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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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.