Editeyes

I read the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron close to twenty years ago. While some of her ideas were a little too gooey for me, I did come away with two practices that I regularly use to stimulate my writing.

One is morning pages. While I don’t write in my journal every morning, I do write EVERY day . . . Here are some things I count as creative writing:

• freewriting with my students
• writing a blog entry
• writing an email message that describes
• responding to a blog with a comment the extends the conversation
• writing a review on GoodReads
• creating a greeting card (birthday, anniversary, congratulations)
• business correspondence that uses colorful examples to make my point
• writing love notes to my sweetie that go in her lunch box

The second thing I learned from Cameron is making artist dates, i.e. creating opportunities to nurture my creative consciousness. Since I’m fascinated by imagery, I often look toward the visual artists to feed this element of my creativity. Visual artists have taught me much about:

• focal point
• juxtaposition
• color
• perspective
• depth

Films are particularly good at serving up wonderful studies in visual imagery. I recently watched a Japanese film that was a marvelous eye feast in which the imagery fed the message: Love My Life.  (It got a lousy review on Rotten Tomatoes, but I thought the filming was amazing and happened to like the story very much.)

And here is an amazing visual collage on YouTube that made me want to take a videography class. I watched this clip 5 times ever marveling at the way these images work together and with the music.

These are two ways I work to stimulate my writing life. What do you do to keep your art alive?

Tags: Imagery, Styl'n, Write Right by ph
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Electing to self-publish my book Between Two Women was not an easy decision. I wanted my book to be selected by a publisher for I believed that would be the ultimate acknowledgement that the work was worthy—both in terms of content and skillful writing.

I spent three years sending my manuscript to agents and publishers. I followed guidelines in books like

Into Print by Poets & Writers,

How To Get Happily Published by Judith Applebaum,

Putting Your Passion into Print by Arielle Eckstut & David Henry Sterry.

I carefully crafted query letters and developed a one-minute elevator pitch which I gave to multiple agents at the East of Eden Writers’ Conference. I sent my queries out and participated in the Maui Manuscript Marketplace.  I created a book proposal and sent it upon request to agents. Here is a sample of the responses I got:

You are a talented writer  [but] memoir has become a difficult genre to place.

We’ve just done a rash of lesbian memoirs so have to work on other things.

We found your memoir to be quiet well done . . . but feel it would be a very tough sell to commercial publishers.

I consistently got the message that since my book’s appeal was to a niche market, I should query small presses directly, particularly those who published books in my so-called niche. That’s when I learned that narrative non-fiction does not bode well as a calling card because fiction sells and therefore keeps small presses afloat. I got rejection letters from Alyson Press, Spinsters Ink, Cleis Press, and Firebrand. As Nickie Hastie says: “How can we buy the books they decide not to publish?”

After considerable rejection, I was thrilled when I friend helped me through the door of University of Wisconsin Press, introducing me and my manuscript to editor, Raphael Kadushin of the Living Out Series: Gay & Lesbian Autobiography. I got an email request from Kadushin to send the manuscript which I submitted immediately and then waited hopefully with only a tiny niggle of doubt.

I had studied the list of books published in the series. They had only published two books each in the previous two years and all four were about or by famous gay men, and the year my friend’s book was published, it was one of six books published and was the only lesbian book. Read what you will into these facts but note that after waiting for six weeks, I received a form letter (that was not signed) saying, “We have decided that your work does not coincide with our current publishing plans.”

A couple of months later I read an article in Writers’ Digest, Dec. 07 about gay and lesbian writing. Kadushin was interviewed and had this to say: “Coming out stories are no longer published unless they are wildly new or have a universal angle.”  He followed this remark with: “Writers [LGBT] have little aptitude to be truly dangerous or daring.”

That’s when I had a change of attitude. I knew my book contained essential stories about women in general and lesbians in particular, and therefore needed to find its way into print as a concrete historical record. It appeared that the only way to accomplish this was to self-publish.

The self-publishing journey is yet another interesting story.  More on that later.

Tags: That's Personal, Write Right by ph
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Del Martin

May 5, 1921- August 27, 2008

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were partners for over 50 years. Martin died this past week at the age of 87 after a life-time as activist campaigning for the rights of women and lesbians.

Shortly after moving in with my female lover, I found the couple in a book entitled Women Together: Portraits of Love, Commitment, and Life. I was euphoric and confused by my new found status as lesbian and delighted to find a book with beautiful images of female couples.

No such book existed when Del and Phyllis were new lovers, but they paved the way for the kind of books I found in libraries and books stores when I first came out.

The two women were journalists. They were writers and human beings who spoke honestly and bravely in a time when such frankness was risky. Julie Enszer writes an in depth tribute to Martin on her blog if you’d like to know more about this remarkable woman. For my part, I simply want to emulate this pioneer in speaking the truth.

May I always choose honesty over safety.

May I remember Del Martin in moments when my confidence wavers.

photo of Phyllis and Del from: www.women-vision.org

Tags: Write Right by ph
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When you grow up in a large family, it’s not unusual to look for a niche in the hope of establishing an identity uniquely your own. The niche or identity that I assumed as a child in a family of 5 kids was athlete or in today’s terms: the jock. My sister was the creative one–the writer, the musician, the artist, and to my way of thinking the free thinker. So I was well into my 40s before I allowed myself to write outside of the formal boxes of academic and technical pieces.

Around that time, I remember being surprised when a young colleague called himself a poet. He hadn’t even finished college, and yet his self-image allowed him a title that seemed evocative. At the same, a small delight found it’s way to my hands: a wonderful personal essay by another colleague. It was a touching piece about his parent’s wedding anniversary that brought tears to my eyes. Though these were minuscule events in the greater scheme of my life, the two incidents managed to break through the hard identity I held of myself as jock and technical writer. Suddenly in what felt like a recklessly unparalleled gesture, I signed up for a 6-week long creative writing workshop.

I was a nervous wreck on the morning of the first class quite certain I was going to be totally out of my element. When the teacher handed us velvety green wisteria pods and told us to hold, touch and study them intimately, I truly enjoyed the pregnant wonder of my pod. But when she told us to write about what we’d discovered, I shuddered with confusion. I was used to writing memos and curriculum and project plans. What could I write about a wisteria pod?

I finished that workshop and then signed up for a second session and later went on to attend numerous creative writing classes and workshops over the next few years, but it was a long time before my pen moved freely on the page confident that what poured forth would have merit and might even be juicy or touching or scary.

It’s no small feat to take a risk and forget how to “write right.” I’m still pushing the edges of my comfort zone, trying to squeak through locked doors and slide around monstrous hurdles.

Today, I’m undertaking the risky business of launching a blog about writing. There are many such blogs out there, some of which I read regularly and have listed in the blog roll to the right. I want to be part of the conversation they are having and add my perspective, be it complementary, unique, or challenging. My goal is to attract readers who are exploring their edges and who will jump in with daring comments that make all of us think.

Come back again for the 2nd post when I will write about my blog’s name–Editeyes–and consider the risks of naming.

Tags: Write Right by ph
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