Writing Salon Mistress Muses

Getting Published

Writing, for me, is a practice — a creative-spiritual practice. It's good for my soul and helps to keep me on an even keel. I go in and out of the desire to be published, to gain more recognition as a writer in my own right (rather than merely as "that woman who runs the Writing Salon").

Ten years ago I was much more concerned about being published, so I sent out more submissions (not many, but way more than I do now [I haven't sent anything out in, oh, probably three or four years], and my number of acceptances relative to the number of submissions was actually quite good. You'd think that would have spurred me on to send out even more submissions. But it didn't. Once I'd proven to myself that I could do it if I tried, my interest waned. Weird.

I'm not proud of this, because one thing I have often said to my shy, lazy, or overly modest students who are dragging their feet about submitting their work is that it's SELFISH to horde your writings and never share them with anyone. To submit your work (if you think it's good work) and get it published is an act of generosity. False modesty is tiresome and annoying.

Why haven't I taken my own advice? Hmmm, seems like no matter how long you've been writing, questions such as this one continue to arise.

What I am realizing more and more every day is that there are so many more questions than answers!  Whether the topic is "my life as a writer" or "my battle with breast cancer" or "learning to cook after all these years of eating Lean Cuisines," what's of primary importance are your questions. The answers are secondary, because the answers are always changing. But the questions — the searching — are what make life so interesting.

Walking & Writing

I have more to say (surprise!) about my last post. Much more. However, I feel like a change of pace, so..... just so you don't think I've become nothing but a boring BCO Blogger (Breast Cancer Obsessed Blogger), I'd like to add that I've been working away on the new spring session schedule of Writing Salon classes, and am rather excited about a new class we'll be offering called Walking & Writing, taught by Stephen Vincent.

Stephen just sent me a short series of some of his own writings that he did (or started) while out walking around San Francisco. The writings are coupled with photos that he also took while out walking, and the series is titled Ghost Walks. Here's a small, lovely excerpt from Ghost Walks.

More about Walking & Writing later, but right now I am inspired, partly by Stephen, to go out for my three-mile walk before the next downpour arrives. This time I'm taking my new Nanopod because, as much as I enjoy the peacefulness of walking in silence, I also sometimes get bored with that. I want to whisk myself around Bernal Hill to the sounds of music today. Maybe a little Zydeco and World Beat.

Serendipitous Rain Walk

Okay, so I had to go up to Quest Diagnostic Labs at UCSF on Parnassus this morning, for a couple of blood tests (so many tests, tests coming out my ears). After the tests, I decided to walk down to 9th Avenue and put a few Writing Salon flyers and cards out and about. As I was just about to reach the corner of Judah and 9th Avenue, I passed the Overland Book Company used bookstore. I had known there was an Overland Book Co. on Webster Street near Union, but didn't realize they had another store on Judah. Since Overland is owned and run by an old friend of mine, Beau Beausoleil, I poked my head in to see if he was there. (I say he's an old friend, and he is - as in the kind of old friend you haven't seen in Forever. In this case, I'd say it had been a good ten years since I'd seen Beau, who I originally met back in the late 70s when I worked at Small Press Traffic bookstore when it was located on 24th Street in Noe Valley. Beau walked into the store one Sunday morning, nobody else was there, we started talking, and that was that.)

Anyway, there he was, sitting behind the counter of what looked to be a lovely, spacious, airy store. I walked in and over to the counter, said "Hi Beau!" and waited for him to respond. He looked at me blankly. I mean a total blank. "It's Jane," I said. Oy. Of course I wondered if I had really aged that dramatically in the last ten years. But "we" decided it was just that I'd had very long and much darker hair the last time he saw me. I also wore contacts back then, but today I was wearing dark brown framed glasses. And yeah yeah yeah, I was ten years older.

No matter, though. We fell right back into our old rapport of yore, and I, being me, wasted no time with small talk, instead launching right into the nitty gritty —  telling him all about my current breast cancer hoopla. He told me some of his nitty gritty life stuff, too. It was a good exchange, not only personally but professionally. Beau gave me a copy of his latest book of poems, Concealed In Language (his ninth book) and also told me about the Sausalito jazz radio show he now hosts, Brilliant Corners, a fun and eccentric mix of poetry and jazz. And I talked Beau into including a quarterly spot for Writing Salon students and teachers in his upcoming Overland Books literary reading series. I didn't really have to "talk" him into it; he was in the middle of planning it, and was happy to work The Writing Salon into his not-yet-finalized program - so long as I can come up with a solid written proposal.

For years I've been wanting to start holding Writing Salon readings in bookstores and cafes around the city, but it takes time and energy to find the right places, contact the right people, and really do all you have to do to make these events happen. Lots of organizing and planning is involved. So... my idea kept simmering on the back burner but never made it to the front burner.

If I hadn't had to go to UC Parnassus for the blood tests, and if I hadn't then decided to walk around putting up Writing Salon flyers in order to get more exercise (a new post-cancer resolution), I wouldn't have stumbled upon Beau's store, which, as it turns out, has only been on Judah Street for a year, and I wouldn't have hatched this new plan to hold a few Writing Salon readings there next year.

Funny how these things come about sometimes, isn't it?

Best of all, I had a glorious walk in the rain. I had no umbrella or hat, and my glasses got totally blurred, but I wasn't cold, and it felt delicious to get soaked from head to toe.

I recommend Beau's radio show from last night. It's a podcast (link above). His intro is very funny.

Health Writing - DeMystifying Medicine for the Masses

Given my recent personal foray into the land of doctors, medicine, and disease, I've been reminded of how important it is for SOMEONE to deliver GOOD health and medical information to "the masses." Much of what we read in mainstream newspapers and magazines regarding the lastest medical studies, controversies, and "discoveries" is too often reported by media people who have no idea what they're talking about - not really. They have neither the knowledge nor the expertise that would enable them to responsibly report on the medical and scientific issues of the day. Ditto for television reporters.

Here's one small example. You pick up the newspaper and read an article that says "the study shows that hormone replacement therapy increases a woman's risk for breast cancer."

What the article doesn't say, however, is that this risk was not shown to be  "statistically significant." In other words, if the risk increases by  a very very small percentage, researchers and doctors do not consider it significant. But when lay people read the article, all they think is, "Oh my god, I can't take estrogen because it will increase my risk of breast cancer!"

Wrong. It's WAY more complicated than that.

So here's what I think: If you're a writer who's interesting in doing freelance magazine writing, you might want to look into the possibility of making health/medical writing one of your specialties. Most magazine freelancers find "niches" for themselves (i.e. sports or fashion or parenting or politics or the environment or travel or culture or....many other subjects), and the health/medical niche is actually one of the more lucrative ones. Not only that, it's meaningful. It's a field of information that we all need more access to, (and more help with understanding).

The Writing Salon occasionally offers a one-day workshop on just this topic. The last time we offered it was back in Summer 2003. I think it's about time to offer it again, even though it's a hard class hard to fill -- probably because, to most fledgling magazine writers, it doesn't seem as romantic or fun to write about health/medicine as it does to write about, say, travel destinations or local eateries or eccentric neighborhood characters.

All I can say to that is, I don't agree. Health and medicine is nothing if not fascinating and FILLED with stories. These stories range from highly informative on a scientific/technical level, to highly touching or even entertaining on a human interest level. Of course, I do think it would require more study and research to do a good job. It's no big deal if you make a mistake reporting on the lastest fashion trend in shoes, but it's a pretty darn big deal to mislead the public if you're reporting on the latest national breast cancer study.

FYI: Here's what our course description said, the last time we offered this workshop:

Are you a freelancer looking to develop expertise in an area that is in high demand by editors? Or are you a medical professional who has always wanted to try your hand at writing about your field of expertise? If so, take this workshop. "The market for medical and health writing is vast, with opportunities to write for a wide variety of major national magazines to smaller and profitable niche markets like hospitals, health education and drug companies," says reporter Ulysses Torassa, who will be team-teaching this workshop with editor Katherine Griffin. "Not only that, it's a fascinating subject with real meaning for people's lives. And the Bay Area is a perfect area to practice the craft, since we've got major medical centers, a thriving alternative medicine community, and frequent major medical conferences where important discoveries are announced." If you're interested in learning and writing about the many new technologies, therapies and issues surrounding medicine today, this workshop will help you get started.

Ulysses Torassa has been a journalist for more than 15 years and has written stories about AIDS, women’s health issues, Medicare, alternative medicine, fitness, and experimental medical treatments. She was medical writer for the Hearst-owned SF Examiner before it was sold to the Fang family. She is now the health writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and writes a monthly column on travel medicine. She has freelanced for Self, Glamour, BabyTalk, WebMD and CNN.com. Katherine Griffin is the managing editor of Alternative Medicine magazine, and has written health and medicine articles for Hippocrates, Health and WebMD.

That's my two cents worth for today!

The Dark Parts

I'd rather spend the next three hours writing than calling doctors to make appointments. But the woman at the financial office at St. Francis wants me to get my primary care doctor to fax her a copy of a "referral letter" proving that she did indeed refer me to the geneticist/researcher/HRT specialist who is going to consult with me - the first of several consultations I must arrange for, as follows, with:

1) The Oncologist
2) The second opinion oncologist
3) The radiologist, Part 1 preliminary consultation
4) The radiologist, Part 2 preliminary consultation
5) The Geneticist/researcher/HRT specialist, Part 2
6) The pathologist/cancer researcher
7) The menopause specialist

All appointments must be coordinated and put in the right order. All information culled from the appointments must then be analyzed and organized (by me, the layperson). The only way I can analyze the information is to ask the various specialists what they think I should do, after telling them what the other specialists think I should do.  When they give me different opinions, which will happen (and has ALREADY happened) I will ultimately have to make my own choice even if I'm not sure which choice to make, because of course I am not a surgeon, pathologist, oncologist, geneticist, radiologist or menopause specialist.

But I digress. Back to the referral letter. After I get that sent over to the St. Francis financial office woman, she will then call HealthNet, my insurance company, again today, to see if she can get through to them this time around. Yesterday they put her on hold for 15 minutes, and she finally gave up.

So I will not be writing for the next three or four hours, as I'd like to do. But I will write for the next 20 to 30 minutes, long enough to say:

For the last two nights running, I've been waking up between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m., and not being able to go back to sleep because my mind is racing with: medical facts, medical questions, gigantic to-do lists, and fears. Currently uppermost in my mind is the question: How will I ever be able to continue running the Writing Salon if I have to undergo both radiation and chemotherapy? I hear that these treatments typically take approximately six months to complete. Six months of living a hellish existence filled with profound fatigue, nausea, all kinds of lovely bowel problems, hair loss, lack of appetite, susceptibility to throat and nose infections, etc. Even if I didn't have a business to run, getting through this "experience" sounds pretty damn difficult. And even if it were only three months rather than six, that would be long enough for the Writing Salon to fall apart. Why don't I just hire help? Short question, long answer. Suffice it to say that this would be a complicated endeavor, at best. It takes time and energy to train someone to do what I have been doing myself for seven years. I'm not saying I won't try. I'm just saying I'm overwhelmed by the thought of trying to do this, at breakneck speed, on top of everything else.

The only way to deal with any of this is to keep going back, over and over, to the mantra: One step at a time.

This morning I wondered how many other women are writing in blogs about their breast cancer experiences. So I did a Technorati search and, of course, found several. I looked at two or three that were sincere but not particularly well written and therefore not compelling. The fourth one, however, I thought was well written and made several good points. Yes, it has an angry edge to it, but that's okay. Anger is allowed, don't you think? It's born of exhaustion and frustration. We can't stay rational and reasonable and calm every second, no matter how hard we try.

After reading that blog, I forced myself to stop looking for other breast cancer blogs, much as I would have liked to find the comfort of hearing how other women are coping with the challenge, because I must get a million things done today.

The first thing I did was pick up a book that came to me in the mail two days ago, from a book publicist at Harcourt. It's called Pen on Fire: A Busy Woman's Guide to Igniting the Writer Within, and was written by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, who teaches creative writing at the University of California, Irvine, and also hosts the radio show Writers on Writing.

I scanned the table of contents and my eyes went straight to the chapter titled: Expose Yourself.  Brief excerpt:

The authors I most admire put it all out there for readers to do with what they will. These authors know there is power in the darkness they've lived through or have seen through the eyes of others and they're willing to harness that power and stream it into words....

...You can't undo what's been done to you, but you can make some sense of it through writing. Use those experiences and create art....

...Those dark parts hold power over us. They give us bad dreams at night and they influence our behavior with people in the light of day. When you write about those parts, you help to transfer that invisible but oh-so-tangible power they have over you onto the printed page.

A Dose of Reality for Writers

I just happened upon a blogsite called Sepulculture that contains an interesting, albeit somewhat daunting post, "Seth Godin's Advice to Writers." I say daunting because it contains straightforward, un-sugarcoated information about how the publishing industry works. Many writers don't want to deal with this reality. Heck, I'm one of them. The book marketing and publishing world is not an easy world within which to manuveur — or to conquer.  Nevertheless, I keep myself fairly well informed, enough so that I basically understand how it works, and can make whatever decisions I make, when it comes to if or how I want to get my writing out into the world, accordingly.

 

Surprise Publicity!

The San Francisco Chronicle Sunday pink section (datebook) did a feature story yesterday called Get Creative, and it ended with a three-paragraph section called "Write On!" that spotlighted none other than ye old Writing Salon.  I didn't even know we were getting a mention. A friend saw it, called me up, and said "Go check out page 23 of the Sunday pink section."

What a nice surprise. It came at just the right time, too. I was still in my pajamas at 2 p.m., blearily working away on trying to get the new fall session classes up onto the website - a project that always takes me several days to do. When I got the call, I was in the process of tearing my hair out strand by strand, because half the course descriptions on the website had suddenly, mysteriously gone from normal font to bold font, and I'd been trying to figure out how to fix it for, well, hours.

I needed a positive moment, something to help my hair grow back in. And I got it.

Not long after that I figured out how to fix the website glitch. Somehow or other, a whole bunch of extra gobbledygooky html code had insinuated itself into the course description for Willa Rabinovitch's fiction writing workshop. The confusing thing was that Willa's course description looked fine; it was all the other course descriptions that came AFTER Willa's that were so boldly messed up. I'm sure a web savvy person would have known, right away, to look where I didn't know to look until the universe finally decided to have mercy on me by waving a magic wand over my head that made me look at (AND SORTA EVEN UNDERSTAND!) the code in Willa's description.

Needless to say, this non-techie writer was very proud of herself. 

Blog Maintenance

Gee, has it really been five days since I last posted? There's a reason. The Writing Salon summer session began last Saturday, July 9th. Five days ago, and I'm always breathtakingly, heartbreakingly, disgustingly busy during the first week of a new session, especially this summer when too many people have been signing up for classes at the last possible minute. I finish making a class roster, send it to the teacher, and then two more people sign up an hour before the class is scheduled to start. I add their names to the roster, send them to the teacher, and then someone else signs up ten minutes before the class is supposed to start. What's this all about? Don't people ever make plans more than a day in advance, anymore? Sure, it's summer vacation time and all, but still. Gimme a break.  I have a blog to maintain! 

Rejected and Dejected? Aww....

Need help dealing with rejection letters? Check out rejectioncollection.com.

Montreal Here I Come!

May 25, 2005

Next Wednesday I'm getting on a plane to Montreal, going to my son's graduation from circus school. That's right, circus school. He's an acrobat. He found his right livelihood early on in life (at the age of five). What a gift. His major is "hand to hand." Graduation, for him, means being in a big performance for ten days running. I'm excited, I haven't seen him since December. He didn't come home for summer vacation last year because he went to Europe instead. He paid for his trip and expenses, as he traveled from country to country - England, France, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Spain, I forget where else - by doing street performances and gigs at festivals. In London, he and the other four members of his "troupe" looked for a traffic intersection with a long stop light. When they found one that lasted two minutes, that's where they performed. They'd do their tricks for a minute, then run around to car windows collecting donations. They made $300 in an hour. That got divided by five, but still! When I was his age, I was working for $2 an hour as a chicken girl at Woolworth's.

What does this have to do with writing? I don't know. Nothing and everything. It has to do with writing because in order to write you have to figure out how to create the space in your life to practice writing. That's a challenge, because you have to do other things at the same time, like raise families and make a living. Only a small portion of writers make a living from writing. I have the statistics on that somewhere. Maybe I'll find them and post them someday. Even FAMOUS writers resort to teaching, consulting, etc. Then of course there are the ones who have entire other careers in addition to their writing. William Carlos Williams was a doctor. Wallace Stevens was a businessman. Bill Clinton had to do a stint as president of the United States, for heaven's sake, in order to come up with the fodder for HIS memoir. Jane Fonda had to prance around as Barbarella before she was able to write HER memoir. (Plus she had to marry Tom Hayden, Ted Turner, and I forget the first hubbie's name — some lady's man director who wanted Jane to do threesomes. Plus, after all that, she had to go and become a born again Christian.)