Sports, Literary Journals, and Strange Bedfellows

My husband doesn't read much; you know, opposites attract and all that. That is, he's not a reader. He does devour each month's Consumer Reports, the newspaper sports pages, and sometimes the stuff I write – that is if I put it in his hands before I sign off on the final proof because it happens to mention him.

Which brings us to my latest publication – an essay in a literary journal I have a feeling my husband will actually read. The journal is Sport Literate, whose tagline reads: Honest reflections on life's leisurely diversions. My essay, "A Well-Jumped Fence," appears in the current print edition (Winners and Losers 2008, vol. 5, issue 2).

So, next time I see hubby headed into his "reading room" (don't we all know where that is?), I'll hand him the journal (at 132 pages and an easy-to-handle 5x7 size, it's not so overwhelming), and see what happens. While I’m hoping he enjoys the entire fine issue, I'm wondering if, once he discovers the other essays and articles – about golf, tennis, archery, baseball and other sports – he'll even get around to reading mine, which is a look back at the huge role horses and competitive equestrian competition once played in my life, and how I feel about its absence now.

I don't often tout journals here, and try not to tell my readers what to buy, but a subscription to Sport Literate strikes me as a win not just for the writer-reader in a household, but for anyone else in the clan who may need a bit of a literary palate expander that speaks their language.

Let's Clean Out the Fridge

In our house, by Friday most weeks, it's "clean out the refrigerator" night. All week, I accumulate leftovers from scratch dinners, remainders of take-out food, sometimes a thing or two my mother-in-law sends over, and then on COTR nights, I lay it all out on the kitchen counter, hand everyone a plate to fill as they like and point in the direction of the microwave.

I'm always a little elated at this easy meal and also a bit disappointed – in myself. All week, as the left-over bits pile up, I make earnest but vague plans to turn them into a hearty stew, a substantial soup, a stir-fry, a crock pot dinner (even though I don't own a slow cooker). In the end, I rarely achieve this noble goal, and yet nothing much goes to waste, the troops get fed and the fridge is ready again for the next load of leftovers.

Which is my long-winded way of saying, I'm doing a bit of that here today. The past three weeks have been a haze of travel, worry and then trying to catch up. Meanwhile, I've been accumulating interesting tidbits in my "to be bogged about" folder, planning to make somewhat intelligent connections among and between them, hoping in a sense, to create a couple of hearty meals for my readers. Alas, it feels like Friday night and the shelves are bursting and if I don't do a general clear-out, I may just get a little overwhelmed and dump it all in the disposal instead.

So, here's my boggy version of COTR night. If you are a little bit hungry, fill your plate with whatever interests you.

►The Village Voice asked 16 writers to name their favorite obscure book.

►The subhead of this Guardian article says it all: "Magazines are peppered with 'real life' case studies - though more often than not, the subject is pleasing to the eye. Why are editors obsessed with unreality?"

►Ever shake your head when seemingly normal people are clueless about the most rudimentary stuff they should have learned in grade school? Though the aim of this magazine's newest webby tool is slightly different, I can see this idea working in myriad ways: Scroll over the word Montana, say, and a balloon would pop up with: "It's one of the 50 states, dummy."

►Some good news about book sales from Publisher's weekly. And some grim news, if you are a book reviewer for PW.

►Check out the Web Habits of Highly Effective (writers and literary type) People. Do any of your most-liked sites overlap?

►As for my own web habits, this is one of my favorite new places. I'm not morbid or anything and was never an obit writer myself, but writing that looks back at a life – or looks at mortality or grief -- and not only in the usual way, intrigues me. Which explains why I can't seem to stop writing about my father's death.

►And, I love this free daily email, which brings me something interesting or funny or unusual in a quick and easily digestible format to break up my day. 'Cause I really do need more ways to procrastinate online.

►Erika Dreifus has a must-read interview about writers' residencies over at her blog, as well as a follow-up post that points you to a major resource when researching residencies and colonies – a site I've used, and I'm happy to say, helped me land a two-week spot at the Vermont Studio Center next winter.

Let me know how your dish turns out.

Writing Motherhood

One of my essays is part of a one-month-only Second Annual Mother's Day Online Anthology over at Mothering Heights. It was an honorable mention in the contest, too.

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers, children of mothers, and people who are like-a-mother, have a mothering nature, appreciate mothers, remember mothers, and especially -- those who dare to write the motherhood experience.

The Random Report

Folks who visit here often know I rarely post anything too off topic…but since I was tagged by several bloggers for this, and since I've been away from home for two weeks, and since my mind is on a hundred other things besides anything literary, I thought I'd give it a go. It's supposed to be Six Random Things about me, but since I hate being confined to a number….

1. I once hired comedian Ray Romano, who nobody had ever heard of, to entertain at a client's fundraiser in New Jersey around 1990. He charged around $300, which is probably about what he leaves as a tip these days.

2. I used to feel cold all the time, even in summer, but ever since I had my first kid, I usually feel hot all the time (yes, temperature-wise. This is a G-rated blog, folks).

3. When I was a teenager, I unknowingly sat in front of Paul Newman at the National Horse Show in Madison Square Garden, and when I turned in my seat, I blurted, "Wow, you have such blue eyes, you could be Paul Newman."

4. I once played ice hockey. Right wing. My friend Babette and I were 15, and were the only girls on a 12-year-old boys' team. See what happens when your older brother has Rangers season tickets and you develop an over-the-top crush on Ron Greschner?

5. One of my Catholic-elementary-school best buds, Ellen Kuras, has won at Sundance for cinematography (twice), and recently made her directorial debut. I always knew she'd do something cool. When she was a teenager, she wanted to be an Egyptologist…..

6. …and hen I was a kid, I wanted to be a: sportswriter, police detective, nurse, probation officer, actress, airline ticket agent. And, I actually did a good bit of sports writing and acted a (very) little while living in California in 1981-82. Can't imagine myself in any of the other jobs, though.

7. When I was 18, I had an 18-inch waist. Guess who was my favorite movie character in my teens?

8. I am a really good cook but a lousy house cleaner.

9. In the 1970s, Roger Staubach, the legendary Dallas Cowboys quarterback, called my house, asking for my father. (They were on a corporate board together, which I didn't know). I asked who was calling, he said his name, and I cracked, "Yeah, and I'm Barbara Streisand" and hung up. My father laughed and Staubach called right back. Years later, I interviewed him for a magazine article. Nice guy.

End of Random post. Next week: back to normal.

Just finished reading: Rise and Shine, by Anna Quindlen. This helped a little to take my mind somewhere else for an hour each night before bed, while away from home and helping my mother with her health issues.

Just started reading: Dream Me Home Safely: Writers on Growing Up in America, edited by Susan Richards Shreve; foreword by Marian Wright Edelman. Published in 2003 to mark the 30th anniversary of the Children's Defense Fund. Some meaty essays in this one.

The Poetry Month That Was

During April, in celebration of National Poetry Month, I participated, along with four poets (graduates/students in the Stonecoast MFA program), in NaPoWriMo. It's patterned after NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month, which challenges thousands of participants to write a first draft of a novel in 30 days. We aren't quite that insane, but did take up the challenge of simply (well, not always so simply, as it turned out) writing and then posting one poem a day. We elected to do our NaPoWriMo in a private blog, but apparently many others did so publicly.

The other participants are real, bona-fide, published, accomplished, dedicated poets, who graciously allowed me – a nonfiction writer who occasionally enjoys experimenting with poems – to play in their sandbox. From time to time, one or a few of us fell behind, but we all always got caught up somehow, shared some great dialogue by commenting on one another's poem-posts, and ended the month, I think, enriched as writers for the experience.

Now I've been tagged with a meme to share my NaPoWriMo thoughts, so here goes:


1. Number of poems written in April.
- 28. Okay, I know April has 30 days, but there was some cross-country travel (for a not-fun reason), fatigue and worry; I made up for it with two longer poems the next two days. Sue me.


2. Number of poems you’ll keep and revise.
- Right now I think about six are worth further work. Wonder what I'll think in another month? I am one of those writers who can put something away for months before revising it; and often I decide something is too dreadful to even think about again, and "lose" the folder. Then I rediscover it, usually by accident (or is it?), months or even years later and take another look.


3. List the titles of your top three NaPoWriMo poems (written by me)
-The Cooks on TV
-Walking to the Bagel Shop with my Son
- My Father's Hand
- The Stresslist (which Raye Tibbitts is publishing next month in the final issue of her cool zine, The Bad Mother Chronicles.)
Oops – that's four. Sue me.

4. List your three least favorite NaPoWriMo poems (written by me)
- Protection (I felt like hiding my head after this one!)
- Hats (silly but not silly in a well-written way)
- Hand-Me-Down (actually I think this has potential, but I disliked the attempt)


5. Favorite line from one of your NaPoWriMo poems.

rests her hand on her child's back

watches it, rising and falling. And

she sleeps at 6:28

just before the vomit splashes

her cheek.

6. Favorite poem by a NaPoWriMo participant. Sorry, I'm going to list my favorite poem by each participant.

- Carol Berg: The Quidnuncs in my Kitchen
- Kathleen Clancy: How do you say no to the freeway?
- Mary Harwood: Sweet Sixteen
- Bridget Madden – some silliness for the desert (3/24/08)
And thanks, Bridget, for introducing me to the very poetic term, ekphrastic (a poem about visual art)

7. What surprised you most about writing a poem a day?
- That I would look forward to it; that one poem often led right to another on a similar or related theme; that on some days even a really rough (terrible) first draft took longer to write than I anticipated, while on other days, it leapt from my pen nearly before I noticed; and finally, that I would so look forward to reading all of the other participants' poems. No day in April was complete without checking the blog numerous times to see what was new.


8. Now that you’ve started the momentum, what’s next?
- Good question. Still have a final nonfiction prose thesis manuscript to complete (only if want to graduate with an MFA in July!). I think I'll put it all away for a while: weeks for sure, maybe months. But I may keep up the poetry habit, because while I know I will never be half as good a poet as a nonfiction writer, there is something about the way my brain seems to work when in poetry mode that is so different than it does when in personal essay or memoir or OpEd or feature-article mode.

Plus, I really love to pick up my favorite pen (a black Pentel Metal Tip 0.7 mm EnerGel Liquid Gel Ink), grab a notebook, sit quietly (anywhere) and write…well, something that resembles a poem. Thought it may never exist as one, it still spurs me on to some new way into a piece of writing.

If you had any good experiences during National Poetry Month, or with poetry in general, please let me know in comments.

Of Bathwaters, Babies and Tight Sleeping -- not what you think!

I love discovering the original meaning of expressions, sayings and words we routinely utter without ever knowing why. The real, and often surprising origins, often leave me speechless, and I usually encounter them in the oddest of ways.

A few weeks ago my husband and I took our sons to a local historic site we had long known about but never visited (think Manhattan residents who rarely even glance at the Empire State Building) – Historic Speedwell, birthplace of the telegraph system that first made Morse code workable. In addition to the ironworks and other industry-oriented buildings, is a restored home and in one of the bedrooms was a round, stout hammered metal tub with a lip seat on one side and on the other, a spout. Bathtime, according to the teenage docent, consisted of filling the tub and then each family member, in descending order of age, took their turns washing. When finally the youngest child, usually a toddler or older baby, finished, the tub was tipped, the water draining from the spout.

Careful: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I immediately brightened, having now an authentic scenario to conjure when I used that expression. The boys predictably didn't find this so interesting; which shows my age I suppose more than any literary bent.

Next was another bedroom, set up to resemble one shared by several children, and the docent peeled up the straw-stuffed mattress to reveal ropes crisscrossed frame to frame. She picked up an odd looking wooden thing, called it a key, and demonstrated how, about once a week, those ropes needed to be pulled taut to ensure a restful and supportive night's sleep.

Thus: Sleep tight.

Both a practical expression: tighten the bed ropes or your back will be sorry – and a sincere sentiment: hope you have a comfortable night's sleep. See guys, I said to the boys: it doesn't mean pull the covers around tight after all.
They seemed both intrigued and abashed.

I felt really smart about my new Sleep Tight knowledge until last week when I read The Kitchen God's Wife, in which Amy Tan conjures pre-World War II China, and relates the lovely custom of snugly wrapping small children for sleep individually in their own personal quilts, even when sharing a bed. Nowhere in Tan's text does it suggest the Chinese have an expression for "sleep tight" that refers to this tradition, but don't you think it's possible?

And now, please feel completely free to leave a comment about how wrong I (and the folks at Speedwell) might be on all counts. Because if there's one thing I know, and love, about language, is that very often, there's more than one explanation, more than one way to skin a cat, that it's sometimes six of one and half-a-dozen of another, that….well, you get the idea.

What's your favorite unusual origin of a common expression?

From Print to Screen?

►I'm not a full time working print journalist, but Paul Conley raises an important point. Where will all the print reporters and editors, whose jobs are quickly disappearing, go to find work? Every single day, as part of my gig tracking industry news for a media-centric newsletter, I read about another major print news organization – newspapers mostly, but some magazines too – laying off dozens and sometimes hundreds. Sure, some find positions online, even before staff cuts come their way. But what about the rest? As always, Conley, an astute industry observer, has given it some thought.

►Could it be studio heads learned something from the writer's strike? Something along the lines of, "What do you know? It all starts with the writing?" Hmm. When I read something like this, I get the idea they may be getting the message. I've got two thoughts about this trend of Hollywood trawling for scripts from the fiction shelves and magazine racks: One, Hooray for my friends whose novels and longer magazine articles may get a second life on the screen (small or big). On the other hand, is this a way for the studios to jump right over the heads of experienced, established and higher-paid screenwriters and instead pluck development properties from a group – that would be the much lower paid novelists and freelance writers – who don't command the bigger paychecks?

Or....maybe all of the soon-to-be out-of-work print journalists ought to take screenwriting classes?

Tuesday Tips

►If, like me, you still have a bunch of VHS tapes in your family room tucked behind the DVDs, and you want to toss the phone when you can't break through a company's automated voice-prompt system and get an actual human voice, you're going to love this: the techie wizards who control "content" (and thus our entire future writing lives) are slowly abandoning MS WORD and all future copy (sorry, I mean content) may have to be entered straight to a "content platform."

►Readings by faculty members and visiting writers at the Stonecoast MFA winter residency are now up in podcast form over at the Maine Humanities Council. A few I especially enjoyed were visiting novelist Tayari Jones, and the 3-5 minute "flash readings" by several faculty members.

►If I were going to be in the Los Angeles area this coming weekend, you'd definitely find me at the Los Angeles Times' Festival of Books. Check it out, my West Coast friends!

►Your book coming out soon? You might want to get this free email newsletter, with ideas even first time authors with barely any budget can do on their own to build book buzz. (Sign-up is at the bottom of the hard-sell home page; but the newsletter delivers).

Hug a Librarian Today - or at least say something nice

Quick, besides your local independent bookstore, your writing group, and your local writing center (if you are lucky enough to have one nearby), as a writer, what's your most important local resource?

If you answered your local library, then stop in some time this week and say thank you – maybe to the reference librarian you pester when your research is bogged down, or the children's specialist who keeps your little ones engaged (and fertilizes the next generation of readers), or the inter-loan expert who tracks down those obscure out-of-print texts. Or, the web wizard who helped you figure out the best way to word your searches.

Where would writers be without libraries and the folks who work there?

At my local library, they set up cookies and coffee yesterday to celebrate National Library Week. Tomorrow, I’m bringing them flowers.

Poems, Writing Together, Prizes and One Peeve

►How to celebrate National Poetry Month? A bunch of MFA students sent out a request to 1,300 poets (well known and not so) asking them to write and send back one poem within six hours. See the 100 who responded at LeftFacingBird.

►What do you get when you combine blogs, group writing, traditional publishing, very non-conventional publishing, and a bunch of other stuff I don't even understand but find really intriguing. Find the answer at WEbook.

►In case you missed the full list, check out the Pulitzer Prize winners.

►Ok, this is not exactly on point, but…no wait a minute, yes it is. It's exactly on point because it addresses one of my pet peeves about modern literary contrivances aimed at kids. Pete Sagal was right on when he observed, after seeing Horton Hears a Who,

"In a new subplot added by the filmmakers, the mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters. He has one son. Guess who gets all his attention? Guess who saves the day? Go ahead, think about it, I'll wait."

Sagal has three daughters, and I have two sons, but this irks me as much as it does him. He goes on,

"And while we're at it, how come a girl doesn't get to blow up the Death Star! Or send ET home? Or defeat Captain Hook! Or Destroy the Ring of Power!"

And, I might add, how come every kid protagonist in modern films has at least one dead parent, usually the mother?

Read the full text of Sagal's NPR rant here.

Ok, I feel better now.

Of Brooms and Rooms

Very few writers persevere at their craft without day jobs -- or night jobs, or flexible part-time jobs that pay the bills and make it possible to write that novel, memoir, essay collection, screenplay, or volume of poetry. Sometimes, those rent-paying gigs are writing-related: teaching, editing, proofreading. More often, you'll find writers in other jobs, across dozens of fields of endeavor.

Nancy Peacock wrote and published a debut novel, and a second novel, while cleaning houses and thought little about her chosen way to support herself. In fact, as an independent house cleaner, the job allowed her to make her own hours and choose (or tactfully reject) clients, and was mentally stress-less enough to allow her to return to her writing without the brain drain common among writers who work more traditional jobs in say, marketing or fundraising.

But others were not so blasé about her work choice. Her literary colleagues were always surprised to hear of it, and not long after a tabloid magazine shouted, "Here's One for the Books: Cleaning Lady Is an Acclaimed Author," Peacock knew what her next book would be.

A Broom of One's Own, just out from Harper Perennial, is her memoir of house cleaning, stocked with equal parts behind-the-scene home-owner tales and Peacock's endeavors to maintain a literary life. She answered some of my questions recently.

Q & A with Nancy Peacock, author of A Broom of One's Own

Lisa Romeo: When did you know you had a memoir? Were you collecting house-cleaning stories all along, or did you decide on a memoir and then go back to recollect the experiences?

Nancy Peacock: Although I'd quit housecleaning, I'd had to return to it, so I was still cleaning a few houses when I started working on Broom. Actually, a friend of mine suggested that I write about housecleaning, and once I thought about it, I decided that I really did have a lot to say on the subject of that particular job. I knew it was going to be part memoir and part writing manual. The main thing that I wanted to do, beginning with the first essay about being featured in the National Enquirer, was be open about my struggles with writing and earning a living. And show by example of my life, that a writing life can take many forms.

LR: You write about people whose houses you cleaned - and even if, as I'm assuming, their names and some identifying characteristics were changed -- did you let them know they were going to appear in your book? Was there any feedback, positive or negative, about that?

NP: I only cleared it with one client - and that was my ex-boyfriend and his wife, (who are) James and Lillian in the book. They were and still are my friends, and I wanted to make sure that they were comfortable with what I wrote. I've changed enough details - such as names and locations of houses - that it's unlikely anyone who knows these people would recognize them. I also told stories that only a housecleaner would know.

LR: In the book, you skirt around (artfully) many details of your personal life. Was that intentional or more organic? Are you not keen on revealing more personal areas of life in print?

NP: I mention my husband and my studio and my writing, but all that was organic to the material. The structure of the book dictated that I wouldn't go deeply into my own home - but trust me, it had (and has) its share of dust bunnies.

LR: You were fond of certain housecleaning customers, and rather disdainful of others (rightfully so). Did you find yourself, in the crafting process of the book, searching for extremes, or did they flow naturally from the memories?

NP: They flowed naturally. Some of the people whose houses I cleaned were extreme - for instance the family that walked around in states of semi-nudity. Others were extremely nice, respectful of me, and appreciative of my work. Both stood out in my mind, for different reasons, as unforgettable.

LR: What skills from your fiction writing did you find most helpful to you when writing this creative nonfiction book?

NP: Telling a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Because each chapter of Broom focused on a particular house and its people, as well as a particular struggle I was having with writing, I had to wrap each story up with beginning, middle and end.

LR: Likewise, were there any techniques or habits from fiction writing you found unhelpful in writing memoir?

NP: No - not really. Not in this book. I think that writing a more traditional memoir, about a time in life that was difficult, could be troublesome. I think the temptation to embellish could be great, as we've seen from the fake-memoir trend.

LR: What else about the nonfiction genre surprised you as a writer?

NP: It surprised me how easy it was to write this book. I am just finishing up my third novel, and I had forgotten what a struggle it is, in writing a novel, to keep all the threads of a story going - to make sure that the characters and storyline are consistent - and that things fit. It takes many, many drafts for the characters and plot to evolve. It can be quite frustrating at times, but I didn't have that to contend with while writing Broom.

LR: Was developing the "I" narrator character easy for you since as a novelist you are used to thinking of character development, or was it difficult to think of the "I" character as you and yet also as a character?


NP: I love first person. Life Without Water is written in first person, but I had been writing in third until Broom. Of course the "I" of a memoir, is very different than the "I" of fiction. It wasn't hard in this case. I have written about myself before, somewhat unsuccessfully, but with Broom so much of the book focuses on the people in the houses that I cleaned. That gave the character of "me" plenty of places to push off of. Also - the "I" in this book really is me, so I didn't need to do any developing. I just remembered the stories and the way I felt at the time - and worked with that.

LR: I found the book a delightful balance between literary nonfiction and an engaging popular memoir to enjoy, say, on the beach. Was this a conscious strategy, to have artistic prose carrying an everywoman theme, but still be assessable to the casual reader?

NP: I never have a conscious strategy, but it's delightful to hear that it worked out.

LR: Did you write the book in the order it eventually appears, or was each chapter a separate piece, which you then rearranged? Or did you get the "bones" of the book down first, and then go back and develop each chapter more fully?

NP: For the first draft, I wrote one chapter a week. I began each one in long hand, in my journal. Then I entered it in the computer, edited it, and let it go. Once I had a collection, I went through with more editing. Then my husband and I went through it together for yet more editing. He's got a good eye for prose and I learned a lot working with him. (It's great to have free editing!) After the book was accepted, my editor at Harper Perennial, Carolyn Marino, suggested that I rearrange the essays to create more of a narrative arc. I think that improved the book a great deal.

LR: What are you at work on now?

NP: I am literally about to send my third novel to my agent, having completed the final draft today. I think I'm going to mine some of my short stories after that - and there's a grant I want to apply for which will take some time. In a few months I'll most likely start another novel.

LR: Any advice to first-time memoir writers?


NP: Be honest.

Still only Tuesday?

►Are you signed up to get a Poem-a-Day during April? I am and so far, so good.

►Authors, future authors and others are in varying states of intrigue, anguish, and both over the announcement of a new Harper Collins imprint, which plans to eliminate advances in favor of profit sharing. Hmm.

►I love it when the mail carrier – whom I watch with way too much interest whilst procrastinating at my computer, positioned so that I can look out my front window – heads to my porch with an armload of small packages marked "media mail." This week he's already dropped off Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith, by Suzanne Strempek Shea; and Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father's German Village, by Mimi Schwartz.

Suzanne, whose workshops I've learned from, writes about her adventure attending a Protestant service at a different (and in many cases, unusual) American church every Sunday for a year. Mimi, a generous and wise writer whom I once interviewed for a research project about women memoirists, undertook a 10+ year project, tracking down the stories her father told around her childhood kitchen table about a place where, "before Hitler, everyone got along." New Englanders might be able to catch one of Suzanne's readings/appearances, and for those of you in the Princeton, NJ area or New Hampshire, check out Mimi's calendar. When I get the chance to read them, I'll let you know more about each.

What are you looking forward to reading?