Category: Publishing

Artist in Residence, anyone?

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

So I applied a few weeks ago to be an Artist in Residence at the Henderson Hunt Farm in New Milford, Conn. I heard from them yesterday.

See, last year I was wait-listed to be a writer at Breadloaf. I really wanted to go there. It’s the penultimate of writers’ colonies. I could be so prolific. Sipping tea on a porch, rewriting my brilliant prose, laughing with the famous published authors — Annie LaMott, Ted Conover, they would all love me if they knew me. (I am exceedingly likable!)

Sure, Breadloaf costs an arm and a leg. Like maybe four thousand dollars for a few weeks. I should be saving for my three kids to go to college. And not spend my money yucking it up with fellow writers. I could do that at any Starbucks in the city. I suppose I could’ve applied for a scholarship, but I’d missed the deadline. Any way, I didn’t get in. So, quit bringing Breadloaf up. On to Henderson Hunt Farm.

I found this little Artist in Residence program nearby, in a really pretty area, at the home of the late, great jazz artists Skitch Henderson. That sounded possible. After all, it wasn’t Breadloaf, hardly anyone knew about it. Just right for me. I stood a chance.

Sadly, the handwritten note informed me yesterday that due to the economy, the Board of Directors at the Hunt Hill Farm have discontinued the Artist in Residence program. There has to be some Artist in Residence program for me somewhere. Somewhere between Breadloaf and non-existent. I don’t know what it is. But I will research, get back to you, apply, and be one of those erudite authors sipping tea, gabbing about my genius, working ever so hard on all my works in progress. Soon. Maybe this summer. If not this summer, then next. For sure.

Writing My Way Home

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

I don’t remember my Great Grandmother (Nana) ever standing. I only remember her seated. She was in a Lazy Boy chair, dressed in pastel — ancient and small. She lived with my Great Aunt Sue.

At Easter when I visited — along with a thousand brothers and cousins (okay, maybe a couple dozen) — Nana would unfold her one published poem and read it out loud.

I don’t remember Nana’s poem. I only remember that it rhymed and that we, her unruly descendents, were quiet for a few minutes. We shared a single focus. I remember that the grown ups, too, were quiet. Nana was my mother’s grandmother.

On my father’s side, there was my father. He left his job as a newspaper man to work at Young and Rubicam as a PR man. He was never the same. He never regained the status he had as the City Editor for the Chicago Daily Herald.

As a kid, I learned that writers commanded respect. Writers were awesome. Writers were men or women, young or old. And they should be listened to.

 My life is in fragments. It is nothing earth-shattering nor outside of the normal fragmented human predicament. At any given moment, I am replying to an email about one of my daughter’s clarinet lessons, while writing a press release about poverty in Haiti, while texting a girlfriend about book club, while phoning the neurologist for my husband’s Parkinson’s Disease appointment.

I don’t read or write nearly enough. I rarely listen to other people’s writing.

I need to go home. Or someplace like a home — like to my Great Aunt Sue’s living room at Eastertime — where I could sit at the foot of a Lazy Boy and listen to a very old woman read a poem.

I want to pay attention to my own voice. To read my words out loud to myself and not be interrupted by the everyday noise of my full time work and family.

Power of Niceness

Published on by mbcoudal5 Comments

I am really struggling with one of my daughters (Let’s call her C). She’s 10. Every single thing that comes out of my mouth, C can/will/does contradict.

I am tired of this and have asked her to make today a radically, completely, goody-goody nice day. Extreme niceness would be such a refreshing change. And it works. Why does my husband, Chris, have a Broadway career despite his steady slowing Parkinson’s Disease? The man is just plain nice. Over the years he has cultivated so many friends. He has no ego. Of course, talent helps.

I am in the middle of the book, “The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Businesss World with Kindness” by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval. It’s chock full of examples about how one simple act of kindness – helping someone with their luggage in the subway, let’s say – can change your world. In business and in life.

I have always been an exceedingly nice person. And at times, I do feel the sting. I think people have equated niceness with dumbness. In Gretchen Rubin’s book, “The Happiness Project,” she talks about research that shows negative people are perceived of as smarter people. I can think of a few examples of this at work (but since it is Lent and I’ve given up gossip, you’ll have to fill in your own names.)

While the negativist may win in the short-run, to sustain a long-term Broadway career, you mustn’t be all crabby and egocentric. You must be nice.

I would love to share this blog post with my darling C, but I’m afraid she’ll contradict me and be embarrassed by me. Mothering is not for the faint of heart. Or for the woman who is so nice, she is a doormat for her 10-year old. Niceness also means being nice to oneself and standing up for rightness.

This post relates to my Number 2 Rule – Escape through Literature. I got a lot out of “The Power of Nice” and “The Happiness Project.”

Media Bias Against Religion

Published on by mbcoudal1 Comment

Terry Mattingly spoke yesterday to the Religion Communicators Council at the Latter Day Saint’s offices on Broadway at 65th. He’s a religion writer who can be found at:  http://www.getreligion.org/

Mainstream media may be biased against religion. But the reasons, Mattingly says, have to do with a lack of time, space, and resources in newspapers. Also newsrooms are ignorant and perhaps apathetic towards religion, but they are not particularly prejudiced.

To overcome media biases, Mattingly suggests religion journalists realize:

1. Words matter. Cover religious news accuarately.

2. Facts matter. Don’t condense church history and polity.

3. Praise the good; call out the bad, especially in blogs.

4. Do not hide. Use the internet for constructive sharing.

Mattingly advises church leaders not to ask reporters where they go to church. Better to question a reporter’s professionalism than their beliefs. Reporters can be effective at covering stories from faiths outside of their own traditions.

These RCC lunchtime meetings are good opportunities to provoke discussion and deeper thinking about the role of communicators in religion.

Prezi.com So much fun

Published on by mbcoudal3 Comments

Learning Prezi.com

You picture your presentation as a big white board. You zoom in, zoom out, link here, link there, post pictures and words, mind map, point to tangential ideas. Am playing around and using this to summarize my sabbatical. If anyone at work asks for it.

http://prezi.com/lf5xhnrhhz1y/communicate/

So much more creative than power point. Click, square, click, square. Although I have loved making power points, have wasted days changing the ways a page flips onto the next.

I just simply like creating. And I don’t care what it is I’m creating. But given that I have to make something, I like using new technology to make something new. I like getting feedback and feeling affirmed (“Wow! Mary Beth! That’s so cool!”) I like and need to think in a non-linear fashion.

Yet, in my writing, let’s face it, I do and have jumped around and sometimes, yes, occasionally at work, people (one editor in particular) want me to be all chronological and probably she prefers the  click, square, next. Click, square, next.

The big circles, the jumping off points, the tangential thinking, the creative asides – some people don’t get that. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I can play by the rules and I can (and prefer to) play without any rules. Both And!

Fondle My Kindle

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

With all the hype today about the iPad, the Apple tablet, I want to tell you about my love for my Kindle.

I’m on my second one because my first was stolen about a month ago at “Once Upon A Tart” in SoHo. Cute place, literary thief. Of course, I should never have left my purse hanging over the back of my chair.

Any way, about the Kindle, when you read on it, the words and meaning still penetrate, though perhaps not as deeply. But these days, who wants to go deep? Better that words, like ink, should float on the surface.

I wonder how writers will write differently knowing that a majority of their readers will be reading on an eBook.

I am always in the middle of writing a book. The heft, the immortality, the importance, the perfection, the editor who corrects my problems with sentence fragments and too many dashes — Brilliant!

I still want to write a book, but now I want to write an eBook.

I’m falling out of love with the printed word. It’s been a great ride, books, magazines, newspapers, but farewell. I’m moving on.

Except, of course, for longhand. Every morning I still write my three pages, longhand. And after a couple of months, when the journal’s filled, I throw the journal up to the top shelf of my closet and then I duck. Because sometimes the journal doesn’t land on the shelf — but hits me on the back of my head and conks me out and I die (just kidding about the dying part!) But in all seriousness, notebooks falling from a few feet high can really hurt! Words can hurt, just so you know!

I wonder how my writing will be different if I writing my Great American Novel for the Kindle instead of for the hardcover, Booker Prize. (I may have to be English to be eligible for the Booker Prize, but I do love the name of that prize. What better name for a book prize than the Booker Prize?)

Writing for the web has changed my style — shorter, sassier, punchier at the beginning — more fragmented and boring the more you scroll down. Because, really, most people don’t read any more, they skim. And they don’t mind sentence fragments either. Not at all.

Another important question — what about the trees? All those books = all that paper = all those dead trees. Yes, the Kindle requires a little zap of electricity now and then and that can’t be good for the environment either.

Random question — Do words from the Kindle go to another part of the brain than printed words? Have scientists done those pretty fluorescent MRI scans — like a Peter Max poster — to show which areas of the brain light up when reading a book versus the areas lit when reading from a screen?

Random point — I love the feeling of reading the Kindle on the subway when people look at me enviously. (I should’ve known my first would get stolen.)

Some smart-looking guy on the subway invariably asks, “Is that a Kindle? I want one!” I gush, “Yes, look at how you can change the font size. Listen to this ‘text to speech’ feature. One of my nine-year olds is reading The Mysterious Benedict Society, and I’m reading — well, I do hate to admit it, “Dumas Key” by Stephen King. And I’ve downloaded “White Tiger.” And you can have like 200 books on the Kindle. And you don’t go by page numbers, you go by percentage read.” But by the time I’ve finished my little sales pitch, that handsome guy on the subway and I have both missed our stop at 116th Street. We’re too busy fondling my Kindle.

Okay, honestly? Most of the time, no one notices my Kindle. I get lost in reading. That’s why I miss my stop and land in Harlem at 125th Street. Because, hey, no matter the conduit, the story’s still the thing.

For they record, my Kindle wasn’t stolen in Harlem, it was SoHo.

Query Letter

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

Apparently, you’re supposed to submit a query letter when trying to get some bit of writing published. This is hard for me. As I would much prefer just sitting at my computer waiting for an editor to approach me. But no. That apparently is not the way it is done.

Having just been to the Tim Burton exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art yesterday, http://mybeautifulnewyork.wordpress.com/2010/01/25/tim-burton-at-the-moma/ I can tell you that young man (well, he’s older than me), he actually sent many cover letters and query letters. You can see copies of one he sent to Disney and an editor replied that his work was much too similar to Dr. Seuss’s work. So there.

If Tim Burton (aka Genius) can write a dang query letter, why can’t I? Lazy? Or maybe there’s some little fear of failure? That if I write a letter, I could be rejected.

Now who likes rejection? Don’t all raise your hands at once. Okay, guess what? Tim Burton got and gets rejected a lot. He also does not finish many of his projects. Mary Beth, do your best, my friend. Write your dang query letter and then get on with your day. Who cares about your feelings? (Me! I do!)

You, Mary Beth, like all artists, actually have to do some work to get paid for your writing. No one is going to show up at your front door and ask for your pearls of wisdom. Not today, any way. Although I am waiting.

Yup, waiting. Still waiting. Nothing? Nada? Nope?

Write Away

Published on by mbcoudal2 Comments

I have OD’ed on blogging. I have seven blogs. Four are on wordpress, one is one TravelPod, one for work at UMCommunities and one on parenting at hubpages. This is not counting the Notes section of Facebook where I sometimes repeat one of my favorite blogs to 603 of my best friends.

How much Mary Beth (or Starr) Coudal does the internet really need?

It’d be one thing if the world clamored for more Mary Beth after I launched one simple blog. If web surfers everywhere emailed me, “Dear Blogger, great to hear about your trip to France. Write more. Start a new blog.”

The only time anyone has ever really immediately asked for more of my writing was after a poetry reading in the East Village. I had read a surreal poem. A young man handed me a slip of paper, which I think I still have. I unfolded it. “More Dada-ist poems please!” That was 15 years ago. But the next day, I was bored of my Dada-ist period, even though I had one real-life fan.

Having so many blogs keeps me from getting bored.

http://RunningAground.wordpress.com/ I am trying to run a 5K but I keep stopping to smell the flowers or take pictures of the George Washington Bridge.

http://GettingMyEssaysPublished.wordpress.com/ is kinda self-explanatory. It’s also a place to put my version of my essays before they get edited. My brother, who is the king of graphic design blogs, told me to call this one Screw My Editor, This One’s Better. But he didn’t actually say Screw and I don’t want to antagonize the potential good will of editors.

http://MyBeautifulNewYork.wordpress.com/ Here are my beautiful Manhattan peeps and places. It’s also a place to chronicle how I frequently get parking tickets.

http://MBCoudal.wordpress.com/ My spiritual journey and my 7 rules for living, especially with regard to my actor husband who has Parkinson’s Disease.

www.umcommunities.org As Mary Beth, the staff writer of a Methodist missionary agency, I share stories that relate to international and national stories.

www.hubpages.com Under the name Starr Coudal, I write mostly about parenting my three brilliant, spoiled rotten kids.

Which blog have I forgotten? Oh, never mind, I’m bored already. Let me change topics.

When I post a blog, say, about any thing – about taking French Class at the Alliance Francaise – the world barely blinks. When I blog a new post, and even spruce it up with a picture, a video, a link to a podcast, I get nada. Nothin’. When my post, like a rock, hits the water of the web? Barely a ripple.

But ya know what? I don’t care. I personally am fascinated by what I have to say. “Mary Beth, I wonder, how is the grammar going in your French Class?” I’m listening to myself. I write away.

I also find myself infinitely amusing. Who cares that Mary Beth delights in beating her kids at the card game, Apples to Apples? Or that she can’t get enough bacon on a Sunday morning? Me! Me! Me! I cannot get enough Mary Beth.

I am thinking of rolling all seven blogs into one unwieldy blog. In which case, I could post on it everyday, instead of like once a week per blog. But then where would people find my Dada-ist poems? Oh, that’s right, I don’t write that way any more. I don’t write for the coffee house open mic. That was before the internet, long ago, when I actually wrote poems instead of blogging about poems that I used to write.

The Happiness Project. I'm jealous

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

I know you’re supposed to feel happy when you read the Happiness Project a book by Gretchan Rubin. And in general, I do. But dangit, I also feel jealous. I’ve been working on my 7 Rules for, like, a couple of years. Also, I have been following the Happiness Manifesto for like seven years. So why am I jealous and not happy.

When I saw that movie, Julie and Julia, I felt jealous then too, because at the end of the movie Nora Ephron was calling Julie about making her blog into a movie. This particular blog I’m writing right now may not make a good movie.

Maybe I have too many blogs. About travel, about running, about my spiritual journey, and this one, about writing.

I will let it go. I will be happy. I want to blog more right now but I’m trying to pull the kids away from the computer, XBox, and TV to play some cards. Maybe that will make me happy.

For a writer, happiness seems so tied to getting published? Or at least getting paid.

Ick! Lice! A funny essay

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

Trying to find the positives when my little family gets lice. Turned this in for my memoir writing class next Tuesday. It’s through Media Bistro. I’m trying not to give all my writing away through my blogs but send them out to magazines too. I just love the immediate gratification of blogging!