Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

The holidays for the kids at McLaughlin Youth Detention Center were brightened by the efforts of 49 Writers volunteers and other community volunteers who came together to Bring the Outside In. This mini-conference, planned by 49 Writers volunteers Lizbeth Meredith and Lee Post, was designed to introduce detained youth to creative opportunities accessible to them upon their release. Workshops on drawing, the spoken word, Scottish country dancing, and cooking connected the youth with adult presenters, reminding them they will soon re-enter a community that cares.

Trey Josey of BNAV

Thank you to Trey Josey and Kima Hamilton of Brave New Alaskan Voices, Lee Post (who also taught a well-attended 49 Writers Comics workshop at Teen Underground this week), Barry Yabyabin of KLT Diner in Wasilla, and Amber Rose and Anne Freitag for generously donating their time and talents to make a difference in the lives of troubled teens. The kids and the staff at McLaughlin were truly grateful.

Lee Post of 49 Writers

On January 1, online registration officially opens for our spring term, though faithful round-up readers can secure their spots beginning today.  From our “Publish and Promote” series to plot, poetry, submissions, and more, we’ve got something for pretty much everyone.  Make 2012 the year you get serious about writing!  Courses are posted on our website.  

January 1 is also the day we rush to register for our Permanent Fund Dividend checks.  It’s a great time to support your favorite nonprofits.  49 Writers has to wait one more year to be eligible for Alaska's Pick-Click-Give program, but don't despair: you can pledge here to support us when your dividend check comes in. We'll remind you on or about October 15, 2012 that your pledge is due. Thanks so much for supporting 49 Writers/49 Alaska Writing Center, a 501c3 nonprofit. 

Keep in mind our first events of 2012:  January 11, the first 49 Writers Synergies Event of the year, “Poemgrass: a Poet and a Banjo” featuring poet Peggy Shumaker and musician Robin Child at the Anchorage Museum, Brian E. Davies Chugach Gallery (4^th Floor) from 7-8:30pm and our statewide Resolve to Write events on January 20, when you’re invited to gather with other writers to share your writing resolve.  Scheduling is already underway in Anchorage (one gathering for adults, one for young writers), Homer, and Eagle River – details to follow soon.  If you’d like to host a Resolve to Write event in your community, email us at 49writers@gmail.com.

On January 25, 49 Writers Executive Director Linda Ketchum will participate in the Anchorage Association for Volunteer Administration (AAVA) annual training event. This event is attended by a number of representatives from the Anchorage nonprofit community and professionals in the volunteer management field.  Linda will participate in a panel discussion titled “A Few Excellent Volunteer Programs,” a lively conversation amongst three to four representatives from the local nonprofit community. In extending the invitation, AAVA wrote, “49 Writers is doing a fantastic job engaging Alaskan volunteers and we would be honored to hear more about your success.”

In case you haven't yet seen the delightful Quinhagak Alleulia chorus, 49 Writers board member sends this link:  http://jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/2011/12/so-you-thought-you-knew-this-one.html.  For a comprehensive calendar of literary events throughout Alaska, visit http://www.alaskalitevents.com/.

Anne Coray's poem "The Art of Being," from her recent collection A Measure's Hush (Boreal Books 2011) is currently featured on the American Life in Poetry website. The column, selected and introduced by Ted Kooser, has a current readership of about 4,000,000 per week from all over the world, and is featured on the New York Times education blog, "The Learning Network," with commentary by a Times writer. Click here to see the column (through Monday).

Next Saturday, January 7, at 7pm, come out for Fairbanks Arts Association's Literary Reading Series Ice Fog Open Mic, featuring Heather Warren, Donald Crocker, Michael Shaeffer, Jasmine Stokes, Raif Johnson-Kennedy--and you! Bear Gallery, Centennial Center, Pioneer Park.

Congratulations to 49 Writers member and instructor Sandy Kleven. Her poem, "Orestes," was nominated for a PushCart Prize by Stoneboat Journal in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Kleven says, "The poem is a lament over the suicide of Sylvia Plath's son Nicholas Hughes, who hanged himself in Fairbanks in 2009. It was written in the Fairbanks Airport because I was traveling this route to remote villages just about every week. My brother died the same way the previous summer." Another of her poems, "Remnants," was nominated by F Magazine of Anchorage. Kleven describes it as "a tale of desire and hope, set in memory's fragile sanctuary." Here is the Skyped reading of "Orestes" at the launch of Stoneboat. 

Issue #5 (Vol. 3, No.1) of Cirque is now live online at http://www.cirquejournal.com/index.php

Hard copies are on sale at MagCloud at http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/317800

Andromeda: Buy Fresh Fish Here: Rick Moody and Why Great Writing Is Hard to Teach

A few of you asked me what I learned at my latest MFA residency. You may have expected a shorter answer, nonetheless….

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of attending a graduate seminar taught by visiting guest Rick Moody (Ice Storm, The Black Veil), often lauded as one of our top chroniclers of contemporary culture, a 1990s peer of post-post-modern stars like (RIP) David Foster Wallace. Moody had great stage presence. Wearing a stylish hat and slouchy jeans, he spoke slowly and leaned in close to the microphone, delivering his advice on the subject of revision in a gravelly, wry, Tom Waits-kind-of voice.

The large audience of faculty and students, myself included, enjoyed Moody’s sense of humor and his aura of hard-won success. I appreciated that he came to the seminar prepared (some don’t) and that he came with strong opinions. Exposure to other writers’ “rules,” beliefs and attitudes helps us create our own sense of authority. Whether we agree or disagree, at least we find, in pressing up against others’ sharply defined opinions, the shape of our own.

However.

However, not only did I not agree with some of Moody’s basic precepts, but much more troubling, I did not think that Rick Moody agreed with Rick Moody’s basic precepts. Which raises an issue: what can we learn from writer-instructors who say one thing but do another?

I’m tempted to coin a new term for this: pedagogical irony. Dramatic irony, as we might recall from high school or college, is that gap between what characters know and what readers know. Pedagogical irony could be a new label for that gap between what a writer-instructor believes and what he says, or even more complexly, between what he thinks he believes and what he really believes unconsciously (or uncomfortably, with denial and literary angst helping to mix the signals) and then further, between that and what he says and what he does.

Examples from my own teaching life.

I advise peers and students to edit by reading their work aloud. It’s great advice, it really helps, and I rarely do it, or only for a few paragraphs or pages here and there.

More complexly: If asked, I’ll tell you that a story should arise organically from well-developed character, and I do believe this would be optimal. However, what comes to my mind first in conceiving a novel is often a scene at the very end­—whether in detailed or very hazy, imagistic form—and I have been known to mold and nudge characters to become the people who would end up in a such a climactic scene. If they refuse to go, I will occasionally kick them. And then I will run after those characters, apologizing, and begging them to wear long pants in order to hide the bruises, because the last thing I want fellow writers or readers to know is that I mistreat and stifle my characters. (Full disclosure: the final imagined scene or key image usually changes, often reversing from what I first imagined. Nonetheless, it’s a starting point.)

But see? I’m still using examples of the gap between what I say and what I do, not really, truly, the gap that starts way back at unconscious belief and results in unacknowledged inconsistencies.

Example from Moody.

Moody started his lecture, as he probably often does (given that I found these great lecture notes from another MFA lecture, online), with an anecdote from his pre-novelist days in the 1980s, when he worked as a New York editor. A superior gave him a crash-course in editing with this mental exercise, which he guided the rest of us through, to much approving laughter.

There’s a sign over a fish stall. It says BUY FRESH FISH HERE. Which word, if any, is unnecessary?

(“One at a time, please, one at a time!” Moody drawled sardonically as people clamored to point out multiple words.)

The exercise was stretched out, as words were discarded as unnecessary. Discard “Fresh” – what fish seller admits his fish isn’t fresh? Pointless even to claim. Delete “Buy” – what else are you going to do at this fish stall? Delete “Here.” Obviously, it’s here. When Moody learned this anecdote from his editing superior, the point was that “Fish” was the only necessary word. At this particular MFA lecture, someone suggested that even “Fish” was unnecessary (who needs the word instead of the thing, right there in the fish stall or sidewalk cooler?) and Moody laughed and happily discarded that word as well. Leaving no words on the sign at all.

This anecdote was a lead-in to his number one rule of revision: “Omit Needless Words.” (Borrowed from Strunk and White, of course.)

There are many problems with this anecdote.

As any advertiser knows—but also as any poet, novelist, or creative writer of any kind also knows—the conveyance of literal, stripped-down, unambiguous meaning is not language’s only, or even main, purpose. The best poetry or prose is not delivered by telegram. The alliterative, suggestive, oceanically sibilant sound of “Fresh Fish” may be just the thing needed to make a stroller stop and think, “Yes. Fish sounds great.” “Buy” and “here” are authoritative words – the first an active verb (and active verbs are generally good) and the second a word that does indeed have meaning: “Here, not there across the street, where they don’t change the ice as often.” The four monosyllabical words have a cadence suitable for putting someone in the mood to eat pure, good, clean fish instead of some polysyllabic, overly complicated or starchy dish, like ratatouille or spaghetti carbonara. Put a blank sign on the street, and frankly, I may just keep walking, especially if that cooler (the question of how the fish was stored or displayed was not well-defined) is closed and I can’t see what’s for sale and hopefully, can’t smell it either.

So yes, there is a reason to write, “Buy Fresh Fish Here.” And if you become such a word-pruner that you end up even deleting “Fish,” then what kind of point are you making about writing? That we shouldn’t write at all? Is this a postmodern statement or a satire? Was Moody pulling the legs of the hundred-plus writers present, only to find that no one yelped back, challenging him?

After all: in Moody’s latest novel, The Four Fingers of Death, a 725-page hysterical-fiction spoof set in 2025 and involving a severed, crawling arm, the character Monty Crandall has become obsessed with trimming his own prose. He succeeds, in the novel’s opening pages (which had me laughing out loud), in becoming an expert author of six-word fiction.

Here is Monty’s first innovative erotic novella, trimmed from an unwieldy 45 pages to six perfect words:

“Go get some eggs, you dwarf.”

Monty’s wife asks the author where and how he will get it published: a run of hardcovers? Instead, he places it in an online periodical. An entire page to itself. No title. No byline.

Are we still to think Moody wasn’t being a little facetious in his lecture? (I’d be tickled to think he was making fools of us all.)

But maybe not. Maybe this idée fixe is so “fixe” precisely because it’s the idea that Moody himself not only can’t seem to follow in his own writing (hear ye, my fellow tuition-paying apprentices— the novel is 725 pages long!), but doesn’t even want to follow, though he insists on prescribing it to others.

Here is what Moody has said elsewhere about why he has “contempt for Twitter”: In general, I think the way to describe the world is to get longer not shorter. Twitter, by virtue of brevity, abdicates any responsibility where real complexity is concerned, because it forbids length.

Here is what Moody does in his own fiction (excerpt from Four Fingers of Death, in a review written by an effusive fan-critic who nonetheless wished that an editor had taken a “hatchet to this entire novel and whacked it down to a size where readers other than Moody devotees):

“Night fell over the desert ... and the stars were like the future perfect of an uncommon verb. Or the stars were the filaments of discarded human aspirations. Or the stars in the night sky were the innumerable preschoolers of September, afraid to climb onto the bus in order to have their liberty abridged. Or the stars in the night sky were like so many holes into which our heads were to be stuck. Or the stars in the night sky were the innumerable computations of some frail and overburdened supercomputer .... Or the stars in the night sky were the total sum of responsibilities, grievances, loves, of a certain nation listing to the end of empire. Or the stars in the night sky were an example of every possible color in the spectrum of all colors ... Or ..."

This is the author who prescribes, “Omit Needless Words"?

This is the teacher who tells us about, “Buy Fresh Fish Here,” a.k.a., revised = “Fish”?

Moody is in effect one of the most manically verbose, digressive authors publishing today. Instead of “Omit Needless Words,” a better opening principle for his lecture might have been, “Why I love words and let myself get carried away with them, who gives a fishy fart what old Strunk and White – or even inappropriately savage critics like Dale Peck -- have to say about it, and here's precisely when and why I break the rules and how it has led to the evolution of my current style, because I know that's what you're all trying to figure out, and Strunk and White have very little to do with it.”

(Disclaimer: Moody did go on to discuss other revision practices, including the writing of more complex sentences. But he also came back frequently to the paring theme, including points about cutting the ends of stories, abstaining from use of adjectives, adverbs, metaphors, and so on.)

A kindly fellow student approached me at break wondering if I was feeling okay (because I hadn’t asked a question—and I always ask a question). So after break, I took a deep breath and decided to ask Moody one question regarding his feelings about plot. He answered that he has “no interest in plot or character.”

By this, I think (hope) he means that he has no interest in mechanical, preconceived, formulaic conceptions of plot or character at the early-drafting stage. He emphasized, under further questioning, that he really does trust the laying down of precise language (rather than any kind of planning) to get him where he needs to go. Yes, yes, the discovery process: a familiar concept. Storylines change, characters surprise us. Whether we’re kicking them or not.

And yet: I still think he didn’t answer the question. The seminar was about revision, but he did not address how he revises for plot and character. Surely, after giving birth to 700-plus pages, there must be elements of plot and character and larger structural issues that require revision, just as individual sentences do.

Moody’s talk, I want to emphasize a final time, was not at all a bad one, and I wish it had gone longer. Perhaps what frustrated me more, as I think about it now, was less his performance than the audience’s limited response. Very few challenged Moody’s over-the-top or oversimplified prescriptions, and none, that I recall, made any connection between what he was saying and anything he had written and published. People laughed and clapped but they let him end the seminar twenty or so minutes short, when the very few questions ran out. The audience had sensed, I think, what I too had sensed—that this was a very entertaining one-man show, but not a true dialogue. (And yet it might have been: Rick Moody has a wonderfully sharp mind, as is clear in both his fiction and his essays, and perhaps that was the problem-- that few attendees wanted to risk his withering disapproval.)

If we are to learn as writers, we need to do more. We need to narrow the pedagogical gap. We need to know what other writers really believe, and what they really do. We need to question and probe. We need to look more closely at process: for example, how does someone who doesn’t care a fig about plot and character come up with winning and cinematic plots (Moody’s Ice Storm and Garden State were both made into successful movies) and intriguing characters? How does imagination and early-drafting really work? How does revision and re-drafting really work?

Here’s what Moody told the Paris Review, when he was asked about how he wove the three parallel narratives that make up his story, “Ring of Brightest Angels”:

Moody: “The best work, for me, has to come from organs that are removed from the brain: liver, pancreas, pituitary gland. So the prose was first, and then I realized what I was getting at, and refined the structure to cohere with where the prose seemed to want to go itself.”

Sounds like we're on the right track, and my own mute glands are envying his glands’ intelligence, moxie, and ambition, but I want to know a little more. So did the Paris Review interviewer.

Interviewer: When you revise, is the process generally additive or reductive?

Moody: It’s both additive and reductive.

OK. I’m still needing more.

I still want to know, from all the opinionated and complex and contradictory writers of our generation (as well as generations past): how do imagination and initial composition and revision proceed through successive drafts, and how does revision operate differently in a poem, a story, a novel? How do the different strategies operate differently for different people?

It’s hard to figure out, and even harder to teach. I’m not giving up yet. I hope you won’t, either.

Andromeda/Your Turn: Resolution Time

Last year around this time, I asked you what your resolutions were. Ideas mentioned: dedicate the year to novel writing, quit a day job, send a query letter, revise a manuscript. Any progress on your own personal 2011 goals? Any new ideas for 2012 resolutions? (And do stay tuned for more info on the January resolve-to-write event.)

I tend to make long resolution lists. This year, I decided to focus in one category: how I organize my time. This week, I started making notes on what exactly I mean by that, and I came up with five weak areas, the most significant one not being procrastination or simple wasting but time fragmentation. Just when I'm starting to write well, I take little breaks to check email or go online (sometimes for research, sometimes to check on unrelated work issues). It's like my brain needs a little reinforcement hit, whether the work is coming well or poorly. I recognize this as a sign of our increasingly distractible society (read this Scientific American article on multi-tasking and how it builds on and leads to greater distractibility).

Sherry Simpson provided us some amazing tech tools and anti-distraction inspiration in her December posts as featured author, and included within my time resolution is the plan to check out at least one of the apps she recommended (Write or Die).

What are you resolving to do this year?

Deb: 2011 Retrospective

Hats off to whoever came up with the idea of celebrating the transition from one year to the next.  Without this annual rite of passage, we’d barrel ahead without taking time to look back and see all we’ve accomplished together at 49 Writers/49Alaska Writing Center.

Instruction, events, and outreach are our primary focus as we embrace our mission of supporting creative writers from throughout Alaska at all stages of their development while building an audience for Alaska literature.  In 2011, we offered fifteen affordable, high-quality writing courses, several of which were sold out, and we began recording select courses for podcast statewide.    In addition to outstanding local instructors, several visiting authors taught courses for us, including Brett Dillingham, Bruce Hale, Mattox Roesch, Dave Hunsaker, Kim Rich, Leslie Hsu Oh, Melinda Moustakis, and David Vann.  In addition, fifteen lucky retreat participants got to study with Dani Shapiro at our Tutka Bay Writers Retreat, expanded this year to four days and three nights.

We launched a new youth outreach effort this year, thanks to an amazing slate of volunteers and a teen advisory council.  Through WYAK (Write Young Alaska), we offered four free workshops for young writers at the new Teen Underground center at Loussac Libraray.  We also sponsored two contests and started two young writers groups that meet monthly at Teen Underground.  Thanks to the volunteer efforts of visiting travel writer Jenna Schnuer, we also launched an online zine for Alaska’s teens, Alaska Out Loud.

In 2011, we also launched a full event series for Alaska’s literary community, beginning with Resolve to Write gatherings in Juneau, Homer, and Anchorage last January.  Our Crosscurrents series of onstage conversations featured authors Nancy Lord, Marybeth Holleman, Charles Wohlforth, Susan Orlean, Julia O’Malley, Dani Shapiro, and Sherry Simpson.  Mark Weber and his crew at the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Bookstore have been fabulous partners for these events.  We also hosted a Synergies event featuring poets John Morgan and Kelsea Habecker as well as two Open Mic events at our 49 Writers Café at Out North Contemporary Art House, where we also hosted open studio Sundays for writers.

Another successful effort was our first annual Alaska Book Week, where we invited readers and writers across the state to join us in celebrating books by Alaskans and about Alaska.  Panels, seminars, book clubs, displays, posters, book marks, and giveaways were all part of the tremendous statewide outpouring of support and participation.

The 49 Writers blog – our birthplace, so to speak – keeps on growing.  Guest posts, interviews, featured authors, our annual Ode to a Dead Salmon Contest, plus musing by co-founders Andromeda Romano-Lax and Deb Vanasse – all these continue to make our little blog one of the most-trafficked literary sites in the state.

We gained our 501c3 status this year, an important milestone as we grow from a labor of love to an established and respected member of the nonprofit community.  We are humbled by the thanks we’ve received from so many of you throughout the year, including an official thank-you from the Alaska Center for the Book, which honored us with a CLIA (Contribution to Literacy in Alaska) award.

None of this could have happened without your support.  As volunteers, you logged over 1500 hours this year to help us bring programs to writers.  As individuals, you’ve contributed over one-fourth of our small but growing budget.  Several businesses have offered substantial support, including Within the Wild Adventure Company, Evergreen Films, Great Harvest Bread Company, Raven’s Brew Coffee, Epicenter Press, and the University of Alaska Press. We are also profoundly appreciative for foundation and grant funding from the Usibelli Foundation, the Rasmuson Foundation, and the Alaska State Council on the Arts.

Thanks to your support, 2012 promises even more in the way of instruction, events, and outreach to Alaska’s literary community.  Under the direction of new Executive Director Linda Ketchum, visiting authors Katey Schultz and Steve Almond will be teaching this spring, and we’ll be offering several workshops with local authors, including a new Publish and Promote series.  Our Synergies series is expanding to included events with acclaimed poets Peggy Shumaker, G.C. Waldrep, and Linda Gregerson.  We’ll be offering our first online apprenticeship opportunity, workshops in Palmer, workshops in several Anchorage schools, the expansion of the WYAK Alaska Out Loud project to include a print anthology, and outreach to McLaughlin Youth Facility and Covenant House. 

2011 has been a great year for Alaska’s writers, and we’re looking for 2012 to be even better.  If by chance you’re doing some year-end giving, check out our new stewardship page and donation links. Thanks for joining us in making Alaska a great place to write!  

Sherry Simpson: Write or Die

Once upon a time, most writers used a quaint device called a "typewriter" to produce their work. (Here's what it looks like, young people.) But that venerable tool has never been a necessity, even for modern writers. Most of Vladimir Nabokov's novels began on 3-by-5 index cards. John Le Carre composed his books in longhand. Fortunately, they also had access to cutting-edge technology known as "wives" who typed their drafts.

I know of one contemporary poet whose refusal to use a typewriter hasn't prevented him from producing more than 25 books and winning major awards. Maybe it helped. Responding to an appreciation of the notebook by poet Charles Simic, British writer Lee Rourke recently wrote that he prefers the thoughtful pace of longhand to the annoying tap of a keyboard.

It all comes down to your druthers, doesn't it? I've half-filled dozens of notebooks fancy and plain with thoughts, passages, and ideas, but I can't imagine composing anything longer than a poem without a computer and its lovely cut-and-paste, delete, and undo functions. Still, it never occurred to me until a few years ago that there's a big difference between writing software and word processing. No offense to our overlord, Microsoft Word, or its open-source alternatives, but sometimes a writer just wants to write, not spend 20 minutes trying to turn off autoformat. Not to mention the exasperating need to open 10 different document windows to refer to sections I wrote 45 pages ago, or to store deleted but not dead passages.

Sadly, no program actually does the writing, no matter how much you beseech or bribe the Magical Computer Elves. God knows I've tried. But for some of us, software designed for creative writers offers a better way to do our work by including such features as character tracking, plot outlining, and more. Also, many writers don't work in a linear fashion, as Keith Blount argues in "Removing the Stigma from 'Writing Software.' " He asks, "Word processors enable us to produce good-looking documents—but do they encourage us to focus on the content?"

With scads of programs available, how do you find the right one for your style and budget? Investigating what other writers use is a good start, with the standard caveat that what works for one person might not work for you. For example, fantasy writer Michelle Sagara West describes her favorite tools in two posts here, and a National Novel Writing Month author lists useful programs here. This roundup of "25+ Pieces of Writing Software You Should Know About" includes many suggestions from commenters. Most offer free trials.

If you don't like the choices, you can always create your own software. That's what Keith Blount did with Scrivener, a Mac-based program so popular that he recently released a Windows version. I love Scrivener with a white-hot passion for many reasons. It's stable, includes excellent tutorials and support, and is a bargain at $45 for Macs, $40 for Windows (less for students and educators).

More importantly, it's flexible and powerful. It stores and organizes notes, outlines, multiple drafts, and immense amounts of research. Everything is instantly accessible while you're writing. Use features you like, such as full-text writing, a virtual corkboard, or script formatting, and ignore what you don't. The backup and autosave systems are reliable (though I'm not sure Scrivener has ever crashed on me), and it's easy to export chapters into one word-processing document.

One reason I'm a fan of Blount is his practical, generous philosophy toward finding the best tool, even if it's not his product. He links to numerous writing and word processing programs that he likes, including free alternatives.

Among those that he doesn't mention is Storybook. This free, open-source software helps novelists organize and track plots and characters, as does Storyblue. Scripped is an on-line scriptwriting program that comes with a community. Aeon Timeline helps novelists track arcs and characters and synchronizes with Scrivener. Smatterings links to many focused apps, such as name generators and plot banks.

For stripped-down, sit-your-butt-down-and-start-writing programs, the website 750words.com encourages a daily writing practice. If fear and shame motivate you as much as they do me, you'll appreciate the negative reinforcement offered by Write or Die. Set the time limit for your session and choose among Gentle, Normal, and Kamikaze modes. Stop writing, and you'll incur either a gentle reminder, an unpleasant noise, or the horror of seeing your words erase themselves. The web app is free; the $10 desktop app helps you avoid "the gigantic kitten of distraction that is our modern internet."

But whether you write with crayons or a Cray computer, never forget the essential truth expressed in this review of minimalist writing apps: "When it comes right down to it, there’s one way to get your writing done: You write."

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

What a year!  Next week we’ll run a 49 Writers 2011 retrospective, but in the meantime we’re looking ahead toward 2012.  Mark your calendars first for January 1, when online registration opens for our spring term.  From our “Publish and Promote” series to plot, poetry, submissions, and more, we’ve got something for pretty much everyone.  Make 2012 the year you get serious about writing!  Courses are already posted on our website. 

Next up – January 11 – is the first 49 Writers Synergies Event of the year, “Poemgrass: a Poet and a Banjo” featuring poet Peggy Shumaker and musician Robin Child at the Anchorage Museum, Brian E. Davies Chugach Gallery (4^th Floor) from 7-8:30pm.  On the eve of the 2012 Alaska Arts and Culture Conference, join current Alaska State Writer Laureate, Peggy Shumaker, (Gnawed Bones, Just Breathe Normally) as she reads from her poetry in the cozy and reflective Chugach Gallery at the Anchorage Museum.  Music by local banjo player Robin Child and friends; a book signing will follow.  Free admission, but donations are welcome to support this innovative reading and performance series.  

And don’t forget our statewide Resolve to Write events on January 20, when you’re invited to gather with other writers to share your writing resolve.  Scheduling is already underway in Anchorage (one gathering for adults, one for young writers), Homer, and Eagle River – details to follow soon.  If you’d like to host a Resolve to Write event in your community, email us at 49writers@gmail.com.

 “Comics: Turning drawings into stories” debuting at Teen Underground Dec. 27-29 from 3-5 pm, for ages 12-14 is now FULL.  To waitlist, email 49writers@gmail.com; include a phone number.  Thanks much to the Friends of the Library for sponsoring this workshop. 

Alaska authors Ernestine Hayes and Deb Vanasse are featured along with the Alaska Aces, the State Troopers, Iditarod champion John Baker, and even Santa Claus, among others on the Governor’s “Heart of Alaska 2011” web page.  Wonderful to see authors honored in this way! 

For a comprehensive calendar of literary events throughout Alaska, visit http://www.alaskalitevents.com/.

Poet Sandra Alcosser invites all students of Poetry, Junior High through Graduate School, to document their environment in Poetry.

Together with Senior News Analyst Cokie Roberts NPR/ABC, she will select work for the National Archives and the Environmental Protection Agency's Documerica Project. Read about it here. 

Poems may be previously published so long as there is no copyright on them. The National Archives will share the poems on Archives.gov, EPA.gov and blogs on Archives.gov and Tumblr. Some or all of the poems will be part of a larger exhibit on the Documerica collection that will launch in March 2013 and go through Fall 2013 at the National Archives building in DC.

Andromeda shares this: World Book Night is an annual celebration designed to spread a love of reading and books. To be held in the U.S. as well as the U.K. and Ireland on April 23, 2012, it will see tens of thousands of people go out into their communities to spread the joy and love of reading by giving out free World Book Night paperbacks (chosen from a list of 30 top titles, both classic and recently published; more info at the website). To get involved, and/or offer to distribute free books supplied by the organization, go to http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/about-world-book-night/what-is-world-book-night.  

Do we have anyone in Alaska already taking part, or willing to take part?

Andromeda: Foreign Rights-One Part of the Changing Book Market

Eowyn's Ivey The Snow Child and Andromeda Romano-Lax's The Spanish Bow: Alaska books that have found their way into foreign markets.

Why might I need an agent? Because the book market becomes more complicated every day, and various rights—from electronic to foreign—need to be handled with care. I’ll be teaching a three-hour clinic, called “Agents: What You Need To Know,” on Feb. 11, Saturday, 1-4. (That morning, Debbie LaFleiche will be teaching a clinic on Getting Published, making it an all-day opportunity for learning about the business side of writing.) One of the many topics I’ll cover are foreign rights, an exciting opportunity that is gaining importance for more Alaska writers, who are starting to see their books published in translated editions.

Today, I’m filling out some IRS paperwork to ensure I don’t overpay on foreign taxes for foreign editions of my novels. I’m glad to have the help of an agent, or I wouldn’t know how to fill out these forms—and probably wouldn’t even know they exist. Most likely, I wouldn’t need them in the first place, because without an agent, I’d be published in only one country, at most, instead of a dozen.

Some of those deals were very small, but they’ve extended my reach as a novelist. Lately, it seems that most visitors to my blog are from places like Argentina, the Philippines, or Taiwan. Cumulatively, these little deals add up. My second novel isn’t out yet, but already, my advances from two foreign editions, Australia and Poland, have surpassed the modest advance I received in the U.S. With my first novel, I earned twice as much abroad as at home.

The publishing world has changed, as we all know. (Today, when we were talking about print runs, my editor told me that about half of her company’s book copies are sold in e-book form. I would have guessed 10 or 20 percent, but 50? We ignore that fact at our peril.)

The rapidly changing global book market, less talked about, is just as important for a writer to understand. About ten years ago, I met Alaska author Lynn Schooler at the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, and I remember marveling at the fact that his The Blue Bear had been translated into Italian. Schooler was humble about his international status, as was internationally-renowned Alaska author Velma Wallis before him. But I was hugely impressed, and confused: How the heck does that happen?

Ten years later, globalization has picked up the pace, and it runs both ways. Ever heard of Girl With a Dragon Tattoo?

Palmer author Eowyn Ivey has a first novel coming out in February. The Snow Child has already appeared abroad, and Ivey’s website shows images of six gorgeous covers, with more to come. Anchorage novelist Don Rearden recently tweeted about an Australian book deal for his first novel, The Raven’s Gift.

According to the New York Times, “These days... the sale of foreign rights to American books - a sleepy backwater of publishing a decade ago - has become a fiercely competitive area. … now, foreign sales often represent as much as a third of the revenues for the rights to publish leading American authors.” That article ran twenty years ago. I’m still searching for numbers reflecting what portion of authors’ revenues are coming from foreign editions today.

When an author sells a book to a publisher, that publisher may retain world rights and use its own connections to sell them; the earnings get rolled into the author’s original advance, helping the publisher earn back some of what it spent, sometimes before the U.S. book is released. Or an agent may decide to hold onto those rights, and sell them herself, often traveling to world book fairs (the most famous is in Frankfurt) to make the pitch. Some agents excel at this; some don’t. The agent nearly always gets help from subagents in each foreign country being approached. That means that a novelist now has not one agent, but many—each getting their cut, each generating emails and paperwork and a web of relationships. It’s complicated, which is why that original agent’s organizational role is even more important. He will decide what rights get sold, which are kept, how hard to push in the foreign markets, and hopefully, he’ll keep track of all those advances coming and going (often, in different currencies) and make sure that an author really does get paid for some bargain paperback printed in Russia, for example.

Sound exciting? It is. Sound hard to manage as an unagented or self-published author? Indeed. We’ll talk about that on Feb. 11. In the meanwhile, do you know of other Alaska authors with foreign editions, or have you recently read a translated novel that might not have found its way into your hands just a few years ago? (One of my favorites was Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses.) Let us know.

Notes from the Old Mint: A Civil War Guest-post by Ann Chandonnet

Ann Chandonnet, pictured above at the "Old Mint" in New Orleans, is co-editor of “Write Quick": War and a Woman’s Life in Letters, 1836-1867.

In Write Quick, the book my cousin, Roberta Pevear, of Bethel and I created, dozens of the letters written by Henry Foster to his wife Eliza were penned in the cramped attic of the New Orleans Mint. Henry wrote about his uncomfortable bed on the rafters, and of once using a drum head as a desk. The Mint had been under construction for many years, but remained unfinished. Henry was able to get up onto the roof and view the wharves along the Mississippi and the business of cotton and other goods going on there. He waited for ships arriving from New England, hoping they would bring mail from Eliza in Massachusetts or from other members of his extended family. Soldiers away from home "lived on mail," as his brother-in-law once wrote.

For nearly two years, Henry was stationed in New Orleans with the 26th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. His duties were chiefly to guard Confederate prisoners. Occasionally, his unit was sent to other places in Louisiana, and he wrote to Eliza from those camps. But he kept returning to the Mint.

In the early 1860s, the Mint not only minted money but also served as the Post Office for the city. The Post Office closed at 5:00 p.m., a fact that Henry mentioned several times in his correspondence.

Today there is a new Mint several blocks away. The Old Mint, located near the popular French Market on the waterfront, lost its copper roof during Hurricane Katrina (2006); sheets of it flew far and wide. It took until November 12 of 2011 to refurbish the building. I had heard that the Old Mint opened for business during the summer, so when I showed up on its doorstep on November 13, I didn't realize how lucky I was. The Park Service historian was very kind, listening to my story of Henry and his letters. I wanted to see the view Henry had from the roof, but that was not accessible. I also wanted to see the attic, but it wasn't available to the public. However, the historian and her fellows quickly realized how important it was for me to get a glimpse of this area. They scouted up two sets of original cast iron steps—closely resembling some of the famous iron balconies of the city, and then allowed me a peek into the attic. It had been transformed with batts of insulation and air ducts, but I got the general idea of how low and dark it must have been when Henry and his comrades lodged there. I was thrilled!

Descending to the ground floor (now a mint museum) again, I noticed the enormous granite steps of the staircases. I could imagine Henry running down the cast iron steps and then down these granite steps—trying to make the 5:00 p.m. deadline for another of his letters to Eliza. The Old Mint is now equipped with a large performance space on the second floor, and will be a jazz history museum.

A New England native and longtime Alaska resident, Ann Fox Chandonnet is the author of numerous books, including Alaska’s Inside Passage (Fodor’s, 2009). Her food history, Gold Rush Grub (University of Alaska Press, 2005), won an Outstanding Book award from the American Association of School Librarians. She currently resides in the Hickory, North Carolina, area.

Deb: Welcome, Linda!

Linda Ketchum, new 49 Writers Executive Director (as of Jan. 1)

Last week we announced that the 49 Writers board of directors selected Linda Ketchum from a field of truly remarkable candidates to serve as our Executive Director.  Linda will do a proper introduction of herself when she takes the reins in January, but in modesty she likely won’t share the details that so impressed the board.

Born and raised in Scotland, Linda arrived in Alaska in 1985 by way of Brussels, London, and the rest of the world. She was determined to be a travel writer on the strength of some freelance work for a small London magazine, but became sidetracked for 20 years until enrolling in the MFA program at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Meanwhile, she gained experience in Alaska’s nonprofit sector as a volunteer, program manager, executive director, and board member, and as a consultant focusing on nonprofit capacity-building. Her volunteer work includes terms as board president of an adult literacy project and the Mat-Su Borough Library Board. 

Her background ranges from serving as executive director of a nonprofit with a $3 million budget to running a small all-volunteer organization as board president.  She has led strategic planning, developed and monitored budgets, developed and designed a small business web portal, initiated fund development, developed successful grant proposals, recruited and trained instructors, and promoted a variety of programs.  She has won awards for her work in literacy and for excellence in partner development.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in languages at the University of Edinburgh and completed her Master of Education in Adult Education at UAA. For four years, she taught a graduate course in social entrepreneurship at UAA’s College of Business & Public Policy. In spring 2012, Linda will graduate with her MFA in creative nonfiction. 

Linda has been a supporter and member of 49 Writers/49 Alaska Writing Center since our beginning.  “I have been impressed by how much the organization has already accomplished in less than two years through the dedicated efforts of its founders and volunteers,” she wrote in the cover letter that went to the board.  “I believe wholeheartedly in your mission.”

She’ll officially take over on January 1, but already Linda is volunteering her time to help plan board training and other upcoming activities.  Those who know her can attest to our good fortune; those who don’t can look forward to making a fine friend.  Beyond Linda’s tremendous resume, she has a gracious presence and a true passion for the literary community.  Welcome, Linda!

Information Wrangling: A Guest Post by Sherry Simpson

Nothing makes me feel like I've accomplished something heroic more than reading a book like Getting Things Done by management guru David Allen. Alas, I prefer reading about grand plans rather than instituting them. Apparently I'm not organized enough to become that organized. (For less overwhelming ideas about time management and productivity, see 43Folders: Time, Attention, and Creative Work, zenhabits, or Creatures of Habit).


Actually, the problem is not that I'm disorganized. It's that I have so much information to organize. My office is jammed with several filing cabinets, supplemented by plastic crates and banker's boxes, everything arranged by a scheme that makes perfect sense to me but would defeat any cryptographer. Then there's vast computer real estate dedicated to storing files. Someday A&E will air a Very Special Episode of "Hoarders" featuring writers—maybe me!—and it will be both horrific and a tearjerker.

The more time wasted frisking my files for an article, fact, or idea, the less time for writing. To amend this insight from psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that I quoted a couple of weeks ago: "The only way to stay creative is to oppose the wear and tear of existence with techniques that organize [information], time, space, and activity to your advantage."


Writer Steven Johnson argues in "Tool for Thought" that information-organizing software can influence the creative process by helping writers make connections and build ideas. Some people, of course, need nothing more than a binder, some index cards, a few stickies. Been there, done that, but computer tools have helped me cobble together my own ground-breaking system: Getting Some Things Done Most of the Time With a Minimum of Shrieking and Hair-Rending. What works for me won't necessarily work for you; maybe you like shrieking and hair-rending.

Information-wrangling begins with making and organizing notes. Like most writers, I scribble on bar napkins, scraps of paper, and magazine margins that maybe I'll find later. Smartphones and tablets are ideal for gathering notes, and new developments in cloud storage and syncing can corral those brilliant ideas and useful facts in one place. [Note: I speak only Apple, so please suggest programs for other platforms. Also, I haven't used everything mentioned here, and 49 Writers isn't endorsing any product mentioned.]

Approximately a zillion note-taking apps are available--some free, some expensive--so the challenge is finding the right system for your working style. AppShopper lists about five pages of note-taking apps for Mac devices. Other flavors are available in Android Market, Amazon's Appstore for Android, and WindowsPhone Marketplace. Web extensions like Thinkery also allow you to make notes as you're browsing online.

If you use multiple computers, then you need a system that synchronizes notes so they're accessible from any computer or device. Microsoft's powerful OneNote now works on multiple platforms. Simplenote is a well-known free app that developers have customized. The popular, free Evernote takes notes, snaps pictures, records audio, and saves entire webpages. An amazing number of associated apps record phone calls, scan documents, turn PDFs into edit-able documents, and more.
 

To help sort through possibilities, The New York Times reviews some products here, Apple programs are described here, and Lifehacker readers recommend their top five note-taking apps here. Notetaking.net tracks apps and lists review sites. This MSNBC article surveys apps and suggests useful ways to organize notes.

Once you're knee deep in notes, how do you find them again? I rely on the Mac program Yojimbo, a virtual filing cabinet with an infinite number of drawers that I can paw through instantly for passwords, serial numbers, PDF documents, bookmarks, story ideas, notes, images, and more. It's simple, flexible, and not cheap.

Notebook 3.0 is set up visually like a scrapbook; I use it for brainstorming. Curio is another Mac project organizer that also allows mindmapping. Windows users might appreciate ConnectedText or Writer's Blocks, but check out this list of Windows-friendly writers' software.


If you're tired of emailing yourself drafts so you can open them from another computer, the free file syncing service Dropbox may rock your world. I can revise an essay in the Dropbox folder on my desktop computer and open the same draft from my laptop, as well as store files accessible from any computer. This review describes similar cloud services, like SugarSync, but notice how many readers praise Dropbox's simplicity.

Mac users wrestling with complicated projects involving lots of research might like DEVONthink's information management programs. The database for my last project organizes almost 5,000 articles, notes, web links, e-mails, interview transcripts, photographs, and more. DEVONthink researches online, searches quickly, and links phrases and documents. The company's site describes how writers use it. If it's good enough for Michael Chabon, it's good enough for us.

No computer tool can help unless it's easy to use consistently. But if nothing else, organizing your notes is an excellent way to procrastinate. Or so I hear. 

Ela: 49 Writers Weekly Round-up

Last week we promised great news about our new Executive Director and the unveiling of our Spring 2012 Literary Season.  

First, the ED.  Since May 1, Deb Vanasse has been serving as 49 Writers Interim Executive Director.  While she loves this feisty little nonprofit, it has never been her intent to run it permanently.  Enter our dynamic board of directors, which launched a full-scale ED search that yielded applications from a number of distinguished candidates, many holding MFAs, MBAs, PhDs.  From this competitive pool, the board is pleased to announce their selection of Linda Ketchum, who’ll start as 49 Writers ED on January 1, 2012.  A founding member of 49 Writers and a UAA MFA degree candidate in Creative Writing, Linda brings an incredible background in nonprofit management and a passion for all things literary.  We promise a full introduction soon, right here at the 49 Writers blog.

Equally exciting is our Spring 2012 Literary Season.  Ready to rev up your writing in 2012?  We’ve got an incredible lineup of courses, including a Submission Workshop with visiting writer/editor Katey Schultz and two workshops with nationally acclaimed author Steve Almond.  Want to work one-on-one with a published author?  That would be our Fiction Apprenticeship with Mattox Roesch.  And check out our new “Publish and Promote” series, with workshops in Getting Published, Agents, Self-Publishing, Social Media, and Copyright Basics.  Of course we’ve also got a workshop from our popular Elements series, this one on Plot, and a workshop for Intermediate Poets.  Finally, for the first time we’ll offer a course in the Valley, “Writing Your Place.”  Registration opens on January 1, but you can take a sneak peek at the line-up. 

Without getting into too much detail, let’s just say we’ve also lined up an exciting season of events in our popular Synergies, Gatherings, R & C, and Crosscurrents series.  You’ll want to mark your calendars now for the first 49 Writers Synergies Event of the year, “Poemgrass: a Poet and a Banjo” featuring poet Peggy Shumaker and musician Robin Child at the Anchorage Museum, Brian E. Davies Chugach Gallery (4^th Floor) on Wednesday, January 11, 7-8:30pm.  On the eve of the 2012 Alaska Arts and Culture Conference, join current Alaska State Writer Laureate, Peggy Shumaker, (Gnawed Bones, Just Breathe Normally) as she reads from her poetry in the cozy and reflective Chugach Gallery at the Anchorage Museum.  Music by local banjo player Robin Child and friends; a book signing will follow.  Free admission, but donations are welcome to support this innovative reading and performance series.  

And of course don’t forget our statewide Resolve to Write events on or about January 20.  If you’d like to host one of these gatherings of writers in your community, email us at 49writers@gmail.com by December 20.  The commitment is small – pick a location (a home or café is fine) plus a date and time on or around January 20 – and tell us so we can help spread the word.  The idea is for writers to gather and share their writing resolve for the New Year.  

Young writers:  Our WYAK young writers group (ages 12-14) meets this Monday, December 19, from 6:30-8pm at Teen Underground, third floor Loussac Library.  Bring work to share, or just come hang out with other writers.  And don’t forget “Comics: Turning drawings into stories” debuting at Teen Underground December 27-29 from 3-5pm, also for ages 12-14. No special drawing or writing talent is required.  Teens need to register soon, as the workshop is more than half full.  The workshop is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Library.  

Visit www.wyakwriters.com for details. 

Speaking of teens, kudos to 49 Writers WYAK volunteer Lizbeth Meredith, who in her day job at McLaughlin Youth Center has helped organize a holiday session called “Bring the Outside In.”  The idea is to give incarcerated youth a chance to explore skills they can continue after release.  Besides offering our Comics class at Teen Underground, illustrator Lee Post has volunteered to teach “Awesome Drawing” at the McLaughlin event.  Contingent on funding, watch for continuing 49 Writers involvement with youth at McLaughlin and Covenant House.

For a comprehensive calendar of literary events throughout Alaska, visit http://www.alaskalitevents.com/.

Tonight, Friday, December 16, 7pm, the Mountain View Boys and Girls Club will host the second of six V.O.I.C.E. Youth Open Mic's. Wang Gat will be the second featured reader. Wang was one of the Brave New Alaskan Voices youth poetry slam team members who traveled to San Francisco this summer to participate in the Brave New Voices national youth poetry slam.

Congratulations to Susan Pope, who has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay entitled "Canyon," which appeared in the Spring 2011 Issue of Bluestem,  a journal of the Department of English, Eastern Illinois University. Her essays have also been published in journals and anthologies including Pilgrimage, Damselfly Press, The Southeast Review, Crosscurrents North: Alaskans on the Environment, Cirque: A Literary Journal of the Pacific Rim, Persimmon Tree, and others.

Ann Chandonnet's book Write Quick was reviewed last week in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Check it out here! 

Featured Writers Coming in 2012

A sneak preview of the featured authors and writers who will guest-blog for us in 2012:

January, Vivian Faith Prescott
February, Teri Sloat
March, Maia Nolan
April, David Marusek
May, Ross Coen
June, Nicole O'Donnell
July, Amy O'Neill Houck
August, Lucian Childs
September, Kathy Tarr
October and November, Students of APU
December, Jen Funk Weber

We hope you find this list a mix of the familiar and the unfamiliar, expanding what we all know about who is writing (and reading) in Alaska. We look forward to their insights and stories in 2012.

What Now?: A Guest Post by Sara Loewen

Truman Capote said, “Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it.”  Maybe that’s a little dramatic. John Steinbeck said, “The book dies a real death for me when I write the last word.  I have a little sorrow and then go on to a new book which is alive.  The rows of my books on the shelf are to me like very well embalmed corpses.  They are neither alive nor mine.  I have no sorrow for them because I have forgotten them, forgotten in its truest sense.

I got a taste of that “little sorrow” when I turned in my MFA thesis this year.  It wasn’t even a book yet, just a book-length collection of essays, and still, hitting send felt kind of awful. It meant the end of mentor comments, summer residencies, school-imposed deadlines, the end of a nurturing community that had given me a glimpse into the writing life.

Sure, I felt celebratory for a couple of hours. I left the library and took a long shower—my first in days. Standing in the shower, I wondered how these years had gone so fast. How I would justify babysitting expenses without MFA deadlines. Having turned in the final submission of writing I’d worked on for three years, I was suddenly free to think about how I hadn’t exercised in three years, or cleaned the house thoroughly, or thought about whether we lived in the right town, or what, exactly, I hoped to use my MFA degree for. Was I hoping to be a writer or a teacher? Was it possible to do both well? By the time my hair was dry, I was depressed.

Creative writing teacher Elise Blackwell asks, “What Defines a Successful Post-M.F.A. Career?” in a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. She lists the many reasons people enter a writing program: to take a few years out of their lives to read and write, to earn a living in publishing or professional writing, to finish a novel or screenplay, to enter academe even though “There are full-time university teaching jobs available for less than 1 percent of graduating creative-writing program alumni.” Blackwell settles, in the end, on her own measure of success: “How many of our students are still making art—and making it well and ideally to the notice of others—10 years out?”

Which is exactly what made hitting send so hard for me—the fear that I wouldn’t be able to sustain my ambition or writing life for the next ten years, let alone for the rest of my life. One valuable lesson of an MFA program is learning how much work writing is. Life rarely arranges itself into tidy sessions of writing time. During my first MFA residency, I was the only one in the dorms with a breast pump.  The next year, the only one wearing maternity clothes. Many times, I worried that I’d entered the program at the wrong time in my life. I’m not sure there is ever a right time. Still, before being published, it is so much easier to say, “I’m an MFA student,” than to say, “I’m a writer.”

There was an interview in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner this fall with Nobel Prize winner Brian Schmidt. His career advice was to “pick something you love so much you would do it for free.” I think the unspoken assumption is that the money will follow. But when you’re a writer, you are often working for something close to free. It’s not always easy to feel confident about writing as a career choice. Sometimes we have to work jobs we don’t love and fit what we do love wherever we can.

Last month a full-time English position opened in Kodiak. With benefits! I could replace the glasses I bought 8 years ago. We could all go to the dentist! For the past two years, I’ve been working as an adjunct and patching together part-time positions to supplement a series of slow commercial salmon seasons. We’re self-employed, and our health insurance costs nearly as much as our mortgage but covers only catastrophic accidents or illness. Benefits would be a really big deal.

I wanted the job, but I knew that taking on five new classes would leave little time for writing. I knew I’d be lesson planning in the shower, grading papers after the boys went to bed, answering student texts and emails on the weekend. I know how I teach, how easily I pour my time into planning classes and commenting on papers. Teaching is better than headlines and Hulu and Facebook and Gmail combined when it comes to stealing time.

All weekend, the little voice that Oprah is always urging us to listen to kept saying, “This is not the right time.” As I was trying to decide what to do about the job, things happened, things my friend Amy would call signs because Amy reads books about cosmic energy and trusting the universe. Like the night I got home from teaching and my four-year-old, Liam, was already asleep, looking angelic with rosy cheeks and arms thrown up over his head, and I realized I had seen him for a total of 25 minutes all day. 25 minutes of cereal eating, pajama changing, teeth brushing, raincoat zipping before it was time to catch the preschool bus. His little brother, Luke, is two. I know now, how quickly Luke will be four, how easy it would be to miss this. And I know already how much I will miss this.

Other signs: the same day the babysitter gave her notice; my MFA manuscript arrived in the mailbox from the graduate office. Steve Jobs died, which should be completely unrelated except that I followed a link to one of his speeches on Youtube, the one where he says, “You have to trust in something. You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life karma, whatever, because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.”

I decided to trust that body of work in the mailbox, to live without new glasses, to floss more often, to wait for a fulltime position when the boys are a little older. When I didn’t take the job, I apologized to the head of the English department who happens to be a lovely person. He said, “Hey, you can’t control when epiphanies hit. You’re a writer—you should know that.”

So when I learned this week that my first book is going to be published, it felt like confirmation of everything that I want to believe in—the creative spirit, MFA programs, luck, mentors, hard work, Amy’s signs. Except the news came with the flu. And my husband’s flu became pneumonia and they found that his white blood cell count was so low our doctor put him into the hospital and told us to prepare for the possibility of Leukemia. Insurance kicks in after our $10,000 deductible, but of course my first thought was that I should have a fulltime job with health benefits. Meanwhile, friends and family rallied—helping with the boys, bringing food, walking our dog, texting encouragement—confirming that yes, we live in the right place.

On the way home from the hospital today, I mailed my contract. I was thinking about the way life changes, slowly or suddenly, with or without our permission. Over the last three years, my MFA classmates have moved, gotten married, changed jobs, adopted children, lost loved ones, given birth—and those are just the big things. Sometimes we sacrifice creative time to pay the bills, or to be a decent mother or father or spouse or friend. And then we get back to work, hoping for sorrows as small as a finished book, hoping for balance somewhere between life and writing.

 Sara Loewen earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from the UAA low-residency program. Her family spends the summer setnet fishing in Uyak Bay. In the winter she works at Kodiak College. Her essay collection will be published by the University of Alaska Press in spring 2013. Her husband is now home from the hospital and feeling better.