Confession: Yes, I read Parade Magazine, that goofy insert in the Sunday paper. I’m especially fond of “Personality Parade” (my main source of celebrity gossip) and the column by Marilyn vos Savant, who, if you don’t know, is in the Guinness World Records Hall of Fame for “Highest IQ.”
So she knows what she’s talking about when she wrote this: “Educators define four categories of vocabulary. Our reading vocabulary is the largest by far, followed by our listening vocabulary. Then comes our speaking vocabulary, which is much smaller, and finally our writing vocabulary, which is smaller still.
“Each category gets more challenging. To read, one need only recognize the word and comprehend its meaning in context. To speak, one must recall the particular word without prompting and insert it instantly into the appropriate context. That’s much more difficult.”
No wonder writing is so hard.
*******
In a more intellectual section of the Washington Post, Jonathan Karp, publisher and editor-in-chief of Twelve, an imprint within the Hachette Book Group, wrote a piece about the future of the book. You can read the whole thing here, but here’s a hopeful note that novelists may wish to cling to:
“Many categories of books will be subsumed by digital media. Reference publishing has already migrated online. Practical nonfiction will be next, winding up on Web sites that can easily update and disseminate visual and textual information. Readers of old-fashioned genre fiction will die off, and the next generation will have so many different entertainment options that it's hard to envision the same level of loyalty to brand-name formula fiction coming off the conveyor belt every year. The novelists who are truly novel will thrive; the rest will struggle.
“Consequently, publishers will be forced to invest in works of quality to maintain their niche. These books will be the one product that only they can deliver better than anyone else. Those same corporate executives who dictate annual returns may begin to proclaim the virtues of research and development, the great engine of growth for business. For publishers, R&D means giving authors the resources to write the best books -- works that will last, because the lasting books will, ultimately, be where the money is.
“That's my hope, at least. As I said, publishing is a business based primarily on blind hope.”
Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Guest in Progress: Debbie Levy
I recently asked a friend if she would be interested in writing a guest piece, and she thought she might like to write about the difficulties of balancing writing and life. As she was figuring out what she wanted to say, she queried some of her writer friends for their thoughts and was so taken by this response that she suggested this should be an essay in and of itself. I agreed, and am happy to share writer Debbie Levy’s wise insight on finding that magical balance:
As you know, Cheryl Aubin asked some of us (her writer listserv friends) about how we go about balancing writing and life. There are plenty of ways to answer that question. I shared with her one small discovery I’ve made over the past decade, during which I’ve published 18 books for young people and otherwise encountered the usual sorts of stuff women encounter, such as shepherding sons from elementary school to college, sharing a life with my husband, dealing with breast cancer, creating family dinners (yes, in our family, the dinners have probably been as important as fighting cancer), and helping parents with debilitating illnesses. Many writers, of course, have much more on their plates to balance. Around ten years ago I got a cat. Six years ago, a dog. Which leads to this:
On balancing writing and life, here’s one idea. Share your life with an animal. Seriously. A dog. A cat. A dog and a cat. Even if you are already sharing your life with a spouse, a child, an in-law or two, various siblings and cousins. Here’s why:
Writing is solitary. It’s solitary even when you are surrounded by the aforementioned spouse, child, etc. A dog or cat offers the steady, always-present communion that most of us humans haven’t quite mastered yet.
A writing life is full of rejections. The dog thinks you’re fabulous. The cat does, too; she just may not show her admiration as openly. Get a rejection; bury your face in the animal’s neck. It helps.
Writing is often meant to be read aloud. Sure, you can read your poem or essay or manuscript to yourself. I find it helps me hear better—helps me detect awkward or self-conscious or repetitive passages—if a set of eyes is fixed on me. As in, wide yellow cat eyes. Brown, soulful dog eyes. You can call a friend and read the work to him or her. You can inflict it on your spouse. But, in the early stages of a piece of writing especially, you’re mostly looking for your own reaction. Reading aloud to yourself in the company of your animal feels right. Try it.
Writers often sit around all day. Get out of the house! A dog will encourage you to do exactly that. All morning long, my chocolate Lab, Toby, sits around with me while I work. Every so often she’ll approach me with a face that means, “Ready yet?” No, not yet. A little while later, she’ll put her head on my knee. Not yet. When she starts poking my elbow with her wet nose, I know I really should get up and out. The cat—Zoe—doesn’t need to be walked, but she does often want the window open, so she can sit on the ledge, and that nice, outside air reminds me that there is a world away from my desk. . . . so you see, a cat can also get you out of your chair.
Dogs and cats bring a certain level of disarray into your life. The shedding. The drooling. The nails on the floor, on the furniture. The barking at nothing. The hairballs. I know, life is messy without animals, too. But there’s something endearing and even humbling, to me, about the harmless disarray of animals. Life is messy; balancing is messy. Embrace the mess. ~~Debbie Levy
About: Debbie Levy’s most recent books for children include Underwater (Darby Creek Publishing 2007), a middle-grade novel (for ages 9-12). Check out her web site, DebbieLevyBooks.com, to find out about her other books for young people. Debbie’s first picture book of poetry for children, Maybe I’ll Sleep in the Bathtub Tonight and Other Funny Bedtime Poems, will be out in 2009 from Sterling.
As you know, Cheryl Aubin asked some of us (her writer listserv friends) about how we go about balancing writing and life. There are plenty of ways to answer that question. I shared with her one small discovery I’ve made over the past decade, during which I’ve published 18 books for young people and otherwise encountered the usual sorts of stuff women encounter, such as shepherding sons from elementary school to college, sharing a life with my husband, dealing with breast cancer, creating family dinners (yes, in our family, the dinners have probably been as important as fighting cancer), and helping parents with debilitating illnesses. Many writers, of course, have much more on their plates to balance. Around ten years ago I got a cat. Six years ago, a dog. Which leads to this:
On balancing writing and life, here’s one idea. Share your life with an animal. Seriously. A dog. A cat. A dog and a cat. Even if you are already sharing your life with a spouse, a child, an in-law or two, various siblings and cousins. Here’s why:
Writing is solitary. It’s solitary even when you are surrounded by the aforementioned spouse, child, etc. A dog or cat offers the steady, always-present communion that most of us humans haven’t quite mastered yet.
A writing life is full of rejections. The dog thinks you’re fabulous. The cat does, too; she just may not show her admiration as openly. Get a rejection; bury your face in the animal’s neck. It helps.
Writing is often meant to be read aloud. Sure, you can read your poem or essay or manuscript to yourself. I find it helps me hear better—helps me detect awkward or self-conscious or repetitive passages—if a set of eyes is fixed on me. As in, wide yellow cat eyes. Brown, soulful dog eyes. You can call a friend and read the work to him or her. You can inflict it on your spouse. But, in the early stages of a piece of writing especially, you’re mostly looking for your own reaction. Reading aloud to yourself in the company of your animal feels right. Try it.
Writers often sit around all day. Get out of the house! A dog will encourage you to do exactly that. All morning long, my chocolate Lab, Toby, sits around with me while I work. Every so often she’ll approach me with a face that means, “Ready yet?” No, not yet. A little while later, she’ll put her head on my knee. Not yet. When she starts poking my elbow with her wet nose, I know I really should get up and out. The cat—Zoe—doesn’t need to be walked, but she does often want the window open, so she can sit on the ledge, and that nice, outside air reminds me that there is a world away from my desk. . . . so you see, a cat can also get you out of your chair.
Dogs and cats bring a certain level of disarray into your life. The shedding. The drooling. The nails on the floor, on the furniture. The barking at nothing. The hairballs. I know, life is messy without animals, too. But there’s something endearing and even humbling, to me, about the harmless disarray of animals. Life is messy; balancing is messy. Embrace the mess. ~~Debbie Levy
About: Debbie Levy’s most recent books for children include Underwater (Darby Creek Publishing 2007), a middle-grade novel (for ages 9-12). Check out her web site, DebbieLevyBooks.com, to find out about her other books for young people. Debbie’s first picture book of poetry for children, Maybe I’ll Sleep in the Bathtub Tonight and Other Funny Bedtime Poems, will be out in 2009 from Sterling.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Stories of Shame and Glory...
…and don’t we all have a few of those, especially the shame?
Green Mountains Review seeks stories about shame and/or glory for an all-fiction double-issue, "Shame and Glory," due in the spring of 2009. Details here.
Submissions should be postmarked between April 1, 2008 and January 2, 2009 and sent to:
Leslie Daniels, Fiction Editor
Green Mountains Review
PO Box 4558
Ithaca, NY 14580
Green Mountains Review seeks stories about shame and/or glory for an all-fiction double-issue, "Shame and Glory," due in the spring of 2009. Details here.
Submissions should be postmarked between April 1, 2008 and January 2, 2009 and sent to:
Leslie Daniels, Fiction Editor
Green Mountains Review
PO Box 4558
Ithaca, NY 14580
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Reading on June 25
Just a reminder about my reading tomorrow:
Fiction writer Leslie Pietrzyk, author of two novels and many stories, will read from her work as a part of A Space Inside on Wednesday, June 25 at 7 p.m. at Riverby Books on Capitol Hill.
Now in its third year, A Space Inside provides a space where developing writers, lesser known voices, and the work better-known writers create between books can be heard. Monthly readings alternate between poetry and prose, but all readers are DC-based writers. All readings, which are free and open to the public, are hosted by Riverby Books with a reception following. Questions should be directed to series organizer, Monica F. Jacobe at 09jacobe@cua.edu.
Riverby Books is located at 417 East Capitol Street, SE, just north of Eastern Market and four blocks east of the U.S. Capitol. A seller of used and rare books, they are open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and can be reached at (202) 543-4342. Please call for directions, if needed.
Fiction writer Leslie Pietrzyk, author of two novels and many stories, will read from her work as a part of A Space Inside on Wednesday, June 25 at 7 p.m. at Riverby Books on Capitol Hill.
Now in its third year, A Space Inside provides a space where developing writers, lesser known voices, and the work better-known writers create between books can be heard. Monthly readings alternate between poetry and prose, but all readers are DC-based writers. All readings, which are free and open to the public, are hosted by Riverby Books with a reception following. Questions should be directed to series organizer, Monica F. Jacobe at 09jacobe@cua.edu.
Riverby Books is located at 417 East Capitol Street, SE, just north of Eastern Market and four blocks east of the U.S. Capitol. A seller of used and rare books, they are open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and can be reached at (202) 543-4342. Please call for directions, if needed.
Homes for Novella Manuscripts
Betwixt and between…longer than a story, shorter than a novel. Here are some options for your novellas:
1.
The Miami University Press Novella Contest
The novella form has had a long and distinguished place in American literature, and has triumphed in the hands of Herman Melville, Henry James, Katherine Anne Porter, Stanley Elkin, Cynthia Ozick, Jane Smiley, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, William Gass, John Gardner, Andrea Barrett and Tobias Wolff, to name just a few.
As commercial publishers are driven more and more by marketplace concerns, novellas, by nature of their length, often fall between the cracks of short story collections and novels and wind up being published—if at all—not as individual volumes but as part of a collection of stories. Because the form is such a pleasure for readers and writers alike—short enough to be read at a single sustained sitting, but long enough to allow the writer greater freedom in character and plot development than does the short story—we are happy to present a rare venue for publishing individual novellas as stand-alone volumes.
Manuscripts submitted for the award will be read and evaluated by our creative writing faculty, all of whom are active publishing writers. The manuscripts will be read “blind;” in other words, all identifiers will be stripped from the pages before the manuscripts are read, and the author’s history of previous publication will not be available to readers. Each year a different member of our faculty will serve as the final judge and will decide from among the list of finalists submitted by the other readers.
Students, former students, faculty, former faculty, or anyone connected to Miami University will not be considered for the award. Though we believe strongly in the talent of those we have worked with and taught, we will do everything we can to assure that this prize is administered impartially, fairly, and without regard to association.
Miami University Press is a non-profit organization. Though we are requiring an entrance fee, we wish to make it clear that this money will be used to pay for the administrative costs of the contest, to help with the costs of publishing a book of high quality, and to allow each entrant to receive a copy of the winning volume. We want that book to be a pleasure to hold in the hands and to read. The winning volume will be distributed nationwide.
Submission rules and guidelines:
Entries must be postmarked by October 1, 2008.
Submit manuscripts, 18,000–40,000 words, with two title pages: one with author’s name, address and phone number, one without. Author’s name must not appear elsewhere.
Word count must be included on title page.
Winning entry receives $1,000 and book publication.
Reading fee $25, payable to Miami University Press. All entrants receive copy of winning book.
Mail to:
MU Press Novella Prize
English Department
356 Bachelor Hall
Miami University,Oxford, OH 45056
2.
The Cleveland State University Poetry Center is pleased to announce the fourth annual Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Contest.
One prize of $1000 and publication of the winning novella is offered for the best original novella submitted between April 1, 2008 and October 1, 2008.
MANUSCRIPT REQUIREMENTS:
Manuscripts must contain a minimum of 60 and no more than 120 double-spaced manuscript pages, not including front matter.
Manuscript pages should be numbered, and, if appropriate, include a table of contents.Include one title page with manuscript title, your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address.The author’s name should not appear anywhere else on the manuscript.Include a second title page containing the manuscript title only.
Clearly indicate on the outside of the mailing envelope “Novella Contest”.
Do not include a cover letter or biographical information.
MULTIPLE & SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS:
Send multiple submissions in the same envelope, marked “Multiple;” entry fee must be included for each manuscript. Simultaneous submissions accepted; please notify us immediately if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
ELIGIBILITY: The Judge for the 2008 contest is Josip Novakovich. Intimate friends, relatives, current and former students of the Novella Contest judge (students in an academic degree-conferring program or its equivalent) are not eligible to enter the 2008 Novella contest.
Manuscripts that have been previously published in their entirety, including self-published, are not eligible.
Translations are not eligible.
MAIL ENTRIES TO:
Cleveland State UniversityPoetry Center – Novella Contest
Department of English
2121 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44115-2214
1.
The Miami University Press Novella Contest
The novella form has had a long and distinguished place in American literature, and has triumphed in the hands of Herman Melville, Henry James, Katherine Anne Porter, Stanley Elkin, Cynthia Ozick, Jane Smiley, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, William Gass, John Gardner, Andrea Barrett and Tobias Wolff, to name just a few.
As commercial publishers are driven more and more by marketplace concerns, novellas, by nature of their length, often fall between the cracks of short story collections and novels and wind up being published—if at all—not as individual volumes but as part of a collection of stories. Because the form is such a pleasure for readers and writers alike—short enough to be read at a single sustained sitting, but long enough to allow the writer greater freedom in character and plot development than does the short story—we are happy to present a rare venue for publishing individual novellas as stand-alone volumes.
Manuscripts submitted for the award will be read and evaluated by our creative writing faculty, all of whom are active publishing writers. The manuscripts will be read “blind;” in other words, all identifiers will be stripped from the pages before the manuscripts are read, and the author’s history of previous publication will not be available to readers. Each year a different member of our faculty will serve as the final judge and will decide from among the list of finalists submitted by the other readers.
Students, former students, faculty, former faculty, or anyone connected to Miami University will not be considered for the award. Though we believe strongly in the talent of those we have worked with and taught, we will do everything we can to assure that this prize is administered impartially, fairly, and without regard to association.
Miami University Press is a non-profit organization. Though we are requiring an entrance fee, we wish to make it clear that this money will be used to pay for the administrative costs of the contest, to help with the costs of publishing a book of high quality, and to allow each entrant to receive a copy of the winning volume. We want that book to be a pleasure to hold in the hands and to read. The winning volume will be distributed nationwide.
Submission rules and guidelines:
Entries must be postmarked by October 1, 2008.
Submit manuscripts, 18,000–40,000 words, with two title pages: one with author’s name, address and phone number, one without. Author’s name must not appear elsewhere.
Word count must be included on title page.
Winning entry receives $1,000 and book publication.
Reading fee $25, payable to Miami University Press. All entrants receive copy of winning book.
Mail to:
MU Press Novella Prize
English Department
356 Bachelor Hall
Miami University,Oxford, OH 45056
2.
The Cleveland State University Poetry Center is pleased to announce the fourth annual Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella Contest.
One prize of $1000 and publication of the winning novella is offered for the best original novella submitted between April 1, 2008 and October 1, 2008.
MANUSCRIPT REQUIREMENTS:
Manuscripts must contain a minimum of 60 and no more than 120 double-spaced manuscript pages, not including front matter.
Manuscript pages should be numbered, and, if appropriate, include a table of contents.Include one title page with manuscript title, your name, address, phone number, and e-mail address.The author’s name should not appear anywhere else on the manuscript.Include a second title page containing the manuscript title only.
Clearly indicate on the outside of the mailing envelope “Novella Contest”.
Do not include a cover letter or biographical information.
MULTIPLE & SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS:
Send multiple submissions in the same envelope, marked “Multiple;” entry fee must be included for each manuscript. Simultaneous submissions accepted; please notify us immediately if the manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
ELIGIBILITY: The Judge for the 2008 contest is Josip Novakovich. Intimate friends, relatives, current and former students of the Novella Contest judge (students in an academic degree-conferring program or its equivalent) are not eligible to enter the 2008 Novella contest.
Manuscripts that have been previously published in their entirety, including self-published, are not eligible.
Translations are not eligible.
MAIL ENTRIES TO:
Cleveland State UniversityPoetry Center – Novella Contest
Department of English
2121 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44115-2214
Monday, June 23, 2008
What I Read on Sunday
Some good reading in the newspapers:
~Suggestions for beach reads in the Washington Post. I thought it was amusing that in the sidebar, mystery writer Janet Evanovich suggested as her choice for a good beach read, “Maybe The Great Gatsby. It has something to do with the time. A lighter, happier time. My second choice would be Nancy Drew, for similar reasons.”
I'm always happy to see The Great Gatsby promoted, though one doesn’t often see it mentioned alongside Nancy Drew (which, yes, I spnet my fair share of summers reading, most memorably while sprawled in a treehouse)...not to mention that I don’t really think of the setting of The Great Gatsby as being “light” or “happy” beyond an illusory way. I mean, isn’t that part of the point of the book??
~Here’s a Washington Post report from the Middlebury College professor/writer Jay Parini, who was asked to teach the kids who trashed Robert Frost’s historic cabin about how and why poetry matters. (Mandatory attendance at the class was part of their “punishment.”) He discussed “Out, Out—,” about a boy who gets his hand cut off by a buzz saw and dies, and, of course, “The Road Not Taken.” As he saidto the kids: “’You are now in deep woods,’ I told them. They seemed confused. ‘If this isn’t a deep wood, I don’t know what is,’ I added. Many of them lit up.”
~I’m looking forward to the late July return of AMC’s fabulous TV show, “Mad Men,” and this article from the New York Times Magazine shows the obsessive brilliance of its creator, Matthew Weiner. He says, “I do not feel any guilt about saying that the show comes from my mind and that I’m a control freak. I love to be surrounded by perfectionists, and part of the problem with perfectionism is that by nature, you’re always failing.” Example: The ashtrays on the set are filled with a variety of different cigarette butts (since it’s the early sixties, all the characters smoke like chimneys)…AND there are lip circles of different lipstick shades on them! We should all aspire to such attention to detail in our work.
~ Finally, the history of the semi-colon here in Slate Magazine, with worries that it may be headed the way of the dinosaur.
~Suggestions for beach reads in the Washington Post. I thought it was amusing that in the sidebar, mystery writer Janet Evanovich suggested as her choice for a good beach read, “Maybe The Great Gatsby. It has something to do with the time. A lighter, happier time. My second choice would be Nancy Drew, for similar reasons.”
I'm always happy to see The Great Gatsby promoted, though one doesn’t often see it mentioned alongside Nancy Drew (which, yes, I spnet my fair share of summers reading, most memorably while sprawled in a treehouse)...not to mention that I don’t really think of the setting of The Great Gatsby as being “light” or “happy” beyond an illusory way. I mean, isn’t that part of the point of the book??
~Here’s a Washington Post report from the Middlebury College professor/writer Jay Parini, who was asked to teach the kids who trashed Robert Frost’s historic cabin about how and why poetry matters. (Mandatory attendance at the class was part of their “punishment.”) He discussed “Out, Out—,” about a boy who gets his hand cut off by a buzz saw and dies, and, of course, “The Road Not Taken.” As he saidto the kids: “’You are now in deep woods,’ I told them. They seemed confused. ‘If this isn’t a deep wood, I don’t know what is,’ I added. Many of them lit up.”
~I’m looking forward to the late July return of AMC’s fabulous TV show, “Mad Men,” and this article from the New York Times Magazine shows the obsessive brilliance of its creator, Matthew Weiner. He says, “I do not feel any guilt about saying that the show comes from my mind and that I’m a control freak. I love to be surrounded by perfectionists, and part of the problem with perfectionism is that by nature, you’re always failing.” Example: The ashtrays on the set are filled with a variety of different cigarette butts (since it’s the early sixties, all the characters smoke like chimneys)…AND there are lip circles of different lipstick shades on them! We should all aspire to such attention to detail in our work.
~ Finally, the history of the semi-colon here in Slate Magazine, with worries that it may be headed the way of the dinosaur.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Work in Progress: At Long Last, a Title!
I’m trying to work with my new computer, but it is not making things easy…it doesn’t seem to like my printer, refusing to play with it despite the fact that I actually managed to find the original installation CD, and it’s already kicked me off the internet once. I won’t even get into the strange formatting that it seems to favor in this peculiar new version of Word. So, this will be an adventure...
I had a dream/nightmare about my book last night, in which my agent sent out my book and told she would wait up all night to let me know who bought it and get back to me…of course in the dream I was waiting and waiting, but she never contacted me and wouldn’t take my calls.
On a more positive note, I thought I’d share the title I selected. (You may recall that finding a title became the source of a fair bit of obsession.)~~
The Arrival
Which I’ve taken from the following quotation which I’m using as an epigraph:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
These lines are from Four Quartets by poet T.S. Eliot.
Here’s the interesting part of the story: I have loved these lines for ages (though I had never actually read Four Quartets). In fact, these exact lines were pinned to my bulletin board in my old house for, oh, 10 years or so. When I first started thinking about titles, back when my book was just a little baby, I looked at those lines and came up with exactly nothing. So it was off on my quest to accumulate 300 title options.
Many people offered suggestions for titles and comments along the way—hoping for my $25 reward?—and I am exceedingly grateful to them. Richard Goodman, author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France and The Soul of Creative Writing, who wrote about titling here, came up with a wonderful list of ideas, and in general, checked in every week or so. At one point he suggested reading Four Quartets. I’ve always like Eliot and Richard is a smart guy and since I’d googled about every other odd and random option (Scottish poetry, architectural terms, Civil War terms, Lincoln quotes, etc.), I thought, Why not?
So I read the long series of poems online here, scribbling down ideas, overwhelmed by the wonderful language, and was startled to come across “my” four lines. I liked that they were about seeing something familiar from a different point of view, about a journey in which one arrived at a familiar place but saw it for the first time…sort of like my estranged family. But I didn’t see how they could work as a title: “The End of All Our Exploring” sounded like a bad MFA workshop story.
The poem was so intense, with such evocative religious undertones, that I turned to the best source for understanding complex works of literature…yes, Wikipedia. Hopefully their interpretation was somewhat based on scholarship…because when these lines came up, it was noted that they referred to the story of the Prodigal Son! Which my book was originally based on! At that exact second, The Arrival, with its simplicity and metaphorical possibilities jumped out at me.
So, thank you, Richard Goodman, for leading me to a place I had been and helping me to see it for the very first time. I guess a title is like love, you know it when you feel it.
I had a dream/nightmare about my book last night, in which my agent sent out my book and told she would wait up all night to let me know who bought it and get back to me…of course in the dream I was waiting and waiting, but she never contacted me and wouldn’t take my calls.
On a more positive note, I thought I’d share the title I selected. (You may recall that finding a title became the source of a fair bit of obsession.)~~
The Arrival
Which I’ve taken from the following quotation which I’m using as an epigraph:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
These lines are from Four Quartets by poet T.S. Eliot.
Here’s the interesting part of the story: I have loved these lines for ages (though I had never actually read Four Quartets). In fact, these exact lines were pinned to my bulletin board in my old house for, oh, 10 years or so. When I first started thinking about titles, back when my book was just a little baby, I looked at those lines and came up with exactly nothing. So it was off on my quest to accumulate 300 title options.
Many people offered suggestions for titles and comments along the way—hoping for my $25 reward?—and I am exceedingly grateful to them. Richard Goodman, author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France and The Soul of Creative Writing, who wrote about titling here, came up with a wonderful list of ideas, and in general, checked in every week or so. At one point he suggested reading Four Quartets. I’ve always like Eliot and Richard is a smart guy and since I’d googled about every other odd and random option (Scottish poetry, architectural terms, Civil War terms, Lincoln quotes, etc.), I thought, Why not?
So I read the long series of poems online here, scribbling down ideas, overwhelmed by the wonderful language, and was startled to come across “my” four lines. I liked that they were about seeing something familiar from a different point of view, about a journey in which one arrived at a familiar place but saw it for the first time…sort of like my estranged family. But I didn’t see how they could work as a title: “The End of All Our Exploring” sounded like a bad MFA workshop story.
The poem was so intense, with such evocative religious undertones, that I turned to the best source for understanding complex works of literature…yes, Wikipedia. Hopefully their interpretation was somewhat based on scholarship…because when these lines came up, it was noted that they referred to the story of the Prodigal Son! Which my book was originally based on! At that exact second, The Arrival, with its simplicity and metaphorical possibilities jumped out at me.
So, thank you, Richard Goodman, for leading me to a place I had been and helping me to see it for the very first time. I guess a title is like love, you know it when you feel it.
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