I Love a Challenge

You might have guessed that since I’ve done and won that crazy exercise in writing intensity NaNoWriMo for the past seven years (only won six) that I like challenges, and I do. 

I like the community.  I like knowing I’m not alone.  I like visual updates.  I like competing with people I’ve never met, and I like that I’m working toward a very concrete goal.

 So, to support my other writing goals this year, I’ve signed up for a few challenges. 

I’m not sure where I heard about the 12x12 challenge.  The goal is to write a picture book a month for twelve months.  It’s the only paid challenge I’m in, and the updates on picture book writing and the community of writers make the few dollars a month I pay to participate well worth it. Out of that challenge has come the 1,000 picture book challenge which I’ll write about in a later post. 

 

A sweet thing about the challenges I'm doing this year is that
I can track them at My Write Club.  I love visual tracking!
And I can add as many challenges as I'm crazy enough to sign
up for.

I’m in another online challenge from the Facebook Group Ten Minute Novelists, the 365,000 Words Challenge.  I’m a part of the Hemingway group, aiming for 250,000 words this year or a little under 700 words a day.  We post our words on a spreadsheet, and we can see how others in our group are doing.  There’s an active Facebook page here, too. 

But perhaps even more motivating are the challenges I’ve set for myself. You can see some of them on the My Write Club screen shot above.  

Challenges work for me. It’s the end of January.  I’ve written 34 poems, seven of which have become (the start of) a non-fiction picture book; I’ve written over 25,000 words; I’ve sent my manuscript to 12 agents, gotten 2 lovely passes, one "no thanks" from a query without pages, and (yippee) one request for a full.  I’ve sent out 21 poems.  I’ve published 8 blog posts.  I’ve read 82 picture books. 

Sometimes, as a challenge goes on, I have to readjust or I find the challenge no longer suits my aims.  I’m okay with that.  I find when I challenge myself, I get more done and I’m better able to narrow my focus by knowing what I don’t want to do.  Having challenges and groups who are facing the challenges with me helps me focus when I put my butt in the chair to get the work done and makes this solitary work a little less lonely.

Medieval Paris: The Cluny Museum

The Cluny from outside the walls.

The first time I went to the Cluny, I went for the Unicorn Tapestries.  The next time, I went for the gardens.  This time, I was searching for everyday medieval objects.  In each case the Cluny has more than fulfilled my expectations. 

A reliquary, in this case a golden foot intended to hold

the foot bones of a saint.

The gardens were closed this time, but I ate lunch in a little garden off the side of the museum.  Though it wasn’t specifically medieval in its construction and design, it still allowed me a bit of quiet in the middle of a seven-mile day.  The  Unicorn Tapestries have a delightful new room.  Before, I was concerned about the fading of the tapestries, and the new room uses diffused light to keep the rich reds and deep blacks of the Unicorn Tapestries from continuing to fade. 

What draws me again and again at the Cluny are the reliquaries. I remember being disappointed on my first trip there that they no longer held the hair, toenails, bones, or other physical objects connected to the saints the were created to hold, but the care that has been taken with the containers speaks to a devotion, fascination, and faith that I still admire. 

Board games from the 14th century.

I spent a lot of time in the everyday objects room, fascinated by the combs and buttons in one exhibit and by the playing cards and dominoes in another. 

I can’t imagine a visit to Paris without the Cluny.  Next time, hopefully I’ll be able to eat my Nutella and baguette in the Museum gardens.

Why I Want an Agent

Photo ©  Lori Gravley.  

I have my writer’s group.  Over five years, almost 52 weeks a year, we’ve met, growing only large enough to fit at a single table, though sometimes I notice others join us and write along. Not for four hours like we do and not at 7 AM, like we do.  So, I’ve got my writing group.  Sometimes, I meet them other days and we gossip and complain and plan and cajole and support and then we write.  We always write.

And I’ve got my critique group.  We all have a practice that works.  And we practice and we read and we share what we read and we share the work and look at the work from angles, finding its facets and trying to make it shine a little brighter.

And I’ve got old friends and students.  We email and message and like and smile at each other from a distance. 

I’ve got my presence.  I post a blog a week now, and three or four encouraging messages on my author feed.  I post photographs to Instagram, sometimes incessantly.  Beauty is everywhere.  And I’ve got my website, and every time someone puts one of my words online, I share it there.  And tinker here and there and grow my friends.  And I read poems I love on the radio at WYSO Public Radio in Yellow Springs, OH, not all the time, but a couple of times a month.  And really, I don’t want to do much more than that because all that leaves just enough time to show up for work, everyday.  And I do.  Two hours or more each day, including weekends.  During the week, I aim for six-hour days, but no matter what (even when I'm traveling around the world for the work that pays the bills), two hours.

What I don’t have, and what I desperately want is an advocate, an adviser, someone to help me grow my career, someone to run my too many ideas by and help me parse out which ones might sell.  Someone who lives inside that publishing world I’ve danced around for so long who can show my work to people who will love it.  I want another pair of trained eyes to look at my work and ask me just the right questions.  I want someone who will believe in me when I can’t quite muster that belief and who will allow me to work knowing that my work might just find the right readers. 

I want a midwife and a doula.  Fifteen percent of what I earn seems a reasonable fee for someone who will do my work in the world so that I can work in the worlds I’ve made in my head. 

I could publish things on my own, and I might.  The historical projects I’m working on may not be saleable.  Or maybe the contemporaries with their little edge of paranormal will have missed the shining paranormal moment in publishing as a reader last year said.  In that case, with these projects I love, I’m willing to work on my own and even pay to get them out in the world.  Someone out there needs those books, and they can’t find them on my hard drive. 

I can publish things on my own.  I’m a poet.  I write a lot of poems that I have to send out (220 last year, thanks Duotrope), so it’s not that I’m afraid to do the hard work of sending things out.

But even with all the opportunities to publish on my own, I want someone on my side.  Someone who will take those saleable concepts and sell them, or at least try.

I want an agent. 

Poem a Day--Beyond the Personal

I’m sure you won’t be surprised that I do research to write some of my poems.  My verse biography of Christine clearly needs research even though I came to the project with much knowledge.

If you’d told me when I was first writing poems that a satisfying poem could be written from research, I might have scoffed.  Though I loved the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and appreciated Edgar Lee Masters Spoon River Anthology, I hadn’t thought of the way a poet created a world like the ones these poets built. 

Even though I wrote poems from different points of view, (most notably "American Girls" which was published in Nebo and nominated for a prestigious award) I wrote that poem from the direct inspiration of a radio story on NPR.

At that time, the thought of using research to write a poem seemed at odds with the confessional and nature poets I read.  Now, I know a number of books written from the same sort of research and exploration that I undertake regularly to find inspiration for poems.  Drea Brown’s Dear Girl, a short verse biography told from the perspective of Phillis Wheatley; the award-winning verse biography of Sylvia Plath, Your Own, Sylvia, by Stephanie Hemphill; and Myrna Stone’s Cassanova Chronicles are all recent books based on research.  The poet immerses herself in the world of an historic figure and then tries to imagine that world for a new generation. 

I have a curious and unsettled mind, so when I find it hard to draw on daily images for inspiration, I usually have a question on hand that I’d like to explore a little more. It doesn’t take much research to find just the phrase to unlock a new poem. 

Try it. Choose someone from history, someone small that you’ve heard only a few things about, and see what you can discover.  See if you find those perfect few words to light the match that will glow into your next poem, or maybe even a book.

Or go to a historical museum, read the placards and interprative displays and write a poem. 

Or next time you see one of those historical markers on the side of the road, stop, read it, soak in the atmosphere, and write a poem.  

A small section of my bookshelf with my research materials 

for Christine

Listen to the radio, read the newspaper, immerse yourself in the world.  Then write the world as only you can. And if you write a poem from a news story, remember that you can submit to Rattle: Poets Respond by Friday of each week about a news story you read and responded to that week.  

If that doesn't work for you (as it sometimes doesn't for me) go back to your daily life and find inspiration there. Or the dictionary. Or a news story. Or try a new form. Whatever works to get the words on the page.  Happy writing.

Medieval France: Provins

I’m thankful to Violette-Anne Onfroy-Curley who recommended I take a day trip to Provins instead of Troyes or Tours. This town, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has embraced and is using its many medieval homes and restored cellars to build a thriving tourist trade. 

I’m sure I probably wouldn’t like it during a festival, and I didn’t go to one of the weekly shows, but the town itself is worth a visit any time.  If you like crowds, find the festivals and shows.  If not, go on a quiet weekday like I did. 

The train strike meant that I had to take a bus to Provins, and the drive through the little villages and wheat fields was a lovely antidote to a week and a half in the city.  The bus drops you right outside a tourist shop, with many of the less academic medieval books for sale including some of the lovely books illustrated with medieval miniatures.  

The wall that surrounds Provins was built in the twelfth century. As you enter the city from the tourist center, you enter through one of the original gates.  The tourist center has maps with specific walks through the town, and most walks lead to four fee-based sites that you can buy a pass for at the tourist center.  In the first site, the Tithe barn, the audio guide gives detailed information on the Champagne fairs in the twelfth century that funded the development of Provins before eventually giving way to fairs in larger metropolitan areas like Paris.  It provides details on trade and craftsmanship as well as about the management of money and people at a large medieval fair . 

 

The tithe barn itself has vaulted ceiling both on the ground floor and in the basement, and the basement guide includes details on medieval quarries that were sometimes located underneath towns.

The number of half timbered houses in town is quite remarkable, and the timbers are visible, so though Provins was a bustling town, that they didn’t plaster over the timbers speaks possibly to less wealth than in places like Paris where plastering over the wood was a way to show your wealth and status.  Downtown, I was lucky to come across a home that was being restored, and later during my walk, I met a man who actually invited me into his wood and plaster home and showed me the progress of the restoration work he and his wife had taken on their charming home forty years ago.

The tower in Provins is another lovely stop.  Unlike the donjon at Vincennes, this tour took me all the way up to the bell keep, full of pigeons and their requisite byproducts.  The bell in the tower still rings, and it chimed while I stepped carefully around the pigeon puddles.  The fortified tower had murder holes and multi function rooms. 

The views over the fields and old houses in the village were worth the somewhat treacherous climbs to the top.

It's possible to walk along much of the old wall from both outside and inside the city, and walking along beyond the canal, I found a lonely stretch where little cut outs in the wall for wells and old gates were visible.  Someone laid these stones eight hundred years ago, and they are still here. Living in the US, there isn't often this deep sense of history unless I visit first nation sites, so I always find these old walls moving. I often stop just to rest my hand against the wall.