Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 25

Hump Day Happy, Thanksgiving Edition

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States. That’s a complicated holiday to navigate, but then, everything is complicated these days, isn’t it? That being said, gratitude is worth practicing year-round. Given that, let’s see what’s making me happy this week!

(By the way, don’t forget to sign up for my completely unannoying newsletter. Because I don’t write to you often enough. Heck, I don’t write to my mom often enough, either. [Hey, I wonder if my mom’s signed up for it…])

“It hurts to give up on a project. But not everything is meant to be finished.”

This article by Alexander Chee is still awesome three years after the fact. A highlight from item #12: “Many of us work at home all day, not even wearing underwear apparently, and we don’t even have valets to mumble to.” (Rest assured, I am wearing underwear while I’m typing this. Maybe.)

PRISM international‘s nonfiction contest deadline has been extended to November 30. Run, don’t walk, folks.

Right when I’m thinking of “Trains and Winter Rains,” Enya comes out with

a new album.

(Seriously, just try to get this song out of your head after you hear it. Bonus? Keep an eye out in the video for sharks!)

Archeology! Researchers unearth a lost island in the Aegean. Sadly, it’s not Atlantis.

“I see fictional people.”

How to weed your bookshelves. If you don’t have more books than you have shelf space, either I have no idea who you are, you’re already doing this, or you need to read more.

“America, you’ve gone yellow.”

I love having completely awesome and talented friends like Natalie Morrill, winner of the HarperCollinsPublishers/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction.

Joseph Gordon Levitt is a part of the Rhythm Nation.

Kiss on my list*

I’ll be the first to admit I have no idea what I’m going to do with the mailing list I just started. That being said, I’ve written at length about how I love making lists, and I’d love it if you’d sign up. Seriously, go here and do that thing. I’ll wait.

“So, what have I just gotten myself into?” you might be asking yourself. I don’t know; I’m kind of figuring that out myself at the moment. I think it goes back to waiting for the mailman. (Which is, of course, an outmoded and sexist way of putting it, especially considering that our current postal carrier is actually a very nice woman. But I long for a word or phrase that combines the same singsong character as “mailman” with the all-encompassing nature of “postal carrier.” Let’s work on that, folks. Meanwhile, moving on!)

Where was I? Right, the mail. I’m old enough to remember when hearing from someone meant one of two things: They either called you on the phone (expensive, especially if they were out of town; you got charged per minute, kids, even if they didn’t live out of the country!) or they sent you a letter (maybe a postcard if they were on vacation or didn’t have a lot to say). This was under fifty cents. It still is, even! (Barely, but still.)

When I was in my twenties, at the tail end of undergrad and then during my first few jobs, when I was living in St. Louis and didn’t know anybody except the people I worked with, I became the sort of person who checked the mail whenever I was coming or going. No lie, I’d look out the window of my third-floor apartment and if I saw the mail van parked on the corner, I’d wait to hear him downstairs in the lobby, and then I’d go down and check my box. Granted, most of the time it was bills (that I couldn’t pay) and circulars (for stuff I couldn’t afford). Every once in a while, though, there’d be a letter—from my brother (rare) or a friend from either high school or my first year of college back in New Hampshire. The mother lode was, in fact, from my mother, when my parents were stationed abroad and we’d trade fairly long letters filling in everything that had been going on between monthly phone calls.

Now, it’s really rare that I get letters in the mail. My friend Keith, though, recently sent one that was funny and unexpected. (Unexpected in it’s arrival, that is, not in its humor. He’s a funny guy.) Before that, I got a fantastic letter written by a group of friends from grad school, written the day after a wedding party (I detected notes of hangover) that also included the following picture:

I have awesome friends. (Also, Wonder Woman!)

I want to get back into the habit of writing letters. I’m kind of surprised this hasn’t become a hip new-old thing to do again. Or maybe it has and I just haven’t noticed.

Anyway! As things tend to evolve, now that sense of expectation has shifted from my mailbox to my inbox. Most of my e-mails are, obviously, from companies, applications, and things that are other than human. So when I get a message from a real, live human, it’s the sort of thing I save to enjoy after going through all the other crap in the inbox, which is the equivalent of the wad of circulars that makes your mailbox look full but is worthless.

I also look forward to things like Queen, periodic dispatches from writer Alex Chee that are a bit longer than a blog post and feel, well, a bit more personal, to be honest. (There’s an archive of them here; check them out and you’ll see what I mean.) It feels different than getting an e-mail notification that there’s a new blog post or seeing something pop up in a Facebook feed. (Don’t get me started on Facebook. I’ll have more to say about that later.)

So, basically, I want to feel like I’m talking directly to people, and maybe it’ll feel that way for you. Maybe you’ll be inspired to hit “reply,” and then we really will be talking directly. If you like reading stuff from me, that may be enough. Every once in a while, though, I might offer you something free. I don’t know what, but maybe a story, a piece of advice, a discount on something. A heads-up on something coming out before everyone else gets wind of it. That sort of thing.

So yeah, go sign up.

*And when was the last time you thought of Hall & Oates?

Hump Day Happy

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been having a productive week. Actually, my recent productivity surge started last Friday, when I fired off a bunch of submissions and got a lot of work done. It’s been fairly steady since then, and when that happens, I just try to ride the wave until it breaks (by which point I probably need a breather anyway).

Meanwhile, here’s the stuff that’s been making my week when I haven’t been working:

Stephen King (“America’s teddy bear with little daggers”) teaches us that the key to success is to outlive your critics:

(via BookRiot)

This is an INTJ brain on writing.

Donald Antrim’s First Time: I had a workshop with him at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown in 2003. (I think it was 2003. Anyway, sometime around then.) He was, in a word, awesome: kind, insightful, encouraging (did I mention kind?). The takeaway statement for me: “I just feel like I’m still starting.” If someone like Donald Antrim can feel that, I’m okay with feeling like an absolute beginner every time I sit down to write. And maybe I should welcome that feeling.

An excerpt from Charlie Demers’ book The Horrors. I was a TA for his writing for social media class at the University of British Columbia, and he’s always been a good guy in my book.

Web Poets’ Society (via Austin Kleon)

“Leaving A Mark” by Miah Jeffra at Chelsea Station magazine. We were Lambda fellows at the same time.

Honestly? The Sainsbury’s Christmas advert is giving me a lift. Bonus: narrated by Emma Thompson!

“A horny deer hunter, a self-loathing store owner, and a sleep-walking psychiatrist break into a computer.” Is that not awesome? I might write the story to go with it. Thanks, Random Logline Generator!

Psst: Hey, while you’re at it, why not sign up for my Completely Unannoying Newsletter? You’ll have my undying gratitude and I promise not to spam you, sell your name, or send you too many animated GIFs.

 

Finalist

It’s always weird talking about boring, everyday things after something of moment has occurred on the global stage. (Actually, let’s face it: it’s always weird talking about boring, everyday things about yourself on the Internet, of all places, all the time. So, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, back to talking about myself.

I submitted a story called “Little Bastard” to Gertrude Press’s Fiction Chapbook contest and, okay, I didn’t win. But! I was a finalist, and my name should eventually pop up on their contest page over here. So, glass half full!

Meanwhile, in their current issue is this fantastic story by Ryan Anthony Rogers. It’s inspired me. Also check out his blog exboyfriendmaterial.com.

Hump Day Happy

It’s Wednesday already? How did that happen? While you’re trying to figure that out, here are a few of the things making my week:

AvoidHumans: this sort of app is practically tailor-made for writers, curmudgeons, and, well, me.
The realization that in any youth-oriented pop culture work, I am likely to relate most closely to the sassy grandma:

You go, mama. You got this.

From Slave Leia to Slayer Leia.
Hey, what’s my line?
An element of random is sometimes needed to uncork a creative bottleneck. Sometimes that element can be as simple as one word.
David Mitchell says “Don’t be a genre snob!“
HarperLegend might be the place for your “visionary digital fiction.”

We’ve almost made it to Friday, kids. Two more days!

Nano-no-Nanette?* No. By which I mean yes.

Hello, it’s me.

(What do you mean you haven’t seen the new Adele video yet? Click the picture already!)

(Is anyone else basically playing this song endlessly over and over? [And does it make you want to drink like, a lot? Or is that just me? Oh, it is? Never mind.] Has it really been four years since her last album? Anyway, in short, I love Adele, and one of these days I’ll drink enough to try this at karaoke.)

Where was I? Oh, right. Write. Nanowrimo. You know, I wasn’t even thinking about signing up for it this year. I signed up last year, kind of on a whim (a stupid, ill-considered whim, if you must know) to spur myself to work on the sequel to The Unwanted (which for the moment I’m calling The Prophecy Boy. Yes, it’s changed. I decided The Flesh Trap sounded a little skeevy). Anyway, it didn’t work. I got about 8,000 words in and then stalled. I had better luck on that project when I was at the month-long writing residency in Vermont, and at the moment that manuscript stands at just under 45,000 words. Since that seemed to work well for me, I decided to try to follow the same sort of schedule for November as I work on a new novel—only it’s not the sequel to The Unwanted.

Here’s what I’m doing: I work on the Nanowrimo novel (tentatively titled While You Were Making Other Plans—yes, I pulled that pretty much out of thin air) in the morning, and The Prophecy Boy in the evening. “Two books at once? Is he crazy?” I hear you ask. Well, maybe. But, the two books are so dissimilar that so far I haven’t had a hard time switching gears between them. Mind you, I’ve also been mainly rereading and revising the first half of The Prophecy Boy so far, and then writing scenes as they occur to me, so most of my heavy-duty writing happens in the morning with While You Were Making. This is fairly typical for me. Also, I spend the afternoon doing freelance work (Hey! Need a graphic designer? An editor? My rates are totally reasonable and I have satisfied clients to prove it!) which helps create a separation between the two storylines.

Why did I decide to sign up for Nanowrimo, though? Mainly because I needed to kick myself in the rear. From August until now, I haven’t done a whole lot of writing, as I mentioned in a previous post. One of the things I’ve learned about myself is that my productivity accelerates when I have a deadline. Even if it’s an arbitrary, non-consequence–based deadline like “write 50,000 words in a month.” Which is not really an unrealistic goal. It. Works out to about 1,700 words a day, and Margaret Atwood said in a Q&A that she tries to write three to five pages a day when she’s working on a project. If it’s good enough for her, well then, it’s certainly good enough for me.

And that’s not to say that all of the words will be the right ones. (Or that they’re in the right order, even.) It’s a first draft, and those are not meant to be neat, tidy, perfectly formed things. (Although I did read once about a notable but very slow writer who couldn’t begin a sentence until the previous one was just right. I haven’t been able to find the source of that statement, though, so I’m not sure it’s true.) As a result, particularly in this case, my first draft is going to have a lot of passages that will inevitably get left by the wayside: backstory, narrative threads that don’t move the story forward, descriptions that end up being character studies—things I need to know about the people I’m writing about, but the reader doesn’t necessarily need to know. It all needs to be written at some point for me to figure out what I’m doing. My drafts tend to be messy and somewhat scattershot. It’s when I got back and revise that they start to make sense on the second or third or tenth draft. (Yes, ten. Why not?)

I also know that whatever I produce by the end of November won’t be a complete draft, either. 50,000 words is not very long, and my previous novels (including the ones that live in the drawer that will never see the light of day never ever [seriously, ever]) have all clocked in north of 70,000 words. Maybe I’ll have more than 50,000 written by the end of the month, who knows? Maybe I’ll have less, but it’ll be more than I started with.

Oh, and if you want to follow along on Nanowrimo’s website, I’m over here.

*Oh, and for the record, I’ve never seen No, No, Nanette . But I have heard “Tea for Two.”

Getting the Best of Fear

Fear: You’re soaking in it! (photo by Viktor Jakovlev)

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear lately. (“Ooh,” you think. “Timely, what with Halloween just behind us.” [OMG, IT’S BEHIND YOU. RUN!] To which I say, ha! As if I could even try to be timely or topical. If I were really timely and topical, this would have been written before Halloween, so there’s that.) No, it’s more like fear is one of those things that’s frequently top of mind for me most days. Am I a big old scaredy-cat? Maybe. Who knows? (Don’t mind me while I finish my saucer of milk.)

Anyway! I was listening to a podcast this morning called

The Invisible Office Hours, which is hosted by two entrepreneurs/creatives named Jason Zook and Paul Jarvis. (I have no idea how on earth I came across them and their podcast, which seems to happen a lot with me on the Internet.) I’m catching up on their previous episodes (I highly recommend “Vampires and Zombies”—no, I’m not trying to be topical again; it’s just really funny), and the one I was listening to this morning at the gym was on Fear.

OK, what does this have to do with writing, you ask? Well, I don’t know about you, but fear is the thing that keeps me from hitting “send” on that e-mail to a potential agent, or clicking “submit” on the short story I want to send to a litmag, or on the application to a residency I’d like to attend. Oddly, it’s not the thing that keeps me from the writing itself; that’s usually just pure laziness or lack of focus. Or both. But even after two novels and more than two dozen short stories, every time I send something out into the world, my finger still hovers for a moment (or a minute, or oh, I don’t know, A MONTH) over the Enter button. Even something like a blog post gives me pause.

“Why?” I sometimes ask myself (and by “sometimes” I mean ALL THE TIME). Why is it so hard to commit to that? What’s the worst that can happen?

“Fear festers in loneliness” is one of the things Paul and Jason said on their podcast, and it made an impression. I’d probably revise it to say “fear festers in isolation” because I think it’s when you’re working solo (without lonely even entering the picture) for extended periods that the fear has a tendency to self-perpetuate. Which makes me think that if you could somehow design an engine that runs on fear, you’d be a) a millionaire and b) a really, really sick ticket. (And there, by the way, is a story idea that I’m just throwing out there for anyone who wants to run with it.)

Where was I? Right, overcoming fear. Working in isolation comes with the territory a lot of the time when you’re a writer, much the same way it does when you’re a freelancer (although you’re working for clients, you’re still doing so more or less on your own). Since I’m both a writer and a freelancer, I’m more often than not hunched over my notebook or my computer in an office for one, so the only water cooler chat that happens is in my head.

Which, if you’re not careful, can be pretty disheartening.

The hard thing to remember at the water cooler in my head is to ask myself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” The answer: They could say no. Although I suppose the worst that could happen is that they could say no and include that response in a lengthy message cataloging all the ways in which my writing is lacking and how I am likely never to be a successful writer. To which I would respond, “Tell me something I haven’t already told myself, oh, I don’t know, a million times.”

Of course, it’s not likely that they would say that because most people aren’t that mean, not to mention that it would take time to do so, and believe me, people who work for literary magazines are not exactly luxuriating in free time. They’re also unlikely to do that because they understand just how much courage it takes to hit that send button.

As Paul and Jason brought up on their podcast, the worst thing I could ever imagine happening would be to die an painful and/or embarrassing death, and none of that is likely to happen by sending a letter to an agent or submitting a story to a magazine, and certainly not by posting a blog entry. Sure, I might put my foot in my mouth or not express something very well, but that’s where editing comes in.

Doing anything takes practice. Self-expression takes practice. The courage to express yourself takes practice. I think fear takes practice too, and that’s where being in isolation lends itself to fear. I don’t know about you, but my mind keeps up an active inner dialogue with me, and some of the things it says are just terrible. We get a lot of practice at being afraid, almost without trying, it seems.

So practicing courage—actually, I’m going to call it “gumption,” because courage sounds like you’re risking your life, and like I said, writing is usually not a life-threatening situation. Exercising gumption takes practice too, especially when the task at hand, more than just hitting the submit button, seems so monumental that you’re not sure how you’re ever going to manage to accomplish it. I mean, do you have a to-do list that includes something like “write novel”? How on earth do you want to tackle *that* one? (See my previous post for more on that.) I guess that’s why I’m such a fan of the list. If you manage to creep up on these monumental, frightening tasks a little at a time, they seem less impossible (and you get to feel more stealthy). So “write novel” becomes a list in itself. And “submit to agents” becomes a list for each agent, where I look them up on AgentQuery, read an interview with them, check out what they’re looking for on their agency website, modify my query letter, gather the required writing sample or synopsis, and *then* hit send.

Yes, it’s still nerve-wracking, but I know by that point that I’ve at least done my homework as best I can. They may still say no, but at least I’m not dead.

Getting back into the swing after being out of it for so long

I’ve got everything lined up, now I just need to write the darn thing. (Photo by Dustin Lee)

Whoa, where is this month going? Well, it’s going where all time goes, into the past—but does time really go anywhere? Or are we the ones going someplace while time just remains where it’s always been? And have I had enough coffee to be having these thoughts today? Oy, my head hurts. Moving on!

Where was I? Right, time. So, I’ve been doing a lot of freelancing work. In the past year and half, I’ve discovered that I really enjoy being a freelancer. Which is odd when I consider how much of a structure freak I am. I like my routine, my habit. It helps me keep on track and stay on top of my time, my day, my projects. On top of my life, such as it is.

That’s not to say it isn’t without its nerve-wracking aspects. It feels a lot of the time that you’re living by your wits—and occasionally at your wits’ end. Work can dry up for months, then suddenly there’s more work than you know what to do with, but you dare not turn any of it down because, well, see the aforementioned “work can dry up for months.”

But you have total freedom to structure and spend your time as you see fit. And in my case, at least, you no longer dread Mondays.

I’ve been in one of those “more work than you know what to do with” modes for the past couple months or so, which means that I haven’t been doing a lot of writing. That’s okay, to a certain extent: I was able to spend most of my summer working on writing projects of various kinds, like revising the novel that I wrote in grad school, finally finishing a story I started eighteen months ago (that part where they say stories are easier than novels? Lies), and starting several other stories and an essay. Shifting gears to graphic design and editing can help keep things from getting stale.

But now it’s time to make my way back into the work in progress (that would be the sequel to my YA novel The Unwanted, which you can still totally buy, by the way). And having stepped away from it for the past three months or so, getting back into it? Not so easy.

I’m a big fan of the list, as you may know. And one of the things on my list at the moment is that book, the title of which keeps changing. It started at the top of my list, and then creeps downward as other things get added and then I lose track of it, until I push it back to the top again.

At one of those points, when I looked at the item on my to-do list, it just said “Finish Unwanted Sequel,” which was a) a discouraging way to phrase it, and b) more than a little overwhelming. I realized then that my list item needed to be its own list.

So that’s what I did. That one to-do item is now its own list of ten things, from “review manuscript written to date” (done!) to “write remaining chapters” (which will be further expanded after I’ve delineated chapter breaks and outlined what needs to happen in each chapter). And now it suddenly seems less overwhelming. It’s still a big to-do, but it looks achievable.

So, what are you working on that seems overwhelming?

Four Courses with Andrew Levy

It’s no secret that I love to eat. I’m fond of saying that I exercise so that I can eat more. (I eat a lot, seriously. As I got older and my metabolism ground to a screeching halt, I went into a period of mourning over the fact that I couldn’t eat a whole pizza in one sitting anymore. This, I realize, is pathetic, but there we are.)

Anyway, I’ll get to the point. My friend Andrew is host of a podcast called Four Courses (“where we actually care what you had for lunch”) and invited me to be his first guest host. I was more than happy to be his guinea pig and hopefully didn’t pop my P’s too much. Go have a listen—it’s downloading to my iPod now so I haven’t actually had the cringe-worthy experience of listening to myself talk, so I can’t guarantee that I don’t sound like a complete idiot. But I probably do sound hungry… which is okay, because Andy and I are already planning our next dining out experience.

Thanks for having me on, Andy!

Briefly, A Personal Credit Where It’s Due

Today’s my anniversary. Now, we’re not married—I like to say that I’m old-fashioned and don’t believe in marriage, although that’s not exactly true either, but I’m getting off track (I know, already?) and you’ve probably noticed how often I do that so ANYWAY, moving on. A while after my partner and I got together, we were trying to figure out when we started dating/going steady/whatever you want to call it. We knew it was late August because we’re not SO far gone that we don’t know what month it is at any given time. When it came time to settle on a date, I said, “August 31.”

I had an ulterior motive. That’s also my parents’ anniversary (happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!), and I knew it was unlikely I’d forget both of them if they were on the same date. Because while I may not be THAT far gone yet, I have my days. Usually Tuesdays. I can’t get the hang of Tuesdays, for some reason.

ANYWAY. Why do I bring this up, besides the fact that today is our anniversary? Because on a very practical level, if it weren’t for him I wouldn’t be a writer right now.

Yes, I’d still be writing. OF COURSE I’d still be writing. (You might as well ask me to stop breathing. Have I turned blue yet? No. See? Still breathing.) But I’m incredibly fortunate to have someone as patient as him and who believes in what I’m doing. How much does he believe in me? Well, enough that back in 2006 he said “Why don’t you go to work part time while you finish your novel?” So I did. And that’s when I finally finished Detours. (Which you should totally read, by the way. You want to do something for my anniversary? Buy my book. Support the literary arts! You don’t even have to read it [but you could]. Either way, I promise not to tell.) So anyway, all that is, why when I read this article at Salon back in January, it rang a little bit true for me.

He’s still hoping I hit the big time, though. So am I, for that matter! So yeah, buy that book, or the other one. Or both!

ANYWAY. He’s like that with the whole believing-in-me thing. When I got into grad school, he said go. I sign up for workshops and residencies and spend ridiculous amounts of time outside of St. Louis (to preserve my sanity; also, it gets really hot here in the summer and ice queens don’t like the heat), and he says go. He says yes more than he says no, and I think there’s a lesson in that for everyone, least of all me.

So yeah, if you’ve read something of mine and you liked it, don’t thank me. Well, yes, you can thank me, but also thank him. I know I do.

Happy anniversary, hon. Eleven years and we still haven’t killed each other! (Well, not yet.)

Mike and me, sometime in 2010. He’s cute, isn’t he? We still mostly look like this, which is to say we’re holding up well and are probably a little tipsy.