Friday Inspiration

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only the queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others.

—Martha Graham 

Unusual Calls for Submissions

Bethlehem Writers Roundtable Short Story Award
Now accepting submissions of short fiction or memoir of 2000 words or less, for the Bethlehem Writers Roundtable Short Story Contest. The theme of this publication is Seasonal Pursuits: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Tales. In addition to a $200 prize, the first place winner's story will also be considered for print publication in the Bethlehem Writers Group, LLC's upcoming anthology of Seasonal Pursuits: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Tales. Second place will receive $100 and third place will receive $50. Submissions will be reviewed by our celebrity judge, Jonathan Maberry. All stories must be submitted by February 15th, 2012.

Whistling Fire Guest Editor Themed Selection
Whistling Fire is proud to announce our new ongoing Guest Editor Themed Selection.  Throughout the year we will have various Guest Editors taking over The Whistling Fire for an entire month and selecting special themed work of their choice.  The lucky few selected will be published every Tuesday of their Guest Editor’s month. We welcome experimental pieces but ask that your writing is limited in length to 3000 words. For more submission guidelines visit Whistling Fire's webpage.
Our March Guest Editor is Orlando Ramirez. Ramirez lives in Riverside, California, where is the editor of La Prensa, a Spanish-language newspaper. He recently received an MFA in Poetry from the Cal State University, San Bernardino, Creative Writing Program. He was one of the original editors of Mango Publications, and has been anthologized widely and published in Zzyva, Berkeley Poetry Review, Badlands and other journals.

Dear Writers,
Poetry – the best poetry – confronts that line, erases it, ignores it, smudges it with a little spit on the tip of the finger to blur the before into the after.
I am looking for poems that cross lines, whether it be the double-yellow line on a two-lane road; the wouldcouldshoulda chain of regret; the poetic line and its break; the line between English/Espanol; the fungible line between male, female and whatever other classifications we create.  Send poems that cross that line and be prepared to discuss the consequences. Any style. In English and Espanol.  Remember -- boundaries are of your own making.
Good Luck,
Orlando Ramirez

All poems must be submitted by February 25, 2012.


At Length
At Length will begin its next open reading period on February 1, 2012. Submissions received after the closing date of February 29th will not be considered. POETRY: We're interested in poems and sequences that are at least 7 single-spaced pages long. PROSE: We're looking for fiction and non-fiction of at least 7,500 words in length. We welcome novellas, novel excerpts, memoirs, narratives, essays, and long short stories. No academic papers, please. Simultaneous submissions are fine, previously published pieces, not so much. *Please be aware that we are not yet able to pay our contributors. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but be sure to mention it in the body of the email, and if parts of the work have already appeared in other venues, please note that as well and provide all relevant details. We will attempt to respond to all submissions within two months, and we ask that you only submit one poem at a time. All submissions are due by February 29, 2012.

Two-hundred New Mexico Poems 
Two-hundred New Mexico Poems, a blog celebrating New Mexico's centennial through poetry, is now accepting previously unpublished submissions of poetry. Suitable themes include: New Mexico history (especially between the years of 1912 and 2012), environment and place, culture, and personal significance of the region. Poems may be formal or free verse and utilize narrative or lyric voice. Submissions are open to all poets regardless of residence, just as long as the poems are clearly connected to New Mexico. Poems written in Spanish will be considered as long as they are accompanied by an accurate English translation. Send your typed submissions with line count of each poem and 50 word bio as a word document to 200nmpoems@gmail.com. Submissions are open until 200 poems have been selected. ("Plenty of room," as of January 31, 2011)

The Quiet Hell

Susanna Daniel has looked into my writer's soul and written about it in her essay, "What Took You So Long? The Quiet Hell of 10 Years of Novel Writing" at Slate.com. It's no fun to go through a "quiet hell," but it's a little bit easier when someone else acknowledges it. Three years after my MFA degree, I'm still painstakingly making my way through the second draft of my "novel." I still need to, apparently, put quotes around the word. When will I feel like a real writer? When will I ever finish this thing? When will my teaching and editing jobs stop taking up so much of my time? When will I stop making excuses and just get the thing done already?

Susanna Daniel has given me hope. Not only did she finally finish her novel Stiltsville, not only did she get it published, but I read an excerpt of it in One Story, and it's good. Like, really good. And now she's written this little gem:

"Writing is hard—writers say this all the time, and I think probably only other writers believe it. But it's not nearly as hard, in my experience, as not writing."

I'm going to put this up on my wall. Tattoo it somewhere noticeable. Make t-shirts. Cross-stitch it onto a nice wall hanging. You know, propagate it through any number of projects that will keep me from working on my novel. (Just kidding, I think!) If you're at all frustrated with a writing project, check out her essay. And then get back to work.

Joke's on you, Write or Die, I LIKE Rick Astley!

Step aside, Kindle, Write or Die has taken your spot on my list of coolest thing ever. Following through on their claim to put the "Prod in Productivity," they take the approach of ceaselessly annoying you to get you to keep writing.

Here's how it works: Go to the website. Enter your word count goal and how much time you want to spend writing. Then choose how hard you want the site to be on you (go all out, pick "evil!"). Then write. Write and don't stop because if you do, you will not enjoy the result. Unless you happen to like the lyrical poetry and harmonized vocals of the virtuistic 90's pop band Hanson. Some people do, and if you're one of those people, I'm not judging you. Hell, if you like them, check out this site anyway and don't write anything, just sit back and enjoy the ride.

If you don't like being steadily annoyed by the musical stylings of Ricky Astley or crying babies or the Banana Phone song (my personal favorite), you'll find a way to stay motivated. Perhaps worse, "Kamikaze mode" will start deleting your work word by word if you don't keep the keys moving. If this is all too stressful for you, you can downgrade to Easy mode. You'll be rather politely reminded that you've stopped writing and should continue please if it's not too much trouble. A progress bar keeps track of how quickly you're moving toward your goal.

There's an extra-special desktop edition for only $10 if you want to personalize your options: disable your backspace key, disable "save" until you reach your writing goal, program your own audio nightmare to play if you happen to stop. Dr. Wicked, the clever creator of Write or Die, seems to have thought of everything. You can even compete with a friend, someone you know or some other poor writer halfway around the world.

Thanks, Dr. Wicked!

Ask the Archives: Writers Sum Up the Joys and Lamentations of Writing

It would appear that even prolific writers of longtime standing and regard in the craft sometimes find themselves lost in their work, wondering how good it is, if it is, and why they put themselves through such grief. They seem to encounter their own unique Rodney Dangerfield moments whereby they feel they don’t get no respect, no respect at all. Yet for all their angst and struggle, they vindicate their efforts with the consolations found inherently within the work itself, the act of writing. Here's what some writers in the HFR interview archives had to say about that. (For more Ask the Archives topics, click here. To submit a question or topic to send us digging for an answer, email HFR@asu.edu)

JOSEPH HELLER (1986)
A chore? I write novels because novels are my choice. It’s stimulating: that’s what I want to do. But it’s hard, it’s irritating, it makes you unpleasant, it makes it hard to be with people and hard for people to be with you…But I write novels because I want to. I mean, I think people can enjoy their work and still take their work seriously. But they can only take it seriously if it isn’t easy.

JOHN ASHBERRY (1993)
I like writing poetry, but there are times when I would much rather watch television than read poetry, so I sympathize with this situation. Certainly no one is obliged to read my poetry or any poetry, but there are people and moments when this is an important pleasure.

VIVIAN GORNICK (1993)
The point is, writing with ease and the goodness of the work is unexpected. Every now and then there’s a work of genius for no reason you can figure out; everything comes together, everything somehow magically comes together. A freeing up in the inner being, a subject that’s surefire, a piece of experience, for some reason, some mysterious reason, the writer stands right in the middle of that experience and can see all around it. Otherwise you’re hacking your way trough a jungle all the goddamned time to figure out what the hell you’re writing.

LINDA GREGG (2000)
And there is also the whole issue of communication and writing as a gift. Yet it’s like a realm. It is not just me trying to write a poem, it’s the things that come into the poems, visible and invisible. All the things that matter get to be part of the poems. It’s the thing that I have even though everything else is taken away…

JOHN UPDIKE (1988)
I don’t want to harp on the economics of it all, but I do think it’s harder now to take writing seriously. When I went to college, Eliot was firmly on his throne; one had no need to defend writing as something worth doing. Now I think anyone who sets out to write must at some point wonder if it is really not sort of a dying little dead-end. The Gutenbergian age is in its twilight: why should I be doing this for an American audience which basically doesn’t read anymore, juts flicks on the tube or whatever else it does—goes out and has a beer?
…So I guess I’m still reading fiction in hope of finding things there, news about life, news about what it’s like to be alive in a certain place.

ROBERT HASS (1997)
The one thing about writing, therefore, is that you are always coming up against the limitations of your own habits…
…I don’t know if art is escape, but work is escape and essential activity in life, really, and so I love having something long to work on because you go to your desk knowing that you’ve got this deep absorbing task to do. It is tremendously frustrating at times, but having the space to work out a complex subject fills up many days, and that is the wonderful thing about it.
…Do it! If you want to write, write!

Website of the Week : Mark Twain Motivational Posters

If you've hit a road block in a story you're working on or if you just can't get started, it can be the most frustrating thing in the world. First, your mind blanks, then you get annoyed that your mind is blank, then you're annoyed that you're annoyed, then suddenly you're watching the Food Network, eating ice cream out of the carton for the rest of the night. It happens. Too often.

Motivation certainly isn't only a problem for writers. No matter your line of work, motivation - or a lack thereof - surely helps or hinders your forward progress.

It's okay. Let Mark Twain help you through any trying time with this fantastic collection of Motivational Posters. Be sure to never forget the age-old adage, "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow." Or something like that.

The Distracted Writer

It's a malady with which every writer is well acquainted. Distraction. Whether it's writer's block or plain ol' lack of motivation, anyone who has tried to live by their pen has run up against this obstacle.

I'm just going to do the dishes first.
My car does need a tune-up.
Someone has to make dinner.
I just need this one little nap and then I'll be good to go.
Oh look, something shiny!

It's different for everyone, but the result is the same, not producing. Not producing, especially in this economic climate, is equivalent to being unemployed because not producing means having no product (duh!) and having no product means having nothing to sell and having nothing to sell means not getting paid. Not gluing yourself to your chair is commensurate with not showing up to work. Is that something you would do, just not show up? Of course not, so why do we think it's okay when we do it to ourselves? The reality is that it's not okay. Whether you write full-time or in conjunction with another job, it seems far too easy to put your writing tasks on the back burner, but nothing is more important than NOT doing that! We here at HFR have devised a list of ways to avoid distractions.

1. Make a space.
This doesn't have to be your own private library and you don't need a cherrywood writing desk from Robb&Stucky to get down to business. Think of your most comfortable place. Try and simulate that environment every time you sit down to write. Most importantly, be sure that the only thing you do in your space is writing. You sleep in your bed. You drive in your car. You watch TV on the couch. Write in your space, and only write.

2. Get everything you need before you sit down.
Need coffee? Need tea? Need music? Need silence? Take care of all of that before coming to your space. Make sure the temperature is right. Make sure you want for nothing.

3. Set boundaries
Unfortunately, this is probably the hardest one to live by. Sometimes our loved ones simply don't understand how important it is not to be interrupted at all while we're writing, not even for questions. If your space is a room, post your hours of operation outside and lay down the law that you're not to be disturbed during those times. If it's somewhere else, turn off your phone and set your IM status to "away." If these measures seem too cold or harsh, your loved ones are not the only ones who need to start taking your role as a writer more seriously.

4. Turn off your internet
The internet is the most insidious of all distractions because you don't even have to get up to use it. In fact, you should take it a step further and uninstall all those pre-loaded games too. You will survive even if you can't top your last score in Minesweeper or Solitaire (my personal demons) and your Facebook friends will not feel slighted in the least if you don't comment on their status as soon as it's posted. In fact, I can almost guarantee that they won't even notice.

5. Just sit down and write
No one can make you do it but you. Chances are, that kind of independence is part of what drew you to being a writer in the first place. Whether it's with a computer or a pen and paper, you are ultimately the only one responsible for approaching and completing the task at hand.

As writers, we tend to think of ourselves as artists and this is by no means untrue. But we're more than artists. We're entrepreneurs, too. It is our business to write and we have to treat it like one, which means clearing away the distractions and actually doing our job. For another perspective on distraction, check this out.