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Tag Archives: writing

Ups, downs, etc.

26 Tuesday Jul 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, learning, Random, writing

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learning goals, querying literary agents, self-regulation, willpower, writing

I stumbled on a couple of concepts that deserve mulling: performance goals vs. learning goals, described by Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck, and willpower as emotion, described by Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto.

Dweck’s work notes that learning goals help us work beyond mistakes and failure while performance goals can stop us before our efforts can lead to improved outcomes.

Inzlicht’s research, or my understanding of it, suggests that willpower comes and goes, much like happiness, anger, etc.

This week, I’ll keep learning goals in mind, as I work on the things that have challenged me lately (writing a successful query letter to an agent, for example). Also this week, I’ll recognize that in the face of ebbing willpower (sometimes it’s really challenging to reach for the fizzy water and not the glass of wine), there are strategies to deploy and keep me on track until the willpower circles back around. In other words, not a failure of character, just the normal cycling of my feelings.

For help with the agent querying, I’m delving into the great advice of agent Janet Reid, whose web site is really helpful and whose Query Shark blog is harsh but good education.

Place matters

12 Thursday May 2022

Posted by supalmer in Random, Retro reads, Story, writing

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describing place, Willa Cather, writing

willcather.org

I’m embedded in “The Essential Willa Cather Collection” and revisiting my profound appreciation for her work. Cather wrote in the early part of the 20th century, and among many accolades her novel “One of Ours” received a Pulitzer Prize in 1923. I had previously read her classic “My Antonia” but I wasn’t familiar with her other books, short stories and essays.

This collection includes many short stories, essays and critiques and her first novel, “Alexander’s Bridge,” as well as “My Antonia.” Cather is known for bringing alive the Nebraska prairie and the immigrants who lived there at the turn of the century. I am in awe of her ability to shape mood through descriptions of place.

Here’s just a bit from “Alexander’s Bridge” where Cather is describing Chestnut Street in Boston: “Wilson was standing quite still, contemplating with a whimsical smile the slanting street with its worn paving, its irregular, gravely colored houses and the row of naked trees on which the thin sunlight was still shining.”

I hadn’t read any of her short stories until now and just finished “On the Divide,” published in a shortlived magazine The Mahogany Tree in 1892. It’s an odd, rich story that does that thing at the end that some authors manage. With one last sentence, the entire story is perfectly knit.

A gifted sister

26 Tuesday Apr 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Random, writing

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art, Betsy James, creativity, Nedra Matteucci Gallery, writing

Seven Cities of Gold: Wings, Artist Betsy James

My good friend Chris James and I have known each other 40 years, and while I knew he had a gifted sister — Betsy James, both an author and an artist — I hadn’t ever seen her work until we visited the Nedra Matteucci Gallery in Santa Fe this month. Goodness me.

I just felt drawn into her work, which captures a magical nexus of sky/land/humans. Oh and birds.

Then I checked her web site and now I’m pulled into her books. Currently reading “Roadsouls.” It’s still early days, but there is something a little Ursula-Le-Guin Earthsea-ish about this book.

Her webpage has some fine observations about creativity. I particularly liked this bit about tithing.

Everybody needs an editor

06 Thursday Jan 2022

Posted by supalmer in creativity, Story, writing

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daily practice, editing, writing

I wrote a farewell piece to a chef and a restaurant that closed at the end of the year. The place is just a few blocks from where I live. Craig and I probably ate there once a week over the last five years. Cozy ambiance, friendly staff, amazingly delicious food: It was hard to say goodbye.

Eugene’s scrappy weekly (slogan: We’ve got issues) published the piece, and it got a fine edit from Camilla Mortensen.

Lessons:

  1. Everybody needs an editor.
  2. I am longwinded at the beginning, essentially clearing my throat with way more wordage than actually needed.

My writing group can also be good for this reminder. At our last meeting, the first 600 or so words of a short story I’m working on did not pass muster. But the writing group can be ignored. (What the heck do these veteran and well-published writers know?) The editor of an actual publication cannot be. I confess I mentally harrumphed at Camilla’s notes, but once I made the changes I agreed with her. So, um, on that short story…back to the drawing board.

Being edited also reminds me of the overlap between beginner’s mind, where we are at play, and expert’s mind, where we employ the skills we’ve honed while at play.

Photo above by writer/editor/photographer/friend Bob Keefer. (If you don’t know Bob’s work, do yourself a favor and check out his web site.)

Beginner’s mind, learner’s mind, expert’s mind

06 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by supalmer in Random

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inspiration, writing

Chinese silk embroidery from the Jordan Schnitzer Museum collection/Susan Palmer

I started the morning thinking about beginner’s mind, what it means, how to achieve it. I wondered if there were research about the efficacy of this practice and typed into the Google search engine “beginner’s mind,” limiting my search to sites with a .gov address. Surprisingly, the first thing listed was not research but an essay by a physician about the value of bringing “beginner’s mind” to patient encounters. I had been thinking about it from a different perspective, being a learner of something new, not an expert using the practice of beginner’s mind to inform my work. But I like this redirect.

I’ll use it today, a writing day for me.

The image above is an example of stunning embroidery practiced by Chinese textile artists. Despite its age, about 170 years, it’s vibrant, intricate, alive. Part of the Jordan Schnitzer’s Museum of Art collection, I can’t help but think the artist brought beginner’s mind to what is a deeply technical challenge. I know a little, a very little, about this kind of embroidery, because I’ve been practicing it for a couple of years. I’m part way through a Trish Burr design, and this practice, currently known as thread painting, uses single strands of thread (the Chinese used silk, but today, cotton is also commonly used), to create these lush images. The stitches, essentially straight lines of less than 1/8 inch to 1/2 inch long, result in the most opulent look.

Susan Palmer

My little owl is a work in progress, and I would say that rather than being in beginner’s mind, I’m more in learner’s mind. I wonder if it’s possible to hold a mutual awareness.

Power of self knowledge

29 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by supalmer in Random, Story, writing

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got-done list, NaNoWriMo, slow work, writing

Every year when November rolls around, I have this internal argument that goes like this: I will jump in and do “National Novel Writing Month.” I will finish my novel. Sure I have 40,000 or 60,000 words to go but no problem! I can do it. Then the other side of my brain, says, Hold on there, sister. When it comes to writing you’re a walker, not a sprinter. I am ever-so-slightly oriented toward procrastination and pondering NaNoWriMo always gives me this energy jolt of thinking I can make up for time lost to day-dreaming, dancing, drawing and other things that keep me from the keyboard. I have done NaNoWriMo at least once. I have started NaNoWriMo at least twice. I would not dissuade others from trying it, and it is especially useful for those who struggle to get anything down on the page. But I do better mentally as the tortoise not the hare. And I am happily plodding along with my current project. This month, I wrote 5,000 words. I did not have the adrenaline rush that can come with a massive word-dump. But I also had some great thinking time. There are many people extolling the virtue of more deliberative processes (examples here and here). Slow work is my current comfort zone. So if you are someone who got buzzed on NaNoWriMo but didn’t get as far as you dreamed you would, take a moment to be grateful for the work you did do. Add a little cheery note to your “got done” list and keep on keepin’ on.

A story about kids for adults

17 Wednesday Nov 2021

Posted by supalmer in Retro reads, writing

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author, good reads, westerns, writing

http://www.louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm

Western author Louis L’Amour, wrote a really fine book with two children as the protagonists. “Down the Long Hills,” published in 1968, won a Golden Spur award and I don’t know how his publisher marketed this book, but the cover design is more classic western than middle-grade reader. I stumbled on it in the 1980s and it’s one of those classics I like to re-read. I sometimes wonder about these genre labels focused on age, how much they help and how much they hinder those of us looking for the next good read.

The missing years

15 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by supalmer in Random

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change, writing

I really haven’t just been lying around with the lovely Kate on my lap for the last eight years, although that would have been a worthy use of my time. Nope. Quit my newspapering job. Got hired to help a Eugene nonprofit expand its mission around the country. Got divorced. Got married. Remodeled a house. Finished a novel. Wrote another novel. And rediscovered Exquisite Now. In coming days, I’ll fill in some of the blanks of the last few years. Love to hear from others who left their blog behind, missed it and came back. Specifically, how are you different? Thanks for any sharing.

Disintermediate this!

05 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by supalmer in Random, Story, What they said

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electronic publishing, good quote, writing

Here‘s a succinct little essay on electronic publishing from the Atlantic, (thank you Alan Jacobs) that I love not only for its respect for the value of copy editors, but also because it introduced me to this great quote from Colorado College librarian Steve Lawson: “Publishers are scared that the Internet is going to disintermediate their asses into the dustbin of history, and the best response that many of them have come up with is to express their fear through hatred.”

Don’t know about that, but I do know that I will now be spending an inordinate amount of time trying to find a way to use “disintermediate their asses” in a conversation.

Those who love, teach

03 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by supalmer in Random, Story, What they said

≈ 6 Comments

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mentors, professors, teaching, Utah State University, writing

Writing is easy. You just open up a vein and bleed onto the page.

I’m paragraphing Moyle Q. Rice, an unparalleled professor at Utah State University who taught many things but who taught creative writing with passion and heart.   I thought of him this week because someone reminded me that I have been making my living with words for 28 years now.

When I stumbled — hopeful and stupid — into his creative writing class so many years ago , he could well have quashed any glimmer of hope I had about writing.  I was terrible. I still remember the red pen notes he wrote on my short stories. The first one said: “Don’t make a crusade of it, but brush up on the rules of punctuation.”

Isn’t that generous and helpful? As were all his red-ink notes. I looked forward to reading them because he was encouraging and direct. There are some  who would take great pains to circle every comma-spliced sentence and misused semicolon, every overindulgent exclamation point and unfortunately deployed elipsis. Moyle, with his fey smile, had no interest in crushing souls.

He saw something in me and nursed it along, not as professor to student, but as reader to writer. He took his students seriously, although he was funny and ironic and took very little in life seriously. He nudged me toward the best in myself.

And he wasn’t the only one. USU in the those years harbored another brilliant soul, Kenneth Brewer who wrote and taught poetry and who knew that meaning is slippery and that words paired in certain ways could change everything.

I did not know before I took classes from Kenneth Brewer that trees could speak of heartbreak and birds could speak of leaving and that water could tear down the fabric of the soul.  As a poet, he was a master of evoking mood in his own writing with nary an emotion mentioned and he was as nuanced in his teaching. He would hold back when you were broken, but push you hard when you were slacking.

They didn’t know, and neither did I, that I would become a journalist. But they laid the foundation. They gave me the tools. You wouldn’t necessarily think that poetry and creative writing come into play in journalism. But they do. The art of writing headlines corresponds with poetry. Meter and line length matter. And narrative arc matters in a news story just as it does in fiction.

Ken and Moyle have moved on to other realms.  I miss them. And I salute all the teachers/professors/mentors out there who understand how to keep a student’s dreams alive, while giving them the tools to grow. It’s difficult, beautiful, worthy work.

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