Lindsay Bland, Montana MFA '09

Mz. Lindsay Bland, poet extraordinaire (and Montana alum!), has a chapbook out with Dancing Girl Press:

Between the Devil and the Deep

Congrats!

Professional Developing Part II

I presented at Laurapalooza yesterday.

And then I made the cover of the Mankato Free Press. Ha!

But what I wrote the other day about not being nervous? Scratch that.

Professional Developing

Tomorrow morning I present at my very first conference. I’m on the grown up side of podium! About now I’m grateful for Second Wind, and my thesis reading. Sometimes MFA readings are treated like a vanity exercise. But I’m about to face a room of people tomorrow three hours before I officially wake up. And I don’t even feel *that* nervous. Weird. Whereas my first reading was an exorcism.The entire week beforehand I was a wreck.

I admit one of the reasons I've always wanted to write and teach is the travel. Here I am! At the AmericInn in Mankato, Minnesota. No, it's not France (yet). But if you check out the link above, my interest in the area will become apparent. Besides, for me, a huge double room at a place with a pool paid for by the U counts as vacation. (AND take out Chinese. AND cable).

Right now it feels good to have who I want to be (writer) pay for a trip. People are interested in what I'm doing. Kind of nice after years and years of people caring about the food I brought to their table.

The Anxiety of Influence: A Dog’s Tale

I co-own a difficult dog. He is our neurotic co-pilot. I worry that I helped morph many of his saner attributes into something no longer sane, all the while trying—with patience and persistence—to quell his interest in barking at humans, pigeons, dogs and plastic bags. I wish I knew his before-us time. Then I could chart his course in the last year and rest assured that our training is doing him some good.

I should first credit Monte with his lovable qualities before I proceed to sully his reputation over the interwebs. He is an amazingly intuitive and courteous dog. He will can jump up to my lap and place his paws on my arm when he senses the twinge of existential despair. He knows what’s up and how to fix it.

Monte will gladly accept visitors into our house, even the dog trainer who came on a house to meet him. He treats our cats with begrudging respect. And he doesn’t pester the 50 gallons of water holding our fish. He won’t tear the window blinds or scratch the hardwood. He squeals in his sleep when he’s dreaming. His brown eyes will make a warm puddle of your heart.

Monte can elevate my blood pressure like nobody’s business. He is very dog reactive. It took us a while to notice this. When we adopted him, all 50 lbs. of his 2+ year old emaciated black lab mix self, we noticed he was a leash puller. He wanted to go, and he was taking us with him. He would, on the other hand, approach other dogs with the curiosity and good intentions—but elevated emotions— in much the same way a kid might approach the ice cream truck. There would be tail wagging but an eventual paw swipe at the smaller dogs or a lunge at the larger dogs. Now, during walks with our numbnut, this behavior is more than I can handle. Has our discouraging his dog greeting (because he gets overwhelmed) reinforced his belief that all dogs are bad and that, when we tenderly try a meet-and-greet, he believes it appropriate to jump and swipe? Oh Sisyphus!

Above all else, it is embarrassing to have a dog that is inhospitable to some of our neighbors, while he slobbers and wags his tails at others. He adores the soft-spoken, aloof neighbor, who memorized Monte’s name, birth marks and habits before he could recognize my face or before I could even learn his name. Monte loves the children that play in our courtyard, who kick the soccer ball and proclaim their bravery in the face of slobbering dogs. He likes the constantly revolving line of fans at our local RedBox. He is angry at anyone who might be banging around under the hood of their cars or watering their lawns when we walk by. He doesn’t like if someone is listening to headphones or on their bicycle. He is angry when someone comes out from around a corner. He is elated at squirrels. He cowers at thunder and if someone slams the door downstairs. His agoraphobia has manifested itself not as the inability to leave the apartment, but rather with the inability to manage the barrage of sensory information he encounters outside. And I thought walking your dog was supposed to be calming and regenerative.

So we enrolled Monte is a Growl class. And he was a super star. I was not a super star. I was a blubbering fool, disappointed when Monte wouldn’t make eye contact and felt like jumping up and down at other dogs. I was a mess simply because I couldn’t stand the anxiety of holding in my anxiety enough to make sure Monte didn’t see that I was agitated. Turned out, I needed a Growl class for humans and Monte needed to stay home and eat bacon and watch Days of our Lives. I think that this human class I need to go find might be filed in the yellow pages under “therapy” or “support group”.

In Growl, the dog trainers told us to sing “jingle bells” to ourselves when approaching another dog, so as not to transfer the anxiety or tension through the leash to our dog. There’s a lot of talk of the leash being the emotional tether—the only thing “connecting” you to your dog. My tension tells Monte when to be tense. My relaxation tells Monte when to relax. My tension is high when I’m tense about making sure I relax enough. The trainers wouldn’t be able to help me if they knew I’m too worried about singing jingle bells and sacrificing one small bit of my attention from him to even remember why I’m supposed to be singing jingle bells in the first place.

It’s been 9 months since we adopted Monte. With excellent precision—if I have the timing right—I can navigate the most stress-inducing dog walk-past on the narrowest of sidewalks while Monte maintains eye contact and prepares to receive a treat. Food motivates. But motivational slogans and commands and food-giving is both exhausting and habit forming. Sometimes it doesn’t even work. Will Monte ever not need treats to walk like a reasonable, obedient and calm dog? Will I ever trust the dog? Will he ever trust me?

Word Choice?

What did writers do before word processing? For one, we repeated ourselves a lot more. As I revise my book I am discovering my crutch words, how I repeat not just in a sentence or in a paragraph (typo) but over the course of 300 pages (tic). I couldn’t finish Anne Rice due to her abuse of the phrase “preternatural skin.” I mean, I wasn’t looking for much, just some vampire paperback action. But even so, I got so irritated I couldn’t read. I’m determined to avoid a similar mistake.

Enter the "Find" tool, which let me know how fond I am of "documenting." I love "to document." Tasks are "documented." So are people. I even found a "documented are," the passive voice version creating a double faux pas. What's eerie is that I've written these chapters at different times over the past four years. My writing might have changed but the obsession with documenting remaints.

I know some of my crutches even as I type them. I have banned myself from the phrase "truth be told" even I have the impulse to start every third sentence this way. I lean on "now," "then" and "so" as (lame) transitions. I'll allow myself this indulgence once in a while, but I try to be sparing.

"Find" next informed me I overuse the phrase "I confess."

"Difficult" was the next to go. Originally I was searching for the word "cult," to make sure I didn't make the same Yearning for Zion joke twice. "Difficult" turned up about every fifth page. It was like finding out one in five people is an alien.

And I have a problem with inserting too many clever, quippy similes, which are like a stinky cheese——delightful in small doses, but if overindulged, impact the bowels.

Then there's when a writer uses the "only once per novel word" twice. For instance, you only get to describe a character's neck as resembling a puggaree once. A favorite writer of mine had this sort of error in her latest novel, and I gasped as if she had just stepped up to accept a PEN Faulkner in a menstrual stained skirt. Where was the editor?

Alas, It's commonly mourned how the days of Maxwell Perkins level editing are long gone. Every time someone reads my book they catch something. But I'm the final gatekeeper. Just because the editor signs off doesn't mean I should

On Writing About Writing

For three weeks I have been reworking the first chapter of my book. And yes, I’m going dotty because in many ways I have been working this same chapter (it began as an essay) for five years. About now it’s like tough, old dough that requires a violent punching. But this is the last stand. I have to make final decisions and once my book is out there I can’t take it back. If Chapter One doesn’t hold, then the reader will never go any further. So I am fine combing the situation and it’s brutal.


My Stymie of the Day takes place on page seventeen. I am worried about being one of those writers writing about writing.

In Montana workshops the general rule was to disdain stories about writers and writing. I'm I was one of the naysayers, but the more I think about it, I'm a sucker for stories that star writers (Sophie's Choice, Wonder Boys, Winslow in Love to name a few). Writers done well make for great main characters. But a bad story about a writer is worse than a bad story about a lawyer. Hence the sordid slushpile tale about the young "writer" who gets his "college girlfriend" "pregnant" and she breaks down over the "abortion."

Lesson: Write about writing if you must——but proceed with caution.

My book (as Chuck Klosterman would say) is 85% a true story. Nonfiction presents a different dilemma: How does the writer set up the project without writing too much about being a writer. My issue right now is that I have to get our heroine (me) from North Carolina to Montana to begin the story. The blog pretty much outs why I moved to Montana. But do I really want to write about that? The MFA, it seems, is often the published writer's dirty little secret. Writing about the MFA is akin to talking about that great yoga pose that aligns the lower intestine. Writers are supposed to emerge from remote valleys and mountain caves, not graduate school

Here's were the creative part of creative nonfiction comes in. I could simply say, "I moved out to Montana to write" and not say why. I have encountered this sidestep often in books, essays and author bios. "So and so lives and writers in the high plains of Nebraska." What so and so might neglect to mention is that he/she is in a PhD program in Lincoln, or a tenure track professor.

How much of the “writerly” parts should an author include? Eat, Pray, Love neglects to mention the lucrative book deal. But while as a writer (and poorling) my first question was how Elizabeth Gilbert financed all this self-actualization, it’s obvious most readers didn’t want to hear about it. They just wanted the story.

These are questions. And I haven’t decided yet.

I should also mention that the part about the MFA takes up maybe two paragraphs.

Thoughts?

(Note: It’s okay in a writing blog directed at other writers to write about writing)

What Not to Write

Writing a query letter might be about the hardest assignment ever. You have to say what your work is *about* without sounding like a complete tool. Yet while ignorance might be the reason for lameness, it's no excuse.

In that spirit, here's a link to Slushpile Hell.

P is for PhD: A Year in Review

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I know I abandoned the blog this past year. Guess I got worded out. When all you do day in/day out is words you crave a task that is not words. Frying a farm fresh egg in a skillet, for instance.

But here I am Summer break. My friends are (mostly) scattered. I find myself inspired to pen a brief wrap to the highlights of my past year as a PhD candidate in creative writing at Ohio University.

So.

I navigated the usual stages if a first year: 1) exhilaration 2) resolution 3) pedagogy 4) assembling of posse 5) poetic musing 6) hedonism 7) deathbed hangover 8) atonement 9) actual writing 10) random drive to Target 11) Karaoke-ing 12) existential questioning 13) the frantic desire to move to France 14) disintegration of self 15) lunch 16) gang warfare 17) more actual writing 18) veganism 19) lapse from veganism 20) total burnout 21) acceptance.

I fought back a torrent of seminars, meetings, assemblages, surveys, memos, notices, warnings, emails, reminders, reports, colloquia, announcements and etc. Ultimately I have found the "oh, I didn't see that one" technique works best.

I still miss Montana. This heartache won't heal. I cling to my 406 area code and MT driver's license. My tags have been expired over a year but I refuse to change them.

I took a Tristram Shandy seminar, which rocked. Sitting around a large oak table discussing 18^th century literature felt exactly like what grad school should be. Advice: take the time to search out those profs who bring the material to life, and the lit classes won’t feel like cement feet.

I lunched with writers such as Rebecca Skloot, George Saunders, Robin Hemley and Lydia Davis. I was hoping for a laying of hands or incantation of secret writer spells, but they did each break the terrible news that the actual writing part is up to me kindly. And sometimes, there was good cheese.

I published in The Gettysburg Review, Brevity, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and mental_floss magazine.

For coursework I read Phillip Roth, Michael Chabon, Denis Johnson, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Joan Didion, Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Mark Twain, Frederick Douglass, Nellie Bly, Hannah Crafts, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and about 50 critical articles, most of which could have been cut in half, although I recommend Henry Louis Gates, Janet McMaster, and Hugh Kenner who all write *gasp* enjoyable scholarship.

I taught three sections of comp at OU, and eight sections of business communication online, and wondered if I will ever get to lead a workshop.

And, somehow, through all of this, I managed to complete a draft of my first book. Despite the extra workload, I believe school helped. Yes, school can be a bubble, but for me the bubble works. As my former Montana prof Kevin Canty wrote once on writers, "Talky, drinky, gossipy, insecure and overcompensating, self-doubting, self-promoting, bright and dark, you are nevertheless My People and I love you almost all."

Reading in Olympia

Lohmann Poetry Prize Reading

Three winners have been announced for the 7th annual Jeanne Lohmann Poetry prize sponsored and judged by Jeanne’s poetry friends in California, and facilitated by OPN. The winners (with their hometowns and poems) are Brian Desmond (University Place, Bicycles), Trina Burke (Seattle, Confinement in a Strange Hour), and Casey Fuller (Olympia, Why Are You People So Nice?). Also, contest sponsor Valerie Berry, will be in town "to say a word or two about each winning poem..., what caught the eye/ear/imagination." Jeanne Lohmann is scheduled to read as well. June 16, 2010, 6:30 PM at Traditions Fair Trade Cafe & World Folk Art, Olympia WA

Someone at work alerted me to this crazypants new fangled program available on the interwebs called Mendeley. It allows you to cross reference and log academic articles and generate citations. Thought you should know.

If Spam Email was a Freshman Composition Essay, What Would I Say?

I sincerely ask for forgiveness for I know this may seem like a complete intrusion to your privacy but right about now this is my best option of communication. This mail might come to you as a surprise and the temptation to ignore it as frivolous could come into your mind; but please consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility.

Dear L. Y.,

Your introduction demonstrates strong pathos, appealing directly to the reader with emotional language. Good job here. However, in revision please direct your attention to eliminating redundancy and consider leading with more concrete information. What is the purpose for you writing to your audience? Could you perhaps lead with a narrative; tell us a little story about where you came from, where you’re going. How am I involved, exactly?

This letter must surprise you because we have never meet before neither in person nor by correspondence, but I believe that it takes just one day to meet or know someone either physically or through correspondence.

I’m sorry—say what? Are you coming on to me? Know thy audience and write accordingly.

I got your contact through my personal search, you were revealed as being quite astute in private entrepreneurship, and one has no doubt in your ability to handle a financial business transaction.

While your audience will no doubt appreciate the lengths you went to personally investigate their background and interests (long walks on the beach, curling up with a fine book), you are rambling and I am suspicious something is up. By now, I don’t plan on listening to you because you’ve spent so much time seeking my trust and hoping I have some blind faith to throw around. I’m on to you!

I am L.Y. a transfer supervisor operations in investment section in Bank of China Ltd. Secretariat of the BOCHK Charitable Foundation 13/F. Bank of China Tower , 1 Garden Road , Hong Kong I have an obscured business suggestion for you.

Wait—did you just say “obscured business suggestion”? You don’t mean “obscure” by any chance, do you? Nevertheless, I like that the suggestion is obscured. That is, you’re finally admitting that what you’ll be asking me is no damn good and I’d be a fool to continue. Go on.

Before the U.S and Iraqi war our client General Mohammed Jassim Ali who work with the Iraqi forces and also business man made a numbered fixed deposit for 18 calendar months, with a value of (I will disclose amount upon your reply) in my branch.

Weigh the pros and cons of taunting your reader with teasers. Will you release this information later in your email? If you introduce a gun to act I, will it go off by act III? You risk alienating your reader (again, mind you) by asking them to follow through to learn more information. Is this assignment not to be informative rather than coy?

Upon maturity several notices was sent to him, even early in the war, again after the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him, We later find out that General Mohammed Jassim Ali and his family had been killed during the war in a bomb blast that hit their home.

After further investigation it was also discovered that General Mohammed Jassim Ali did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank. So, (I will disclose amount upon your reply) is still lying in my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim it. What bothers me most is that, according to the to the laws of my country at the expiration 3 years the funds will revert to the ownership of the Hong Kong Government if nobody applies to claim the funds.

Against this backdrop, my suggestion to you is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to General Mohammed Jassim Ali so that you will be able to receive his funds. I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we shall come out successful.
I have contacted an attorney who will prepare the legal documents that will back you up as the next of kin to General Mohammed Jassim Ali, all what is required from you at this stage is for you to provide me with your Full Names, private phone number and Address so that the attorney can commence his job.

Could I give you my public phone number (?) and we can call it a day?

After you have been made the next of kin, the attorney will also fill in for claims on your behalf and secure the necessary approval and letter of probate in your favor for the transfer of the funds to an account that will be provided by you with my guidance. There is no risk involved at all in the matter as we are going adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents.

Please consider opting for a topic change and re-writing your persuasive essay all together to fit the requirements of the genre. You mention a legalized method. This makes me think of the often touched upon subject of marijuana legalization, legalization of drinking for 18 year olds, legalized driving when you’re 11, things of that nature. Pursue any of the above topics in favor of the current one, please.

Please endeavor to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this issue. Once the funds have been transferred to your nominated bank account we shall discuss the percentage issue on your reply.

Believe me, there’s nothing nomination worthy about my bank account. Know thy audience. Have I said that already?

If you are interested please send me your full names and current residential address, and I will prefer you to reach me on my private and secure email address below and finally after that I shall provide you with more details of this operation.

If you tweet: poems

From the most recent Lost Roads newsletter:

Lost Roads' Editor, Susan Scarlata, is in the midst of "Tweeting" an entire book of poems. This experiment with dissemination started in January and will continue until the entire manuscript has been posted and sent out in to the world. If you are interested in following search SusanScarlata on Twitter and get a few lines of poetry added to your day, and an entire poem every three to four. This manuscript, entitled "Reaching Here," considers potential confluences of ancient rituals and current technologies.