Category: First Feature

Cuppa Pulp Moves to CILK119

Post author By mommapulp
Post date September 2, 2014

September 1, 2014

Following a warm reception by local readers and writers since 2012, Cuppa Pulp needs to move–all the better to wrap its arms around a growing community, so to speak! We hope you will visit soon at our new upstairs nook, CILK119 in Nanuet, NY, a shared workspace for professionals of a Creative ILK (get it?).

Better yet, join us for a sneak peek on September 18! Author and energetic writing professor Joanna Clapps Herman presents How Life Becomes Fiction, a craft talk for writers, in our new space.

A Better Writer’s Space

CILK119 features a welcoming shared workspace for writers, makers, and small business owners. You’ll look forward to planning meetings and presentations at CILK119, too. Membership to CILK119 includes wifi, a lounge and resource area, printers and paper, and conference and classroom space.

Resource shelves awaiting a new finish; roomy writers' space desks awaiting assembly — Resource shelves awaiting a new finish; roomy writers’ space desks awaiting assembly

Oh, and coffee. Not only coffee, but all that ideally goes with it: social gatherings and other special events for members.

Curated Fiction and Nonfiction

Boxes of books, ready mugs, and the ever-vigilant Keurig.

Fear not, readers! Our curated fiction and nonfiction will come with us! While we will maintain a monthly rotation of contemporary reading at Meadowlark Toys, most of our collection will come with us to the new location, along with our writer’s resources. Browse in our new lounge area and enjoy a courtesy discount of 10% off to nonmembers, 20% off to members on books and other resources.

What is “curated” fiction and nonfiction, you may ask? In short, a quality collection of books in print that includes the best of the bestsellers along with memorable modern classics and graphic novels. It’s basically stuff we like. (And if you can convince us that you have well-considered curative advice to offer, we’ll order the stuff you like, too.)

Launch and Sneak Preview

We will launch with a series of lectures and workshops for creative startups in October, 2014.

Don’t forget our September 18 sneak peek! Please join us for How Life Becomes Fiction, a special event for writers featuring author Joanna Clapps Herman.

In the works: a maker space for inventors and engineers, and a classroom/conference space for teachers and collaborators.

Author News Blog First Feature

Meet Elizabeth Eslami!

Post author By mommapulp
Post date February 25, 2014

We are beyond thrilled to announce the launch of Elizabeth Eslami’s short story collection, Hibernate, winner of the Ohio State University Press Prize in Short Fiction, right here at Cuppa Pulp Booksellers this April!

Elizabeth’s debut novel was the lovely Bone Worship, about an Iranian-American college dropout walking the line between two ethnic worlds while she tries not to fail out of life altogether. Elizabeth is not only a remarkable writer, but a much-loved teacher in the MFA Program at Manhattanville College. The Program will also host Elizabeth in New York City with a special reading to honor Hibernate.

She shared with us some insight to her work, her life, and the difficulties of supporting a dog on a writer’s paycheck.

Liz, we loved the way that Bone Worship portrayed the second-generation American experience. Will we see more of that in Hibernate? What else can you tell us about the new collection?
Hibernate is a collection of eleven stories, set everywhere from Montana to Los Angeles to Tehran and beyond, populated by people whose lives have been profoundly, irrevocably disrupted, forcing them to navigate substantial obstacles. Sometimes those obstacles have a more literal stopping power, like a ship wedged in a frozen sea, or someone being born into a certain kind of life, or not having money, or encountering a stranger who talks himself into being trusted. Other times, the obstacle is seven layers deep: the desire to meet a nebulous standard of beauty, or the pull we sometimes feel toward self-destruction as an end to boredom.

The characters and the places in these stories are all over the geographical and psychological map, yet you meet them on the same uneven terrain. They’re all going to make a move, you know that much. Whether that move is going to bring them to destruction or salvation or some more treacherous between-land is what you’ll want to know.

So, more world-straddling heroes! Sounds delicious. Why a story collection, after the success of the novel?
Because writing a novel is hard! As you well know. I’ve always loved story collections, and I always imagined writing one, even back when I was writing Bone Worship. Most of us cut our teeth, certainly in grad school anyway, on short stories, kind of like dissecting a frog before you try your hand at a cadaver. (That’s neither a dig at frogs nor at stories, by the way. I love both of them!) I feel like you can get closer to perfect with a story in a way that’s nearly impossible with a novel.

The other thing that’s fun with a story collection is that you get to try a little of everything – tonally, stylistically. If you screw up with one, maybe you get it right with the next one. Stories are such an intense immersive experience. It always makes me laugh when people say that stories are gaining popularity because they’re designed for the short attention span. You can’t afford to zone out with a short story! What, you’re gonna grab a sandwich while Arnold Friend is teetering on the porch steps? Please.

Sometimes a short story is so intense, like really good poetry, that I actually do have to take a break between sections of a single story. I had that experience reading Every Good Woman Has An Ax–and after I finished, I took a break and then read it again. What a pleasure! What are some of your favorite stories, and what are you writing next?
My students get sick of me talking about it, but Sherwood Anderson’s “Death in the Woods” is my gold standard. Lawrence Sargent Hall’s “The Ledge.” “Majorette” by Lauren Groff. Ben Percy’s “Winter’s Trappings.” “People Like That Are The Only People Here.” Everything from Turgenev’s Sketches from a Hunter’s Album. Flannery O’Connor and Alistair MacLeod and Pam Houston and Alice Munro and Danielle Evans. I’ve taught Aimee Bender’s “Ironhead” and “Ysrael” by Junot Diaz dozens of times, and each time they yield something new. I loved “The Diggings” from Claire Vaye Watkins’s Battleborn.

Every Good Woman Has An Ax, which you read in the Manhattanville Review, is actually an excerpt from a novel by the same name, which I am currently writing. Okay, actually, I’m lying to you, because right this second, I’m writing a short story. (Told you I love frogs.)

Last but not least, for all the struggling writers out there, we all want to know about your transition to professional status. Is it true that you are able to support a dog with your writing? How’d you get there? 😉
You’d have to define “struggling” vs. “professional” for me. If professional means “published,” okay. But I always feel like I’m struggling. I always want the writing to be stronger, to take less time to get there, to be published in better magazines, to get more reviews, better reviews. To be noticed by critics and readers, which is weird for a shy person but goes with the territory. I think the struggling part is permanently necessary. To be hungry and active and never truly satisfied. But if we’re talking about money, the answer is easy.

No, I cannot support my dog with only my writing. Teaching helps with that, having a husband who teaches helps with that. Denali is twelve now, our little old pointy-headed lady, so it’s a world of arthritis and hypothyroidism and vet visits. Everybody thinks it’s funny that I include her in my acknowledgements, but she’s the key to my writing. Never judges, is fully disciplined, in her dog bed next to the desk before I’m in the chair. She rode around in the back of a Toyota Corolla all over the Pacific Northwest for the first book tour. Every event, I have a memory of looking back, seeing her pointy head staring between the head rests. I told her I’d be back. I was off to earn her Pupperonis.

Blog First Feature

Have You Hugged Your Bookseller Today?

Post author By mommapulp
Post date January 21, 2014

Writing News

January –, 2014 The biggest news at Cuppa Pulp is that, after several months of neglect, we’ve updated the feature posts to review The Last Policeman novels, and to introduce guest blogger Jeffrey Shaffer. Jeffrey is a Portland, Oregon bookseller, and married to children’s book author Susan Blackaby (Brownie Groundhog and the Wintry Surprise). We’ve been enjoying his personal reflections on book selling, and hope you will too!

Writers interested in guest-posting here about reading or writing may message us on Facebook (as Jeffrey did) or email us at info@cuppapulp.com

We also hope to check in with more news for readers and writers in the weeks to come… but for now we’re sliding by on the assumption that writers are all busy fulfilling their new years’ resolutions to write more, and readers are taking a break to watch the new season of Downton Abbey (and re-watch old episodes in between).

Have You Hugged Your Bookseller Today?

A COLUMN BY JEFFREY SHAFFER

A consequence of working at Annie Bloom’s is that I’ve developed two personalities. BookLover Jeff is gregarious, always happy to start open-ended conversations with customers, and sometimes has trouble knowing when it’s time to shut up. BookSeller Jeff is pragmatic, maintains an awareness of what’s happening in every aisle, and is always careful not to do anything that might degrade the reputation of the store. The tug of war between these two determined personas is ongoing, even when I’m relaxing at home.

For example, not long ago I was drinking my morning coffee while staring out the kitchen window and saw something truly wonderful. A young man was strolling along the sidewalk staring intently at an object in his hands. I assumed he was holding some type of web-accessing device but no–he was READING A BOOK.

The voice of BookLover Jeff immediately spoke up inside my head. “That person should be congratulated!” he said. “Too many people these days are becoming slaves to their electronic communication gadgets. You need to run after that guy and let him know he’s doing a great thing. Give him a big bear hug and say, ‘I officially declare you to be a reading rock star! You’re my new BFF! Keep turning those pages!’ Go tell him. Now!!”

It was very tempting. I do believe that reading should be encouraged at every possible opportunity. But in this case there was a major complication: I was wearing only a terrycloth bathrobe. Before I had time to make a move toward the front door BookSeller Jeff stepped in with some cautionary advice.

“Don’t even think about it,” he warned. “Stay right here and finish your coffee.”

“I feel bad just letting that guy walk away,” I said. “What harm could come from complimenting someone for reading a book? And I could also tell him I work in a bookstore, so he understands why I’m so thrilled.”

The reply was immediate. “Have you never heard about The Law of Unintended Consequences?” Sometimes BookSeller Jeff can be a bit sarcastic. “Look at this from a more objective viewpoint. What is that guy on the sidewalk going to think when he sees you, a total stranger, charging toward him in your bathrobe? It’s also highly likely that during the chase your waistband will come untied and give the entire encounter an X-rating.”

BookLover Jeff felt the wind going out of his sails. “Okay,” he offered, “so how about we just forget the bear hug and give the guy a high-five?”

“Good idea,” I said. “What’s wrong with that? ”

“Pretty much everything,” BookSeller Jeff shot back. “Consider the bigger picture. Suppose the incident goes viral. Word gets around that a man reading a book caused a scantily clad homeowner to come running out of his house and give chase. It’s the kind of story that makes people not want to carry books around in public places. Then they find out where you work—that could cause consumers everywhere to be nervous about even shopping for books, so then bookstores all over America start going belly-up, and suddenly the entire publishing industry is reeling. Do you want all that on your conscience? That you wrecked the book business with one impulsive act of affection that went tragically haywire?”

By this time the sidewalk reader had disappeared around the corner at the end of the block. “Well, he’s gone but not forgotten,” I said.

“Maybe he’ll come back someday,” BookLover Jeff added hopefully.

“Maybe he’ll walk into your store one day and become a regular customer,” BookSeller Jeff suggested.

“That would be great,” I agreed. “And now that you mention it, I sometimes give hugs to regular customers. How come you’ve never had a problem with that?”

“Because the store is a controlled environment that provides a literary context for the hug,” BookSeller Jeff patiently explained. “And, in some instinctive way, you have always been careful to observe the two crucial rules about spontaneous hugging, the first of which is to let the customer make the first move so you know the mood is receptive.”

“And what’s the second rule?” I wondered.

“Be absolutely, positively certain,” BookSeller Jeff concluded, “that all of the participants are fully clothed.”

Jeffrey Shaffer is a bookseller and booklover at Annie Bloom’s Books in the historic Multnomah Village district of southwest Portland. His relationship with Annie Bloom’s began in the 1990′s when the store’s booksellers enthusiastically sold his two humor collections I’m Right Here, Fish-Cake and It Came With the House. He continues to blog about politics and popular culture for Huffington Post and also contributes to the ‘Modern Parent’ blog at the Christian Science Monitor.

This blog post originally appeared here, and was republished with the author’s permission.

Blog First Feature For Writers

Writing News and Part 5 of Advice on First Drafts

Post author By mommapulp
Post date October 4, 2013

Writing News

October 4, 2013
First off, THANK YOU to Team Cuppa Pulp writers and sponsors for supporting the New York Writers Coalition on September 22 for the 8th annual Write-a-Thon! You raised over $1200 through Team Cuppa Pulp, and we even got a special commendation at the event as one of the top three fundraisers. Overall, the event brought in $14,000+ to help fund workshops for writers on the fringes who have something to say. Every community has these voices in their midst. How much richer might our history become, as well as our literature, if we could better preserve those voices!

The Great Link of the Week is one that’s been officially around since August. Check out Narrative4, an initiative headed up by authors Colum McCann and Luis Alberto Urrea that seeks to build empathy among young people from all over the world through story: a “United Nations of decency,” as McCann says. For 5 bucks, you get 100+ wildly different stories on the theme of “How to Be a Man,” and you help this initiative to build momentum. Or you can click over to their Blog for FREE to watch Sting (swoon) sing part of a musical he’s writing about his Newcastle shipbuilding forbears.

Last but not least, here’s some writing inspiration from Jenny Milchman, whose first novel, Cover of Snow, was published last year to critical and commercial enthusiasm after nearly twelve years of drafting and redrafting. Not only is Jenny a model of perseverance (and her work a model of craft), but we want to thank her for her enthusiasm in encouraging the Writer’s Space here at Cuppa Pulp. We look forward to Jenny having an event with us when her second novel hits the shelves in Spring 2014.

Post script, speaking of events. We will welcome romance author Elf Ahearn to Cuppa Pulp on Saturday, October 26 for a reading and signing of her new novel, A Rogue in Sheep’s Clothing. We will provide refreshments; BYOB (that’s Bring Your Own Bodice).

Writing Advice: First Drafts, Part 5

Begin Again

Donna Lee Miele

Almost from the moment you begin, you find thoughts of revision irresistible. But this can staunch your creative flow. Instead, build a plan for revision into your first draft process. It might be a long trip, so plan to enjoy the journey.

“I’m happy to do as many drafts as any story I commit to needs,” says Joanna Clapps Herman. “That could be ten or it could be a hundred… I don’t care. I’m on the road with my work, and I love being on the road.”

Joanna’s forty-year career has involved writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for numerous journals and presses, and teaching creative writing at every level. She is on the MFA faculty at Manhattanville College, and teaches creative writing at the City College of New York’s Center for Worker Education. She knows how to work hard and fast, when necessary.

But her recent memoir, The Anarchist Bastard, took years to write. “My husband would urge me to turn my attention to writing about my Italian family and I would look at him in confusion,” she writes in the Introduction. “But I was still so utterly of them, a part of them, that I had no words to bring to my pages about them. You can’t write about that which is so much a part of yourself that you can’t step back from it, consider it, think about it… It took the larger part of twenty years to be able to fully unloosen my word hoard against this wordlessness.”

Joanna took her time delving into her family’s sometimes painful secrets and tunneling through a wealth of social, historical, and literary research. Armed with plenty of facts and knowledge, she brought good and bad truths to light, and transfigured the day-to-day of family into a cultural portrait. Not quite like pulling story out of thin air, perhaps—more like spinning straw into gold.

But the craft process was much the same. A successful writing life had taught Joanna to enjoy every stage—even when revision requires a hundred drafts.

“I no longer have the need to drive to the end,” she says. “I love the last stage of the process… Making sure I have a sound architecture, making sure the characters’ concerns are really clear.”

For Joanna, revision begins during the first draft. While staying with the initial flow, she tracks her own inner dialogue with a new “grocery list” of questions and suggestions for herself. She keeps the list aside until she is ready to think about the second draft. “I always keep a writer’s journal—what is going on in my writing life, what is going on with a specific piece, what my struggles are, what isn’t working, just to clarify it to myself.

“I trust each stage to do its work.”

The Authors’ Extra Mojo:

For many of us, a “polished” first draft is not only impossible, but undesirable. Anne Lamott writes, “There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph of page six that you jut love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you’re supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go—but there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages.”

Revision is “when the writing craft comes in,” says Emmy Laybourne. She plans on multiple passes dedicated to different aspects, until “everything’s sparking and moving:” overall story movement, scene progression, character consistency. But not in the first draft.

While writing his second novel, James King planned a revision process involving rewrites of entire chapters or sections, but he still set it aside completely. “The first draft gave me a chance to meet and get to know the main characters and to experiment.”

Max Ellendale is more scene-oriented. She knew she’d be “rewriting scenes over and over until they’re gut-wrenching or disturbing in a way that sticks.” But not during the first draft.

Lauren Groff’s first round of revision consists of typing up a single draft from the multiple longhand drafts she completed while nailing down the elements of her story. “It’s a very long process, but it’s shorter than if I were to be attached to the sentences… For me, writing is all about finding the way to tell a story, and making sure that the way you tell a story is absolutely right for the story you’re trying to tell.”

***

Come back to the story you first envisioned. Do you recognize it? Or has it transformed—or become disfigured? Do you still want it to live? Prepare to begin again.

***

Draw story from beyond the page. Exercise discipline. Engage a positive inner dialogue. Be unstoppable. And begin again.

You may check your blueprint at every stage. Or you may rely only on a grocery list, or a funny little talisman that grants you excellent insight. But do devise your own practices, because your muse doesn’t communicate in sentences. That’s your job—to conjure story.

Coming Next Time: Dreaming a Workshop, Part 1

References:

Except where noted below, quoted material from James King (Bill Warrington’s Last Chance, New York: Viking, 2010), Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14: Sky on Fire, New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2013), Max Ellendale (Glyph, Breathless Press, 2012), and Joanna Clapps Herman (The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011) are from personal interviews and emails with the author, March-June, 2012.

Quoted material from Lauren Groff (Arcadia, New York: Voice, 2012) is from the author’s transcript of Ms. Groff’s seminar at the New York Writer’s Institute, State University of New York at Albany, March 27, 2012. “Lauren Groff on Writing and Arcadia”

Herman, The Anarchist Bastard, pages 3-4.

Anne LaMott, Bird by Bird, New York, Random House, 1995, page 23.

Author News Blog First Feature For Writers News and Events

Writing News and Part 4 of Advice on First Drafts

Post author By mommapulp
Post date September 9, 2013

Writing News

September 5, 2013–Best writer’s inspiration this month comes from a video. Poet Neil Hilborn offered “OCD” as a finalist in the 2013 Rustbelt Poetry Slam, delivering a punch-to-the-gut love story that is also a wrenching portrait of human psychological illness. Do that in 1000 words or less, and you have created living art.

Congratulations to local author Max Ellendale for Glyph’s appearance on Amazon’s Erotic Horror bestseller list!

Last but not least, Team Cuppa Pulp is looking for some bada** writers and generous souls to support us in the 8th Annual NY Writers Coalition Write-a-Thon, benefitting writing programs for the underprivileged. You can read Donna’s plea here. Join us by registering or donating at our FirstGiving page for the Writers Coalition. Writers reach out to sponsors and show up to write from 10-6 on September 21! If we have enough team members, we will have two groups, one at Cuppa Pulp and one in NYC at the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Library, 20 West 44th St., NYC, NY. Thank you in advance for supporting the NYWC through Team Cuppa Pulp!

Writing Advice: First Drafts, Part 4

Be Unstoppable

Donna Lee Miele

Max Ellendale is no stranger to finishing difficult projects. She holds a graduate degree in mental health counseling, completed her MFA in 2013, and has written short stories since the age of 12. The second book in the Glyph series was recently published, and the third is well-underway. But she almost abandoned Glyph in the first year of her MFA program.

“At the time, most people were not clued in to the booming sci-fi/fantasy genre. I felt like an outcast. What I was writing wasn’t good enough, because it wasn’t memoir or literary fiction. It dampened my spirit. ‘What are you writing that for? That has no value.’ I butchered Glyph and changed it to attempt to meet the needs of others, breaking Kurt Vonnegut’s rule of writing fiction: ‘Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.’”

The turning point came when, against all her own expectations, Max mastered a “worthwhile” writing assignment: a literary memoir. “I struggled the entire semester because of my ‘sci-fi/fantasy handicap,’” she says. “[And] I tore a nonfiction piece from somewhere inside me. During our final reading, I made people laugh, and sad at the same time. The look on my teacher’s face, and the pat on the back she gave me when I finished, said to me, ‘You can do this, you can write.’”

With the confidence gained from this small success, Max went back to writing what she really enjoyed. She learned to listen critically to critics. A literary critique of genre fiction “is like going to a podiatrist for a dental consult,” she says, “though the flipside is also true. You might learn about metaphor and symbolism from a poet, or you might get some political insight from a blogger. Take what feels right and leave the rest.”

Max also found an audience through online networking. Industry wisdom counsels against putting your drafts on your own website or blog, if your goal is publication in a literary journal or press. Many publishers want work that has never been published before, in any format. But Max had already submitted to numerous agents without success, and felt that it was time to try communicating with readers another way.

“I posted a few tidbits on my blog that started to get some attention. My now-editor read chapters 1 and 2 and contacted me via Facebook. She urged me to submit to the small press that she works for, which publishes in my genre. I was able to find value in my work.”

The Authors’ Extra Mojo:

So does Max celebrate upon finishing a first draft? “I celebrate by moving on to the next project,” she says.

For most writers, the “next project” is revision.

James King does not celebrate either. “I get started as quickly as possible on the second draft,” he says.

Emmy Laybourne takes a time out—sort of. “When I get to the end of a first draft, I type ‘The End,’ and then I lie down on the floor and go to sleep! That’s happened twice, now. I get to take a nap, in the middle of the day.”

Stephen King recommends stepping away from a piece completely, for longer than one afternoon. “My advice to you is that you take a couple of days off—go fishing, go kayaking, do a jigsaw puzzle—and then work on something else. Something shorter, preferably… you’re not ready to go back to the old project until you’ve gotten so involved in a new one (or re-involved in your day-to-day life) that you’ve almost forgotten the unreal estate that took up three hours of every morning or afternoon for a period of three or five or seven months.”

If you’re not a strict outliner, you’ll know you’re done with a first draft when “you feel you’ve done what you set out to do, or you’ve come as close as you are capable,” says Joanna Clapps Herman. “By the time I’ve gone down my initial ‘grocery list’ and said what I have to say about each item I have a rough first draft, and I know more or less what work is ahead of me to write this piece fully.”

Joanna, who has experienced the full spectrum of the writing process many times, understands that when you finish your first draft, you are really just beginning. Now is the time to call on craft—“All the stuff that everyone works so hard to learn, and that is so well outlined in so many how-to books,” Joanna says. Your work has found its voice, but that is intermediary, at best, to a complete book. You must enflesh your story’s bones. You’re about to start all over again.

Coming Next Time: Part 5, Begin Again

References:

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2010, pages 211-212.

Author News Blog First Feature For Writers News and Events

Writing News and Part 3 of Advice on First Drafts

Post author By mommapulp
Post date August 15, 2013

Writing News

August 15, 2013–Check out local filmmaker Deborah Kampmeier’s crowdfunding drive for her upcoming film, SPLiT, here. It looks AMAZING. Deborah’s past projects include Hounddog and Virgin, portrayals of women’s experience that are true jewels in the astonishingly small contemporary treasure-chest. In other news: writing is, apparently, communication! The age-old rumor that many writers fail to connect with readers because of simple breakdowns in language and syntax–well, author Karl Taro Greenfeld says, it’s TRUE. Check out this interview with Karl in The Review Review, in which he confirms the rumor: writing IS communication.

Writing Advice: First Drafts, Part 3

Vanquish “Writersbane:” Staying Out Of Your Own Way

Donna Lee Miele

Emmy Laybourne says that her editors’ initial rejection of Monument 14 “was very hard to hear,” but the usual banes of self-doubt and writer’s block never bogged down her process. She revised to produce the very different, very polished manuscript for her first novel, which went on to receive a Publisher’s Weekly starred review before release. To date, Monument 14 and its sequel, Monument 14: Sky on Fire, have earned her great reviews, thousands of young fans, and a hot demand for another sequel, due out in 2014.

“I’m really quite out of my own way,” she says. “I’m not critical at all as I’m writing. I just write. I let the stream pour and pour. When you’re writing a first draft, you shouldn’t sit down with that bully writing partner who looks over your shoulder going, ‘No… that’s not good. Start over. That sentence sucks. You know what, it’s not gonna happen today.’ I don’t sit down with that person! She’s not allowed. Not in a first draft.”

A highly trained improviser, comedienne, and actress, Emmy finds that her performance work gives her writing an edge. “Improvisation is just about training your mind never to judge yourself in the moment. That is what I think is crippling to writers. When you’re improvising, you cannot stay in the past for a second. Improv teaches you to stay in the present moment, to never judge yourself.”

Common writersbanes are self-doubt, writer’s block, or garden-variety procrastination, that succubus that likes to sit on your chest, blocking your focus. Emmy dispatches them all without flinching.

“I have a few tricks,” she says. “Number one is attaining a certain velocity. You have get up to speed. In a week where I’ve written for four hours Monday, four hours Tuesday, I sit down to write on Wednesday, and I literally just start to write. It’s right there. The next thing is, if I’m really in the zone, before I go to bed, I think about the next day’s writing. It works like a charm. Then, if I’m blocked, or can’t get started, I walk. It’s better if it’s the same walk every time. I’ll walk as many loops as it takes for me to see the scene in my mind. Then I’ll go back, I won’t check emails, I’ll just sit down and write what I came up with.”

Learn to talk to yourself. You engage your banes via a healthy internal dialogue, instead of one in which they easily sabotage you. When you commit to regular writing hours on consecutive writing days, your storytelling voice strengthens. Walking, or any form of meditative movement that doesn’t wear you out, keeps your focus active.

Your infant creative work is only beginning to find its voice. Your anxieties and fears, by contrast, are well-versed in sending you off-track. Acknowledge them, instead of pretending they don’t exist. Then quiet them. Your task is to nourish this new fantastical being, your story. Recognize your limits, be patient with your process, and the power of your story will eventually guide you past the blocks.

Max Ellendale encountered another common interloper while writing her first novel: too much advice.

Wanting more than anything to make a living as a novelist, Max brought Glyph, a paranormal romance, to the first year of her graduate writing program. But neither she nor her novel were prepared for the literary fire-breathers at the gate.

“At the time, most people were not clued in to the booming sci-fi/fantasy genre. I felt like an outcast. What I was writing wasn’t good enough, because it wasn’t memoir or literary fiction. It dampened my spirit. ‘What are you writing that for? That has no value.’ I butchered Glyph and changed it to attempt to meet the needs of others, breaking Kurt Vonnegut’s rule of writing fiction: ‘Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.’”

How did Max vanquish her banes? By hard, often introspective work, she improved her skills and her story, and gained new confidence. A little help from the magic of online networking did the rest.

**And for a little extra mojo**

Along with Emmy, James King recommends “Sh**ty First Drafts,” a chapter from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird. “The first draft is a child’s draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page,” Anne writes.

“Use the first draft to be as creative as possible,” James says. “This is tough to do if that little voice inside your head is constantly piping up… ‘You think anyone’s going to publish that?’”

Lauren Groff’s pet interloper during the first draft is getting into “fetishizing the individual sentences,” she says. “I write the first draft longhand, without really caring what I’m writing about, because the first draft is where the characters come alive, and they start to tell me who they are… And I don’t even look at it again… I go and do another longhand, and then possibly one more…

“If the sentences are good, they’ll stay… And if they’re not good, why not throw them out, and start over again with something else?”

To tune back into her subconscious when she’s stuck, Lauren also observes the ancient practice of… napping. “Napping is a huge part of the writing process!

“The dreamscape is really important… Sometimes [a problem] solves itself in your head, if you just close your eyes and relax.”

Day-to-day anxieties clamor for her attention, but Joanna Clapps Herman has the discipline to let them wait. “I’ve gotten past them so many times,” she says. “Now they are like annoying old relatives. Oh, you’re here again? I know how to deal with you. Sit down and have a cup of coffee, because I have some work to do! If I’m really having trouble, I force myself to sit down for just ten minutes a day. I start a log, where I literally log myself in and out. Even if I am only at work for very short periods of time, especially then, to keep myself honest. By the end of two weeks of this, something always emerges.”

Coming Next Time: Part 4, Be Unstoppable

References:

Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird (New York: Anchor Books, 1995), 22-23.

Blog First Feature For Writers News and Events

Writing News and Part 2 of Advice on First Drafts

Post author By mommapulp
Post date August 5, 2013

Writing News

August 5, 2013–In news unrelated to writing, but all about creativity and inspiration and legendary local businesses, Maxwell’s in Hoboken closed on July 31, going out with a block party (during which no one could park their cars, as usual!). Maxwell’s was one of the best places to see live music during the rise of alternative rock, not because of a great sound system or ambiance, but because you could go there and be yourself! Read writer Jim Testa’s tribute here… Also on July 31, women storytellers and poets gathered for another kind of block party at Maria Luisa in Nyack, New York–follow the conversation here. Thank you, Maria Luisa, and we hope that the trend will continue! Finally, for reassurance to novelists, this wise plum from Richard Ford, from a recent New Yorker Fiction podcast episode: “To be a novelist and a perfectionist is almost to doom oneself.” If we’re doomed anyway, at least we know we’re not dooming ourselves. No perfectionists ’round these parts, that’s for sure.

Writing Advice: First Drafts, Part 2

Getting Started: Wordsmithing By Any Means Necessary, with James King

There’s not much charm, and only a hint of mystery, to this part. For his first great feat, King Arthur pulled a sword out of a stone. You’ll have to stick your butt in a chair.

James King’s process has evolved over the years. He currently assesses the progress of his story as he goes along. “When I finish a chapter,” he says, “I create a very informal outline for the next chapter, describing the main characters, the goal, and the conflict within the larger, overarching goal and conflict. It seems to help with pacing.”

But he arrived at this by trying “just about everything else.” A professional business writer, James entered the book-length fiction arena armed with a keen and supple work ethic. But he saw three novels rejected, as well as “dozens of short stories and poems,” before Bill Warrington’s Last Chance won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. “I’ve experimented with every approach to writing imaginable,” he says. “I’ve tried working from extensive outlines, from a brief synopsis, from in-depth character studies, from plotline spreadsheets, index cards… you name it. I even tried several novel-writing software programs.”

Whatever tactic his fickle muse prefers, James’ most reliable weapon is discipline. A Yankees fan, James found in Derek Jeter’s 2009 record-breaking season inspiration for himself as a writer. “What makes [Jeter] successful is his uncompromising commitment to the game… He doesn’t practice only when he’s in the mood. He doesn’t wait for ‘inspiration’ before stepping into the batter’s box. He doesn’t take a day off during the season because, well, he’s been playing a lot of ball and has ‘earned’ a day off.”*

You can’t ignore craft. Stephen King calls it the Toolbox: vocabulary, grammar, structure. You must make craft second nature. Take advice from a mentor, do writing exercises, notice and follow the practices of favorite writers. Without the tools, you are impotent.

But without your ingenuity and industry, the tools are dead matter.

“If you’re a writer and not someone who simply wants to be known as a writer,” James advises, “you’ll keep going.”

**And for a little extra mojo**

In Naming the World, a trove of writing exercises by literary wizards, editor Bret Anthony Johnston includes no less than 17 pages of writing warm-ups, simply geared to “make it easier to get your butt in the chair, and keep it there… [D]evising strategies to capitalize on whatever time we can afford our writing is tantamount to success.”

Lauren Groff concurs. “The butt in the chair is the number-one ingredient for the recipe of a novel.”

Prepare to spend a lot of time with yourself. Find a comfortable process.

You may prefer minimal outlining, like James, or like Max Ellendale. “I plan out the plot turns and climax of the central plot along with the subplots, but I never outline,” she says. “I hate outlining. It confuses me and draws away my focus. I’m a very linear writer. I start stories from the beginning and write straight through to the end.”

Seasoned author Joanna Clapps Herman begins with setting down the full spectrum of ideas and scenes that seem vital to the piece. “I have a rough grocery list of what I am going to write about,” she says. “And I write that grocery list down. It’s not an outline, but just a list of ideas or scenes that I’d like to have in this piece. It’s simple and I can just keep coming back to it in a simple way. Oh, I’ve done some pages on that, let me try the next item and see where that goes.”

Many successful authors, like Emmy Laybourne, write to an outline. Laying out a book-length work from beginning to end, animating scenes in miniature first, may best support your creative energy, may even supercharge your powers.

Monument 14, Emmy’s first novel, almost languished in a structural mire prior to completion. Emmy had sold the idea on a proposal and 165 pages, then tried to finish the manuscript without an outline.

But her focus weakened. “The story meandered,” she says. “I had flashbacks, extra scenes. It was just very languid. And then I handed it in, and they hated it! They hated it so much! I had given them half an action-packed manuscript, half Anna Karenina.”

Emmy’s rewrite for Monument 14 was based on a succinct outline. She brewed up the sequel according to the same strict formula, finishing the first draft in seven months.

Coming Next Time: Part 3, Vanquish “Writersbane:” Staying Out Of Your Own Way

References:

Bret Anthony Johnston, Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer (New York: Random House, 2008).

James King, “Derek Jeter and Writing,” The Business of Writing, September 14, 2009.

James King, “Easy for Me to Say,” The Business of Writing, March 23, 2011.

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, (New York: Pocket Books, 2002)

Blog First Feature For Writers

Writing News and Part 1 of Advice on First Drafts

Post author By mommapulp
Post date July 25, 2013

Writing News

July 25, 2013–Just a couple of news items. If you’re a poet and have not yet heard about it, here’s a link to the Poetry Society of New York’s Poetry Festival, happening this weekend. Second item: Terrible Minds on doin’ it wrong. If you’ve had a frustrating writing week, maybe these insensitive words of advice will get you to lighten up.

Writing Advice: First Drafts, Part 1

Other writers may challenge me on this–many consider revision, for instance, to be the hardest part of writing–but in my experience, the greatest obstacle to finishing a book-length writing project is nailing down a decent first draft. By “decent,” I don’t necessarily mean “polished,” but complete, in the sense of having a beginning, middle and end, and representing at least the boundaries, if not the living fullness, of the world you are trying to build.

I had the opportunity in the last year or so to connect with five published authors on the process, and will present their insight in a series of five blog posts.

Before Words: Underneath Arcadia, with Lauren Groff

You begin without writing. Your simmering, creative primordial soup sublimates into the elements of story. Your muse offers sparks, whiffs, even dazzling displays, but she rarely speaks in sentences—that’s your job. In this non-writing stage, you assemble the raw materials for alchemically transforming inspiration into story.

“I’ll carry around a detail or an idea with me for years,” says Lauren Groff, “and one day that idea will interact with something that I read, and explode into a different story.”

Arcadia, Lauren’s second novel, started where motherhood, a move to a new town, and a deluge of grim media events unsettled Lauren’s life. News of escalating war in the Middle East and the U.S. peak oil phenomenon, even the release of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, seemed to foretell apocalypse. It made for a “dark place in my life, and it took me four years to write my way out of that place.”

Pre-writing, Lauren simply sought to escape her emotional downward spiral. “I researched happiness, and people who tried really hard to be happy,” she says. “People who go outside of the mainstream and try to create a better world.

“I visited a number of former intentional communities… I did a lot of talking, and a lot of walking around… I talked to as many people as I possibly could, without a notebook, without a recording device…

“Writing a novel is exercising the imagination, and exercising sympathy.”

Lauren’s longing for community and her real-life efforts to start over set the stage for Arcadia. Observing her own son and her own second pregnancy, she began musing about a fictional child, a depressed mother. “I wanted to write as close as possible to the heart,” she says. “I would never say that writing a novel is therapy. But there are elements of struggle in the book.”

The non-writing aspect of writing infuses your day-to-day perspective. “Things will come to you… Those moments, in your sleep, in the shower, pushing the grocery cart, those are the moments that give you what you need… When you start noticing, everything calls for your attention. When you open up that part in your body, or in your mind, where you’re asking for the world to tell you what you need for this story, it will tell you… deeply, repetitively. There will be words you’ve never seen before that will come at you… three or four times in a day.”

Your creative self is opening a new conversation with the world, forming a unique library of image, emotion, and language—the vocabulary of your story. When you have taken in enough to begin seeing interesting patterns on the wind, you take up your pen.

**And for a little extra mojo**:

Stephen King says that story is a found thing, like a fossil. The germ for his novel Misery came during a catnap on an airplane. J.K. Rowling famously claims that Harry Potter “strolled” into her head, “fully formed.”

While you can’t idly wait for inspiration, accept that the initial work of any book-length piece takes place off the page: an irresistible image, a scribbled phrase, a spate of intense research. Many authors carry ideas in their heads, little black books, or hard drives, long before beginning to write.

Max Ellendale always keeps a little black “idea” book in her pocket. When an idea seems ready, it “gets its own notebook.”

Emmy Laybourne hardly writes at all during what she calls the “conception stage.” “I walk a lot, I think about it and let it grow. Inside myself, I start to feel another being that has its own heart, its own volition, its own little world. At some point, the book begins. The focus becomes, well, you’d better sit down and write it! Because the words will stop.”

Joanna Clapps Herman describes her new, barely-conscious ideas as “the strangest creatures. I love how inchoate they are. First there is a flitting of images, bits of language. At some point there are a few sessions of intense writing, where I begin to get very excited with what I am trying to say. A flood of language, ideas, images… I just ride that flood, try to keep up with it and not talk back to it.”

“What seems to work for me,” agrees James King, “is to, first of all, spend a lot of time thinking about the story and the characters. Then, I pretty much jump in with a first chapter to see how it ‘feels.’”

Over weeks or months, related images appear in your jottings. Word-patterns emerge. You decide to commit to the work. You finally begin your first draft.

Coming Next Time: Part 2, Wordsmithing By Any Means Necessary, with James King

References:

Except where otherwise noted, all quoted material from James King (Bill Warrington’s Last Chance, New York: Viking, 2010), Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14: Sky on Fire, New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2013), Max Ellendale (Glyph, Breathless Press, 2012), and Joanna Clapps Herman (The Anarchist Bastard: Growing Up Italian in America, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011) is from personal interviews and emails with the author, March-June, 2012.

Except where noted, all quoted material from Lauren Groff (Arcadia, New York: Voice, 2012) is from the author’s transcript of Ms. Groff’s seminar at the New York Writer’s Institute, State University of New York at Albany, March 27, 2012. “Lauren Groff on Writing and Arcadia”

Subtropics: The Literary Magazine from the University of Florida, “Interview with Lauren Groff,” www.english.ufl.edu/subtropics/Groff_interview.html, quoted in “Lauren Groff on Writing and Arcadia.”

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, (New York: Pocket Books, 2002)

Scholastic, “J.K. Rowling Interview”

First Feature

Meadowlark Toys, Sunbridge Books, and Cuppa Pulp Booksellers

Post author By mommapulp
Post date March 4, 2013

Step into our store and enter a vibrant world of tranquility, wonder, exploration, and creativity!

Timeline:

2005: Meadowlark Toys was conceived by a collective of families at Green Meadow Waldorf School in Chestnut Ridge, New York, to offer a local retail source for toys made of natural materials that encourage creative play, in keeping with Waldorf education. Our selection of children’s books was curated to honor similar ideals, highlighting stories to encourage children’s emotional growth and sense of wonder. Our craft books and supplies offer inspiration and natural materials for your projects.

2006: Meadowlark Toys expands its selections to include responsibly made gifts for all ages from craftspeople around the world.

2010: Meadowlark merged with Sunbridge College Bookstore, incorporating Waldorf educational resources and other anthroposophical treasures that support local and visiting teachers and families.

2012: Cuppa Pulp Booksellers represents a further expansion into the best in trade fiction and nonfiction. The Writer’s Space offers writer’s resources, including in-store texts, wifi for Internet research, events for writers, and a seasonal book club.

Mission:

We strive to meet the needs of our customers for:
• carefully sourced, natural toys, craft supplies, and gifts;
• foundational and innovative anthroposophical research, commentary, and literature; and
• for trade fiction and nonfiction that both challenges and entertains.

Our plans this year include a new online store, which will include selections from the whole store–toys, gifts, and anthroposophical resources from Meadowlark and Sunbridge, as well as trade fiction non-fiction, and writer’s resources from Cuppa Pulp.

Explore our Chestnut Ridge store and our many ways of encouraging play, exploration, and creativity for all ages.