You mean, you don't want to pick my brain?

"I am going to be an author when I grow up," my student proudly declared during lunch yesterday.

"Really?" I responded with enthusiasm. "That's great!"

"Yes," he replied to me, and to his friends he said, "I hear the publishers and editors are totally evil, though."

"No," I piped in, "they are just people trying to find work they think they can sell. I've met some very kind editors and sometimes they reject your work and sometimes they don't, but they are usually pretty helpful."

Which is when I pulled out my copy of my recently published one page Guideposts article that came out this month. I showed it to him and explained that I was an author, too. He looked at it and handed it back to me without reading it.

I said, "Magazines are great ways to break into getting published. They will often take your short stories and things like that and sometimes they'll pay you. Guideposts paid me $150 for this article."

"Oh," he responded, "I don't want to write anything short. I spend so much time developing my characters, see?"

He then went on to brag to his friends about the 2 chapters of the book he's written and continue talking about what he had heard about the evils of the publishing industry.

I realized that he wasn't even remotely interested in anything I had to say, which shouldn't have surprised me, but was irritating.

I have spent the past 5 years working on becoming a writer. I know there are others who have worked harder and been more successful than I have, but I am fairly proud of what I have accomplished. I have taken online workshops to improve my writing, I've written 1 1/2 children's chapter books which are not publishable yet, but are a step in the right direction. I have had 10 newspaper articles published in our local paper, 5-10 poems published in various literary journals, won a poetry award in a local contest and most recently, my article was published in Guideposts. All told, I've probably made over $500 on my writing in the past 5 years.

It's a start and I know where I'm going to go from here. First chance I get, I'm going to some writing workshops for children's literature. Workshops are definitely worth the cost, in my experience, plus the contacts you make are really valuable.

The little I've learned about publishing has been mainly through trial and error, dumb luck, internet and book research, and trying desperately to pick the brains of anyone I know who might know something about being published.

I am by no means an expert on this yet, but I am getting there, and I am proud of what I have learned.

So for this kid to not be interested in what I had to say was unbelievable to me. I thought, "Kid, pick my brain- I will give you 5 years worth of publishing information
right now. I can tell you exactly how to get started." But no, he was more interested in pontificating about how incredible he was and in perpetuating myths about publishing that were based on apparently nothing but hearsay.

So here is the advice I would have given him, if he had been listening.

1. Submit to magazines and small literary journals. You can find them on Duotrope.com. There are other places as well.

2. Go to writing workshops and take online workshops. They are completely worth it.

3. Read a wide variety of stuff. If all you read is bad fan fiction you find on the internet, you may be missing out on some mental development.

4. Submit, submit, submit. When you get rejected and they actually tell you why, be willing to take their advice. Then submit again.

5. Try local markets. Write for your local paper. Submit to local contests.

6. Start a blog. It gives you great experience, connects you with other people with similar interests, and gives you a chance to see how people respond to your work.

7. Write. A. Lot.

I know there are other ways out there to work on writing, but these have been the most helpful to me.

I want to pick your brain, too. What have you learned in your publishing journey? What do you think an aspiring writer should be doing to develop his or her craft? Please tell me, because unlike my high school student, I really do want to know what your experience has taught you.

The AMPM Downtown

The AMPM downtown 7/11/11

I have refined the "don't ask me for money" look.

After trips to Paris and Istanbul and Oxford where beggars wait for dumb Americans,

I have learned a curt headshake and frowning distant eye look that clearly says, "don't ask me."

I try not to go to the AMPM in downtown Bakersfield because

I'd rather just avoid the streetpeople or the conmen who make up convoluted stories about why I should give them my money.

And who treat me like I'm cheap if I give them less than a five.

"I just need enough gas money to make it to Riverside where my sister has a job roofing her house for me."

"Don't you have any more? Come on, I just need a little more."

But sometimes gas is cheaper there and it's more convenient to stop there, so I go.

And there is this young man who looks scruffy and unkempt and perfectly healthy enough to get a job

and I see him approaching out of the corner of my eye as he mumbles something hard to understand,

"There's a motel down the street, we just need-" but I cut him off with my effective headshake and he moves on.

As I finish pumping my gas, he walks over to a young girl standing under a yellow streetlight,

with her hands on a baby stroller.

I feel a wave of bile guilt rise in my throat as he shakes his head sadly at the girl.

They walk away and they are nearly to the end of the block before I drive behind them in my car.

I open the window and hand the man a twenty.

I wrote the above piece last July and I am proud to say that it was accepted to be in the Blinking Cursor Anthology, which just went to print. My copy is already on its way to me.

This was, of course, a biographical piece about a real event which I found haunting and upsetting. I don't want to ignore the needy; I hate being hard-hearted, but there are so many people out there who will take advantage of kindness that it's hard to know who has a legitimate need and who doesn't. If you've ever struggled with this dilemma, you will understand what I was trying to say.

Don't Teach What You Love.

Try to avoid teaching what you love. That's my advice to other high school teachers. Because when you really love something, like a book, or a poem, or a play, to the point that it's a part of who you are, it hurts too badly to have it spit on or criticized.

I learned that my first year teaching, with the book Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte. I love that book. I first read it in middle school and from that time, I have related to Jane on almost every level of my being. I want to BE her. The book launched my entire interest in Gothic Female literature, which I have read voraciously since that time. I wrote my senior thesis on Gothic Female Literature. And it all started with Jane.




So when I taught it to high school seniors...I was excited to share Jane with them.>.And devastated when they were bored, when they didn't get it, when they didn't care. When they said it was "stupid."

Of course, you can teach things you like. I like Shakespeare. I have taught Romeo and Juliet 13 times now and I like it a lot, I like it more every time I read it. But I don't love it. I don't relate to it on a personal level. So if the kids don't like it...I don't really care.

But last month we read poetry. And I love poetry. I am a poet. I know how hard it is to write. And I know how hard it is to get your poetry published. I have had 4 or 5 pieces published and every time, it's like a miracle. It has literally taken me years to get to this point, and I am still barely at the foot of the mountain. So when we read poetry by writers who are not only published, but who also make money writing poetry, they are like superheroes to me. Nobody makes money writing poetry. Unless you're Robert Frost or Maya Angelou or somebody like that. You have to be INCREDIBLE. I am awe of these people.

And yet again, I have little scrawny idiot students who say, "it's stupid." One particularly lovely darling said, "This poem doesn't even make any sense. I could write this in my sleep."

I had just spent 15 minutes explaining the meaning of the poem and discussing it with the class, so naturally, I couldn't help but chew his face off.

"Oh, really? You could, huh? You could write a poem that is so good that it's not only published the first time, but multiple times, and eventually put into one of the literature books for high school English? I'd like to see you try. You do that, kid, you write a poem that a legitimate literary magazine publishes. Then you tell me that you could do this easily. Because I am a published poet and I know, it's extremely difficult to do."

He seemed alarmed by my outburst.I am not sure how long I stood there sputtering my frustration and rage at him. After he left I punched a filing cabinet and threw my roll book on the floor. Very mature. I have been teaching for 6 years, but I just can't not get upset about stuff like this.

That is why it is best that I don't teach what I love. Let me teach computers or something that I am vaguely interested in, but that I don't really care about. It's probably better for me and the darling idiots.

Guess What Came in the Mail...

A check for $150 from Guideposts Magazine for my Promise Pinecone piece! What will I do with this little windfall? This actual money that my typing on the computer magically produced?

Well, the long-term-thinking thing to do would be to use it to pay for something else writing-related, like a writing workshop, or save it towards my creative writing masters...

But based on the pain in my feet at the end of the day...and the slippery soles and scuffed footwear in my closet, I might just need to buy myself a few pairs of new shoes. It's not a very exciting idea or a long-term investment, but I really do need new shoes.

If you recieved a check for $150, how would you spend it?