Abandon all hope, ye who enter here?

We had to visit Savannah, Georgia over Halloween weekend. An already spooky city becomes even spookier. By day, Savannah is filled with art students and town squares and beautiful Victorian buildings-- old estates that are now inns, museums, and apartment buildings. By night, it's a whole other place (once you leave the waterfront with its drunkenness and overpriced candy stores).

The man and I spent a good 4-5 days over there, mostly staying in an old hotel/hostel called the Savannah Pensione. Cool place by day, great location, on a street with other homes that look like they should be landmarks. By night, though, the street changed. Houses looked menacing, you felt like something would come at you from the shadows.

A few doors down was the creepiest: a tall three or four-story home with severe black shutters that reminded me of Psycho. We walked in the middle of the street a couple of times to avoid its magnetic pull (as scary as it was, I couldn't stop looking at it, waiting to see a face in one of the upstairs windows).

Then back to the hostel (after a long, interesting day of wandering and eating fried okra and sweet potatoes) was a new kind of spookiness. We lucked out supposedly-- it's not high tourist season now, so they gave us the carriage house behind the main building. A carriage house that reminded me of the Salem Witch trials, a place where we both agreed something horrible must have happened. Even worse, the house was divided into two apartments, sharing the bathroom in between them. One night a woman stayed in the neighboring apartment, a person we never saw or met (but whom I heard in the bathroom at maybe 4am). Once she left, for the rest of the trip I couldn't stop imagining some deranged woman spying from her room or breaking through our door. Or coming up the stairs for us, or pulling the latch on the bathroom door, angry.

Of course, much of this was due to seeing Paranormal Activity a few weeks back. The rest, though, was due to the utter creepiness of the city (and don't get me wrong, I love the South). And then the man and I are both writers and tend to let our imaginations wander. They wander to strange places. For three nights, we had to sleep with the lights on. I hope he's not annoyed at me for revealing that one night we bought reading materials at the grocery store to keep us occupied (instead of trying to sleep in terror). While he read Esquire or GQ or one of those magazines (for the articles), I read New Moon, the second Twilight book. And you know what? It made me feel much better.

And did I mention that we took a tour of the city Halloween night in a hearse? Sure, there was a newlywed couple in our hearse, and the sisters from Atlanta bringing a 10 year-old daughter out for her birthday. And sure there were all the drunken ghouls wandering the streets and howling at us and waving. But beneath it all, the driver told us the most gruesome stories of murders and brutalities that happened in these beautiful, creepy houses, or the hangings and executions that occurred in these lovely but scary town squares.

I doubt we got any sleep this trip, but we did get material to think about. Maybe it would be fun to write a horror story or sci-fi. My mom once told me I'd be good at it. But I don't like to be scared all the time. It doesn't take much.

PS-- Back to Writers' Program land here, I've heard that the UCLA Extension website is having some trouble this week. If you'd like to see the winter catalog, click here:
http://www2.uclaextension.edu/writers/pdfs/quarterly/wi10writers.pdf (If you dare!)

PS 2-- I forgot to mention that we did see Flannery O'Connor's childhood home, which was a highlight. You can see where some of her own deranged material originated.

Journeying

Online instructor Robert Monroe stopped by the office the other day, and a few of us got to talking about the writing process. The journey. Some writing students may think that published writers write pages so easily, the story just coming to them, they must have a gift. How far from the truth that is (as far as I can discern-- though Joyce Carol Oates may be an exception). The process of writing will be a struggle, and it's completely normal to want to give up sometimes, or to read a paragraph over and over again until it becomes gibberish and wonder why you wrote it. It's also normal, I think, to imagine that piece published, to read over certain sections and feel like you nailed them. It's all part of the process.

Personally, I've found in the course of one story, I might love my first two paragraphs, then by page 3 want to burn the whole thing, then get to page 12 or so and stall out (what the heck should happen next?), and in the end crawl out of the trenches with a draft I can barely look at. Then the next day I read it and love it again... but later that night think it's awful and am embarrassed it even came out of me. Maybe that says I'm on some kind of emotional roller coaster, but I think a lot of writers have a love-hate relationship with their own work. What they may not know is this is normal. That's why having a good community of writers (ahem, the Writers' Program) around you can be so helpful: they get it.

Anyway, I didn't mean to turn this into a commercial. I'm just in that stage right now-- page 16 of a new story-- and wonder Am I near the end? What happens next? And shouldn't I already know? I start to feel a little panicky (especially considering my next grad deadline tomorrow). But then I remind myself: this has happened pretty much every other time I've written a story, and some of them have gone on to see the light o' day. Deep breath and keep going. Thinking about the writing sometimes can cause so much more anxiety than actually doing it.

(Also, the anxiety is up a little today because the man and I are heading on a trip tomorrow morning, and I have to finish everything before then. Headed out to Savannah, Georgia for the weekend. I've never been there, but my parents as children used to vacation there all the time, so looking forward to it. And no, I haven't read or seen Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil-- maybe that's what I'll do on the plane tomorrow... if I can stay awake after the all-nighter I'll be pulling tonight. Wish me luck!)

This is good, right?

When I got home last night, I found an envelope addressed in my own handwriting. Could it be? Yes, the writer's nemesis (perhaps): a rejection slip. I don't even remember sending this one out, but back in September I logged it on an Excel sheet on my laptop, so I must have done it (I swear, my memory is gone these days). Anyway, on the slip was a handwritten comment:

Liked [your story] "Park-life" but the girl seemed older than 11. It made the top 100 out of 900 submissions. We'd be glad to consider more of your work in the future. Our next deadline is Feb. 15.

Top 100 out of 900? That's sort of a good thing, I think. Right? I've received about a dozen rejections for this story. I have a soft spot for this one and haven't made many changes since submitting it in workshop here about a year and a half ago. (I also included it in my MFA program applications-- with good results.) But now I wonder, in light of the many rejections, should I take another pass at it, write a new draft? Or should I just try sending it out a couple hundred more times and find someone who likes it? Hmmm.

The funny thing is that when I workshopped it here in two different Writers' Program courses, one instructor suggested I write one more scene just before the end (which I did) and send it out, done. The other instructor told me the second half was problematic, and I should probably spend more time with it, exploring possibilities. Maybe it is time to revisit it...

Process? What's your process?

Nick Hornby has the right idea. The man and I saw him at the Skirball Cultural Center a few weeks ago promoting his latest, Juliet, Naked. Book Soup hosted and sold copies. Hornby was an amiable fellow-- read for a while, discussed his film adaptations, mentioned his good friends Sarah Vowell and Emma Thompson (can you blame him?), and then the inevitable question of writing process comes up. A woman stood up and asked, "What's your process?"

At these readings, people always want to know: How do you do it? How do you write? How do you create this magic from a blank page? The underlying question, of course, is: Can I do it, too? One of the best answers was novelist Mark Haskell Smith saying he wrote in his pajamas in bed in the daytime. For some reason I imagine him smoking a cigar while writing there, or an old fashioned pipe. I could do that. I usually cringe when someone asks the process question-- is it too personal to ask someone that? Is the asker assuming a familiarity that isn't really there? As much as I cringe, though, I'm just as curious about the answer as the next guy.

So, the woman asked Nick Hornby his process, and he told us the secret: he rents an office outside his home and mostly just writes during "business" hours. He has the balance of writing and life down. Must be why he has time to see friends Vowell and Thompson. But he elaborated: What does he do in this office a couple of blocks from home? He downloads music and checks email. What about writing? Well, he gets writing done in three-minute bursts several times throughout the day. It equals, I think he said, about 43 minutes of actual work. And in this way-- 43 minutes a day, every day-- a novel gets written, and another, and another.

So, I like his process. Sounds fairly ideal, actually. Today I've been writing on and off since about 11am. The past hour there's been some bagel-eating and email-checking (luckily, the Internet was down in the library earlier). Before I started writing today, I took care of the nagging procrastination items that are the last things to do before making yourself focus (making dentist and doctor appointments, mailing a student loan payment-- you know you've mastered the art of procrastination when you prefer those tasks to the writing itself). So, I managed at least three solid hours of writing new pages. It was a solid chunk because if I got up, someone would steal my seat at the library (amazing how crowded the library is, even on weekdays). That three-hour period already is more than three times the amount of writing Nick Hornby completes in a day. And there are still 7 hours left today. So, I guess I feel pretty good about my work today. Thanks, Mr. Hornby. This next deadline won't run me over like a steam-roller after all. And though at the next reading I won't be the person asking about the writer's process, I'll sure be taking notes.

There will be feedback!

Speaking of writing workshops, we came across a great article here in McSweeney's. If you need a laugh this evening, this is your spot.

How's your writing going out there?

I'm in a slight moment of not knowing what I'm doing. You might call it writers' block, but I don't want to go that far because there's this huge flu sweeping through here and I want to blame the second-hand effects of that instead (ie I can't write very well if my head is in fog for half of the day). And I did start writing a couple of pages centered on a (very dramatic) conversation I'd had in eleventh grade, but it was getting generic. I didn't want the characters to be the actual people, but when I tried to let them be different characters, they became very stock and cardboardy. I'll come up with something, though. This period is coming on the heels of (almost) finishing two different pieces, one that I started in a Writers' Program workshop long ago, so I'm feeling productive despite the very recent lack of productivity.

Also reading a collection by Bobbie Ann Mason. Great stories, more than half of which were run in the New Yorker a couple of decades ago. I don't hear much about her these days, but one of my Writers' Program teachers recommended her work. Anyone out there have other book suggestions? Lately I've been reading a ton of female short story writers (Lorrie Moore, Jhumpa Lahiri, Antonya Nelson). I am willing to branch out a bit, I swear.

And movies. The man and I saw Paranormal Activity last weekend, and I swear, for a few days after that he was afraid of me. And then I sort of liked trying to scare him. In any case, interestingly done horror film. I usually don't like horror-- and especially horror shot mostly handheld (can you say motion sickness?)-- but this one's worth checking out.

Read this on a Tuesday morning

A few quick notes here--

Instructor Nancy Spiller wrote this piece in Sunday's LA Times about Southern California's change of seasons. Check it out here.

On another note, interested in submitting your work to journals? Read (and memorize... kidding) our interview with fiction writer and instructor Marianne Villanueva, posted yesterday.

Finally, a quote I liked from the bottom of a student's email: "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be." -- Lao Tzu

"It's tenacity that gets you published": a Q&A with fiction writer Marianne Villanueva

How many of you are submitting your work to contests or journals? Once you've workshopped the H-E-double hockey sticks out of a piece, do you face the big "now what"? I do. I've submitted some work in spurts, but more often I write a few drafts, decide the story's not really working, and instead start something else. You lose that sense of completion when you...uh...don't complete the story. But setting it aside is easier than polishing and exposing it to the firing squad of editors. It's easier, sure, but then the work doesn't get out there. (Can you just imagine the little devil and angel on my shoulders?) Maybe what we need is a little push. So, how about a pep talk from one of the pros?

Today we're very happy to bring you a Q&A with writer and online instructor Marianne Villanueva, who wrestles with the submission process just as the rest of us do. Check out her expert advice below.

Writers' Program: You've published numerous stories. How do you separate the writing process from the submission/publication process? Do you work on both simultaneously?

Marianne Villanueva: My writing process is very instinctive, and so is my submission process. Often, when I think I've finished a story, I send it out the same day. I am very indecisive, so sending out the same day is a way of stiffening my nerve. The number of publications I have does not apparently ease the process for me, it's always nerve-wracking (the sending out, I mean).

WP: I understand that you recently had to withdraw a story from a contest because it had appeared in an online journal before the contest judges made final decisions. Tell us about this experience. Do you think this is typical?

Marianne: No, it is not typical. Or, at least, it hasn't been until this year. But I think I'm entering a (good) zone with my writing, so I'm hitting the right buttons more often with editors. This is the first year where I've had two different places want my work. The first time, I was able to talk one of the editors into doing a switch. The second time, it was a contest, and I knew I had to withdraw, because the web-zine that published me first was known. (If it had not been a well-known web-zine, I MIGHT have been able to get away with "previous publication," so I guess it depends on the particular situation, and whether you are dealing with big, known magazines -- which have, frankly, a surfeit of authors and don't need your work as much as you need them to publish you.)

WP: What's your approach to the submission process? Do you submit one story at a time, many stories? Do you ever write stories tailored to a specific journal or editor's need?

Marianne: I submit one story at a time, unless the magazine accepts short shorts, and specifically states how many they can look at, at one time. I've seen submission guidelines where editors say they'll look at three or four short shorts (generally up to 1000 words each). But if I'm submitting a 15-20 page story, I only submit one at a time. I don't ever write a story tailored to a specific journal, because you're just letting yourself in for a whole lot of disappointment.

WP: What has surprised you most about the publication process?

Marianne: What surprises me most is how hard it is, even after I've had two books published (a third, if you count publication in the Philippines). It never gets any easier, you always have to sell yourself. So, I'm thinking, I'll be 70 years old and still having to pitch. Now, that's depressing.

WP: What advice would you give the writer just starting to send work out?

Marianne: I would tell a young writer to send out MASSIVELY. Because, many times, it's TENACITY that gets you published. So much depends on luck, or chance, in addition to talent. So you've got to make the odds work in your favor. And you can't take any rejections personally. You just have to suck it up and remember that editors are people, who have personal tastes and who are also dealing with massive volumes of submissions.

Don't expect to be paid, be grateful, and always remember to thank the people who publish you. Editors will remember and appreciate this, believe me.

WP: Thank you, Marianne!

(P.S. The girl in the photo above is not Marianne, at least as far as we know.)