NaNoWriMo - Let's go!

 

     For the uninitiated among you, November is National Novel Writing Month – nanowrimo for short.  The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of 30 days.  I always thought of that as a crazy, impossible task, particularly for someone who was more known for flash and micro fiction than for any narrative of any length.

     Then in 2011, amidst a long long dry spell, I decided to try it.  And you know what?  It was liberating in a way that other writing projects hadn’t been in a very long time.  I shot for the word count, not caring so much about the direction of the plot, not caring about quality.  Just pushing for that 1600 or so words a day.  And I did it.  I ended with a novel just short of 60,000 words.  Now, it’s not a novel that I will probably ever try to revise (though I make no promises – there were a few scenes, even complete chapters that I really liked.  There’s some promise despite its issues…).  It’s not a very good narrative.  I changed main characters midway through.  It took thousands of words before it really found any kind of direction whatsoever.  And when I was done, I felt more burned out than I had felt for a very very long time.  But I had done it.  Me – whose longest story prior to 2011 was probably 800 words.  *I* had written a novel.  I had proven that I had it in me.  I had proven that I could still write.  And I learned that I apparently work better under a deadline – a lesson that I need to keep reminding myself of, honestly.

     Unfortunately, I didn’t follow through in the following years.  In 2012, I tried but fell far short of the necessary word count.  I was scattered and just couldn’t make anything come together.  (Truth be told, I was in a pretty bad place mentally and emotionally and I think that had far more to do with it than I was willing to admit at the time…)  Last year, I didn’t even try.  You know, I can’t remember why I decided to pass on it.  Maybe because of my crushing defeat in 2012.  The same reason that I considered passing this year as well.  But I decided that I was going to go for it again this year.  Sort of.  I’m cheating.  And I’m ok with that.

     Luckily, I have had quite a few of my short (flash and micro, still, despite finishing that novel…) stories accepted this year in various places.  The problem is that I am running out of polished, finished stories to submit.  It’s definitely a nice problem to have, don’t get me wrong.  But I have written very little fiction in quite some time.  And so I am cheating at nanowrimo this year – I am not going to try for a novel.  Instead, I am going to try and write 50,000 words worth of short stories (and poetry, if I become inspired along those lines…).  Hopefully, it will give me some pieces worth revising and finishing up, but I am going to try my hardest not to worry about that as I go along. 

     The first day hasn’t gone so well.  Yesterday, I came down with some crazy stomach bug that my wife brought home from somewhere (she was sick last week) and spent the night huddled on the bathroom floor.  Today, I’m dizzy.  My head feels like every single sound is a fireworks display.  Pushing the words from my head down through my fingers into the keyboard seems like a monumental task.  But I know what happens when you fall behind with your word count, so I am persevering.  So far, it is all junk.  But I’m exercising.  And if I can hit the daily word count feeling like this, I think it can only get easier from here on out…  Right?

 

     Regardless, if you’re a writer and have never tried nanowrimo, I definitely recommend it to you. It’s one of the hardest things you can try, but it is really exciting at points, too.  The days the words just flow out are brilliant…  You’re reminded (if you’ve lost the feeling like I have) of what it feels like to simply overflow.  It’s an odd thing:  The word count can become your muse.  Today is the first day, so you have plenty of time to catch up (in 2011, when I completed my novel, I actually started a week late…).  Join in.  And if you do, let me know your progress.  I’ll be updating mine throughout the month.  (Today, so far, I’m at roughly 1200 words.)  You may not end up with a novel, but if you fail, you still wrote – probably more than you would have in that same timeframe.  And maybe you’ll end up with something truly great out of it.

 

     And if anyone has any particularly helpful writing exercises or prompts, I’d love to hear them.  I’m going to need help to get through this – at least with stories that are worth going back to…

On teachers and teachings...

     When I was young thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up, most of the time I came around to teaching.  More than anything else, I wanted to teach.  Initially, I wanted to teach young children - I thought I would love to teach elementary school.  That dream fled when I experienced a half-day of teaching first graders during a career day (I want to say I was in sixth grade?)...  A half day that left me crushed - tired, hopelessly tired and defeated.  A little melodramatic for a first career day, but that's exactly what I felt.
     Somewhere around that point, I decided that I would like to instead teach high school.  And then I went to high school.  I imagine even the teachers who impacted me, who truly taught me there in those halls had no idea that I was even paying attention.  Hell, for too much of the time, I wasn't paying enough. 
     Entering college, wandering through those days (years) of undeclared status, teaching was still with me.  I long flirted with the idea of continuing my education until I could teach university classes.  (I of course wanted to avoid teaching intro classes - even then, there were limits...)  So many teachers at UW truly changed me and changed how I looked at the world.  I wanted to have the chance to have that influence on people.
     Eventually, life spun me in a different direction.  Other things were required of me and I went other places.  Part of me still wishes I had been able to follow through and end up teaching.  I look at those I know who do teach and am continually impressed with their resolve despite low pay and near constant bureaucratic struggles.  I have a hard time believing 100% that I could make it as a teacher - I am absolutely *not* a subscriber to the "those who can't, teach" philosophy.
     Most of all, though, I am grateful for those who have taught me, those who truly changed me (for the better, I like to think), those who were there for me.  Now that I have a daughter who will be entering kindergarten next year, I am thinking even more of teachers.  I only hope that she can have some of the same riches that I was given.  I know I will forget some people (and I feel awful for those I do forget), but I want to say thank you to some of the best teachers I have had the pleasure of learning from...
     In the early years:  Mrs. Britton (who took care of me in first grade), Mr. Dunham (who fostered an early love of words), Mr. Brecht (who let me opt out of advanced reading because I hated the book we were reading and I couldn't stop reading the one that the other group was assigned), Ms. Buscaj (Thanks for A Wrinkle In Time), Ms. Gustafson (who taught my class a whole lot about life in a really rough year), Mr. Pentland (Who probably had no idea I was listening in between my bouts of desperately trying to impress people in his class, typically by being an idiot), Mr. Gasser (who put up with a lot, almost always with a smile)...
     And at UW:  Diane LeBlanc (who took a small-town kid who thought he was worldly and open-minded and started him out on a whole other quest without ever putting him in his place), Alyson Hagy (What could I possibly say?  You are still teaching me.  You are truly selfless and giving.), Sharon Doubiago (Who taught me that it was ok to write about sticky, messy truth and gave me a semester that absolutely changed my life.), Colleen Denney (Who taught how to *see* art.  I can't think of a less melodramatic way of saying that.), Paisley Rekdal (who was kind to my poetry and patient with me)  Phil Holt (who managed to make the driest classic literature come alive in such a way that made it feel so fresh and fascinating), the "two Susans," (Susan A. dragged me kicking and screaming across the degree finish line and I appreciate that a lot more now than I did at the time.)...
     As I said, I'm sure there are others that I am forgetting at the moment.  And that says nothing of the other amazing teachers I know in my everyday life that I've never had the opportunity of taking actual classes from. 

Basically, thank you to all of those in the profession.  Know that you are appreciated.  Not enough by the country that we live in by any means...  But you change lives.  Daily.  And in my opinion, that's pretty darned cool.

A quick update on recent (and not so recent) online publications...

I still feel like publishing things online can feel more than a bit transient.  Between that and the fact that I am horribly scattered and forgetful, I thought that I should occasionally update here with a list of links to places one could find my work online.  Hopefully, there's something here that you haven't read or something that you would like to read again.  If you really like something of mine (or anyone else's for that matter...), consider dropping a line to the editors of these places.  You would be surprised how little feedback many of these editors see from their work...  As this is the first time doing this, some of these poems and stories are much older.

Story Problems, a prose poem, can be found on Red Fez:  https://www.redfez.net/poetry/2037

Two flash fiction pieces in the first issue of Kysoflash: http://www.kysoflash.com/RussellBreak.aspx
and http://www.kysoflash.com/RussellConversation.aspx

Another recent tiny little fiction piece:  http://microfictionmondaymagazine.com/2014/07/14/microfiction-monday-seventh-edition/

Two poems of mine in the October issue of The Birds We Piled Loosely: http://birdspiledloosely.wordpress.com/

A poem I'm really proud of in Apeiron Review:  (I'm on page 93)  https://www.scribd.com/doc/241230479/Apeiron-Review-Fall-2014-Issue-7

Another poem featured on Melancholy Hyperbole:  http://melancholyhyperbole.com/2014/09/23/the-second-dream/

Another recent short story: http://www.sonderreview.com/#!read/cfvg

An older short story about a blind date: http://www.pindeldyboz.com/crblind.htm

A little bit different...  http://arseniclobster.magere.com/archive/issuesix/russellcc1.html

Three poems featured on Poetry SuperHighway in 2013:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/2013/09/september-23-29-2013-c-c-russell-dominic-bond/
My feature there in 2005:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/2005/07/psh-poets-of-the-week-401/
And from 2004:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/2004/03/psh-poets-of-the-week-436/
And from 2003:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/2003/05/psh-poets-of-the-week-504/
And from all the way back in 1998:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/1998/07/psh-poets-of-the-week-729/

A much older poem from Oyster Boy Review: http://www.oysterboyreview.org/archived/13/RussellC-Mike.html  and an older flash fiction piece from there as well (one of my favorites of my older stories...)  http://www.oysterboyreview.org/archived/05/russell.html   If you dig around the archives there, there are a few other old poems of mine.  I'm not saying that they are any good, but they're there.

Another old poem from Impetus:  http://theimparchives.tripod.com/25/russell.html

I think that's most of what's out there right now in the world wide web as far as my words go.

Comic books and short stories (and shadow-boxing with the muse)

Apparently, my attention span is fairly short these days.  Taking a look at my Goodreads feed the last few weeks reveals a literary diet completely consisting of graphic novels and short story collections. 

I'm also apparently scattered - right now, I'm reading two different poetry collections (Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno's Slamming Open The Door and Allan Safarik's Advertisement For Paradise), a collection of short stories (Tamara Linse's How To Be a Man - which opens with one of the most amazing stories that I have read in a very long time, the title story for the collection.  If the rest of the collection holds up to that standard, I'm in for quite a treat.) and two more graphic novels (Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers and Flight Volume 7).  Whew.  For someone with a tenuous memory, that's a lot to keep straight.  If what someone reads says something about their personality, I would assume that *how* they read it has a little something to say as well.  I'll leave that deduction up to you.

I used to think that as a writer I had to focus on one thing.  Only poetry, only prose, genre-fiction or literary, etc. etc...  I'm slowly coming to the point that I am ok with being just as scattered as an author as I am a reader.  I understand the business reasons for a tighter focus, but I've found (through much trial and error) that it is just much better for me not to fight inspiration when it seems to come so seldom.  Not to mention that it is difficult to see writing from a business point of view when the money I dump into supplies/submissions far outweighs any income I've received thus far. 

So, then, what are my new random projects that I am allowing myself to entertain?  I've written a sci-fi story (or else the beginning to something much larger that's sci-fi in nature...), I am at the very beginning of plans for some video poetry of one kind or another, and I am toying with the idea of finding an artist who would like to collaborate on some comic book styled art to accompany poems.  Who knows if any of these projects will actually go somewhere, but if I allow myself to play, perhaps... 

On yet another tangent, (though more related than others...) for anyone interested in comic art and poetry, check out Bill Sienciewicz's ad for Mtv from 1991:  http://brianmichaelbendis.tumblr.com/post/95283141965/bill-sienkiewicz-1991-mtv-artist-series-ad
This ad, torn lovingly from Rolling Stone (or Spin, perhaps) hung lovingly on my college room walls for many years.  I actually still have it today.  *This* is the kind of thing I would love to accomplish.  And hey, if anyone wants to track down the original art and buy a gift for me, well...

Here I am.  I'm rambling on my blog (again).  I'm listening to my entire musical collection on shuffle, playing with a new poem that doesn't want to go where I want it to go, the first two lines of a new story that feels like it could be good, some ideas for a poetry video - possibly involving Lego, trying to remember a fantastic line of poetry from a dream last night that I told myself several times I should just get up to write it down, tracking some packages that should be arriving soon, reading my Facebook feed...  Too scattered to even know where this blog post might be going.  Maybe that's the simplistic metaphor right there.  (Or else I'm reaching for depth where there is none.)  Regardless, this is where I am today.  I'm learning to just roll with it a little.

The clouds had nothing to do with it.

cool air and some manic rambling regarding motivation

It is a beautiful fall day here in Wyoming.  Perfect temperature for opening all of the windows and doors while I sit around in a jacket and enjoy the cool air coming through the house.  Tomorrow, there's a 60% chance of light snow - yes, in early September - and I cannot wait.  Of course, it most likely won't snow and everyone will have to listen to me complain about how the weather forecasts are never right.  But for now, I love this feeling; fall coming on, a cold front pulling in, the leaves starting to turn enough so that they hiss and crackle in the breeze...

Fall always makes me a bit manic.  This week, I'm all over the place.  Cheating.  Anything to keep me from actually writing.  Today, a long morning coffee break, web browsing (I should seriously cut off all net connection.  I'd have probably finished five novels by now...), updating my Goodreads, reading my Facebook feed (a few times), running errands that could probably wait, catching up on e-mail, reorganizing my hard-copy submission files (I am helpless at keeping things updated electronically - it's old-school for me or I'd be even more of a mess), playing with the cats...  I've been up about 7 hours or so and I have basically accomplished nothing at all.  If I was my boss, I would be in serious danger of losing my job.  Oh, wait....

I suppose I still find myself waiting for my muse far too often.  Sure, I know that success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration - that's the cliché I'm looking for, right?  But, yeah... I know it.  And I put the mantra through its paces.  Just do it.  All you have to do is write.  Or my favorite, from Sharon Doubiago's workshops back in the day:  Just don't lift your pen from the paper:  Don't.  Stop.  Writing.  Maybe that's what I need for motivation - a professor to give me homework.  I'm obviously not too great at being my own boss.

So, here we go...  I've finished a short little blog post for the day.  The sun is higher in the sky - a little solar warmth mixed in with the cold air.  I'm done cheating for the day.    At least for now.  Let's do this thing.

Selling your soul for your art (or just being melodramatic about it...)

I recently received an acceptance (from a magazine I won't name) after having my story short-listed for awhile.   The acceptance said that they would be sending along some notes on the manuscript for me to go over before publication.

When the story arrived with their notes, I felt like I was given a failing grade in junior high.  All of these notes, redactions, reasons why things didn't work.  I don't mind saying that the first thing that kicked in for me was the writer's ego.  Frankly, I wanted to just flat out say no.  Maybe it has just been a long time since my college workshop days, a long time since I've had peers workshop my stuff at all.  Maybe it is because so many literary magazine/site editors these days are simply "yes or no" folks and I very rarely am asked for revisions.  Whatever the reason, I am positive that much of the blame rests on me.  But my first reaction was more towards the flight end of the fight vs... internal debate.

And then I sat down, printed out both versions (yeah, I still prefer paper to screen if I want to actually think about what I'm reading...) and read them together.  And you know what?  The editor was right.  What they proposed made the piece a lot leaner and meaner.  There were less needless tangents, less extraneous words.  The story got to the point and stuck there.  It was much stronger for their "interference."  The editor was absolutely right.

What I'm unsure of still, however...  While the piece is stronger, I do feel in a way that my "voice" or style was edited out of it to a point.  I know that this has been discussed at length by people so much more well-spoken than I, but it's definitely something playing on my mind.  Are we (the collective we, though I suppose I am particularly referring here to the Western We of the literary community) editing the writer out of the work?  I don't suppose I'm one to talk since I regularly go on tirades against strangely-denoted dialogue in fiction, but I wonder how much of their individual style most writers are willing to let go of in a particular piece in order to see to it that it actually ends up in a form that might be read.

(I will say as an aside that I did suggest a couple of changes that I felt reintroduced some elements of the style I had in the story initially and the editor was happy to work with me.  This is definitely not a tirade against this particular editor at all - I am quite happy to have worked with them and wish that I had this sort of dialogue with more editors, honestly.)

At any rate, it's a question that is keeping me occupied lately.  I would love to hear thoughts in the comments section if anyone feels the spirit move them.

In other publishing news, I received my contributor's copy of Firewords Quarterly today and it is an absolutely beautiful little perfect bound volume.  I definitely recommend checking them out at firewords.co.uk and incidentally, the editor suggested a change to the poem that appeared in this issue that absolutely worked and made it stronger - and made it even more authentically match up to what I would consider as my "voice."  So there you go, I suppose.

A Tale of Two C.C.'s

So, here I am, trying to (re)break into the print world.  Now, typically, I would go off on a tangent here about how lonely the publishing world is.  But is it possible that there are two of me?

Not exactly, it turns out, but I was surprised to find another C.C. Russell out there a couple of weeks ago.  I was bing-ing my name (googling is a much better verb, but I'm a cheapskate and I like getting gift cards for doing searches, so I stick to Bing) as any vain author would do to see if my recent story publications were out there yet.  I found that if you don't modify the search (I usually search for C.C. Russell poetry or C.C. Russell fiction or somesuch), the first entry that pops up is:

C.C. Russell, author of Beautifully Broken

Hmmm.  Well, while that sounds a bit like a title I would have used in the 90's (Who am I kidding?  I'd probably still use it...), I didn't write it.  But...  but...  OK, I admit - as silly as it sounds, it was a little bit of a crushing moment.  Ever since I started using C.C. as my pen name in '92 (Thanks, Jen.), I've been looking forward to seeing just that:  C.C. Russell, Author of...  Honestly, it kind of sucked to have it be someone else (absolutely no offense to that other C.C. Russell out there - kudos to you.) and it made me sort of have an existential "name" moment.  Should I give up on the initials and just go by Craig?  Come up with a different pen name entirely?  Certainly, I'm at a point of fame (or lack thereof) that any options are really possible.  While I've published poetry and stories here and there for a couple of decades (Holy crap, I'm old), it has been many years since my last chapbook was availably for anyone to purchase. 

I ended up really considering the whys of C.C.  I started out using it because it sounded more "writerly" to me, as silly and basic as that is.  Quickly, though, it became more.  As I took gender studies classes and read books like Jeanette Winterson's amazing Written on the Body, I became more and more interested in gender as an author and how your characters are seen based on the gender that readers attribute to the author of a piece.  I enjoyed writing stories with female narrators or with characters of an indeterminate gender.  Leaving my name genderless, I felt, brought less "baggage" to those characters and stories.  (It was also interesting to see what editors and other writers who first met me through my words expected me to be.)  It did create a couple of awkward moments (I was invited to contribute to a couple of women's writing anthologies in the mid to late '90s, which I definitely took as a compliment), and I never seemed comfortable with people calling me "C.C." in person.  It almost created a second identity for me and I have found that to be both useful and off-putting at times.

I strongly considered dumping C.C. and going less formal.  Craig Thompson and his most-incredible graphic novel Blankets taught me that it's ok to write under that name, after all.  But in the end, I've decided that I'm sticking with it, keeping the pen name.  Hopefully, there's room for two C.C. Russells in the author world.