Category: essay

My “Career”: A Report From the Wilderness

Back in September of 2015, I was accepted into Lesley University’s low-res MFA program. I had applied in two genres: fiction and nonfiction.

I was more interested in fiction at the time, but I sent along the second application, figuring that if I couldn’t get into my first choice, I had another opportunity to advance myself via this other stream of writing that I had begun pursuing.

I got the call notifying me of my acceptance a full week before the deadline for applications, but was told that I’d been accepted into the nonfiction genre, not the fiction genre that I had hoped for. Still, I was pleased to have been accepted into the program. On reflection, I felt that the selectors had been correct, as the nonfiction writing sample I had given them was the stronger of the two I’d sent, and I had applied in nonfiction, so it was entirely legitimate for the school to offer me a slot in that program.

In fact, I was the only nonfiction student in my semester, though beginning in my second semester, another student who had taken a semester off joined me, and kept pace with me until the end.

Still, I was left with some reservations that I had to work through in order to find my way to enthusiastically embracing the idea of being a nonfiction writer. Was it really what I wanted to do? Could I embrace it as a course of study leading me to my beloved genre fiction while bypassing some of the conventions of mainstream fiction? If I were to be a nonfiction writer, what exactly would I write about? I’d been accepted into the program on the strength of a memoir piece: was memoir all I had to offer as a nonfiction writer?

Without a clear answer to these questions, I dove in and began producing new work, absorbing what I could from the seminars, workshops, and one-on-one mentor/mentee work that would be the bulk of the means of imparting my training as a writer. In the end, what I hoped for happened: I left the program a much more confident writer, with a deeper understanding of my craft.

At the other end of that process, I find that I am unclear on my direction forward. I have harbored the notion that my training in nonfiction would stand me in good stead as a fantasy fiction author, and there are stories I mean to write that are of that sort.

But I also have a few essays that I’ve written, a couple I’ve placed in tiny markets here, another there, a couple that I would like to find a home for somewhere, but haven’t yet. I am also about halfway through a book of memoir essays. I think I have some good stuff, but I need that much more to get to something that actually *would* be a full-length memoir.

My few brief encounters with agents through the auspices of my MFA program leave me with doubts as to the salability of that work, though the consensus is that the quality of my work is good. What’s lacking, then, is a sense of mission. My idea of what I want my career as a writer to look like — what I want my work to mean — is less than completely formed.

I don’t know that I should know what my body of work will ultimately look like at this point. But I should have goals, and some sense of how to proceed towards them. I am working in a vacuum. I have described myself as being in that post-MFA wilderness. I haven’t found my way to connect what I do to an audience. I am walking through this desert somewhat aimlessly.

But I am walking, and I am looking for trails and signs that will lead me towards civilization — towards what I want from my writing, which is to be a part of the cultural conversation. My ideas, my metaphors, my stories: I want them to matter in the world.

About Englyn Cyrch

This week I am writing Welsh quattrains, one a day for the whole week. The particular Welsh quatrain (four-line poem) form I have decided to focus on is called an englyn cyrch. The best sense I can make from what Google Translate tells me the term means is “attack verse,” or maybe “verse attack,” or even possibly “verse raid.” So, maybe they’re little four-line blitzes.

Englyn Cyrch are very math-y. Each line has seven syllables. The first, second, and last lines must rhyme, and the third line must rhyme with the second, third, or fourth syllable in the last line. I appreciate the strict form as well as the brevity. My challenge is to make them seem somehow natural, or at least musical.

The ones I have written so far this week have not been stellar, but I’m enjoying them as little word puzzles, or language exercises, or little sketches. They’re fun to make on that level. As of this writing, I have produced five (the fifth one went live a half an hour before this post did, the third will appear later in the week) and I think that they are trending towards better as the week goes on, though I liked the one I wrote first best so far.

I hope you find them amusing, and I invite you to try making your own. Happy writing!

Flaws and Forgiveness

What can we be forgiven for? What, specifically, is that line that, if it were to be crossed, there could be no redemption, ever? Kevin Spacey comes to mind in this regard. Evidently, he victimized under-aged boys, and did so for decades. People in the industry knew this about Spacey. Considered, until recently, one of the greatest actors of our time by many, a few knew him to be a monster: a predator. Can he ever find forgiveness? Can those who knew but never spoke be forgiven?

And what of Thomas Jefferson? What of many of the founding fathers, who owned slaves and/or stole the land of the indigenous people of this land often over their dead bodies. Look around, Americans. You live in the society Jefferson and his colleagues devised. Can our own founding fathers be forgiven? Since he’s been dead for 192 years now, Is Jefferson beyond the need for forgiveness? I wonder who that mercy might benefit, if given. Perhaps no one?

And what about me? What about you? What infractions against the general welfare might cause any of us be in need of forgiveness? Do we need forgiveness before we are found out? Or are we only sorry if we are caught? Should any of us be forgiven? What good is forgiveness? What payment to society in recompense for our transgressions is too extreme? At what point does the administration of supposed justice cross the line and become a crime in and of itself? Is revenge ever a good thing? Can it return us to balance, as it claims to intend?

Can we ever forgive ourselves? For whatever crimes, known or unknown, that we have on our spiritual ledgers, can we offer grace to our own troubled minds? Can we show ourselves mercy?

And having absolved ourselves, what shall we do then? Do we simply go on with our lives? Do we remember the cost of our transgressions? Do we deserve our own forgiveness? Will we disappoint even ourselves?

I have disappointed myself many times. Do I deserve forgiveness? I have trouble forgiving myself. In small dark nook in my heart, I have not yet done so. I see how not forgiving myself holds me back. But forgiving myself is very hard to do.

I want to believe them. They’re probably right. But it’s hard.

Can I forgive my betrayers? Can I forgive those who have deliberately wounded my dignity? Can I forgive those who have broken my heart? I want to. I am a romantic, a utopian. I want everyone to understand each other and be friends. But too often, I have been misunderstood. I must not be very good at explaining myself, or perhaps I am strange.

Because I can forgive almost anyone else, but I can never seem to forgive myself.

Writing Challenge: A Blog Post About Poop

Poop.
Human waste.
Brown-25.
Shit.

Everybody poops. Pooping is proof of life.

Poop is disgusting. It’s alive with bacteria. It stinks, powerfully. Poop is terrible. I do hope that you wash your hands after you poop, for your sake as well as mine.

I can count on the fingers of my left hand the number of serious conversations that I remember having about it. I am aware that this is because I have never had kids.

There are people who find poop funny. I’m not that person, and haven’t been since I was 6 or so. I’m not here to make poop jokes. I’m here to talk about this defining subject that hardly anyone ever talks about. There are people who find poop sexy. I am definitely not that girl. Human excreta is so not my thing. More power to you if it’s yours. I don’t judge.

Punk scourge GG Allin was into poop. He once got himself banned from a well-known rock venue in Cambridge, MA for pooping on stage. I have a friend who tells me GG used to eat a whole bar of Ex-Lax™ before a show. He also told me that GG went to the emergency room with blood poisoning more than once, because he would also cut himself as part of a show, and then roll around in his own excrement. I kind of liked GG’s first single, but… like I said: not my thing.

Is poop important? It would be difficult to answer that question in the affirmative. But it is, arguably, the single thing humans produce in greatest abundance. It’s been observed that (healthy) humans produce about an ounce of poop per day for each 10 pounds one weighs: a person weighing 160 pounds will produce almost a pound of the stuff every day. It should be fairly easy, then, to do the math for the estimated 7.4 billion people on the planet, if we consider 160 pounds to be the average weight of a human being.

The disposal of human waste is of great import, because of the very real dangers of not getting rid of it. 2.8 billion of us live in impoverished places where there is inadequate human waste disposal. This is of major concern for both humanitarian and world health reasons. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is working to develop technologies for processing human waste as close to the source as possible, which should considerably reduce the cost and difficulty of dealing with the amount of  human excreta produced in cities in poor countries where getting rid of feces and urine is most challenging and therefore most threatening to general human well-being.

75% of poop is water. What’s left is half bacteria and half undigested fat, fiber, and carbs.  It’s what’s left after virtually everything of value has been extracted from what we take in.

But poop is not entirely bereft of meaning. In a laboratory, scatologists can study feces and determine many things about the being who produced a particular sample, such as what it eats, where it’s been, whether it has certain health issues.

Poop can be a metaphor. In this blog post, though, it’s not being used as one: here, poop is just poop.

 

A Bit About the American Sentence

This week, I am posting at least one American Sentence per day, and a few extras randomly during the week.

What is an “American Sentence”?

The American Sentence is a poetic form that was invented by Allen Ginsburg, who felt that the English language was not well suited to the 5/7/5 format of Haiku. He proposed eliminating the three lines with the strict syllabic formula and keeping the seventeen syllables. An American Sentence can have as many or as few sentences as will fit in those seventeen syllables.

I have tried my hand at it here and there through the years. I enjoy the challenge of stripping a thought or story down to bare, and sometimes lyrical, essentials. This week, as I have given myself the challenge of making one or more per day, I notice some things about how I work to create these little bullet-point-like poems.

I have started each one so far with about 30 to 50 syllables, and then I whittle them down, going through anywhere from 5 to 12 drafts. The refining of these drafts clarifies and brings into focus what I am trying to capture: the final version of the Sentence has, to this point, consistently been more vivid. It’s like panning for gold.

My standout examples so far, I find, are directly experiential, rather than reflective or philosophical. I’m not entirely convinced that this will be true always, but as I continue to work with the form, I am learning more of what’s possible within it. I am finding that simple language seems to shine brighter in these compact poetic bursts.

Because these little poems are coming directly from my experience, they are snapshots of my environment, shutter clicks from my world view. In my hands, they are truly American sentences.

I invite you to give them a try. You can post your American Sentences here in the comments, if you like.