It's National Poetry Month! What Are You Writing?

It's National Poetry Month!  Many of us will be seeing a lot of poems, either famous or written in the previous ten minutes, posted on blogs and Facebook for the month.  A lot of people will write a poem a day.  I haven't written poetry since my first year of graduate school, and I haven't felt the urge to do so since.  But I do have the incredible urge to write nonfiction.  Being on sabbatical means I am supposed to be writing, so I have a plan for the month that may not celebrate poetry but will get me writing.

I have a lot of writing books, some focused on poetry, some on nonfiction, but many just on writing/journaling in general.  They are filled with exercises of all types.  So, each day of April, I will pull a book off the shelf, flip to a random page, and write in response to that exercise.  This is in addition to the actual nonfiction writing I have already planned to do this month, which is revising some essays and getting them ready to go out to journals.  And I will be doing these exercises with the larger context of the essays I'm writing (all about my undergraduate years) in mind, allowing them to push me in new directions and explore something I had not already explored.

Today, I had to write an ode to something ordinary.  I set my timer for twenty minutes and ended up writing well over a page.  No, I don't plan on posting what I'm writing.  I have learned that my first drafts are pretty much all telling, and I have to transform that into showing--into a narrative--during revision.  And a big point of doing this is to write without fear, without the editor in my mind getting any attention.  That means, for now, writing alone.  But I should end up with over thirty pages of random material by the end of the month.  Hopefully.

And don't be surprised if I ask people for random numbers on Twitter or Facebook.  I may ask for numbers between one and two hundred, turn to that page in a book, and do that exercise.

What are YOU writing this month?

Christopher Hitchens and Joshua Bell

(I'm taking an online writing class on medical narrative through Creative Nonfiction.  I was just getting ready to post this on our discussion board, but I could tell it was going to be a long one by discussion board standards, so I'm making it a blog post.)

After reading the essays for this week, I cannot help but compare Christopher Hitchens and Joshua Bell.  First, I have to be honest: I have never really been a fan of Hitchens.  I would not say I actively dislike his work, but I have rarely finished one of his pieces.  I start reading, and something annoys me, so I move on.  I think, after reading "Trial of the Will," my problem is that a masculine bravado seems to permeate his work. "Arrogance" has never felt like the right word. But when Hitchens mentions Nietzsche's bravado, that word clicked with me.  Hitchens and I have just lived very different lives, which is relevant because the life of the reader is as much a part of an essay as the life of the writer.  Hitchens is smart and well-read.  There is nothing wrong with his writing.  He just has a view of the world that clashes greatly with mine. The value of reading sometimes rests in the text's ability to make us see things anew. Other times, it's just annoying.

Hitchens writes about philosopher Sidney Hook and how he wanted to die after suffering a stroke from an angiogram given after congestive heart failure.  He is in great pain, his family is in pain, but doctors deny his plea to stop all life-supporting procedures.  Hitchens is suffering from esophageal cancer (and its treatment) when he writes his essay.  Hitchens writes, "I haven’t sailed as close to the bitter end as he [Hook] had to do. Nor have I yet had to think of having such an arduous conversation with a physician."  That just stuns me.  He has never thought about having a conversation with doctors about what life-saving measures he does or does not want performed on him?  That is either because of ignorance or bravado (okay, as I write, I'm starting to wonder if "arrogance" should be the word I use), and Hitchens is not ignorant.  But how could he have never "had to think" about taling with his doctors about end-of-life decision making, especially after his own father died of esophageal cancer in 1987.  Is it just because I watched so many die of AIDS when I was younger and that I ended up marrying someone who because his family's patriarch at 37 that I have thought about my death and that he and I have talked about what we do and do not want?  Is it just because I have been lucky enough to work with medical students at UConn and had discussions with them about end-of-life issues?  That right there is one big example of how we just look at the world so differently and why I am perhaps not drawn to his writing and its grounding in literature and philosophy, whereas my essays are grounded in experience first.

Ian McEwan's "Christopher Hitchens, Consummate Writer, Brilliant Friend" is very well-written.  I can appreciate how he sets the scene of Hitchens in the hospital, especially a hospital I have been in myself.  I am really interested in how the narrator of the essay is not the main character in the essay; as someone who writes memoir, that's not what I usually do.  But my appreciation for it is mainly intellectual.  Hitchens was not someone putting on an act, and I respect that.

Now, Joshua Bell who is a primary subject in "Pearls Before Breakfast" fascinates me, and it is because he does not seem to have the bravado I see in Hitchens.  A world-class violinist plays on a subway platform during rush hour to see what happens.  Now that's performance art!  I actually enjoyed this essay so much I do not want to say a lot and ruin it for those who have not read it.  But I really enjoyed his portrayal in this essay and his awareness of how his greatness may not always translate.  I just really grew to like this guy as I read about his responses to the video of the performance.

If the goal of this week is to think about structuring a narrative, and if E. M. Forster says that a story is successful if the reader keeps reading to find out what happens next, then "Pearls Before Breakfast" is the greatest success of these three for me.  I convert the readings to PDFs so I can read them off-line, highlight, and annotate.  That essay was twenty-five pages long, but I kept feeling the pull to read more.  The other two came out to around six pages each, and I'm not sure I would have finished either one.

That's not to say I was thrilled with Weingarten's writing.  His audience clearly does not include me.  He had a few snide things to say about some of the people waiting in line at a busy kiosk buying lottery tickets.  He writes, "the people waiting in the lottery line looking for a long shot would get a lucky break -- a free, close-up ticket to a concert by one of the world's most famous musicians -- but only if they were of a mind to take note."  Reading the rest of the essay and its ruminations on Kant and beauty, I can't help but wonder if "of a mind" means "smart enough" or "culturally-aware enough."  Well, I never heard of Bell before this and would have never guessed that he was the street musician on the subway platform.  If Weingarten looks down on us who are not in the class that recognizes and celebrates Bell, so be it.  Along with that, I have to note the extensive parenthetical comment Hitchens makes in his essay, which is longer than many of his paragraphs.  He describes being interviewed on the radio in "deepest Dixie."  As I read that section over and over, I do not know why it is in the essay except as a dig about those of us from deepest Dixie (though many of us born and raised there do not refer to our homes as being in Dixie, what with those pesky racist connotations to which Hitchens seems to be directing his wry smile).  The phrase "passive-aggressive parenthetical" comes to mind; maybe "arrogance" is the word to use.

Songs from 1988-93

I'm working on a series of essays that focus on my life from 1988-93, which are my undergraduate years (though the essays are not really about college).  I've been thinking for a while of creating a playlist of songs from the time because music was always in the background, whether from my car radio, my CD player when I was riding the bus, or the background in bars and clubs.  Thanks to Wikipedia, I am able to find out when the songs were released and put them in order.  But that's not just my Virgo mentality at work.  I can look at the list and see a kind of progression, my transition from boyhood to manhood.  I just set my timer for twenty minutes today and got the list started.  It'll be fun to listen to on the treadmill, though I better have a notebook handy for the memories that arise.

If anyone can think of any songs from that time period, feel free to let me know in the comments.  My only rules for including them on the playlist are 1) only one song from an artist or I'll end up putting all of Depeche Mode's Violator and R.E.M.'s Out of Time on the list and 2) they have to be something that played a role, however minor, in my own life.  Perhaps your memories might trigger some of my own.  You can click on the image to enlarge it.

How Would You Cite Quotations from TV Shows and Movies?

Anyone who has been following me anywhere online knows that I have been researching rape jokes for a few years.  I'm finally drafting the article, and I'm stumbling on something.  At the start of my article, I list ten sample rape jokes I have collected from television and film over the last twenty years.  What do you see as the most legitimate way of citing quotations from TV shows and movies?  I'm trying to decide between two ways.

First is citing the actual episode of the TV show or the movie.  The journal to which I plan to submit this article wants Chicago-style endnotes, and citing the individual episodes is tricky.  The citation starts with the group, performer, or composer.  Is that the person who wrote the episode/film?  Is it the director?  Is it the person who spoke the quotation in question?  The one advantage of citing quotations this way is that I am citing the original source, but it's not often a source that people can find easily (such as obscure movies and cancelled TV shows not on DVD).  That's another thing, if it's on DVD, do I cite it that way even if I made a note of it fifteen years ago during a broadcast?

Second is citing IMDB quotation pages.  I have been keeping notes for years, but I confirmed my notes by referring to IMDB, and I could cite the quotations from there.  But that is not necessarily the original source.  On one hand, this does show people the actual quotation they can read for themselves.  But it also feels a bit like citing Wikipedia.  IMDB is credible to me, but would academic readers read it this way?

I should note that I am planning to send it to a rhetoric journal and not a media studies journal, at least not for the first go around.  So, rhetoricians, would citing the IMDB page bug you?  What about you media scholars?  Preferences?

(And if any students are reading this, you can see that professors struggle with citation just like you do.)

Including Your Own Work in an Edited Collection?

It's been a year since I earned tenure, and I'm starting to think about the next big steps I want to take.  One thing I want to do is edit a collection of essays about the work of David Wojnarowicz, the artist I've been studying for a few years.  I realized that I don't really want to write a book about him because I don't really care what I think, but I'd love to know what other people think.  That's when the idea of a collection hit me.  I've co-edited a couple, so I certainly know how to do it.

Here's the question.  What do people think of editors who include their own work as a chapter?  Every once in awhile, I hear some criticize an editor for doing that.  I've often thought of it as a good thing.  It's the editor putting herself or himself out there just like the other chapter authors.  Also, I assume the editor has some passion for the subject, so it's cool to see what she or he has to say beyond the general introduction.  But maybe I'm in the minority?

Because here's the question.  As I create a call for submissions and take the time to let people write abstracts and essays, I've wondered if I should work on my own essay and send it to a journal or save it for the collection.  Anyone have thoughts?

This is going to start something of a series here.  I'm questioning where to best place my energy, so I'm exploring ideas and options.

Keep Trying

This afternoon, Creative Nonfiction Online selected my tweet as today's winner in their daily contest for the best memoir in 130 characters. Now, I admit that this is not the same as a Pulitzer or even having an essay published in their journal, but I was quite excited, mainly because I decided that one of my goals post-tenure is to do more with that kind of writing. When Creative Nonfiction announced this contest a few months ago, I started writing tweets, but I was getting frustrated easily.

Frustration is a common feeling for creative types. It's one reason why people stop being creative. At the time I was writing these tweets, I was also working on an essay that I sent to a few journals, some of whom rejected it faster than I thought possible. Frustration began bubbling and bubbling.

I told myself that this was part of the process, though. I've heard all of the stories about how Catch-22 is called that because it was rejected by twenty-two publishers before it appeared in print. I've heard repeatedly how it takes time. And all of that makes sense. I told myself when I started getting various forms of writing out there to be judged that it's about the process. You complete a project, whether a tweet or an essay, and you get it out there and move on to the next. I told myself this repeatedly.

But it is easier said than done. With CNF tweets, I would see the daily winners appear, and I would start with the whining. "But I had such a good one today!" Or, "Wait, I've read that several times, and I don't even understand it!" There were even times I would really work on them but not in a good way. It wasn't about crafting a fine sentence. It was about obsessing over it.

That essay I sent out last summer? I've been working on it in various forms for over ten years. I've edited it more times than I can remember. And I mean editing, not writing. I would work over words, tweaking verbs, combining sentences, breaking others into smaller units. I know that's quite normal for a lot of writers, another reason why people don't get work done and don't progress in their writing. But, dang, it was just frustrating me to feel stagnant.

With the tweets, I did almost give up a few weeks ago. I actually spent some time thinking whether or not I wanted to continue or move onto other things. But I like the daily aspect of it. I like that I do move on and produce something new regularly. So I tried again.

And "winning" or getting picked is not the only arbiter of success. Other people have said they like reading the tweets, and isn't that the point? I've "met" some great writers online. There were certainly many days I would think, "Damn, no wonder mine didn't get picked. That one's good." Last week, @Ralphley put me in his Follow Friday group, and that really made me feel good because I like his stuff, too. I know people are responding well, and that is a good thing. That's a reason to keep writing.

And this entry may sound like I'm making too big of a deal out of being a daily pick. But this entry is not really about that. It's more a reminder that I really do need to keep going with the same old writing process I promote daily in my classes. It's a reminder that there are people who like to see my work even if most of those people at the moment are not editors. They are still people I respect.

The tweet today was not one of my best. It was, "She always knew when to speak up and when to quiet down. I'd shake my head, wondering how dogs can communicate better than people." I like that it's about Auggie, but I have others I like more. I keep a list of them, and I really like the first one I ever wrote, "Neither the grave nor the obituary hit me hardest; it was the deck of worn, dog-eared playing cards she'd never touch again."

What's really funny about today's tweet is that it was inspired by a writing exercise I read about this morning where you respond to the idea that animals have a sixth sense. I had that in my head when I left home today. When I reached the office and saw a couple of cnftweets on Twitter, the thought hit me. So I posted it.

I need to get some other things out, too. Which means I need to finish some things. I need to find the balancing between revising and obsessing. And I need to keep reading. Basically, I need to keep trying.

No news there.

Getting to Class

I'm really going to miss not taking a class at NYU next semester. I've done it for two semesters now, and I love it. The class itself this semester is really great. I wish I had time to read everything because I know I'd be getting more out of it than I already am. As of now, I already get ideas flowing for the projects I intended, but I often get more ideas for other projects, too. And the train ride is fantastic for reading and thinking, which I never, ever give myself the time to do.

Next semester, no classes really work out for the times I'd be willing to take them. In the falls, I teach on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which are also the days the university sets aside time for meetings (no classes are offer during lunch just so there's guaranteed time to meet). In the springs, I teach in Mondays and Wednesdays (and sometimes Fridays), but I then have meetings on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I thought of just saying I'd skip all meetings on Thursdays, but there really wasn't anything I wanted to take then.

And I realized on the train yesterday that I really need to give myself time to work on the projects that I'm getting all these ideas for. Things just really flow, and I generate lots of random sentences and paragraphs and fragments. I need to start working with them. I'll still be a university associate, which means I can get into the library (virtual and literal). I will still take trips to give myself the reading and thinking time.

I know how much I'll benefit from doing so.

Hint Fiction

hint fiction (n) : a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story

_________________________________

Anthology Guidelines

Tentatively scheduled for the fall of 2010, W.W. Norton will publish an anthology of Hint Fiction. What is Hint Fiction? It’s a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story. The thesis of the anthology is to prove that a story 25 words or less can have as much impact as a story 2,500 words or longer. The anthology will include between 100 and 150 stories. We want your best work.

It’s possible to write a complete story in 25 words or less — a beginning, middle, end — but that’s not Hint Fiction.

The very best Hint Fiction stories can be read many different ways.

We want stories we can read again and again and never tire of. Stories that don’t pull any punches. Stories that make us think, that evoke some kind of emotional response.

Take a look at the winners and honorable mentions of the Hint Fiction Contest for examples.

Payment is $25 per story for World and Audio rights.

Reprints? Sure, but unless you’re one hundred percent confident in the reprint, why not try to write an original piece?

For formatting purposes, you must include a title (which actually works in your benefit, as the title helps give a better “hint” of the overall story).

Writers can only submit up to two stories, both embedded in the same e-mail. Don’t worry about a cover letter. We don’t care where you’ve been published or what graduate program you’ve attended — all author identification will be stripped by a third party so we will only see the stories and nothing but the stories.

To make everyone’s lives easier, embed the stories like this:

TITLE

Story.

TITLE

Story.

Your name.

Submissions will open August 1 and close at midnight Eastern time August 31. A submissions e-mail address will appear on this page on August 1 — DO NOT SUBMIT TO ANY OTHER ADDRESS BEFORE THEN.

Please note that due to the expected volume of submissions, we will be forced to respond with form letters.

Thank you, and good luck.

***For a limited time, if you link to these guidelines on your blog or Twitter, you can submit a third story. These must be posted between July 1 and August 15. Include the link at the end of your e-mail. If you don’t include a link, the third story will be deleted unread.***

Summer To-Do List

First of all, Happy Birthday to Da Man! We keep birthdays pretty simple around here. We don't do presents but just focus on a sincere card and a dinner out. About the card, it has gotten much easier to find cards. Someone should do a study (if it hasn't already been done) about the changing language or greeting cards. There were hardly any that said "For My Husband From Your Wife" like I saw a decade ago. The one I bought said, "For My Guy," and there were several saying things like, "For the Man in My Life" or just not saying anything gender-specific at all. And the passages often don't mention the gender of the giver, either. It's nice having a lot of relevant options. As for dinner, we have reservations at Braza, a Brazilian churrascaria in Hartford. It'll be a meat fest!

But knowing that it's his birthday reminds me that the summer is at its halfway point. Yikes! I've done a lot already, and I'm going to do my best not to pressure myself to accomplish anything other than what has to get done because of already established deadlines (probably one of the best post-tenure privileges). That said, I don't want to get to the end of the summer and feel like I've wasted time. So, today I made the to-do list I've been thinking of making since May. Daily, I now commit to:

30 min. of academic writing,
30 min. of creative writing,
30 min. of sabbatical prep,
30 min. of academic reading,
30 min. of personal reading, and
30 min. of organizing.

Yes, cry me a river. I'm committing myself to three hours or work a day (though that doesn't include administrative tasks and such). But on days I've done some serious reading, I've often forgotten the writing. And there are some things piling up around me, literally, that I need to address. In a few weeks, I'll add class prep to the list, too.

And, yes, I'll often be setting a timer for much of this. I like the timer thing; it helps me focus. And, I'll certainly be allowed to work longer when I get on a role. I just can't forget the other things on the list. Oh, and I'm allowing myself two days a week not to do any of these things, either full days where I do nothing or days when I do half the list on one day and the other half on another.

I just have to find some balance between pressuring myself to work and not getting anything done at all.

Remember That Journal I Asked About?

A few weeks ago, I posted a question about what to do when it has been almost a year since you'd heard about a journal submission, and the editor keeps giving you the runaround. After hearing people's thoughts, I'd decided that I was going to wait until it had been a full year since the first email from the editor saying they had received my essay and then email them, asking for a response and saying I really appreciate the opportunity for feedback but saying that I would send it elsewhere after two weeks. That was the plan, at least.

Sunday night, when I went to check email before bed, there was a message from one of the members of the editorial collective. They liked the essay and thought it was a great fit for the journal and wanted one change "before a final review prior to publication." And the change was pretty simple. I'm writing about specific moments related to my teaching of issues related to gender and sexual identity, and I presented the discussion through the framework of my body, what it means when my body is in the classroom teaching different things. They said that it seemed I was talking more about identity than the body, so they wanted a shift in how I framed the essay. And that makes perfect sense to me. So, I spent this afternoon making those changes and emailed it back to them tonight.

I admit that I'm not getting my hopes up too fast, though. First, the email thanked me for resubmitting my essay. But this was the initial submission. I'd never received a revise-and-resubmit request. And I wrote back Monday saying I could get the revision to them soon, asking how they wanted to receive it. I hadn't heard anything, though we're just approaching the third day after I sent it. If they really think it's that close to publication, then fantastic. I thought it needed more work, but that's why I needed responses. Considering how the timing has gone so far, it may still be a long time before this moves forward, but I made the requested change and got it out of my inbox fast.

Last Week's Recap

Last week, I did not do any blogging about the RSA seminar other than my entry on Wojnarowicz for the seminar itself. Frankly, when I was NYU, I had no television or internet or anything else in my dorm room to distract me, so I blogged more. At Penn State, I had a typical hotel room with cable and a hot tub close by. When the seminar was over each day, I was back in the room needing to veg out a bit and welcoming distractions. But that silence was not a commentary on the seminar, which was great.

I went hoping to get a better handle on how I could frame my work as a part of visual rhetoric. One of my exam areas for the PhD was in visual rhetoric, but that was just as the field was starting to come together, and a lot has happened since then. It always seemed like it would be a good way to frame my work, but I wanted to get a better sense of the major texts and frameworks so that I could apply them to my work. And I got that kind of information right away.

I might be wrong, but I think I was the oldest person there in terms of career. There were a few assistant professors, most of whom seemed to be in the early years of their jobs. But most of the participants were graduate students. It felt a bit odd to be the old guy in the room. And I'm sure there were moments when I was the annoying old guy in the room. I admit there were times I could not shut up, but that was because I was really getting into it and had tons of ideas in my head.

And it wasn't just about the workshop. I had lunch one day with Michael and another day with Deb. Michael and I have met a few times before and caught up on things. And Deb gave me some great ideas for some of the various projects I have in mind. And I hung out with a couple of local, non-academic friends, too.

Now, after that NYU workshop and the RSA seminar, after auditing a class at NYU last semester, the next thing is to finish the draft of that damn Wojnarowicz article, which is now what I am officially calling it. I've done a lot of thinking, and the options are all there. It's time to do it, and it's the primary goal for July.

A Little Talk about Wojnarowicz

(For my regular readers: At the RSA Seminar this week, we have been asked to compose a blog post like one you would see on No Caption Needed. I'm altering that for selfish reasons. I want to get that damn Wojnarowicz article I've been talking about for years to a journal by the end of 2009, so I'm taking every opportunity I can to write for that article. So I'm doing a close reading of one of the images I plan to discuss there. That's what this is. Feel free to comment, since this is part of a project I intend to pursue in depth, as anyone who has known me for a while knows. I have none of my research with me, so this is a basic close reading, but any and all feedback is welcome. Because the journal may not be able to reproduce images, I am writing as though the image is not included in this entry.)

This is one representative example of the images contained within the Sex Series. Like every other image in the series, Wojnarowicz prints it so that the image looks not like a standard photograph but more like it is a negative, still in black-and-white but with the light patterns reversed. The dominant image is a photograph of the two main bridges connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge. The top right of the photograph shows the southeastern edge of lower Manhattan, while the bottom shows the northern sections of Brooklyn. The photograph depicts a somewhat typical skyline shot clearly taken from a plane. The viewer is place well above this scene, barely able to distinguish any building but the tallest skyscrapers, let alone individual cars on the bridges. It is a vast and familiar public space, one where millions of people shift in and out of it each day.

At the top of the image's left corner, Wojnarowicz has place a circular inset depicting sexual activity between two people. One person on all fours straddles the face of another person lying on her or his back. This inset represents the private domain. Acts like this one could be occurring throughout the public space in the image's background (though, hopefully, not in any cars on the bridge). In many ways, it is a completely average sex act between completely average people. But even though the act is average and ordinary, it is often shrouded in secrecy and shame. Wojnarowicz, knowing that American society does not engage in larger, public discussions about diverse facets of sexuality, wants the placement of these two images together to remind us that sex is everywhere, that it is as ordinary as the bridges that connect Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Gender is impossible to determine in the inset because of both the technique of printing is as a negative that I mention above but also because it is cropped in a way that removes the head and upper torso of the top person and the lower body of the bottom person. The sex act dominates. In depositions related to the court case, it is clear that Wildmon assumes these people are two gay men engaging in fellatio, but Wojnarowicz makes it clear that these are women participating in cunnilingus. I clarify gender in this case because it reflects what I see as one of Wojnarowicz's goals for the entire Sex Series. As a gay man, Wojnarowicz knows that viewers will assume he is promoting the need to acknowledge gay male sexuality in a world where thousands have died from or continue to live with HIV. But Wojnarowicz wants to promote the acknowledgment of sexuality in general. Many images in the Sex Series depict gay male sexuality, but others contain heterosexual sex, and this one highlights lesbian sex. Using the image of the negative erases gender (except in those insets that show a penis protruding from a male body) and highlights the normalcy of sexuality across genders.

The use of a circle may initially appear to be an ordinary way of inserting this private scene into this public space, but there is much more going on here. The use of the circle highlights visualizing technologies. Both the microscope and the telescope, devices that look outward and inward, use circular lenses. And connecting the insets to those technologies supports my claim above about the need to acknowledge the things that define our existence even if they usually remain invisible to the naked eye. The blood cells that carry oxygen to our hearts (and, in some cases HIV) and the stars that provide us light at night are a part of human existence. At the same time, reflecting on these technologies--and the ordinary and extraordinary things they can reveal--brings to mind other technologies, specifically the technologies of surveillance. I have said above that these insets highlights the normalcy of sexuality, but they also make visible the acts of surveillance that push people to keep sexuality secret. To be clear, neither I nor Wojnarowicz is arguing that we should be having sex in public. But this surveillance demands that we not even talk about sex in public, which is a dangerous silence in a world where sex can lead to death. I raise all of these points, however, to show that this image does not encourage a singular, simplistic reading. It is complex, just as sexuality itself is complex especially when you consider all its forms.

Ultimately, the images in the Sex Series promote the belief that sex, while usually a private act, is an ordinary part of life for most people. At the same time, sex can be a complex act that embodies a range of pleasures and fears, purposes and motivations. Placed within the context of Wojnarowicz's work in general, I see this series as arguing for the need to acknowledge this complexity and engage with it in public discourse. Otherwise, people of all sexualities and genders will continue not just to die from HIV but to feel the range of negative effects that result from seeing sex through a shroud of shame, secrecy, and fear.

Links for My Presentation

Tomorrow is Friday, and it's the last day of the seminar. We're each going to give a quick five-minute presentation on "our projects," broadly defined. I have a few directions I can take, mostly pedagogical, but I think I'm going to talk about my work on Wojnarowicz. It's the project I really want to complete this summer, and some of the things we discussed this week got me thinking about it in productive ways. For regular readers of this blog, this is one of those posts that is mainly a place for me to list some links I want to use in my talk. If you click through, be aware that these images may be NSFW, which means everyone will be clicking through now. But I want to show some images from the Sex Series, like this one and this one and this one.

A Question for My Academic Peeps

At what point do you tell a journal editor to pull your article from consideration? I sent an article to an editor last June. In July, I get an email saying to give them six months. In January, after six months, I email, and she says I will "hear soon." In May, I email and hear they are really sorry but they will let me know the status when they are in the office on Monday (this was a Saturday that I emailed). In a few weeks, it will be a year.

To be honest, it's an article I wrote very quickly because I wanted to have something else in my tenure packet under submission somewhere. Sure, I worked on it, and it's got some things I like, but I'm not so fully invested in it, certainly not in its current state. But I'd love the feedback. I learn a lot from that feedback.

So I could just wait, but I'm beginning to wonder if that passivity on my part will encourage their passivity, and I'll never hear a thing. Do I pull it? Perhaps by replying to the email that says six months so I can show that I've waited a year? Am I the one being unreasonable? Do I wait?

On the Other Hand...

In my last post, I wrote about trying to figure out when to apply for a sabbatical. Originally, I said that I was going to wait until Da Man and I moved to a bigger place even though we aren't sure when that will happen. Since this might be the last move we ever make, we have a very specific list of demands, and we aren't moving until they are all met. But then I started thinking, and that always creates trouble.

Seriously, I was thinking much along the lines of what Susan commented to that post. Why not grab the opportunity when I can? Yes, there's a financial considerations because the year-long one comes with a paycut down to 60%. But I then thought, quite obviously, of spending the next year living on 80% of my salary, banking 20% so that, if the sabbatical works out, I've got enough to raise it to 80%, which I would already have been living on. And I've got to become more conscious of my spending.

We are true GA-DINKs (gay, double-income, no kids). We've spent the last few years getting our bills to a place where we can pay them without a lot of stress or thought. It's true that things can change in this economy, but things have been looking good for us, and I'm really grateful for that. I should be able to bank 20% each month if I watch what I spend at Amazon and out to eat and all that. Yes, the bills get paid. Yes, I don't go wild with the credit card. But I'm not that conscious of a spender after that.

I feel like I need to make the conscious choice about when I'm applying so that I can make other choices about next year, too. For example, I now think I will not be going to any conferences next year. There were a couple I was thinking about, but there are none that are pivotal to my professional development right now. And even with my professional development money, conferences cost a fair amount out-of-pocket. I'll be thinking about other things like that, too.

I know someone else who has a sabbatical who has comfortably taken the attitude that it will all work out and that hir family and kids will all be fine. But I did want to talk to Da Man about it and make sure he's on board, and it would really stress me out if I didn't have some kind of general plan to follow. I'm not a seat-of-my-pants kinds of guy, in case you haven't noticed. And if the sabbatical doesn't work out, then I've got more in savings for when we apply for the next mortgage and/or for the move itself.

This may all sound like a lot of silly mental hoopla. It's a sabbatical, so go for it! But the anal-retentive Virgo needs some structure. And then I can get excited. My project will build on the work I've been doing on Wojnarowicz, and it's fun to develop those ideas and make those plans.

So let's go for it.

The Creative Urge

Every Wednesday, I've been taking the train to NYC to audit a class at NYU, taking the train back that night. Some people think it's nuts since I spend as much time traveling as I do in the city, but I love it. My last Wednesday is this week, and I'm going to miss it. I've gotten into a rhythm of doing lots of little things throughout the day. I read an article about Wojnarowicz. I flip through a book or magazine. I listen to some music. I watch parts of a TV show or movie. I jot down some notes for an academic piece. I grade. I get down some images for a creative piece. And, at the end of the day, I feel like I did a lot. More than that, I feel like I did a lot of things I would not have done if I hadn't spent the day away from home, campus, and the internet.

Yesterday, I read the last two issues of The Sun. When I was in Puerto Rico, some of the other participants turned me on to the journal. I'd heard of it before, and some of my favorite pieces from Best American Essays have been from it. I subscribed to it as soon as I got home, and I had a couple of issues at hand on the train. Wow, do I love it, especially the Readers Write section. This is where readers have submited short pieces--vignettes really--on a specific topic. The two issues I had were on "The Dining Room Table" and "Faith." Wow, the pieces just blew me away. All of these images just kept coliding in my head. The ride back, when I was reading these sections, went by so fast. When I was in Puerto Rico, I wrote one and sent it in. I don't know how great it is, but I was happy about it. And reading these, I got an idea and jotted down some notes for the next one, which had had me stumped.

And this all got me thinking about the sabbatical that I'm eligible to apply for next year. I've been telling people that I'm not going to apply until Da Man and I move into a bigger place because those on a year-long sabbatical get a reduced salaray (while those on a semester-long one get full pay). I want to do the year because I want to get all out of it that I can. And the trips to NYU plus the other reading/writing I've been doing has gotten me thinking about how much I can get from a sabbatical. And how maybe I should grab it now.

Of course, part of this is an urge to disappear that often arises at this time of the year, as everyone rushes to complete the semester and the year while still preparing for next year. It's the time when everyone on campus seems upset and when I feel like I can do nothing right.

No need to make any decisions now, though.

Guess I Better Stop Complaining

The last couple of days have been kind of rough. Two people asked me at separate times if I was okay because I just didn't look the same. It really wasn't anything except a pile of emails and such from people needing things now and acting like their request had to be my first priority. It was nuts. Tuesday night, no problems. Wednesday and Thursday, just demand after demand after demand. And it was visibly wearing on me.

Then today arrives. And I gotta stop complaining.

First, I received word that the article that I have been writing since 2006 on representations of African-American girls with AIDS has been officially accepted by a nice women's studies journal. It will appear in print in 2010. Damn, it's been a long time coming, and it'll be a long time until it's out, but the hard work is certainly done.

Second, I found out that I've been accepted into one of the NYU week-long seminars this June. I thought for sure that they were going to say that I'd done enough and that other people needed a chance, but I really worked on my application because this seminar on art and public policy will really help with a class I'm teaching this fall. Frankly, it was my best application, so I'm thrilled.

Third, Yoko Ono is following me on Twitter! Okay, she's following over 19,000 people, but that's a really cool email to get. Sample tweet? "In the middle of the night I wake up in the dark." God, I love her.

So the whining needs to stop, at least for a bit.

What Now?

There are two comments/questions that I've been hearing a bit regularly as the dust settles from the tenure process. First, many tenured faculty have told me to do as little this summer as possible. I've been advised to garden and go hiking and spend time with Da Man and read things that have nothing to do with work and all that. I will say that I have decided to make no plans for July. I have a few things in June, but I'm going to keep July off-limits. I almost sent a proposal to a conference, but I decided not to do anything, that the last thing I really wanted to do was create another conference presentation even if it sounded like fun.

But the second thing has come mostly from the recently tenured. They often ask what I plan to do next in regards to scholarship. Someone made a joke that I could just sit for the rest of my life and never write another word again. While that might technically be true, I do feel like I have an ethical responsibility to keep up with scholarship and professional development. Now, I also think that workshops and other things I done through NYU count as professional development and certainly suffice. But while I'm happy I no longer have the pressure to produce writing, I still want to produce it.

So what to do next? Some of my colleagues have talked about how their writing took entirely new directions after tenure, like they had permission to play and explore. Some immediately set their sights on a book. We don't need one for tenure, and while we don't need one to be promoted to Full Professor, either (as long as we have significant scholarship in other ways), a lot of people turn to a book project.

I'm not sure what to do, but I know me. I can't just plan to follow my whims. If I do, I will accomplish nothing. I need some kind of plan. Yes, I can certainly change my mind if I want, but I need an initial road map. And last night I decided that I am going to work on four articles right now. They are each things that have been tickling the back of my mind in various ways for a few years now. I'll write each of them, working on one a year (2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012). As I work on them, I'll keep track of both how I feel about them and how they are received. And in four years, I'll decide if I want to build any of them into a book or do something else.

No, I don't plan to talk about any in detail at such an early stage, but the general topics are David Wojnarowicz, rape jokes, gay porn, and truth in memoir. Last night, I created binders for each project and put in whatever I already had for each. I plan to take a couple of articles with me on the plane to CCCC this week, too.

It's certainly not a major, life-altering decision, but it feels good to know that I'm working on this and not that. Also, it doesn't really feel like I've closed any doors but still have some leeway, too.

Of course, I could completely change my mind in the next hour, too.

Calling for Greater Transparency

An odd thing happened recently that got me thinking about a bigger issue in academic culture. I applied for both a seminar and a workshop at the Rhetoric Society of America's summer institute. I was accepted into the week-long seminar on visual rhetoric, which made me really happy. I knew it was going to be competitive, but I also knew I had to try. Every time I read the description, I got excited. I was rejected for the weekend workshop on performance studies and rhetoric. I was a little surprised by that because I think my work aligns pretty closely with that topic. But rejections happen.

With my rejection, though, came a note saying that I could be considered for other workshops that still had openings. The problem is that the workshop to which I applied was on that list. I sent an email asking if there was some mistake, and I received one back saying that it was an error for that workshop to have been listed as an option for me.

My problem is that, to be accepted into another workshop, those of us rejected from workshops just have to send an email back listing the workshop (and alternatives) that we'd like to take. It says nothing about writing a statement or providing any justification for why we want to take that workshop, which is what we had to do in our original application. In other words, I was rejected for the workshop based upon what I had written but other people can be accepted into it without having to write anything.

I'll admit, that irks me. I would have had a better chance of getting in if I'd applied for another one and been rejected from that. And I have not gotten any explanation for why that is. I understand that it's pretty common to get rejected for jobs, from journals, and for other programs and have no reason given. I've had that happen a lot. It just feels odd to be rejected when I submitted a full application knowing that others will now be accepted without having to take the same steps.

Perhaps the workshop leaders of the new workshop to which we would apply will receive our original application. The problem with that, though, is that our original application was created with a particular workshop in mind. So it says little about our expertise on other topics. If I apply for the one on Lincoln's rhetoric, my application about visual rhetoric and performance studies would be irrelevant, yet I might get accepted because space remains. That's all well and good, except I hate the idea of taking a spot from someone who really wants to be there and really tried to be there knowing I didn't try as hard or take as many steps as they had to take.

And this all relates to a bigger issue that I encountered during the tenure process, the need for greater transparency in the application and submission process. For my tenure application, I wrote to all of the editors and workshop leaders with whom I worked asking about the acceptance rates. And I was surprised by how few I heard back from or how vague the information was. One journal that published my work would not give me the acceptance rates at all, and that came up in my tenure review. I had all the emails I sent asking for the information to prove that I wasn't trying to hide anything, but I shouldn't have had to do that.*

Not everyone was like that. The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities actually told me that 33% of proposals were accepted for the conference one year I presented and 50% another year. Other places said that the applicant pool was "competitive" or "very competitive." An essay collection that published my work gave me the number of proposals submitted and accepted. But a lot of places said nothing.

In talking about this with people, we discussed several reasons why. Perhaps some journals, workshops, or conferences are embarrassed that the rates do not sound as competitive as they would like. But 1) it seems like everyone has an ethical responsibility to be upfront and 2) maybe word getting out might help make the rates stronger. If a journal has a 90% acceptance rate, I can think of a lot of junior faculty and graduate students who would send something that way, which would make the process more competitive because submissions would increase. Plus, again, I think we just have an obligation to be honest about the process.

This may sound like sour grapes for not getting accepted into the workshop, but I have been rejected from many things in my life. And I was accepted into the seminar, which really makes me happy. But I've been on the other side, too. I have co-edited a collection of essays and organized panels and workshops. I have sent rejections to many people. But when I've done that, I've been very aware of the golden rule, treating others as I'd want to be treated. In a lot of cases, I was upfront about the number of submissions so people knew that they were not alone in their rejections. Many times, I did offer a line or two about why I rejected them specifically. I can remember asking myself, "What kind of rejection would I want to receive in this case?" And I wrote that kind of rejection. I'm not saying they were perfect, but I am saying that I tried.

Knowing that I was rejected from this workshop and that other people will be accepted without having to submit what I had to submit (which was not a huge amount, I will admit) feels wrong. In that case, I think there should be some reason. Maybe, "You do not have as much experience as we would like participants to have." Or, "You have more experience than we would like participants to have." Or, "We want to get as many people involved in the entire institute as possible. And since you were accepted into the seminar, we did not let you into the workshop" (but then why tell me I could take others?). Or, "You work is in an area of performance studies and rhetoric that we will not be covering." Of course, all of those reasons are a bit invalidated considering that people will be allowed in without having to say anything about their experience or research.

Ah, well. What I have learned from this is that I need to remember the golden rule. When I send rejections, I need to send what I would like to receive, and that means being as transparent as possible. And I will have a great time at the seminar, I'm sure. I love being a student. It's why I'm auditing the class at NYU and applying for all these things constantly.

But I do wish we had greater transparency in general. I think we can only benefit from it, that the resulting discussion would be a good thing. Certainly, though, I welcome other perspectives.

*Yes, I know that there are places online and in print that publish acceptance and rejection rates, but this particular journal was listed in none of them.

Back Home in the Snow

I've posted all the photos I wanted to upload to Flickr, so check them out if you so desire. As much as I dread it, I must move on and prepare for the start of the semester.

For the last post about Puerto Rico, I wanted to say a bit more about the writing that we did because some people have asked. As I said in an earlier entry, he workshop was called Writing from Experience, but we spent a lot of time talking about writing about encounters with the "other," a common phrase for us in academia. The thinking is that, in writing about those who are different from us, we end up saying a lot about ourselves. It's a risky yet energetic kind of wrting. Our workshop leader, Mayra Santos Febres, has a long history of putting different types of people together in her fiction, so her classes and workshops have that kind of angle in mind.

As for the writing we did throughout the week:

1) A description of our trip to Puerto Rico.

2) A description of our secret where we either fictionalize ourselves or consciously reflect on our perspective. See, after we spent an hour introducing ourselves, Mayra asked us to tell the one secret that we would rather die in a firey hell than tell. Yep, you read that right. She says she always starts her classes that way on the first day, that everyone who takes her classes knows they'll be asked to do it.

3) A description of the face of the person sitting next to us. She put us in pairs, and we had to look at that person and find the feature that makes them unique and base our descripiton around it. The historians and psychologists in the room really responded well to this, talking about the potential for this exercise in their teaching.

4) A description of a body part other than our face.

5) A description of the market at Rio Piedras. On Wednesday, we visited this market near campus. We wandered for about thirty minutes just observing and taking things in. Then we wrote about it.

6) A stream-of-consciousness response to the tarot card we pulled out of her deck. We were to take a card, start with an objective description, and then let it "speak to us." And it all had to be stream of consciousness. I have to say, I produced my best piece of writing with this one, and I think most of the group would agree.

7) A recap in dialogue form of a discussion we had with a partner on a specific topic. We drew a topic out of her hands--doctors and healers, the beach, lovers, water, Obama, teachers--and talked about it with a partner. Then we tried to capture what we talked about in a written dialogue. We had dancing as our topic.

The point of this workshop was to help us improve our scholarship and/or our teaching. We talked about how to use these in our various types of classes, and we talked about what to do with our own writing that we'd produced. It was a great week, and I hope I can maintain the momentum.

I'll certainly try.