Happy 130th birthday, Virginia Woolf! I’m commemorating the occasion in two ways.
First, Killing the Angel, a literary magazine inspired by one of Woolf’s speeches-turned-essays, is now accepting submissions. Check out submission guidelines and information by clicking here.
Additionally, The Christian Science Monitor has published another one of my pieces, “How to Date Virginia Woolf,” in today’s Chapter & Verse blog. I hope you enjoy it.
About two years ago, I found myself in a used bookstore in London. A book titled Leonard Woolf, by Victoria Glendinning, caught my eye. I was in the UK following a passion for Virginia Woolf, and so I bought the book because I thought it might supplement my study of her. The novel sat for the past two years on my shelf, and only this week did I finally feel compelled to pick it up and begin reading.
I didn’t expect the biography of Virginia’s husband to expose so much to me about Virginia herself. Reading about his life before her, his life with her, and his life after her gave me a new and somewhat unsettling context to everything I know about Virginia Woolf. While her inspirational diaries and letters often focus on writing and womanhood, I found some of her personal views on other topics to be elitist and snobbish, and I found myself having a hard time believing someone that has been such a source of inspiration to me–as a woman, a writer, and a human being–could have such different opinions from me when it comes to other facets of life.
Another surprising fact I learned was that within the first year of Virginia’s death, Leonard became romantically involved with another (married!) woman, Trekkie Parsons. (Yup. Trekkie. I can’t say it out loud without laughing.) Apparently, he stayed devoted to her for the last thirty-some years of his life. He wrote to her that she was the best thing that ever happened to him. This, too, surprised me. I always thought Virginia was the great love of Leonard’s life, and that he spent his surviving years working to preserve her place in literary history. It is a romantic image that might have some truth, but might also be just that–an image we carry in our minds, promoted by popular representations of the Woolfs years later. After all, it’s much more romantic to think Romeo and Juliet were the love of each other’s lives than to remember that in Act One, Romeo swears up and down that Rosaline is the only girl for him.
It’s an important lesson to remember: Our heroes, like all humans, are fallible. We can admire their strengths and allow them to inspire us, but we shouldn’t put them on pedestals so high that we forget they are humans with flaws. If we remember that, we can continue to learn from our heroes without sacrificing critical thinking–and thinking for ourselves.
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I’m beyond excited to announce that my literary magazine has received enough funding through my Kickstarter campaign to create and launch a first issue! Thank you to everyone for your support and enthusiasm for this project. Now the real work can begin! I will be putting out an official call for submissions by the end of January. Stay tuned!
Whether it’s 2011 in a class I’m teaching, 2000 in a class I’m attending, or 1963 in a class Bruce McAllister was attending, the question surfaces.
“Are we supposed to be looking for deeper meaning in the book? How do you know the author meant this to be a symbol for something else?”
The Paris Review blogged about the survey young McAllister, determined to prove his English teacher wrong, sent to 150 famous authors. The survey centered around the question: “Do you consciously place symbols in your work to be discovered?”
McAllister got many replies from writers like Saul Bellow, Jack Kerouac, and Ray Bradbury. Some responses he received:
Norman Mailer: “The best symbols in a novel are those you become aware of only after you finish the work.”
John Updike: Do you consciously place symbols in your work? “Yes.” Do you subconsciously place symbols in your work? “Yes. I have no method; there is no method in writing fiction–you don’t seem to understand.”
Ralph Ellison: “Symbolism arises out of action and functions best in fiction when it does so. Once a writer is conscious of the implicit symbolism which arise in the course of a narrative, he may take advantage of them and consciously manipulate them as a further resource of his art. Symbols which are imposed upon fiction from the outside tend to leave the reader dissatisfied by making him aware of that something extraneous has been added.”
I see three lessons in this addition to literary history. First, the world of writing is rarely cut-and-dried; as The Paris Review puts it, “[t]he answers to the questionnaires were as varied as the writers themselves.” Second, authors often care about paying it forward. Many of the writers’ responses come from a position of mentorship, the desire to share knowledge with a fledgling of their field and to help him grow. I can recall times when I’ve reached out to authors for advice and been pleasantly surprised by the results: Andrea Seigel and Caryl Phillips come to mind. Acknowledgement from literary superstars is hugely encouraging for writers just starting out. Third, it never hurts to question. McAllister probably had to write his paper on symbolism in The Scarlet Letter regardless of what Ayn Rand thought, but he was all the more educated for reflecting on the purpose of the exercise.
Thanks to the bountiful generosity of friends, family, and even a few strangers, we are now almost SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of the way to funding my Killing the Angel Kickstarter goal! Seventy-five percent. Knowing that so many people believe in this project that they are willing to contribute makes me incredibly happy. Thank you so much for giving to help make my vision a reality… and if you haven’t donated, here are some reasons why you should go to my Killing the Angel pledge page and pledge today!
1. Everyone who contributes gets a free contributor copy of our first issue. That’s right, whether you donate $1 or $100, you’ll get a free copy of the mag! Of course, there are also lots of other incentives for each donation level.
2. All the cool kids are already doing it.
3. Kickstarter makes donating fast and easy. Do your good deed in less than five minutes.
4. As a chef said recently on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives: ”It’s a fine line between success and disaster.” My seventy-five percent will become zero percent if I don’t meet my $2,000 goal by midnight on December 24.
5. Karma!
I can’t think of a better Christmas present than waking up on December 25 knowing that I have the resources to spend 2012 creating this literary magazine. Thank you so much to those of you that believe in my vision, and thank you to those that will donate before the 24th to help push me toward the finish line.
Too much tryptophan from the holiday weekend making your writing muscles a little weak? Tighten them back up with this bank of prompts from Writer’s Digest.
A sampling of the ones I like:
- A picture on your mantle unexpectedly falls and crashes to the floor. As you go to pick it up, you notice a note hidden behind the picture. The message is from the future—and written by you. It instructs you to do something important. What does it say?
- You had planned to attend a friend’s birthday party and plugged her address into your GPS system, but the system guided you to somewhere else. Oddly enough, there was a man waiting for you at this mysterious place. “Sorry I had to rig your GPS, but this is urgent,” said the person.
- You get into work and find that your boss has left a voicemail message on your phone. The message is urgent. Though, what’s peculiar is that the message is not work related. Write this scene.
Thinking about a career change? Get the real scoop from Job Talk NJ, a new blog dedicated to interviewing professionals from different industries. The woman behind this project is Suzanne Kaplan, a fellow teacher and writer. If you work in an interesting field (so far, the first two interviews are from a writer and a chef), reach out to Suzanne, and maybe you’ll be the next featured professional!
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a writing conference in New York that featured many industry professionals–agents, editors, and writers. It was awesome. Here are a few of the things I learned:
1. Change the font of a document you want to edit for spelling. Even though the words are the same, the visual change will help you catch mistakes you might gloss over otherwise.
2. Never start a book with the protagonist waking up in the morning. Snooze.
3. Frankfurt and London have two of the biggest book fairs in the world.
4. In earlier times, an agent could get a sense of a writer’s style from his query letter. Now, due to the (disturbing) trend of writers hiring marketing services to write their letters, agents have become skeptical of the query’s authenticity.
5. Finding an agent is the first step on the very long road from manuscript to bookstore. One writer said her book was rejected by twenty-six editors before finding a home–and her book has done very well since then. Strength and courage are required at every step of this process.
6. Subscribe to and read as many literary magazines as possible.
7. Blunt feedback might hurt to hear, but it’s ultimately for the best.
8. The query letter is an art form to be mastered in and of itself.
9. If you want to publish a collection of short stories, you more or less have two options. 1) Publish at least half of the stories first in prominent magazines and journals, or 2) Write stories that can stand alone but also read like a novel (like Ms. Hempel Chronicles or Olive Kitteridge).
10. Industry professionals care about nurturing the careers of emerging writers. They are eager to find fresh talent and make many writerly dreams come true. Good news for us, MFA class of 2010!
Great news: I’ve reached 25% of my Kickstarter goal to fund the production of my literary magazine! To honor this milestone, here are ten reasons why you (yes, YOU!) should consider donating to Killing the Angel magazine.
1. Because local art is awesome art.
2. Sweet contributor rewards (brand merchandise, Virginia Woolf books, free copies of the magazine…).
3. I’m planning on paying writers stipends for contributing. None of this “no pay, but great clips/exposure!” stuff.
4. Read the essay by Virginia Woolf that started it all. I’ll wait. …. Okay, so now you see why this concept has to be brought to life.
5. Two words: novella serialization.
6. I’m already 25% of the way there, but if I don’t get to 100% of my goal, I don’t get any of it (oh, Kickstarter…). Help me make it all the way!
7. ”I just spent $30 on tickets to see the worst movie ever! What a waste of money.” ”Oh yeah? I just donated $30 to Killing the Angel.” ”Man! I should have done that instead.”
8. You know how everyone always wants to know about That Band before it gets to the Top 40 list? It’s just as cool to get in on the ground floor with literary magazines.
9. You’ll have the satisfaction of knowing you’ve improved the lives of lit nerds everywhere.
10. Some of the coolest people I know have already donated–why not follow suit by clicking here and pledging?
To everyone that already donated–thank you so much for supporting and believing in my vision. It means the world to me. I’m looking forward to the day when I can send you the finished product!
This month’s The Writer magazine featured the website Better Book Titles, a place where you can more accurately rename a book on its original cover art. Some of my favorites:
Allen Ginsberg’s Collected Poems: TMI
Dr. Seuss’s Oh! The Places You’ll Go!: Last Minute Graduation Gift
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men: Never Flirt With Puppy Killers
Antoine St. Exupery’s The Little Prince: Dating a Flower Feels Very One-Sided
Lois Duncan’s Killing Mr. Griffin: A Good Case for Grade Inflation
Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex: How I Met Your Mother
Read the whole list here!
