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This month’s guest post is from Moira Muldoon. She and I met in grad school when we were both seeking our MFA’s in Creative Writing. Then we had kids around the same time. I asked her recently how she’s managing to make time for writing now that she’s a mom. I think you’ll appreciate what she has to say as much as I do. Moira is a writer and test prep tutor who lives in Texas. She can be reached at moira@testpreptexas.com.
Oprah’s talked about it enough that I doubt I need to: some people (often parents) put other people (often children and household) ahead of themselves. For me, as a parent and partner and self-employed person, that translates to the fact that I find it hard to spend time working on poetry. For me, there’s an inherent luxury in writing poetry: it requires time outside work, which is time ordinarily spent with family. So, how to carve out that poetry time? From family or from work? And where does it fall in terms of other things that also need time carved out – working out, household needs (cooking, cleaning, putting flea meds on the dog, etc.), date nights, one-on-one kid time, downloading Top Chef episodes? Again, I’m not saying anything groundbreaking here; a lot of people (the majority?) are faced with similar choices about using time well and find ways to do what they need to. I know that, for me, writing is necessary to my sanity. (It’s a little like getting enough sleep – amazing how much more I can get done when I’m not bone tired.) But identifying what I need most is not the same as making sure I get it. At the moment, I’m trying something new to keep myself on track with writing – collaboration. I’m working on a writing project with someone else. We set deadlines and while I might blow off my own internal deadlines (‘I won’t be writing today since I spent the morning getting X-rays to make sure my toddler didn’t swallow a quarter’), if I have external deadlines, where I owe a piece to someone else, I somehow figure out how to get it all done: the X-rays and the writing. I will do for another person what I won’t do just for myself. I hate letting other people down. I hate messing up my obligations to people I care about. So, if I’m collaborating with another writer, I get more done. I won’t let my collaborator down, though I might easily have blown off my commitment to myself. I don’t know if I’m not disciplined enough, or if I’m just plain lazy, but I do know that having a partner, that being responsible to someone else, works for me. It’s like having a gym buddy. For writing. I’ve been collaborating for about seven months now and so far, this new system is working. Despite the fact that a writer is supposed to be alone, in a garret, at a retreat, scribbling away, I’m writing more now that I’m working with someone else. I am using whatever quiet time I have in better, more efficient ways because I have external deadlines. YAY! I’m keeping my fingers crossed. We’re going to have a second child in early February – I hope that this system will still work once chaos settles in for good. Photo by Prosthetics 1.
It depends on how you define good. Ultimately, you want markets that you would feel proud to have your work in. Early on, I submitted poetry blindly. What that means is that I responded to calls for submission without ever checking out the publications. That was a mistake. Though I got a lot of work published very quickly, it came out in journals I would never want to be associated with. For instance, one of my poems was published in a journal full of clip art images of mirrors in which to write personal affirmations. Is the name of it listed on the Publications & Performance page on this site? No. Is it listed anywhere? Nope. The second thing you’re looking for is a market that publishes work resembling yours in style, subject matter, or layout–especially when you’re writing poetry. The best analogy is musical genre. You’re not likely to hear hip hop on a classical station. Don’t send your narrative poem to a journal that solely publishes language poetry. Also don’t send your personal essays to a market that only accepts fiction. Another thing to consider when finding a market is that there are different tiers of publication depending on where you are in your publishing career. You’re not likely to get into The New Yorker early on. Does it mean you shouldn’t try? Absolutely not. But don’t limit yourself by only sending to the big boys. Be willing to start in the proverbial mail room and work your way up. So how do you find these markets? First of all, read. Read literary journals and magazines at a bookstore or library. Read online journals. Read books in your genre, both by single authors and collected works in anthologies. Find the writers you like. Learn from them. The content of their work will teach you something about writing, but you should also read their bios. In a journal, read the author’s bio to see where else s/he has been published. Then check out those publications. If you’re reading collected works of a writer, look at their acknowledgements. Where else has the work you find most comparable to yours been published? Read those publications. Then read the bios of the authors in there, and so on. Also, look for unlikely places that publish your genre of work. It may be that a gardening magazine has a section for short stories that have gardening in them. You might even try searches like “gardening short stories” and see what comes up. Try anthology calls for submission as well. Maybe somebody is putting together a collection of poetry about parenting right now. Think outside the box and you may find a journal that doesn’t get enough subbmissions for its literary sections. Once you’ve got the names of these publications, how can you go about finding them? Use Duotrope’s Digest for poetry and fiction listings and Poets & Writers Literary Magazines listings for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Duotrope’s has over 2500 listings and sends out a weekly newsletter (if you want it) with recently added paying and non-paying markets, markets that have reopened/closed for submission, upcoming themed publication deadlines, and any other market updates. I like the format of the P&W listings better but Duotrope’s are by far more comprehensive. Once you find a possible market, make sure to read sample work on their website or at least one of their issues, which you can usually buy directly from them, at some cool bookstores, or maybe read at the library depending on how established the publication is. Is it worth it to buy or use some version of Writer’s Market (Poet’s Market, etc) or The International Guide to Literary Magazines and Small Presses? Not really. You’ll find much more up-to-date information on the web. Now you’re ready to research. Photo “Literature 1″ by James 119 When you’re submitting writing, especially when you’re a poet so you’ve got a lot of titles to keep track of, you need an organizing system. It ensures that you keep sending out all the poems that you’d like to have published, you know what is sent where and how long it’s been there, and you have all of your publication credits in one place. While there’s certainly no one right way to set up this system, I find that it’s easier for me to modify someone else’s system than make one up from scratch — at least if I have no idea where to start. So, here’s my submission tracking system. Feel free to use or modify it to suit you. Create a Submission Tracker file in Excel. My file has three worksheets: 1) Poem Index, 2) Published Poems, and 3) Need Editing. The Poem Index includes the following columns:
I use a color highlighting system for the Poem Index so I can easily see what the current status of a poem is.
The Published worksheet includes the following fields:
The Need Editing worksheet is for poems I’ve stopped submitting but I don’t want to give up on. Having a list of these gives me a place to move a poem and its details if I decide to stop submitting it and start working on it again. The Need Editing list makes a good starting place for a revising day. I used to also track the market submissions for each poem, but doing this in Excel was a messy process because what I really needed was a database. Fortunately, Luminary Writer’s Database has created a free online tracker that allows users to see what poems are out to which markets, how long they’ve been out, and what their current status is (pending, rejected, accepted, and withdrawn). Add all the titles you’ve got in your Submission Tracker. The reason you want your own Excel file and not just to use Luminary is that you can add all the details/fields to choose which poems you’ll submit. You’ll also add markets to the tracker though you may not want to fill out all of the available fields in the market tracker. I add the title, website url, and any notes of my own (like what type of poems they’re publishing, if I have dealt with them before, etc). When I’m ready to submit, I always go to the market’s website and reread their current submission guidelines so it didn’t serve me to add those details on Luminary. Between your Submission Tracker in Excel and the Luminary Writer’s Database, your poems will be so organized that when you find places to submit, you’ll be able to choose the best poems for that market and know exactly where your poems are: waiting to be submitted, pending, or published. Your next job is to find some markets for your poems. Stay tuned for the next installment in my Submission series and I’ll help you do that. One of the singer/songwriters I find to be a most inspiring lyricist is Ellis Paul. With the release of his new album, The Day After Everything Changed, Paul is sending out “Musings” about his process through his email newsletter and on his website. They answer many of the questions I’m asking about writers thinking, arrangement, inspiration, and the like. Well worth a read, even if you haven’t heard his music. Plus you can listen to tunes via his website, iTunes, and elsewhere if you want to hear the kind of music he’s writing about making. Had one of my worst days ever with my son. We just had opposing wants today. When my husband took him this afternoon, I knew I was too aggravated to be productive or get out of my head, so I went to the movies. Can’t remember the last time I went to a movie by myself in the middle of the afternoon. It was awesome. The movie, 500 Days of Summer, was okay. the score was amazing. Listening to good music for nearly two hours as a backdrop to someone else’s story was cathartic. Tonight after Cavanaugh was in bed, I wrote two blog posts for mamatrue and moderated comments for API Speaks. How do you write? When do you do it? How do you know what to do? I’m always curious to find out how other writers approach writing. It’s one of the reasons I love memoirs on writing –Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is one of my favorites. While no two people are likely to have exactly the same way of going about things, I’m curious about how people do it and from all of the questions people ask me, I find they’re curious about what I’m doing too. So I’ve starting tracking my current writing practices. I’ll share them with you as well as the discoveries I make about my writing patterns, routines I’d like to create, and tasks I need to add. I’ll do a summary report once a week usually. To start though, here are the last couple of weeks. In future process posts, I will include more about the time of day I was working, how long things took, and what things I’m noticing or want to tweek. so that my picture of my process is more detailed. Sunday, August 30th - Totally rethought the focus and goals of this site. Monday, August 31st – Moved posts from sonyafeher.com to mamatrue.com, my parenting blog Thursday, September 3rd
Friday, September 4th
Saturday, September 5th – Received nice note from Gargolye editor that they were already full with dates for next submission period. Sunday September 6th – Wrote three blogs posts on new format for website and scheduled them for subsequent days so I wouldn’t add all the content at once and people could read it in the order I intended. Tuesday, September 8th
Wednesday, September 9th
Thursday, September 10th
Friday, September 11th – Wrote blog post for this site and finished up last of 5 part series on night weaning on mamatrue Saturday, September 12th - Talked to a bunch of my mama buddies about my book challenge. and invited them to join me. I also asked for suggestions for the top 100 list I’m creating. Monday, September 14th
Tuesday, September 15th
Let me know what kind of details you’re looking for. How can my evaluating my writing process help you? I’ve been evaluating my writing process so that I can use my writing time more efficiently, but also so that I can help you figure out how to focus your writing time so that you can accomplish your goals. Maybe you’re just learning how to write, or you’ve switched from one genre to another. Maybe you want to get your work out there: on stage, into journals or magazines, or to a web audience through a blog. Maybe you’re trying to accomplish many writing goals at once. That’s where I am at the moment, so on each occasion where I actually have time to work on writing, I end up spending part of the time trying to figure out what to do that day. It’s not particularly efficient. It wastes part of the precious time I have. When I’m jumping around, here are the different tasks I have on my immediate to do list:
If I blog, then submit, then read something about Web 2.0, even though I’ve worked on many areas of my list, I didn’t get as deep and am less likely to have completed anything. Instead, I have the draft of a blog post, a potential market I need to research more before I can submit, or I’ve added something to my social media to do list but don’t have time to actually do it. If my goal is to post to my blog three days a week, say on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, then I don’t have to waste writing time trying to decide what to do on those days. Over the last two decades of writing, I have had varying goals and so my process doesn’t always look the same. What remains constant however is that if I know what my goal is, I’m much more likely to meet it. On the days when I decide I want to complete and publish one blog post before I allow myself to do anything else, I get something crossed off my list. It focuses me and I’m able to concentrate more fully on the one job I’ve given myself. Once that job is done, I can focus on the next thing: submitting to one journal. Then I cross that off the list and can move to something else. So my recommendation for today is that you sit down and make your own writing goals list. Write down everything you can think of, then break the list into categories: immediate, short term (over the next few months), and long term (one year, five year, or in this lifetime). Then do a gut check. What is it you really want to be doing right now? Writing more, getting published, finishing a book you’ve been working on for years, starting a book you’ve had the idea for but never make time to actually begin? I ask this because there will be certain items on your list that feel more immediate to you. Though I have a 300 page first draft of a memoir I pitched at an agents and editors conference and have five agents interested in looking at once I have a final draft, my focus just isn’t there right now. I kept feeling like I should finish the memoir but when I sat down, there were so many other things I wanted to be doing. The result was that I kept feeling like I was failing even when I was accomplishing so much else. So I took the memoir off my immediate to do list. By the end of the year, I expect that I’ll have gotten into a routine with my immediate list. That will open up room for something else. My short term goal of getting parenting essays published will move up to the immediate list. It will be easier to move from blogging about parenting to finding markets and querying them with parenting essays. Then I’ll start working on the memoir again with the longer term goal of completing it. So make your lists and be honest with yourself about where your energy is. If there’s a particular area you want some help with or you’d like to see me write a post on, let me know. I’ll add it to my list.
Two weeks ago, I got both. I went out three nights, more times than I’ve been out in a week since my son was born almost three years ago. Tuesday night I saw Wicked the Musical, Thursday I went out for my monthly mama happy hour/dinner to eat Ethiopian food (which I discovered I do not like, by the way), and on Saturday I saw Flush, a new production by Arial Dance Theatre. Maybe it was that I got so many hours out of the house to be something other than a mom, or maybe it was that I saw acting, singing, dance, and it woke up my inner artist. Whatever it was, I finished the week inspired. I couldn’t just sit and watch Flush. I kept pulling out my notebook to write down my experience of the performance. Where am I supposed to look? I feel anxious. They want me to. They chose this music, this video, the dancers’ movements specifically to make me feel this way. The dancers were in the center of the room with three rows on either side so the audience was facing each other. Part of the experience of viewing the show was periodically noticing how other people were reacting to watching the same thing I was watching. Eventually I began thinking about the process of making and performing the work. What translates? What did the writer intend? Is the audience getting it? If audience members discussed the piece afterward, how much would anyone actually remember? Would they agree in their interpretations? Does it matter if what they’re experiencing is what the author meant, or the director hoped to convey, or how the dancers translated the work so they could perform it? All of that got me thinking about the process of art. Both Wicked and Flush had elements from The Wizard of Oz and it made me consider what it would mean to pull the curtain back on the writing process. Throughout my life, people have asked me about being a writer, as if it’s mysterious. And in some ways, I guess it is. From a very young age people are told they can’t make a living as writers, yet some people do make careers of it. Some people write their entire lives without ever finding an audience for their work, or they find audiences through nontraditional channels. In the last few months, I’ve had people ask me about various aspects of my writing process: being a blogger; getting poems, articles or essays published; how to decide what to write about or find a voice, getting an agent; if I would critique their writing; what author platform is; whether it’s worth it to go to grad school for writing among other things. I’m figuring it out as I go along, but thinking about how often I’m asked how I do it made me realize it might help people if I dedicated this site to exploring different writers’ ways of working. Before I’d left the theater, I decided my website would take a new direction. I got home, changed the tagline and wrote a new description for this site. In our right minds, no one would ever pursue creative writing. We’re told no one makes a living at it, writers are crazy, addicted, or otherwise damaged. But in our wrong mind–that universe of creativity and hope–we do it anyway. Here’s one writer, in her wrong mind, pulling back the curtain so you can see how I fit writing into my life, what I do with it, how I find markets and submit work, participate in various writing communities, and navigate the unfolding world of social media to build an author platform. I’ll interview writers from different genres and at varying steps in their own process so you can hear a variety of ways of doing it. I’ll publish guest posts on people finding a way to write once they have kids: how to make time for writing when you have a day job, other people wanting your time outside of work, and you still must write or you’ll go crazy. Whether or not writers make a living at it, writing makes them a life. Photo by gemenes So I just figured out a new focus for this site, which will include me recording my writing process so people who are trying to figure out their own process can see how someone else is doing it. I’ll go into more detail about things like submitting poetry in individual posts, but will keep short notes about what I’m doing on particular days to track my own progress. Monday Wrote blog post while Cavanaugh had quiet time–about writing while he had quiet time Tuesday (first day of part-time nanny)
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday Second day of nanny. I felt antsy and unable to focus. I started thinking about what our nanny is getting paid to be with Cavanaugh and that I’m not getting paid to write. Though I’m aware that the way I’m going to make a writing career is by writing, and getting publications and clips, all the critical voices in my head are so loud. I know plenty of people who have childcare so they can get a break, go out to lunch with a friend, go to the gym, make art, etc., I’m having a hard time giving myself permission to have help with Cavanaugh so I can do whatever I want or need to. I cleaned the dining room and got other household stuff done but no writing or business of writing. I felt like I’d failed. No pressure there. Saturday Went to see Flush and totally rethought website. Now to make changes. |
 This work by Sonya Feher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.  |
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