Places for Writers: Calls for Submissions

If you don’t know Places for Writers, do take a look. It’s a Canadian site that links to publishers and writers’ resources. It also lists calls for submissions by journals, magazines, and other publications. Some pay, some don’t. Some are prestigious, some are emerging. But visiting the site might give you hope on a day when you feel like you’re writing for no one and for no purpose. It may remind you that, even in your solitude in front of your notebook or computer screen, you are still part of a literary community.

Here’s a sampling of recent calls (with upcoming deadlines) for essays and creative nonfiction:

CALYX A Journal of Art and Literature by Women (US) is accepting submissions of poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction. Deadline: December 31, 2010.

Paragon, Memorial University’s student-run literary press, is accepting submissions for their fourth issue. Publishes poetry (max 3) and fiction/creative nonfiction (2000 words max). Deadline: January 1, 2011.

Vox Humana Literary Journal, an international literary venue, is accepting short fiction, poetry, and critical essay submissions for its Spring 2011 issue. Favours work related to the Middle-East — particularly Israel and Palestine.

Happy writing, happy submitting.

[Photo: duluoz cats]

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Writing in a Time of Pestilence and Pain: A Few Thoughts in Anticipation of American Thanksgiving

La varicelle, as it’s called around these parts, or chicken pox to us English speakers. Our doctor confirmed it this morning. Despite my son’s vaccine against it, the virus has taken hold, though perhaps not as firmly as it might have otherwise.

As I write, my red-spotted boy colours beside me with his new markers, picked up at the pharmacy with his prescription. There’s nothing like sickness to make you appreciate your good health and the time you have to work under more normal circumstances. The coughing and sneezing of the past few weeks have been a good reminder to me that, when the body fails, a life of the mind is hard to sustain.

If I want my mind to function, I have to honour my body.

I’ve always had a bad back, and if I write for too long without taking the time to go to my yoga classes, it isn’t long before the pain takes over and saps all my attention. I learned this the hard way some ten years ago, when I sat at my desk from dawn till dusk, seven days a week, five weeks in a row, to finish my dissertation. By the end of it, I could barely walk. Poor me.

But recently, I’ve been trying to think about my back pain differently. I’ve started thinking of it as a gift.

I inherited my bad back from my father, who in turn got it from his mother. And when I speak to my cousins and aunts, we are all surprised hear that we have the same issue. Back pain binds us together in the present, but it also gives us a link to the past – to the grandmother who connects us all, and who inevitably had a whole different relationship to pain.

The fact is that my back pain is but a shadow of what my grandmother went through. Whereas I have the luxury of taking a break and heading to yoga class when I feel my muscles acting up, my grandmother had no such choice. Whereas I have the time to think about this pain, to manage it, and to turn it into a text if I can find the right words, my grandmother had to grit her teeth and keep going.

There were calves to feed, cows to milk, logs to chop, and there was no rest for her aching back. On the farm where she worked (for nothing), in a place she had been exiled to against her will, back pain would have meant something very different to her: pure suffering and an external manifestation of what must have been happening inside her.

This coming weekend (as long as the pox allow – our doctor is hopeful), my son and I will travel to meet with my cousins, their children, and my aunt. Darius, who travelled with me to Siberia to find my grandmother’s village, will come up from San Francisco to meet us on his holiday weekend, and has planned a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner for the occasion.

As I raise my glass to toast the harvest and the gathering of my grandmother’s children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren for the purpose of hearing stories about and looking at pictures of the place she was exiled, I will remember my minor annoyances. And I will be thankful for the pox and the pain.

Because my trials are so small, I know I am blessed. In this troublesome back of mine, I will always carry of piece of my grandmother.

[Photo: Sara Björk]

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Banff Centre – Self-Directed Residency Deadline

As you know, several years ago I spent a month at the Banff Centre for the Arts. I took part in its Literary Journalism program, and the experience continues to resonate with me today. It’s where I conceived of my recent essay, Pregnant Pause.

I’m a huge supporter of the Centre and encourage artists and writers to consider taking part in their programming in any capacity. Below is a link to the Centre’s self-directed residency for any of you who need a place to begin, make headway on, or finish that piece of writing that needs a final push to make its way off your desk.

The deadline’s coming up fast:

Self-directed Writing Residency (Winter)
www.banffcentre.ca/programs/residency
Program dates: Minimum of three days between January 4 and March 31, 2011
Application deadline: November 26, 2010

[Photo: Heather]

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Alternate Economies and a Literary Experiment: An Invitation to Help Me with an Essay Project

Yesterday I received a letter in the mail from a really funky writer friend of mine in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It contained an invitation to be part of an “informal book club” project. The letter asked me to send one already-read book to a designated recipient, and to send six more such letters to others, inviting them to do the same. In theory, the invitation explained, if everyone down the line participated, I would receive 36 random and gently used books through the mail.

Yes — it’s a literary pyramid scheme!

Now, ever since an old high school friend handed me a video and implored me to watch it, saying it was something I would be “really interested in” (it turned out to be some sort of incomprehensible Amway pitch), I’ve been really wary of this sort of thing. I don’t like chain letters by email or otherwise, and won’t take part in them, but something about the informal book club has appealed to me.

I’ve always loved alternate economies: garage sales, freecycle websites, barter networks. I love the flow of infant clothing and equipment that happens among young mothers who pass on articles to the next woman down the line as their little ones grow, knowing that more will come their way from those with older children. It’s a simple method of recycling and a way of resisting the message that we should consume more and more and more.

The informal book club idea strikes me as being in this spirit — it’s a cashless or low-cost exchange of goods, but with a surprise factor.

I like the idea of selecting a book off my shelf that I’ve read, enjoyed, but can do without, and sending it off to a stranger as a gift. And I like the idea of random people doing the same for me. It’s an experiment I’d like to try, and I think there may be an essay in it. If you help, I’ll do my best to write something insightful and funny about the experience.

I’m looking for six willing participants to take part in this literary experiment with me. If you are interested, please send me your mailing address via the contact page, and I’ll send the letter off to you so you can get started. As you can see by the fact that I have no ads on this site, I’m not particularly capitalistic by nature or spam-minded, so there’s no danger of your address being sold or used for nefarious purposes. Information you transmit through the contact page comes to my private email address, and is not made public. I’ll send you the book club letter and that’s it. Promise.

Drop me a line, and let’s see what comes.

[Photo:patrick colgan]

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Litvak Studies Institute Contest: East European Roots

The Summer Literary Seminars-Litvak Studies Institute Jewish Lithuania/Litvak Experiences Program announce a new non-fiction contest: East-European Roots: New Writing on the Old World, held this year in affiliation with Tablet Magazine, the leading online magazine providing a “new take on Jewish life,” and judged by Philip Lopate. The theme for the contest is Eastern European Histories: People’s Roots and Ancestral Heritage. The contest is open to everyone.

The contest winner will have their work prominently featured online in Tablet Magazine. Additionally, the winner will receive free airfare, tuition, and housing to our 2011 SLS/LSI Jewish Lithuania/Litvak Experiences Program. Second-place winners will receive a full tuition waiver for the 2011 SLS/LSI Jewish Lithuania/Litvak Experiences Program, and third-place winners will receive a 50% tuition discount.

A number of select contest participants, based on the overall strength of their work, will be offered tuition scholarships, as well, applicable to the 2011 SLS/LSI Jewish Lithuania/Litvak Experiences Program. Read the full guidelines below.
Details here.

Litvak Studies Institute (LSI) and Summer Literary Seminars announce their joint 2011 Jewish Lithuania program in Vilnius.

It will take place July 31-August 13. Core faculty includes: Regina Kopilevich, Vytautas Toleikis, Efraim Zuroff, and a number of other distinguished individuals (TBA). The program will be held in parallel with the SLS-Lithuania program, and will share with SLS such eminent writers-in-residence as Ed Hirsch, Robin Hemley, Joseph Kertes, and Rebecca Seiferle.

[Photo: ~Liliana]



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Postcard from Siberia

Pictured above is one of my most cherished possessions. It’s a 1947 postcard sent from my grandmother in Siberia, addressed to her husband and children. It was sent to a town in Massachusetts where we had relatives, though at the time my grandfather and his kids (my father among them) were living in the UK. My grandmother wrote their church’s address from memory, I think, and sent it off as a kind of Hail Mary attempt to reach her loved ones.

Amazingly, it made its way out of Stalinist Russia and into the hands of distant cousins in the US. From there, the card found its addressees: my father, my two aunts and grandfather. It was the only moment of communication my grandmother had with her children between 1941 and 1955, when regular correspondence between Siberia and the West became possible.

The back of the postcard reads:

1947.II.16

My Dear Children Birutėlė, Janutė, Algutis and Antanukas [the latter, her husband, is addressed as one of her children, because she had told Soviet authorities her husband was dead],

It made me indescribably happy to learn that you were alive and well. I’m healthy, I work on a farm. In my thoughts and in my heart I am always with you.

The priest, my uncle, is still alive and lives in Liepalingis [Lithuania], as before.

Write to me, all. I await your letters.

Your mother,
Ona Šukienė.

After weeks of working my way through my travel notes from Siberia, I’m now back to my archives: reading my grandmother’s letters, and travelling in my mind across languages, time, space.

My grandmother wrote letters to her children from Siberia from 1955 to 1958, then from Soviet Lithuania from 1958 to 1965, when she joined her family in Canada. The above card marks the first step in their long process of return to one another. For me, now, it marks the beginning of my next stage of writing.

While working through my Siberian travel notebook over the past few weeks, I wrote a great deal in a very short span of time. It was going so well that I didn’t dare stop, question, or even re-read too much. In fact, I was working so fast that I  became uneasy, and started bracing myself for the other shoe to drop.

Well, crisis averted. With the complex tasks of weaving past with present and of melding my life with that of another back in my sights again, the familiar feeling of wading through mud has returned. Writing hurts again and the book resists.

All is well with the world in this regard.

Onward. (Squish.)

[Photo: J. Šukys, Ona Šukienė’s Siberian postcard from 1947, private collection]

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How I write my books: Beginnings, Middles and Endings

My friend Rachel asked me about my writing process recently (OK, this morning). She wanted to know how I plan out my writing week, how I determine how many words to write, and what time of day I do my best writing. Essentially, she wanted to know about my process. So, here’s what I’ve come up with.

First of all, a confession: I’m a very slow writer. In terms of real writing, I max out at about 1200 words a day; I’m satisfied with 500, if they’re good. I write five days a week, and when I’m not writing, I’m reading, editing (sometimes for money), reviewing books, essays, blogging, translating, or applying for grants, fellowships and residencies. I do my best writing in the morning, and if I allow myself to get distracted too severely before noon, the day is shot.

As for my process and project planning, it all depends on what stage I’m at.

Beginnings (ca. 100 manuscript pages): At the very start of a project, I try simply to write. I don’t worry about quality, I just let ideas flow uncensored. I gather questions, comparisons, and avenues to explore in the future. Each day I sit down and try to fulfill a quota (minimum 500 words), even if it’s garbage. At this stage, I’m always buried in books and research, and the writing is about finding a footing on new terrain. Beginnings are light and fun and full of hope. At every stage of writing, I keep a list of what needs to be written next.

Middles (ca. 100-300 manuscript pages): This is where it gets hard, and it’s the stage I’m entering with my current project. I’ve had my fun, and now it’s time to figure out a theme, structure and direction for the book. I need to gather all the nonsense I’ve put down on paper and sort out the good from the bad. It’s very, very easy to get lost or stalled or overwhelmed at this point, since I’ve produced enough that there’s no turning back, yet not so much that there’s an end in sight.

One tactic that worked for me while I was writing my second book was to chop up my manuscript into very small pieces of 3 to 10 pages, and limit myself to one idea per piece. Dealing with a single idea at a time allowed me to see what didn’t fit, and to experiment with the text by removing or radically rearranging entire sections. In the end, my second book was made of thirty-two small chapters that I bundled into nine parts. This process worked so well last time that I think I’ll try it again.

Endings (300+ manuscript pages): This is where I stick to a time-line. It’s time to nail the text down, and write the hard sections that I’ve been putting off. I plan a schedule out on a calendar and stick to it. (I think I allotted two weeks per chapter at this point for my last book, but this will vary with each manuscript.) Accountability is key at this stage, even if it’s manufactured. For me, it’s enough to announce my schedule on Facebook to feel like I have to stick to it or face public humiliation (never mind that it’s a mind-game – the key to to find a game that yields results).

Final Endings: Once the book is off my desk and in the hands of an editor, his or her schedule takes over, and a healthy fear of authority keeps me in line. You need the book by October 1? No problem. I’ll work day and night to meet the deadline. At this point, it’s important to have a new project in mind and to go back to the fun and hopeful Beginnings stage, since nothing (short of actually giving birth) brings on postpartum depression like finishing a book, and the Final Endings stage (what with review, copy editing, and proofs) can be really long. For me, overlapping projects are the way to go.

If you have a different process, I’d love to hear about it. And if you have any questions you’d like me to tackle, or themes you’d like to see explored on the blog, drop me a line via the contact page.

Until then, happy writing.

[Photo: uploaded by l-frings]

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