What It's Like Living Here

I have an essay up on Numéro Cinq Magazine, which is run by author Douglas Glover.

Take a little peek into my local world (and mind).

You try to tell people what it’s like living here, but you’re not sure you know. You’ve lived here nearly your whole life, and you’re numb to this place. You have to push yourself to see it.

You tell people that this small town, situated thirty-five miles southeast of Pittsburgh, is the last bastion of suburbia before the routes go rural. You live in a thirty-year-old subdivision of single family homes and townhouses. One way in, same way out. (Keep reading...)

This New Way of Being (Roller Derby Makes Me Brave #3)

This is Part 3 of "Roller Derby Makes Me Brave," an ongoing series in which I chronicle my journey to becoming a derby girl. To make sense of this post, please read the other installments here.

Thirty-six years and I've barely inhabited my body, but a bruised tailbone pulls one's attention down into the seat of a self. My body. My tailbone. Nerves and pain at the base of my spine, a flinch and quick "eesh" of air sucked in through teeth every time I sat or stood or shifted.

I fell because I was roller skating. Lured onto wheels by the siren song of Roller Derby. I fell because I was trying to be brave. I fell because I was tired of being so careful in my everyday living.

I've never played an organized sport, never been one to willingly break a sweat, and I've never liked the saying, "No pain no gain."

Thirty-six years, and what do I know of this body?

I don't engage in physically high-risk activities. At most, my lifetime accumulation of injuries have been minor: Skinned knees, paper cuts, bruises (sometimes in strange places) that I can't recall causing. A slip and fall on ice. The worst of anything has been my ankles, each one severely sprained multiple times, starting with a fall in eighth grade gym class. A torn ligament in college, a stupid (sober) fall running around campus before graduation. Never broken a bone, but friends would (do) call me clumsy, accident prone.

It's not a label I think much about. It just is. Until it's something else.

Advil and ice helped the pain, but there wasn't anything I could take to fight off the confusion and fear that burbled up with each dull ache and stab.

I wrestled with the tension that vibrates between between pride and shame. So proud of myself for getting on skates, for falling and getting back up. So proud! And so ashamed for taking a risk and getting hurt. I hid my guilt behind a thin veneer of bravado and practical pronouncements: "It's not so bad. There's not much you can do for a bruised tailbone except rest it." That week was uncomfortable, not just for my backside, but for my inner compass. I was learning to look at the world through a new lens, the lens of I took a risk and got hurt, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid or bad or irresponsible.

This was a new way of being in the world. If you played sports as a child, you may not understand this. If you are accustomed to taking physical risks, you may not comprehend. But if all your life you've been bundled up in...

Play it safe
Be careful
Take it easy

...then you may understand this. You may comprehend the profound nature of this shift.

All my life I've been afraid of getting hurt.
All my life this tension between desire and fear.

No sex before marriage. No sky diving. No driving too fast or without a seat belt. No drugs. No excessive drinking. No. No. No.

I've bubble wrapped myself in worry.

The day I stepped outside of that soft bunting, the bubble burst. An epiphany of the obvious: Sometimes people do things for fun that can hurt them. And this is not wrong. This is an acceptable way of being in the world. 

At age 36 I was learning what most 10-year-olds know. Kids who play sports learn these lessons about their bodies, their limits, their capabilities at a young age. They learn how to get hurt and how to heal. How to get hurt again and still not fear. Here I was, approaching (or perhaps already at) middle age, navigating, for the first time, this new way of being in the world. This new way of being in my body. This new way of being me. This new way of being. This new way. This.

One Gleaming Image

It is winter. Ravens are standing on a pile of bones -- black typeface on white paper picking an idea clean. It's what I do each time I sit down to write. What else are we to do with our obsessions? Do they feed us? Or are we simply scavenging our memories for one gleaming image to tell the truth of what is hunting us?

~Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

Epiphany, A Literary Journal (review)

cover image from Epiphany's websiteAs I mentioned in the last post, I've started a new series about literary journals. I'll offer some tips on submitting to journals and review some of the many I have stacked around my house.

Earlier this week I had a guest post over on The Artist's Road, Patrick Ross's blog. Patrick is doing a series of Lit Journal Nuggets, and we'll be linking back and forth every so often so you can get a feel for a variety of journals. (So far he's reviewed AGNI and Fugue.)

If you have questions about journals or would like to see me review a particular publication, please let me know.

Here's the beginning of my review of Ep;phany:

Epiphanies get a bad rap in the world of literature. Writers bemoan how overused and trite this literary device has become. Need a tidy way to tie-up the loose ends of your short story? Give your protagonist an epiphany! Need to impart some existential meaning to bridge the personal-universal gap in your memoir? Epiphany! [Keep reading this review....]

Intro to Literary Journals

Awhile back I mentioned literary journals in my post about alternatives to getting an MFA in writing. I included them in my list of things to seek out and pay attention to.

Literary journals! Read them, subscribe to them, and send your work to them. Volunteer with them. If you don't know much about lit journals (I didn't just a few years ago), check out NewPages.com to get the lay of the land.

What are lit journals? Basically they're periodically published collections of writing, often supported by a university, though not always. Think of them as magazines of well-written prose and poetry, sometimes with photography and art. They may contain essays, short stories, poems, and interviews. You can probably find at least a few of them lurking in the magazine racks of your local mega-bookstore. I've spotted The Paris Review and Granta at mine, but there are hundreds more! (If you have a well-curated local bookstore you may have a better selection available.) Magazines such as The Sun and Orion feel a bit more magaziney than lit-journaly to me, but they are definitely closer to lit journal status than a magazine such as Good Housekeeping. (These aren't judgement calls, just comparisons to help give you an idea of what a lit journal is.)

Lit journals are perhaps the best-kept secret of the publishing world. This is a shame, because it means that the general public has no idea they even exist. If I told my brother that I was published in The Iowa Review, he would probably congratulate me and then (secretly) think, "Iowa? What the hell's in Iowa? What did she write about? Corn and cows? That doesn't sound very impressive." But if I told my friends from grad school I'd been published there, they would probably congratulate me and then (secretly) think, "The Iowa Review! Bitch! I wanna be in The Iowa Review!"

(For the record, I have not [yet] been published in The Iowa Review. And my friends probably wouldn't really call me a bitch.)

The point is this: What is impressive to other writers may be absolutely meaningless to the general public. But then, this is the way in most fields. I'm sure carpenters and chefs have their own personal milestones, the names of which would impress others in their profession while I'd be clueless as to their importance and clout.

Before grad school I really knew almost nothing about literary journals. I had heard of their existence, but I didn't know what a big part of a writer's life they could (probably should) be. I had no idea I'd end up with lists of them to check out and a spreadsheet to track my submissions to them. Long before authors have a book published (and long after, actually), they usually submit their work to lit journals, and if they're persistent and lucky, they get published in one and then another and then another. If you look at a published collection of essays or short stories, you will probably see that the author has acknowledged the journals that first published some of the pieces. Even excerpts of memoirs and novels can be first published in journals.

In an effort to help spread the gospel of literary journals, I'm starting a new series about them here in The Word Cellar. I'll offer some tips on submitting to journals and review some of the many I have stacked around my house.

Tomorrow I'll link to my first review, which I did as a guest post for Patrick over at The Artist's Road. Patrick is doing a series of journal reviews as well, and we'll be linking back and forth every so often so you can get a feel for a variety of journals.

If you have questions about journals or would like to see me review a particular publication, please let me know.