Sure, I’m in!

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In 2018 I did not stick to my resolve to blog weekly, but I’m still looking for some ways to “reboot” the blog (and other writing stuff) this coming year. So this blogging challenge for 2x monthly sounds like the ticket.  Thanks to poet Kelli Russell Agodon over at the Book of Kells for the invitation. Twice a month? Easy-peasy. Thanks also to Dave Bonta at Via Negativa for getting the whole thing rolling.

Yeah. I’m in.

I have some other ideas, too (which I’ll be posting about very very soon). One will be my re-launch of the Writing the Circle series (if you’re a subscriber, look for that New Year’s Day-ish). I’m also planning (for reals this time) to teach an on-ground poetry class.

How did 2018 shape up? Well, you’ve been here with me. I have a new poetry book, Body My House, which amazes me (I must admit) on multiple levels (particularly that it didn’t exist at all in 2017, and by June, it was published!).

My BIG writing goal for the second half of 2018 has been kind of on the down low (if that means what I think it means): to finish a complete draft of my mystery novel and, ta da (drum roll please), I have almost done it. (How rough can a rough draft be?) In any case, I have enough to begin revising on schedule. Considering everything else that popped up in my life this year, I’m pretty happy.

If you’re a blogger and would like to join the challenge, pop over to Kelli’s blog and sign up!

Help Is Available

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I just turned in my grades for fall quarter 2018! Whew — that’s over! (Woo hoo!)

I don’t know what I was thinking when I signed up to teach two courses this fall. Oh, yes, I do know. I was feeling a very evil pinch of “empty-nestitis” (just made up that word), and I was also feeling that my darling mother was going to outlive me. So if my baby (19 years old) didn’t need me, and Mom didn’t need me to be constantly hovering, then I may as well go back to work. That’s what I was thinking.

When I first contacted the college, in August, I was thinking that I’d just teach 2 classes per quarter for a few years — get my health insurance paid again — earn a little income — etc. Then, as you know, the universe had a big ol’ laugh at me.

My mother died.

And even though I adored the majority of my students and drew a lot of energy from them, even though I’m grateful to them for being a much-needed distraction from everything else, I discovered that I really, really do not have time to trek up to north Everett every day to teach freshman composition.

To borrow a bit from Emily Dickinson’s lexicon, “My business is to write.”

As I graded this last set of papers — an assignment intended as a light-hearted research paper requiring students to 1) talk to a reference librarian, 2) interview a parent or other person from a previous generation, 3) quote and use in-text citations, and 4) create a Works Cited page a la MLA guidelines — I was amazed at how many students had decided to do the bare minimum.

I get that they perhaps hadn’t written this sort of paper before, or recently, but — hey — I was right here! I kept telling them how many hours I was at my desk every afternoon. I arranged to have specific hours available to meet with them. I gave them models to look at. I went over the models in great (excruciating) detail.

Why would a student decide to fake a bibliography or omit it altogether, or do 2 sources (when they were to have 5), or not use a single quotation in a paper that was all about learning how to use sources and quote from them? Why would they give up…

WHEN I OFFERED AGAIN AND AGAIN TO WORK WITH THEM INDIVIDUALLY AND GIVE THEM ALL THE HELP THEY NEEDED?

In truth? I think it is really, really human of us to go it alone, to get too busy or to believe we’re too busy to ask for help, to throw in the towel, to tell ourselves it’s impossible……to forge our way forward step by painful, bleeding step……when all the time there’s a bus pulled up at the corner, just waiting to offer a ride.

I do it, too.

This isn’t a post for pitching my services, just a reminder — help is available! Look around! Ask! (It’s a reminder for me, too, of course.)

And, should you want help from me, you know how to get it.

Meanwhile,  I hope you write.

Bethany

[photos from pixabay.com]

The Poetry Grid in Seattle

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Last year my editor at Goldfish, Koon Woon, sent me this link–to a 2017 PBS news story about poetry in Seattle. I recently ran across it while cleaning up my in-box, and I wanted to share it.

“Navigating Seattle’s Ever-Evolving Streets Through Poetry”

 

 

 

 

 

Why do I blog?

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Two of my girls dragged me to our discount theater last night to see A Simple Favor. It stars Anna Kendrick–they fell in love with her during her Pitch Perfect days–and my youngest daughter has seen A Simple Favor five times. They said I had to see it.

It was a strange movie, and strangely entertaining.

But among other, jazzier plot points, Kendrick’s character has a vlog that goes viral and hits its one-millionth follower.

This gave me pause. A million followers?

I have 40 followers.

I woke up this morning, thinking I should delete my blog and go do other things (which I largely do, anyway). And then I remembered a video I saw recently about cows, about (specifically) how hard it is to impress a cow. (If I could find it, I’d post a link here…but maybe someone deleted the video when they realized the cows wouldn’t care?)

In the interest of full disclosure, the cow video got me because I’ve been writing a poem about cows.

But, more to the point, I thought it was time to revisit “why I blog,” and why I will probably keep blogging. So–

  1. I started blogging as a kind of commonplace book, a place to post quotations and links that I wanted to be able to find again.
  2. I started blogging because writing has taught me so much, and I thought I would enjoy sharing what I’ve learned with my writer friends.
  3. A few people–a cousin and my friend Janet B., for two examples–wanted me to share poems (this, when I was writing a poem a day), and it seemed a blog would be a good way to do that.
  4. Once I started blogging I discovered that–for whatever reason–I don’t get all uptight and perfection-y about writing blogposts. I just type stuff and go over it a couple times for errors and post. It reminds me of showing up to teach at the college–ready or not, here it is.
  5. For a new reason, I recently made a commitment to blog about my journey through The Circle, and I’ve yet to carry out that commitment.

And, just for good measure, here’s a quote that I came across today that definitely applies:

You must once and for all give up being worried about successes and failures. Don’t let that concern you. It’s your duty to go on working steadily day by day, quite steadily, to be prepared for mistakes, which are inevitable, and for failures.  -ANTON CHEKHOV (found on Advice to Writers)