Owning my Writing

I have now worked with 7 editors and most have been rather cool. What I had not realized with my first editor was that I had a say -I was so excited to have someone publish me that I let them do whatever they wanted and I completely cringed when I read the final print. The reason for the cringe was that I was writing an edgy sex column and my editor tried to kitch it up! It did not sound like me at all. The rest of the editors have been for small literary presses and have been phenomenal about taking suggestions and not hijacking my piece. I agree with Zinsser that I would rather take my piece out of a magazine than to allow the editor to make it his/her own. 

Okay, so to the average Joe would say, I should just be thrilled that someone wants my 1800-word short story and I should accept my fate. Here's the thing with that -I probably spend 15 hours creating that short story, let alone the five other stories that I started and didn't finish in between. Guess what, after having my short fiction published 6 times in ten months I think I should have a say. These are my words, my personality, my style that I have honed and worked on. Zinsser, once again, stresses that the commodity of writing is the writer's personal style, not the just the content. I wholeheartedly agree because every short has already been told, it is only different by the way each writer tells it, and if style were not important than people wouldn't care which newspaper they read, but they do! 

Now for workshopping, I find it to be an invaluable resource for two reasons, 1) you are able to see errors in your own work that you wouldn't have seen before, and 2) you are able to learn to read critically which helps with your own writing. One of my favorite parts about workshopping in online course is that you don't have to hear everyone else's opinion before you give your own. IF five people have responded to an essay I read it twice, comment, and then read the other peer reviews. 

As for editing: Yuck! I don't like revision and I don't personally like editing but I sure as hell need it! I do know that much. As I said before I love a good editor, a patient editor BUT  I don't know if I would ever want to be an editor.




Hooray, for this forum to write about all my misgivings and personal issues with writing. I don't know if I will continue on this path of blogging but it has been an interesting ride, if one doesn't mind cliches -and I must say sometimes I don't. With that said, the ownership of my personal style is the most important aspect of my writing, my greatest joy, and the absolute hardest part of the writing process. I have written two novellas which began as really strong short stories and teetered off into the abyss of mediocre long fiction. I need to learn to carry my voice beyond 3000 words and then I will have truly accomplished something.

Enjoy Your Own Voice

Here's the scoop -you have to enjoy what you write. Or as Zins puts it, at least fool the people into thinking that you enjoy it. Not to pat myself on the back BUT  I have been speaking on this subject for the last 6 weeks so nah nah nah nah. I win! Okay, fine, I don't win, but I get it. I have been writing since I was eight. I am, as Zinsser is (I love when the experts agree), that some inherently have more class than others when it comes to writing, translation: some people are born with a talent for writing and others are not. One, may work on writing and become better, but it is the one with the natural ear and the work that will be the better writer. 

My single most enjoyable experience with a piece I have written would have to be my short story "The Prodigy," a story about an aging child prodigy, who has a second chance. The reason I most enjoyed this piece is because much of my work are character sketches, but this story is fully rounded  with a character sketch. I have spent the last year working on a collection of short stories about women in the midst of crises. Each character has lent herself to the next, evolving her to a new place, finding more out -even though none of the characters are the same. "The Prodigy" was at the height of this discovery. This character is self-deprecating, most like me, and yet nothing like me. It was extremely fun to write a very small story, with undertones of depression juxtaposed with her willingness to go beyond her fear. I spent a bit of time researching the harp, how it is played, as well as certain phrases that would be used -I felt this gave authenticity to the piece. I realize that I most enjoy writing on a subject that I don't know in order to learn. I am a master googler. I want to be in the process of learning everyday. This story did that for me. However, the one thing I do understand, seemingly well, is human nature, so even though I did not personally experience the determination it takes to become a harpist, I do understand the drive, the personality that one must possess. I think I have shared this before, but I had my mother read the story when I was at the half-way mark and she called me a "sociopath" because she knew I had only played the cello for one year and never practiced and it was almost scary to her how persuasive I was. When she read the final piece, she cried. I remember sitting there and thinking, I hate that she is crying, but I do love that I could make someone become that immersed in seven pages of fiction/pure fiction to cry. There is a victory in that.

I like short, succinct sentences that cut out the frivolous content and make a reader want to read more because they aren't getting bogged down by details. I love to write. I love to read. I love to write something in a way that is uniquely my own. I think the best way to describe my voice is to say I write without emotion on the page but it is deeply weaved in. 



Basically, when it comes down to my skills, I am good and evil. Yes, tone, voice, style -I have honed (not perfected, if I had I would probably stop writing) but I have, because of my voice taken creative license to throw out some grammar. This does not please me. It is of great issue, actually. I am currently studying grammar on the side, and have a tutor for this area. This of course has not stopped an editor or two from publishing my work, but I believe as a writer I have to learn all of my craft and not just let the editor fix a few of the line errors that exist. But, bottom line, I enjoy my own writing very much (not blogging, my fiction). Who knows if others do or don't like what I do. My friends say they do, but could a friend really be honest with me? It doesn't matter really I have to find my own joy in my passion.What I like the most is my audacity (if I may steal from Zinsser), I am not afraid when I write. I am afraid on an almost daily basis of so many things -losing friends, alienating people, hurting someone, looking weak -but in my writing I can do all of that, learn about those aspects of myself and others, and have a better understanding of the world around me. 

Oh Man!

Here I am again. I am writing on the thoughts of Zinsser the man who is bold enough to write a book titled On Writing Well! But I have to give it to the man, he always comes through. This particular chapter deals with people and the interview process. I think my favorite part is where he reminds us to bring many pencils and something to write on. The reason I like this is because I have been the manager of numerous businesses and I will tell you this that if an applicant comes in to fill out an application without a pen I WON'T HIRE THEM. This is the same mentality that Zinsser is stressing to us writers "Be prepared." As a writer leaving the house without a pen or an electronic device to write down a bit of interesting dialogue that we hear as we cross the street should be punishable by law. Okay, so, I'm going a bit far but if you are a writer, especially one that is doing interviews, show the people respect. Zinsser stresses this when he says that "Writing is a public trust." It should be. Creatively moving a quote around here or there is no big deal, but changing what the meaning of interviewees point is, is absolutely wrong.

"I only got this job because I'm a woman," my friend Heather says.
"Not true."
"Yes, it is. I don't feel real bad about it in the scheme of things...you know, men usually get the jobs I want. But, in this case I think Brian and Rob are both better qualified. They have both been doing radio for two years and they sound better than me."
"Why do you say that?" I ask, sipping at my Coca-Cola.
"Brian has been doing my job already, should have gotten it and I did. He is kind of a bitch to me about it."
"He'll come around in a month or two."
I've never heard her talk this way. Heather has wanted to a better radio market for years and now that she has, she doesn't think she is good enough. Crazy talk, if you ask me. But I let her indulge, because if I know anything about human nature is when someone is kicking themselves you just gotta let them do it, because if you don't they'll also start punching.
"I don't know, I really don't," she says as she plays with her rice and beans.
"I understand that you feel this way, but I think once you get comfortable..."
"No. I am not good enough. Did you listen to me the  yesterday?"
I hadn't. Although, I had the day prior.
"Yes, you were great!"
"Really?"
This was the first light that I had seen in her eyes all dinner. She wanted to hear she was great, she trusted me, but I knew there was nothing I could do but that didn't stop my determination.
"Yes, you were really good."
"You are just saying that because you are my friend."
She was still looking at me, hoping that friendship was not the cause of my admiration.
"If you weren't good I wouldn't have said anything."
This made her laugh.I smiled at her.
To be totally honest, my friendship is not the source of my admiration, but my admiration the source of the friendship. Although she has been a DJ for years I have never heard her speak so candidly about her fears and insecurities, which to be selfish I must say made me feel a bit better about my own self-deprecating nature toward my writing.

Write What You Know

I write and do all of my homework on one corner of my tweed sofa. I don't go for the word couch, it sounds so pedestrian and cheap. Yea, I'm judging you if you do use it. Usually, as is tonight, my cat, Baby (worst name in the world), sits curled up next to me as I smoke close to half a pack of cigarettes, which the ashes seem to pour over my ultra modern table. This table swivels, but don't try it cause I built it with own two little hands and if it is swiveled the one bolt that I was able to hold it all together with turns the three blocks that rest on each other onto the floor. Let me try to explain this better- there are three faux wood squares that are supposed to move around to create different looks for the living room, but if they are not installed properly (and they are not!) the cardboard starts to crack and everything slides off. I stare at my bookcase filled with only a quarter of the books I have purchased, most of which I have loaned out to some friend of a friend that I knew for all of a day before pushing my favorite Bukowski book on them like it was heroin, and I feel sad to have lost so much of my history with my collection's disappearance. I play no music, just the humming of the air conditioner, and the sound of Baby's coos and growls -she's kind of a bitch. So, here I sit. Same as everyday, trying to create from thin air and so much of it bad.

I find that writing about a place I know so well, is beyond difficult because I have seen it so many times. There is nothing new to me about my place. Nothing unique anymore, the smell of fresh paint is gone, and the excitement of being out of my parents house is no longer here. I understand the concept of the exercise to write about the mundane to find a way to bring a life to it, to really challenge myself to find something different in the smallest of things and not just in big plots or big places. But man, was this hard. I am having an easier time with the non-fiction, but let's be clear as can be THIS IS THE MOST DIFFICULT CLASS I HAVE EVER TAKEN. I keep saying that I don't like writing about myself, but it's not just me that I don't like writing about. I have discovered I don't like writing about things I already know. But, this exercise and the assignment this week helped me to see that I don't have to write about something I know in a way that I already know it. I am able to find a voice and a tone to compliment the setting which makes it different and continuously discovering new things within my comfort zone. I also have trouble keeping up stamina, this is especially difficult when I am unable to fictionalize things. Okay, so you wouldn't know that my table is modern and swivels, I could have said that I have a Monet in my living room -but I would know and that would make me uncomfortable. That discomfort would come out in my writing and it would be worse than it already is. So, I am doing the assignments as suggested and hoping that I am accomplishing something worthwhile, and I hate to say it but I am learning something that will be useful in my fiction. Drats! I have been fighting this course for 5 weeks but I think I will just embrace the unknown and set forth.

Hats off to Kincaid

I was introduced to Jamaica Kincaid some years ago in an English Lit course. It is interesting how over time the way you view a writer changes significantly because I remember reading a few of her short stories and not enjoying them very much but I read her essay A Small Place and found her wonderfully charming. Although her essay states "place" this is actually an essay on traveling. Normally you would read an essay about Antigua and the writer would rave on and on about how blue the ocean is and Kincaid acknowledges the banal way a traveler views his/her escape. She describes what it is like to get off the plane, how the cab driver will try to scam you (but you won't see that because you are on vacation) and the church you will visit but then she does the most ingenious thing -she tells you what Antigua is really like! That the eyes of the wanderlust are just that: lustful not able to see the truth. Kincaid's way use of the essay is profound to this fiction writer because there is pizazz and flair and goddam irony! I think that there couldn't be a more honest piece of travel writing out there. I am as critical as they come to my own writing and to others. I feel that if you are sitting down and writing something, even if just for yourself, that it should be entertaining, have a great voice, and unique. Kincaid's piece is not only unique but fun in its own depressing way. For New Year's I went to Cabo and had this very wonderful lighthearted experience but I did not think about where the people lived that gave me this experience. Her philosophy is incorporated into the essay without making it a personal piece but rather a historical one in which different classes of people cross paths and meet in the middle of paradise/shanty towns and neither one is able to see what the other does. When I think of my impending travel/place essay a sense of doom overcomes me. Why? I am happy to tell you -because writing non-fiction, whether a school essay or a creative piece, makes me beyond nervous. This type of writing is out of my element. When I submit a short story to workshop I am proud, generally elated and I receive a rather pleasant response. When I submit an essay in non-fiction I feel that I am a phony! Uncomfortable with the voice! Wanna throw it out! This blog is no different. However, Ms. Kincaid's essay showed me that an essay that I am dreading because of the confinements of the assignment and because it is an essay (let us not forget) does not have to be feared. My essay does not have to be of the drab sort of a vision of traveling that most people expect. I may write an essay about a visit Lancaster, PA land of the Amish, and what I think that they might feel. Let me clarify, I am not saying that I would dare understand the way the Amish feel nor would I make it personal but in the way that Kincaid is able to frame her essay in such a way that she is not the center focus but is very much the voice of the essay. In my head a journalistic approach was going to have to be the way to go but a ha! I have seen that is just not the case. The Amish will probably not be the subject of my next essay but maybe they will. What I do know is that I won't write if I don't think it is a quarter as eloquently composed as Kincaid's. Not perfection but something admirable, something I am comfortable with and I believe that Kincaid has succeeded in showing this writer a new way to look at something.

Memoirs/Personal Essay

Here's the thing, I have a blistering high fever and have had so all weekend. Not only that but I have been throwing up everything I am putting down. I give this disclaimer because I do not know how clear I am being in writing about this reading. I have attempted to write my blog, but have been so dizzy!

This week we read about the difference between a memoir and a personal essay. For those of you that don't know the difference a memoir is a longer story over a broader amount of time and a personal essay is one that is a snapshot of a moment in one's life.


I find Zinnser's style to be provocative and interesting as a how to, but also as do as you please. He suggests that we don't go overboard in talking about ourselves and at the same time not to be afraid to take risks. I sure as hell wish I had Zinnser sitting on my couch as I roughed the world of the personal essay. I chose the snapshot, as I was not sure of myself and definitely didn't think I could pull off an entire memoir. I usually write fiction and I don't have a lot of stamina with that either. I enjoy the art of the short story more than the full novel (although that is a goal of mine).


Being ill, writing about myself, and reading about writing about myself, has produced an anxiety in me greater than I have felt since I attempted my first music review. I like to hide behind a character's voice rather than use my own -I consider myself the Johnny Depp of writers. Zinnser suggests that we find our own voice and I am seeing the power in that. I think that if I could just relax and be myself my fiction would improve as well as my attempts at creative non-fiction.

There's a story that he recaps about a student who's father was held captive during the Holocaust and she wanted her father to join her in Poland to revisit it. When he refused and did not want to talk about it she thought her story was done. But Zinnser, the brilliant man he is, told her that it wasn't his story but her story that she was after. This student did the work herself and realized that we only have our own stories. He also remarked on students that wanted to interview family members about certain events and he told them that was no longer a personal essay -more like journalism- and allowed the student the freedom to write how he remembered the event. I would love to say this helped me greatly during my first personal essay, but I did not enjoy the process, nor find that I did well at it. My fears of a weak voice were there and I did not accomplish what I had wanted after all, but I think with more guidance from Mr. Z I will get there or somewhere closer to there by the end of my eight weeks discovering the voice within me that is screaming "don't let me out!"

Snobs in all Forms

To paraphrase Zinsser: non-fiction is the stepping off point for most writers because they are most comfortable in the shoes of their own thoughts. I disagree with this thought. I have been writing as long as I am able to remember and the drive to writing was fantasy, not reality. I live in the reality and prefer not to write about the normal, everyday, mundane or the painful experiences in my life. I find that to be the opposite of cathartic. I become frustrated with rehashing events. For some this might be true, for some this isn't, and for this writer it definitely is not. I also disagree with the idea that someone learns to write. I belong to the school of thought that believe that writing is in you, it is something that is chosen for you not something that you choose. So, for those that are "learning" maybe it is true that non-fiction is their stepping off point but for those of us that are cursed by sleepless nights and anxiety filled days of flashing cursors it isn't a matter of ABC to 123 but rather different avenues of the same event. 


Zinsser's point of declassifying literature is well taken. He does not care for the snobbish attitude of those that consider fiction high brow and non-fiction non-art. I would consider myself a literary snob and have made this same claim many times over, however after reading his opinion I truly have reconsidered my nose-in-the-air assumption. And yes, the only true distinction is good writing and bad writing, and that should be the only place we can be snobby. If we may. And I will. I can't give up all vices at once. 


In the chapter, I understood why he nor the three women were interested in engaging in a literary discussion with a less than well versed radio host, however the four panelists were as big of snobs as the critics who consider non-fiction an inferior beast. I thought that Zinsser and the panelist could have been informative and helpful to the audience as well as to their inferior host rather than refuse to answer a question they deemed beneath them and lacking eloquence. The intellectual silent treatment is part of the reason people are afraid to ask questions and engage in areas out of their comfort zone. I had a boyfriend who was/is a die hard Raiders fan, I knew nothing about football, let alone his reason for waking up on Sundays. He knew this but rather than deeming me a fool he enjoyed sharing with me the rules and points of the game. I became interested and soon didn't need him as a crutch to enjoy the sport. If we literary types could follow this lead we could open up a world to those that we left out because we are impatient with their lack of inherent knowledge and in turn open up an entirely new dialogue that could only improve our view of literature ~whatever that means.