Go Team Go: Writing as a Team Sport

This time last year, I was happily banging away on the first draft of my novel. Every evening, I delighted in sitting at my desk and writing my story. I was captivated by my characters, and frankly, enamored withfiction.

Fast forward to the present moment, and it’s way harder to arrive at my writing desk with the same amount of zeal as I did last fall. The honeymoon period is definitely over.

As you all know, I had a summer full of all kinds of adventures, very few of them having anything to do with sitting at a desk and writing a novel. Towards the end of the summer, I was complaining to a writer friend about how little progress I made on my novel. 

“My gears are creaky,” I told her. “I can’t get into it.”

It seemed liked everything I wrote was dry and forced, and I couldn’t seem to get into a groove. (I wanted my strange writing groove from last fall to magically reappear!) She was in the same position with her novel—re-working a full draft—and we decided to schedule a writing date to move forward on our respective projects. She would come to my house and we would hold each other accountable to write for several hours. And write we did, dammit.

Since that initial writing date, all of the progress that I have made on my novel has been with her in the room. Once or twice a week, she comes over with some snacks and we chat for a while before setting the timer for one hour. And every time that alarm goes off, we’re surprised by how fast the time flew by. And every time she leaves my house several hours later, neither of us can wipe the silly grins off our faces. We’re doing it. Slowly but surely, these novels are getting written. It’s taking a lot of time and elbow grease, but it’s happening.

When I told her how different my writing process was for this draft than the first one, she laughed and made a really good point.

“We’re at places in the revision process that are not the most fun,” she said.

We’re not just dreaming up characters and fun situations to put them in. We’re sweating and toiling to turn those whimsies into masterpieces. (Or at least into some kind of finished product. Whether it’s any good or not remains to be seen.)

I still love my characters, but I see how complicated crafting a compelling story actually is. You cannot simply string together a few curious incidents and call it a novel. Readers need so much more than that to connect to a story in a meaningful way.

The storyline I mapped out over the summer is in constant flux. Every time I sit down to write, my perfect plot is in danger of taking an unexpected turn. Characters act out in unpredictable ways. What I thought was the climax has shifted. Characters that I thought were minor have become major, and vice versa. Things come up that I didn’t prepare for, like hurricanes and broken arms. And then what?

The truth is, I’m dealing with a living, breathing animal with a mind of its own. For the first time, I am beginning to understand the fiction writer’s dilemma of striking the delicate balance between controlling the narrative and letting the story take the reins. It’s an amazing and beautiful and scary process.

All the confidence that I had in my novel when I first started has leaked out of my brain, which makes it hard to return to the manuscript with the same gusto I once had. But luckily, I don’t have to feel like I’m in it all by myself. Although I’ve shared work with many writers over the years, I’ve never had an active writing partnership like this one. I’ve heard of other writers who always write together, but I had never seen the value in it until now. I’m grateful for my writing partner who knows when to talk shop and when to get down to business.   

So much of writing has to be done all by our lonesome. So why not try to make it into a team activity?  It's not as if I can't write on my own, but it's just more fun this way! 

Remember! Always use the buddy system!!

Speaking of which, check out my BUST interview with my friend and client, Thelsuice Gonzalez, as we discuss the process of working on her memoir as a team. 

MFA Year Two Recap

My writing studio at the Art Farm

Hi friends. Since my last post, I’ve finished my second year of graduate school so I thought this would be a good time to recap the past year of my master’s in creative writing.

This time last year, I was heading off to my first artist residency at the Art Farm in Nebraska. In a few days, I’ll be joining some of my Art Farm friends on a farm in eastern Texas to recreate the magic! During my residency last summer, I spent delicious day after delicious day writing, the hours interrupted only by a passing bunny rabbit or thunderstorm. I breathed life into old pieces and conjured up new ones; I am happy to report that all of the writing I did at the Art Farm has found homes in various literary journals and online magazines. But I’m jumping the gun! 

When the fall semester started, I went full speed into submitting my work. This was a new world for me, but I was lucky enough to have an insider’s perspective by working as an editor at Saw Palm, USF’s Florida literature and art journal. Regardless, I dealt with months and months of nonstop rejection, but I used these “failures” as ammunition to keep going. I quickly learned that rejection is a huge part of a writer’s life, and the sooner we learn to deal with it, the better.

Eventually, I got my first acceptance in late October from The Normal School. Needless to say, I was psyched.  A few other acceptances followed, and my first pieces were officially published in early December on The Toast and Lunch Ticket.

All the while, I was enrolled in my first fiction class where I started the project that was to become my thesis. Of course, you might remember that I came into this program as a creative nonfiction writer, so this switch was a confusing but exciting decision. Regardless, I still write plenty of nonfiction, but I decided that I’d rather work on a novel for my thesis than a book-length memoir project. (At the end of October, I attended the NonfictioNOW Conference in Flagstaff and met tons of awesome writers!)

Over the course of the fall semester, I wrote a first draft of my novel and received great feedback from my professor and peers. In the winter, I turned an excerpt from the novel into a short story called “Mango Season” and sent it to a few places.

Oh, and let me not forget that I taught my first creative writing class in the fall. My students were delightful and we had a great time exploring fiction, nonfiction, and poetry together!

Okay, so I had a busy fall semester. The spring semester was no different. I went back to teaching composition, and I registered for four awesome classes: Comics (or graphic narrative), another Fiction Workshop, Craft of Creative Nonfiction (Reading the Lives of Others), and Environmental Literature.

Saw Palm's 10th Anniversary Issue!

[Also, I set some SMART goals in December to keep me on track. More on that later.]

I tried my hand at comics for the first time—and loved it. I set aside my novel and wrote a few short stories for my fiction class (and we properly inducted into the official fiction writer’s club). I read tons of amazing (and sometimes frustrating) books for my CNF and Enviro Lit class. Meanwhile, I was still sending work out like crazy, getting lots of rejections and a few more acceptances. I begin to shift my focus away from literary magazines and started sending work to more mainstream publications. I landed several freelance writing gigs for corporate and governmental organizations. I wrapped up a year-long memoir project with a private client. I gave my first reading in NYC and saw my name in print for the first time! (First in the Reader's Write section of The Sun and then in the Tahoma Literary Review). 

Towards the end of the semester, things started to pick up even more. I was awarded USF’s Anspaugh Fiction award for my story “Mango Season.” I embraced painting and made a full-length comic/children’s book. Then, I had an article published in The Washington Post that was then picked up by The Sydney Morning Herald—completely unbeknownst to me! I was driving somewhere in Alabama when I received a phone call from a strange number. It was a radio station in Sydney and they wanted to interview me on-air about my article. I had no idea what they were talking about, and they explained that my piece about not having wi-fi at my house had been featured in The Sydney Morning Herald that day. Of course, I was more than happy to talk to them about my internet-free lifestyle. J

Now, the semester is over and I’ve returned to my restless ways. I’m on a road trip around the south, visiting friends and family in Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. In the midst of my trip, I got some super exciting news. My short story, “Mango Season,” was awarded the Charles Johnson Fiction Award by Crab Orchard Review! I am over the moon, and more than ready to get back to work on my novel—as soon as I get back home from my travels!

All in all, it’s been a productive and exciting year with lots of "firsts". I’ve done lots of writing, reading, editing, freelancing, workshopping, submitting, pitching, published, drawing, and dreaming. I’m so grateful for the support I’ve received from my family and friends, as well as from my awesome writing community at the University of South Florida! Although I don’t want my MFA to end, I’m excited to see what this last year holds. 

Exclusive Interview with A Bonafide Restless Writer

Some of you may have heard about Couchsurfing, a social network created to connect travelers with locals in the areas where they are traveling. It's a beautiful concept and I encourage you all to check it out! I have been participating in CS since 2007, mainly as a traveler, and I recently decided to open my home to couchsurfers coming through Tampa. My first surfer, Eagle Gamma, is an adventurer extraordinaire. He's spent the last 3 years of his life on his bike saddle, traveling all over Canada, the United States, and Mexico.  Not only is he a rider, but he's a great WRITER too! You can check out his blog here and this really cool interactive map of all the places he's biked!

How long have you been restless?

I have been restless my whole life. When I was a child, I liked to wander, a habit that I’ve carried with me to this very moment.

How long have you been writing?

I’ve been writing since I learned to write at a young age which I forget the number. I have been writing consistently since I was a young child.

What sorts of things do you like to write about?

I like to write about the universe, imaginary universes, selves, and also anything and everything in between.

Eagle's Travels

What projects have you completed on the road?

I’ve completed an account of the astrophysical research happening at top locations around the world intermixed with my own outlandish adventures (Astrotripping: A Cosmic Journey, forthcoming). I’ve also completed an interactive work of science fiction which readers can play with and edit themselves, PhaseQ . And most recently I wrote a children’s adventure originally in Spanish and recently translated into English called El Burrito que Queria Volar. As well as several articles on the subject of astronomy.

How does being in motion factor into your writing process?                  

That’s a great question. The most immediate way is that I actually consider writing to be fundamentally a kind of motion so when I'm moving I am writing and the act of later putting those words to paper is almost an afterthought. So I consider the movement itself is actually the original source of stories and ideas and characters and I then translate that motion into a more conventional written word format. More specifically, while physically moving, I often consciously and subconsciously conceive of story elements and much of the inspiration comes from the environments thru which I move. Sometimes I daydream about a story while in motion and sometimes I think through the mechanics of the story. And sometimes I think about something else or nothing at all and let the story develop on its own.

So are you always working while riding your bike?

No, I think its important to take time off for a lot of reasons that can include safety, enjoyment, efficiency and other activities.

Why is the bicycle your preferred method of moving through the world?

A lot of reasons. I love bicycles. Bicycles are fun, efficient, good exercise, good for the environment, good for cultural travel and they help to form community.  Also they’re really cool and they can go anywhere. Being exposed to the world, you’re forced to experience it directly. You're thrust into the same space, forced to breath the same air. You basically have to interact immediately with the places and people instead of a car or plane where you’re shooting through obliviously to the location.

What are the challenges of being a restless writer?

There are many. The first challenge is to be a restless writer in the first place. It takes immense courage, effort and logistic prowess to be able to move around constantly and write. Psychologically, its extremely difficult because so much of life is rapidly changing all the time. lacking any type of solid or stable foundation, it becomes an extreme challenge to write consistently while living life on the road.

Given these challenges, why do you choose to live in this way?

Because, first and foremost, I love the freedom and joy and novel experiences and interactions with so many different people of so many different cultures. A lot of the things I get to do in the course of this life fulfill my lifelong dreams of exploring the world and writing about it and living an adventure.

The Riding Writer at Work!

What projects do you have coming up next?

My big project extends my existing Worlds O Wisdom project, adding a new world development concept that involves life itself. It’s educational and fun and revolutionary. Stay posted on these developments!

Anything else you want to add?

Really to me it’s a kind of liberation to go through these processes that constitute living as a restless writer. While I realize its much of a personal quest, I also believe that more generally its extremely valuable for people to each pursue their own quest and that whatever yours is, you give it a shot. 

Revision: The 95%

As the semester progresses, I’ve been teaching my students about revision. I regret not having “taught” it sooner; the more I write, the more I realize that this lesson needs to happen day one of any writing class.

For many new writers (myself included), it is enticing to write something, re-read it a few times, rearrange some words, and jump straight into editing: grammar mistakes, punctuation, formatting. Unfortunately, this does not guarantee good writing. In fact, it will most likely produce the opposite.

The word “revision” means to “see again.” This means going back to the drawing board and re-envisioning a story or essay. In the process, the writer learns more and more about the characters or essay topic. Our writing ancestors had it write when they used the word “essaie,” or efforts, to describe what we do.

William Stafford says it best:

“I do revise in the sense that I do go back over what I write, but it doesn’t look like a different process. It’s just the same process, going back through the same terrain again… seeing if the signals are different. And every now and then, you may get a little nudge of a new idea, or adjustment.”

To illustrate what I mean to my students, I use the example of paintings. Most painters will study their subject extensively, sketching the dancers or the sailboats that they want to portray on the canvas. From these sketches, they learn about their subjects, understanding the way a dancer’s feet move in a pas de bourrée, or how a boat sits on the water under full sail. 

The sketches inform the painter's drawings, and they begin to have a deeper sense of what they want to depict in their paintings. After much trial and error, the painter is ready to sit at his easel and bring the paintbrush to the canvas. When we look at the final painting, we see hints of those first sketches; but we can also see that the painter has come a long way in their process.

Now imagine if a painter made a sketch and decided it was good enough to start applying oil paints to it right away. What would it look like? A masterpiece? Not likely.

That is what a writer is doing when they try to edit their first drafts. It’s like putting icing on top of cake batter; the cake is not ready to be iced yet until it has gone through the fire and then cooled.

Proofreading, or editing, means to polish up what is already written. In case you needed another analogy, this is putting the shingles on the roof of the house. Unfortunately, we cannot put shingles on a house if the foundation isn’t strong, or if the walls haven’t been built yet.

My thesis advisor is pushing me to birth the first draft of my novel as quickly as possible.

“It’s going to be a disaster,” he says. “And that’s okay. Because then at least you’ll have something to work with.”

He knows the secret – 95% of writing is revision.

“After I write this draft, I’m just going to set it aside and start over, aren’t I?”

“Yep,” he says, smiling. “And over and over and over again.”

The blank page is a scary place, but I am trying to acquaint myself with the idea of returning to the drawing board again and again. I find solace in knowing that I won’t be returning empty-handed. With each new draft, I’ll be armed with the wisdom and lessons of each one that came before it. 

****

Please visit my new page on the website and fill out the form to receive a free chapbook of my work! Also, feel free to shoot me an email anytime at carmella.guiol@gmail.com . 

I'd love to hear from my readers!

Graphophobia

Tomorrow I leave for middle of nowhere Nebraska to take part in my first ever writing residency at the amazing Art Farm! I am super excited about being in a totally new environment with the sole purpose of writing. I'm not going to lie, though. I'm scared.

Fear is a part of any artist's psychological landscape. Let's call it graphophobia for fun. It was Georgia O'Keeffe who famously said: “I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing that I wanted to do.” Fear is just another thing I've got to get used to if I want to make writing my life. 

I don't fear many things that others might fear, like traveling solo in a foreign country or swimming between islands in the Ten Thousand Islands. But these days, as this new adventure approaches, I feel fear encroaching, gaining speed behind me, scratching at my back with its long talons. The demons roar in my ear: What right do you have to call myself a writer? What have you ever published? Who wants to read what you have to say anyway? 

For the past few weeks, I've been letting fear rule. I've stayed away from my writing desk. I've jotted down some notes here and there, but for the most part, I've been mute on the page. Let me tell you that it doesn't feel good. When I think about it, and I try not to think about it, I feel like a fraud. I want to run far, far away from my MFA program. I want to turn my writing desk into a shot glass exhibit. "There are so many other things I can do," I tell myself. "Quit now and save yourself the trouble." 

This afternoon, I joined my professor and a few classmates at a coffee shop. "What have you been writing?" my professor says.  "I haven't written a word in a month," I blurt out. "Am I doomed?" He laughs and goes on to assure me that my writing career  is not doomed. "It's okay to take a break," he says. "Now get back to work." 

We spent the rest of the hour workshopping each other's pieces. It felt good to get my hands back into the dirt, to wrap my mind around words, and dive back into the world of lyrical language, tone, structure. 

In transcendental meditation, I was taught that our mind wants to transcend. We don't have to force it. It will happen naturally if we let it.

I hope that I can approach my creative process with this levity, to trust that our minds - our souls - our beings - want to create... If we let it. This is what a residency provides: a physical and psychic space for your creative self to expand and explore without fear. 

Wish me luck!

The Importance of Mentorship

Yesterday, I spent an hour in the pool with a good friend, going over the intricacies of the free style stroke. I am a longtime swimmer, both on swim teams and for pure pleasure, and I have also taught swimming to youngins at Coral Gables' Venetian Pool. I must say that I learned so much about swimming by teaching it. I thought about different aspects of the strokes that I had never considered before. This is probably because I was learning from a champion swimmer who has made this her life.

My friend knows how to swim. She's swam all her life. But -- she's never actually been taught how to swim. She gets tired easily, she says. Her legs feel leaden after a few laps. I could see why after I watched her cross the pool once. Her kicks are inefficient and she isn't breathing properly. Yes, she can jump into the deep end of the pool and make it to the wall without drowning. The problem is that she won't do it the best way that she possibly could.

Which is where I come in. I watch her swim, I swim alongside her, I try my best to make sure my strokes are an example of what hers could be with some practice. I give her pointers and praise. Afterwards, she tells me what a difference our short time together has made.

"It's important to have a teacher," I tell her.
"I was just going to watch YouTube videos," is her response.

We live in a world where we can learn anything on our own. The internet provides us with a cacophony of resources for every hobby and craft. I am not against it. But I do believe that having a real, live teacher makes a world of difference. This breathing body can tell you all the same things that a Wiki How-To article can do, but you can ask questions and perhaps discover even more than you set out to learn. This person can give you the wisdom collected through their past experiences so that you can learn from their mistakes.

When I wanted to learn how to bake bread, I apprenticed for an artisan baker. When I wanted to learn how to grow food, I spent several seasons working alongside experienced vegetable growers, watching how they did things and asking why they made the decisions that they did. It's the same reason why I go to yoga classes even though I could very well practice by myself in my living room.

This is also the reason why I joined an MFA program. I wanted that living, breathing person swimming beside me who has spent a lifetime swimming miles upon miles in many different bodies of water. And luckily, I have found several of these mentors in my program.

Just recently, I learned Transcendental Meditation from a great teacher, Prudence Bruns, the inspiration behind The Beatle's song, Dear Prudence. I have dabbled in meditation for many years, but it has never clicked for me like it did during this training. Every time we met, I had more questions for her. She brought in past experiences, or the experiences of her pupils, and taught us a great deal in a short amount of time. I hope to continue learning from her as the years go by and my meditation practice deepens.

And so, I urge you to seek out a mentor in your craft. Perhaps there is a skill you've been dreaming to learn. Find someone in your area who is an expert in this, and offer them a hand. People don't generally turn down help. It's in working alongside them that you will have the opportunity to learn from their wisdom and experience. A few hours spent working alongside a skilled quiltmaker or master beekeeper could prove to be invaluable in your development as a quiltmaker or beekeeper. Not only will you gain the knowledge, but you might gain a lifelong friend in the process.

Wrangling the Restless

Blogworld, I have a confession to make. I have been letting my restless self get the best of me.

This past weekend, I went to Miami where I went dancing every night and flitted around the city visiting friends. I fell into my old ways, doing a million things at the same time and filling my hours to the brim with activities. I stayed up too late ever night but morning still found me working in the garden, pulling weeds from my food forest.

As I flip through my calendar, it is clear that the rest of the semester is more of the same: spring break in the mountains, a writing conference in the Midwest, camping adventures, birthdays and blessings. After April, summer looms like a blank slate, nearly four months of potential travels. My wanderlust has been in overdrive as I troll discount flight sites to see where the wind will take me. As someone once told me, I definitely don't let the grass grow beneath my feet.

Some may call this busyness but I call this life. I am beginning to accept this truth about myself: movement is my medicine. Who's to say that being on the move means not writing, reflecting, or honoring the artist within?

No one, really. I think that is an idea that I have created and internalized all by myself, the notion that a writer must be stagnant or padlocked to their desk.

 Stay, Carmella. You must stay at your desk and not move, a little voice inside me whispers. And there is truth in that, too. The writer must know how to glue their bum to chair sometimes, but it is just as important for this writer to go salsa dancing on a Friday night, or to fly to Central America spur of the moment to meet up with an old friend. In between the lunch dates and the salsa swings, you can always find me with my pen in hand, scribbling furiously in my notebook, my spirit on fire with the innate need to translate these experiences into art.



We are all different - our needs, desires, dreams, realities. Our writing processes are just as diverse. Rather than try to fight mine, I have resolved to accept it and work as best as I can given my reality.

It's a question of time and energy. Some people gather energy when they spend time by themselves. While I enjoy these moments too, where I really fill up is in my interactions with others. A day without human connection is a dark day for me.

So that's what I was doing back in Miami. Filling up my tank. Squeezing, dancing, hugging, walking, sharing, laughing, breaking bread, singing. Living.

Making Space

We're over halfway through with the semester. This is the time when shit gets crazy. Everything is due all at once, papers need to be graded, the reading load is as insane as always, and the weather is that perfect mix of sunshine and sweet breeze.  

But still, somehow, it's important to find time for quiet moments of introspection, moments where we make space for truth to seep in.


I had a breakthrough last weekend. A few, even. My roommate was out of town and the thought of being home alone all weekend was frightening at first. But something about the chill in the air got me to my senses. 

First, I drove over to Home Depot and bought the makings for a garden paradise: wood for a raised bed, a few seedlings, a shovel, and several plants with tags that read "low light." I had already spent way too much money at the USF Plant Sale the weekend prior, where I bought three different kinds of banana trees, a sweet almond bush, a variety of tomato seedlings, and salad seed packets for good measure. 


Now I had my shovel; I was ready to go. I got to work digging holes in the backyard and distributing horse manure from a local farm (my roommate has a horse so I have an compost connection!). When the trees were planted and the seedlings were watered, I got to work arranging my indoor plants. I’ve never really owned houseplants, or at least not since college when I needed something to perk up my dreary dorm room in the dead of winter. Although my life is not as dreary as it was then, my life is certainly not as plant-ful as it has been in the recent past. So I have conceded to the fact that I am just in a place in my life where I need a plant on my desk. And in the bathroom and on the kitchen counter. 


The next morning, a fellow writer and I headed to the beach for some sun and sea healing. While we sank our toes into the sand and soaked in the rays, we talked about – you guessed it – writing. She’s in her second year in the program so I picked her brain. I have basically been asking anyone who will speak to me about his or her writing process, mainly because I feel so at odds with my own. 


She told me that she has several writing spaces set up around her home, places that she has almost turned into sanctuaries, safe havens where she can do the hard work of facing the blank page. I thought about my own home, a safe haven in the making, and I realized my problem: there isn’t a single space where I want to sit down for a long time. I thought about my desk - a blank white closet door sitting on stools. My original intention was to use it as a writing table, but it had quickly turned into a receptacle for abandoned papers and random flotsam. Just thinking about it made me anxious. 


When I got home, I resolved to make my desk into a creative space – a space where I wanted to spend time. I hauled out the big computer that was dominating one side of the desk and moved my stack of magazines into the bathroom. I cleared away the wreckage and restored my desk to its original –blank- state.
 
I placed two potted plants on the windowsill in front of the desk, and sat down with nothing but a notebook, a pen, and a cup of tea. And I wrote. 

And I didn't get up.

Home sweet desk!

My roommate has her kitties... 

and I've got my plants!

Author Spotlight: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

This weekend, I got to go on a BIG KID FIELD TRIP with my awesome Literature of Place class. In light of reading Marjorie Kinnan Rawlins' The Yearling and William Bartram's 18th century Travels, we traveled north on I-75 to a few notable places south of Gainesville.

Our first stop was Cross Creek, the tiny hamlet where Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote her Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Yearling, along with tons of short stories, several novels, and a memoir named after her town. She even published a cookbook, Cross Creek Cookery!

You might remember watching the movie based on The Yearling starring Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman. Whether you liked it or not (I remember loving it as a kid!), you should definitely pick up the book. It's beautifully written and thoroughly researched. Rawlings based it on a real family she knew who lived in that area and had a pet deer. I loved her descriptions of Florida's subtle beauty in its springs and forest, and in the wildlife that make these places their home.

The family that Rawlings wrote about in The Yearling lived further east, closer to Volusia and Lake George. But still, she did most of her writing sitting at the table on her front porch, overlooking an orange grove. Her constant companions were the chicken and geese who roamed the land.

What I would give to have such a gorgeous writing space! And check out those chairs, made from original deer hide! (All of the furniture in her house is original, donated to the state park by her second husband, Norton Baskin.)

I'm happiest when I'm outdoors. Which means, when I've got my writer hat on, I'm happiest when I am writing outdoors - or as close to the out-of-doors as possible. So a sun-drenched space like this one, with a view of the trees and the sky and the forest, is my ideal workspace. Unfortunately, my current home does not have a screened in porch, and my office is in a dungeon. Sooooooooo... I'll have to wait for that sweet writing porch. One day!

Rawlings was known for being independent and strong-willed - she needed to be to live on her own in a wild place like Cross Creek! She loved solitude and spent many weeks on her own, writing and being in nature. She wrote about feeling "vibrations" from the land and, if you read The Yearling, you'll understand the depths of her relationship to the natural world. 

Although she could be reclusive at times, she was a great cook and loved hosting people at her home. Zora Neale Hurston and Ernest Hemingway were just a few of her famous friends who spent time at Cross Creek. She even said that she got "as much satisfaction from preparing a perfect dinner for a few good friends as from turning out a perfect paragraph in my writing." I was fascinated by all the mementos of her homesteading lifestyle, from cast iron pans and ancient coffee cans to an ice cabinet. Writing and living close to the land -- what else can you ask for??

Rawlings' book Cross Creek was a memoir of sorts, in which she wrote about life in the backcountry of central Florida and the neighbors who shared this world with her. I haven't read it yet, but I plan to! As a writer of creative nonfiction, it's important to read different examples of memoir and see how it has evolved over time. Unfortunately, Cross Creek got her in a bit of trouble with a  good friend who did not appreciate the way that Rawlings described her in the book. The friend sued her for invasion of privacy, and although Rawlings was only ordered to pay $1 in damages, the long court proceedings took a lot out of her. After the incident, she didn't spend as much time at Cross Creek anymore, favoring her New York home instead, and she never wrote about Cross Creek again.

Either way, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings is a great example of a strong woman, and a talented and dedicated writer. I admire her fierce spirit, and I hope I get to live and write in such a beautiful place myself one day.

From Farm to Desktop

October is here - my favorite month of the year! And although I'm missing out on decorative gourd season and leaf peepin' back in New England, Florida does have some positive fall attributes. For one thing, carambolas are back in season (then again, when are they not in season??).

Starfruit to Heaven

And unlike New England, where farmers are putting their fields to bed for the winter, we're only just getting started down here in Zone 9. 

Farmers hard at work at Sweetwater Organic Farm where I volunteer once a week... 

You may not know this about me, dear readers, but I used to be an organic vegetable farmer. Yes, once upon a time, in the great state of Massachusetts, I hoed innumerable acres of squash and harvested too many tons of green beans. 

But let me back up just a bit. How did I come to be a grower (and lover!) of vegetables, you might ask? As an environmental studies major, I learned all about the atrocities that are happening to our planet, and I asked myself - what can I do? Eating food is the main way that we interact with our environment on a daily basis, and so I thought that food might be a good place to start. So I began to learn more about organic farming practices, closed-loop permaculture systems, and school gardening. I spent the last few years of undergrad chasing chickens and experimenting with vegetables I had never heard of before like kohlrabi (which literally look like aliens). I worked as a counselor at farm camp and ran after-school garden clubs for urban youth. I was hooked. After graduation, I spent a season on an educational farm in Martha's Vineyard, a season on small vegetable farm in western Mass, and another season on a permaculture farm in Homestead, FL. Many of my good friends dedicate their lives to growing food in a good way. And yet, here I am, sitting at a desk rather than working the fields.

So why am I here, at an MFA program for creative writing?

Well, when I wanted to learn how to grow vegetables, I went to workshops, talked to farmers, and worked on farms. When I decided to get serious about writing, I knew I needed an apprenticeship, mentors, an immersion. 

It hasn't been an easy transition, from farmer to writer. For one thing, I don't get to eat the fruits of my labor. I've gone from working on something tangible and real to working with abstractions like words, sentences, stories. Sometimes, when I'm hunched over my laptop for hours writing the same paragraph over and over again, I wonder - how is this important? I'm not feeding anyone! 

But, in order to be on this path, I have to believe that stories can change the world - that they do provide sustenance in some way. We need bread to live, but we need roses, too.

Let's All Be a Little More Like Jane Goodall

It helps, when starting a big endeavor like an MFA, to be clear about the goals you wish to achieve by the end. I'm taking a class called "Graduate Studies in the 21st Century" which has been very helpful in helping us map our way.

In the name of accountability, these are the goals I have come up with:

1. Improve my writing skills. This is why I'm here. I think I'm a pretty good writer. I want to be better.
2. Engage in a community of writers by developing relationships with professors, peers, and off-campus events and groups. Before coming to the MFA program, I was part of a few writing groups but again, I wanted more. Now I have 10 pairs of eyes looking over my work and giving me feedback! And one of those people is the talented and impressive Heather Sellers! Yes, I am a lucky girl. Also, I have already attended a writing workshop by the Spoken Word poets of Tampa and I hope to get more involved in this beautiful and vibrant community.
3. Further my development as a teacher, by actually teaching classes but also by learning from my fabulous teachers, many of whom practice contemplative pedagogy which I love! Learning lots from brilliant people...
4. Explore my career opportunities as a writer. Whether that means transcription work, marketing, editing... I'm excited to learn about all of it! And hopefully I can even do an awesome internship in the field.
5. Develop a STRONG WRITING ROUTINE. No, I don't need an MFA to do this, but I'm hoping it will help.

It's a hard life being a hyperactive person and a writer at the same time. But then again, when I see people like the incredibly inspiring Jane Goodall (who came to campus this week!), I realize that you can lead a highly productive and active life, and also.. write books! She's done amazing things with her life: she's changed the way we view primates and ourselves, released countless chimps back into the wild, and written 15 books along the way! 

That's one badass lady.