Writing Myth #1: Daily Writing

As writers, we’re told that, in order to be good at what we do, we must write, if not every single day, then at least very, very consistently (like, every other day or so). Even if we are dried of ideas. Even if our minds and bodies are burnt out. Even if we’re temporarily bored with going at the same thing over and over again. We are told that forcing ourselves into a daily habit, no matter what, will cause us to generate ideas...eventually...and you never know: maybe that one halfhearted line we jotted down will inspire something greater later down the road.

There are two reasons that forcing constant writing to the extreme can be counterproductive for a writer. One: we are not allowing our creativity to rejuvenate; and two: we are not allowing ourselves garner new material.

The concept of the dark moon phase is a spiritual one, originally, and typically for women because of the cycles their bodies go through. However, it needn’t be only reserved for spirituality or femininity; this phase is, really, any period of time that a person goes through in which their physical and mental facilities slow or shut down. Think: depression, illness, “writer’s block,” etc. It’s a period of rest, in which we metaphorically, and sometimes literally, renew ourselves. Think: sleep, winter.

If we push ourselves too much in anything, we often break down and cannot keep performing 100% effectively. When we are feeling burnt out about writing, instead of pushing the issue, many times it’s best to step away for a while to give our minds a break so that we can come back to our pieces with full force. We can retreat into ourselves, watch mindless TV, pursue another creative medium, go out and party, sleep, do whatever the hell want to make ourselves feel better and inspired again.

Going a length of time without writing will not hurt you as a writer, at least not if you are choosing not to write (because, on the contrary, not writing against our will due to work or school or life can be frustrating, and that can be dangerous or detrimental to our creativity and happiness). I am not spiritual at all, but I buy into the idea of the dark moon phase because I do believe in allowing time to revive ourselves. When I was still in college, I'd allow myself at least a week at the beginning of winter or summer break to just sleep and fuck around because of how burnt out I'd be from school, but then I'd rev up and get some serious writing done. Stepping away from a particular piece or just the act of writing itself can lead to a refreshed mind once we come back, and often that’s when we are able to figure out solutions to problem areas, are able to see things in a night light, and are able to perform at our best.

Also, by not forcing ourselves into a strict routine of writing, we allow ourselves to actually experience life, which can do a lot more good for our writing than actually writing can sometimes. An old friend of mine told me that he felt almost guilty because he hadn’t been writing too much because he’d been busy doing many other things, and I had told him that that was a good thing: doing other things. How else are we to generate new ideas? Even if someone writes something extremely fantastical, with lots of imagination involved, they still need to draw their most basic ideas from somewhere, and those come from what we do and observe personally.

I write a lot about love. My ex used to get upset and was always on my case about that because he’d say, soon I’d need to get more material if I wanted to keep writing, if you know what I mean. In a way, he had a point (that’s not to say I can’t and don’t write about things other than relationships with men). But if you sit at a computer or in front of your notebook every single day, especially for a substantial amount of time, you’re missing out doing the things that are indeed worth writing about.

There should be no guilt, no feelings about not being a “true writer", because you might not write every day like many people tell you that you should. Embrace the moments away from the art, give yourself a break. Being a “true” writer simply means knowing that you won’t stay away from writing forever, you’ll come back when you’re ready to be a beast at it. You know it. 

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Follow the Literary Underground @litinc
Siren Bee @ButterDancer
And check back Monday, May 19 for a brand new post.

A Life after the B.A. in English and A Year into Retail

I went to Catholic school for ten years, nearly half of my life. When I transitioned into a public high school, and even into college, I had trouble shaking off the traditions and the “Catholic guilt,” even though my beliefs did a 180. Old habits die hard, ya know. Just the same, how I think about writing still kind of relies on what I’ve been told or what I’d experienced while in a liberal arts program, which I’ve been graduated from for almost a year now.

            

I could start a whole big list of the myths brought to you by creative writing programs (I was only in one briefly when I first started school, but still, I’ve taken classes since), but these courses can be “forgiven” if considered a fundamental education for “beginning” writers, or a chance for writers to do something a little more fun and creative in their college career. And I could list off a bunch of “remedies” that could help get writers beyond the typical creative writing course standards (such as: telling over showing is not always what’s best...whoa). 

But, I won’t because my advice isn’t any better than anything else others might be handing out, and hey—I don’t even have an MFA to back it up (insert a wink here). All I’ve got to offer are my own considerations about different approaches to craft anyway, but one big thing I’ve learned is that it really all comes down to the person who’s writing and what works for them or not. (Yeah, some things may not be effective for some audiences, publications, or genres, but hey, there are always other readers. I mean, do you realize that monster erotica is, like, extremely popular?)

            

Because today I’ve been drinking and because I’m facing a possible promotion at work, my main spiel deals with my years of feeling as if the line of work I ended up with after graduation simply isn’t good enough for a writer. After I graduated, everyone expected me to enter an MFA program and become a teacher, and that totally didn’t end up happening. Not even close. And so, because I needed a job, I got one in retail. That turned into a full-time gig, then I got a promotion as coordinator of my department, and now I’m up for management.

You know how you go into a store over and over and the thing you buy is always in the same spot in the same aisle, but then one day it’s moved and you get pretty pissed because you can’t find that item easily? Yeah, that’s what I do. And ya know, I really like it. 1, the job keeps me busy both mentally and physically so time goes by super quick and I’m not left with excess time to think about how my life might suck; 2, the tasks are puzzle-like and require problem solving skills since I am constantly having to figure out how to make shit work so it isn't mindless; 3, I never have to take work home with me, and so while I may be exhausted from working at 6am every day, I have my afternoons all to myself; and 4, I work with many awesome people who are real people and who I can learn from.

In the beginning, I felt pretty depressed about it all, though, because others made me feel as if I wasn’t living up to my potential. I have a college degree, why the hell wasn’t I using it? Because, honestly: I don’t need to use it to have a fulfilling life. I’ve had many wonderful experiences in college that have indeed helped me become who I am today, and they have shaped my identity as a writer, but it is not the degree or the career thereafter that defines who you are as a writer/artist/person in general. 

You are what you do in all aspects of your life. If you work just to make a living and then come home to write beautiful books, who’s to say you are no better than the creative writing teachers, etc? If anything, working jobs outside the field of writing can give you an advantage: you are experiencing different things that can enrich your writing and influence your creativity by giving you insights that you may not get from having a career that mirrors what you do artistically. Anyway, in the end, being a better writer doesn’t mean you’ve got the academic or professional credentials to back up your talent; it means you’ve worked pretty damn hard at your writing, and you can get that from anywhere at any point in your life.

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Follow the Literary Underground @litinc
Siren Bee @ButterDancer
And check back Monday, May 5 for a brand new post.

Call for submissions: The Parenthetical Review

The Parenthetical Review is seeking works of fiction and creative non-fiction for its forthcoming online edition. Submissions should be approximately 5,000 words. Humor, speculative fiction, research-based non-fiction and immersion journalism will all be considered. The deadline for submissions is 15 May. All work can be e-mailed as an attachment to submissions@parentheticalreview.com Visit: www.parentheticalreview.com to see the call for submissions and for further contact information.

grassroots, yo

ok. so i don't like kickstarter. first of all there's the fees. we already operate in the red, so fuck that. also, there's a bunch of crap you gotta fill out and i'm lazy sometimes and i didn't feel like it. also, you have to send out "rewards" to everyone... see reason #1. and isn't helping out with something you dig reward enough?

i slapped this site together (http://theliteraryunderground.org/letsfundraisethisshit/) with some of the groovy stuff the LU has done/is doing. all of it could not have happened without some very generous individuals. generous with their money, time, skills and talent. i'm not even going to try to make a list because there have been MANY and i would forget someone. not for the lack of mattering because IT ALL matters. because there are so many good things going on, i can't even keep track. love and light to you all and i don't even care if it sounds hippie.

help out if you can, spread the word.

luv,
mm

http://theliteraryunderground.org/letsfundraisethisshit/

Butter-Coating Our Art, Or How I Gave Up Caring About What Is Art and Focused on Enjoying Art

Let me first say: this is going to be the one and only butter reference that I’ll ever make in a blog post. Promise. (I keep saying how no one will let me live down that one time that I might’ve danced in a kiddie pool of butter at a Jacksonville, IL poetry reading, but I’m partially to blame for the legacy living on.)

Now, I’m gonna say this: Man, I used to be one pretentious little shithead when it came to the arts. When I was younger – say, around the high school age – it was because of my inflated ego. My sworn enemy at the time and I used to secretly read each other’s online diaries to further fuel our hatred for each other (teenage drama, psh), and I remember one time knowing that she was writing about me. She had written, “She thinks she’s God’s gift to writing.” Yeah, back when I was 15, I sure did think so. I’m not even sure why I thought that, other than teachers’ compliments had probably simmered in my mind and created a monster.

But, as I got older, the pretentious attitude came from my time served in academia. Now, now, I’m not saying there is anything wrong academia/academic-flavored creative writing. But I am saying that earning an English lit degree left me with this false sense of knowing what qualifies as good, and that in turn meant, turning up my nose at some things that could very well have been worth my time. (Take, for example, The Hunger Games. A while ago, I never would've touched them because I was all, "Ewww, what is this? It's definitely not 'good' literature!" But then I read the first book and, yep, I fell in love.) And sure, there are some qualities of art that we can just tell are not typically 'good', but that’s a different topic for a different week.

           

My point for this short and sweet inaugural blog post deals with the pretension surrounding what is art and what is an insult to art. So to speak.

How many times do we go around spewing out, “That’s not art. That’s art. Oh, that is definitely not art”? Who are we really to know? We can have our own opinions of what art is and we can (and should) use those opinions to try forming a substantial definition, but see, the problem is that not even philosophers who spend lifetimes studying the question of what is art have a comprehensive idea of what it is. They do agree (and I do, too) that there is something “special” that sets art apart from other forms of entertainment or expression, but not everyone agrees on what that thing is. For instance, could art be art because of emotion, or is it intent, and blah blah blah? So, again: who are we to know ourselves? We simply know what we create. Everything else is just something we’re all striving to understand.

So, now to the damn butter incident. Yes, one time, my friends did talk me into dancing in a pool of butter while a woman sang “Someone Like You” and a man danced behind me in a diaper. Some people regarded that as a mockery to art, as if we weren’t taking poetry seriously because we did this between readings. This is where the problem of thinking we know all about art comes in. No one ever claimed that this gimmicky little stunt was art or what have you. It wasn’t even in defiance of art. Not at all! And the truth is we all care deeply about the art form. What was it then, this stupid little dance? Fun. That’s all.

Mockery? More like beautiful regret.

Art should be taken seriously, indeed. It is very important for our society, it is critical for human existence, but it should not be taken so incredibly seriously that we cannot have fun with it, alongside it, or at its expense. Sometimes, it is when we step beyond the boundaries and delve into the batshit that we learn the most about ourselves, our groups, our art. We might learn more about what it may or may not be, we might gain experiences that enrich the concept we already have of it, we might simply walk away with story/poem ideas (which is always a good thing). But when we turn up our noses, we risk losing out on all sorts of interesting (not always in a good way, of course) experiences and opportunities.

TLDR: You should never candy-coat your creations, or look at them with rose-colored glasses with your nose tilted upward, but, dammit, sometimes it’s just fun to get ‘em all greased up and saturated in butter.

Follow Siren Bee on Twitter @ButterDancer.
Check back for a new post every other Monday. 

http://thisispoetry.tumblr.com/

THIS IS POETRY
The Literary Underground is pleased to announce a new project called "This is Poetry". The project will ultimately result in an eight-volume collection of poetry, each volume representing poets from a specific geographic region as well as several special collections. These perfect-bound books will be published under Citizens for Decent Literature Press, founded as part of The Literary Underground. Co-edited by Michele McDannold and Brian W. Fugett, we are currently working on the first two volumes: Women of the Small Press and the American Midwest.

Poems selected for this project will first be published online via tumblr blog - http://thisispoetry.tumblr.com/ - a bit of a social media experiment with poetry. Wouldn't it be great if poetry went viral? We think so.

Submissions are taken by invitation only and based on referral from poets participating in the project. This is how the project is taking on an organic life of its own. It's not just the eds hitting up their favorite poets. It's the eds hitting up their favorite poets, their favorite poets tossing in their favorite poets and so on etc into awesomeness.

Another important and exciting aspect of this project is that we are encouraging contributors to send in their best, most defining work including and emphasizing on previously published poems. It is our intent to highlight other small press publishers, noting the publication credit with a link to the online presence of the small press publisher with each poem published on the tumblr as well as a links page including the same, gathered for easier reference.

viva la Underground
SUPPORT THE SMALL PRESS!

http://theliteraryunderground.org

the debut issue of Blotterature Literary Magazine is now LIVE

http://blotterature.com/



contributors: Amy Lindsey, ira joel haber, Carol Moore, Tim Murray, Carla Winterbottom, K.A. McGowan, Roberta Turner, Peter Fraser, Isaac Blum, William Taylor Jr., J.B. Mulligan, Miguel Gardel, Thaddeus Rutkowski, E.B. Ellis, Nicole Montalvo, Kayla Greenwell, Lee Olsen, Janine Rivett, Suzanne Cope, Aaron Fine, Toke Hoppenbrowers, Maximillian Jackson, Rev. Dr. David Breeden, Joe Gianotti, Kachan Chatterjee, Kenneth Pobo, Jessica Thelen, Stephanie Schultz, Kathe Davis, David Potsubay, John Swain, Gary Kay, Ted Jackins, Michael Lee Johnson, Mark Lamoureux