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Advice to Writers – You’re A Boxer

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You’re a boxer. Your job is to get punched in the face and keep swinging. It’s easy for anybody to say, “I wrote five scripts. None of them sold. I gave it my best shot. I’m moving back to Chicago.” You can’t do that. If you want a career in Hollywood, you can’t fail. You can quit, which most people do when they don’t achieve success as quickly as they’d like, but you can’t fail. There are as many opportunities as you can create for yourself. You can write a script a day, every day, for your whole life, if you’re that motivated.

ADAM RIFKIN (Quote reblogged from AdviceToWriters – Advice to Writers – You’re A Boxer.)

stubborn little me, at three

This quote touched a nerve for me. Many years ago I wanted a child and had pretty much exhausted all attempts to have one the usual way. Then infertility treatment failed. At least, what we could afford to pursue failed. My husband is older than I am and we weren’t eligible for adoption agencies. Then I learned about private adoption. Then our first adoption failed, at the hospital. Devastating.

But this is what I realized: I couldn’t fail. I was not willing to give up being a mother. “Not in this lifetime maybe,” a friend counseled me. I got mad. Bullshit, I thought. In this lifetime! We put our hearts out there again, and our oldest daughters, twins, appeared. Six years later, their sister showed up.

My daughters may drive me crazy (some days), but I never regret being their mom.

That’s how I’m going to pursue this writing gig, this new, full-time writing gig. I can’t fail.  “There are as many opportunities as you can create for yourself.”

Day 28: Translation

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Here’s a thumbnail portrait of today’s process…

I tried to take seriously Chris Jarmick’s assignment for day 28, to “translate” a poem into English from a language I don’t know. I found a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and printed it out. I carried it around. I don’t know German, but I thought I could make out a few of the words. I opened my poetry book and copied out the poem in longhand. It’s a longish poem (“Erlkoenig” is the title, I think) and I thought I would copy only a stanza or two, but I ended up copying the whole thing. Then…for a long time…I stared at it. Then, I wrote this (please excuse the lack of cool accent marks):

Resisting Translation

The assignment is to translate a poem into English
from a language I don’t know–
and knowing so little of languages other than my own,
it seems an easy enough assignment.

“Translate,” in smart quotes, which must mean,
“not really translate,” though I can guess
that Nacht und Wind 
means Night and Wind. (Is that cheating?)

Assignments, I tell my students, are about
getting out of our accountant, linear left brains
and into our creative, more imaginative
right brains, into what poets count our better half.

But aren’t I beyond assignments, beyond
all that sturm und drang, not to mention the Nacht
und Wind? No knave or knabe, not I.
And spat (which I looked up) has nothing to do with spitting,

not even a spitting wind. Mein Vater, my father,
let me off the hook of this difficulty,
let me mutter and growl in my own tongue,
write (whatever it might mean) birgst du so bang. 

Day 4: Sort of a Momentous Day

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This morning — around 10:00 — I went to Staples and printed out my novel manuscript. I meant to take it home and give it to my beloved (he’s my final proofreader), but instead I went to Barnes & Noble and started reading. I have been reading all day! It’s good, I think it’s good. But I also finally — FINALLY — figured out my character Hannah and how she contrasts (and doesn’t merely mirror) the main character. So I had lots of little changes. And I’m almost all the way through. I’m so happy!

Luckily (in terms of my poetry goals), early this morning I spent some time with day 4’s NaPoWriMo assignment from POETRY IS EVERYTHING. I haven’t returned to it to try to make it better, and as it is almost 9 p.m. and I’m exhausted, I’m just going to post it, as is.  Shitty first draft.

I hope that you’re writing, too. Even just scribbling. It’s all good.

PROMPT for April 4th 2014: Bus Stop

Think about a bus stop. You might write about the place, or make observations about people at the Bus Stop. Does it have a specific meaning you might want to try and convey? Can you imagine a Bus Stop experience (realistic or not) that would inspire a poem? Write it.

For another prompt or challenge be sure to check out Maureen Thorsen’s NaPoWriMo site where you’ll find prompts, challenges, comments, and information on all things NaPoWriMo.

Riding the Bus

An early bottle (4 a.m.), then an hour
on the dissertation. Mornings
I left the house in the dark
before my babies woke,
drove to the bus stop and stood in line
with the other commuters. Mounted the steps,
found a seat. I liked to sit by a window,
lean my head against it, close
my eyes. I smelled of milk,
of the ammonia of the diaper pail.

At 11:30, my class taught, office hour kept, an hour (more)
of writing, I was on the bus again,
reading tomorrow’s lesson and student papers.
At the bus stop, my husband waited, babies
buckled into the back seat
of the station wagon. He took my car
and left for his teaching job. I drove our daughters home,
unbuckled, unzipped. Diapers changed,
lunch doled out, naptime beckoning.

Housework beckoned, too. Kitchen to clean,
laundry (always diapers). I could have spent
those two hours of slumber
grading papers, or writing—
the unbiddable mountain of pages calling.

It was not unlike waiting in line at the bus stop–
what does one do but what the others do?
Inspired by the closed eyes of my drowsing babies,
the little fists propped against their mouths,
I folded, too. I crawled into my bed,
curled into a ball. I smelled of milk
and ammonia. I slept.

Any Excuse to Write

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It’s Poetry Month! I am accepting the challenge to write one-bad-poem a day for 30 days.  Well, the challenge is to write a poem, but calling it “one bad poem” makes me feel better about offering whatever I happen to come up with. If you’d like to play along, you can find prompts all over the Internet. I picked up mine from POETRY IS EVERYTHING. The prompt for today was harlequin. 

You thought the fool a fine tarot for marriage
framed the print to hang in our first kitchen
by then too late for me to read the signs
queen of cups capable of anything as I well knew
hidden the next 30 years. A friend dared me
to have my cards read and I never told you
knowing you would disapprove, would frown and
gyrate, put the red hat on and dance
not like finding the money spent, like even less
my fondness for what you call rubbish
and there’s that fool still presiding in our kitchen
the harlequin nose turned up, jangle
of spangled arms at everything I’m cooking up.