Shame On Me

Posted on 17 May 2012 | 3 responses

Here’s a photo from my presentation last Wednesday at Lakewood Library. If you’re wondering what the heck is on the screen, well, let’s just say I tried to do a different kind of author appearance. I dug through my old photo albums, made good use of a scanner, gave the audience a glimpse of my early writing (and non-writing) life, and described how my formative writing experiences traumatized shaped me into the writer I am today. (I should clarify that the photo of the Amish man you can see in that slide is one of the few not from my personal family photo albums. Sadly, even though I’m from Lancaster, PA, I did not learn how to write in-between barn raisings.)

I covered everything from silly childhood writing attempts to my misguided teenage years of thinking writing awards were more meaningful than perhaps they really were. And, of course, rejection — I covered plenty of that, too.

This was my first time trying this type of presentation, and despite the fact that I was essentially making a fool out of myself on purpose, I just might tweak this thing and use it again for the future. Of course, I still have no idea whether getting all “creative” in this way was a good idea or not. It’s so hard to say, and even harder to say why in the heck I am so willing to humiliate myself like this. All I know is that I have no shame. That plus my new idea of how to tailor this presentation even more to other writers means, well, maybe one day I’ll take this show on the road.

I didn’t use any notes and instead let the photos guide me through the presentation. So, without further adieu, here’s a small sampling of some of the photos I used. I won’t include any captions, so use your imagination:

I think that’s more than enough for today. Have a good weekend, everyone.

 

 

The 45th Winner

Posted on 15 May 2012 | 10 responses

Today was the first day in weeks that I had a free evening to myself, and it was all thanks to a canceled writing group meeting. As much as I love a good critique session, this cancellation allowed me to 1. actually enjoy some time outside after work and 2. catch most of the live stream of the Sophie Kerr Prize ceremony.

I wrote all about Washington College’s Sophie Kerr Prize in a blog post last year. Here it is for anyone who missed it but is curious what the heck I’m talking about: Winning the Sophie Kerr Prize.

Even after all this time and distance, I still get a little nervous about this prize and for those students vying for it. Tonight, I watched the ceremony from the comfort of my bed, surrounded by the cats, while eating maple pecan granola out of the box. Spoken like a true winner. Nonetheless, this is how I rung in the news of Kathryn Manion being named the 45th winner of the nation’s largest undergraduate literary award, which this year was worth $58,000.

I don’t know Kathryn Manion, of course. I’m just an aging former winner creepily peering in on a live Internet feed from hundreds of miles away. With cats. Even so, as someone who understands the tension of that moment just before the winner is announced, I cheered on all the finalists — and completely recognized myself in the way Kathryn’s voice shook immediately after winning.

The Sophie Kerr Prize has been on my mind this week not only because the impending announcement, but because I discussed the prize last Wednesday during my author event at Lakewood Library. Talking publicly about winning that prize still feels foreign to me. It’s like admitting a secret. That’s probably because it’s not something I talked about a lot after graduation, not even with other writers, and certainly not with strangers. You don’t introduce yourself by saying, “Hey, let me tell you about the time I won $61,000 for my first novel when I was 22 years old.”

In the grand scheme of things, at least from a writer’s perspective, the Sophie Kerr Prize is not particularly significant. It likely won’t have any life-altering impact on the winner (except, of course, for the sheer amount of money awarded, or its ability to cause some winners to succumb to self-imposed pressure and anxiety, like what happened to yours truly). With that said, it’s also an interesting piece of trivia. In the last few years, as I’ve come clean about winning the Sophie Kerr Prize — first in a personal essay published in Poets & Writers,  then here on my blog, and now, in a presentation I will continue to use for future events and readings — people want to learn more. You won how much money? What did you do with it? And who was Sophie Kerr, anyway?

When I was creating my presentation and attempting to describe the arc of my young writing career so far, I kept returning to not only the Sophie Kerr Prize, but all the writing awards I won as a young adult and teenager and how they contributed to my unrealistic expectations. The truth is that I disappointed myself for years after winning the Sophie Kerr, and only recently have I begun to develop a healthier perspective. Winning that prize is fabulous, but it’s not the end of the road when it comes to building a writing career. It’s not even the beginning. It’s just a single bright flash along the way.

I can’t say whether other Sophie Kerr winners went through the self-doubt and the disappointment that I did after winning. I’m probably just more neurotic than most (always a safe bet). In any case, I certainly hope this year’s winner is more easily able to make the transition from the glitz of this prize into a real writing life.

So congratulations to Kathryn. To her and the four other finalists, I can only say: Write on.

 

Writerly Confessions, Part II

Posted on 11 May 2012 | 5 responses

» I forgot to bring my bookmarks and business cards to my library presentation earlier this week. Oops.

» My alma mater posted this blog interview with me recently. I neglected to mention in my response that I don’t really believe any author or book should be considered “a guilty pleasure.” Is that so very post-literary-snob of me? Also, now that I’ve said that, I’m not even sure if it’s really how I feel.

» I will be participating in a panel discussion tomorrow at the Ohioana Book Festival, which actually came as news to me because I had somehow read the schedule wrong and initially assumed I wasn’t on a panel. I’ve only been on one panel before but I think I love them. Although: Is there a term for the fear of being asked a question you don’t know how to answer? What about the fear of ruining a perfectly nice and succinct question by rambling on and on about some nonsense no one needs to know? In other words, the term for my life.

» Sometimes, for no real reason, and no matter how much I enjoy reading the comments themselves, I simply can’t bear to venture into the comment section of my own blog to respond.

» Every now and then, usually when I’m contemplating just how profoundly I may be embarrassing Future Laura, I consider putting an end to this blog. But don’t worry, that won’t happen anytime soon. You’re stuck with me for a while.

» I found today’s image when I searched for “Laura of the Future” in Flickr.

» Last night I wrote an essay right before going to bed, which was of course a mistake because my mind was swirling around in its most active state until nearly 1am when I had to be up at 6:30am. Then I had these bizarre and creepily political dreams that I forced myself to write down in case their plot points come in handy in the future. I really hope they don’t, which is to say they probably will.

» I started writing my new novel and then abruptly stopped. I’m going to throw out everything I’ve written so far and start again in a few months, after I’ve done more research. All of this makes me incredibly happy.

» When I was a sophomore in college, I workshopped a poem about a close friend and the professor announced that I had written “a lesbian poem.” At first I was surprised but I realized he was right and then I felt disconnected from my work in a really healthy and positive way.

» Sometimes I like to have a Trader Joe’s beer. The cheap kind that costs like 50 cents a can. This isn’t really writing-related but it’s a confession I felt I should make.

Go here for more writerly confessions. What do you confess?

Photo: Lou O’ Bedlam

Publishing Lessons: Fixing the Glitch

Posted on 10 May 2012 | 8 responses

When Living Arrangements was published in November, I contacted my local Barnes & Noble to verify that they’d ordered some copies of the book. In response, B&N told me they could not and would not order the book because it was listed as “non-returnable” in their system. They would only order a copy if a customer pre-ordered it and paid for it in advance.

Obviously, this was not a high moment in my writing career. I was so embarrassed and disappointed that my book could not appear in B&N that I did the worst thing I could have: nothing.

I assumed that because Living Arrangements is published by a small, university press, and because B&N is the largest national bookstore chain standing, that this pre-ordering business must have something to do with the evils of corporate publishing. Considering that independent bookstores could order Living Arrangements with no problem, and because book distribution in general is one big mystery to me, I thought that little books like mine were routinely treated this way in the big chains, and I had no choice but to accept it.

I was so busy making all these assumptions and accepting my B&N-less fate that I didn’t think to mention this issue to my publisher. Flash forward a few months later, when I was preparing for the Ohioana Book Festival. B&N is handling the book sales for this event, and when they informed me that they could not carry Living Arrangements and I’d have to sell my own consignment copies (of which I’d still have to hand over a large percentage to B&N), I forwarded the info to my editor at BkMk Press. In return, I received an instantaneous, just-slightly-panicky message that my book indeed should be listed as returnable and this is a problem that needs to be fixed ASAP.

You see, B&N should have been able to order and carry my book all along. By not discussing this issue right away with my publisher, I made the situation worse.

I need to point out here that the error was not B&N’s, and it also wasn’t my publisher’s fault — instead, it was a glitch that occurred elsewhere in the book distribution system. A glitch that I had the power to address if I had been more proactive.

When I was at AWP this year, I listened to several debut authors admit that they wished they had spoken up more during the publishing process. They wished they’d realized they had the right to ask questions, the right to be informed, and the right to be involved in the process. Too often, they said, they would think, “I’m so lucky to have a book deal at all that I shouldn’t bother anyone by asking too many questions or demanding too much.”

It is so easy to fall into that mindset, particularly if you’re published by a small press, or maybe even more so if you’re a little fish in the big pond of a major publishing house. I felt so fortunate to have my debut story collection published, and to have such a wonderful editor (who, over the course of the last year, has cheerfully taken my countless phone calls and answered all my neurotic and anxious questions with the utmost of patience), that I would sometimes tell myself to calm down, back off, and just let things happen. Unfortunately, it seems I often stressed over the things that ended up mattering the least while letting the bigger issues — like this B&N snafu — carry on uncorrected.

My publisher set about fixing this distribution glitch a few weeks ago. When I called B&N yesterday to confirm that they had ordered copies of Living Arrangements for the Ohioana Book Festival on Saturday, a B&N employee cheerfully told me, “Yep, we have your copies right here!”

See? Easy. Now let’s just hope that, after all this, someone at the festival actually buys a copy.

Photo: qnr

p.s. My presentation went well last night, or as well as it could when I’m expected to drag my introverted self to a podium and speak in public for an hour. Recap and photos coming soon.

 

Odds and Ends

Posted on 8 May 2012 | 8 responses

• First, don’t forget to enter to win a free copy of Anthony Doerr’s Memory Wall by leaving a comment here.

• I’ll be in Columbus, Ohio, this Saturday, May 12 for the Ohioana Book Festival. It’s held from 10am to 4:30pm at the Hayes Metropolitan Education Center, 546 Jack Gibbs Blvd., Columbus 43215. This event is free and features author panel discussions, children’s activities and a book fair. I’ll be attending a special reception that night at the Governor’s residence with the other authors and will try to return with some good photos and stories from the evening.

• And for a final last-minute reminder for anyone in the Cleveland area, I’ll be at the Lakewood Library on Wednesday (May 9) at 7pm to give a presentation that will either be fun and entertaining or will go down in flames. Even if it’s the latter, at least I’ll one day be able to write about that particular humiliation.

• I leave you with this quote from Maurice Sendak: “I would infinitely prefer a daughter. If I had a son, I would leave him at the A&P or some other big advertising place where somebody who needs a kid would find him and he would be all right. … A daughter would be drawn to me. A daughter would want to help me. Girls are infinitely more complicated than boys, and women more than men. And there’s no doubt about that. We just don’t like to think about it. Certainly the men don’t like to think about it. I have lived my whole life with a dream daughter.”

Discuss.

 

Living Arrangements Goes Gold

Posted on 4 May 2012 | 7 responses

My last bit of good news for this week is that Living Arrangements won a National Gold award in the 2012 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY Awards) in the short fiction category.

Living Arrangements tied for gold with Knuckleheads by Jeff Kaas (Dzanc Books), which I’ve had on my reading list for a while now. The bronze went to God Bless America by Steve Almond.

To see all the winners, go here.

I’m unable to attend the award ceremony in New York, but apparently I’ll receive a gold medal in the mail, which I promise not to pet and call “precious.”

Enjoy your weekend, everyone. It’s Friday, the sun is out, and I need to start eating burritos immediately in preparation for Cinco de Mayo, so I’ll see you next week.

Giveaway: MEMORY WALL by Anthony Doerr

Posted on 3 May 2012 | 3 responses

It’s May, which means it’s Short Story Month, which means it’s the perfect time to spread some story love. I’m participating in the Fiction Writers Review’s 2012 Collection Giveaway Project, and you can reap the benefits — a free copy of Anthony Doerr’s Memory Wall.

I picked up my copy in October at the Ohioana Awards ceremony. Memory Wall won the fiction award, but Doerr was unable to attend the ceremony. In his place, he sent his mother and a beautiful acceptance speech that made the rest of us feel a little outclassed (or is that just me?).

The collection contains seven stories that grapple with what the New York Times called the “relentless fascination with memory and with the way memories are destroyed, eroded, drowned, faded or eaten away.”

The title story surrounds 74-year-old Alma Konachek, a South African woman who pays to have her memories preserved. Every night, Roger Tshoni and Luvo, his young accomplice, break into her house to sift through those memories in their search for the priceless fossil Alma’s husband discovered just before his death. An excerpt:

Things don’t run in order. There is no A to B to C to D. All the cartridges are the same size, the same redundant beige. Yet some took place decades ago and others take place last year. They vary in intensity, too: Some pull Luvo into them and hold him for fifteen or twenty seconds; others wrench him into Alma’s past and keep him there for half an hour. Moments stretch; months vanish during a breath. He comes up gasping, as if he has been submerged underwater; he feels catapulted back into his own mind.

Sometimes, when Luvo comes back into himself, Roger is standing besides him, an unlit cigarette fixed in the vertex of his lips, staring into Alma’s cryptic wall of papers and postcards and cartridges as if waiting for some essential explanation to rise up out of it.

Doerr is a particular inspiration to me because he won Ohioana’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant in 2000, eleven years before I did, and in that time has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments: four O. Henry Prizes, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, and three Ohioana Book Awards, to name just a few. But more than that, he’s written complex and compelling stories.

To win a copy of Memory Wall, simply leave a comment on this post by Wednesday, May 30. Leave any comment you wish, but I encourage you to leave a memory. That’s right — any memory. I’ll choose a winner at random and announce the results on this blog. International entries are welcome. I may decide on a whim to name a runner-up to receive a copy of Living Arrangements, too.

Erika Dreifus is giving away a copy of Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision as part of this project, so stop by her site if you’d like to enter to win. If you want to participate in the Collection Giveaway Project yourself, go here. Good luck!

Complexly and Helplessly Human

Posted on 1 May 2012 | 6 responses

NewPages has posted a lengthy review of Living Arrangements. A few excerpts:

Winner of the prestigious G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, Living Arrangements, a collection of short stories by Laura Maylene Walter, offers the reader thirteen well-crafted stories, crisp in their language, tight in their structure, and thought-provoking in their effect. Most of the stories deal with loss, memory, family relations, and a variety of “living arrangements.”

*****

The stories make us reflect on incidents in our lives that shape our identities in imperceptible ways. They also remind us of the range of instincts that make us complexly and helplessly human. Although Living Arrangements is her first collection of short stories, it is no surprise that Walter is already an acclaimed writer who successfully engages with a variety of human emotions, relationships, and institutions.

*****

Walter, through her undramatic language, sensitively draws the reader’s attention to the most intimate but barely perceptible necessities of people who are often dismissed as dysfunctional.

Full review here.

I have some additional good news about Living Arrangements that I should be able to share very soon this week. For now, I’m off to be complexly and helplessly human.

Pens and Friends

Posted on 30 April 2012 | 14 responses

I saw Anne Lamott a few weeks ago as part of the Cleveland Public Library Foundation’s Writers Center Stage series. I decided to get a little wild and crazy and not take notes like I usually do and instead just enjoy myself.

While this might have been a good step in the “let’s relax for once in your life and stop taking obsessive notes every damn time you listen to an interesting writer speak” direction, the combination of 1. my tired, work-addled brain 2. my lack of notes and 3. my laziness in getting around to blogging about the event means that this post will be a little thin. But please, if you have never heard Anne Lamott speak, trust that she is charming and funny and a joy to see in person.

I do recall a few pieces of her advice for aspiring writers:

1. Always carry a pen with you, everywhere. I’m sure this is an obvious one for most of us. Lamott likes to write on index cards because they’re easy to carry and fit into her back pockets without making her butt look big. I try to have a pen and paper on my person at all times (though sometimes I have to get resourceful and write on gum packs or Chipotle bags). And I’d like to point out that I did have a pen with me during Lamott’s event, and I might have even broken down to use it for note-taking, except it fell and rolled under the seats in front of me right before the event started. Clearly, fate intervened and told me it really was okay to take the night off.

2. Find two good friends you can talk about writing and share your writing with. I attended this event with one of my (two) writing buddies, so when Anne Lamott doled out this bit of advice, Jennifer and I looked at each other and laughed. We have definitely fulfilled this one, and I think it’s all right to feel a little proud of ourselves — because as I’m sure a lot of you know, it is not as easy as it sounds to find trustworthy writing friends/partners who get you.

She also pointed out that it’s probably in the best interests of most people in your life if you don’t write. That it doesn’t truly matter to anyone but you if you write that book (which is why it has to matter to you). That at a certain point, you have to let go of the excuses and distractions and just do it. Just write the thing.

I’ll leave you with one last comment Lamott made that I enjoyed and will paraphrase here: “If the people in our lives wanted us to write nicer things about them, they really should have behaved better.”

How are you behaving?

5 Random Things, Part X

Posted on 25 April 2012 | 4 responses

1. I’m not proud to admit this, but for a brief period in the third grade, I insisted on correcting my friends when they said things like “Me and Julie went to the store.” I’d get all school marmish and say, “Julie and I went to the store.” I can vividly remember saying this to a friend on the jungle gym behind the elementary school. She let it pass like nothing had happened, which was big of her. When I look back on this now, I wouldn’t have blamed her if she’d given me a bit of a slap or set about emotionally sabotaging me. Which, come to think of it, she kind of did three years later, so I guess I got my payback in the end.

2. Not far from that jungle gym was a patch of woods that contained a few old gravestones. One read “J. Dillinger,” so a friend and I decided it was the grave of the bank robber John Dillinger, and obviously the whole area was haunted. I also swore I once saw a ninja in those woods. I reported the Dillinger/ninja stories in careful detail in our short-lived Kreative Kids Klub newsletter. I would love to get that newsletter back in my hands (especially for my upcoming Lakewood Library presentation) but it’s long gone.

3. Let’s get away from the elementary school trauma with this post about social media from Roxane Gay. She says: “When it comes to the social networking, do what you want. This is not as complicated as we make it. Ignore most of those well meaning articles about writers and social networking. Some of those articles are a little crazy and written by people who want you to Market Yourself and Be a Product.” 

4. Ann Patchett discusses what it means to not have a Pulitzer winner in fiction this year: “Let me underscore the obvious here: Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.”

5. Finally, here’s an easy-as-pie video tutorial on how to write a novel. (Found via Margaret.) There’d be a lot more snacking, tea/coffee drinking, cat interruptions and stress sobbing if I made my own version of this video, but still.

 

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