"Here’s to everyone who has ever understood what it means to be small."

I just want to take this opportunity to thank two amazing and inspiring people who have recently announced that they are moving forward into their next adventures: Christopher Newgent, who told us today that his brainchild, Vouched Indy, is closing up shop this June; and J. A. Tyler (or "Papa Tyler," as some have been known to call him, OK, not "some," just me), who told us last month that his brainchild, Mud Luscious Press, had run its course (covered here and here). The two of you have been a huge part of my literary life, and I wouldn't be where I am without you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

It is with so much sympathy and understanding that I want to reach out to both of these men and say, "I love you for what you've given us, what you've done to help make indie lit so great, so exciting, so fun." Because it isn't easy to juggle work, your own art, family, friends, and then also run a business too. But I think that one of the most incredible things that indie lit, or online lit, or whatever we want to call it, has to offer is the chance for great people to come along and make great things for a time, and then also let them go, while at the same time allowing more great people who may be unknown to us now to come along and make their own great things for a time. There is a revolving door here, that we are all always aware of, and as it spins, welcoming us in, ushering us out as time goes on, it's still so wonderfully spinning to welcome others in, still gently letting others out. 

Where would I be without J. A. Tyler and Christopher Newgent? I wouldn't have had the love and support of an amazing publisher, who midwifed my first book into the world. I may not have gotten into an MFA program that, perhaps because of that first book, relieved me of teaching a 2/2 for three years. I wouldn't have had the love and support of a friend, who put so much time and energy into brainstorming and helping to plan Lit Pub. I may not have also gotten into a PhD program that, perhaps because of that first book and Lit Pub, relieved me of teaching a 2/1 for two years. (And let me say here that if I had not been admitted, I would have had to close down Lit Pub. Without the generous funding and two-year fellowship, which will allow me to continue long-term vision rehabilitation as I now, this summer, come back from my break and return to my role as publisher at Lit Pub, I would no doubt have had to quit indefinitely.) For the roles they have taken on at such different times in my life, I cannot thank J. A. Tyler or Christopher Newgent enough for their gifts of time, effort, and support. 

I've shared this story before, but it is worth telling again: We Take Me Apart wasn't always the We Take Me Apart that ended up getting published. It started out as this, a 10-page, single-spaced poem/story thing that I didn't know what to do with. At that time J. A. Tyler was making those little hand-stapled chapbooks, and I knew I wanted his eyes on my words, but my poem/story thing was too long for his chapbook series. I asked him if he would consider it anyway. He said yes. While he had it, I blogged about thinking the thing could become a longer work, maybe a book-length work. When he responded, he asked if I'd meant it in my blog post: Did I really want to make it a full-length book? And if so, he just might be interested in publishing it, because he'd been considering the possibility of publishing full-length titles. I said yes. We set a deadline for a first draft, and I got to work. 

And I floundered. The days and weeks went by, and I had nothing. I went back to the drawing board and just before deadline sent a few brand new pages, a ridiculously long email explaining my thought process. He said, I trust you. I trust your process. Do what you need to do. And we set a new deadline. Within only a matter of a few months, We Take Me Apart was born, printed, packed, and shipped out into the world. It was my first book, and Mud Luscious's first book. It was, and still is, my greatest personal accomplishment. 

Lit Pub, too, wasn't always the Lit Pub it is now. In its early days, Christopher Newgent was there, writing tirelessly, promoting, as he had already developed a reputation for, beyond tirelessly. That tirelessness was, as we quickly realized, unsustainable, and we went our ways and Lit Pub turned into the Lit Pub that it is now -- a wannabe-boutique book publishing company that uses its blog to recommend other publishers' books. That's not a bad way to use a blog, and the idea, of course, is the little sister of Chris's Vouched (without the guerilla table). 

When the news broke that Mud Luscious was, or soon would be, gone, I was unable to respond. I think my Facebook status was something like, "It sure isn't fucking easy, is it." And it's not. Anyone who's read slush, anyone who's edited for an online magazine, anyone who's put their money toward printing a magazine or a book whether staple-bound or perfect-, anyone who's given their time, anyone who's ever written a review and then written another one, or even a personal blog post and then another, you know it's not easy to sustain. The time the energy the effort the money the worry. 

And then something, who knows what -- a family emergency, the desire to have a family, the loss of a job, the gain of a new job, the loss of a house or health insurance, a graduation, the need to move home, the need to dip into savings, the fact that there are no savings, or in my case a bump on the head that would leave me unable to perceive or process visual images with accuracy -- can come along and upset that fragile balancing act that was already always teetering either ever-so-slightly or wildly.

Listen, we are meant, I think, to live in the moment, to accomplish great things in those small pockets of time. And we should all do so well as to listen to our hearts, when new moments present themselves, and move on proudly and bravely toward those other, different, even more wonderful things.

Love to you all, who seized a moment to make some small part that helped then make this great big thing that we all love so wonderful.

"chance guided his footsteps into the avenue of a beautiful castle"

 

Today's title comes from Gabrielle Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's The Story of Beauty and the Beast, which some of you may know I have been working with, reworking, writing about, rewriting, for about three years come fall. 

Odd to think about fall when it is only just beginning to feel like spring. 

It is a beautiful Sunday morning. 

Coffee's in hand. Rhye's filling the room. 

I have been stuck in the aftermath of Villeneuve's snowstorm since April 2012. It is the morning after the storm, and her first mention of any magic. The passage reads: 

"Proceeding without knowing in which direction, chance guided [the merchant's] footsteps into the avenue of a beautiful castle, which, it appeared, the snow had respected, as there was none to be seen. This avenue was composed of four rows of orange trees of a great height, which were laden with flowers and fruit. Here and there statues were to be seen, erected apparently without any regard for order or symmetry, some being placed by the side of the road, others among the trees, and all being composed of some unknown substance; all of them, too, were life-size, and had the colour of human beings; they stood in different attitudes, and were clothed in various dresses, the greater number in the garb of warriors." 

First I went off on a tangent about oranges that started with McPhee and circled around my grandmother, "The Bees," Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Disney's Beauty, the fog from Bleak House, Michael C. Kotzin's treatment of Dickens's confessional trilogy, Barry Westburg's analysis of Blake's and Wordsworth's contributions to the developmental novel, and back to Kotzin's conclusion that fairy tales:  

"not only helped make Dickens's novels vehicles of his didactic purposes (especially the purpose of fighting for the cause of the imagination) but also helped to make them popular, in his time, when they were considered entertaining, and in ours, when readers are moved by their echoes of timeless, traditional narrative depictions of the struggle to come of age and to survive the battle of good and evil."

That was the wrong road. 

I even knew it -- I can't even believe it, a whole year ago, this passage has had the better of me for a solid year, April '12 to April '13, infuriating! -- as I had included the utterly too self-conscious embedded reference to Annie Dillard's quotation: 

"When you are stuck in a book; when you are well into writing it, and know what comes next, and yet cannot go on; when every morning for a week or a month you enter its room and turn your back on it; then the trouble is either of two things. Either the structures has forked, so the narrative, or the logic, has developed a hairline fracture that will shortly split up the middle -- or you are approaching a fatal mistake."

I have maintained from the start that this would be a slow, slow book. It will take years. I know this. I accept it. It has never been clearer to me than now, after a solid 364 days of "turning my back" so as to avoid that "fatal mistake." 

Fuck. 

So, OK, it's time to fix it.

I am ready.

I am home now from the mountains and have only the mountains and their nearby city's inhabitants to thank for feeling ready. I chose the photograph above of the oranges, specifically with the mountains in the distance, to remind me, to inspire you, too, if you are reading this and have been similarly stuck and stalled inside something of your own. 

Godspeed. 

And oh yeah, P.S., those statues are pretty weird, right? Yeah, in the original, in Villeneuve's B&B, the King dies and "a powerful neighbour imagined that it would be an easy thing to seize upon the dominions goverened by a woman." 

But the Queen: 

"placed herself at the head of her troops . . . and took entire provinces, won battle after battle . . . and resolved never to sheathe sword until she had brought the enemy to such a pass as to make it impossible for him to commit fresh acts of treachery in the future."

She is such a badass. 

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

I've been tagged! So here goes nothing. Thanks for including me, Joseph!

What is your working title of your book (or story)?

Fit Into Me

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Several years ago, when I was teaching at Widener University and renting a room in South Philly, I used to go to B2 on E. Passyunk. One afternoon, while flipping through a City Paper, I began highlighting various phrases on each page, which I used to fashion a little story called “Portrait of a Modern Family.” Of the many characters in “Portrait,” the teacher has always captivated me. Some characters never let you go.

What genre does your book fall under?

Fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

 

Clémence Poésy's expression here captures the essence of the teacher as I understand her, and the dark and light contrast of this photograph the mood of the book.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

A mother’s past comes back to haunt her daughter.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Neither. I’d like to keep it in the family.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I hope to finish it before the arrival of the daffodils.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I think it’s too soon to tell.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Pinterest.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Fit Into Me begins with the dresses, “dog,” and Sam from We Take Me Apart.

OK, tag you're it!

Jamie Iredell

Lily Hoang

Matthew Salesses

A Long Overdue Update During Hurricane Sandy

I made it a point today to make my house feel as warm and cozy as possible -- not just to divert from the storm but also as a way to mentally prepare for my annual autumn write-a-thon.

Today, for about the first time in over a year, I attempted to write something new.

I have revised in the past year, but I have not attempted anything from scratch. 

Today, I not only attempted to write for what feels like the first time, but I tried (am still trying, as this blog post attests) to write all day. This is ambitious, to say the least, because I am under doctor's orders to sleep 10-14 hours a day (more on that in a bit). But I told myself I could take naps, and so far I have not had one. 

It is a point of pride for me to be able to participate in what has become an annual all-day marathon. Three years ago, a professor gave our workshop this assignment: to replicate Midwinter Day, a la Bernadette Mayer, and write for 24 hours straight. A few of us from that class generated so much material that we decided to do it again the next year, for the sheer volume of it. But, if memory serves, last year we only gave it 12 hours.

This year, we said we'd do it again -- and I'm sure we will yet -- and so today, with the storm out there and classes canceled for the next few days, I decided to give it a shot here by myself, as either a warm-up to the actual event whenever it happens, or as a personal test, just to see if I can, to see how much I am able to do. . . . 

Because of my brain injury (more on that in a bit), I opted for the 12-hour session again instead of the 24. About 8:00 p.m. now, I'm at the beginning of Hour Seven and can claim only 3 journal pages, 2 cups of Earl Grey, and a pot of roasted poblano and corn chowder soup for my trouble. When I have completed this post, I will call it a day. Basically, what I learned today is I'm good for about half an hour, then need to go do other things, and then, through sheer force of will, can struggle through a blog post. 

(Oh, I also started a personal Twitter account because some other "Molly Gaudry" (what!?) exists on Twitter. Another "Molly Gaudry" in the world is news to me. For years I have been the only Molly Gaudry on Facebook, and the first 20-some pages of Google results for my name all belong to me or my work or something related to my work. All this time, I thought I was all alone in the world. Now, I'm not so sure. It's hard to tell. But in any case, I decided I should at least reclaim my name to all the webspace things I can, I really don't know why but it just makes sense, and so who knows, maybe I'll keep the account active and tweet every so often.)

As for the writing plan -- so far it seems to be a total failure, but I'm OK with it and now, well after 9:00 PM, I'm happy to count this longass blog post in the tally and also to keep truckin'. Besides which, I don't stress out anymore over writing or not writing. It just hasn't been a priority since I hit my head last September during preseason endurance training for roller derby tryouts and, oddly, six months later started seeing double.

I can, at long last, finally, explain that:

1. When I fell, my body absorbed most of the fall but I rolled quite a bit down a cement hill and my head, which was the last thing to hit the ground, stopped all my momentum. I blacked out for an unknown amount of time. There was blood in my ear and the doctor's report, which I've only just received for record-keeping's sake, notes a 5-inch vertical abrasion on the left side of my face, which I did not remember at all. What I remembered was that I bruised a whole side of my body, jammed a wrist and a shoulder, went to the doctor and was told that people get concussions all the time and there's not really anything you can do other than make sure not to hit your head again. She told me to worry instead about my wrist and shoulder and not getting an infection from the road rash up one leg. 
2. I healed up and seemed fine. 
3. Six months later, I went to AWP and my damaged brain was completely overloaded with too much information -- over 600 exhibitors and over 10,000 registered attendees. There were too many moving objects, too many people, shadows, and lights; too many food smells and perfume smells and hair smells inside and too many city smells outside; too many voices, near and far, happening at once; too many hand-skin textures shaking hands and too many fabrics and other things we touch when hugging. The whole operating system fell apart then and there. My OD, FCOVD says I don't have a hardware problem; I have a software problem. 
4. But I wouldn't find the right kind of doctor (the above-named OD, FCOVD) for months and months and months, during which I believed I was going blind and would never be able to read again (I have yet to be able to get more than a few pages into any adult book, but I have since discovered that I can at least read children's literature, and I am loving, absolutely loving Judy Blume and Roald Dahl and E. B. White again, and the hardest books I've managed to finish are Wilson Rawls's Where the Red Fern Grows and Cynthia Voigt's Homecoming and Dicey's Song). But, only a few months ago, I truly thought I was unable to read, and that I might lose everything I had ever worked for, everything I knew and recognized as my life. I accepted that I had no marketable skills other than writing and teaching, and I lost my shit a little for quite some time. 
5. After another six months of completely stumping 7 other doctors -- 2 of them neurosurgeons -- I finally have a diagnosis: traumatic brain injury. 
6. The reason for the delayed diagnosis is simple -- I kept telling doctors that the trouble began at AWP. I did not drink there, I did not fall there, I did not do anything out of the ordinary there other than try to sell some books from behind a table. My eye doctors said my eyes couldn't be healthier. But for a stress-related ulcer, my general health checked out just fine. My CT-scan came back fine. Blood work all came back fine, too. Eventually, a psychologist gave me the all-clear, and told me to go have a great life and not look back unless I want to exchange pleasantries. It wasn't until a neuro-opthalmologist threw up his hands in exasperation and sent me to a vision therapist that I began to (1) be believed and (2) understand. 
7. The vision therapist, an OD, FCOVD, took one look at my eye teaming, did a few tests, looked over my intake forms, and said, "Did you hit your head?" I said, "No." He said, "Are you sure? Think about it. Take your time." I thought about it. I kept thinking about AWP. I was like, Hmmm. And then I remembered last September. I told him about that. He did a few more tests. Asked a lot of questions. And gave me the good news: "You have a brain injury." Believe me, it was welcome information. A diagnosis! And a treatment plan!
8. My new OD, FCOVD (unfortunately, I had to move and start over again with a new OD, FCOVD) says that since the damage occurred on the left side of my brain, the language side has been affected. The loss is permanent, but with therapy we will try to build new pathways, in an attempt to teach unused brain to take over the functions that the lost parts used to manage. 
9. I'm also, simultaneously, struggling with an exacerbated underlying childhood condition -- convergence insufficiency, which has always, as long as I can remember, been a part of my life. But until recently, I only ever had trouble after gym class, which ended in grade school, and otherwise playing ball sports (which I rarely ever did for obvious reasons), and it was nothing a good night's sleep didn't fix by the next morning. Now, since AWP, I live every moment of my life like this. And reading looks like this. I am lucky, though; because I can recognize letters and words so fluently, I'm better off than most, and I can struggle through it. 

When I boil it all down, I can tell you this: At its worst, my brain injury has left me with a 5th grade visual memory. The best way I can explain that is with a task I have to perform fairly regularly -- addressing envelopes. When a PayPal order comes in for a Lit Pub Book, I have to copy the person's name and address onto a label. Most names, if I already know how to spell them, are absolutely fine. I see it, I remember it, and I write it. But a name that has an unusual spelling means trouble. I do not recognize it, and I cannot remember it. I have to copy it letter by letter. Same for street names. Cities and states are generally no problem. But zip codes are impossible. I can never remember one zip code. I cannot remember 5 numbers in any sequence. I always, always have to copy the zip code one number at a time, and then I have to double check it, triple check it, because I cannot be sure that it is right. With a word, I am more fluent. With numbers, I'm fucked. Numbers are a nightmare.

In Coping with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, "Gail" reports that fatigue is the biggest problem she faces:

"Because she is tired all the time, her possibilities for rehabilitation are severely limited. Gail has noticed that when she is tired, she doesn't cope well, sleep well, see well, or even speak properly. Her speech is slurred and she frequently trips up the stairs. 

Gail's fatigue is worst during fine motor activities. In fact, writing a single check exhausts her more than scrubbing floors. She explains that while floor-scrubbing requires her to fill a bucket and make large arm motions, check-writing calls for writing on lines, forming letters and numbers, knowing the date, and folding and inserting checks into stamped, addressed envelopes. Gail says that writing a check causes her to break out in a sweat, as if she were running a marathon."

I sympathize. 

But I can get better -- not 100%, but as close as possible -- in vision therapy, which I just started this past Friday, to the tune of $250/week, out of pocket (it's an exclusion). I don't know how long I can continue to pay for treatment, but I had to at least get started, see what it's all about, give it a shot, to be able to try to replicate it at home when the money runs out and at least continue with my at-home exercises. 

I don't have much else to say here.

I am reading, slowly, and writing, very very very very slowly (today is day one of trying to write again), and I'm hanging in there, very strong, focusing most of all on finishing my current degree and applying to PhD programs. I've been through the process of applying to grad schools before, but it has never been so challenging. I'm very lucky that I've got two samples already written, one from last fall, and one from last spring, and they will serve me well I think. Unfortunately, my old GRE scores were from 2006, so I had to retake the general test last week. I have put off the subject test until April, when I hope to be much improved. In the meantime, I am really looking forward to my writing scores, since there wasn't a writing section last time I took the GRE, and because I went out of my way to privilege the writing sections. I didn't bother with the math and scored in the 0 percentile. I only scored in the 73rd percentile for the verbal, but all things considered I did much better than I thought I would. And now I'm just taking it one day at a time, one task at a time. Now that it is past 10:00 PM, I'm 3 hours short of my 12-hour goal, and I only really wrote for 2.5 hours total. Still, it's something. And it feels good to put this out into the world. If for no other reason than to explain my absence from so many things. 

To close: for anyone who is overly concerned, rest assured I enjoy my days, which are leisurely. I'm leading a healthier lifestyle, physically and mentally, and I am above all else relaxing more than I ever have before. More than anything else throughout all of this, rest and relaxation seem to help most of all (TBI-related chronic fatigue is crazy.) If I don't get enough sleep, I have trouble concentrating, I'm irritated by every far off sound, a random smell can set off an instant migraine (although I have fast acting nasal spray to combat that, which helps), my left eye droops and hangs, and, worst of all, I can't type: aSim pels entnece l okoslik ehtis. That right there, on top of it all on a bad day, can be soul-crushing. 

But we persevere. And life goes on.

(And, if we're lucky, on great days, like today, we distract ourselves with Pinterest and pretend that it is working toward a new book, after all!)

The Kindergarten Teacher

Now somewhere past its second draft, my "teacher story" exists now in the realm of potentiality. It could be something, it might be something, and it is this sense of possibility that is exciting. There is still so much work to be done, but it's a writing project I'm committed to and excited about. 

I made a crucial change. The main character is now a kindergarten teacher instead of a junior high teacher. This opens up a lot of space for her to grow and evolve into a new person, away from my initial inspiration. I think this may have been the hardest part of getting here to this point: really digging at this existing figure and trying to rethink her in order to create a new space, the right space, for her to occupy -- a space that she is truly at home in, a space that will betray her, a space she must reclaim eventually, and a space that can support and sustain the length of a novel. 

Big thanks to Blythe, who suggested Jerome Stern's Making Shapely Fiction. I think that the conversation we had leading up to the suggestion that I read this book was revelatory, and then, of course, reading the book and taking certain credos to heart also got me here to this place, which is at once a creative place as well as a working place. It feels good to be in it again and good to be doing these things that for so long I've been missing: working, creating.

I feel like, additionally, now that she is a kindergarten teacher, I understand more about her. She is the kind of woman who leads a quilting club at her local women's shelter so that the women can take these coverings with them when they go. And she volunteers as the choir director at the senior citizens' home and gets them out into the city, where words are not enough and song is how they can express their deepest sentiments. She is also the kind of woman who, in the car on the way to school every morning, listens to The Chordettes.

I feel like she has strong maternal instincts, which is not as obvious as it sounds. What I mean is that even though she nurtures all these children in her care all day, all week, year after year, she is growing ever more aware of a desire to have her own children. And that what she wants most is to love. In everything that she does, in everything that she touches, all she leaves in her wake is proof of her love.

I feel like, more than ever, I need to be writing a character like this. 

But of course there needs to be more.

What I've got so far is something like this: When a little girl from her kindergarten class dies one night at home in her sleep, and when the teacher begins to obsess over the idea that any of her children could also die in their sleep during afternoon nap time and in her care, in her classroom, this haven she has made for herself and for them, her entire world goes dark. Not only will she feel that she has failed that one little girl, that she could now fail any or all of them with her inability to keep them safe, but she will also question her ability to mother. She will do inexplicable things and lose herself. . . . 

So this is it: this is the new book. It is an exciting time. 

P.S. Do you see that little braided flower up there? The kindergarten teacher made it. She made it for you.