Month: March 2016

by Li Yun Alvarado

“PhD by 33”

Those were the words I scrawled on a yellow post-it note shortly after beginning my doctoral coursework. At the time, the fact that the phrase rhymed felt significant, as if the rhyming meant my five year deadline was somehow meant to be.

I was twenty-eight when I began, and even though five years to complete the coursework, comprehensive exams, a proposal and dissertation was an ambitious goal, I believed it was attainable, so I wrote “PhD by 33” on that post-it and stuck it prominently above my desk. That post-it was only the first of a collection of messages that decorated the area I came to call my “dissertation station.”

“Shitty First Draft!” proclaimed another post-it, making reference to Anne Lamott’s advice that all great writing begins with a shitty first draft.

“What Must Get Done Will Get Done” — a mantra I picked up from a high school friend also made an appearance on my wall. I had used that phrase for over a decade to psyche myself up before long nights of paper writing during high school, college, and graduate school.

After reading Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day by Joan Bolker, I posted several quotes from that book on my wall as well:

“Living (and writing) well is the best revenge”

“First you make a mess, then you clean it up”

“Not every single word of this can be garbage”

“Writing is probably the best cure for a scared writer”

“Create and Care for Your Writing Addiction”

“Don’t cry over spilt milk, or unwritten pages”

“Write one day at a time”

“WRITE FIRST!”

“The best dissertation is a DONE dissertation”

One of my favorite post-its came from an unexpected source: the last line from Cristina Yang’s final monologue on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy: “Assume it will be Brilliant.”

I’m not unique in my use of post-its to motivate and inspire. On the TV show Being Mary Jane, Gabrielle Union’s character Mary Jane displays meaningful quotes and affirmations on yellow post-its all over her home—even on her head board.

Chicana feminist-poet-scholar Gloria Anzaldúa wrote her ambitions on “candle affirmations,” circular pieces of paper on which she wrote personal, professional, spiritual, and writing aspirations. Presumably after writing these affirmations, she’d place a candle on top of the paper, set her intention, and light the candle. You can find Anzaldúa’s candle affirmations at her archive at UT Austin (Box 5 Folder 5).

Most recently, a page full of affirmations were found in one of novelist Octavia Butler’s notebooks. “I shall be a bestselling writer,” she begins. “This is my life. I write bestselling novels,” she continues. Her aspirations are not limited to her own success either. She affirms, “I will help poor black youngsters broaden their horizons. I will help poor black youngsters go to college.” One powerful phrase that she repeats is: “So be it! See to it!”

News of Butler’s page of affirmations circulated like wildfire among my friends’ FB pages. Her words alongside her successful career acted as an example of the power of clear and precise envisioning. As the title of one Blavity article proclaims, “Octavia Butler’s Personal Journal Shows the Author Literally Wrote Her Life Into Existence.” I think it is that idea of writing oneself into existence that resonated so powerfully with us writers because so many of us are trying to do exactly that.

Butler’s affirmations reminded me of another post-it I stuck on the wall above my desk while dissertating: “Dr. Alvarado.” I wrote the title “Dr.” beside my name long before my dissertation was done as if to say, “So be it! See to it!”

These examples, combined with my own experiences creating vision boards and posting advice and affirmations around my home, have made me a true believer in the power of the post-it, or, more accurately, the power of clearly articulated aspirations, affirmations, and images posted prominently in our living and working spaces. I’ve come to believe that these post-its, lists, candle affirmations, and vision boards can function as powerful aids in attaining our hearts’ deepest desires—as writers, artists, and even as human beings.

So, did I achieve my goal of “PhD by 33”? No. That was a crazy goal!

But by my 34th birthday in October of 2014, my committee and I had agreed that I would be ready to defend my dissertation that spring — the first person in my cohort to do so. Having the “PhD by 33” stretch goal made me stay focused on making steady progress on my doctoral work even when life got in the way (losing a friend and a grandparent; having my brother, sister-in-law, and infant/toddler nephew as roommates; finding a (benign) tumor on my breast; teaching and grading (ugh!); embracing a long distance romance turned cross-country move turned marriage; planning a wedding in Puerto Rico from California; and buying a first home—to name just a few examples). During those six years, I pushed myself and pushed my committee to support me on my forward progress, so that I could not only finish, but finish quickly.

When it became obvious that “PhD by 33” wasn’t going to happen, I let myself off the hook. I crossed out 33 and wrote in 34. Finishing by 33 was never the point; finishing was the point. By pushing myself to make that 33 “deadline,” I was a lot closer to the ultimate goal by my 34th birthday than I might have been otherwise.

Post-PhD, my writing related post-its remain above my desk, along with some new additions, like a picture of Idris Elba asking “Shouldn’t you be writing?” Yes, Idris, yes I should be.

The post-it that replaced “PhD by 33”?

“5 Books & 2 Babies by 45!”

I’m giving myself ten years to focus my efforts on “Books & Babies.” I even created one of my elaborate vision boards filled with cut-outs from Poets and Writers and parenting magazines evoking the parent/writer life.

Will I make these things happen? Sure. Why not? I don’t know. What I do know is that if I don’t try to make them happen, then they most certainly won’t.

A few months after writing “5 Books & 2 Babies by 45!” on a post-it, a poetry manuscript I’ve played around with and submitted in various forms for about nine years was finally picked up. That chapbook, Words or Water, is now available for pre-order from Finishing Line Press (book #1). The summer after I earned that PhD, I wrote a picture book manuscript, submitted it to a contest with Lee & Low Books and won second place. I have faith that it will be published one day (book #2). As we speak, I’m compiling poems for a full-length manuscript I hope to start submitting next fall (book #3). My husband and I are enjoying trying for baby #1. I’d say that’s not too shabby for my first year of “5 Books and 2 Babies by 45.”

In the end, clearly articulating what I really want—in writing— helps keep me focused and striving. I write towards those goals, and I submit towards those hopes, and I think of new projects with those aspirations in mind, and I make love open to those dreams. And I move forward. And I write my life into existence.

Li Yun Alvarado is the author of Words or Water and Nuyorico, CA. A poet and scholar, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education; The Acentos Review; and PMS Poemmemoirstory among others. She recently received the Lee & Low New Voices Honor, and in 2012 she received an honorable mention for The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She is currently the Senior Poetry Editor for Kweli Journal and is an alumna of VONA/Voices Writing Workshop and AROHO. She holds a BA in Spanish and sociology from Yale University and an MA and PhD in English from Fordham University. Li Yun is a native New Yorker living in Long Beach, California who takes frequent trips to Salinas, Puerto Rico to visit la familia. You can order her new book and learn more about Li Yun on Facebook and at www.liyunalvarado.com.

by Jay O’shea

Recently, I was rejected for a fellowship for which I was asked to apply. This isn’t the first time I’ve been invited to put myself forward for an honor of some kind – an award, a job, a publication opportunity – only to receive a rejection. I am aware of this and, yet, every time I receive one of those requests-to-apply emails, the cogs of the fantasy-generating apparatus in my mind start to turn. I reflect on the benefits of the award, publication, or job and how satisfied I would be on receiving it. Each of those rejections sting even as I tell myself that rejection is part of the writing game and that rejection is, as we’ve all heard so many times, a sign that we’re making our best efforts to add our voices to the conversations we long to be part of.

Like many writers I reassure myself with all those tales of great works rejected. Robert Pirsig’s classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected a stunning 121 times. Ursula K. Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness was dismissed as “unreadable.” More recently, Booker Prize winner Marlon James’ John Crow’s Devil received 78 rejections.

The pattern of high quality writing getting rejected is so common that it’s easy to assume that rejection is arbitrary. And it is.

Except for when it’s not.

To keep our equilibrium as writers, we need to recognize typologies of rejections. In doing so, we can, I think, take a lesson from self-defense.

The Empowerment Self-Defense framework, with its attention to violence as a tool of social control, is particularly useful for thinking about categories of aggression and how they suggest different responses. The idea here is that we can better counter violence if we anticipate what an aggressor intends their cruelty to accomplish, altering their script with our defensive actions. We can observe, for instance, that women face predatory violence from men whereas men encounter territorial violence. Because men see women as prey, not as rivals, they frequently lure potential victims into temporary relationships of trust and launch an assault from that point. It is frequently effective for a woman to counter a male aggressor by assertive boundary setting, first verbal, then through the use of physical force if necessary. A male aggressor attacking a female target usually expects cowering and pleading; he doesn’t expect a jab to the eyes or a palm strike to his nose.

Because men typically see other men as opponents, an aggressor often draws his target into a challenge fight. The temporary relationship an aggressor establishes is one of rivalry, drawing imaginary lines that he insists his target has crossed. A man attacking another man expects his potential victim to take the bait that’s offered; he expects “what’re you looking at?” to be countered with “you got a problem?” not with an unflustered “just thinking about something that happened at work.”

A woman’s boundary setting and a man’s refusal to engage can be effective because they diverge from conventional gender behavior. They provide an aggressor with exactly the opposite response than he intended to provoke and subvert his expectations, potentially leaving him struggling how to respond. They are also, particularly at first, hard to execute because they contradict years of strictly enforced gender socialization. For these reasons, working with typologies of violence is a good place to start with self-defense.

Thinking back on my own experiences of conflict, I see that it’s not a great idea to end there.

One time in particular stands out in my mind. I was walking down a crowded street in Amsterdam. A drunk British man checked my shoulder. I turned, expecting mutual apologies but he was already in my face, shouting. He yelled some barely coherent insult; I yelled back. He shoved me. I shoved back. He pointed in my face. Without thinking I pointed back. We postured, we shouted, we countered one aggressive action with another, raising the stakes gradually and almost imperceptibly. Finally, my partner grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me from the conflict as the drunken man’s friends took hold of him and moved him away.

It came to me only gradually: that was not predatory violence. My safety did not depend on scaring that man. In fact, he wanted to be scared so that his aggression would be justified.

That was a challenge fight. And I walked right into it.

I gave a drunken idiot exactly the response he hoped for. I let him write the script for my interaction with him.

Now, when I teach and write about self-defense, I talk about violence as gendered but also point out that we may end up in situations where we face kinds of violence we don’t expect. Extracting ourselves can be harder if we expect predatory violence and wind up in a challenge situation or we expect the challenge and face predation. Our chances for emerging unharmed are enhanced when we can identify the typology of violence before us. Our chances for coming out of it safely are better yet when our ability to recognize violence is adaptive, responsive to what we see before us rather than based what we think we’ll see.

I call this ability the wisdom to know the difference.

Rejection is not the same as violence. Few people who reject our work intend to hurt us. In the case of violence, both ends of the spectrum are cruel, violating, and dangerous. The binaries of rejection consist of joy on one end and disappointment on the other.

There is, however, a certain commonality in the way our responses bifurcate. It is all too easy to fall into either-or responses: bad writing gets rejected; good writing does not. Or, conversely, it’s the good writing that receives rejections, precisely because it’s challenging and new. Bad writing slips through all too often, seemingly without anyone catching it.

Exciting, provocative writing sometimes does get rejected. Work sometimes gets rejected because it’s innovative and a reviewer second-guesses it, assuming the writer can’t pull off what’s in the proposal or the query letter. Work gets rejected because a reviewer is having a bad day.

Writing that is poorly crafted or not fully realized also gets rejected. Writing gets rejected when there are flaws in its execution that an agent or editor can’t articulate or doesn’t have the time to comment on. Writing gets rejected when it’s just plain not ready for publication.

It’s up to us as writers to figure out when our writing is rejected because it’s unsettling and when it’s rejected because it’s not up to par. We need to know when to change and when to keep plugging on with submitting until our work finds a home. We need the wisdom to know the difference. Unlike in self-defense, our safety doesn’t depend on this wisdom. But our happiness and our resilience as writers might.

Author, martial artist, and amateur neuroscientist Jay O’Shea lives and works in Los Angeles. A Professor at UCLA, she is currently working on a project entitled Risk, Failure, Play: What Martial Arts Training Reveals About Proficiency, Competence, and Cooperation. She has written and edited several books on dance; her essays have been published in three languages and six countries. Her short fiction has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Toasted Cheese, and in the anthologies Bloody Knuckles, Death’s Realm, and The Female Complaint. She is about to send her first novel, The Alchemy of Loss, out into the fray of agentive and editorial evaluation.

Twitter: @jayboshea

February was a banner month for WWS members getting their work into the world. Here is a brief look at the work published and awards won this month.

From “Tract Home Take Down” by Rachel Sona Reed published at Angels Flight Literary West:

A house like ours
is a pile of rubble
is a new foundation
is a giant skeleton
is a mess of noises
is an empty stucco signifier
is a nameless neighbor
is a neighborhood renewed
is a house no more.

Also from Rachel Sona Reed, “The Medical Procedure that ‘The Blacklist’ Blacklisted,” published at Hello Giggles:

Yet after the shock of finding herself pregnant by her (fake) ex-husband, Elizabeth spends exactly one episode in tearful contemplation before calling an adoption agency. Perceptive viewers will note that this decision still exposes the baby to the occupational hazards of her life, if only for nine months or so.

Notably absent from Elizabeth’s calculus is abortion. It’s not that it would be in character for her to elect an abortion, but it’s difficult to believe that this character wouldn’t even consider it.

From Tisha Reichle’s “South of Resurrection” published at Annotation Nation:

Before I sign up for a workshop or class with any writer, I always read at least one of her books. If she has multiple novels, I choose the one that has some element similar to what I’m doing with my own writing. I selected South of Resurrection by Jonis Agee because it is in a rural setting with characters who are not wealthy; these are the people of my childhood. The characters also battle nature and a history of racism; this has been the chaos of my adulthood.

Tisha also received an acceptance from Ghost Town (Issue 9) for her story “An Argument Against Old Cheese.” Great news!

For ten weeks, Cultural Weekly will publish one poem per week from Ashaki M. Jackson’s chapbook, Surveillance, forthcoming from WritLarge Press. In February, “Professional Wrestling Holds,” “The Public Examines Black Resilience and Is Dissatisfied” and “The Public Confuses Death with Pornography” were published.

From “The Public Confuses Death with Pornography”:

You sit in the violence Teeter
into the video from your safety
You are – each time – unsure
of what you’re viewing: Videos
of Black bodies crumbling so primitively
it is convincing

From Lauren Eggert-Crowe‘s poem “Things I Have Burned Intentionally” published at Horse Less Press:

Come June, we gathered our papers. Flung them in
unmemorized. We children, we lit fires.

Look forward to “Supercuts” from Kate Maruyama upcoming in Duende magazine and “Traces” upcoming in F(r)iction.

Toni Ann Johnson’s short story “Time Travel” will soon be featured on the podcast Reading Out Loud.

Carla Sameth‘s “Donor X” is forthcoming in MUTHA Magazine. 

Jay O’Shea was invited to give a TEDxUCLA talk called “A Crisis of Play: Kinetic Experience in a Viewing Society,” a presentation focusing on the importance of physical, informal, competitive and cooperative recreation for the individual and the larger society.

Lots of great news for Elline Lipkin who was accepted to a July residency at the Dorland Mountain Arts Colony and also had a poem, “Florida,” come out this month in Cherry Tree. Look for her poem “Among Mothers” in TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics in March.

Last but certainly not least, Antonia Crane received a string of acceptances this month:

• an article (title pending) in Buzzfeed for a column called “Concepts of Home”
• two articles in a new publication called PrimeMind: “White Hat, Black Stilettos: An Interview with Violet Blue” about the connection between sex workers and hackers AND an interview with neuroscientist Dr. Nicole Prause about the effect of pornography on the human brain
• two articles in Tabu, a new publication about sexual health and wellness, which encourages women to feel empowered in their unique sexualities (coming in March)

Congratulations to all of you! Truly inspiring.