Parting the Veil

Guest blogger, Mylène Dressler

As a novelist who’s been writing a great deal of non-fiction lately, I’m starting to wonder: What on earth is happening to me?

For most of my life I’ve been so single-mindedly devoted to fiction it’s been like a vow of chastity. For decades I’ve hardly known what it meant to write at all without holding the screen of character, the mask of make-believe in front of me, always peering, willfully, through another pair of eyes. Even before my novels began being published, my passion for fiction was near-total: all through the years of my childhood, I devoured (an occasional biography or history aside) the novels of Austen and Christie and Dickens, and when I was done with them made up my own stories; through college and graduate school it was the 20th-century American fictionists I adored, Faulkner and Cather and Morrison, and what non-fiction I wrote was forced on me, required by coursework and professors. As soon as I was free of schooling I did nothing but write stories and novels, year after year after year, until finally it seemed to me I had no voice apart from the characters I created. And I didn’t mind at all. It’s awfully nice, wearing a costume (something I learned during my years as a ballet dancer), even if it’s a costume that fits so snugly it plainly shows your own form.

Then one day I was asked to contribute an essay to an anthology about grief (because there is loss as well as hope in my novels), and I found I . . . couldn’t do it.

Because I had no idea what “I” sounded like.

And it felt naked. And painful. And stiff.

And I discovered I was absolutely terrified to write as . . . me.

I don’t know about you, but as a creative person, I hate bumping up against my limitations. If I find I don’t know how to do something, I generally want that much more to learn how to do it. A few years ago, when I realized I was afraid of dialogue, for example, I wrote a novel, The Floodmakers, in which half the characters are playwrights and all anyone does is talk. Another year, when I was worried I didn’t know how to write from the perspective of an elderly man, I wrote The Deadwood Beetle, a book that forced me to look through a retired entomologist’s wrinkled, secretive eyes.

When I discovered I had completely lost the ability to write without a fictive mask shielding me, my first thought was that I really ought to do something about it. I mean, what kind of writer is afraid of any kind of writing? So I muscled through the essay on grieving, somehow, and then oh-so-tentatively decided to enter the naked world of blogging. You’ll laugh: but it was hard for me. What seemed to come so naturally to others—perhaps even to you—was a daily mystery to me. Is that me? Is that really me? Only slowly did my words become familiar, the sound of that voice on the screen recognizable as the one I lived with every day. Yes, that’s me. It’s been two years now, and this year my blog American Stories Now is being recognized by that paragon of journals, Creative Non-Fiction, as one of the best of its kind on the web. In fact, with more invitations to contribute essays to anthologies, I seem to be writing more non-fiction now than fiction. Which brings me back to my initial question:

What on earth has happened?

I ask myself if it’s a sea-change. I don’t know. Perhaps. I like change. I remember so clearly the day I knew I’d danced in ballets long enough. The light changed in the rehearsal hall, the bodies around me looked beautiful but strange, the floor dipped slightly, I felt a little flutter in my stomach, and wondered what was going to happen next. And liked not knowing what was going to happen next.

The difference between fiction and non-fiction is often slight—often no more than the angle from which you see the stage—but as a form of presentation, as a stance taken in front of an audience, it’s profound. This is me talking now. I know many writers who move with great fluidity and grace back and forth between these genres (and others), and I may yet become one of them. But I wonder. The tools I use in these different forms of writing are very much the same—that is, the words seem to pile up in the same way—but I’m liking right now the way non-fiction fits to my hand. There’s always something to be said for a new angle. It makes you see the tools all over again. Learn them all over. Feel them fresh and clumsy and wet. See, the trouble is, once you leave school, no one is around to make you do things you don’t know how to do. You can spend years gripping a pen in exactly the same way. Until the day someone comes to you and says, Tell me about the death of your father.

What is happening to me? I’m finding I’m drawn more and more to any kind of writing that closes the distance between me and the reader. I’m hunting proximity. I find myself earnestly trying not to wear a veil—and this is so curious and fascinating a pursuit to me, so fraught with confusion—isn’t everything veiled? isn’t everything constructed, made-up?—I feel awake and alive and yes, naked again. Good and naked.

Someday—and it will be sooner rather than later, I imagine—I’ll want to be an old scientist again, or a gay playwright, or a Jewish woman. There are so many ways to dance. To record the truth.

But for now it’s just me.

Ever ask yourself what has happened, and discovered it was simply time?

Mylène Dressler, PhD, is the author of The Medusa Tree, praised as a “lyrical and clearly envisioned debut” by Ms. Magazine, as well as the novels The Floodmakers and The Deadwood Beetle, named by the Christian Science Monitor as one of the Best Books of 2001 and by the Women’s Press as one of its Great Books by Women Writers. She is a past winner of the Paisano Fellowship in Fiction and the Carson McCullers Fellowship, and has been a faculty member or a visiting writer at the University of Texas at Austin, the National Autonomous University of Chiapas, Rice University and the University of St. Thomas, among others. Her workshop, the River of Words Retreat, annually brings writers and creative women together for a writing intensive along the banks of the Colorado River. You can reach her at author@mylenedressler.com.

www.mylenedressler.com

Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at books@hercircleezine.com.

eReaders: A View from Somewhere in the Middle of the Road

by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo

I love the page. The visceral and sensual qualities. The smell of the paper. The feel of a book in the hand – its substantiality, presence and poise. My adoration of books goes way back. The best days of my grade school years were the bi-weekly visits of the Bookmobile. In my home, I love the stacks of books around the house, the shelves for the kids, more books scattered on the floor than toys. I think of books as a form of collection, of not only the books themselves but of some history of the reader herself. And, of course, the simple joy of book browsing cannot be forgotten (a much more romantic experience than scrolling through the search results on an eReader).

But – here comes the confession – my eReader has become my guilty pleasure.

Once I became aware of the idea of eReaders, I vacillated between really, really wanting one and being completely repelled by the idea of abandoning my book habit. Of, in essence, abandoning books. Those well-loved, careworn, soft pages. The smooth pretty covers, the weight of several in my bag at all times. Trade warm books for a cold e-reader? The leap seemed massive. But then I received one as a gift, and, as my sister pointed out, “Yeah! You don’t have to make the decision now!” Apparently, my eReader-versus-traditional-book angst had not gone unnoticed.

For voracious devourers of books, eReaders provide some lovely features, all of which have been expounded upon ad infinitum. Typical pros and cons aside, I have discovered some innovative features of my eReader. Such as, on my cold cold New England nights one hand only need be peeking out from under the covers to hold the lightweight equipment and turn a page. Also, since it is a portable library, those of us obsessively inclined to carry around numerous books at all times (just in case) will maintain better spinal alignment with an eReader in tow rather than seven books. Lastly, (and, admittedly, this may be exclusive to my eReader experience) a stroller fitted with a good old-fashioned clothespin to attach an eReader to the visor makes for effortless reading on long walks with napping children. No blowing pages or crippling hand cramps from trying to hold a book while steering an ungainly double-stroller. (What? You mean you don’t read while strolling your kids through naps? I guess it’s just me. But try it if applicable – it’s a beautiful thing.)

Readers can hate them or love them, refuse them or embrace them, but for a writer, they can’t be ignored and a set of complicated questions arises. Where are eReaders taking us? What do we stand to lose? How will the tool impact the publishing industry, the writing itself?

Maybe we’re on the cusp of a transformative era for not only the form of books, but the content itself. eReaders homogenize the text: the font is the same from eBook to eBook, the formatting is not by numbered pages, but by “locations” due to the ability of the device to provide different sizing of the text based on reader preference, rendering intentional text placement irrelevant. While these elements do not support experimentation of form, could they possibly enhance content? Stripped down, are the words then allowed to shine more purely? Without all the packaging, not only could the content be foremost, but readers might be able to fully focus on the words. Of course this might be a temporary condition as the technology is bound to improve. Which leads to another thought: as the devices evolve, writers will be required to be flexible and innovative. Creativity through new channels will be essential. Meaning will need to leap fully and expansively and succinctly from the arrangement of words, maybe more than ever. Oh! how I love to swoon over the sheer power of content. The ways in which we can arrange words and set tones.

Another thought: will we need to begin to write with searchability and search engine indexing in mind? How will concern with page rank affect the content? How will titles and tags and metadata transform the way we think about arranging content? About writing it in the first place? The very words. (And will this be any different from pandering to any other trend publishing has thrown the way of writers?) This could be an opportunity for wider creativity.

And it may be heavy-handed to say this could be an opportunity for writers to reclaim the power, but eBooks do provide writers with an extremely easy means of getting the work out there: no printers, distributors, publishers or brick-and-mortar stores. The concept of too-small print runs, gone. Out-of-print books can make a return without the usual overhead costs typically involved. It seems to pose more potential problems for the publishing industry as it exists for the sake of traditional print than it does for writers. Will it offer more freedom and opportunity for writers? It could certainly offer more control and more profit for the writer. The artist in me adores the idea of artists doin’ it for themselves. It’s a very romantic notion and, in light of these emerging technologies, pretty feasible. Independence for writers? Freedom to make and distribute art? It brings out the idealistic hippie in me.

I suspect that paper books are not going anywhere any time soon. I think eBooks and traditional books can coexist peacefully for a long time, the eBook simply another form of the work. The task for writers may be to think differently about content, the words and their arrangements. It may pose some interesting challenges for creativity – for the words to exist meaningfully in the context of the demands of the new technology. While the novel has existed in its basic form for hundreds of years, one thing we can be sure of, technology does not maintain stasis for nearly that long. A thing in constant flux requires a level creativity that may prove to greatly enhance the way we think about and execute writing. Could it churn out some mediocre work? Sure, but that’s already floating around anyhow. In the meantime, as a writer, I will continue to focus on meaning in my content and as a reader, my traditional book habit will carry on even as my eReader habit evolves. And I will try not let my books know that sometimes I cheat on them.

Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo is a writer, reader, yogini (when she can squeeze it in), mom, part-time Office Manager, a homemaker and the Coordinator and Writer for The Writer’s Life blog. She loves to cook and take long walks with her kids and is a woman who wants to meaningfully exchange and intersect with other women writers. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Currently she works at a web development company (because part-time Office Manager buys more groceries than Struggling Writer). She is at work on a novel and a short story collection. Melissa lives in North Central Massachusetts with her family.

Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at books@hercircleezine.com.

eReaders: A Bourgeois Answer to the iPod

To crown our summer internships, and before moving on as Her Circle Ezine staff members, Laura Cude and I were asked to each compose a piece about our thoughts on eReaders, a subject that had popped up during our weekly meetings throughout the summer. Laura and I began this journey together as interns. We “met” in weekly Skype phone sessions and our blog work brushed up against each other on the Google calendar. We share a passion for women’s creative work and strive to enrich Her Circle Ezine with our voices and those of the women whose work inspires us. The eReader pieces initiate what will be an ongoing series in The Writer’s Life on the potential impact of emerging technology and tools for writers on writing – be sure to read my response to the topic tomorrow and to look for posts on the subject in the near future.

Enjoy! And please share your eReader thoughts or experiences with us!
Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo, Blog Coordinator, The Writer’s Life

Guest Blogger, Laura Cude

As a member of the iPod generation, it seemed like only a matter of time before a book equivalent appeared. I wasn’t too familiar with the whole eReader phenomenon until recently. This may be because I don’t know anyone who owns one. In fact, I don’t know anyone who wants to own one.

Despite possessing an iPod since they first hit the shelves, I never download mp3s. Instead my 80 GB music library is full of tracks, which I have ripped directly from my CDs. One of my greatest pleasures is the ritual of the CD purchase: taking it home, reading the liner notes as the CD plays and finding a place for it amongst the hundreds of others. I display them like a badge of taste, similar to the display of my DVD and book collections. They form a library, symbols if you like, of the catharsis and enjoyment I have received from my choices.

My first encounter with an eBook was with a Sony eReader during a visit to a Waterstone‘s store recently. After massaging my frugal mind around the price, and feeling patronised by its availability in pink “for the girls,” I got to grips with it. Maybe I’m easily irked, but the page turning button turned me off immediately. I’d feel like I’d have to constantly sit there with my index finger at the ready for going between the tiny pages. There being about fifteen sentences to a “page,” and it not being double sided like a book, it gives the cliché of describing a novel as a “real page turner” a whole new element of meaning. I also have a problem with staring at screens for prolonged periods of time. I tend to blink less, and read slower than what I do when reading from good old-fashioned paper. I seem to take in the information differently, maybe even less effectively. I guess this is a by-product from years of internet browsing: you read, you scroll and you click somewhere else.

The portability of an eReader is a major advantage, even when you’re intending on only taking one book out on the go. Lugging around all 800 pages of The Second Sex felt like I had adopted a pet rock to accompany me on my public transport journeys. And plenty of times when I’ve left the house I’ve squeezed my Oyster card, phone, keys, cash and iPod into a clutch bag, only having to employ a bigger one in order to jam my latest read in for the bus ride. An eReader however would slip neatly into the clutch bag jungle. But is this rather facetious predicament really one that warrants a solution? Do I need to have another rectangular, expensive item to worry about being the subject of pick-pocketing when I’m out in Leicester Square? And is it really that inconvenient to turn a page instead of pushing a button? It just seems to be simplification for the sake of it.

I could cut the eReader some slack if, like in the war between mp3s and CDs, eBooks were actually cheaper than their paperback counterparts. After having a quick look online at some eBook stores however, there is virtually no difference in price, and in some cases, the eBook actually costs more, which is hard to believe when the virtual alternative entails no printing, publishing or shipping costs.

The greatest potential I see for eReaders is the benefits it could provide to writers who want to self-publish. If burgeoning writers without a publishing deal or agent could make their book accessible via the eBook, that would be a revolutionary way to release their work into the world. And with the current book blog tours and book trailers sweeping across virtual land at the moment, they could promote their product for as little expense as they could afford to invest.

I don’t think an eReader will be replacing my hard copy books anytime soon. Though books are not always conveniently portable, they are always accessible without the jargon of computer compatibilities, battery charging and warranties. The biggest technical difficulty you will face with the trusty book is how to avoid bending the spine.

Laura Cude is twenty one years old and from a dead beat town called Leatherhead which is located in Old Blighty. She left Kingston College last year with three A grade A levels, and three university acceptances. She turned them all down in favour of practical work experience, which is what bought her to Her Circle originally as a blog coordinator for The Writer’s Life, and now as the writer of inContext. She is a music enthusiast and keen writer, using song composition and screenplays as her weapons of choice. Combining her interests in feminism, existentialism and pop culture, she aims to make inContext a revealing and energetic exploration of the politics in feminist literature and the 21st century.

Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at books@hercircleezine.com.

A Kitchen of One’s Own

by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo

Carving out a writing life, piecing my time together into some sort of quilted whole, amidst the busyness of my small children, the care of my home, a part-time job, this blog and my creative writing work, is challenging on the most productive days and (most) other days entirely overwhelming. Consuming. Think treading water, my face a tiny circle in an enormous waving pool.

I rarely leave my kitchen for very long. That’s okay – everything I need is here. As I type this, I stand on the cool, lovely ceramic tile my husband installed two years ago. I stand here at the counter and I prepare food for my family. I clean, I fold laundry, I make appointments with doctors, I answer emails. And I write. I have all my tools at hand: laptop and notes and notepads fanned out, my pots and big bamboo wooden spoon at the stove, my cutting board and favorite knife, my big old silver bowl of compostables. My ever-chattering radio. I begin each morning with great vigor and ambition and then, in the end, I do the best I can. I write in fits and starts. Scraps of paper, scrawled ideas, thoughts, lines, beginnings of chapters pepper my counter, flutter around my computer in the breeze from the double window above the sink.

My domestic moments are miles removed from the writerly life I once imagined: a room of my own, money and opportunity flowing, big fat publishing contract, hours of stimulating conversation with other writers. Unfettered time. An endless stream of it. But, even in my most frustrated moments, I am sure that’s not what I really want now that real life has found me. (Well, maybe some of it in small doses might be okay…) I’m a mom, a part-time Office Manager, a homemaker, a writer, a reader, a woman who wants to meaningfully exchange and intersect with other women writers. This life I have now and the life I once imagined have blurred lines, not strong delineated borders. It’s not compartmentalized, not self-standing boxes, but tendrils weaving up and out with connections of all shapes. This is what I have learned.

When I received the email granting me a summer internship with Her Circle Ezine to help coordinate The Writer’s Life blog, I was in my kitchen (where else?) making a morning snack for my kids. In those moments of domesticity, it can be difficult to connect with that universe of words and stories that occupied my mind and spirit with such a stronghold and singularity before the children came to fill my mind and heart and hands with all their needs. I told my children the good news and we jumped around the kitchen.

Then I began the work of figuring out the balance of the demands of the blog responsibilities and the needs of my family and the persistent call of my creative writing work (not to mention the part-time job). At first I was daunted and then a rhythm emerged and then the enjoyment bloomed. Then I received the email asking me to consider accepting the Blog Coordinator position with the eventuality of being its main writer. And again we danced around the kitchen, and now I begin the work of finding the balance and the patience of awaiting for the rhythm to once again emerge. It will.

I am grateful and excited for this journey with The Writer’s Life on which I am about to embark. One of its gifts is the flurry of urgency and busyness, the sharpening of focus and discipline and its reaching affects into my creative work. It makes me work when it might be easier to clean something or worry about clutter when a little clutter doesn’t matter but only serves as a means of distraction from the hard work of creativity. The work matters. And when you are working regularly, it is easier, more joyful to return to the work day after day.

Stories and words have been a lifelong infatuation of mine. I am an ardent reader of women’s literature. I admire the ability of women to evoke a visceral response to emotional content. The urgency of our words to be written and voiced and shared creates a passion and a tension that is exhilarating to experience. My own work centers around women traversing their space and landscape: unadorned yet intricate.

My vision for this blog is only beginning to come into focus – the edges still soft and blurry. I wasn’t going to admit that at first. I feared I needed to have it all mapped out in order to do it well and be taken “seriously” as a “real” writer. But I have decided this is going to be an endeavor in fearlessness. An exploration in writing deliberately but not self-consciously. Of being genuine and authentic, abandoning the worry of revealing some essence of myself that I think I should conceal or beautify in some false way. This is the point from which I begin.

This harried mom is embracing the opportunity to find balance. This writer is taking on the challenge of writing where I can and when I can and doing it with abandon and doing it joyfully! I want to write the way I want to write, and say the things I want to say with no fear. The core of it: do the work of your spirit and your heart, wherever you find yourself, and it will be good.

Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo is a writer, reader, yogini (when she can squeeze it in), mom, part-time Office Manager, a homemaker and the Coordinator and Writer for The Writer’s Life blog. She loves to cook and take long walks with her kids and is a woman who wants to meaningfully exchange and intersect with other women writers. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Currently she works at a web development company (because part-time Office Manager buys more groceries than Struggling Writer). She is at work on a novel and a short story collection. Melissa lives in North Central Massachusetts with her family.

Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at books@hercircleezine.com.

Weekly Writing Prompt

Welcome to this week’s featured writing prompt.

I just pulled Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard from the stack of books on my kitchen counter and randomly chose these words/phrases:

“…smoke from fires drifting…”
“Catch it if you can.”
“…stricken…”
“…more like air than like water…”
“…seashore…”

See what you can create incorporating these phrases into a creative piece.

Enjoy! and don’t forget to post your finished work in the comments section (optional).

Q&A with Emma Donoghue, author of ‘Room’

Emma Donoghue’s latest novel Room tells the story of Jack and his Ma who live in a locked room that measures 11 foot by 11. As Jack reaches his fifth birthday, he begins to ask questions concerning their surroundings, provoking his mother to reveal to him that there is a world outside of their room.

Q: The story of Room is told from five year old Jack’s perspective. What was the inspiration for adopting a child’s voice and how did your approach compare to writing from an adult perspective?

A: I would never have tackled such a story except from the novel perspective of the child: a five-year-old’s vision seemed to me to offer possibilities for making this a really interesting story. It was really no harder than using an adult narrator, because every individual voice needs to be crafted, and every narrator has their limitations; it’s always a matter of trying to suggest more than the narrator understands.

Q: I read elsewhere in an interview with you that the story of Room came to you quite quickly. Is this always the case when it comes to your writing?

A: Sadly, no: although I often get an initial idea fast, it usually takes a lot of chewing over before I find the right shape or angle for a novel. Room was unlike any of my other works in that it really dropped into my lap and I knew at once that this was a story people would care about.

Q: Your writing has contributed to many different mediums of expression, such as novels, short stories, plays for stage, radio and screen. Do you find any of these disciplines you have turned your hand to more pleasurable, or more fascinating than the others?

A: Well, they all have their satisfactions, some (I’m thinking of literary history) quieter than others. The most exuberant times I’ve had have been with a theatre company in rehearsal, but overall fiction is my favourite, perhaps it’s because it’s the one in which I get to control everything!

Q: How does the practice, sources for inspiration and the creative process of writing novels, such as Room, compare to that of writing literary history, such as Inseparable?

A: The research for works such as Inseparable is tiring but demands less of me personally; the novels are faster but I have to put more of myself into them, they’re more of an emotional marathon. When I write fact-based historical fiction I get to wear the two hats of researcher and novelist in turn, which is great fun.

Q: The premise of Room, a mother and son locked away from the outside world, sounds disturbing and eerie on paper, yet the innocence of Jack, and the love between him and his mother suggests otherwise. What inspired you to use this notion of extreme isolation and take it down such a tender path and revelatory path?

A: The initial trigger was reading a few headlines about Felix Fritzl, who was five when he encountered the outside world for the first time. But I knew that what I wanted to write was a purely fictional story so I stepped well away from the Fritzl and other cases and came up with my own scenario which in many ways (e.g. the presence of natural light) is much less horrifying than the real ones. My aim was to simplify and ameliorate a kidnapping scenario so that the emphasis would be on the issue of freedom versus safety: the question of whether Ma can possibly give Jack what he needs for a happy childhood.

- Laura Cude

Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at books@hercircleezine.com.

What do you want to write?

Guest blogger, Susanne Dunlap

I’m beginning to think of that question as a luxury for either the unpublished writer who is still finding her way to her voice, or the superstar writer who can pretty much take charge of her own career and write whatever the heck she wants.

Let me backtrack a little: I can’t put the hard work, soul-searching and sheer hours into writing something that’s really not what I want to write. Every book I’ve written, whether it has ended up being published or not, has been something I’ve felt passionate about.

That said, as I am becoming more and more of a career writer (I quit my dreadful day job three months ago and haven’t looked back), the question of the market and how much a writer should consider it when planning projects, has become much more real to me.

I write historical fiction for adults and young adults. What’s more, at least to start with, my books were about musical subjects, because that’s my background. I spent a good chunk of my adult life in graduate school getting a PhD in Music History, and I discovered so many incredible stories, so much rich material, that if I mined it forever I would never exhaust it.

But it’s not a great time out there for mid-list writers like me. I made a career shift a few years ago when my agent suggested I write a young adult novel, since my adult novels tended to have heroines on the brink of adulthood going through something that gets them to the next stage of their lives. I thought about it, terrified at first that I wouldn’t be able to appeal to younger readers, and discovered something buried in me that reveled in reaching back to explore the emotions and thoughts of a teen. After the first YA novel, I was hooked.

I’d left the ending of that novel, The Musician’s Daughter, up in the air a bit to allow for a sequel, which I already had formed in my mind. I wrote it and submitted it to my publisher as the option book. To my complete astonishment, they didn’t buy it. They wanted another book from me, but weren’t sure about marketing a sequel.

I’m a pretty resilient person, and I soon thought of another subject that fascinated me, but it really took me away from music for the first time. Anastasia’s Secret was a rewarding exploration for me, and it opened me up to more possibilities. In the YA world, maybe I didn’t have to stick closely to music history, which was my “brand differentiator” in the adult world. Hmmmm.

I’m pleased with where my YA novels have taken me so far. The Musician’s Daughter has been nominated for several awards, something I never expected. But the huge success of writers like Suzanne Collins, Stephenie Meyer, or Shannon Hale is still only a pipe dream for me.

And that makes me think. Are readers simply not as interested in the things I want to write? I could no more write dystopian fantasy than fly to the moon. I admire those writers immensely, but I’ll never write the way they do. But I would be kidding myself if I claimed not to wish for more success, more readers, for my stories. I find myself reading other writers like an archeologist, digging into the prose to try to figure out what it is that has ignited so many imaginations, and wondering if I could do that with my own preferred subject matter.

I haven’t found the answer yet. But I’m up for just about any challenge. I like to think that each book I’ve written has helped me grow as a writer. And you know what? It’s actually kind of exhilarating to discover that my career as a novelist doesn’t have to be tied to my expertise in music history.

So I’ll end this blog post with a secret: In addition to the book I’m under contract to write for my wonderful publisher, Bloomsbury USA Children’s, I’m working on something pretty frighteningly different. I don’t know yet if it will work, or if it will ever be published, but just doing it has reminded me that the only restrictions on our creativity are the ones we put on it ourselves.

What do I want to write? I want to write something that will push me beyond the limits I thought I had into a new world, a new audience, and new insight about myself. That’s the real joy of writing: what it teaches you about your own capabilities. I feel like a marathon runner of words. An Olympic gymnast of plot. A major-league baseball player of character development.

I’m stoked.

Susanne Dunlap has published two adult historical novels, Emilie’s Voice and Liszt’s Kiss, and two young adult novels, The Musician’s Daughter and Anastasia’s Secret. Her next book, In the Shadow of the Lamp, will be published by Bloomsbury USA Children’s in April, 2011. Susanne lives in Brooklyn, is the proud mother of two adult daughters, a doting grandmother, practically lives for her dog Betty, and loves to ride her bicycle.

Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at books@hercircleezine.com.

Confessions of a Porn Researcher

Guest blogger, Gail Dines

When people ask about my occupation, my answer is usually a conversation stopper. They do not expect to hear that I research porn, and, after the inevitable jokes, most people are actually fascinated to hear what I have to say about the harms of porn. Of course, not everybody agrees with me, and what often follows is a spirited and lively conversation. It is amazing how many people have stories to tell. Some tend to reveal too much and then regret it. My former dentist, for example, told me about how he liked to spank his wife but then, at my next visit, terminated me as a patient because he said I had a “difficult mouth to work with”! I have had complete strangers write long letters to me about their masturbation history, and one even cc’d the president of my university.

Some of these letters are actually very moving, because they are from men who feel that their porn use is out of control and they don’t know how to stop. Others tell me how porn led to divorce or bankruptcy. And then there are the women who write to say that their partner’s use of porn is a form of betrayal. My suggestion to them to seek help feels inadequate in light of the desperation these people are feeling.

There are also those who enjoy throwing insults at me, but after twenty years I have grown used to this. I have been accused of being a man-hating feminist, a prude, anti-sex, and a book-burning zealot who wants to control how people have sex. What makes dealing with these insults difficult is that a good proportion of these critics have never read my work. Debate and disagreement are the lifeblood of scholarship, but how can I engage with someone who is basing his or her arguments not on my actual work, but on what they think anti-porn feminists have to say? And of course the most likely source of these stereotypes is the media.

The media often caricature us as angry feminists who think that every man who reads porn is going to turn into a rapist. No anti-porn feminist I know would ever make such a claim, because we believe that the effects of porn are often subtle, even barely detectable. But in order to make this case to the public, we need airtime—and for anti-porn feminists this is a rare commodity indeed. I was once a guest on a show on MSNBC that was self-described as an investigative account of the porn industry. For 50 minutes they offered up a glamorous version of the porn industry, but when they came to me in the last 10 minutes, I was swiftly dispatched because I said the show was an example of shoddy journalism.

All of these negative reactions, however, are far outweighed by positive ones. I get emails from people all over the world thanking me for taking on the porn industry and being willing to speak publicly about a topic that generates so much emotion. I am very grateful for these emails. But—to be honest, and knowing what I know about porn—I have no choice but to keep speaking out. Silence would mean capitulation, and as long as there is a porn industry, I will be an anti-porn feminist.

Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston. She has been researching and speaking about the porn industry for over 20 years. For more information on her new book, Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality, please visit her website at: http://www.gaildines.com/.

Weekly Writing Prompt #9

Welcome to this week’s featured writing prompt.

Create a piece (short story, poem, etc.) inspired by this excerpt from the poem Loba: Parts I-VIII by Diana DiPrima:

“like pearls
in the road
she
dances”

Enjoy! and don’t forget to post your finished work in the comments section (optional).

Juncturing

Guest blogger, Marissa Matarazzo

In February of this year, my first book, a collection of short stories titled Drenched: Stories of Love and Other Deliriums was published. The stories are all connected. The connectedness happened first by accident. And I thought I’d made an idiot mistake. Eventually things got better.

I wrote the bulk of the book in grad school and at the start of my MFA program. I thought that collections of short stories should be a medley, a book of examples of the many things the writer can do. Like an actor’s reel, but in words. I had amnesia about reading and loving Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son and David Shickler’s Kissing in Manhattan, both collections of interconnected shorts. A handful of stories later, into what would become Drenched, I noticed that I kept writing about the same thing (love—finding, losing, longing for it, and the magic that occurs in the pursuit of it). I thought of Lorrie Moore’s short story “How To Become a Writer.” At a college cocktail party, the main character is asked what she writes about and her “roommate, who has consumed too much wine, too little cheese, and no crackers at all, blurts: ‘Oh, my god, she always writes about her dumb boyfriend.’” —a line I’ve always loved but then suddenly identified with in a caught and embarrassed way. I considered my stories and noticed that the narrator and main character in several of them (lazily? uninventively? persistently) felt like the same woman. I’d intended for her to be several characters, different in each story. For whatever beginner or scaredy-cat reason, I thought she couldn’t or shouldn’t be the same. That would prevent the collection from being varied. I panicked and my brain turned twelve and it said: never put too many songs by the same artist on a really good mix-tape. I felt like I was making the worst mix-tape. And what’s most horrifying about thinking I’m writing the wrong thing is the thought of having to dump everything and start over.

I eventually outgrew my panic. I reminded my brain it belonged to an adult and I told it to relax and to not confuse writing with mix-tapes. Then I experimented with this recurring lady narrator and imagined all the stories as parts of a whole—a single world where love and grief and water cause extraordinary things to happen. Like a discovery game, I found and developed the points where the stories could overlap or connect. This game stitched the stories together to give them what started to feel like a cohesive texture.

In the end, that character I was so worried about narrates three of the ten stories in Drenched, and makes a cameo in two others. All the stories are connected by character or event or place, and the second half of the book follows a genetic line through several generations. In the way that single short stories occupy a defined space and have a particularly satisfying heft and shape (like a bocce ball or a souvenir sack of ocean glass—this feeling of dense weight I can palm is something about short stories I love most), connecting all the stories seemed to do this to the collection as a whole. Made it feel solid and contained and like a point on a map I could find and visit. This felt really good.

Marissa Matarazzo is a fiction writer and author of the recently published Drenched: Stories of Love and Other Deliriums (Soft Skull Press, 2010). Her short stories have appeared online and in literary journals such as FiveChapters, The Nervous Breakdown, Faultline, and Hobart. She has won several writing prizes and earned her MFA from UC Irvine, where she was the recipient of the Dorothy and Donald Strauss Endowed Thesis Fellowship.

www.marisamatarazzo.com

Want to write for The Writer’s Life blog? Drop us an email at books@hercircleezine.com.

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