Tag Archives: writing

Perspective: Why “to MFA or not MFA?” is the dumbest question I have ever heard

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If I was given a nickel every time I mentioned I had an MFA in writing and someone told me in not so many words that it was not worth money, I would have paid my student loans off years ago.

First, I would never consider telling someone their dreams were worthless. Second, the debate is so tiresome. I understand people don’t want to “waste time” or “waste money” or “make a major wrong life step.” Still, to think that hard about it means those people who say mean-spirited stuff like “it’s not worth it”  have missed the point altogether.

We hear the sentiment “If you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life” all the time, but when someone actually adheres to that as a life mission statement, we tell them it’s a mistake. It’s not worth it. Perhaps those who say that need to look within themselves a little deeper.

I didn’t make the decision to get an MFA lightly. I wanted a new direction, an authentic direction, not a direction someone else felt was good for me. I wanted to do something that moved me. I had dreamed of focusing on my writing in that way for a long time, but had been afraid for one reason or another. One day, I heard one of those Story Corps interviews on NPR. In this particular interaction, a husband was interviewing his wife. She had stage IV cancer of some type. I don’t remember now what type. He talked of her strength and how she had not let her cancer stop her from following her life dream of getting a Master of Fine Arts degree in visual arts. That story stuck with me. After hearing that story, I wondered why I was waiting any longer to follow my heart and do what I wanted. I dreamed of teaching and writing and being home more for my children. I dreamed of being in a wonderful community of writers and making lasting friendships. Mostly, I dreamed of doing something I was so passionate about that I would literally tell people who thought I was crazy to bag it.

Some did think I was crazy, but I had had a lifetime of being sane, of being the good girl and doing what good girls do. Good girls are practical. Good girls do what they are told. Good girls do something like major in something that everyone around them thinks will be good for them, even if everyone around them has no idea who that good girl really is. So, I embraced crazy. I embraced the idea that I’d read in Anne Lamott‘s book Traveling Mercies that you have to leap and the net will find you.

I lept. I went for it. I didn’t think about the stupid debate. I just knew that I would make the darned thing work for me because I wanted to do it. I learned that rather than fear that the net won’t be there, know that the net is always really there. I wanted to dive into the study of something I loved. I was tested in many ways. My first attempt at getting into schools failed, but I tried again and got accepted to  two schools. That, of course, was not the most difficult test. Ironically, I was diagnosed with cancer in the midst of grad school. In the midst of working full-time, raising two children, and attending grad school, to be exact. I didn’t let it stop me. I finished. I did it. I wouldn’t change it or say it wasn’t worth it. I am doing what I love. I am writing. I am teaching. Do I still have loans? Yes. I’d have them if I did something others thought would be more “worth it.”

I posted a status on my Facebook page that says how I feel about this topic best. I posted it because I heard, yet again, someone who does not have an MFA tell me how worthless or useless it is to get one. I am proud of my MFA. I worked hard for it. I knew going into it that it was not the end all, be all to my writing career, but there is no end all, be all. There are only choices we make in the moment that help us see that this moment is all we have. We have to keep writing. We have to keep taking the path we know deep within is right for us.

Here is my Facebook status posted 3/2/13:

I got a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing because I followed my heart. I listened to the creative Crissy within. I got a bachelor of science degree in sports medicine because I was too young and naive to think for myself. In essence, I did what everyone thought I “should” do. I love words. I love inspiring others to discover they might love words as well. Nothing makes my life resonate more than spending a day working through even a single line of my novel. I have not taped an ankle in more than 20 years and I don’t miss it. I was never able to get a halfway decent job until I started writing. It baffles me how often I hear people tell me in not so many words how my writing degree is some how worthless. Not one person ever told me going into sports medicine wouldn’t be worth it. Perspective:/

One foot, two foot

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A long time ago, after many failed attempts at trying to make my family sportingly proud, I took to the only sport that didn’t require me to dribble, kick, or throw a ball. I took to long distance running. I won’t say I was great, but I was good and distance running came surprisingly easy to me, the one kid who always finished last in sprints, in pretty much anything that one would file under the title “sport.” It wasn’t that I had to be sporty. My family accepted me just fine. Still, my sibs were way more sporty than me. My brother played hockey and baseball and did just fine. My sister, well she probably got the most sporty genes of all of us and the looks and the smarty genes, but that’s a whole other blog.

The first time I took to the roads, though, I felt something liberating. I ran two miles. I was surprised how good I felt. The next day I ran four. I was training for my first road race, the Dixboro Fun Run, held in the small hamlet of Dixboro. My dad signed me and my sporty brother, who was running for wrestling training, up for the race. I think I trained for about a week. I ran the two-mile and surprised myself by finishing first in my age-group and second overall female. I got hardware. At that point, I hadn’t really ever won anything sporty in my life. Well,  I think there was a softball championship in there, but I never felt I contributed that much to the team. Softball was torture.

After that race, I craved road racing. I ran all the time. My neighbors came to know me as the girl who was always running. One of the older boys who used to hang out in the neighborhood used to call me Champ. He said I was going to be a champion one day. I never knew his name. He will never know how good that made feel, some strange boy urging me on. Parents in the neighborhood urged me on, too. Someone would inevitably catch me coming into our tiny subdivision at the end of the run and ask how far I’d gone that day. Some would laugh and tell my parents they saw me in the next town 10 miles away. You could say I became a little obsessed. I loved running. I ran track and cross country. Ultimately, though, my favorite were the road races I ran. I loved the community that surrounds road racing. Everyone was so encouraging, especially to women runners who really were just making inroads into the sport. I was always pacing with some group of guys because the women were spread so far apart and they were all welcoming.

I ran a little in college, but by that point I wasn’t good enough for college running. I ran two marathons and came close to qualifying for the Boston Marathon, my dream at the time. At some point, life got in the way. Kids came. I had other things I needed to do. With kids came a few stubborn pounds.  I never got back to running like I used to.

More than five years ago came the devastating news that I had cancer. My treatment regime was long and hard on my body. It took a long time to recover. I still am not sure I have fully recovered. This summer, however, I wanted to get back in shape, if nothing. Every time I say I am going to start walking, I end up running. I also needed to help Maynard the Wonder Dog lose a few pounds. He came to us on a diet. He is now my jogging partner. I started in the spring. It has been a struggle. I’m slow, much slower than I used to be. It’s much harder than it used to be. I think I have been running two miles since spring and it has felt hard and tiring since spring. Today, though, I felt the shift. The one that I used to feel after only a week or two, the shift that helped me see I was really back, that running was what I was supposed to be doing. Yes, I felt it. My feet didn’t shuffle as much. I kicked my heels a little more. I kept a pace, still not fast, but faster, more importantly more comfortable than running has felt in eons. I had gotten to a point where I thought I’d never feel that.

For me, there is a strong connection between the endurance and persistence of hitting the pavement or trails and the endurance and persistence needed to come to the page regularly and work through rejection and work through drafts. I love that they remind me of each other. I love that doing both makes me feel so good. Carry on. Endure. Persist. One foot. Two foot.

Intro for Gearing Up to Get an Agent. Here we go.

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Deana Barnhart
Love it, hate it
I’ll admit it. I have have a love/hate relationship with writing. I can’t live without writing. That’s the love. I can’t live without writing. That’s the hate. On the days when writing is good, I feel like I can take on the world. On the days when writing is not good, I want to stay under my covers, eat lots of chocolate and brood about why I ever thought in a million years I could do this thing called writing. To be honest, I have to share the good and the bad. It gives me the whole that is my writing life. Like many artists I’ve seen, if asked why I do this, I do this because I don’t want to do anything else. This is what I do. I am a 44-year-old mother of two (great kids), dog lover (shout out to Maynard the Wonder Dog), teacher, foodie (part owner of a Spanish-themed food cart with awesome chef hubby), lover of all things pastries, college English instructor, as well as a writer. I have one novel done and another in the works as well as bunch of short stories I am constantly revising. Eager to get to know other writers throughout this unique little gathering.
Answers to questions given by Deanna Barnhart, author and organizer of Gearing Up to Get an Agent.
-Where do you write? I have a sacred space. Right now, I have let my son temporarily camp out at my sacred space as he is attending school online. So, I write on the couch opposite my sacred space.
-Quick. Go to your writing space, sit down and look to your left. What is the first thing you see? I see the window on my left. It looks out at my neighbor’s house. The cat (my other favorite animal friend) is curled up on my little orange throw rug. Not to be outdone, Maynard the Wonder Dog has wandered into the room and plopped down right next to Thomas-Wilbur (the cat). I see my little table under the window that reminds me I have to organize my folders and books for school and set them up there. Ah, the distractions that take us away from writing are ever present.
-Favorite time to write? I’d have to say morning, before family is up to burst the bubble of quiet I like.
-Drink of choice while writing? Roos Roast Lobster Butter Love Coffee.
-When writing , do you listen to music or do you need complete silence? It depends on the mood. Mostly, I like the quiet, but sometimes I find my playlist inspiring.
-What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it? The manuscript I am working on now is called Monarchs in the Classroom. The inspiration comes from a conversation I had with my mother who was an art teacher. She talked about a science teacher colleague of hers who raised monarch butterflies in the classroom and that got me thinking about three characters, a teacher, who is dealing with issues on the home front, and two students, one who is wheelchair-bound after an auto accident and one who has fled a physically abusive father. This isn’t my completed novel that I will be pitching.
-What’s your most valuable writing tip? The thing I always have to tell myself is that I just need to keep writing. I need to keep reading and writing. Each draft gets better. I learn so much from other writers and the process of writing. One of the newest things I’ve learned is that hearing books read from books on CD is another valuable way to get insight into good writing. Maybe, it’s the poet in me that needs that other level of hearing, not just reading a, book to understand what the writer is doing.
Can’t wait to get started.

Lemons, fig cake and setting

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When life sends you lemons (and figs) via the U.S. Postal Service, make lemonade and fig cake. Okay, so life didn’t really send the lemons and figs. My parents sent them. They sent them all the way from their home in California where lemon and fig trees produce so quickly they can’t eat or use the fruit fast enough. I’ve enjoyed the gifted bounty. I have made delicious fresh-squeezed lemonade and an out of this world fig cake that I found a recipe for at a blog called Lemons and Anchovies. With a name like that the recipes have to be good. This one was probably the best thing I’ve baked from scratch ever.

None of this has anything to do with the Midwest Writers Workshop, except to say that my time there was a nice gift in what has turned out to be a stressful, quickly dissolving summer. As I mentioned in my previous post, I learned so much. I think today’s nugget will focus on what I learned in D.E. (Dan) Johnson’s workshop classes. I attended two. For those who don’t know Dan, he writes historical mysteries set in Detroit in the early 20th century. I have not read his books. I intend to even though I’m not one to really read mystery. I’m compelled by the glimpse I had of his writing and by his writing knowledge. He knows his stuff.

Fig Cake made with figs from my mom and dad’s backyard in California.

His workshop on setting was an elaboration on the writing mantra “show, don’t tell.” That description doesn’t really do it justice, because he dove deeply into what that really means and how that really works to bring a narrative to life. I think the most valuable piece of advice I walked away with was his technique for making sure he’s using enough of every sense. He goes through his manuscripts with five different highlighters each representing one of the five senses. This gives him a visual diagram of how often he’s using these to bring out setting. I haven’t tried it yet, but it has made me much more aware of where I’m using all the senses in my work.

So, now that I am thinking of the senses, time to go let the golden, soft fig cake melt in my mouth, so I can taste the hints of sweet cream, olive oil and butter as the smell of baked fig wafts about my head. I won’t forget to wash it down with the sweet and tangy fresh lemonade.

Food and poems intersect in a barn on a hill

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francine j. harris

My two worlds have intersected in an old wooden barn with one big window covered in opaque paper allowing light to fall on a stage where poets read and musicians played alongside chickens. The barn belongs to Tilian Farm Development Center, a place that gives new farmers a head start on the road to owning their own farms. A couple of the farmers are friends we have gotten to know through writing and through our food cart venture, which has put us right in the heart of the local food movement in Ann Arbor.

I couldn’t help but feel like I was more where I wanted to be than I ever have been. My friend Deedra and her husband, Bill, own Honest Eats Farm, one of the Tilian Farms. She took me on a tour and picked a sugar snap pea off the vine for me to eat. There is nothing more sweet, nothing more satisfying that so simple burst of goodness. Growing up, I was so far away from that. The nearest I got was our annual berry picking adventures.

The event was A Bard Sings Out II, a benefit for the Tilian program. Featured among the group of poets were some of my local favorites,

Winter Sessions

Francine j. harris, Aaron McCollough and Keith Taylor, who headlined. I won’t do it justice trying to describe what it’s like to hear poets read in a barn like that. I only know that something felt so right about hearing the words move through that setting, those succulent sweet words mixed and nurtured, watered and weeded, much like the sustenance growing in the field beyond the barn.

Our friend, Nick Wilkinson, who owns A2 Pizza Pi, the cart that sits right next to ours at Mark’s Carts, took some of that sustenance and cooked wood-fired pizzas for everyone who attended. Nick makes the most delicious artisanal pizza and he has always used ingredients from another of Tilian’s farms, Green Things Farm, owned by Nate and Jill Lada.

Sitting outside with the pizza cooking and the music of the string band Winter Sessions filtering from the barn, it felt like a dream, a good dream where all my senses are heightened. I can smell the smokiness of all that good food cooking. I can ingest the images fed to me by great poets who care about things like sustainability and land and the small organic farmer in the farm to table mix. If my pictures look fuzzy, it’s because I don’t have the latest and greatest gadget. I have the anti-gadget. Or, it could be because dreams have that kind of fuzzy glow to them, that kind of “yes, it happened but you can’t really prove it” feeling. Well, as it turns it did happen. I hope to spend a little more time out there, perhaps helping my friend Deedra. Word has it she needs helps pulling weeds. I like pulling weeds.

Rejection

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I have recently been conversing with writing friends on the topic of rejection. There is no way to get around it as a writer. If you send work out, you are bound to get rejection letters. Most are of the form letter variety, but once in a while an editor will write a nice note about your work or add helpful suggestions (that might be sugar coating it a bit) for editing the piece. While rejections in any form sting, there are positive ways of looking at the experience.

1. The more rejections you have, the more work you are sending out there. I attended a workshop with author and University of Michigan MFA faculty member Peter Ho Davies many years ago. He said his stories were rejected on average about 12 times before they were accepted. The more stories, poems, essays you get out there, the more you increase your chances that they will be accepted for publication.

2. I always like to evaluate a story after it is returned. If I receive critique from an editor, I try to look at it as a gift. Gifts can be taken or thrown away. If you don’t agree with the gift, or don’t like it, throw it away. It is your work after all. If there is a nugget of truth to the gift, don’t take it personal, play with what is being suggested. I like the word “play,” because that is what it feels like when I am working on stories.

Image

There is a ghost in my Gothic garden. This is what I spend my time doing when I am not working at the cart or writing.

3. I recently discovered that gardening and weeding and cleaning the yard are nice ways to work off any bad feelings associated with rejections and life, for that matter. It’s always good to step away and keep things in perspective. I could reiterate the stories of all kinds of famous writers who received harsh critique and rejection, but all you have to do is type something like “rejected authors” in Google and you’ll find plenty on your own. I figure they are like anyone else making a go at a writer’s life. They too must have felt the pangs of doubt creep in when those notes came in. What did they do about it? They kept going and going and going. They still keep going.

My mother used to tell me when I was running races, you are only as good as your last race. In other words, you keep going, keep trying, keep working to get better. That is really the best way to fight the doubt that comes with rejection.

My life as I envision it

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I realize I have not posted in ages. It has not been for lack of trying. I have tried. Oh god, how I’ve tried. The words just will not come. I’m in a sort of writing limbo. I need to give myself time to come out of it. My method for this is to get some writing, any writing, done and forgive myself for the slow pace of it all. In addition, I am giving myself time with everything. There is no hurry. Sure, it seems like everything must be done right now, but not so. I have been working through some personal things that have taken up a lot of time and a ton of energy. For fun, and for a brief moment of escape I am going to take a page from my friend who once wrote in presence tense his vision for his life. I think it’s an exercise that life coaches and motivational people use, but I thought it might give me the boost I need this morning to begin the necessary steps to make that vision a reality. Also, my friend Cynthia Newbery Martin at her blog Catching Days shares  how well-known writers spend their days. Every time I read one of those posts, I feel like I am reading a bit about the life I envision.

My life as I envision it:

I wake up. Make myself a latte with no flavors. Have a delicious breakfast of fruits, nuts and coconut yogurt before going to my desk, which is in my writing office that had a big window that looks out a wooded area with a pond. I don’t look at any mail. I sit down and begin work on my second novel. My first book, “Sometimes the Smallest Things,” has been published by St. Martin’s Press and I am preparing to go on tour. My agent gently, or not so gently, nudges me to finish book two. I love the silence in the mornings and feel bolstered by the sound of birdsong and the soft rhythmic breathing of my dog who lounges at my feet. I work like this for a good three to four hours before I get up to take the dog for a walk and grab a sandwich. In the afternoon, I usually get a call from my son, who has a moment between classes just to check in. He likes to check in. I like to hear from him. My daughter calls, too, but later in the evening after she has spent time in the recording studio. I take a few moments to get the business of emails out of the way. I see that I have readings scheduled all over the country and I have been invited to lead a few workshops. This gives me a nice little nudge to work a couple more hours on my novel before doing some work in the garden. Jay returns home from his restaurant to have dinner with me before he is off again. Some days I go to the restaurant. I spend the rest of the evening reading and getting a few odds and ends done.

Okay, so that’s only one day, but that would be a nice day with a lot of nice stuff going on. Now, I do have some quiet time. It’s time to get to my projects, for real.

Dream House, Dream Life

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The other night I dreamt of a home that I could easily see as my dream house. Even now, I keep mulling the floor plan over in my head. The front door opened into a family room furnished with antiques in the gold and maroon shades I like so much. That sitting area was to the right of the door with a big picture window adjacent to the door. The room opened to the left, too, where a fully stocked bar sat. Beyond the family room on the right was another living/dining room area. The family room and bar area had a log-cabin interior. The living room was dry-walled and painted a toned down yellow. The kitchen sat at the back of the house and  was much bigger than the tiny galley kitchen we have now. I could enter the kitchen from the living room/dining room area or through the back hallway where the bedrooms were. In the dream, my house was so beloved that random groups of people would meet there or have photos taken there, even though I lived there.

Yes, I could see myself there, maybe not with all the random people, however.

Why am I going into detail about this? Well, the house felt like home. It felt like a dream home on so many levels. It got me thinking about my dreams and aspirations. So often I get caught up in the “should do” mentality, i.e. I should be substitute teaching today because that will put some cash in the bank. That is when I lose sight, first, or what I have already done, and, second, of what I really want to do.

I already have been happily teaching quite a few classes. I already have been picking up a few regular freelance writing assignments. In essence, I left my full-time job to teach, to freelance, and to help build our food business. All of it was meant to get me closer to home and to get me closer to doing what I want to do the way I want to do it. That’s what I am doing. I am essentially in my dream home, not the one in my dream, but the one I am creating for me. In creating that dream home/life I realized that I always wanted to freelance, but feared the uncertainty of it. I am often one to try to see the signposts along the road. Lately, I have been doing some freelance work that I have been fortunate to get with little effort. To me, that’s a sign. That’s the universe telling me to keep doing what I want to do, giving me a little taste of that so I’ll get down to business and begin seeking more of that. That is why I have foregone the subbing for today. That is why, starting today, I am committing to my goal of building my freelance life, building my dream life, building my dream house. Essentially, I am living it already. I am realizing that building the dream life means living the dream life not sitting in some distant setting imagining what that life might be.

Sunshine mugs, dogs and words, moments of gratitude

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Maynard and my happy sunshine mug.

This is about the time of year I pull out my happy sunshine mug. I am typically tired of the cold and eagerly anticipating the coming sunshine and warmth. This winter has not been that bad. Still, it seems like Mr. Snow Miser has been coordinating his relatively few snowfalls with my long drive into work. It seems every snowfall we have had this winter has come precisely when I’ve had to be on the road. So, even though there have been relatively few snow days and everything has been mostly warm, I still wanted to pull out my happy sunshine mug.

If nothing, it gave me an opportunity to snap a photo of my beloved lab mix Maynard. He had another impression of the snow. He saw it out the back window and wanted to play in it. I think that pets remind us that what we may see as a cold nuisance, they see as an opportunity for fun.

The happy sunshine mug and Maynard remind me that there are so many things to be grateful for, even when we are in the darkest depths of winter, well relatively speaking. I’ve seen winters where we have been in much darker depths, or course. Still, on my recent drive home from visiting my friends in Tecumseh, the sun was so bright and warm I felt the presence of spring. The fact that I am able to do that on any given day is warm in and of itself. I spent breakfast last week at Selma Cafe, as my husband served as guest chef. I knew only the hosts, Jeff and Lisa, but it was exhilarating being amid all those people wanting to help local farmers and have a great meal all the same. That same day I had lunch with my oldest and dearest friend, Kim. I’ve known her since I was 11 years old. We had not seen each other in a while, so it was such a wonderful time of catching up and laughing like we used to when we were girls. I was tired, but it was a good tired. This has been a fantastic week. The kids have midwinter break and we have been able to hang out a bit. The extra rest time has given me a chance to clear and organize my desk area. My dad laughed as he caught me on Skype during the massive undertaking. He says I do desk cleaning about once every month.  My desk area is what I refer to as my sacred space, the one corner of my house that I have devoted to my writing endeavors. Virginia Woolf wrote of having a room of one’s own to write. The best I can do is a corner with a window view of my little Ypsilanti street and the red maple that gives me inspiration. That is good enough for now. It’s a cozy spot that is quiet in the early morning as my family sleeps. That is the time I choose to write. Speaking of gratitude, writing has been difficult these past months. Who am I kidding? Writing is always difficult. But, the opportunity to show up at the page, to get what few words I can from even the driest of spells brings hope and clarity. I realized recently, perhaps I’ve always known this, that there is no easy path to writing. There are no “give mes.” Still, to say it takes “work” is to say that it is “work” in the most utilitarian sense of the word. Work is not the word I choose. Is there a word to describe it? Play? Even play doesn’t capture the agony I feel some days. Writing is its own act. Writing is the only word to describe the act. It encompasses itself. Writing is not work. It is not play. It is writing, the act of bringing something alive in words.