Happy Holidays—I’m takin’ the week off!

I decided recently that it’s been quite long enough, and it’s time for me to get back into the writing game. Of course, the decision to begin writing again is one thing, and the actual beginning of writing again is another thing altogether. It was necessary, then, for me to formulate some sort of plan to ease myself back into the world I used to live in so completely.

I made the goal that during my winter break from classes (which lasts a paltry three weeks), I would write every single day for at least fifteen minutes. “Fifteen minutes? That’s nothing,” you say. “Not even enough time to really get the fire going.” True enough, but I settled on this goal for a reason: it would be easy for me to keep it. Anyone can scrape together a measly fifteen minutes a day, and because I would be on break from teaching, it would be even easier for me to make it work. 

My hope is that writing at least a little every single day will help get the wheels turning once again, after which it shouldn’t take me too long to get back up to speed. My break only officially began this past Monday, so it’s difficult to assess too thoroughly how well it’s working. I can tell you that on day two (Tuesday), I forgot to sit down to write. Forgot! I was so frustrated with myself on Wednesday when I realized my mistake, but on Thursday I wrote for a little over half an hour and made up for it.

I also contented myself with the knowledge that forgetting to write one day is not the same as choosing not to write. The fact is, I’m no longer so mired in the writing world that going a full day without writing could never escape my notice. Writing used to be, for me, like taking a shower: you do it pretty religiously every day, and if for some reason one day you can’t, you survive it . . . but you’re very aware that you missed a day. I’ll get back there, I know I will, but it’s going to take a little time.

In addition to the day I completely forgot to write, on Friday I didn’t get a chance (sort of). Even though the ideal time for me to write is fairly early on in my day, right now, with a three-month-old baby and a husband who doesn’t get a winter break from his main job (working as the Managing Editor of New Ohio Review), I’ve been taking my fifteen minutes at the end of the day, just after Amalie goes to bed. I probably could find time earlier in the day, but the end of the day thing was working well enough. Until Friday. The day Amalie, for whatever reason, simply would not go down without a fuss. She kept falling asleep, but the second I’d lay her down she’d wake up and start crying. Finally, at around 1:30 AM, she drifted off, but I was too tired to even think about writing (plus, it technically wasn’t Friday any longer).

Other than those two slips, I’ve enjoyed my few minutes of writing time each day, and am already finding myself thinking about this piece or that idea when I’m not physically writing. I may have to flush all the brown water out of my system before I can write anything very good, but still, writing at all again feels pretty great. It’s like I’ve been wandering lost for what feels like a very long time, but now I’ve stumbled upon an overgrown path that looks vaguely familiar. I have to beat the weeds and tree branches out of my way, but I feel fairly positive that if I keep heading forward, this path will let me out somewhere I want to be.

I thought it might be nice, since my Ami B. will be three months old this Tuesday, to take a look back at how things have changed for me, as a writer, since becoming a mother. Much to my surprise, for the first couple of weeks, I actually did have plenty of time to write, or at least, I would have if I had chosen to use it for that. I did not. Ami slept most of the time, and she hardly ever cried. But rather than using her sleeping time to write, I tried to rest as much as I could, too. I was, after all, on the mend, in more than the usual way, since I got very sick immediately after the delivery and was bedridden in the hospital for a few days.

Then, just when I started getting my energy back, Ami started staying awake more and more, and spending, as it turned out, the majority of her waking time crying. She started wailing when we tried to lay her down in her crib. To increase my milk supply, she started eating more and more frequently—sometimes as often as every hour, which meant I sometimes spent most of the day and night with her attached to one breast or the other. That free time of the first two weeks, which I had wasted sleeping or staring blankly at some crappy Netflix reality TV show or other, was gone, and I resigned myself to the fact that I just wouldn’t be able to write, probably, for several months.

But I’m happy to say that finally at about two months old, my Amalita started fussing less and less. Her prolonged nighttime fussiness—called unhappy hour or the witching hour, depending on which book you read—pretty much went away altogether, and when she does fuss, now, we sort of know what to do most of the time. On top of that, her sleeping habits have gotten more predictable. She still refuses to sleep in her crib (from talking to other parents, I’m beginning to think that no baby in the history of babies has ever willingly slept in his or her crib), but she’ll go down for a good five hours at the beginning of the night and then wake regularly ever three hours after that for a little nighttime snack. I’m actually getting a reasonable amount of sleep again . . . and having dreams! Oh, sweet dreams. Even when they’re nightmares it feels so good to wake up and know that I was sleeping deeply enough to have them.

And though she’s awake and alert most of the day now, which means she needs almost constant attention, the time to write is there if I take it. Damien and I have both started to get the hang of this whole parenting thing, enough, anyway, that we’re not convinced we’re doing everything wrong and damaging her in some irreparable way. As a result, he can take her when I need to get something done, and vice versa. Still, I haven’t really been writing. It would be a lie to say I haven’t written at all since she was born, but still, I haven’t written more than maybe a total of a couple pages, not counting blog posts and a book review. The time is there, in other words, but just like that first two weeks after Amalie’s birth, I’m not using it to write.

But I do have plans to slowly get back into the writing game during the winter break. I’ll tell you all about it next week.

This holiday season I strongly urge you to buy small press books and literary journals for the people in your life who enjoy reading. I made a resolution last year to buy people small press books as often as possible when it comes time to buy someone a gift, and it’s worked out very well. Here’s why:

Small presses and literary journals need your support. Some of the best writing out there is being published by these venues, but a vast majority of the reading public doesn’t even know these books are out there. Small presses and journals usually operate mostly or entirely using funding from grants. They don’t have much money coming in, and they NEED people to buy copies of their books to keep themselves afloat. But with little or no budget for marketing, every single copy sold is a triumph; every book you or anyone else buys goes to a very worthwhile cause.

That’s right: buying these books is doing a good deed. It is! Small presses and journals are important from a cultural and artistic perspective. They take the chances that major publishers don’t take. They publish work based on its artistic and literary merit, NOT based on how much money it’s likely to rake in. Without these publishers, we would live in a world in which mostly all that’s available to read is the literary equivalent of big budget Hollywood blockbusters. Can you imagine a world without independent films? If the small presses were all to go under, that’s exactly the literary world we’d be stuck with. Sure, there would be a small selection of higher quality books, just like the Hollywood studios put out a few decent movies for Oscar consideration each year, but major studios and publishers alike are driven by the bottom line, and so the bad far, far outweighs the good.  

And if you’re a writer, I shouldn’t even need to explain to you why it’s in your best interest to keep small presses and literary journals out there. Unless you plan on getting really lucky, you’ll likely need to publish in these venues before you can hope to land an agent or a two book deal with a major publishing house (and those of us who are really being honest with ourselves know that the likelihood is that we’ll publish in these smaller places forever).

But culling gifts from small presses and journals is not just a good deed; it also makes for some genuinely awesome presents. Buying small press books or literary journals for your loved ones who enjoy reading will most likely expose them to authors, stories, and books they would never otherwise have heard of. It doesn’t mean you just buy something random that the recipient of the gift won’t even want. There are so many varied small press books and journals out there, you’re bound to find something for every reader on your gift list if you just take the time to look. I LOVE getting a book that looks good but that I didn’t even know existed for a gift. It’s an unexpected treat; it gives me something I never would have known I wanted and often opens up a whole new world of books I want to read when I find a new author whose writing I love.

So why not give it a try this year? To get started, you can find a good list of small presses and literary journals, complete with links to the press and journal websites, at NewPages.com. NewPages also posts book and journal reviews, which might help you pick out what to buy for whom, if you’re having trouble. Go here to look for small presses, and here to find a list of literary journals.

A topic I’ve addressed before and no doubt will feel compelled to address again in the future is when to know whether a particular piece of creative writing is finished, polished, as good as it can be and ready to publish as it is, and when to accept, on the other side of the spectrum, that a piece is simply not ever going to be good enough, that it’s time to drag-and-drop it into the old “Failed Attempts” file.

Sometimes this question arises—like with my MFA thesis—because you’ve been sending and sending and sending something out and getting nowhere with it for so long that you have no choice but to ask yourself if it’s actually publishable. I got several agent nibbles on my novel, but no bites, and while most of the agents who actually requested to read some or all of the manuscript said it was well written, none of them believed that they would be able to sell it to a publisher. Fair enough. So I gave up.

But sometimes you find yourself asking this question because a particular piece keeps coming back with personal rejections. “This is very well written.” “We’d very much like to see more from you.” “You should know this came very close to getting accepted.” And yet it always gets rejected in the end. I have a story like that right now—the only story, in fact, that I’m currently submitting, which in and of itself is kind of depressing, don’t you think?

I guess it’s maybe because this is the only story I have in circulation, but I’ve been paying particular attention to this string of rejections. Why, I keep asking myself, does this story keep garnering these kind words from editors, even though it keeps getting rejected. I’ve come up with two likely possibilities.

The first is that maybe they think the writing is good, but not the story. This, I think, I would choose to take as encouragement. Then I would shelve the story and use the rejections as motivation to finish up some of the not-quite-ready stories I have in the works. (Motivation, by the way, I am in desperate need of, having taken such a long break from any serious attempts at writing and being, as a result, a bit rusty and hesitant.)

But the other possibility is that it’s a good story that just hasn’t found its home quite yet. This possibility is obviously preferable, but I don’t know if my considering it is wishful thinking. Am I wasting these editors’ (and my own) time by sending this story around? Am I futilely clinging to a bad story just because I’ve sort of lost my writing groove and this story is, at the moment, the only story I’ve got to send?

How to know, how to know.

Personal rejections are, of course, always a good thing, but sometimes they can be more confusing than form ones. I just don’t know when to take the fact that the story keeps getting rejected as a sign to pack it in. I’ll probably send this story out for at least one more round of submissions, but eventually, if it keeps getting rejected, I’ll need to accept that it just isn’t going to happen with this story. So I guess the real question is how many rejections should I rack up before that happens?

This week, I received an early Christmas present from my mom: a Kindle Touch. This is my first foray into the world of e-readers. Ever since e-readers first started to gain popularity several years ago, I’ve been adamantly against them—or at least, against owning one myself—and afraid of how they might affect the future of the book industry. As a writer, reader, and bookophile, I guess I just felt uncomfortable with the idea of electronic books, fearing that they may supplant the need for hard copy books altogether. This fear is somehow ridiculous and entirely reasonable all at once.

As writer, e-readers made me uncomfortable because I was afraid of how e-books would change the way writers are able to get their work out there. The biggest problem lies in the lack of any need for brick-and-mortar bookstores if there is no longer such a thing as ink-and-paper books. Online shoppers are only going to find books either by actively searching for them, having already learned of the book elsewhere, or by browsing (only the most popular, major publisher books will come up that way). Small presses and small press authors like me don’t stand a chance.

As a reader and bookophile, e-readers offended me aesthetically. I like books as physical objects, small, handheld works of art. I like the feel of them in my hands, the smell of them, the sound of the turning pages. I like the way they look lining my walls, just like they lined the walls of the home I grew up in. E-books, no matter how convenient, portable, and inexpensive, are not works of art. They’re technological marvels, sure, but not works of art.

But when my husband Damien decided he wanted a Kindle Touch, I found myself suddenly rethinking my whole stance. The main reason Damien gave for wanting a Kindle—and I couldn’t help but see his point—was because a lightweight, easy-to-hold-with-one-hand reading device would make calming a fussy baby so much more bearable. My mom, who has been on the Kindle bandwagon from the beginning, offered to buy him one for Christmas. Suddenly, I found myself wanting one too.

They arrived this week, and they’re every bit as useful as my mom said. We’re both in love with them. Damien’s read more this past few days than he’s been able to read in a long time. He’s actually reading more with the baby, because what else is there to do when she’s fussing or sleeping in your arms? Our Kindles also allow us to buy more books for less money, to never worry about how much it will cost to ship them the next time we move, to not run the risk of the post office losing them (I’m still raw about all the books the post office lost when we moved to Ohio), and to read the same book at the same time (especially nice for us because we like to read the same book and discuss it, which in the past has always meant one of us reading it first and then waiting, trying not to forget anything important, as the other reads it).

On top of that, they’re far more environmentally friendly. You might think the electricity you use to run the e-reader equals the paper used to print hard copy books, but the fact is, e-readers use electricity very economically. As long as you keep the wi-fi turned off when you’re not using it, Kindle Touches are supposed to last up to two months between charges. Both Damien and I have been using our Kindles like crazy since we got them, but the little battery symbols on both are still almost full.

Yes, if I set aside my nostalgic and possibly materialistic obsession with physical books, I can see that the benefits of e-books far outweigh those of their traditional, hard copy counterparts. And if I can come around on the e-reader issue—me, of all people!—it doesn’t seem such a stretch that so, eventually, will everyone, that sooner or later (probably later, maybe not in our lifetime), physical, hard copy books will be little more than antiques. Just look at records. Okay, they’re not extinct yet, but as the generations of people who actually lived in the pre-CD era die off, I think record companies will stop putting new albums out on vinyl.

I expect children’s books will continue to be published in hard copy form, but I’d be willing to bet that someday—maybe a hundred, two hundred years in the future—all other books will be published only in electronic form. And while part of me still wants to rage against such a future, there’s nothing wrong with, let’s face it, progress. Cheaper, easier to handle, and better for the Earth we live on—e-books are not, as it turns out, a bad thing.

In a recent Scientific American article, novelist and psychology professor Keith Oatley talked about a variety of studies that proved a link between reading fiction and exhibiting heightened social skills. Avid readers of fiction are better able to pick up on social cues and empathize with others than are people who don’t read much fiction. This, of course, flies in the face of the cliché of the shy bookworm who has no friends and has trouble relating to other people. In fact, fiction (and this includes movies, by the way, though not, interestingly enough, TV shows) broadens our understanding of the vast spectrum of human experience. By reading a lot of fiction, we are better able to understand and care about people whose lives, backgrounds, and personalities are nothing like our own.

We English teachers already knew this, or at least, we had an inkling. I can usually tell whether or not a student reads much just by how much a student seems to understand and be able to relate to people with viewpoints different from their own. Students who don’t read for pleasure at all tend to be far less able to mentally put themselves in someone else’s shoes, to use another cliché (and students who announce proudly that they read nothing but the Bible in their spare time are even worst, but I digress).

As the Scientific American article was written by a fiction writer (who happens, also, to be a cognitive psychology professor), I couldn’t help but wonder where the writing of fiction might fall in to all of this. Now I have to tread lightly here because I certainly don’t want to suggest that fiction writers are somehow better people. First of all, too many writers are pretentious and self-absorbed, suffering from delusions of grandeur, for writers to be better than other people. Plus, I would apply my speculations about how writing might have a similar effect not just to fiction writers, but to writers in any genre. But I do feel that writing can help you process things you don’t yet know how you feel about. Writing can help you understand the world around you.

That’s definitely how it’s always been for me, anyway. One of the main reasons I write is so that I can climb into other people’s heads and learn what makes them tick. I write, often, so that I won’t judge, so that I can remind myself that we’re all human beings, and we all—or most of us, anyway—believe that we are “good.” Writing forces me to empathize in a way that just thinking about other people and their situations doesn’t. When I write, I have to become someone else for a while. I have to understand not only who my characters are but also why they do the things they do, how they justify their actions to themselves.

And when you’ve so fully become someone else, it becomes impossible to judge them quite so harshly. When you understand someone, you can’t hate them. Just like reading can change your personality, so can writing. And for me, that’s reason enough to do it right there.