Kathryn Mockler's Blog, page 25
August 18, 2024
Barbie Heads
Barbie Heads, Kathryn Mockler, 2024Walking down the street, I come across six severed blonde Barbie heads skewered on the antennae of a black truck.
The first Barbie has her eye gouged out with devil horns drawn in red above it, the second has an upside-down crucifix branded on her forehead, the third’s face is covered in dirt, the fourth has white paint splashed over her mouth to look like semen, the fifth has black stitching that runs across her cheeks and mouth sewing it shut, and the sixth Barbie has baby blue earrings and black smudges on her face that look like bruises.
Their hair shimmers against the fading light of the dusk sky and the sound of a metal band practicing in the basement in the house adjacent.
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August 16, 2024
Raven Series
Raven Series 1, Kathryn Mockler, 2024
Raven Series 2, Kathryn Mockler, 2024
Raven Series 3, Kathryn Mockler, 2024
Raven Series 4, Kathryn Mockler, 2024Support Send My Love to AnyoneSupport Send My Love to Anyone by signing up for a monthly or yearly subscription, liking this post, or sharing it!
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August 11, 2024
Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 39
Hello friends,
Welcome to Issue 39 of Send My Love to Anyone where you’ll find SMLTA recommendations, a new essay by Kirby on tenderness, a list poem by Carrianne Leung, two poems from Victoria Mbabazi’s forthcoming poetry collection, an excerpt from Jacob Wren’s new novel, my writing advice to my younger self, and some thoughts for Words Count on writing book blurbs.
From the archive, you’ll can read 3 things Farzana Doctor learned while writing 52 Weeks to a Sweeter Life and an except from Concetta Principe’s book DISCIPLINE n. v. A Lyric Dictionary.
Plus a book giveaway.
Hope you enjoy!
Kathryn
Send My Love to Anyone | Issue 39* I try to find language
* I read histories of occupation and land theft
* I post things on social media","size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Carrianne Leung | Issue 39","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2024-08-08T17:18:36.166Z","cover_image":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazon... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f...
truthfully I can only tell you what’s missing
if love is oxygen it’s done nothing but die here
it’s yet to acclimate to my home’s density
but truth can exist without intimacy ","size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Victoria Mbabazi | Issue 39","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2024-08-12T00:07:46.729Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f...
1: My Apologies
Dropping bombs is the purest form of capitalism. A Tomahawk missile costs US$1.87 million. An AGM-114 Hellfire costs US$150,000. The price of a GBU-44/B Viper Strike is currently unlisted but is likely also somewhere in this range. And the moment they hit the ground, the moment they detonate, the money is gone and you must buy new ones in order to do it all over again. A computer lasts from three to five years. A car lasts eleven. But a bomb, when you use it, lasts a split second and it’s gone. A bomb that kills many and a bomb that kills no one costs the same amount. It is not like throwing good money after bad or watching money burn. It’s like watching money detonate, watching money explode, like a Hollywood film in which the many explosions make up for the shortcomings of the script, filling in for absences of meaning and purpose.","size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Jacob Wren | Issue 39","publishedBylines":[],"post_date":"2024-07-27T02:31:47.155Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... the ArchiveSupport Send My Love to Anyone
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"How I loved your love."
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This knife | fork | book postcard, tenderness, by Montreal-based artist/friend Billy Mavreas has become my calling card of sorts, I take it with me everywhere I go, gift it at my readings, a li’l reminder of what I’ve come to know as my core strength, what keeps me here.
About Baldwin, Toni Morrison said, “Your tenderness—a tenderness so delicate I thought it could not last, but last it did and envelop me it did…You knew, didn’t you, how I loved your love? You knew.”
“The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light.” - James Baldwin, Nothing Personal
There is but one struggle, the struggle to be here, damaged and all. “There is no hierarchy to oppression.” (Audre Lorde) It’s a courageous act to continue.
And this is nearly impossible without “accurate reflectors.” Trusted intimates in whose naked radiant faces we see ourselves.
“Magnifying each other’s light.”
I also refer to them as “touchstones,” those [people/things] that immediately connect us to/remind us of a self we misplace at times that in this reflective light, brings us to the here & now. Our radiant selves. My fairy.
“I see you.”
Branding/marketing, AI will have none of it. What we see is a fabrication of what it’s supposed to be, look like, sound like, but strangely not feel like. An idea of the dream. Not the dream itself.
Your dream.
“And I heard that there's a special place
Where boys and girls can all be queens every single day”
I only recently came across Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club online, not her official video (which is a hoot) but by the positively infectious viral lip-synching duo TrinoxAdam on TikTok (@trinoxadam). Goodness, the rapturous love these two share.
And the joy of a good pop song.
As Langston Hughes quickens:
“We / Who have nothing to lose / Must sing and dance”
and, while I’m there (Nothing Left To Lose EBTG) much of this summer, why wait? or as my dance buddy Christopher says, “Lay it all down babe.” And I do, dancing my tits off to RuPaul’s The Realness, my 6pm daily routine.
Oppressed peoples have always found ways to dance in the face of adversity, often as an act of defiance, a means of survival, the express purpose of ecstasy, joy. To rise up.
If anyone was to tell me in 2024 I’d be enraptured in my living room movin and groovin to one the the best Pet Shop Boys’ albums EV-VAH, the gift of a lifetime, with these opening Neil Tenant words from the opening track, Loneliness:
There is a better fight
A cause close to my heart
The struggle against loneliness
That's tearing you apart
Lush strings and orchestrations swell to one of the most recognizable beats/sounds in queer music history, and a video to pine over. Who else but PSB to make your lonely-ass get up and dance?! “Get over yourself, Cher!”
poetryisqueer
A post shared by @poetryisqueerHere’s a playlist I made to dance on my 65th. A springboard of sorts.
Maybe it’s not your cuppa, and you’re worth finding out what your lifelines, your reflectors, your touchstones, your cuppa is. What moves, keep you here.
Jimmy (honouring his one-hundreth this year): “Best advice I ever got was an old friend of mine, a black friend, who said you have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all. That’s the only advice you can give anybody. And it’s not advice, it’s an observation.”
James Baldwin, at 100, on high beam.
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Victoria Mbabazi | Issue 39
The Siren imagines an ending during a storm
WASHText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedthe sky is fractured bythe approaching hurricaneit paints the air a soft bluehardened by thunderingharsh and apocalypticthe room wrestling with floatingpages the aroma of coffeeburning the singing kniveshitting near empty platesdeclarations turning intohaunting observations they maketheir way up our throats tell meyou love me I thought endingsforeshadowed you don’t have todie here you don’t mind youstand up resignedI’m the only one who’llsurvive this hurricanethe cracked windowsstill hoping you’ll tell meyou love meVictoria Mbabazi is a Pisces with an Aries Moon. Their first chapbook, chapbook, is available with Anstruther Press and their double chapbook Flip is available with Knife | Fork | Book. The Siren in the Twelfth House is their first full-length poetry collection. They live in Brooklyn, New York.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
The Siren in the Twelfth House
by Victoria MbabaziPalimpsest Press, 2024“Truthfully I can only tell you what’s missing” writes the heartbroken protagonist at the beginning of Victoria Mbabazi’s The Siren in the Twelfth House. But this isn’t a book that succumbs to grief. Mbabazi’s poems are siren songs, reclaiming love from pain, and rediscovering joy through the destruction and eventual rebuilding of astrological houses. Prepare to slow dance through this profound and powerful debut.
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August 10, 2024
Call for Submissions: Reinhilde Cammaert Memorial Writing Scholarship
SUBMISSION DEADLINE:
Friday, September 6, 2024 (11:59pm EST)
This creative writing scholarship is open to emerging Ontario writers working in fiction and creative nonfiction who identify as living with mental health and/or addiction issues. Successful applicants will be paired with a professional writer from InkWell and will meet three times by phone or video conference, to receive feedback on up to 60 pages of prose.
The program will begin in December 2024/January 2025, and a $500 honorarium will be awarded to participants upon completion.
Applicants are required to complete a form (linked below), which includes short answer questions and a portal to upload a 10-page writing sample. There is no application fee.
Please don't hesitate to contact us with questions at maya@inkwellworkshops.com
We look forward to reading your work!
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August 8, 2024
Carrianne Leung | Issue 39
I try to find language
I read histories of occupation and land theft
I post things on social media
I am challenged
I receive threats
I am told that I am being watched
I read some more
I go to protests
I find others who see the same things I do, and I cling to them
I find others who choose not to see
I am bewildered that it’s a choice to not see
I have nightmares
I have been lied to by people appointed to tell the truth
I have been betrayed and so have you
I watch the world become reconfigured
I watch power reveal its true faces
I witnessed
I witness
I find out there are other genocides happening simultaneously to my regular life
I do the groceries, the laundry, feed my kid, walk the dog, go to work
I see pictures of children without heads, limbs, bodies tore apart
I do more laundry
I have more nightmares
I am a coward and sometimes, I try to be brave
I post more on social media
I go to more protests
I talk to people who say nothing about this hell on earth and so I don’t mention it either, but I still feel the flames and wonder why they can’t
I can’t stop thinking about Hind
I become afraid that I will forget Hind and all of them
I discover that the price of living in these times is amnesia
I am not living
I no longer know how to be human
I no longer know how to talk to you.
Carrianne Leung is a fiction writer and educator. Her books include the Wondrous Woo and That Time I Loved You which was awarded the Danuta Gleed Literary Award 2019. She is currently working on a new novel, titled The After.
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August 7, 2024
Writing Advice to My Younger Self
This is a picture of me when I was around 17 or 18, the age when I first wanted to be a writer.
There aren't many pictures of me as a teenager, so I don't have a lot to choose from.
Yes, that's a hippie scarf and Pink Floyd poster on the wall. The 60s came back hard in the 80s.
Yes, I'm smoking.
Yes, I look like a stoner.
I know. Embarrassing!
I was thinking about what I would say to my younger self about the writing life and things that I wish I had known at that age when I was secretly writing poems in my journal and would never have dared to tell anyone I wanted to be a writer.","size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Writing Advice to My Younger Self","publishedBylines":[{"id":21201715,"name":"Kathryn Mockler","bio":"Kathryn Mockler is the author of Anecdotes (Book*hug Press) which was a finalist for the 2024 Trillium Book Award and shortlisted for the 2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award. She teaches creative writing at the University of Victoria.","photo_url":"https://substack-post-media.s3.amazon... My Mind","id":41948360,"type":"newsletter","reaction_count":0,"comment_count":0,"publication_name":"Send My Love to Anyone","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f... Send My Love to Anyone
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Writing Advice to My Younger Self
My Younger Self Gives Writing Advice to My Younger SelfI wrote this a few years ago, but much still applies as advice to myself—especially the saying no part!
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This is a picture of me when I was around 17 or 18, the age when I first wanted to be a writer.
There aren't many pictures of me as a teenager, so I don't have a lot to choose from.
Yes, that's a hippie scarf and Pink Floyd poster on the wall. The 60s came back hard in the 80s.
Yes, I'm smoking.
Yes, I look like a stoner. I was.
I know. Embarrassing!
Here is some advice I would give to my younger self about the writing life. These are things I wish I had known when I was secretly writing poems in my journal and would never have dared to tell anyone I wanted to be a writer.
Don’t let anyone determine whether or not you will be a writer besides yourself. When I started writing I felt somehow that I need permission to write or to be told that I was worthy of becoming a writer by someone who I thought was important. This is a trap that many new writers fall into. But you don’t need anyone’s permission to write. There are going to be more people who write books than who read them, and you have to decide if you are going to let someone else choose how you want to spend your life. At the end of the day, you will be the person most invested in your writing life. Never allow someone tell you that you can’t or shouldn’t write or what you should or shouldn’t write about.
Try not to let rejection determine your value as a writer and human being. If you are rejected from something you really are invested in know that it will take about a week for the pain to go away. Acceptances don’t necessarily mean that the best writing has been picked. Best is subjective. It’s often random. Try not to take it personally. If you find yourself constantly being rejected then do something to get feedback so you can build your skills and improve your writing:
take a course
visit a writer-in-residence in your community
get a trusted writing friend to critique your work
start or join a writing group
hire an editor (if you are able)
read more
write more
Make honest connections with people in your community. Be wary of users. Be wary of people who want to befriend you too easily or quickly. On the other hand, don’t treat people as a means to an end. Networking is not about using people. If you do it right, you are just making friends with likeminded people. Invest in people not in what people can do for you.
Volunteering can be good but avoid over-volunteering. If you’re operating in the lit mag or small press world, there will often be volunteering opportunities which can be a good thing as long as you are getting something out of it and not overdoing it. It can be easy to get exploited if you are someone who is willing to please. Alternatively start your own thing and that way you can control how much or how little you want to invest.
Try not to determine your worth by using someone else’s career as a yardstick for your own success. Even though you will feel it from time to time and it’s perfectly understandable and natural given how competitive the literary world is, jealousy, if you dwell on it for too long, is going to be a waste of time (unless of course you find it motivating then go for it). For many jealousy drains energy that is better spent elsewhere like on your actual writing. Everyone will have their own path. There is no age that you should be published by. My first book of poetry was published when I was 40 which at the time I thought was so old. Focus on yourself and mind your own business. Chances are you won’t win awards for your writing or make money. If you are published, you most likely will hardly ever be read. I hate to say this but it is true. Be able to live with not being the most special writer in the room, and you will have a more fulfilling writing life.
You have to be in this for something other than external validation. If something good happens, be grateful for it, and be pleasantly surprised but don’t expect it. But if you are only a writer for the cookies, it will be a rough writing life. For most writers, there are more downs than ups, and learning to navigate them and getting yourself out of ruts is what will sustain you in the long term.
It’s okay to burn bridges. For much of my writing career, I was so afraid to burn bridges I behaved in ways I regret. I let people walk all over me, and I didn't stand up for myself. Don't be so afraid of burning bridges that you refrain from speaking out on issues that are important to you or that you allow others to harm, use, or take advantage of you. Your writing career is not worth more than your dignity, humanity, or core values.
Say no. I used to be a yes person and now I'm a no person. I encourage more people to be no people because usually what you get asked to do is work for free for someone else. I used to say yes all the time for fear I would lose some great opportunity. But usually there is no great opportunity, and you end up feeling depleted and resentful. No one is going to pay you more or respect you at your job or in your career because you constantly work for free or say yes to things you don't want to do. A medical crisis forced me to say no a couple of years ago, and at first it was terrible. I was filled with guilt and was distressed all the time. But after the first few times saying no (because I had to), I realized just how liberating it is to say no and to only spend time on things I really want to and are able to do. When you say no the world doesn't fall apart because, hey, you're not that important. And the person asking will just ask someone else. I wish I could shake my younger self and say stop it. Stop saying yes all the time. Chelene Knight offers a terrific workshop for writers on the topic of saying no: How to Say No with Love
Don’t underestimate people. I have been on the receiving end of being underestimated. It does not feel good. I have underestimated people too, and I deeply regret it. Underestimating people is about wanting to feel superior. Don’t do this. People can learn and grow and develop and change. We are never just one thing at one time. Give people the room to be better and to surprise you.
Try new things. Don't do the same thing over and over because it worked and you liked the praise. Try something new and be willing to fail. You'll learn more from your failures than from your successes.
Move your body. Make sure that you get exercise. Writing is a sitting gig. And that sitting is hell on your body. Strengthen your core. Go for a walk. Trust me. You will have a bad back if you don't.
These are still things I need to remind my current writing self.
Do any resonate with you?
What would be your writing advice to your younger writer self?
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August 5, 2024
Gatherings | Issue 39
Recommended readings, viewings, music, and art from Send My Love to Anyone!
My NewsAnecdotes has been shortlisted for the 2024 Fred Kerner Award along with Lucian Childs, Ifeoma Chinwuba, Lara Okihiro, Janis Bridger, and Caroline Vu. Congrats to all the finalists. The winner will be announced at an online event in September!
The judges had some nice things to say about Anecdotes:
“Kathryn Mockler challenges our preconceptions about what a short-story is and can be with this collection. Like Lydia Davis before her, she pushes the envelope on this form, opening new vistas for writers who are bound to follow her lead. Particularly engaging are the stories that play with form to bring us new perspectives on story-telling. In any collection this approach would be brave and challenging. When taking on topics like sexual violence, abuse and environmental change it rises above those laudable aims and achieves something more profound: pure art, gracefully achieved.”
“Anecdotes is a highly original and an intentionally jarring hybrid collection in four distinct parts. Mockler’s bold and darkly playful approach to exploring some of the big issues of our time is an authentic and empowering call to action to anyone who’s paying attention.”
Thanks to Heidi Greco for the lovely review of Anecdotes in subTerrain!
Thanks so much to Tim Blackett (author of Grandview Drive) for having me on his podcast to talk about Anecdotes (Bookhug Press) and other random stuff like TikTok and favourite email salutations! Fun fact: Tim was my first TikTok friend!
My micro short film Do You Know What’s Great? adapted from a story from Anecdotes will be screening at the following festivals:
August 29-31, 2024 - Oxford Shorts Festival at St. John’s College, Oxford University
September 16, 2024 - Austin Micro Film Festival at the AFS Cinema, 6259 Middle Fiskville Rd, Austin, TX
Anecdotes can be ordered through Book*hug Press or to your favourite independent bookstore!
Kirby NewsKirby is reading in Barrie with Caitlin McKenzie on August 9, 2024!
Tickets available at knifeforkbook.shop
Fertile Festival 3rd Instalment
Have you got your copy of Kirby’s She yet?
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SMLTA RecommendationsSeveral writers are cutting ties with the Giller Awards. Much respect for these authors. My book is not eligible or I would be joining them!
Elamin Abdelmahmoud chats with former Giller Prize winner Omar El Akkad about why he’s protesting the Giller Prize.
ICYMI wrote one of the best Alice Munro essays:
sweater weatherwhat i'm doing about alice munroHello friends—Thanks for reading sweater weather! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Some news: I am working on two books of nonfiction to be published with Graywolf. I am very excited. One is a book of literary criticism about morality and fiction and aesthetics, etc. The other is a craft book dra…Read morea month ago · 1627 likes · 142 comments · BrandonMore Alice Munro news. Another victim comes forward and an employee quits Munro’s bookstore over abuse revelations.
Inspired by a need for more grounded, non-elite analyses of the current situation in Sudan, we interviewed four people whose organizing against the oppressive policies of the Sudanese state spans years and in some cases decades. Each of them links the revolution to the current war and foreground the organizing and collective visioning processes that have and could potentially still move us toward a popular democratic future in a post-war Sudan. We are incredibly grateful to them for speaking to us despite the circumstances that they face, including telecommunications and electricity blackouts in much of the country. In this first installment, you’ll read our introduction and an interview with Abdelraouf Omer, a Gezira farmer and union organizer.
If you would like to help grassroots civil society and mutual aid groups at the frontlines of relief efforts in parts of Sudan most impacted by state violence, donate to the Sudan Solidarity Collective.
— Rabab Elnaiem, Nisrin Elamin, and Sara Abbas
Read In Sudan, the People’s Revolution Versus the Elite’s Counterrevolution in Hammer & Hope
Sad to hear about David Lynch’s diagnosis.
faroutmagazine
A post shared by @faroutmagazineInteresting discussion about AI and Creative Writing Pedagogy from AWP. Honestly feeling at a loss about AI and teaching. I worry about the environmental and other costs of using it. Here’s a conversation with professors who are addressing it in different ways in the classroom. I’m at the point where I’m just listening to a variety of perspectives and trying to learn as much about it as I can.
Reading as Resistance:
whatsonemorepothos
A post shared by @whatsonemorepothos
Since Hillbilly Elegy came out in 2016, I’ve experienced countless people claiming to now “understand” where I come from and what Appalachian people are like. But they don’t think of my childhood watching my dad lose himself while arranging music on his piano or my grandfather tenderly nurturing plants in his ridiculously large garden. Instead, they imagine the stereotypes of J.D. Vance’s version of Appalachia, where the entire region is made up of poor rural white people consumed with violence who have no one to blame but themselves for their life circumstances.
Back when the book was first released, Book Riot published an excellent piece about why Hillbilly Elegy is problematic. It’s been over four years since Vance’s memoir hit the shelves, but now we have to contend with the movie of Hillbilly Elegy, directed by Ron Howard and starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams. Many of the issues from the memoir carry over to the film version of Vance’s story, presenting his harmful portrait of Appalachia to a whole new audience.
Read 15 Books About Appalachia to Read Instead of HILLBILLY ELEGY, Book Riot
SMLTA contributor Farzana Doctor has a novel out this fall with ECW Press, The Beauty of Us.
“This novel’s quiet genius lies in how it reminds us that we are all always recovering and starting over; this is a story for everyone. A moving and seriously empathetic novel, as faceted as a jewel.” — Thea Lim, author of An Ocean of Minutes
“Undeniably cinematic.” — Catherine Hernandez, author and screenwriter of Scarborough the book and film
Watch this vital conversation from 2022 on the Importance of Storytelling and the Novelist as Knowledge Keeper between Kagiso Lesego Molope and Zakes Mda!
For novelists whose works are situated in conflict zones, could it be said that they must be seen as having multiple roles? In these worlds where books are banned and libraries are lost, can the novel then be considered an archival site, a place where the people's histories can be documented? Though this can often be said about historical fiction, novelists writing about conflict zones have the added pressure of recording history as it happens or from recent memory. Kagiso Lesego Molope and Zakes Mda are both apartheid survivors and have written extensively about apartheid. They are in conversation about the role of the novelist, the importance of documenting history in fiction and the burden of the survivor as a storyteller. This event was produced in collaboration with Gothenburg Book Fair.
From four flashes you need to read right now!
The Art of Flash Fiction Four Flashes You Need to Read Right Now!Cala Gonone, Sardinia - Photo by Luca Cassani on Unsplash…Read more21 days ago · 48 likes · 5 comments · Kathy FishThe inaugural Inside Prize has named its first recipient—the author Imani Perry. The new book award is “a collaborative project of Freedom Reads, the National Book Foundation, Center for Justice Innovation and Dallas bookstore owner Lori Feathers.” And in a novel move, all the prize judges are incarcerated individuals.
Read The first US Book Prize judged entirely by incarcerated people has announced a winner on Lit Hub.
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Check out this essay by SMLTA contributor in his Substack which is a companion essay for his new story collection Rubble Children.
No More Abysses, No More WallsThe (Not So) Jewish SuburbsA few things…Read more2 days ago · 2 likes · Aaron KreuterAlso SMLTA contributor Saeed Teebi interviews Aaron Kreuter for the podcast, Short Story Today
Toronto reading series Junction Reads is fundraising!
Thoughtful essay by on writing and the market!
Counter CraftWriting For, Within, and Against the MarketRecently, I’ve been thinking about the market. Or rather, the author’s relationship to it. This was spurred by Christian Lorentzen’s excellent essay “Literature Without Literature” that was critiquing Dan Sinykin’s also excellent book Big Fiction. I enjoyed…Read morea day ago · 84 likes · 22 comments · Lincoln MichelCaliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici
“Dressing the Ghost” by on !
Medium CoolDRESSING THE GHOSTNone of my friends wanted to model a dead girl’s dress, but after they did they all posted photos of it to their Instagram accounts. The outfit was black with a gold belt, and black bows on each shoulder. A pleat ran across one hip, making the fabric of the skirt drape in a sexy way. I didn’t remember having ever seen my roommate in it. When my roommate was killed, I’d been left with a stack of blue jeans and blouses and an empty room…Read more22 days ago · 2 likes · 1 comment · Emily Schultz“ …in my experience, if you go to an MFA program without having done anything like that, you can quickly find yourself undermined just through inexperience. And by this I mean that if you have the feeling of winning a golden ticket that will save you when you get into the program, you are in danger. You are already giving that institution too much power. You will save you, as it were. To believe otherwise is to give too much power to the faculty and your new peers. You may find yourself in a crisis if you feel you are letting them down somehow, more afraid to disappoint them than yourself. I say this because by the time you are in graduate school, you need to know it’s important to be able to disappoint a teacher if you feel you are right about what you need to write, perhaps especially if that teacher is a hero to you. You are not there to become someone’s acolyte. You are there to locate you in all of this and to give yourself what you need to live and work as a writer.”
Read Alexander Chee’s excellent advice about the writing life and MFA programs in On Turning Writing Community, Writing Habits, and Submitting Work Into A Life in The Querent!
A Woman Under The Influence (1974) | John Cassavettes
I am obsessed with Rosali! Enjoy!
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