We Need Kindness Now

Regardless of your political persuasion, I'll bet you can agree with me that we need a little kindness in the world right now.  Every morning I open my news apps with trepidation.  I know that I need to be informed, that I need to see the reality of what's happening in the world, but the truth is, I'd rather not know.

And yet I've realized it's important to face the difficulties of the world in order to figure out where the help I can give is best placed.  This is also what drives me as a teacher.  I know I can spread positivity in the world, and where better than with the future difference-makers?

Yet at this time of year I find myself getting a little down about it.  It's the end of the school year and I'm tired, the students are tired, my children are tired.  And when I get tired, I turn into the gumpiest, most impatient woman on the planet...or at least in South Carolina.

And yet the world finds a way of bringing me back to hope...

Yesterday I attended our school's graduation excercises.  I always look forward to them as I'm a sentimental, nostalgic type and I love seeing the kids transition from what they've always known to that for which they will be known.  But this year was extra sweet for me.

I teach a creative writing independent study, a class limited to four students who choose to write a novel, a short story collection, a poetry collection, or a play/screenplay.  It's a tall order--especially for second semester seniors--so I usually end up with the kids who have been waiting for a reason to have to find time to write creatively.  This year I worked with two novelists and two poets.  You should probably make note of their names, as I'm certain the world will be blessed with their writing quite soon.

Katherine, Sophie, Louisa, and Jacob gathered around me after their graduation, when their peers were heading to the cafeteria for cake or taking pictures with family.  They had two large reusable grocery bags containing five boxes, and they were so excited it was barely containable.

They had created for me what has to rank as one of the best gifts I've ever received.

Inside the boxes was a tea set.  Each writer had painted a teacup and saucer that illustrated some element of their writing.  Katherine's teacup featured a pair of eyes staring at me, a la The Great Gatsby, eyes being pivotal to the characterization in her novel, a fantasy surrounding specially enabled humans and a mysterious and (hopefully) misunderstood stranger.  Sophie's depicted a cat on a windowsill and a school bus to remind me of her book of poetry, a glimpse through the eyes of several students who were experiencing the same events with different emotional responses.  Louisa's was painted rainbow because each of her poems focused on a different emotion, and Jacob's was covered with a passage from Deuteronomy, a chill-inducing moment from his Jason Bourne-esque novel.  The crowning piece was a teapot featuring the title character from the novel I had worked on with them, Miranda.

They had gathered at a local pottery studio after exams to make these pieces for me.  That's right, four high school seniors, during the week when many of their peers go on beach vacations and throw last minute celebrations, had spent an afternoon painting pottery for their teacher.  Wow.

So today I feel better about the world.  Because these four stand as examples of the kindness that is on its way.  These creative, intelligent, compassionate minds are making their way into the world and are determined to share their voices in it.

So when you look at the news and feel the anxiety I share, let your heartbeat slow and your breathing regulate.  The future's looking mighty bright indeed.

And now for something completely different...

One of the questions I've often asked myself is: What kind of writer am I? And by that I mean, in what genre does my work fit?

As I've written on this blog, I love writing in the chick lit genre, particularly about the American South.  I have stories for days, a veritable well from which I can draw inspiration. Certainly Sweet Divinity fits perfectly into this style and genre, as does My Literary Boyfriends.  Yet I also enjoy writing literary fiction; at least, I have enjoyed writing it when working on my manuscript of Miranda.

So the question remains: What genre suits me best?  And I think the answer is "both".

When I first set out on my journey to publish, I just sent out whichever manuscript was ready, not a worry about a long-term career.  I just wanted to publish.  But the more I work, the more I know this is what I wish to do, consistently, for the rest of my life.  Therefore I came to the realization that perhaps I had to choose: Am I a Sophie Kinsella or a Jane Green, a Caassandra Clare or a Chris Cleve?  It seems as if in order to market your book, one must market herself, and that requires defining yourself as a writer.

But the truth is, I am both a chick lit writer and a writer of literary fiction, and I'm pretty sure I've got some nonfiction inside of me as well.

So while I'm still seeking representation for Sweet Divinity, I think I'll give Miranda a little bit of love, and we'll see if she strikes an agent's fancy.  Besides, while I can be sweet and humorous, I certainly believe I'm complex enough to be gothic and metaphysical as well.  We should all own our unique complexities.  And I'm ready to own mine.

A Query Query

I've had many questions about the journey to publishing. This is a journey I've been on for some time, and I take it for granted that everyone who knows me or who reads this blog knows the path a writer takes on her way to publication.

But the truth is, it's a much more complex path than many imagine, with many alternate routes from which to choose. From the moment I completed my first manuscript, I've been trekking the route to representation. On this path I submit query letters to literary agents whom I think will like what I have to offer. With perfect timing, a captivating hook, and luck on my side, the agent asks for a partial of my manuscript, then the full manuscript, and then ultimately offers me representation (with a possible rewrite there at the end to see how I work with others). I've been down this path to the very end, through the rewrite, only to get the breakup letter that lowers the spirits of any writer. In fact, I save all of my rejections in a folder so that one day when I sign with an agent or publisher, I can hit "delete" in a grand purge!

I've had a lot of success with my query letter, and I'm grateful to so many blogs and articles that have helped me strengthen it. The first round of queries, I sent this letter in a shortened version, but when I began to shop around last summer (the summer of my literary ailment), I added a paragraph on marketing. This was after I received a rejection that contained something like, "I love it, but I don't know how to make it stand out in a busy market."  So I decided to address that concern upfront.

I'm not naive enough to believe my query is perfect. However, it's effective.  So if you're wondering just what a query letter looks like or maybe just what this novel I've been ddiscussing is all about, I offer you the generic form of my query letter for Sweet Divinity.

Dear Reader,

Based on your interests and the clients you represent, I feel certain that you will enjoy my commercial women’s novel of 95,000 words titled Sweet Divinity.

Amanda Jane Roberts swore she would shed her country ways and never look back to the Georgia farm where she was raised.  But now that she’s discovered her husband’s affair (in a movie theatre, no less!  How tacky!), she’s packing her bags and her precocious five-year old daughter and heading home.  And home hasn’t changed one bit.  Her feisty mother who shoots squirrels from her attic with a shotgun, watches her preachers on television, and tosses her son’s marijuana plants out the window (replacing them with useful herbs, of course) is still the independent, wise woman she always knew.  Her best friends, young mother Dana and closeted David, are ready to pick up where the friendship left off.  And the country boys are still gentlemanly and sincere.

But Amanda soon learns that although home may not have changed, she has.  The girl who once loved working outside, cheering on the local high school football team, and baking sweet goodness in her mother’s kitchen has become a city girl whose girlfriends love high heels, overpriced coffee, and air conditioned comfort.  She has forgotten the politics of small town life, and is quickly thrust back into a world where people are judged on their ability to hold with tradition.

Against this backdrop, Sweet Divinity is the story of a woman searching for her true identity and the strength to make a life of her own.  Starting over as a single mother, she longs to find her place.  Through taking on the challenges of living with her opinionated and idiosyncratic mother, establishing herself as the town’s most sophisticated (and still southern!) baker, and explaining to her daughter why life is disappointing but ultimately rewarding, Amanda begins to realize that although she may be “citified”, perhaps there is a little bit of country girl deep down, hollerin’ to get out.  Thus the novel raises a universal question: how much of who I really am is defined by the place I call “home”?

Sweet Divinity will be my first published novel.  While studying English at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, I was fortunate to be selected for an independent study in novel writing under the mentorship of Gap Creek author Robert Morgan.  I received my MA degree in English from The College of Charleston/The Citadel and currently teach high school literature and creative writing courses in South Carolina.

I am very excited to send you the manuscript of Sweet Divinity (named for the essential southern sweet—I can send you some of it as well!).  The authentic Southern voice fills what I see as a gap in a women’s market full of metropolitan voices or stereotypically “southern” twangs.  Women want authenticity and relatable qualities in their protagonists, and my heroine, Amanda, appeals to southern women in an authentically regional manner, but also to every woman in the universality of her experience.  Having lived and studied in three southern states, I can attest that there is a rich market here waiting to be tapped by a sassy southern voice.  I look forward to traveling and promoting my work in my region, but also sharing a bit of this place through national marketing.  I believe in Amanda Jane.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Megan P. Koon

 

A Storytelling Mouse

I love Walt Disney World.

No, wait...I am obsessed with Walt Disney World.

It's true; I plan friends' trips to Disney, presenting them with multiple recommended packages from which to choose. The minute our family vacation is over, I'm pricing the next one.  I completely lose it when Eeyore enters the room.  I tutor all summer to fill the "Disney Fund", and once filled, I book and plan our next trip.  Driving through Orlando without visiting Disney is simply not an option.

Why am I so captured by Disney?  Is it the element of escapism?  The irresistible return to childhood?  The pixie dust?

I've given this a lot of thought (too much, perhaps), and I have to say, I believe my Disney adoration is due to the fact that, at the foundation, Disney is about storytellers.  And I love storytellers.  Heck, I am a storyteller.

Disney was founded on a mouse with a story, piloting a steamboat.  It has transformed classic fairy tales and folk stories into icons.  It celebrates the diversity and unity we find in one another.  It imagines how we will interact in the future.  It looks at the ways man and nature need each other.  It pays attention to the details, understands that sometimes it's the little things (like the tiniest mouse) that make the story work.

When I think about the stories that have stayed with me, I realize that Disney is behind many of them.  Sure, I've read the original Grimm stories, and I know that Disney made its tweaks, but I cannot deny that Disney has increased the widespread longevity of these tales.  I remember being terrified of the Evil Queen's transformation in Snow White, going to see The Little Mermaid at my first slumber party, crying the instant the music began in The Lion King because it moved me in such a deep way (okay, my eyes still fill with tears each time I hear the opening cry of "The Circle of Life").

The point is, these stories have really meant something to me, and watching them come alive while being invited to be a part of them moves me in such a fundamental way.

I feel sorry for people who reject the "materialism" of Disney.  They're missing the whole point.  Disney is built on stories.  A trip to the Magic Kingdom is about living those stories.  Stories preserve our history, assist us in expressing our emotions, and capture our creativity and imagination in productive and meaningful ways.  We need to celebrate our stories.

So save your pooh-poohing of Disney and listen...there's a mouse waiting to tell you his story.

Hemingway the Human

I've been thinking a lot about Ernest Hemingway this week.  I just finished teaching A Moveable Feast for the fifth year, and I ran across a nonfiction work, Hemingway in Love, by A.E. Hotchner, on display at the local library.  Considering that my class was completing our study of Hemingway's story of love and writing in Paris that very day, I couldn't help but think that the fates had somehow placed the book there for me to find.  Or maybe it was just a librarian with a hunch.

No matter, the book enlarged my understanding and fascination with the man who lost love and could never find it again.  And it got me thinking about the way we consider writers of the past.  Do we picture them holed away at their desks, scribbling furiously with dull pencils or clanking away on their typewriters with a cigarette dangling from the corner of the mouth?  I read A Moveable Feast and I wish I could walk to a little cafe and write for hours surrounded by interesting people, foreign tongues, the swish of skirts, the clink of tea spoons, the laughter of lovers.  And yet I write best in silence, outdoors, in the sunlight.

I think it's easy to think of the great writers of the past: Hemingway, Faulkner, Kafka, Woolf, Hardy, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Twain, Poe, Wilde, among others--as writers alone.  We forget that they loved, that they lost, that they ate, that they took baths and brushed their teeth.  We forget that they were also human beings who were thus imperfect, but not only in the ways we expect them to be. I hate that people talk endlessly about Poe's "opium addiction".  I prefer to dwell in the stories I read about his playful interactions with children or his playing of the flute.  There's so much more to a writer than the paper and the ink.

And yet, a writer is a writer.  Being a writer is so essential to who I am.  It's how I reflect, how I cope, how I explore, how I love.  Should we separate the writer from the person?  Or should we simply take more time to see the whole person, every aspect of who they are?  Reading A Moveable Feast, one sees Hemingway as the brash, uber-masculine man that pop culture promotes, but one also sees the lover, the flawed man who got wrapped up in money and fame like so many before him and so many to follow.  What interests me most is the fact that he's working on this book at the end of his life, before he took his own life.  He's looking back at what he was.  It reminds me of The Great Gatsby by Hemingway's friend, F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Nick wonders if Gatsby can remember his initial dream, his dream before it was made incarnate in the flawed human form of Daisy Buchanan.  He wonders if Gatsby, before the end of his life, had seen the grotesque nature of the rose or the pain caused by the bright sun.  Perhaps at the end of Hemingway's life he, too, was trying to grasp the life that eluded him.

No one looks at Hemingway's life in a superficial way and thinks it was a life unlived.  The man was an amateur bullfighter, a boxer, a big game hunter, a deep sea fisherman, a war veteran, a war correspondent, a husband and a father.  And yet, in Hotchner's recollection we are told that the last time Hemingway saw his first wife, Hadley, on the streets of Paris, he said to her, "I want you to know, Hadley, you'll be the true part of any woman I write about.  I'll spend the rest of my life looking for you" (151).  We can all get down on Hemingway for cheating on his wife; we can get down on him for wanting it both ways.  But what we see when we look closer at his life is a man who messed it up and realized it too late.  A man who longed for fame and then realized he didn't want it.  A man who spent his life trying to find the simplicity he forfeited so early on.  I want to believe that, in the end, he found it again.  And if that's so, then he found it through writing.  The closing line of A Moveable Feast reads, "There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other.  We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached.  Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it.  But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy" (211).

Writers are humans using language to live.  I hope that Hemingway found the life he longed for.

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast, Scribner, 1964.

Hotchner, A.E.  Hemingway in Love: His Own Story, St. Martin's, 2015.

My Process, Part II

As promised, here is the second voice that made its way through my mind when I sat down to begin work on My Literary Boyfriends.  In retrospect, perhaps I was channelling the English teacher desire for vengeance.

Chapter One: In which an unsuspecting teenage brat gets his
    I was raised in a bookstore, so I probably had a few books dropped on my head as a baby, which no doubt explains my indecisive nature.  But one aspect of my life upon which I was completely decisive was my choice of career.  I am, indeed, a librarian.
    But lest you click your tongue and shake your head, and start applying all those mundane librarian stereotypes to me, let me stop you.  Yes, I love books.  Yes, I love peace and quiet.  Yes, I wear glasses.  But at least once a day some disheveled middle-aged man (usually in specs himself) will walk up to my circulation desk and ask to speak to a librarian.  Sigh.
    “I am the librarian, sir.  How may I help you?”
    Overly-dramatic shocked look ensues.
    “No.”
    I blink rapidly to avoid rolling my eyes.  “Yes.”
    Overly-dramatic shocked look continues.  And then…inevitably…
    “But you’re too pretty to be a librarian!”
    Now, I suppose I should take this as some kind of a compliment, but I don’t.
    “Sir, are you implying that all librarians are required to look a certain way?”
    Now he’s embarrassed, looking about to see who is listening.
    “No…no, I just thought…”
    I take a deep breath.  “How is it that I may help you, sir?”
    On behalf of all librarians everywhere, I must insist you put your stereotypes aside.  We are not all mousy, timid little people stuck in the fashion world of nineteen sixty-five.  We do not all carry canvas bags and where large, frameless glasses.  And we wear make-up.  Really.  We do.  One of my fellow librarians and I always put our faces on in the bathroom mirrors in the morning after we’ve clocked in, so we won’t be late.  See, we’re street smart too.
    But I will admit that perhaps I’m a little more…how should I put this?  More fashion-conscious than most of the librarians I remember from my youth.   Perhaps it’s because I’m only twenty-six.  I wear heels to work, as the stacks make fabulous private runways, and my glasses might be Kate Spade (except for special days when I wear my D and G’s!).  I see why these men have the reaction they do, but I just don’t understand their need to tell me about it.  It’s a library.  No one goes to the library to pick up women.  And if they do, that is beyond pathetic and they should at least go to the Barnes and Noble.  It’s like a capitalist library.  And when you meet the girl of your dreams, you can take her out for coffee right away.
    Seriously, I’m appalled that they allow drinks and sticky sugar goo so close to their books.  Shame.  Shame on you.
    Now you may be thinking that my job is boring somehow.  All the shelving and scanning and database entering.  So I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  The absolute, bar-none, best part of being a librarian.
    Summer reading.
    Some kids come into the library the first week of June, eager looks on their faces, summer reading lists in hand.  The most excited have usually narrowed down their list to a select few choices, and they ask my opinion about which to choose.
    I love these students.  I see myself in them, excited to read something new, learn about something complete unknown, and get a head start on their homework!
    For these dear children, I take the time to listen to the types of books they like to read and then choose the tome that will most likely please them.  It’s like a puzzle, figuring out which book fits the kid.  And sometimes, when a kid says just the right thing: “Well, I really like the Brontes because I love the setting and the emotions.  And the words are just so beautiful”, I hand her my Thomas.  I’m very protective, of course, as Thomas only deserves to be read by one who can truly appreciate his perfection.  Same with Will.  Oh—did I say that?  William (we’re on a nickname basis, you see).
    But at the end of the summer, with nary two weeks until the start of a brand new school year, the stragglers inevitably show up at my desk.  I find there are three types of procrastinator.
 
Procrastinator #1: The “Two Much to Read”
    “Can you help me?  I’ve got to choose a book off this list and I have no idea what to do.”
    “Why are you waiting so late to decide?”
    Smile.  “To tell you the truth, I’ve been reading all summer, but I just haven’t read anything off the list.”
    “What have you been reading.”
    Eyes brighten.  “I read the entire Game of Thrones series!  I loved it!  But it took me all summer, you see, and…”  Kid shrugs and hands me the list.
    I like this kid.  Sure, he isn’t reading “high” literature, but at least he’s reading.  I hand him Lord of the Flies and send him on his merry way, with a promise that there will be a pig head on a stick at some point in the book.
    “Awesome!”

Procrastinator #2: Too Busy
    “I’ve been working all summer, and then my family went on vacation to Mexico (poor kid) and the next thing I knew—it’s the end of the summer and I haven’t read a thing.”
    This kid doesn’t bother me.  Sure, he’s read nothing all summer and thus his brain has begun to shut down and beginning to read something now will be like handing a kindergartener Ulysses, but at least he has no aversion to the summer reading assignment.
    “What have you read in school that you liked?”
    He bites his lip and looks at the ceiling.  “I liked The Great Gatsby.  That one was pretty good.”
    The Sun Also Rises it is.

Procrastinator #3: I Hate Books (I need a minute to compose myself here…okay, I’m ready.)
    “Why haven’t you started your summer reading before now?”  
    He narrows his eyes.  “Because it’s stupid.”
    Thoreau.  He gets Thoreau.  And only because Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography isn’t on the list.

    There is a certain satisfaction in handing out these books, doling out justice one tome at a time.  And while you might think that I’ve missed an opportunity with kid three to give him a wonderful book and inspire in him a love of reading so rich that this cynical child will become the next Mark Twain, consider this.  That kid isn’t going to read a lick of that book.  His parents forced him off of his Playstation and into the library, and now he will go home, Spark Notes the book, write a completely crap essay, and assume the teacher’s fool enough to give him a passing grade.  I pray she’s smarter than that.  At least I know that with Thoreau, the Spark Notes will be boring as hell.

My Process, Part I

When I first begin a project, I have to find the narrative voice. With Sweet Divinity, this was easy. With Miranda, it took months, and let's just say there were a LOT of voices in my head! To find the narrative voice for my new project, tentatively titled My Literary Boyfriends, I started this way...

        I have two literary boyfriends and they haven’t the faintest clue about each other.  My American boyfriend is William.  A Southern gentleman with a lovely pair of melancholy eyes, an insight into the human heart unrivalled by any other, and a genius of language manipulation.  When we first met, I was intimidated by him—he was so confident, so smart, so…Southern.  And yes, maybe he tips the bottle a but too much, but I hardly care.  I’m completely smitten.
But what William doesn’t know is that long, long before I knew he existed, there was another lover.  A poet, a novelist, an observer of human emotion, morality, and candor.  Thomas.  My British beau.  Creator of the moors of Essex, the heart of Churchminster, the beauty of Tess.  He drew from me a sigh of longing that exuded all of my pent-up teenage emotion.  I love him.
These are my literary boyfriends.  The men with whom I fill my life.  My Southern gentleman.  My British beau.  Thornton Wilder wrote that people are meant to live two by two in this world.  I prefer three.  I’ve always been indecisive.  Don’t tell the boys.


This initial piece is narrated by the first voice I heard when I began exploring the concept of My Literary Boyfriends.  To be fair, it sounds a lot like me.  After all, William Faulkner is my literary boyfriend, but Thomas Hardy is in fact my literary husband.  When I think about these writers and my enduring love for them, what you just experienced is the voice I hear.  But the trick in writing in first person is letting the authentic voice of the novel come through your pen (or keyboard).  So while this was the first voice, it wasn't the right voice.  At least not to begin.  In the next post I'll share with you the second voice I encountered on my journey for a narrator.  Spoiler alert: It wasn't "the one" either.  That said, I really like her.  Get excited.

What I'm reading this week:
The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman (I've only 60 pages to go!)
William Faulkner by Caroline Porter (though I'm skipping sections that contain spoilers of novels I've yet to read)
Absalom!  Absalom!  by Willliam Faulkner (my self-proclaimed "favorite book", though I haven't read it since grad school so I'm reminding myself why I love it)
The Spy by Paulo Coehlo (the cover is beautiful)