Chloé Caldwell's Blog, page 2

LGLA

In August 2017 Short Flight/Long Drive is re-issuing Legs Get Led Astray  (which will have been out of print for 2.5 years by then) with four NEW essays. It’s really funny now to think about how when LGLA released I was living at home with my dad and had no job except working at his store.

Photo courtesy Acacia Blackwell

 

HIT SEND

Last night was the last of my 6-week personal essay workshop at Catapult in NYC.

Sniff sniff. We played a (drinking) game called HIT SEND where the girls all submitted essays to publications in real time.

From L to R: Aneri, Jane, Jessica, Kristy, Jessie, Becca, Ashley, Juliana Daria

WINE

 

***

Applications for my next class at Catapult are open.

Instructor: Chloe Caldwell
Dates: Wednesdays, July 20 – August 24
Time: 6:30 – 8:30pm
Fee: $495
Number Of Students: 6-9
1140 Broadway, Suite 704, NY NY 10001
Co-Sponsored By Electric Literature

Submit a writing sample here.

***

I have a box full of my book WOMEN, if you want a signed copy, paypal $15 to cocomonet@gmail.com and I’ll send one out.

 

 

 

 

Hit Send

Last night was the last of my 6-week personal essay workshop at Catapult in NYC.

Sniff sniff. We played a (drinking) game called HIT SEND where the girls all submitted essays to publications in real time.

From L to R: Aneri, Jane, Jessica, Kristy, Jessie, Becca, Ashley, Juliana Daria

WINE

 

***

Applications for my next class at Catapult are open.

Instructor: Chloe Caldwell
Dates: Wednesdays, July 20 – August 24
Time: 6:30 – 8:30pm
Fee: $495
Number Of Students: 6-9
1140 Broadway, Suite 704, NY NY 10001
Co-Sponsored By Electric Literature

Submit a writing sample here.

***

I have a box full of my book WOMEN, if you want a signed copy, paypal $15 to cocomonet@gmail.com and I’ll send one out.

 

 

 

 

bad women

This event at The Strand is in three weeks. 1k ppl say they’re going, so, uh, wish me luck with my stream of consciousness talking. More info here. Hope to see you there on Apr. 21st.

My 30th bday was sweet, here’s a pic from a dinner I had w some bad (ass) women at The Jane Hotel.

photoshop by Logan Sachon

In the past month or so I read some great essays about turning 30. Click the photo to read the essays.

The late 20s and early 30s seem to be a turning point in many modern women’s lives. For a while I’ve been taking note of creative women I admire who come into their own and start producing amazing work on the cusp of 30. Margaret Atwood and Joan Didion published their first books at age 29. Patti Smith recorded Horses at 29. Tina Fey was 29 when she was named head writer of Saturday Night Live. bell hooks published her first major work, Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism, when she was 29. (No wonder everyone loves a 29-year-old.) Oprah had just turned 30 when she landed her first TV talk show. Martha Graham was 32 when she opened the Martha Graham Center for Contemporary Dance. Diana Vreeland landed her very first job in magazines at age 33. Dorothy Parker published her first volume of poetry at 33. —Ann Friedman

“On Turning 30” by Molly Crabapple on VICE

For me, many of the privileges of getting older have been bound up with getting cash. As an artist, I’ve done better than most.  Each year I’ve managed to hack together more opportunities, and paint with more mastery, until one day, I realized I was no longer flailing just to stay afloat. Being 30 is sweet. Saying I was 30 I pointlessly despised. —Molly Crabapple

Sure, my boobs were a bit perkier at 25, but I didn’t have the right bra.

—Karley Sciortino

But my favorite paragraph about growth, maturity, getting older is from Elisa Albert in her essay Currency, on leaving NYC.

“It’s just you miss the reckless girl who lived here. Retarded funny stubborn blind unforgiving little wench, beholden to no one, blindly enacting her will on everything, everyone. It was your youth! Now you’re older and wiser and better in about a thousand ways. A halfway decent sense of self on a good day, for starters. Now you know some things about where to put your energy, about what it means to build up instead of tear down, what it’s like to nurture good things so they grow. You wouldn’t trade anything for anything. All of this is true. And yet let us not skirt the issue that something was lost. Something has been lost.” —Elisa Albert

Thanks to The Strand (apparently they think I used to work there) for putting my book in the window with Patti Smith. Nice book placement is helping me finally earn royalties, wheeee!

Major Dramatic Question

Today my essay Major Dramatic Question published in Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner’s Lenny Letter. It grapples with teaching writing when a) you identify as a writer, not a teacher and sort of detest teachers and b) teaching writing having not gone to school for writing and c) can writing even be taught? Do we kill it the more we talk about? I hope you enjoy it!!! (At this point to read it you have to be subscribed to Lenny. Later it will go on their website. I think.)

 

Staying on the topic of teaching writing, last night Ashley C. Ford came to visit my personal essay class at Catapult, which is made up of 9 ambitious, smart, lovely, women. Ashley and I had wine downstairs at my new favorite bar, Vin Sur Vignt—where I’m definitely going to meet my future French husband—beforehand. We talked about how we’re both teaching and writing full time. (Her at New School, SkillShare, and Catapult, me at Litreactor, Gotham, Catapult.) We talked about how we met online back in April 2012. Ashley had tweeted asking about personal essays. Can someone share some great ones with me? she asked. I jumped at the chance and emailed her. Are you a writer? I asked. Yes, I’m a writer she said. In the midwest. I just published my first essay on The Rumpus. From then on, though Ashley and I weren’t BFFs hanging out all the time, we were on one another’s side. We supported each other’s work. 

Ashley C. Ford beaming

Since 2012, Ashley moved from Indiana to NYC and went from working at Buzzfeed until she took the plunge to freelance full time. Now she writes for Elle, Lenny, The Guardian, regularly. It felt REALLY GOOD to sit across from one another and be like, hey, we made it. We’ve accomplished stuff. We are suddenly in the same place. (Catapult. NY. A wine bar.) Neither of us ever thought we’d be teaching writing.

We told my class how we both wrote for free for years, until now. Now we are both at the point where we solely write for pay. We both agreed on one thing: to see things happen in your writing life, you have to take risks. Nothing will happen until you do. No one will give you permission or ask you to write for them if you don’t put yourself out there. Also, get on Twitter. Reach out to people. Find your tribe. I’m pretty sure Ashley quoted Oprah at one point.

Why not you? we asked the class. Many people think there’s cliques of writers around, Ashley told them. Like you think you’re on the outside and don’t know how to get on the inside. I felt that way too, I said. Everyone does. It’s not true. Why not you?

Check out Ashley’s class: Forget The Clicks: Writing Great Essays For The Web.

And stay tuned for an event Ashley & I are doing together this fall at Power House Arena.

Cheers!

Complimentary champagne

 

Donate To A Hungry Ghost

Part 1: On Saturday I went to yoga class, and afterwards my deceased friend who used to teach that Saturday morning class, Maggie Estep, was loud in my head. Then I realized her birthday had just passed. And I started reading her blog. And found this post I’d read before. I’m pasting it here:

I’ll Buy That For A Dollar by Maggie Estep, 2013:

A while back, the prolific and excellent writer Joe Lansdale posted something funny on his Facebook feed.  I can’t find the post, but it was really good.

The post said something about how, oftentimes, when you tell someone you meet you’re a writer, they ask:

“Would I have heard of you?”

“How the fuck should I know?“

Okay, actually, I don’t think that was Joe’s post, but his was about going to the dentist and the dentist saying:

“You’re a writer?  I’ll expect a signed copy of your next book when it comes out. “

And Joe says:  “Good, and I’ll expect a free root canal.”

Totally paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it.

I laughed and laughed.

A surprising number of people don’t understand that writers and musicians and painters are not waifish dilettantes flitting about, subsisting on flowers and good lighting.

This is how we make our living.

Buy our shit or we die.

Most people grasp that Adele and Stephen King have products in stores that can be bought, but seem to assume that, if they haven’t heard of those of us who are less well known, then our work cannot be bought, or is perhaps shitty and shouldn’t be bought.

Sometimes people tell me:  Oh, after meeting you I went to the library and took out a copy of  one of your books. I really enjoyed it.  And then I loaned it to my entire family.

It’s a compliment, I suppose, but, really, can’t you just buy ONE of my books? They’re not all great,  but they don’t cost more than a cappuccino and a muffin and they’ll make you feel things.  I promise you that.

More and more, a lot of us do give our work away for free — or for whatever a person wishes to pay for it.  We blog.  We put up pay-what-you-wish downloads of our records.  Etc.

See the indefatigable Amanda Palmer’s TED Talk, The Art of Asking.  It’s part of why I finally decided, Fuck it, I’ll ASK!

All the industries behind the arts are in upheaval.  I’m not going to snivel about it. The world changes, sometimes quite rapidly. That is one of the beautiful mysteries of being alive.

It was seeing Jon Katz’s “Donate” button that was the final straw for me, that made me rip at the resistance I felt about ASKING.  And I’ve installed a “Donate” button on this blog.

Nurture the things you love or they die.

So I think it’s okay to offer people the opportunity to donate to this blog.

I might die tomorrow. You might die tomorrow.

So.

(she did die ‘tomorrow’.)

If you found one of my books in the stuff your ex left behind and read half of it then forgot it on a park bench, you could give me a dollar.

If you saw me on MTV when you were 15 and thought I was hot and put me in the spank bank for future masturbatory fodder, you could give me five dollars.

If you’re a high school student performing one of my poems in speech competitions, you could give me a dollar.

If you wonder how I’m going to keep from going to debtors prison before finishing my next novel, you could give me several dollars.

Or not.  That’s fine too. You can just think nice things about me.  In the yoga philosophy, they say this is really powerful. This thinking of nice things.  I have found it to be true.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite Bob Holman poems:

You know things

THINK THEM.

And then, if you want, give me a dollar.

Thanks.

***

Part 2: There’s a long essay in my forthcoming collection titled Hungry Ghost. It’s about a time 2 years ago when an über famous celebrity was supposedly coming to sleep over at my apartment. The essay is about success, money, status, the internet, female friendship and ambition.

The essay was originally called The Celebrity. But when I was holed up in a cabin in Rhododendron, Oregon for a few days to work on my book, my friend Fran  told me about the Hungry Ghost concept after reading a draft of my essay. I spent those days working on my essay and listening to Tara Brach talk about what it means to be a Hungry Ghost on her podcast.  I promptly changed the title of my essay.

***

So I was surprised on Saturday when I came across a post called Lulu The Hungry Ghost on Maggie’s website, about her cat. Then I was even MORE shocked when I read this paragraph so eerily similar to one from my essay. I will paste them back to back below:

There is, in Buddhism, the figure of the hungry ghost.  A revenant with a tiny mouth and a huge belly, constantly hungry but unable to sate itself through its miniscule mouth.  It’s meant to symbolize beings who crave insatiably.  Often, it refers to addicts.  In some cases, beings who eat, um, FECES and the bodies of dead humans. No one can fill our big hungry ghost stomachs.  I think we have to come to terms with wanting or be doomed to die wanting. Wanting more and more and more.  Too much is never enough.

—Maggie Estep, April 19, 2013

In Buddhism, the term hungry ghost refers to the person whose appetite exceeds their capacity for satisfaction. The visual of a hungry ghost is a Buddha-ghost with a tiny mouth and an enormous stomach. They’re greedy, starved for money, sex, drugs, power, status, all the good stuff. More is never enough. Though I’ve done my fair share of self-work—therapy, books, yoga teacher training, meditation—I have hungry ghost tendencies I must keep in check. When I started what I thought would be this epic friendship with the Celebrity, I really did want to be close and intimate with her, but my hungry ghost started haunting my dreams, surprising even me.

—me, 2016, Hungry Ghost, I’ll Tell You In Person

Damn! I mean…uncanny. Really.

Here’s the thing: I’m sure 70% of people have a Hungry Ghost inside them. It’s normal. It’s being aware of it that matters.

Then I drove to Maggie’s grave and delivered flowers.

***

Part 3: In July, it will have been one year that I have been working full time for myself.

I am doing better financially, as I approach my 30th birthday, then I’ve ever done. I have gained traction in my 29th year. (See: The Power of 29) I still worry over money every day. But I ask for more. I was recently asked to write an essay on any type of pain for a launching publication in LA called END PAIN. The editor could pay me 400, she said, for 1500 words. I asked for 500. Absolutely, she said.

I love this essay Story of The Fuck Off Fund on The Billfold.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a year now, so finally, yesterday, Samuel Sargent helped me install a DONATE button on my site. You can see it on the right side bar underneath my books.

And if you ever feel inclined to donate a few bucks to me, I am grateful.

I would not have been able to work for myself if it hadn’t been for Gotham Writer’s Workshop, Litreactor, Catapult, and the people (probably you) who sign up for those classes. (I’m planning to write a post called LETTERS TO PEOPLE WHO PAID ME b/c many of you buy my books directly from me, and pay me to work with you one on one. Thank you.)

But, I’m still poor. It’s just how it is. I’m doing better, but my version of ‘better’ is relative.

I work for myself, i.e. I work for a million different people.

THANK YOU.

p.s.  I have also written about $$$ here and here and here.

p.p.s. I love this essay by Ann Friedman, One Weird Trick For Keeping Female Employees From Quitting as well as this conversation about $$$ between Logan Sachon and Emily Gould. 

 

2 classes & an Interview

I’m teaching an online 10-week memoir class at Gotham Writer’s Workshop beginning May 3rd-July 12th. If you sign up before March 21st, you get $30 off.

You must use the promotion code EBN30B16 when registering

Code expires Monday, March 21 at midnight!

*****

I’m also teaching a 6-week personal essay class IRL in NYC, beginning July 20th. APPLY HERE.

Cosmonauts Avenue did an interview with me about WOMEN. Caroline Rayner wrote a beautiful intro and asked some really interesting Qs I’m never asked.

I read Chloe Caldwell’s novella, WOMEN, for the first time last spring. I was still getting used to living alone after my boyfriend suddenly broke up with me and moved out. I was counting down the days until I’d leave Virginia for Massachusetts. I was trying to work and read and write constantly.

Last year I promised myself I’d read more books by women, and I found out about Chloe Caldwell through a Shabby Doll House list where Lucy K. Shaw picked WOMEN as one of her favorite books of 2014. I remember flipping to the epigraph the day WOMEN showed up in my mailbox. “‘Girls are cruelest to themselves.’ Anne Carson, The Glass Essay.” I remember texting my friend something like, “I am already devastated.”

I wrote in my journal after finishing WOMEN that it made me feel torn up and that I wanted to read it a hundred more times. The narrator moves to a new city and falls in love with a woman for the first time, a much older woman named Finn, and everyone, including the reader, knows that it cannot work. But you still ride it out. I recognized bits of myself constantly, like when the narrator says, “It’s just that I love a good train wreck, possibly to distract me from my own.”

Like when she freaks out and smashes her phone. Like when she can’t quite let Finn go. I felt raw, and for weeks afterward I thought about how dangerous it can be to let yourself disappear inside the world of someone you love. I was trying to create my own world, but I wasn’t quite sure who I wanted to be.

Read the whole thing here.

ta-dah

I was supposed to share my cover in a few weeks but yesterday I saw that Amazon and Goodreads (add it to your to-read list!) already has it up. So here it is! Designed by Patricia Capaldi. If you want to do an interview or review it for a publication, you may request a galley from my publicist, the great Amelia Foster. They will be available April 28th. The book will officially release October 4th, 2016. (Which is weird b/c WOMEN also released 10/4. 10:04! Like the Ben Lerner book!)

Violette

I watched a crazy movie a few weeks back, Violette.

The movie is the story of novelist Violette Leduc. She lives with the writer Maurice Sachs (are they married? I wasn’t sure). He is a legit novelist and they’ve had some sort of affair. Early on in the movie, she begs him to stay with her and he screams, Nothing is going to happen with us!

She reads his manuscript and he says Well? (Alors?) and she becomes upset, walks toward the window and explains she cannot believe he didn’t write about her. “All your famous friends,” she says. “If I were to write a book, I’d write all about my love for you.”

So she writes some pages. He reads them. He gives no feedback except for: “Keep going.”

The next morning he sneaks out of the house, leaving Violette. She moans and groans and screams and cries and whines. But he’s gone.

Violette goes to some meeting (confused about this part) and finds a book by Simonne De Beauvoir. What woman writes a book so long? she asks. But then she reads it and becomes a fan.

Violette finishes her own manuscript: In The Prison of Her Skin (cheery title, her mom says when she sees it) and somehow has Simone De Beauvoir’s home address. She walks to her door, catches SDB on her way out. SDB proclaims she’s very busy, leave the manuscript, she promises she’ll read it.

The next day Violette receives a telegram, I READ YOUR BOOK. BE AT MY PLACE AT 9A.M.

Violette goes to SDB’s apartment and SBD tells her how much she loved the book, and that she’s going to give it to her friends Albert Camus and Jean Genet, and they’ll publish it.

They do a low print run; Violette becomes upset in a bookstore when the shop owner tells her, “Never heard of it.”

The movie is split into 4 parts, each a trajectory about how Violette’s books came to be.

So Violette goes for drinks with SDB and Camus (who was just having dinner with Sartre but he drank too much so he went to bed).

Then Violette writes another book she calls STARVED. “It’s you,” SDB says about the title.

Violette falls into lust with SDB and keeps trying to kiss her and stuff. It’s super funny. SDB is not having any of it.

SDB tells Violette the press will give her 25k a month so she can write.

Because Violette has no $.

So now I’m forgetting what happened. It’s a long movie, over 2 hours, and I began this blog post a few weeks ago….

She writes RAVAGES.

There’s this theme going on that Violette has borderline personality disorder slash thinks she’s really ugly. This is confusing because they’ve casted a beautiful blonde woman as Violette, so, like….?

So then Violette goes a little crazy and storms into SDB’s apartment. She’s like, “You get all the success while I get nothing.” And SDB says:

Violetet tells SDB about falling in love with a girl friend in Boarding school.

Over lunch Violette asks SDB what she’s working on, and SDB is like, I wanted to write a book about women but now I realize I have a hill to climb. “What’s the title?” Violette asks. “I’m thinking The Second Sex,” she says.

Later on, Violette’s final book comes out and all of the reviews say: VIOLETTE LEDUC WRITES LIKE A MAN. Also there’s one great scene where Violette can’t find her first book in a bookstore, and the shop owner tells her she’s never heard of it, they probably did a low print run, and Violette goes so nuts over it. Apparently she was tortured by her perceived ugliness and low self-esteem. This was confusing in the movie since they casted a beautiful woman….

 

Anyway I don’t have enough time to continue what happened, so watch the movie or read the book! I couldn’t believe I’d never heard of her, this woman who opened so many doors for women writers to follow.

 

“Since she is obsessed with herself, all her works—with the exception of Les boutons dorés—are more or less autobiographical: reminiscences, a diary of a love affair, or rather of a loveless affair; a travel journal; a novel which transposes a certain period of her life; a novella introducing us to her fantasies; finally, La bâtarde, which summarizes and goes beyond her previous books.” —SBD

How funny that this statement by SBD stands to be true today:

“In these days, there is an abundance of sexual confessions. It is much rarer for a writer to speak frankly about money. Violette Leduc makes no secret of the importance it has for her: it too is a materialization of her relations with other people.”

You can read the whole foreword in The New Inquiry.

More news next week!

 

Russian Lessons release party

This book party on Sunday is going to be so fun, HMU if I’ll see you there ?!??!?!? Howl Arts, East Village, 7pm.

My personal essay online class begins THIS Thursday. Sign up here before it’s too late. There are only 2 spots left!

My next online Memoir 1 class begins May 3rd, mark your calendar or sign up here. 

Here’s a pic from the writers who came to Hudson last weekend! We ate A LOT.