One Writer's Week

6 1/2 writerly things

Here’s a glimpse into some of the writerly occurrences I’ve been involved with over the course of a week. For your reading pleasure, I’ve sifted out the mind-numbing boring stuff, like doing laundry, cleaning, and re-caulking the bathtub.

1. Manuscript completed

For the past year, I’ve been working ferociously on my second memoir, Let’s Pretend This is Fiction, Okay?. I polished off this draft and sent it to my publisher hours in advance of the deadline. If you enjoyed my first memoir, Kissing the World Goodbye (also published by Unsolicited Press), you’ll like this one too, although the first half is quite dark (but funny at times). It’s not slated to come out until October of 2027.

My husband half-jokingly asked me if I was now ready to start my third memoir. I told him that when you are born into a family like mine, you have a responsibility to do something with the great material they give you. Right now, however, I’m going to focus on some other writing projects and unfinished poems that I’ve neglected.

2. Saintly coincidence

Intercede: Saints for Concerning Occasions just celebrated its first birthday, but you already know this if you read last week’s post about the book’s playlist.

No sooner had I finished that post than I received a request from OLLI (the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Western Michigan University) to offer another “Five Secrets to Living Life to the Fullest, a class they said was one of their most “popular classes.” (That was nice to hear!) I created “Five Secrets” based on what I learned from doing research for my saint book. So if you live in the Kalamazoo area and haven’t had a chance to take this class or took it but forget the pearls of wisdom I tossed your way, stay alert for the registration for their fall courses. (No previous knowledge of saints or how to live fully is neccessary.)

3. Publication

Pure Slush is a literary magazine that began 15 years ago in Germany and is now based out of Australia. Founding Editor Matt Potter has taken several of my pieces over the years and says Pure Slush is just “the right combination of highbrow and trashy.” One of the joys of being a writer is developing relationships with editors. Matt is a delight to work with and one day I hope to visit Australia and buy him a beer.

As a nod to 15 years of Pure Slush publishing, their latest anthology, “Fifteen,” was officially released on May 4th. It has 73 writers mulling over the significance of ‘15.’ I’m so happy that “A Crash Course in Chemistry” is included. (It will also be included in my next memoir.)

A “taste” of Fifteen can be found here.

4 & 4 1/2. Submissions

Heard back from editor Julie Kissel that my nonfiction piece, “Uncircled Sides,” was accepted for an upcoming anthology, Things Left Unsaid: Words that Matter. This piece is actually a letter I wrote to my dead typing teacher and it will also be included in my not yet released memoir.

I also sent out three submissions. I’ve been quite slack in this area as I’ve been focused on finishing the memoir, so it felt good to toss out some work for consideration. I forgot how much time it takes to do this!

5. Professional development

I attended “The Secret Life of an Obit Writer,” a zoom event hosted by Narratively Academy. Lee Gutkind interviewed New York Times obituary writer Michael Roswenwald. He shared how he decides what to include and what to leave out of a person’s life story. One interesting piece of advice he tossed out about obituary writing—and I think this can hold true for other forms of writing, like memoir—is to find that “pivot” in a person’s life. Figuring out that moment and why it was important, and unpacking what was happening around that time, is a good place to start. The pivot is not always obvious, but once you find it, he said, you should “mine the hell out of it.”

Side note: I’ve finally let go of the mild grudge I’ve held against Lee Gutkind for decades. I met Gutkind—whom Vanity Fair dubbed the “Godfather” of the creative nonfiction genre—when I was in my twenties and living in Pittsburgh. He was a guest visitor to a creative writing class that I was taking at The University of Pittsburgh. I asked him a question and took great offense when he remarked that no one really has anything important to say/write about if they are under 30.

Love in the Obituaries

6. Writer’s group

My poetry group meets every two weeks, but my attendance has been a bit spotty lately, so I was thrilled that I could make it this time. Since Covid, we’ve gotten into the habit of emailing one or two poems in advance. When we gather in person, we read them aloud and give/listen to feedback. This week, after reading one of the poems, I had to look up a word I never heard of before: vassal. I asked my poet friends if anyone else was unfamiliar with the word. Everyone else knew what it was.

The guy in green who is swearing an oath to be loyal to the guy in the throne is a vassal. In exchance, he’ll be protected and get other perks, such as use of land.

Notes:

• The cover image of the typewriter is thanks to a Writing Without a Net subscriber who loves old things. (Thank you, Nancy K!) I just added some words onto the paper.

• The artwork portraying the vassar is from 1471 and is in the public domain. The artist is unknown.