Time works in such interesting ways, especially right now.
In early March, when I could see the shut down coming, I imagined staying at home for weeks at a time. Trusting our fridge and pantry would hold, I hoarded books. I’d have time to read! I’d read all the books! I bought more so I wouldn’t run out. So far this quarantine has lasted twelve books.
On March 8, 2020, I ran the LA marathon’s 26.2 miles in under five hours. I thought I’d keep running during the safer at home order. What a great way to recover and stay in shape. So far, I’ve run 75 total miles in quarantine.
Time is funny during a pandemic. When school was in session for my students, my children, and for me, I woke up early, got in hours and hours of teaching, and planning, and grading. We were so busy, but it felt like wheels spinning in a cage. School has been out for six weeks. The wheels are still spinning.
Water and time flow along the Deschutes River in Central Oregon.
There is time to write this summer. Time to submit work, revise, query, edit. Two hours each morning: Women Who Submit Writing Alone Together for 120 minutes. Sometimes those minutes are enough. Sometimes the minutes stretch into 180 or 240. Suddenly, there aren’t enough minutes to do it all.
If you record a reading and it’s less than a minute, it might be too short. If you record a reading of an essay and it’s longer than a minute, it might be too long. Everyone wants recorded readings. Time them carefully.
The pendulum of time swings back and forth. One day, I do absolutely nothing. The day stretches. The kids turn rotten and the avocados become overripe. I fill the day with nothing and nothing and more nothing. I read the news and fill with anxiety. I do nothing. The next day I’m up early: exercise, make breakfast, start bread, drink coffee, write, revise, help kids with their work, edit, read, fold dough, make lunch, check the news, make donations, answers emails, play with kids, bake cupcakes with the kids, pull weeds, write a letter, make dinner, bake bread, go for a walk, wipe down the counters again, write, check the news, read, sleep. And then the pendulum swings back and again and again and again and again.
In Ruth Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being, she writes of the now: “But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It’s already then.” How quickly the now becomes then. As we swim in this river of days, they flow past us and disappear. We float on these moments, however we measure them: in minutes or hours, in pages or poems. The days rush into weeks and weeks into months. July is almost over and August will arrive. 2020 is already half over. It’s taken about three minutes to read this. Thanks for sharing your time.
Now, what do we do next?
Noriko Nakada writes, parents, and teaches eighth grade English at Emerson Middle School in Los Angeles. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Kartika, Catapult, Meridian, Compose, and Hippocampus. She is spending her time in quarantine perfecting sourdough, biscuits, and pie crust. She has two kids so she answers approximately three thousand questions a day.
I have thought long and hard about my decision to address the newest example of police brutality against Black men and women in America that has resulted in the worldwide protests. Sometimes the only way that I can deal with the rage that these images evoke in me is to become numb as a defense mechanism. Far too many times these occurrences flood our timelines for a few weeks, and then are gone until the next incident. I worry about myself, but more than that, I am constantly worried about my family and you, my students. I pray that the world can see the joy and light that I see in your faces daily. I see you for the individual qualities that you bring to the classroom. I see your excitement but also your pain and struggle. Quiet, loud, extroverted, introverted, disengaged, actively participating, Black, White, Asian, Latinx, Pacific Islander, Native American, Multiracial, Gay, Straight, Bi or Curious, I see you and advocate for you. I want nothing more than to protect you as you figure out who you are as you pass through the awkward years of middle school. You have enough to deal with becoming yourself without having to deal with images of abuse due to immigration status, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, oh and on top of all of that, a worldwide pandemic that has isolated you from friends and loved ones for months.
The last time Los Angeles was awakened by a civil unrest was in 1992. I was a couple of years older than you are now. I remember how that impacted me and the many emotions that I didn’t know how to express. I experienced all three stress responses: fight, flight and freeze. I felt powerful from the rage but also completely helpless against a system that continuously exhibited disdain for me and my people. The far too often attacks on character either through explicit statements or with microaggression based on implicit biases adds to the stress of trying to exist in peace.
Through the years with each new murder at the hands of police or “stand your ground laws,” I could feel the pressure building to another eruption that inevitably happened two weeks ago. I would like to be optimistic that this time it will be different. So far, the evidence is suggesting that this time may be different. Maybe since people were confined at home and couldn’t turn away, they finally see and understand what Black people have tried to explain about mistreatment and the systemic racism found in the police, healthcare, and school systems of our country.
I hope and pray that when you are my age, you will not have to tell future generations experiencing yet another civil unrest the story of “When I was your age…” My parents told me of Marquette Frye in 1967, my story in 1992 was LaTasha Harlins & Rodney King, and in 2020 it is George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arberry and too many others to name. I believe that your generation can break this cycle. You are open to an entire world through social media to share experiences and understand each other. Learn and become who you are so that you can celebrate and respect the similarities and differences of others. You have shown that you can adapt and survive anything. To quote one of my favorite cartoons, “I believe that you have the power to change the world” (Avatar the Last Airbender).
Congratulations on all of your accomplishments. I am so proud of each and every one of you. It has been my pleasure to be your science teacher.
Sincerely,
Ms. R. Montgomery
I majored in Biology and graduated from California State University Dominguez Hills. My first teaching position was at Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles. I left the field of teaching to work in a pathology lab at Harbor UCLA Medical Center. I spent three years studying the effects of alcohol induced hypoxia due to binge drinking on the liver of rats and mice. I left the field of research and returned to teaching to answer a calling. After my experience at Crenshaw, I wanted to reach students earlier in their academic careers. I received my preliminary teaching credential in biological sciences from UCLA Center X with a Social Justice emphasis. I taught at Bret Harte Middle School in South Los Angeles for 12 years. I am currently teaching at Emerson Community Charter Middle School in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. I believe that everyone can learn if given a fair opportunity. I try to instill a love for learning and a need for students to stay socially aware.
Our spaces have changed due to the current situation, as have our concepts of rooms, events, and conversations. But as we step into Zoom sessions, chat rooms, or House Parties, and as we prepare to go out into the world again, here are some good things for us to remember as white people moving in spaces that aren’t all white.
I get where it comes from. I grew up the youngest in a white family with two older brothers, so there was always competition for attention at the dinner table. I learned that if I could be clever enough and say the thing loud enough and get my opinion out, I would win. Not win, but be seen.
This need to talk continued as I grew up white in American classrooms. Teachers reward the answerers, those who raise their hands and say the thing all the way. By the time you get through high school, you know the grades are there for “class participation,” showing interest, registering your opinion. And through college. And into the job world; if you’re at a table, you’d best be heard if you want to be seen as a member of the team. By the time we’re adults, it’s ingrained in us. “Be assertive.” “Register your opinion” “What do you think? Say it while you have the chance.”
We’re so good at saying the thing. Being heard. Letting the powers that be know we are the smart one. We are all over social media registering our opinions daily. When something big happens in the news, there’s this urgency inside to be heard from. I’ve felt it, that same squirm in my belly that came when a topic would come up at the dinner table. Or in a meeting.
But what we missed was that in our various classrooms, colleges, and jobs, this is not what people of color have experienced or what they’ve been taught. They were silenced, ignored, brushed off daily and, over time, taught that there was no reward for speaking up; it would get you corrected, silenced, ‘splained to, or a combination of the three. If you are a white woman reading this, you’ve experienced some level of this brushoff from men. We all have. Imagine it being the relentless message in every space you occupy. Understand we’re experiencing a different operational reality from our friends of color. I’m working on paying attention to this.
Allyship series by Atlanta artist Danielle Coke @ohhappydani on twitter and instagram.
It happened again. I’m certain if you’re reading this, you’ve been in a space where this happens. The white guy got a hold of a mic.
The overall thrust is that the publishing machine of the US is not only white dominated, but only promotes white writers, even when they’re telling stories of people of color. Flatiron Press’s kajillion dollar promotion of the problematic American Dirt pushed the conversation to a head.
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, a poet and activist, the founder of Women Who Submit, put together in very short time a crackerjack panel to talk about these issues, including Christopher Soto, Myriam Gurba, Romeo Guzman, Roxane Gay, and Wendy C Ortiz. All of these people have expertise in the publishing industry.
When Xochitl opened the mic up to questions after the panel, she gave a very clear reminder to the room that this space was being held for writers of color, children of immigrants, latinx writers.
And that white guy got up. He’s an agent and proceeded to ‘splain the publishing industry and statistics to this panel of experts.
Here’s where you can chuckle and say to yourself, “I’m not that guy,” and pat yourself on the back. But my question here is, instead of letting a roomful of people politely wait for this man to say his piece that adds nothing to the conversation, to let the guy bogart the mic from a roomful of people for whom that microphone was intended, what can white people do?
I was going to holler, “not your microphone, sir” but I sat there thinking: this isn’t my event, I came here to be quiet, listen, and amplify. But how many times have the BIPOC in the room had to carry a white guy like this?
I made up my mind to talk to the guy after the event ended. But when I got up, this agent was handing out his card to writers of color. Maybe this was a gatekeeper who saw the problem and could get writers’ books out there. I realize now I should have waited until he was not handing out a card and still had those words. Not that this guy, who had been clearly told who that microphone was for was necessarily going to learn, but I will work to do better next time.
Handling these guys takes a lot of energy, but it’s work BIPOC are tired of doing. We need to step in where we can, stop that guy from instinctively bulldozing and not listening. I ‘m working on this.
And, I’m hoping, as you’re reading this, you understand that the tickle in your belly, the squirming in your seat, your inner need to absolutely say the thing is best subdued in these spaces. When you walk into a reading or a conversation where people of color are well represented, which people of color have created, I’d urge you to appeal to the other things I hope you were taught growing up white: how to be a good guest, how to not speak until spoken to, how to be respectful of the experts onstage.
Allyship series by Atlanta artist Danielle Coke @ohhappydani on twitter and instagram.
We are products of the systems we grew up in and if you’re part of the dominant culture in this country, even if you are waking, even if you read all the things out there and feel pretty “woke” (please don’t call yourself that, you aren’t) there’s still a lot of work to do.
Stick around only white people? Put yourself only in comfortable situations? No. This does nothing but put you out of touch with the world, the country, the city you’re living in. It also makes you an active participant in a system your forebears created, and that system is not equal.
It is your responsibility as a member of the dominant society in this country to be aware of the system you’re in, fight for justice where you can, and listen to non-white people tell us how it is for them. Because only they know.
And where you can, where you have influence, create spaces for people of color. Even if it’s only at work or in your extended family. Even if it’s only online.
And just don’t be the asshole where that space has been created.
I’m still learning, but here are some tips on how to be a better ally, for that is what you’re working on.
Pay attention to the space you’re in. Any space at all where there is a person of color, recognize and allow that person to speak. Shush your white buddy who doesn’t get it. This lack of listening can happen at dinner tables, cocktail parties, receptions and in office meetings, and in Zoom sessions. Don’t be party to it.
Pay attention to the conversation you’re in. Is your opinion really going to enrich the conversation, or are you simply feeling that tickle in the belly, squirm in the seat need to be heard? Was your opinion actually asked for? If not, stay quiet. Your opinions are valuable, but they do not need to be everywhere all the time, they have their space. Save it for later.
Is your sudden need to express an opinion because everyone is weighing in? Is there a dogpile going on? Can you stop said dogpile?
Has the space been created for people of color only? Don’t be afraid to reach out to a friend of color to ask that question before attending. There are spaces you don’t belong.
Has the space been created for people of color to have a voice? If you are welcome there, your role is to sit, listen, and amplify on social media. Tweet that stuff out; good poetry, things said, amazing moments, tweet it with credit to the person who said it. You’re helping your white audience (if you are white you likely have a few white folks in your feed) see the conversations that are taking place. They can learn a lot from people in spaces they might not get to.
Amplify books, articles, poems, short stories, essays, and art by people of color. The systems in place in so many of those worlds only push the white version. Help your fellow artists, writers, poets, journalists, friends out. Retweet, share, and get excited about anything you genuinely liked–be as loud as you can!
If there’s an opportunity to step in to talk to a white person (live or on social media) when your friend of color is doing some heavy lifting. Ask that friend of color if it would be helpful for you to do so. “Can I handle this asshole for you?” You can do the explaining, references, give that person articles. Better yet, you can take the conversation to a sidebar outside this person of color’s feed. Because it’s exhausting for them. Also, THAT white guy does better when they’re in private conversation. Sometimes when they feel they’re being called out publicly, they go toxic. The object is to shut them up off your friend’s feed and out of their day.
Listen and learn. You are not woke. You are learning things, but I promise, you are not woke. My family has 300 years of benefitting off a system built on slavery and land theft, grown on laws and systems put in place to benefit their own. Inequality that takes 300 years to build runs in our fiber in ways we don’t understand. Keep listening, keep learning and get involved in the community where you live.
If you consider yourself a feminist, please understand that women of color are functioning under a different operational reality than you. If you’re a white woman, yes, you have experienced oppression, but again, that absolutely having to say the thing can make you unwittingly drown out voices of color around you. Be conscious of the spaces in which you are traveling and make sure you ‘re adding to the conversation, not talking over anyone.
There is work to be done, and it is not up to people of color to be the only agents of change. As Roxane Gay said in the #DiginidadLiteraria event, “It is not encumbent on writers of color to fix a problem they did not create.”
Kate Maruyama’s novel, HARROWGATE was published by 47North. Her short work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and in several anthologies, including Women Who Submit’s own ACCOLADES. She is a member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee of the Horror Writers Association and teaches in the BA program at Antioch University Los Angeles and for inspiration2publication among other places. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles, where she lives with her family.
“Ask your heart, from time to time, what is most important right now, in this moment, and listen very carefully for the response.” –Jon Kabat-Zinn
When I learned that my students would not be returning from spring break, it was like a shovel to the side of my head. I was jolted; cortisol ran through my body for days and weeks, and I had a constant, throbbing headache. I was asked to move my teaching, my content, my carefully designed community-building designed activities, online. Many of us found ourselves in the awkward and terrifying position of being told to stay still, and yet be heroically productive. Like the students, all my plans were interrupted, and my writing utterly side-lined.
I wavered between being frozen with inaction and indecision or distracting myself with constant movement: more dishes to make or bake or stockpile; more articles to read; audio books; an online course; youtube exercise clips; zoom meetups. Not still, not listening, just being certain there is noise and action and activity to crowd out stillness, thoughts and doubts and, in particular, fears.
That inner editor, that tireless nag, relentless reproachful, reminded me that other people were writing their wry think pieces, their touching essays, their profound poetry. Other writers signed agents; agents made deals, sold books. My inner editor, eyed me disdainfully, as if to say, “Why not you?”
In the meantime, I considered that “last days” have passed, without my even realizing it at the time: the last meal at a favorite restaurant, the last purchase at an independent shop, the last recognition of a student’s presence before they return to their home state or country. The last physical classroom meeting for this semester.
My husband was let go from his job; I heard from friends and students: their job losses, a ruined relationship, weddings delayed or dissolved. Financial hardships, moving away, moving back home, relatives on the frontlines.
I needed to be still, and ask my heart, and listen.
My heart said, it is okay to mourn.
I gave my inner editor the day off, the night off, the week off, the quarantine off. Shh, I told her. There, there, there.
*
We are humans, we are elastic and we accommodate the wonderful as swiftly as we do the unpleasant. We adapt. We are now a month or so into this odd world. Or three and half years, depending on your reference point.
We are in a holding pattern, in my case with its particular comforts and concerns. My home is cozy; in order to visit my 80-year old mother I can not see my children. My daughter is a cashier at a grocery store; people I know are suffering.
In one particular highly effective habit from Steven Covey’s iconic text he gives a Venn diagram and explains, where our area of concern overlaps our area of influence, therein lies our greatest power. I have tremendous anger and anxiety for so many current political outrages and utterly avoidable tragic outcomes, but that is far, far out of my area of influence.
What, out of so many concerns, lies within my influence? My words on the page. My interactions with and responsibilities towards my friends, family members, students, community. Where I invest my time and money. My attitude towards this situation.
What does my heart tell me now?
Out comes the printed draft with all my annotations, it is time to continue my revisions. I bite my tongue against the harsh words I have for my husband, borne out of spending so much time together. I connect and loop in with my friends and family. Put a colorful top and a cheerful face on for the zoom classes I teach. Reach out to the struggling students. Send money to people and causes in need.
The county announces a two week extension to our physical isolation. My doctor friend assures me it will be extended again. And again.
Disturbingly, thoughts of the future creep in. How will I survive in a summer like this without students, who give me so much meaning and purpose? Like millions of others, I wonder, will there even be a fall semester?
Stop! I shift gears, and ask my heart, what does it want, for the future?
My heart is very clear. It wants a tomorrow quite different from the yesterday that preceded all of this chaos. A yesterday where so many were struggling and financially subjugated.That makes me pause and reflect, now, looking to the future, what will we bring to tomorrow, to make this world anew?
Désirée Zamorano is an award-winning short story writer and the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Amado Women. A frequent contributor to the LA Review of Books, her essays and short stories can be found at Cultural Weekly, Catapult, Huizache, and Kenyon Review.
I had something else in mind for today’s column and had found someone write it. She wrote a beautiful and important essay on allyship, but that was done over a month ago, and so much has changed since then. So like so much right now, that essay will sit and wait.
We occupy this strange place right now. The world as we knew it sits just outside our view, and we can’t see out on the other side yet, can’t quite make out the horizon. We are stuck here with our thoughts, our words, our works-in-progress, ourselves.
If there was ever a time to remind ourselves to breathe, it is now. I find myself forgetting as I scroll through the news or zone out watching anything-but-the-news.
WWS member Lisbeth Coiman is sharing a poem a day, and Xochitl Julisa Bermejo shared Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” yesterday.
Or listen to music.
Xochitl shared “You’re the Best Around” from The Karate Kid the other day.
Or write a poem.
There are still many ways to connect.
Whatever you’re doing, hang in there. Maybe submit something, or maybe just breathe.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.
I’m heading to AWP again this year. Last year was my first because I had the chance to table for Jack Jones Literary Arts. I also listened in on panels, heard from writers I respect and admire, and tackled that book fair.
The book fair is so
overwhelming. All of those presses and programs and tables and books and
writers. You could run into Jericho Brown wearing a flower crown, or Terese
Marie Mailhot signing her memoir, or Wendy Ortiz browsing. In that overwhelm
that is the AWP Book Fair, I was star-struck, and buying too many books, and
stuck in my head as I wandered the aisles. I saw presses I’d sent work to who
had passed. There were presses I’d never heard of. There were presses who’d
published me. What did I have to say at these tables where my words were or
were not welcome?
I felt lost, and small, so
I found my way back to the Jack Jones table again and again. I only tabled
there for a few hours over the course of the conference, but it was always a
magnet pulling me, and it felt like my home base within that chaos. Even when I
wasn’t tabling for them, every time I found myself in that fair, I’d walk by
their table, visit with the staff or an author, ask if they needed anything,
and help out before making my way to a lecture or panel.
Jack Jones isn’t at AWP
this year, but I want to tackle that book fair in a way that feels healthy and
productive. I don’t want to feel so lost and overwhelmed. So this is my AWP
Book Fair action, and I invite any Women Who Submit members who are attending
to join me in putting a little activism into your book fair wanderings.
1) Approach a press with one of our Women Who Submit postcards.
2) Present the card and
introduce yourself. Explain a little about Women Who Submit, an organization which,
as a response to the VIDA count, empowers women and nonbinary writers to submit
their work for publication.
3) Choose your own
adventure:
a friendly press: Thank the presses for doing their part to bring more gender equity into the publishing world. Maybe ask how they think they will do on the 2019 count, and what they plan to do to ensure continued equity in 2020. Ask about how they think they’re doing publishing women of color.
a press that is making gains: Acknowledge that the press has improved, but isn’t yet equitable. Ask if they are doing anything to ensure more equitable gains on the 2019 count or for 2020. Ask if they know about their racial representation and how they think they are doing/can do better.
a press that isn’t
friendly to women: OK, only one of these is at AWP this year, but go ahead and
let them know that they aren’t very equitable in their publishing of women and
ask if they’re doing anything to change this. Ask how they might improve their
representation of women of color.
a press that isn’t on the VIDA count list: There are so many of these! Ask them how many women editors they have, editors of color, queer editors? Are they actively recruiting marginalized voices? What are their strategies? Do they pay? Are they interested in hearing from our members? Particularly if there are women tabling, and specifically women of color, thank them for the work they are hopefully doing to ensure more equity in publishing.
4) Ask them to look for
Women Who Submit members in their slush piles, and to be on the lookout for
submissions during our Annual Submission Blitz in August!
5) Record your
interaction. Did they seem receptive to WWS’s mission? Any names of editors or
upcoming submission deadlines you should note? Will you send them work?
Press designations from the 2018 VIDA Count: Book Fair location or N/A (not attending)
Friendly Presses
+60% women published McSweeney’s: T1930 The Missouri Review: N/A Prairie Schooner: 1668-1669 The Normal School: N/A Pleiades: T2034 The Cincinnati Review: 1533, 1534
+50% women published Tin House: 1635 Granta: N/A Boston Review: N/A Ninth Letter: 1532 Jubilat: N/A Colorado Review: 1430 Conjunctions: N/A Virginia Quarterly: 1129 Fence: 1751 n+1: T1321 The Believer: 1643-1644 New England Review: N/A Kenyon Review: 1655
Getting Better: (made improvements >+5% in more equitable representation, but still not to 50%) Poetry: 1457 The New Yorker: N/A Gettysburg Review: 1135 Southwest Review: T259 Harvard Review: T1220
Male-Dominated Presses (less than 40% women represented) The Times Literary Supplement: N/A The Nation: N/A The Threepenny Review: N/A London Review of Books: N/A The Atlantic: N/A The New York Review of Books: 1058
Find us for WWS cards at the ACCOLADES Release Party on Thursday, March 5th from 4pm-7pm at La Botanica or at the ACCOLADES Book Signing on Friday, March 6th from 12pm-2pm at table Nosotrxs: More Than Books, 1038.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.
It’s been three years. We have been living with a white supremacist, rapist, corrupt reality TV star at the head of our government for three long years. What does this do to a woman? A woman of color? An ally? An artist?
We knew he was white supremacist:
housing discrimination, condemning the exonerated five, blocking Native
American casinos, denying Obama’s citizenship, and over the past three years,
he’s confirmed this by building a wall, instituting a travel ban, carrying out thousands
of inhumane family separations, denying asylum, and calling white supremacists
very good people.
We knew he was a sexual
predator before, but his court appointments threatened my reproductive rights,
threatened affordable health care, threatened my autonomy.
The gas-lighting
continues. The lies and constant barrage of bad news make it hard to breathe because
the air is so toxic. It’s hard to keep pushing when the Senate and the
Republican Party continue to legitimize unlawful conduct. It’s hard when there
are kids in cages and the earth is on fire and our rights are suddenly up for
negotiation.
But what other options do
we have? Opt out? Leave? Or do we follow the news, keep watching even when it’s
hard, and push back with our thoughts, our actions, our words, our money (if we
have any after “tax cuts”)?
During the National Book
Awards in January of 2017, Colson Whitehead gave this advice: “Be kind, make
art, and fight the power.” I repeat this on those toughest days. I remind those
struggling around me: we are worthy, we matter, and those most at-risk matter.
Our art matters, and hate cannot win.
My kids were in diapers
at the start of this presidency, but they have grown up over the past three
years. 45 has only grown more vicious and cruel. My youngest only knows a world
under this president, and my oldest knows we protest. They also know how to be
kind and to make art. They know it’s hard work to fight the power.
It’s been three years, and with hope and more work, next year things will be different. We look toward hope and a future of healing and redemption. We look to make art that restores, and we keep fighting.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.
One of the things I love
most about our Women Who Submit community is the way we celebrate. We clap-up every
submission and query at our parties and acknowledge our passes and publications
in our virtual spaces. So during this season of celebration, let’s think about all
of the ways we can close out the year celebrating our work and our risks and
all the choices we make that move our creative work into the world. Here are
five ways we can celebrate our writing lives this holiday season.
Celebrate the words. Maybe it’s a line in a draft of a poem, or a nice holiday note. Maybe it’s a turn in a story, or maybe even a whole paragraph or chapter that works exactly the way we want. In those small, sacred moments when we feel like we actually get the words right, let’s celebrate them, even if we are the only ones reading them (so far).
Celebrate brilliance in the works we read. Look at all of the amazing final drafts in the world! I am sometimes overwhelmed when I first walk into a bookstore or library. There are so many books, and I wonder where my own voice fits within all of the noise. Instead of hanging my head, I’m thankful for all of the books, and all of the poetry and essay collections I’ve read this year. These books have so much to teach if I read and learn from them. Instead of concerning myself with where my voice fits, I can celebrate books and know I am working to make space for more voices.
Celebrate gifts of words. This holiday season, like most others, I gift favorite books that I’ve read in the past year and hope to talk with loved ones about them. Maybe it’s a personalized note or card aiming to thank or communicate an important thought. The written word allows us to connect with friends and family beyond the social media share or text message. Talking about ideas and stories allows for a different level of connection, the kind I strive for but struggle to create with even my dearest family and friends.
Celebrate the accomplishments and write them down. All of the submissions, readings, conferences, residencies, late nights, early mornings, time at drafting, revising, editing, researching, responding, and risk-taking. It all takes so much, and most of us do this work while working and caretaking and living full and busy lives. So celebrate all of those ways we put our work and our words out there. For every reading or lecture we attended, for every opportunity or conversation we said yes to, or all of those times when we supported other writers and then grew as writers ourselves, cheers to all of that.
Celebrate growth across time. It’s the end of a year and of a decade. There are best-of-lists for all things artistic and creative all around us, and it’s easy to get lost making sense of everyone else’s reflections. But this looking back doesn’t need to be public, it doesn’t need to be shared or written about, but it is worthwhile. You will see just how much work you have done over the past months and over the years. Celebrate it. Celebrate you and your artistry, and then let’s look forward to all you are becoming in 2020 and into this next decade.
Happy holidays to you all. I look forward to celebrating with you all in the new year and decade.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.
The sky held smoke from a brush fire burning in the valley, even though our submission party was being held in a business park transformed into a college campus in Culver City. As hard as it was to show up on this Saturday morning, we were there.
It was hot, even for October in Southern California, so the title of Rocio Carlos and Rachel McLeod’s workshop, “Pay Attention: Attending and Collaborating at the End Slash Beginning of the World” pulsed with urgency.
We walked through glass doors, down carpeted hallways, and into an air conditioned classroom. We brought life with us. Writers breathed into the space, offered snacks, hauled metal water bottles, laptops, notebooks, and pens. Rocio and Rachel scattered pieces of greenery across tables. Cuttings of sage, lavender, rosemary, and citrus welcomed us. We pressed leaves between fingers, brought the outside in, and as more writers filtered in, the smoke of the weekend lifted.
Rocio and Rachel, the collaborative authors of Attendance, shared their process with us: their attending to the world; Rocio to flora, Rachel to fauna, and to all of the overlapping spaces. They paid attention. That Saturday morning, for a collection of moments, we collaborated with them. We shared their process, by attending together, paying attention, breathing in air, and taking care. It was not the kind of self-care Rachel described as being important so we can be more effective workers, but a mindfulness that connects us with one another, that helps us create connection even if the world is ending slash beginning.
We wrote together. We shared our names, and some flora and fauna. We wrote. We walked and breathed in one another’s work, and then we wrote again. We took attendance. Rocio and Rachel illuminated a bit of their process, and then sold all of their copies of Attendance.
WWS Leadership with Rocio and Rachel: taking attendance.
As we stand at the end slash beginning of the world, it can be tempting to bury our heads in the ground, but this workshop reminded us to look, to lift our heads to the weather and take the pulse of everything around us: to take attendance and take care. It was exactly the way we all needed to spent a few moments on a hot fall day before getting to the business of submitting.
You can view this workshop stream on the WWS Facebook page. You can support Rocio and Rachel’s collaborative work by purchasing Attendance.
Noriko Nakada is the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.
I’m showing up today, y’all, but I’m exhausted. From working my own day job. From parenting my two kids. From breathing on the flames of a writing career I’m hoping will someday generate more than a couple of flickers from hot coals. I’m exhausted from the news. The devastating bad news. The possibly good news. The potential for what might come soon, might come later, might not come at all.
Knock on wood if you’re with me.
I’ve been watching lots of tv to escape and see the world right now. One of my late-summer guilty pleasures is Hard Knocks. It’s an HBO Sports production following an NFL camp throughout the preseason. I’ve been watching for years, even though I’ve written off the NFL #IStandWithKap. This season, Coach Gruden of the Raiders does this thing where he says, “Knock on wood if you’re with me.” When he says this, the players rap on the tables around them and it’s a cosign for whatever he’s said.
I started using this in my classes. “So, the author here is clearly unreliable. Knock on wood if you’re with me.” It works. My middle school students knock on wood. Or they don’t, but at least a few do and it always wakes up the room for a few seconds.
Knock on wood if you’re with me.
So, tonight I’m going to breathe. On this warm fall night that still feels like summer, I’ll put a few words on the page, close my eyes to the news cycles spinning, kiss my kids goodnight, and breathe. In the morning there will be a fresh day, a new page to write, new headlines to unpack, another school day for my students and my children, and sometimes it is enough to just breathe. And the next day, the next week, the next month there will be endless opportunities to push, but tonight, breathing is all I’ve got.
Noriko Nakada is the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.
Noriko Nakada is the editor of the Breathe and Push column. She writes, blogs, tweets, and parents in Los Angeles. She is committed to writing thought-provoking creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.