Guest Speakers, Authors, and Literary Magazines

So, I'm REALLY bad at this whole blogging thing. I'm sorry, it's just that I've been drowning in a sea of homework and am barely able to keep my head above water. Anyway, I'm here now, and I'm gonna try and blog at least twice a week, so we'll see how that goes. Now get comfy, ladies and gents. This is gonna be a long post.  I've got quite a bit to share.

Mike Rush was the guest speaker in my How to Get Published (HGP) class this past Tuesday. He was, by far, one of the best guest speakers that I've ever had the honor of hearing. He was inspiring and casual; he didn't lecture like he was an experienced published author on a pedestal. In fact, the stuff he was saying was so awesome that I had to write at least some of it down...and I ended up taking two and a half pages of notes. There's so much I want you guys to know about that I'm gonna break it up between two posts.

He began by giving us the prompt, "Publishing means..." and having us write about it.  Then, a few people shared what they wrote. I didn't share, but I wrote: Publishing means putting yourself out in the world for others to see, either formally as in a printed book, poem, or short story, or informally as in a blog or YouTube video. It means making your thoughts, feelings, and ideas heard and accessible to other people. It means making money off of your creativity, or it means getting your ideas or information out in the world to improve things like education (but NOT for the money). Publishing  means being put up for sale like cattle to be poked, prodded, and judged. 

Maybe not the most uplifting outlook on publishing, huh? Well, then he talked about the vulnerability of publishing because it's not something that many people think about. Most people just want to be famous and make lots of money anyway (which doesn't always happen). He called publishing the end of innocence, and if you think about it, it really is. No one can write something that everyone will love. There will always be someone out there who doesn't like your work and is critical of it.

Rush teaches math at Vilonia High School, and is a published author, but the first thing he wrote was something to give away. He and his wife were part of a group that got together and talked about their spiritual beliefs, and I believe the book he wrote for them was called The Lessons: Things I've learned about God from my Dog. Then in 2004, he participated in the Central Arkansas Writing Project's Summer Institute where he wrote and published a review of the book I am a Pencil by Sam Swope. He just happened to have read the book, and someone just happened to need someone to write a review of it. I bring up these seemingly random examples because they are great examples of being part of a community. Rush stressed over and over to our class the importance of having a writing community. Even C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien got together in a pub and read each other's work (Lewis reading Lord of the Rings and Tolkien reading The Chronicles of Narnia).

Talking about being part of a local writing community led into talk about the writing community of all authors- scholarly, published, and unpublished. That grand community is apparently quite inviting. Rush said, "Try and find the author of every book you read" (which just happens to be one of our assignments for the class - contacting three over the course of the semester). He went on to say that "those we hold up [on a pedestal] will turn around and hold us up". Lady Vanderslice reaffirmed that statement and told us about an established, published author (Daniel Pink, I think) who had commented on her blog. No matter how high we lift authors, they really just want to be on our level, part of the community and encouraging us in our endeavors (and being encouraged in return).

So, as I said earlier, for HGP we have to contact three authors over the course of the semester.  It sounds really cool...until you have to do it. I was looking for ways to contact some of my favorite authors to thank them for their work, and I actually didn't find any contact information for some of them.  So I decided to use Twitter. I was so annoyed that I had to try and condense a pages worth of adoration of their work to 140 character or less, but I did. I tweeted to Bill Willingham the following:  I just wanted to say thanks for writing the Fables series. I've recently stumbled onto them and just can't put them down. I really wish I could have written more than that, but oh well. And I must say that I hesitated right before I clicked the "tweet" button. I was thinking, "who am I to talk to him", but what's done is done... and he still hasn't replied. Oh well, better luck next time, right?

Last, but certainly not least, for HGP we also had to subscribe to two literary magazines. I chose American Short Fiction and The Antioch Review. My copy of American Short Fiction came in the mail today! I can't wait to read it! That's all for now, folks. I'll give you some of Rush's other golden nuggets of writing wisdom... tomorrow, hopefully. What d'ya think so far?

BK

Evaluating and Responding to Creative Writing

So chapter 8 of Released Into Language is about evaluating and responding to student's creative writing. I'll hit some of the high points here because this chapter really reaffirmed some ideas I already had about evaluating and responding to creative writing.

The chapter begins by stating that some creative writing teachers admit that grading a student's work cannot be done. I would definitely agree, to an extent.  I think back to the first day of my Illustrated Narrative Workshop class. Our professor openly said that he didn't have the right to critique everyone else's work. We still discuss pieces and try to derive meaning and establish context, but we certainly don't want to say something that would make them revert to the fetal position. I truly believe that you can't really judge a person's creative work - unless it is obvious that they don't even care about their own work and are trying  to turn in crap.

The author also talks about the composition teacher's ability to "wash a page with red ink". That's something that I distinctly remember from junior high and high school, but it wasn't just my English teacher that made papers or tests bleed. Almost all of my teachers wielded a mighty red pen that everyone feared for their grade's sake. The red pen was threatened on many occasion.


Bishop gives us Peter Elbow's list of problems that concern tradition grading, and I especially  liked the last point about a person's intelligence or learning being "summed up on one dimension". I'd never really thought about this until my Lit. for Middle Grades class last semester when we actually got onto the subject of written exams. It doesn't matter if a test is multiple choice or fill in the blank. Either way, a test is arbitrary because it limits the students ability to show their knowledge. They can't get over 100%.  Okay, they might be able to if there were bonus questions, but they are still limited by the questions that are being asked on the test. That was why my professor hated tests.  That's why we always wrote papers in his class and we were allowed to choose the topic. He was allowing us the chance to go above and beyond and show him our insights into texts. So think about that the next time you have to write and essay.


So, what do you think about evaluating and responding? Let me know in the comments. And thanks for those torturous papers, Sommers!

BK

Better Late Than Never, Right?

I started a blog on Wordpress over Labor Day weekend.  I even posted about Labor Day, and then I typed up a word document of my reflection on chapters 1-3 of Released Into Language, but I never even posted it online. Wordpress and I were having a sort of love/hate relationship anyway.  So here I am on blogger and here is my reflection.  Enjoy!

"Professional writers are notoriously opinionated" is how chapter one of the book begins. All I can do is smirk and laugh to myself. Yes, yes they are, and that is the only reason why some people write - to make sure that other people know about their opinions, thoughts, or ideas. Anyway, that first sentence that I keep smirking at ends with "writers are people who write". That really resonates with me. I'm not sure why right now, but it does. I'll do some more thinking about that and get back to you.

Bishop quotes Donald Murry, a creative writing professor, who wrote that a professor "will not be a teacher, he will be a senior learner". This reminded me of Dr. Stengel, my American Post modernism professor. This will be my third class with him, and he begins every semester by letting the class know that he teaches so that he can learn from students. He wants to hear our thoughts and ideas.  It's encouraging that someone with a Ph.D and years of teaching experience believes that every individual in the class has something important to bring to the table. All of my creative writing professors are the same way. They are encouraging in trying to foster our creativity and grasp of the writing craft. Several pages later, talks about the writing community that creative writing workshops give students. That's what we are. We are all colleagues and part of a community, a community of learners, explorers, creators - trying to make ourselves and each other better at what we do.

Later on, Bishop mentions a seminar that "was not meant to commercialize a writer", but was meant to teach them about different parts of the publishing world that they would enter as a professional writer some day.  This is an important thing to do as an writer. You can't become a part of an industry that you know nothing about. This is why I'm taking Lady V's How to Get Published Class.

Reading about the theories was a bit overwhelming. I felt like I was being pulled under by a whirlpool, but the same thing happens in my English classes.  Sometimes it's easy to get mired in theory. Though, I did enjoy the Teacher vs. Student sections a few pages over. Lectures and discussions led by teachers are important, but so are those led by students.  I've learned that I do best in those college classes that find the delicate balance between the two.

I'll leave you with a quote by Joseph Conrad from a section of the book about writers and their goals.  He said, "My task...is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel - it is before all, to make you see." I just loved that.  

Well, there you have it. Those are my thought on some important things that stood out to me. What do you think? Sound off below.

BK

To Blog, or Not to Blog

That was the question. 

I've wanted to start a blog for awhile now. Many times over the last year, I've asked myself whether I should or not.  I'm double majoring in English and Creative Writing; so I know several people with blogs. It's sort of something that we English/Creative Writing majors do. Besides, blogging just seemed like the next logical step in improving my writing. Still, I kept putting it off. During the school year, I decided not to start one because of the work load. During the summer, starting a blog seemed pointless because hardly anything in my life was worth blogging about. 

I finally decided right before classes started that I would start a blog at the beginning of the school year. The idea was that if I had to sit down and write, I would become a more disciplined writer (something I really struggle with).  Conveniently enough, I found out on the first day of class that I have to start a blog for two of my classes: How to Get Published and Teaching Creative Writing.  Some of my posts will have to do with publishing and creative writing, but mostly they will be about anything and everything. 

So, here I am, ladies and gents. This is my official welcome to my own little corner of the blogosphere. I hope you like it here. I think I will, and either way, I'm here to stay. 


BK