“I really need a deadline and accountability to be my most productive,” an interview with Heather Frese

Recently I had the chance to talk to my pal Heather Frese, author of The Baddest Girl on the Planet (Blair) about the challenges of writing while parenting and the importance of finding your “people.”

Q: What are some of your recent and current projects? What are you working on now?

A: My debut novel, The Baddest Girl on the Planet, won the Lee Smith Novel Prize and was released in spring of 2021 (Blair). Prior to that, I’d published short stories and essays, and was shortlisted in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Essays. I’m currently working on, or trying to work on, a big revision to a novel that’s been sitting in a metaphorical drawer for a long while now. I’ve got a few essays underway and I have some ideas percolating for a new novel, but nothing has solidified yet.

Q: Recently, we formed a small writing support/workshop group. What does that do for you or your writing?

A: I really need a deadline and accountability to be my most productive, and this group gave me that. And it was an extra bonus to have that accountability provided by some of my favorite people!

Q: Including our workshop group and friends outside of it, why is it important to you to connect with other busy writers?

A: I think for me, after I finished my MFA program and moved, I had a bit of an identity crisis that was compounded by my transition into the overwhelming-ness that was early motherhood. So connecting with other busy writers was a really vital way to remind myself that I was, indeed, a writer. Even when I wasn’t really writing (and I had a good chunk of years where I was intensively mothering and not really writing), that connection was so important to me in maintaining the idea of myself as a writer, and kept me holding on to a near future where I would write again.

Q: What else is competing for your time? What other priorities and obligations are you trying to write around?

A: I’m the primary caregiver to three young kids. They’re awesome little humans. They’re sweet and smart and hilarious, and oh boy do they take up nearly everything I have, mentally and physically. I came to realize pretty early into motherhood that I couldn’t write while they were awake and/or in my near vicinity. You can catch tiny snippets of time that way, like a sentence or to jot a note, but the sustained flow of creativity and concentration to really dig in and shape something? No. And I give mad props to all those authors who wake up at 3 or 4 or 5am to write, or who stay up until 3 or 4 or 5am to write, but I can’t do it. I’m just too exhausted. This fall my youngest started preschool a few mornings a week, so I drop everyone off at school, dash to a coffee shop, and try to switch gears and slam myself into writer-mode for a few hours. And it’s working! I’ve been so much more productive in those few kid-free hours than I’ve been in years of trying to work with kids in the house.

Q: How has being a part of communities helped your projects come together in the past?

A: Having trusted critique partners has made a huge, huge, massive, giant impact on my writing. Oftentimes when I’m stuck on something, a writing partner will be able to quickly see what needs to happen or have an idea of how to fix things. Without that help, I’d be struggling for months before figuring it out, if I ever did. It’s also so important to have moral support and to know that I have people in my corner who understand what I’m trying to accomplish and are giving feedback based on getting the project to the vision that I have in mind, you know? Feeling like I’m not alone in this often overwhelming and demoralizing process of writing, revising, and publishing is so helpful.

Q: What recommendations do you have for writers out there who want to find a community of their own?

A: Honestly, connecting online through social media was really powerful for me when I was living far away from my in-person communities or hadn’t found local writing friends yet. I know Facebook can be problematic, but it’s been a big positive for me in staying connected with other writers. I’d also say that it’s really important to find people who connect with your work and get what you’re trying to do. You don’t even have to write in similar styles or genres, but feeling that sense of connection or gelling with where the other person is coming from helps a lot.

December 8, 2021 0

The skill of being rejected

Pic: This is how I keep track of submissions. Low tech but effective.

I have found, pretty recently, that being rejected as a writer is a skill. And like any skill, you can get better at it.

During lockdown, I got back to work on my own writing, spending more time and energy on it than I had in years. Instead of finding the creative well dry, as I had feared, a couple of stories seemed to write themselves. I joined four friends in a Zoom writing workshop (we still meet). I made appointments with an excellent editor-for-hire, and we’ll schedule another session soon. I wrote and I revised, and then I wrote some more. I went on a personal writers’ retreat, renting a cabin in the Catskills with my wonderful friend N. West Moss for a few days, and drafted two new stories. For a while there, I was kicking ass.

In that time period, I also got back to submitting my work to journals and magazines and writing contests. I realized that the process energizes me–everything sent out is a chance that it will find a place in the world. Submitting stories (and sometimes, essays and poems) makes the process more real for me–it makes me feel more like a “real” writer, whatever that is.

And wow, did those rejections roll in. And they keep rolling in. And honestly, yep, sometimes they stung, and sometimes they still do. But they sting less all the time. I shrug at them now, mostly. If I get two in a day, I laugh. It sucks, even now, if I get a rejection on a submission I thought was a good fit–like if my story matched the theme, or aligned with the goals of the publication.

A few came close. “Joiner,” a story, was a finalist in the New Millennium Writing Awards. A flash piece, “Rest for the Wicked,” got a lovely rejection from the Parsec Ink contest, saying it made the longlist. Fatal Flaw rejected two poems, but encouraged me to send more (I will!).

I’ve gotten acceptances, too. For the year of 2021, my record is 5 acceptances, 43 rejections, with a handful of submissions still out. Most recently, The Elpis Pages, a print collective (with profits going to Planned Parenthood), took my essay “What’s Left.” That will be out this month. Then, I got an email from Last Girls Club, saying my story wasn’t a fit for their magazine, but could they read it on their podcast, Blood & Jazz? (The answer of course was YES.)

A lot of what has gotten accepted from 2020-2021 had been in the works for a while. Like a long-ass time. A poem that Blueline Magazine took (“Bargain,”) had existed in various forms for over seven years. “Tourist,” a flash essay Anti-Heroin Chic published, was first drafted about three years ago. Every time those pieces (and others) got rejected, I would take another look at them. Tinker. Fiddle. Tighten them up. And, not surprisingly, they got better. And then they found homes.

I was inspired by the article “Why you should aim for 100 rejections a year” from LitHub by Kim Liao. I was also motivated by a Facebook thread posted by the editor of a small press, which turned into a big conversation about why women tend to submit less often than men. (Spoiler: it’s because patriarchy.) The main idea with both of those? Submit, submit, submit.

I look for opportunities on various Facebook pages, through Reedsy, Newpages, and Erica Verillo’s blog, Publishing and Other Forms of Insanity. I don’t mind submissions fees–publications are expensive to run and print, and need to pay for staff and software, etc.–but I don’t break the bank. I look for cheap and free submissions opportunities, too. I keep track of everything in a janky notebook–see photo. (I tried keeping a tidy Excel file, but that’s just not me–I’m a pen-and-paper gal at heart.)

In 2022, I hope to hit the 100 rejection mark. If I double my rejections, I might just double my acceptances, too. Who’s in?

December 1, 2021 3

“Stay on the Path,” an Interview with N. West Moss, author of FLESH & BLOOD

N. West Moss is the author of the story collection, The Subway Stops at Bryant Park, and the memoir, Flesh and Blood: Reflections on Infertility, Family, and Creating a Bountiful Life. Her essays and short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, The Saturday Evening Post, The Stockholm Review, Salon, the New York Times, Brevity, River Teeth, and Ars Medica, amongst many others

Q: What projects are you working on now? What are you excited about?

A: I have several projects in various stages of completeness. I have a middle grade book that has been purchased, and I expect to get notes from my editor shortly. I also have ideas for two sequels to that book, and those ideas are written down in a file. I have a children’s book that I’m writing with my mother. I have a novel for adults that I’m also working on, as well as several essays, a short story, and a one-act play. That sounds like I’m writing a lot. I’m not really, but they are all there and ready for me as soon as I have time. Oh, another cool thing is that someone has purchased film rights for a few of my short stories, so I’ve gotten to spend time with him and hear the ways that he is envisioning making a very quiet story into a short film. It’s thrilling to collaborate in that way, to write, but really, I’m excited about all of my projects, every single bit of them. Creative endeavors–what joy.

Q: You write in seemingly all genres. Is it difficult or freeing to move between genres? What advice do you have for other authors who want to diversify that way?

A: I read in all genres, from the most high-falutin’ literary work (think Virginia Woolf) to armloads of YA, poetry, plays, etc. I love language and I don’t feel like being bound by form. So no it’s not difficult to move between genres. It’s a delight. My memoir [has launched], and [I’m doing] interviews about that book, but I’m already looking forward to spending time writing fiction again, where I can make things up, and amuse myself without being the center of the story. So I love it. That being said, I have a lot to learn. So I got the itch to write a play or two or three, and I know that there is a lot I don’t know, so I’m sitting in on a friend’s script writing class, and I’m hoping another friend (you know who you are!) will teach an online class that I can attend in January. I want to be good at it, and I want to test out the ways that these different forms both constrain and allow us certain freedoms, simultaneously.

Q: What have you NOT tackled yet that you want to?

A: I want to get better at long-form fiction. I love great novels and I feel right at the edge of my ability with that. I need time though, to get better at it. The novels that I want to write require great time and concentration, and I don’t have great swaths of time, sadly. I also want to write some plays. I’m all excited about Sara Ruhl’s work (I got to be on a panel with her recently and now I’m reading everything she’s written) but I’ve always been fascinated by Eugene O’Neal’s two plays, A Long Day’s Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh, and the ways that allowing characters to just speak for themselves reveals them so utterly. I want to be able to do that. I also love the idea of working with other people sounds great. I’d love to have a director and actors and lighting designers and costume people all add to their vision of my story. It just sounds like fun. Oh, also, I have never written poetry. I love reading poetry, but I just have never learned how to make it myself, even though I think that some of my language is poetic. I’m not a poet, I don’t get how to do it, and maybe someday someone will teach me how.

Q: What are you trying to write “around” in your life–what priorities also take up your time and energy, and how do you fit writing in, too?

A: All I want is time. All any writer wants is time. I wish I was rich and had a butler and a cook and someone to make me cocktails and do the dishes. But I don’t have any of that, and I have a full-time job, so I work around all of that. Whenever I think that it’s too hard, I think about Pearl Buck getting up very early in the morning and writing before her children awoke and before she went out to work in the rice fields, and I think, Quit being a baby and get to work. So I try to be disciplined. I have a lot of books that I want to write before my life is over, and my father, who did some writing, lost his ability to think clearly at the end of his life, so I feel like the clock is ticking. I try not to waste time, but I still do, and I’m not too hard on myself. I don’t want to ruin writing for myself by beating myself up. My career is moving along and maybe one day I’ll be able to afford to take a long residency somewhere and get substantial work completed. Until then, I do what I can.

Q: So much about writing is really about networking and marketing, which can exhaust writers and take time away from their craft. How do you connect with readers and other writers in ways that you find beneficial or rewarding?

A: There’s also all the time spent sending our work around and waiting for a response. I got into MacDowell a few years ago. What a lucky break that was, and I’ve since been to other residencies including the glorious Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA) and Cill Rialaig in Ireland. Meeting other artists at these places is enormously helpful. But really things are getting easier for me now. Getting the right agent has been enormously helpful. He looks out for me, and helps me strategize about my career, and he protects me from a lot of the sending out process and the negotiations, that I wouldn’t be very good at. Having my current book published by Algonquin has been a stunning change for me. They arrange events for my book. They send the galleys out to reviewers and influencers. They get me interviews. They even help place some of my writing. All of this is to say that if you keep plugging away and get lucky enough to have an amazing agent and a lovely publisher, you finally get to do a bit less of these other jobs, and more of the writing. I say that to you, though, in the midst of the vortex of my first big launch, and even with people helping with that other stuff, it’s still pretty extroverted and exhausting. The thing is, I’m willing to do anything if it means I get to be a writer, and my job, as I see it, is just to stay on the path and put one little foot in front of the other for as long as I can.

November 22, 2021 4

The pressure to produce

I’m writing this post even though my website isn’t ready. I’m creating a website even though I don’t really need one. I’m writing and revising and workshopping and submitting even though I don’t have a book to my name and maybe never will.

I’m doing all of this as I teach four classes per semester as an adjunct at a state university, hold a part time position as the managing editor for a small press, take one class at a time in a hairbrained bid to get a PR degree, and try to be present for my family.

But I’m not unique–I know so many writers, all of us too old to make those horrid “30 Under 30” lists. We’re not emerging writers and we’re not established writers. We’re all just swimming toward a shore that looked deceptively close when we were younger and seems to get farther away the longer we paddle.

But I am (we are) stubborn as well as struggling. The voice inside my head that tells me to keep going isn’t loud, but it’s persistent. Every time I submit to a journal or to a contest a tiny bubble of hope, no bigger than a bit of carbonation in a glass of ginger ale, floats up to the surface. I shrug and tell myself “Maybe.”

So, just like that saying “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have,” I’m creating this website for what I hope one day to have and have done. And I’m creating this blog as a community space where we, all those paddling writers and I, can whisper “Maybe” together and celebrate the big and small successes and remind each other to keep trying, even though we’re fighting through jobs and chores and family obligations to grab those few precious moments when we have the time and the energy to write. To tell each other it’s okay that sometimes we can’t find those moments.

So, coming soon to this blog, look for interviews with authors and editors, guest posts from other writers, news on my projects, and musings on how I might be tired but that doesn’t mean I’m done.

November 18, 2021 9

“Tides Advance, Tides Retreat,” Review of WATER LOG by Hugo Clemente

This review is published and owned by American Book Review. To read it in its entirety, please create an account with Project MUSE.

EXCERPT: Serene, seductive, buoyant, and seething in turn, Hugo Clemente’s Water Log is ever shifting and always beautiful, like the ocean that features as both character and landscape in this fragmented narrative. It has been called poetry, a novel, a love story, a travel log — and while it is these things, it’s also a celebration of the nomadic surfer’s lifestyle and a keen-eyed critique of those who inhabit and visit the Canary Islands.