Forging ahead

Go forth, little book manuscript ... I've scrubbed your face and tied your shoes and fixed the button that was buttoned crooked. Now it's your job to be as charming as possible and make yourself some friends.

Yep, it's out there in the world making its first few visits, with more to come (I have no illusions about sending this thing out to one or two places and striking immediate gold). Hey, anything that gives me a reason to go out and buy new office supplies (printer paper, enormous envelopes, address labels, binder clips) has got to be a Good Thing, right?

I do have to say that as I wrote out the checks for the reading fees, I was grateful all over again for the grant I received that's covering the first flurry of submissions. Very, very grateful.

* * * * *

Speaking of grants, I got word this week that my good friend & fellow poet Shana Ritter received an Individual Artist Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission this year. Go Shana! She's got an interesting project planned.

* * * * *

You can now download the podcast of my recent radio appearance. (You don't have to have an iPod or anything; it's just an mp3 file you can download.) You can go to WFIU's podcast page and scroll down to The Poets Weave, or go directly to the program. You can also subscribe via iTunes. It's always so weird to hear my own voice on the radio!

* * * * *

Finally, a few pictures from my recent retreat at Clifty Falls State Park.


The Ohio River, viewed from behind the Clifty Inn.


There were tons of these turkey vultures hanging out on the thermals over the river, pretty much all the time. They're enormous, with a wingspan of several feet, and incredibly graceful as they soar.


I saw a couple of these cranky-looking box turtles. When I was a kid we used to catch these and keep them for a while, but you're not allowed to do that anymore.


An early morning walk in the woods. Anyone who says Indiana isn't pretty is nuts.


A desk, a cup of coffee, and a bunch of unruly poems. I think this was somewhere around the time that I was despairing of ever turning this mess into a manuscript.

Retreat Wrap-Up

(Before I jump into this post, just a quick reminder that my chapbook, Breach, is now available for pre-order! Clicky the linky for the details, if you missed my earlier post. Many, many thanks to those who've already ordered it, or plan to.)

* * * * *

So, a few thoughts on last week's manuscript-wrangling retreat -- which was a huge learning experience, and overall a good one, and really I'm inclined to say it was more of an advance than a retreat, hehe.

I had taken along a big pile of books, my iPod, and some DVDs (the box set of "Planet Earth") -- anticipating that with entire days stretching before me, I'd have some significant downtime to fill (nobody can wrangle poems for 12 hours a day). I also kind of thought I'd catch up on email (there are a couple of listservs I haven't even looked at for weeks, sigh). Uh ... no. I did read 4 books of poetry and Ordering the Storm, and I watched a little bit of tennis, but I got behind on blog-reading and even MORE behind on email and I didn't touch "Planet Earth" even once. Apparently, a little reading and some poem-wrangling and some journal-writing and some tromping in the woods pretty much fills up the entire day without even blinking. I wasn't bored for a moment. I did find myself at loose ends the first evening, but remembered that is pretty normal for me when I'm away from home -- even in Provincetown, where I am happy and comfortable, it takes me the first few hours to settle in -- once I made allowances for that, I was fine. I have always suspected that if I ever won the lottery and found myself in a position to quit my job and just be a full-time writer I would be happy as a clam, and my retreat certainly did nothing to disabuse me of that notion. (Sigh.)

Ordering the Storm was moderately helpful. One of the essays in it suggested that the first two poems are what establish the contract with the reader, and so you want to use them to establish the pattern of the book -- but loosely, so that you leave yourself room to maneuver. (I'm totally paraphrasing here based on my understanding of the essay, and am too lazy to get up and find the book to quote from it.) In other words, you don't want both of your first two poems to be sonnets unless the whole book is sonnets, because that sets up an expectation which you will then fail to fulfill. You want to outline both the pattern and the range of the book, I guess you'd say, so you don't want the first couple of poems to be too alike, but you certainly want them to make sense together.

That made sense to me. But what was even more helpful was that I'm currently reading a rather good biography of Bruce Springsteen, which focuses on his music & songwriting more than on his personal life -- sort of a critical biography, I guess you'd call it. Just before my retreat I'd read the chapter about Born to Run, an album which is a masterpiece of structure & sequencing, and (as you know if you've seen the documentary Wings for Wheels) Bruce really agonized over putting it together -- what songs to include, what songs to leave out, what order to put them in, what story he was telling with the album. He's said that "Thunder Road," the first song, is meant to serve as an invitation to the listener, drawing you into the album. And when you think about it, "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," the second song, really does establish that "contract with the audience" that the Ordering the Storm essay talks about; it's the quintessential E Street Band song, defining the mythos and the sound and really setting forth what the music is all about. The whole album takes you on such a perfect journey that by the time you get done listening to "Jungleland" you feel like you've been somewhere and learned something. So I listened to Born to Run a couple of times during the week, and it really helped things click into place as I arranged the first section of the book. (I'm going to start calling it a book, not a manuscript. Easier to type and, hey, if I believe in it as a book then maybe it will become one someday.)

I also read the chapter about the making of Darkness on the Edge of Town, which is another freaking brilliant album. As I read this chapter I was realizing that I had way, way, WAY too many poems and was going to have to start being fairly ruthless about leaving stuff out, even published poems, even poems I like. And you know what, Bruce recorded so many songs for Darkness that he probably could have made a triple album ... but he didn't, he pared it down to one brilliant, mesmerizing piece of work. And I realized hey, if Bruce could leave "The Promise" off of Darkness, I can leave [poem I really like] out of [manuscript] and the world won't end. (And then when my book becomes a huge best-seller I can put out a Special Deluxe Edition with Special Deluxe Bonus Material, and put some of the stuff back in that I took out the first time around, and people will have to buy themselves a second copy of the book just so they can get the Special Deluxe Bonus Material. Right? Because that happens to poets, right? *grin*)

I also listened to Tunnel of Love, which (if you can get past the Totally 80's Production Values) is, in my opinion, another structurally brilliant and strongly focused album. So, listening those 3 albums actually helped a whole lot -- more, in some ways, than reading over books of poetry whose structure I really like. Thanks, Bruce! ;)

Then I read through all the poems that I'd brought (a huge stack of the things -- well, I have poems I still believe in that date back to my late twenties, and I'm 47 now, so that's basically 20 years worth of poetry to sift through) and made notes on them about season, time, and location. I thought those might be good organizing principles to start with, as many of my poems rely heavily on seasonal imagery, and I have a lot of poems that are set specifically in Indiana or Provincetown or Maui, and a lot of my poems could be classified as "day poems" or "evening poems" or "night poems." I ended up not really using that information, but it helped me get a little distance from them as I read them, so it was a good way to start. I also started jotting down some notes about recurrent themes, images, and words. That part did end up being helpful.

Then I started pulling out the poems that felt like they belonged in the first section. I'd had a first section and a last section loosely in my mind for quite a while, but amusingly enough, what I'd been envisioning as the last section kind of turned out to be the first one, and vice-versa. As I sifted and sorted and pulled different poems up to the top, I kept asking myself, Which one is my "Thunder Road"? And I kept hearing that piano intro in my head, the invitation of it. And you know what, that did the trick.

It took me the first three days to get the poems sorted out into sections, and although I'd originally envisioned three or at most four sections, it turned out to be five. I've tried forcing them into fewer, but it really seems to want to be five right now. Hmph.

Once I had the sections laid out, I went through and got even more ruthless and took out quite a few poems, and tinkered with the order a little bit. There were several poems I felt kind of sad about taking out, like I was rejecting them. But here's the nice thing about blogging: if they don't fit in this book, and they don't fit in the next one (I think a few of them are my first steps into the next one), and they don't get picked up by journals (or maybe even if they do), I can always post them here on the blog. So I don't have to feel like oh, poor little poems, never to see the light of day. Heck, the truth is that even though this blog doesn't have an enormous readership as blogs go, a poem posted here will probably get read by as many people as a poem published in a dinky little print journal. Realizing that made it a little easier to do the necessary weeding & pruning.

Finally, on the last night, I printed out a clean copy of the whole thing, with section dividers and a table of contents and everything (and I even typed up an acknowledgements page, because that's just fun to do). And I put it all in a magical springback binder, and I read through it, and reading the poems one after another & hearing the ways in which they echoed one another was really, really cool. All of a sudden it felt like a whole thing, not just a pile of poems. It's a thing that I will probably keep tinkering with and working on, even while I start sending it out. It's not a perfect thing. But it is, I think, a thing that is ready to go out into the world a bit.

* * * * *

Today I was thinking about my five sections (it's a longish manuscript, about 78 pages in its present incarnation, but even so, five sections seems like kind of a lot). I read through the manuscript on my lunch break today, and made some notes towards possible changes. There's an arc to the whole thing, for sure; the sections are in the order they're in for a reason. But each section also has its own character and could probably stand on its own as a chapbook. There's such a trend towards books that are very unified, very monothematic -- and this is not one of those. But thinking about it, I realized that what I have is kind of like a collection of linked short stories rather than like a novel. And when I thought of it that way, it made sense and it seemed okay.

So now I just have to get the thing sent out (and because there's a line item in the grant for submission fees, I have to send it out to a number of places before June 30th -- no pressure, huh). That will be this weekend's task.

* * * * *

A few other retreat thoughts: Staying in a state park was actually a really, really, really good idea. I had a lot of solitude, but there were people nearby in case I needed them, and that felt kind of good too. I only had one real conversation all week: with a naturalist at the nature center in the park (who was very interested to hear that I was working on a book, and who said he'd really love to see more arts-related activities happening in the state park system). When my head got too full of words, I went out for a run or a walk in the woods, and that was perfect. I saw some cool wildlife: turkey vultures, immature red-tailed hawks, pileated woodpeckers, cardinals, crows, a Baltimore oriole, robins, and other birds; a GINORMOUS wild turkey (I know that should go in the bird part of the list, but it was so huge it almost wasn't like a bird at all); several deer; a couple of marauding raccoons swiping birdseed outside the nature center; a couple of box turtles; a small pond that had about a gatrillion tadpoles in it; and lots of squirrels and rabbits, including a bitty little baby bunny that was just redonkulously cute.

I could have gone into town (Madison, Indiana) if I'd felt the need, but staying within the confines of the park worked really well for me. There was one gift shop and one restaurant at the inn, and I was grateful for the gift shop because they sold mosquito-bite remedy (oh yeah, I should have included mosquitoes in the wildlife list), and I ate at the restaurant a couple of times but mostly I prepared my own meals with the mini-fridge and microwave and coffee maker in my room. If I'd been in a town, I would have been distracted by shops and restaurants and people. As it was, I had solitude without isolation, and I had relief from pounding on the poems without having excessive distraction, so it was perfect.

And all the while I knew that I would have to blog about the whole thing, because I put that in as part of my grant. One of the requirements is that there has to be some "public benefit" from your project, and while it seems a little hubristic to imagine that lots of people will benefit from these thoughts about my manuscript-wrangling experience, there are lots of poets struggling to put together their first books and there is not a whole heck of a lot out there that's been written about the process ... so maybe, in some small way, this really will help someone. I do know that paying attention to my process and knowing that I would have to be accountable for it in some way was helpful for me. I had to approach it with a certain level of mindfulness, and not just throw poems together in an instinctive way but try to articulate to myself what it was I was doing & why, and that has been a good exercise for me.

We'll see what, ultimately, comes of this. But it's been worthwhile, to say the least. Well worthwhile.

Quick update: it's a draft!

We had another round of ferocious storms today, and the inn (and in fact apparently the entire town of Madison) was without power all afternoon and into the early evening! Fortunately it wasn't so hot and steamy that being without a/c was onerous (it's supposed to get well up into the nineties for the next few days), and I was able to set up shop at a table outside my room near a big window where there was lots of light -- so I still got a lot of work done today.

In fact, I have sort of a draft of the manuscript pulled together! Er, slight problem, though -- it's just a wee bit lengthy. Like, I need to cut at least 1/4 to 1/3 of it. Oops. It occurs to me that what I might have on my hands is my first manuscript mooshed in with a head start on my second, so I'm going to read through the thing tonight with that possibility in mind and see if that helps me pull some stuff out without sending the entire structure of it crashing down.

General retreat advice, if anybody wants it: I've done a pretty good job of eating relatively healthy food while I've been here, and I think that helps a lot. You gotta be in shape for this kind of work! *grin* I've also realized that it is very good for me to take my meals as a break from working -- read something non-poetry-related, watch a little tennis, surf the web, whatever.

Getting outside and moving around feels crucial, too (when it isn't pouring down a deluge of rain). Tonight at dusk I went out for a nice walk/run, and I saw lots of wildlife: a small snake squashed in the road, a few deer, a couple of raccoons, a bitty little bunny, and tons of birds. (Also: mosquitoes. Hey, that's wildlife, right? Just very small wildlife.)

I also found an enormous turkey feather by the side of the road, which I am keeping as a souvenir. It's the length of my forearm, striped brown & cream, really quite beautiful. I could make a quill pen out of it! I could.

* * * * *

One quick PSA -- this info came to me in the Indiana Arts Commission newsletter. Sounds like a fabulous opportunity:

29 Artist Residency Opportunities in Alaska, La Familia Gallery (Seattle, WA)

Seattle-based La Familia Gallery is now offering 29 annual artist residency opportunities in Talkeetna, Alaska. Accepting applicants from around the world who concentrate in the visual arts, music, and literature, the residency program aims to encourage a better understanding of what one truly needs live, to create, and to be happy. The La Familia Artist Residency program is designed for emerging and mid-career artists who are seeking direction, inspiration, and reflection. Eight, six and four week residences are available. Deadline dates run from June 2008 to December 2008. To learn more, please visit
http://www.lafamiliallc.com/AKResidenceHome.php.

* * * * *
I'll have another announcement in a few days, so watch this space.

Retreat, the Tuesday update

I'm so easily derailed.

When I went to bed last night the plan was to get up relatively early and go for a run before the day heated up (both temperature-wise and work-wise), then get down to business and maybe take a short hike in the late afternoon. When I got up (relatively early; at least I managed that much!) it was drizzling, so I nixed the run and made coffee. Checking the online news and weather for here and for home (which is 100 miles northwest of here), I saw a fairly good chance of severe storms, and some pretty impressive stuff rolling over the Illinois border. I worry so about my house and especially my cats when I'm not home; my roof already needs replacing, I have a big old silver maple in my back yard that's bound to drop a ginormous branch someday, and one of my cats is terrified of loud noises (thunder most assuredly included). I watched the radar as storms rolled through Bloomington, and held my breath as the tornado warning was announced and eventually cancelled. (There was a tornado on the ground about 10 miles south of my house, as it turns out.) I emailed back and forth with a friend who's almost as tornado-phobic as I am (for those who don't know -- when I was 5 years old a huge tornado whomped up half of the city I lived in and gave my house what-fer [um, apparently hanging out in southern Indianatucky has afflicted my vocabulary] and I've been pretty nervous about storms ever since) and she assured me that Bloomington was, in general, still standing.

Before all of this commenced I had managed to make myself sit down at the desk and shuffle through poems for a while, picking out a half-dozen from the stack that for sure belonged in the first section of the manuscript. (Last night I spent some time reading through everything and made some notes about recurrent themes, images, motifs; that was useful work and helped me see some connections I hadn't really made before. A decent start. What I have is really a hodgepodge of about ten years' work. The second book, if there ever is a second book, will probably be easier.)

Then the storms roared through here: some thunder, a pretty stiff wind, and about as much rain as I've ever seen barrelling out of the sky all at once. Fog rose out of the woods and over the river and the mighty Ohio was entirely obscured. I watched the Weather Channel until rain knocked out the satellite signal, then tuned back and forth on the radio looking for a station that would give me more weather updates than whiny country music. I kept cruising for updates on the Bloomington situation as the second line of storms raced through there and nervously pacing. (Seriously, I really do not like possibly-tornadic storms, and by this time they'd put out a tornado watch that included me.) When it cleared somewhat I opened the windows again (if I'm gonna be in the woods I want some fresh air, dammit!) and thought I'd take a little nap on the couch to get myself recombobulated. Before long, the tornado sirens started going off. Sigh. Turns out it was just a "severe thunderstorm warning but there's also a tornado watch so we'll blow the sirens just in case because these storms can drop tornadoes with no warning" situation, and all we got was more thunder, wind, and rain. Rain waterfalling off the roof of the inn. Rain making a greeny muck of the woods. Rain ... you want rain, we got it and then some.

Well. Eventually I was able to get back to work, and as of right now I've got a draft of the first section (of 3 or possibly 4). Hooray! It's kludgey and will certainly evolve as I continue to work, but at least it's a structure to start from. Last night I listened to the Born to Run album, paying special attention to structure and sequencing; I think that album is an absolute masterpiece in that sense (and in many other senses). "Thunder Road" issues the invitation, then "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" lays out the platform that everything else evolves from. "Night" promises that the momentum of this thing is going to be relentless. And so on.

Dinner break now. Thanks to having a microwave and mini-fridge and a certain amount of foresight, I had a very lovely dinner of mesquite-grilled tuna fillet (the kind that comes in a pouch and you just nuke it for 45 seconds or so), roasted potatoes (from the Bloomingfoods deli), and green beans (from one of those "throw the bag in the microwave and steam the things" bags). There is a restaurant here, and on the first night I succumbed to the lure of the fried chicken dinner special (half a chicken, green beans, tossed salad, rolls & butter, mashed potatoes & gravy) -- the Indiana state park inns all make a mean fried chicken -- but my heart will be much happier if I don't do that every night, you know? After I watch a bit of news, I think I'll take a short walk and look at the river for a while, maybe sit outside (if I can find a dry spot) or in the lounge overlooking the river & read some other people's poems for a while ... then back to it.

It's amazing how quickly these days are flying by.

#1 thing I'm glad I brought (besides the laptop and, of course, my poems): really good coffee.
#1 thing I miss: the cats, of course; but after that, a stapler. Shuffling through piles of poems would have been a whole lot easier if I could staple the multiple-page ones together. Doh!!

Retreat, First Morning

It's hard to go out
without a watch.

But this is how
I begin this day, I leave
the ticking thing beside
my bed and go

down to the green bluff
that overlooks the Ohio.
The transit of the sun
and the roar of distant industry

mark my time, as does
the urgency of birds.

The morning becomes
a gradual arc, not
divvied up in minutes.
Nothing is fragmented,

not the cloudless summer
sky, not the tiny spider
I shake from this white page.
I'm awake now. I am waiting.

* * * * *

Here by the river there are many vultures -- enormous things, soaring on thermals, spiraling with great broad wings outstretched. I think those wings are solar panels, storing up the energy of this abundant summer sun. I know these birds eat dead things, are scavengers, cleaning the woods of stilled & rotting flesh. I like the thought of all that dead wildness taken up to this boundless sky: bits of deer, skunk, possum gone higher than those creatures could have dreamed in life, warmed by all this riverlight, unhurried, drifting in spirals, soaring.

* * * * *

Also, I am reading this article from the Poets & Writers website: "Putting Your Poetry In Order." I like the idea of manuscript as mixtape ... I've made a lot of mixtapes in my time and always thought I was pretty good at it. :) So, maybe I can handle the manuscript thing too...

maybe...

Retreat, Day One

So, part of my project proposal for my grant was that I would blog about the process. I've posted a few things through the year (most notably when I was in Provincetown for the workshop), and now that I'm actually on retreat I should post! I arrived today in the late afternoon and got checked into my room. Clifty Falls State Park is lush and green and wooded, and the southern edge of the park sits on a high bluff that overlooks the Ohio River. It's really lovely.

I had the tiniest of fender-benders on my way out of town, which I think was meant to put me on notice that mindfulness is necessary. I think that may become one theme of this retreat.

The other theme is to listen to myself and give myself what I need in order to be productive and creative. That means eating when I'm hungry (and not when I'm not), going to sleep when I'm sleepy, et cetera. Sounds simple, I know, but it's not how many of us live on a day-to-day basis.

To that end, I decided that what I needed tonight was an evening of relaxation, to set up sort of a buffer zone between "retreat space" and everyday life. I had a nice dinner, after which I sat at a picnic table outside overlooking the river and wrote in my journal & read for a bit. Later on I took a long soak in the tub, which is something I haven't done in goodness knows how long. I am very relaxed indeed. And tomorrow will be for sufficient caffeination and some good productive focusing. When I walk out of here, I have to have a submittable manuscript in my hand. That's the goal, and I will meet it. "No retreat, baby, no surrender!"

Another year older and mumble mumble debt

I will be 46 years old for another 95 minutes as of right now. Yep, I'm officially pushing "pushing fifty." Heh. I spent Memorial Day weekend at my mom's, eating tiramisu cake to celebrate.

On the way back, I'd set up a playlist on my iPod, and it was within about two minutes of being the exact length of the drive (which is a little over 4 hours). I listened to Joni Mitchell's Hejira, Patti Scialfa's Play It As It Lays, and a recent Bruce Springsteen concert recorded in Seattle. (I have to say that "Point Blank" into "Devil's Arcade" in the deepening twilight just past sunset, long gray clouds over long green fields, was a bit -- well, almost creepy. Ominous music. But in a good way.) As I pulled into the driveway of my home, Bruce was just doing the band intros at the end of "American Land." I almost sat in the driveway and listened to that last minute and a half or so, but was too eager to get inside and see the cats. Made for darn good driving music, though, all the way.

Haven't drafted a poem since May 11. Which explains why I feel off-kilter. Or maybe I haven't written because I feel off-kilter. Vicious cycle, that.

On Sunday I leave for my manuscript retreat. Maybe I'll get some new writing done during the week. Mainly, I want to wrestle the manuscript into something remotely resembling submission (ooh, kinky) and do some revision. I feel really apprehensive about this whole thing, for a whole bunch of reasons -- some valid, some not so much.

A lot of things coming together in a nostalgic kind of way, lately. Listening to some music I listened to obsessively in my late teens/early twenties and finding a whole new dimension in it. The recent "alumni reunion" at my old dorm. Being back in touch, a bit, with a couple of people I hadn't heard from in some years. Birthdays. Watching loved ones age. The change of seasons. I'm not sure where this ride is taking me; I don't like nostalgia poems, so who knows.

This retreat is partly about solitude -- something I'm not afraid of, and which I have a fair amount of in my life. It feels like a different quality of solitude, going into this. Me and the manuscript. I almost feel like I shouldn't tell anyone where I'm going, keep the destination a secret the way you're supposed to for a honeymoon. Because this manuscript face-off feels a bit like a covenant, a (re)commitment. Like I should be making vows to poetry. Maybe I should have planned to do this in a nunnery. ;)

The lights go out and it's just the three of us,
You, me, and all that stuff we're so scared of.

I'm kind of sad not to be doing a workshop this summer. There are some good ones out there. At the same time ... it kind of does feel right, this year, just to take a pile of poems into a room and dive in for a while. Yeah, it would be nice to be doing it in Provincetown, but there are a lot of distractions there. Lovely distractions indeed, but ... distractions.

Apprehensive about next week, yes. Also curious about what I'll end up with. I have some ideas about what I think this manuscript will look like, but I need to do the work before I know for sure.

Apprehensive. Curious. Solipsistic as hell. Yep, smells like a poetry retreat to me. ;) Debating the relative merits of taking a bottle of wine. Speaking of distractions.

If you've done a similar retreat, tell me about it -- what worked, what didn't. How it changed you, or how it didn't. I'd love to hear.

Just in under the wire...

…of the fiscal year, I’m finally going to take my long-delayed grant-funded writing retreat. Essentially, I’m going out in the woods for a week and locking myself in a room with a pile of belligerent, unruly poems, and I’m going to wrestle them to the death or until they turn themselves into a proper book, whichever happens first.

It sounds terrifying but fun. I like “terrifying but fun.” It’s good for me.

Okay, I said “going out in the woods” but in reality I’m going to be staying in a rather nice little suite at the Clifty Inn, in Clifty Falls State Park. I will have internet access (all the better to run around checking various publishers’ page requirements as I cobble this thing together), a fridge and a microwave AND a restaurant (but I’m a cheapskate so will probably only eat in the restaurant a couple of times), and even apparently a whirlpool bath. People, I know how to rough it in the woods. *grin* The woods are an important piece of the puzzle, though. I want to be able to go out and tromp around when my head gets too full of words.

I hope that in the process of whacking the poems together into a coherent manuscript (is “coherent” too much to hope for…?), I’ll also manage to do some serious revision on some of them. I definitely want to go back and look at a lot of my titles. I have boring titles.

* * * * *

I did, last week, manage to revise a chapbook manuscript & sent it in to a contest just hours before the deadline (email submissions, o how I love thee). Feeling pretty good about that, as I think I improved the original manuscript significantly and by the time I hit send I rather liked what I had. It is definitely more thematically structured than the chapbook I’ve got coming out this summer, which is fun. We’ll see what happens.

* * * * *

This past weekend I attended a reunion for alumni of the dorm I lived in as an undergrad. It’s not just a regular dorm – it’s the “Living-Learning Center” on campus and has always been known as the hippie, social-activist, artsy, happening dorm. Certainly it’s the only one I would have willingly lived in for three full years. There were a lot of people younger than me there, a few older, and a handful from “my era” – some of whom I hadn’t seen since the early eighties. (I lived there from 1979-1982.) Pretty wild. Even though I work just a couple blocks away now, I never go over there anymore – no reason to, really – so it was weird to be back inside those limestone halls.

In the evening there was an open-mic coffeehouse, which was really just like old times with some noisy punk-ish music, some folky acoustic music, a staged reading of part of a script, and some poetry. Yep, I read a few poems (hell, give me a stage and a microphone and I’ll take it anytime). I remembered so vividly the first poetry reading I took part in there, back in the fall of 1979. I was 18 years old and probably read some Terribly Sensitive Poetry. We had snacks set out on tables, and the coffeehouse was lit by candlelight. After I read there was an intermission, and I basked in the glow of having Shared My Terribly Sensitive Soul – for the first time in my life I felt like one of the cool kids. I got a snack, and leaned back against one of the tables talking to someone, basking in the glow et cetera …

…when all of a sudden this guy leaped forward and started whacking me on the back of my head.

Then I noticed the, er, slight scorched aroma around me.

Yep. I’d leaned back against a candle and set my long hair momentarily on fire.

So much for being cool. I think I was cool for about five minutes there, and then never again.

I’m more careful with candles at poetry readings now, I promise. And much less Terribly Sensitive, thank gawd. Still got long hair though.

* * * * *

Headed up to my mom’s for the long weekend and some slightly-before-the-actual-event birthday cake. I’ll probably watch part of the Indy 500 while I’m up there, just to see if Danica can win the thing. I’m not really into car races, but I’d be excited to see a woman win it. Go Danica!

* * * * *

Speaking of cars: "It will answer LIVE FISH OF INDIANA on the phone." You gotta check this out. You can't make this stuff up, people. Even though I live less than 20 miles from where this allegedly takes place, though, I don't think I live in the same state at all. This guy must live in that OTHER Indiana. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Cheering on the artists

I left work a little early today, stopped by the Buskirk-Chumley box office to pick up a ticket for Carrie Newcomer's CD release concert next month, realized I had a little extra time, and wandered into the relatively new Blu Boy Chocolate Café and Cakery. Oh holy cow, that place is good! It's a tiny little hole in the wall with only about four tables for eating there, but they make all their own chocolate and serve very good locally-roasted coffee. They had various cookies, cupcakes, tarts, chocolates, persimmon pudding, and good stuff like that. I had the most amazing chocolate cookie (it was like the chocolate cookie that all other chocolate cookies wish they could be!) and a cup of very good coffee, sat down at a table and scribbled in my journal for a bit. When I got up to leave I realized the woman at the table behind me was also writing, and on the table in front of her (next to her chocolate cookie and cup of coffee) was a copy of The Practice of Poetry. I guess chocolate and coffee and poetry and hanging out in a little cafe on a rainy day just go together really well, huh? :)

Then I went over to the John Waldron Arts Center for a workshop about this coming year's Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant program. I was one of two current grantees on the agenda to share our experiences and advice. There was a good turnout for the workshop, including one person I knew well enough to go say hi to and a couple of other faces that looked familiar. I basically gave a little five-minute pep talk -- talked about going up to Indianapolis to listen to the review panel, and some of the things they said, and what a great learning experience it was; talked about how important it is to present yourself professionally in your application, and how the panels DO notice if your writing is sloppy and full of typographical errors. I wrapped up by saying that the process of putting together the application should be a great learning experience, and especially if it's your first time doing this, just applying for the grant is a big step in your artistic career. It gives you the opportunity to step back and look at what you've done so far and what you'd like to do, and what you need in order to get you from here to there; it gives you the opportunity to look at your art as a part of a larger artistic community; and, maybe most importantly, it makes you stand up as an advocate for your art, to say things like "I write these poems and they are good enough that somebody should give me money so that I can do more of it." That's hard, for some of us, maybe for most of us -- making, out loud, a clear statement of belief in your own work. Just doing that, going through the process of doing that, can be an incredibly worthwhile experience whether or not you actually end up getting the grant. And, I said, once you get your application in, give yourself some credit for that. Go out and get a cupcake, and celebrate, and congratulate yourself.

Afterwards I chatted with a writer who's starting to work on her application, and made some suggestions for her. And a couple of other people told me that what I'd said had been helpful for them to hear, which felt really good. (Another thing I said was that the "public benefit" part of the project -- because it's funded by taxpayer money, you have to show that the citizens of Indiana can benefit somehow from your project -- could be fulfilled by something as simple as blogging about the process. Hi. One person said she really liked that idea.)

I hope that what I had to say was helpful and encouraging. The whole process, because it's a state government thing, is filled with bureaucracy and paperwork and hoops to jump through -- and it can be awfully overwhelming and intimidating. I hope I gave at least one person enough encouragement to get through the process and get something good out of it. If I did, then I'm really glad I made the effort. Anyhow, if nothing else, it's always kind of fun to meet a few other artists/writers and suchlike, and remember how many of us there are out there! And it's nice to be reminded that a year ago I was sitting there in that workshop, wondering whether I'd be able to get it together to get my application in -- which I did, and I feel really good about having been successful with it, and grateful to have been given the vote of confidence in my work that this funding represents.

Grants are good. There ought to be more of them, darn it.

Local opportunity: grant workshop

For writers & other artists in Indiana: the deadline for 2008-2009 Individual Artist Grant applications is quickly approaching! The Bloomington Area Arts Council is once again sponsoring a workshop in which representatives from the Indiana Arts Commission will be talking about how to put together a good application. I attended this workshop last year as a prospective grant applicant and it was super helpful; this year, I'll be attending to share a little bit about my experiences as a current grant recipient. I think I have some good advice to share, especially some of what I learned when I attended the panel that reviewed the applications in literature. The workshop is scheduled for this coming Thursday, January 10, at 5:30. Here are the details from the BAAC:

Bloomington, IN- The Bloomington Area Arts Council and members of the Indiana Arts Commission are hosting a grant information workshop for individual artists interested in enhancing and developing their careers. The Individual Artist Project grant program supports individual artists, of all disciplines, for specific project-related costs incurred July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009. Eligible projects are purposely left flexible to respond to artists' ideas, dreams, and needs, however, the goal is to aid the artist's career development.

Minimum eligibility requirements to apply include that the artist: must be at least 18 years of age; resided in Indiana for one year preceding the application date, and remain an Indiana resident for the duration of the grant period. The Indiana Arts Commission cannot provide funding for those enrolled in a degree- granting program, received an IAC grant in FY 2008; or is part of a collaboration for which another artist is applying for IAC support in the same year.

The grant information workshop will be held on Thursday January 10, 2008 at 5:30 p.m. in the Rose Firebay at the John Waldron Arts Center, 122 South Walnut Street, Bloomington. Reservations are not required, but they are appreciated. Please call (812) 334-3100 to reserve your spot.

In other news, my stupid cold continues to hang on, but at least the weather is getting better -- after lows of 2-4 degrees on several mornings this week, this weekend it's predicted to hit SIXTY degrees. Wacky, truly wacky.

Me and some poems

1. Me

Bloom: Celebrating Life in Bloomington has uploaded parts of the April/May issue to their website, including the article about the Bloomington poetry scene. To read profiles of & poems by a bunch of Hoosier poets (Cathy Bowman, Roger Mitchell, Jenny Kander, Patricia Coleman, Tony Brewer, and yours truly), go to the Bloom Magazine archive and click on "The Beat Goes On: Bloomington's Poetry Scene." The article is in pdf format.

2. Some poems

I thought it might be interesting to offer a list of the poems we talked about in Carl Phillips' workshop the other week (other than the student workshop poems). We talked about various aspects of these poems, primarily focusing on how they create and disrupt patterns (language, syntax, placement on the page, etc.) and how we can use what we see in these poems to help us revise our own work. Some of them were already familiar to me, but a number of them were new, and I feel like I learned quite a lot about how to read poems as well as about writing/revising the things myself. Anyway, these are not necessarily in the order in which we discussed them, though we did start off the week by looking at the Jarrell & returned to it frequently in the course of our discussions.

Randall Jarrell, "90 North"
Martha Collins, "hang" and "burn" (from Blue Front)
Robert Creeley, "The Souvenir" and "Kore"
Carol Frost, "To Kill a Deer"
Robert Frost, "After Apple-Picking"
Marilyn Hacker, "Pornographic Poem"
Robert Hass, "At Stinson Beach"
Langston Hughes, "Island"
Laura Jensen, "The Red Dog" and "The Crow Is Mischief"
Brigit Pegeen Kelly, "The Dragon"
Peter Klappert, "No Turtles"
Yusef Komunyakaa, "Venus's-Flytraps"
Sharon Olds, "I Go Back to May 1937"
Muriel Rukeyser, "Looking At Each Other"
Sandro Penna, "The Stars Don't Move" (trans. W.S. DiPiero)
Louise Glück, "Mock Orange"
Ellen Bryant Voigt, "Largesse" and "Song and Story"

I was reminded all week that reading poems with other poets & talking about what we can learn from them, as poets, is something I really miss in my life right now -- and is probably my biggest motivation towards getting an MFA. I will always write on my own, and summer workshops are great for getting my workshopping fix; but studying the work of other poets, contemporary & otherwise, just feels so important to me right now -- and having some guidance with that would be absolutely lovely. I really liked how Phillips guided us through these poems & what he chose to emphasize about them -- it felt like a very useful & fruitful approach. Definitely something I could stand a little more of.

Last day

Fine Arts Work Center
Originally uploaded by land mammal

It's an absolutely gorgeous morning -- warm, with abundant sun, well-fed birds hopping about in the mulberry tree outside my bedroom window. I sat outside in the sun, in a chair in the gravel courtyard, until I couldn't stand it anymore.

I picked up Robin Becker's newest book, Domain of Perfect Affection, here -- I really love her work -- and was reading it. Realized, a couple of poems in, that this week has made me a better reader of poetry. Which is something that I wasn't necessarily expecting to get from this workshop, but am VERY pleased to have found here; I think reading poetry and writing the stuff go so hand-in-hand as to be impossible to separate in any meaningful way. (It's that way for me, anyway.)

So I am going home with that, and with a few new drafts, and with some excellent exercises/prompts I want to work with, and with a certain sense of fullness that comes from living this way for a week -- as if poetry were central to everything.

Which it is.

Always.


[Above: The Fine Arts Work Center campus. My little apartment is at the top of the set of stairs you see here, and the studios where the writing classes meet are along that balcony. It's an unpretentious building, for sure, but magic happens here.]

C'mon in ... the water's fine

happy dog on foggy harbor beach
Originally uploaded by land mammal

Since I plan to give out my blog URL tomorrow in class when we all share email addresses, I want to take a moment to issue an official welcome to any of my classmates from this week who may stop by this blog. Welcome! (Did that sound official enough? Did it have authority?)

I want to encourage you to look over to the right-hand column of this blog and investigate the links you'll see there (the ones listed under where it says "I read too many blogs" -- which I do). There are a lot of really cool blogs there, almost all written by poets, many of whom are very fine poets. It's one kind of cool way to learn about how poets live, what they think about, how they negotiate the day to day. Which is to say, pretty much like non-poets, except that we use weird-ass words like "enjambment" and mean something by them.

It has been a good week here in Provincetown. Tonight is the potluck barbeque, open studio time for the visual artists, and student reading. After that, our class plans on going out somewhere for drinks or what-not. (Not THAT kind of what-not, ya pervs.) I always love the student reading; both years I've been here there have been at least a couple of pieces that have really grabbed my attention. And it is a fun audience to read for.

It's hard to believe the week is almost over, though. It is always hard to leave. I've met some really cool people and had some great conversations. I don't want to dive prematurely into the whole "wah wah wah it's over" thing, but things do start winding down soon... sigh.

Today, though, is an absolutely beautiful day. There is abundant sunshine and a cool breeze, and I have poems in my head. Life is good, y'all. Life is good.

[Above: A really cool dog I met walking along the harbor in the fog; click photo to enlarge.]

How it's going

It's going very well, thank you.

Oh, you wanted more details than that. Well, okay. :) So every day we have class from 10 to 12 and 12:30 to 2:30 (it was originally scheduled for 10 to 2, but Carl felt that was a heck of a long stretch to have class without a lunch break, so we have a half-hour for lunch). It seems to work pretty well. We start out by discussing some specific poetic issues, starting with one or more poems from the packet we got on the first night; we've talked about poems by Jarrell, Creeley, Laura Jensen, Marilyn Hacker, Martha Collins, Langston Hughes, & Brigit Kelly; for tomorrow we're reading Komunyakaa and Frost. Somewhere in there Carl gives us a writing/revision prompt or exercise, which is optional. (I actually haven't done any of them yet, but I want to do all of them & do plan to try them!) Then we have a short break, and come back & workshop 3 poems. After our lunch break we workshop 2 more poems, take a short break, and come back for a looser discussion of "the writing life" issues -- more general issues & questions we may have. Today, for example, we talked about putting manuscripts together. (You guys, I am really nervous about trying to do this! I know that's silly.)

Then we have free time in the afternoon for writing, reading, napping, exploring the town, going to the beach, whatever; and at 8 there is generally a reading and an artist slide talk. Last night was Carl's reading, which was a bit too short (better to leave us wanting more, I suppose!), and a slide talk by painter Andrew Mockler, which was quite interesting. I don't know much about art, so it is always interesting to hear visual artists talk about their process. There are always, it seems, useful parallels to be drawn with the writing process.

Last night a small group of us ended up at the Squealing Pig for drinks and conversation. What I love about being here is that we can talk about the silliest, dumbest stuff, and then all of a sudden the conversation shifts back over to poetry for a while. It's like poetry is a part of regular life and not some special thing you have to set aside for an appropriate time, you know? What a concept.

Today I visited (ahem) a couple of bookstores, including the used bookstore. I don't know why I feel it is my personal mission to support independent bookstores wherever I go. One of these days the floor of my house is going to collapse under the weight of all those books. I did buy Annie Dillard's new novel, which is set in Provincetown, and I also found (used) a complete volume of Cavafy, who people keep quoting at me so maybe it's time to actually read him.

Plus, it was nice just walking down Commercial Street. Here at the Work Center you can feel a little bit set apart from the bustle of the town, which is lovely sometimes and peaceful, but it's also nice to get your feet wet in the flow of the crowd, as it were. It is Bear Week in Provincetown; I'd never been here during Bear Week before. I guess there are a few more bears here than usual, but I'm not sure I would have noticed if someone hadn't mentioned it, honestly.

Tonight Gail Mazur reads, and a slide talk by Marian Roth, who does pinhole photography. Should be fascinating.

[Photo above: Race Point Beach]

Postcard from Provincetown

apartment 7
Originally uploaded by land mammal

The front door of my little apartment here at FAWC. Welcome. This is where it all happens...

Just checking in from Provincetown

Everything is going wonderfully so far! No glitches with the air travel; found a lovely little bookstore not far from where I spent the night in North Dartmouth, MA (why do I feel a personal responsibility to support every independent bookstore I can find??? no wonder my house is drowning in books); got to Provincetown in the late morning and spent about three hours on Race Point Beach, during which time I felt every little bit of tension in my body completely dissolve and wash away (and I also wrote a quick little poem); checked into my little apartment at FAWC and bought groceries and got settled in before a sudden downpour; had our orientation & our first quick little "get the logistics of this in order" class meeting; went to a good reading tonight by Tony Hoagland and Jason Shinder; came back to my room and drafted another new poem -- a funny one (at least I think it's funny!), which is unusual for me but how could you not want to write a funny poem after hearing Tony Hoagland?

It was hot and humid and relentlessly sunny all day, so the downpour and the clean cool air that followed was like a blessing.

My little apartment is on the second floor, and one of the bedroom windows looks out directly into the branches of a mulberry tree, absolutely laden with ripe and unripe berries. Which means that, in the morning, I bet there will be a whole bunch of hungry birds chomping and chirping about two feet from my head. This makes me almost giddy with happiness, the thought of awakening that way.

I think Carl Phillips is going to be a very good teacher. It's going to be a wonderful week.

This place is magic, I swear it.

And I still can barely believe how fortunate I am to have received this scholarship and this grant, that I can be here without having to worry that I'm spending money on something frivolous like poetry (which we all know isn't frivolous at all, but...) instead of repairing the house or whatever. Because coming here the past two summers has stretched me financially -- it's been worth every penny, but it was difficult -- and to be able to take in the blessings of this place without that difficulty is just ... such a gift. And to have it affirmed by multiple (!) outside sources that yes, this is what I should be doing and yes, this is where I need to be right now and yes, the work I may be able to do here is worth a certain investment ... I can't begin to put into words just how full that makes my heart feel.

So I'll try to keep the "OMG I am so lucky girl" chatter down from here on out, but I had to say it tonight. Because I am feeling very, very lucky and very, very blessed. And I think putting a little gratitude out into the world is probably a good thing all around.

The Project

Good news from the Indiana Arts Commission: they've approved my project modification. This basically means that the funds that would have gone, in the original proposal, towards my workshop tuition -- now covered by the Ali scholarship (thank you, thank you, FAWC!) -- will now be used in other ways.

I feel like I've been walking around in this state of wide-open gratitude for the past couple of weeks, since finding out about the grant. Really, I've been feeling pretty darned grateful ever since May when I found out about the scholarship. It is amazing to me, and kind of scary too, that people who don't even know me can take a look at some of my work and believe in me enough to make this kind of an investment. It makes me want to work really hard, to put myself on the line a little bit more than I otherwise might. I guess that's the whole point of it. Ultimately, I have to write because of what comes from inside me: I have to motivate my own self, not depend on encouragement from others. Writing is ultimately a pretty solitary act. But damned if the occasional encouragement doesn't give me a good and helpful kick in the pants. :)

So here's a quick rundown of the project I proposed and for which I'm getting the grant. The main thrust of it is to get my #$%*! book manuscript banged together, finally. To that end, the grant is covering travel & housing expenses for my workshop next week, which is a revision workshop -- the review panel really liked that I'd specifically chosen to focus on revision at this stage of the game, and my hope is that I will try to think about how revision might feel different as I begin to work with a bunch of poems as a body of work, how the poems might inform one another as I work to revise them.

Then I will be packing my bags again in October and heading off for a ten-day writing retreat. (I haven't applied yet, but I have someplace in mind; gotta get that application in now!) I want to take stacks of poems, and scatter them around the room and put them in piles and spend the time constructing that manuscript. Of course I'll revise poems as needed, and maybe write new ones as I find places where I need new ones in the manuscript. I also plan to take a big stack of books and get a bunch of reading done, and I'd be very surprised if I don't also draft a lot of new poems just by virtue of having that sacred time and space set aside & surrounding myself with words. But the main goal will be to come away from the retreat with a workable draft of a book-length manuscript.

Then I've also got a little chunk of money in the budget for contest and submission fees. Optimistic, huh? :) I should be able to send it out to about ten places. I'm not thinking about that part too much yet.

Finally, in March or April of next year, I'm going to do a big bang-up gala reading. I plan to invite a couple of other local poets to read with me. I'm nervous about it, because I've never "headlined" a reading before -- usually I just read with my poetry group or as one of a lineup in someone else's event -- I wonder whether anyone will actually come? I guess we'll find out.

One of the requirements for the grant is that there should be some "public benefit" derived from my project. This is sort of interesting, because the ultimate outcome would be to get the book published and maybe that benefits somebody besides me (sort of), but if that happens it won't happen during my grant year. I'll get it submitted during the grant year, but I doubt I'll hear back from most of the places before the funding cycle ends. The spring reading is part of my "public benefit" component. The other part: blogging! I plan to blog about the whole process -- managing the grant, going to the workshop, wrestling with the manuscript, sending it out. My hope is that other poets will be able to learn something from my experience, even if it turns out to be "how not to do it." *grin*

It was interesting putting together the grant application. I went to a workshop for potential grant applicants, at which a couple of Indiana Arts Commission staff members explained the process and answered questions; that was so helpful and if you're thinking about applying for a grant and have the opportunity to attend something of that nature, it's well worth it. Besides the "public benefit" part, one aspect of the proposal that they stressed was that it should represent taking the next step in your artistic career. That meant I had to spend some time thinking about what that might mean for me. Even if I hadn't been awarded the grant, that process would have been so helpful to me: asking myself what I was ready for, what could I do to really push myself, what seemed equally feasible and terrifying? Because I'd thought about just asking for a really nice laptop, and I could certainly use a new laptop to replace my on-its-last-legs one, but would that make me a better poet? Nah.

So that's the basic road map for this grant-funded year. It all feels like a very big step to me, but (and I hope this doesn't sound too ego-y) it also feels like a logical step. It's about time I got cracking. I'm forty-six years old; if I want to have a book published before I'm fifty, I don't have a lot of time to waste.

It's pretty funny being this open about the whole process, saying out loud "yes, I am working on a book manuscript and I'm going to try to get it published." I hope I'm not jinxing it. This is all going to be an interesting experiment....

I will not take these things for granted

Today I received the happy confirmation that, out of a record pool of 226 applicants, the Indiana Arts Commission has selected me as one of the 2007-2008 recipients of a $2000 Individual Artist Grant.

I think they were going to be awarding about 40 grants -- I haven't yet seen the list of recipients. I'm dying to find out which of the other literature proposals got funded!

There will be more details about my project to follow, because -- dig this -- blogging about the whole process was a part of my proposal. Hee! I will tag grant-related posts with the tag "2008_IAP_Grant" so they can be followed here. For now, suffice it to say that I am going to be one busy poet for the next twelve months or so -- and of course there is plenty of paperwork.

I also need to insert a small caveat -- in the "everyone should have such problems!" department, I am going to have to revise my proposal because of getting the Agha Shahid Ali Scholarship from FAWC -- since the workshop is part of the project being funded. Yikes! I did NOT expect to get both the scholarship and the grant -- but I am NOT complaining!! --The revision, as I understand it, means that the IAC has the opportunity to re-evaluate my proposal. But I have already figured out how to handle this, I think, and hopefully it won't be a problem.

Yeah yeah, everyone should have such problems. *grin*

So, more later on the details of the project. For now, if you'll excuse me, I have a major BUTT-WAGGLING HAPPY DANCE ALL AROUND MY LIVING ROOM that needs to be performed....

Edging back to normal

...whatever "normal" is! *grin*

Now that my mom has been home from the hospital for a few days, and I'm home from taking care of her, it's time for me to rest up a bit and then get back to business. I have two months till my workshop in Provincetown, and especially now that FAWC has given me the Ali scholarship, I feel like I have a responsibility to show up ultra-prepared, with poems to work hard on and a good sense of what I want to learn from the week. I do think I get more from a summer workshop if I prepare for it, plan for it, identify what I'm there for -- though it's also essential to be open to surprise, to learn something you didn't expect to learn.

Speaking of which, did you see this nice article in the New York Times about summer writing workshops? Of the ones they mention, FAWC is the only one I've been to, but they all sound like fun.

Also, I need to get stuff sent out -- I have hardly anything out right now, and hello, you don't get anything published if you don't send anything out. I spent April focusing on drafting new work, so it's time for a little breather to take care of some of the older stuff for a while, kick it out of the house and see if it can fend for itself yet.

* * * * *

Pleased to see that Lucille Clifton got this year's Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

* * * * *

The Indiana Arts Commission has made audio files of this year's Individual Artist Grant panels available for download. You can listen to people talking about me behind my back! Except it wasn't really behind my back, since I was there. Anyway, they're humongous files, so don't try it over dial-up. (Am I the only blogger in the world still using dial-up? What can I say, I get it for free, and on my budget, free is always good....)

* * * * *

It's May. How did it get to be May already? The university had its commencement exercises on Saturday, and although more students enroll in summer sessions than back in my undergrad days, campus is still much much quieter than it is during the year. It's lovely.

Yo yo dawg, so check it out...

...okay, none of the Indiana Arts Commission panelists acted like American Idol judges, but wouldn't it have been kinda fun if they had?

Seriously, I drove up to Indianapolis today to sit in on the IAC Literature panel, and I am so glad I did, and so glad the process permits that kind of openness -- it was a fabulous learning experience. I got there a bit late and missed the first few applications, but I heard most of them. There were four panelists, a moderator and a coordinator and a tech guy; the discussion of each application was kicked off by the first reader, who presented their evaluation (generally reading from something they'd written out), and then the discussion opened up. Some of the applications didn't take very long to discuss, including a couple which were immediately deemed "no-brainers" (as in "we'd be crazy not to fund this"). Some received more in-depth discussion and, in a couple of cases, some back-and-forth that may have swayed some panelists' evaluations. There was a big three-ring binder with all the applications available for the audience members to peruse, which was really nice.

All in all it was VERY interesting, and from what I could tell, I think the panelists did a good job of getting right to the point and picking out the most important points of each application, positive and negative. They weren't brutal, but they didn't hesitate to "get real" (as Randy Jackson would say) -- one panelist said about one application, "I suggest that you should get to be a writer before you apply." Ouch! Some of the day's recurring themes:

• Timeline. Several people were proposing to write entire novels in the course of the grant period -- one had even included "marketing" as a line item in the budget, for a novel that hadn't really been started yet. The panelists consistently saw this kind of thing as "unrealistic" and overly optimistic.
  
• Preparedness. One writer with no publication credits & not that much experience in the genre of the proposal wanted funding to go to Bread Loaf; the panelists thought that being accepted there would be a challenge at this point in the writer's career, since Bread Loaf is highly competitive. If the writer had included a Plan B, perhaps a less selective workshop or conference, I think the proposal would have done better. They also liked to see writers who've already done some work on their own rather than applying for a grant too early; "writers need to make a commitment on their own before asking the State of Indiana to commit [financially] to them." It's also a very good idea to do your research, and really target what you're asking for -- if you want funding for a workshop, be careful to select a workshop that will give you something specific that you need for your project. For example, they really liked that I'm planning to take a workshop on revision, because that shows I've thought about what I most need help with and what will move me towards my goal. (That's exactly why I chose Carl Phillips' workshop at FAWC over other, equally attractive-sounding workshops -- I thought it fit best with my overall plan. I'm so glad the panelists agreed!)
  
• Along similar lines, don't ask for funding for something that won't push you forward to the next level in your writing. One writer wanted to take a workshop that the panelists felt was "beneath her" -- that she was already doing quite nicely in this area and the workshop wasn't going to benefit her enough to justify the expense.
• Professionalism. It should be obvious that if you're asking for money to write, then you should make damn sure the writing in your application is good. This means: spell things right. Also, be professional in the sense that you know something about how the writing world works; this goes along with selecting the right workshop if you want a workshop, knowing when mentoring is appropriate and helpful, etc.
  
• Specificity. Whatever you're requesting funding for -- is it the best way to get what you need? Be clear about what you intend to derive from the workshop, retreat time, travel, whatever you're asking for -- and make sure that is the best option for you. Don't ask for funding for an elaborate writing retreat, office space, etc. when what you really need to do is just sit down at your kitchen table and make yourself write. Grant funding is no substitute for self-discipline and initiative.
  
• Overall -- what they wanted to see most of all is GOALS that are clearly stated, appropriate to the project and to the current stage of the writer's career, and realistic. And provide evidence that shows you will be able to follow through on your proposal. "We should spend our money on artists who have a track record that indicates they can take the next step." "There are so many wonderful ideas, but we need evidence that the person can make them happen."
  

I suspect that most of those points are going to be relevant in any artistic grant proposal, not just here in Indiana -- so I hope that sharing them will be helpful to someone else. A lot of it seems like it should be common sense, but apparently -- not so much. ;)

Without going into embarrassing detail, I will say that my application seems to have met with a fair amount of support. I wasn't one of the "no-brainers" but I got some very positive, very encouraging feedback. One panelist said that the work I'd submitted wasn't his cup of tea, but that he did see that it was good and "worthy of attention" -- I can definitely live with that. One thing they particularly liked was that I was quite specific, in each phase of my proposed project, about what "success" would mean. There were 18 applicants in literature, and about 230 overall, with enough money for 40 grants -- so it's very competitive. I won't know until June whether or not I get a grant, but I feel hopeful. And even if I don't, I can rest easy knowing that nobody laughed my little application out of the room, that I was in the right ballpark.

And now if you'll excuse me, I have a little orangey cat who's just flung himself headlong into my lap and flopped over onto his back for a bit of a belly rub. Speaking of clearly stated, realistic goals. *grin*