Chautauqua

An annual journal explores the values of Chautauqua Institution broadly construed: a sense of inquiry into questions of personal, social, political, spiritual, and aesthetic importance, regardless of genre.

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We’ve Moved!

Check out our new website: https://chautauquajournal.wixsite.com/website

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A Brief Interview Manual for Writers

Last year, I interviewed about fifteen women in South Korea. Before I left for the country, I talked with two writers and two social scientists, who conducted many interviews for their research, to learn their techniques. I was armed with a digital recorder and computer, but still encountered issues I wasn’t prepared for. As I started to write, I found more mistakes I could have prevented if I had known more about conducting interviews. I have written a brief manual for writers who will utilize interviews in their work.

Before the interview:

1. Sound recorders: Unless you need to present the recording itself, you don’t need an expensive recorder. However, a good recorder captures clearer sounds and helps differentiate noises from voices. I recommend a digital recorder, as it is easier to replay and make copies of recordings. Research to find the best one for your project. Although there are many sites available, one I found useful was Doug at the Oral History in the Digital Age (Chautauqua is not affiliated with this organization) to find one.

When you have your recorder, learn how to use it properly and conduct a test interview. Set the correct date and time. Make sure that you have enough memory for your interview. Always bring backup batteries.

I recommend preparing a backup recorder too, even if it is your phone or computer. Device malfunction happens more often than you’d think.

2. Writing instruments: Do not assume your recorder will save everything. Written notes may save you time later and enrich your memory. You can bring a notepad or computer or any other tool. Typing is often faster than handwriting, but consider your interview environment.

3. Visual aid/camera: It is always nice to have pictures from your interviews. Some might be sensitive about having their picture taken, but even if you can’t take pictures of your interviewee, you can take a record of your setting to help your memory later. A video camera is another option, but it may make interviewees uncomfortable. Always ask permission to use these before conducting the interview.

4. Interview questions: Finalize your questions and perform a mock interview.

On the day of the interview:

1. Arrival: Arrive early and learn about your setting. Take pictures, if able, and make notes.

2. Interview: Be courteous—introduce yourself and the purpose of your interview. Tell your interviewee how you will use their information and ask for permission. Ask separately for voice recording, notetaking, and pictures. When recording, state the date, time, location, and interviewee’s name. Use your primary and backup recorders at the same time.

3. Notes: I recommend taking notes throughout the whole interview process. Include the date, time, place, and weather. If you are not taking pictures, note the appearance of your interviewee. Record their gestures.

After the interview:

1. Recordings and pictures: Check whether they are properly saved. Make copies as soon as possible and store them in multiple places—your computer, cloud, etc.

2. Daily notes: This should be like your diary. Consider the events before and after your interview and write about them chronologically.

I hope you have a great interview!

--Jooweon Park 

*Photo by Jooweon Park, 2017

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Of Time and the Editor

Whenever I submit a story or essay to a journal, I feel a satisfying sense of expectation: smart people are about to read my words, and if they are good words told in the right order, and if the right reader encounters them, and if my piece fits the issue and is original enough from the other selections, and if, if, if—then maybe the journal will publish it so that many other smart people can read what I wrote, and thus will begin that mystical process by which one person’s vision catches fire inside another person’s imagination.

And like all writers, I hate the waiting. I want an answer right now; I want to know if I hit the high mark at which I was aiming.

But here’s what I have come to learn in my years as an editor: the process of choosing and editing work then building the various pieces into a coherent journal issue takes time. Even with electronic submission managers handling some of the clerical work of logging in manuscripts and letting the writers know we got them, the process still relies on editors—people—sitting down and reading carefully all the many poems, stories, and essays that come our way. Last week, for instance, I read sixty short stories and essays and half again that many poems. Not skimmed but read.

I always read hoping to discover that gem that makes all the hours and eyestrain worthwhile—that inspires me and makes me grin with the old-fashioned pleasure of sharing a bright imagination different from my own, one that shows me the world in a new way and inspires me to think interesting thoughts. The kind of writing that sticks in memory, that I find myself talking about at the dinner table or while having a drink with friends.

Every so often a writer who has submitted work to Chautauqua gets impatient that we have held the work for too long—he or she wants an answer, yea or nay—and might even withdraw the work from our consideration. This of course is every author’s right.

But realize that like so many literary journals, Chautauqua is produced by a largely unpaid staff who works conscientiously for many hours each week trying to find the work that best fits our journal, expressing our literary and ethical values. We create the journal over the course of two semesters, which means that we often hold work we are interested in until the end of the reading period in November and then some—if we are interested in publishing it. We want to figure out not just whether it is good enough to be included but whether it will join in conversation with the rest of what we are publishing—a silent dialogue that will elevate every piece beyond its own intrinsic value as part of a whole vision.

Each piece is read by at least three other members of the editorial staff, and I read pretty much everything—as does Jill Gerard, my co-editor, and Marissa Flanagan, our managing editor. If any member of the editorial staff champions any manuscript, it comes to the table. We have spent a solid hour talking about one word in a poem, other hours parsing the ethical behavior of a nonfiction narrator, or arguing about the merits of an unusual literary aesthetic. We read as much of the work as we can out loud, each of us taking turns, to hear it and to taste it. We learn how to listen to each new voice.

As I am fond of telling our editorial staff—which largely consists of students in the MFA and BFA programs in creative writing here at UNC Wilmington—we are not just producing a literary journal; we are creating an experience of artistic collaboration whose outcome is—if the process works right—a beautiful piece of literary art. In the spirit of Chautauqua Institution, the journal is the concrete expression of the experience of cooperation, of passionate discussion, of conscientious engagement with authors and artists and their ideas.

If you submit a manuscript to us and could be present to hear the way your work is discussed, you would be proud and humbled and gratified and flattered and at times a little stung by the critique—but whatever else you felt, you would feel respected.

There is just no way to hurry up the process and still respect the work and the authors who send them to us. We make haste slowly. So if your work remains in our editorial queue for several months, please don’t feel slighted. Just the opposite: know that your words are being read and responded to by multiple readers. And if they are good words told in the right order, and if they are original and fit our theme and if, if, if—then maybe they will catch fire in our imaginations.

—Philip Gerard, Editor

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Self-Trust, or, sticking with your work even when it hurts!

From the time we enter school, we learn one lesson more powerfully than any other: mistakes are bad. This is often reinforced in our workplace and other parts of our daily life. If this is the message we’ve internalized, we may find it difficult to begin, or stick with, creative work. The very heart of creativity, after all, is exploration, experimentation, and risk taking. Which means making mistakes! 

In my own writing journey, especially over the past year, I’ve had to learn to get comfortable with the incredibly uncomfortable mess of creative work. In our school and work life, incompetence is so frowned upon, it can be downright painful to write a rough draft. This is why countless writers give up while writing rough drafts and abandon the creative process. It’s emotionally overwhelming to feel like you are bad at something. 

But the truth is, in order to be a good writer, you have to be willing to write badly. You have to be brave enough to make tons of mistakes and keep making them, day after day. 

How do you find the strength, courage, and persistence to stick with your work even when it hurts?  

I have discovered that one of the crucial keys to sticking with a creative project over the most emotionally rugged terrain is self trust. 

You develop self trust over time as you gain awareness of your own sabotaging emotions and beliefs while you write. Trusting your own mind to know what to do, to problem solve, to unravel even the most unruly of knots as you create is essential to every step of the creative process. 

When you first begin a project, you’re often at your most vulnerable. Your idea is like a baby bird, deeply fragile. You have no idea if it will live or thrive. You’re excited but also terrified. When you start writing and the magic you felt in your head isn’t transferring to the page, when you’re messing up left and right, your first reaction might be frustration, panic, or even self loathing. This is the critical moment. Become aware of what your inner voice is saying. I knew I wasn’t good enough. They told me I couldn’t do it, and they were right. Even if I keep trying, I’ll never be as great as I want to be. Now is the time to protect your project by trusting yourself! This is my rough draft, and it should be messy. The more drafts I write, the better it will get. I trust my mind to get this idea where it needs to be.

The practice of self trust will also rescue you as you grapple with the “murky middle” of the creative process, reassuring yourself that you have what it takes to see the project through to completion. Even if it’s messy, even if you still don’t know where you’re going, telling yourself I’ll figure it out; I trust myself to get there will keep you persisting through the storms where others might jump ship.

When at last you reach the brink, that most tender and terrifying edge where you cast your work into the world, it’s here that trusting yourself, and what you’ve created, will give your work wings. 

And one day your readers will say, thank you for being brave.

–Summer Hammond

Photo Credit: Summer Hammond 2017

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Q&A with Ross Gay

The final week of October was the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s eighteenth annual Writers Week. After a busy yet rewarding week of craft talks, readings, and panels with visiting authors and publishing professionals, a group of MFA and BFA students had a discussion with the poet Ross Gay about his writing process and his advice for writers and writing teachers alike. Ross Gay is the editor at Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press and a professor at Indiana University. At the previous night’s packed Buckner reading, Gay read some of his upcoming work as well as poems from his book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, which won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award.      During the Q&A, Gay talked in more detail about his upcoming book and his writing process for the poems included in it. His forthcoming book is a collection of poems he called “delights,” which he wrote over the course of a year. Each day, he set a timer for thirty minutes and used that time to write a poem by hand about something that delighted him, whether that was two people carrying grocery bags or a laundry bag together or neighbors gathering around a fig tree in Pennsylvania to pick and share the fruit. After writing about ten or so poems, he would transcribe them, taking care not to revise too much while transcribing, as he felt that the more he revised, the more he was messing up the poems. He told us that writing these delights was not without its challenges. Around day four of the project, he got stuck. He felt like the work he had produced on day three was not as strong as he wanted it to be, which made him call into question the entire thing. Would the work he created be worth the time? Would he be able to maintain the project for the whole year, as he intended? But he decided to do his best and not get in his head about how the poems might be received or if he missed a day here or there. In the end, he wrote about two hundred ninety poems. Now he is working on revising, picking the strongest of the poems for the new book. As a group of less experienced writers, it was reassuring to hear that a poet many of us look up to has moments of doubt just like we do, and that we can push through those doubts by focusing less on what the end product will be and more on the writing process itself.      One question people had for Gay at both his reading and the Q&A session was one regarding the positive nature of his poems. Many of the writers felt that modern poems were usually focused on the negative aspects of life and were intrigued by Gay’s ability to focus on unabashed gratitude and delights. Gay said he worried that people saw the baseline of life as despair and that moments of joy were simply thought of as breaks from the norm. Gay believes the actual baseline of life is connection and care. He talked about how so often in a day we experience small moments of kindness—people holding the door or checking to make sure that someone who tripped is all right. Although he is heartbroken all the time that does not negate the joy he experiences.      Gay also talked about the connection he felt between writing and gardening, his other passion. He said writing poetry reminded him of his time participating in an orchard planting project, where he knew he was creating and cultivating something that would likely outlive him, just like his poetry hopefully will. His overall goal is to take great care of his plants, his poetry, and his reader.

–Sarah Wall

Photo Credit: Melissa Crowe 2017

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Chautauqua Announces 2017 Pushcart Nominations

Chautauqua, the literary journal of Chautauqua Institution, has nominated six contributors featured in Chautauqua 14: Invention and Discovery for the Pushcart Prize. The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series has been published once a year since 1976.

Robert Kirvel receives the nomination for his essay, “A Bomb in the Final Essay by Oliver Sacks,” which won the Chautauqua Editors Prize. Kirvel is a Best of the Net nominee for fiction, 2016 winner of the Fulton Prize for the Short Story, and a 2015 ArtPrize winner for creative nonfiction. He has published stories or essays in the UK, New Zealand, and Germany; in translation and anthologies; and in a score of US literary journals, such as Arts & Letters.

George Drew’s poem, “Prayer on the Line of Scrimmage” was first runner-up in the Editors Prize. He is the author of The View from Jackass Hill, 2010 winner of the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize awarded by Texas Review Press, which also published Down & Dirty (2015), and his new and selected, Pastoral Habits, in 2016. His eighth collection, Fancy’s Orphan (Tiger Bark Press), came out in January 2017. He is the winner of the 2014 St. Petersburg Review poetry contest.

Dan Roche was second runner-up with his essay, “Emptying Eddie’s Garage.” Roche has published two memoirs, Great Expectation: A Father’s Diary (Iowa, 2008) and Love’s Labors (Riverhead, 1999), and essays in the North American Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Journal, Under the Sun, Passages North, and other places. He’s been a fellow in nonfiction literature with the New York Foundation for the Arts, and he teaches nonfiction writing, journalism, and photography at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York.

Elizabeth Burton is nominated for her story, “Creakings.” She is an award-winning fiction writer from Lexington, Kentucky. Her short stories have appeared in Waypoints, Kentucky Review, and Roanoke Review. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Texas (English) and Stony Brook University (linguistics) and is studying fiction in Spalding University’s MFA program.

Johnson Cheu is nominated for his poem, “Mother, Sewing.” His poetry and essays have appeared in Family Matters: Poems of our Families, Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images, and Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out. He served as the inaugural fiction/poetry editor of Disability Studies Quarterly, and he is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Cultures at Michigan State University.

Doug Ramspeck is nominated for his poem “Roadside Glass.” He is the author of five poetry collections, and his most recent book, Original Bodies (Southern Indiana Review Press), was selected for the Michael Waters Poetry Prize. Two of his earlier books, Mechanical Fireflies and Black Tupelo Country, have also received awards. Individual poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, Slate, the Southern Review, and the Georgia Review.

Supported by Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua is produced in partnership with the Department of Creative Writing and the Publishing Laboratory at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Each year a group of graduate and undergraduate students work as members of the editorial team. They read and discuss submissions, fact check and edit, search for art, and participate in the artistic process of building a book. Chautauqua is released each year in June as the Chautauqua Institution’s summer season begins.

Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. Anchored by the historic Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle, founded in 1878, Chautauqua’s literary arts programming includes summer-long interaction of published and aspiring writers at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center, the intensive workshops of the nationally recognized Chautauqua Writers’ Festival, and lectures by prominent authors on the craft and art of writing. Learn more at chq.org/season/literary-arts.

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Four Points of View

One of the most important tasks for a writer is choosing the point of view. The writer must ask  who the narrator of the story is. Is the narrator a part of this story? Can they influence the events or are they simply an outsider looking in? Is this story a sprawling epic or a journey of self-discovery?  There are four points of view: first, second, third (limited), and third (omniscient).        The third person omniscient is the literal “god” point of view in which the narrator is the see-all, tell-all storyteller. Everything from thoughts to actions are revealed to the audience by the narrator. This point of view is for stories with an ensemble cast. Examples of third person omniscient include George Orwell’s Animal Farm, J. R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, and Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo.      An advantage for using the third person omniscient is the use of “dramatic irony” where the audience knows something a character doesn’t. For example, in The Count of Monte Cristo, we, the audience, are clued into Edmond Dantes’ escape from the prison. We know that it is Dantes inside the body bag thrown out of the prison and not Abbé Faria.        Unfortunately, this point of view distances the reader the most from the narration.      The third person limited is perhaps the most effective point of view. It’s an over the shoulder, filtered view of the story. This perspective avoids the problem of giving the audience too much information—something an omniscient point of view may run into. This perspective is for stories with two to three (maybe more) main characters that serve as foils for one another. For stories that feel self-contained or want to teach a lesson.       George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is a good example of the third person limited, in which each chapter is divvied up into a singular viewpoint of a certain character. Each character has their own plot that feeds into the grand scheme of things in that epic fantasy realm.      I have found that the first person is very effective for frame narratives, narratives with simple, straightforward plots, and for introverted characters where it’s easy to get lost in a character’s head. It’s a perspective where I would allow the audience to see through the eyes of whatever character I’m trying to emulate through my writing.      My favorite example of the first person point of view is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. A collection of perspectives, pieced together to form a singular truth about the titular monster. This story also serves as testament to the unreliable narrator.        The last point of view, seldom used in fiction, is the second person. You will find this used mostly in nonfiction, letters, songs, and poetry, but there are a few examples in fiction, such as Dr. Seuss’s Oh, The Places You’ll Go. “Congratulations! Today is your day. You're off to Great Places! You're off and away!”      Surprise! You’re a character now and it’s time to choose your point of view for the story you want to write. Will you address the audience directly? Or will you simply use he or she and keep yourself out of the story? In the words of Dr. Seuss, “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”

Willam Clark Gayton

Photo Credit: William Clark Gayton, “Stairway to Orion” 2017

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What Makes a Good Editor? Thoughts from Our Team

Lisa Bain, who has edited many New York magazines, once told Philip Gerard that every writer needs an editor, and every writer deserves a good editor. As writers, when we look back on our own published work and see obvious mistakes, it is easy to feel cheated in the editing process. Editing is a dialogue between writer and editor, and in this dialogue, there must be a mutual trust

Here at Chautauqua, one of our mottos is “first, do no harm;” as editors, we always want to suggest ways to make a piece better and give the author the opportunity to bring their creative vision to the page with clarity. We asked our staff what they think makes a good editor. Here are ten of the qualities we think most important:

1. Vision. The editor wants to help you carve out your own vision rather than impose their own directive. 2. Passion. They are as passionate about the writing as you are. They’re nonthreatening and can talk about the work like you’re in a book club. 3. Solutions. They offer solution-based editing, giving specifics and taking it from a craft standpoint rather than saying things like, “I love the content.” 4. Flexibility. They point out where they’re interested and offer solutions to issues, while allowing for options. They let you address the issues in your own voice.   5. Opportunities. They point out places of opportunity that you may not see. 6. Questions. They know how to ask really good questions so you can create your own solutions. 7. Insight. They provide a chance to think in new ways, and they help you learn how to be a better writer. They help you recognize what your piece lacks and fill in the gaps to get closer to perfection. 8. Conversation. They are able to talk about the work, and any changes it may need, as a living, breathing piece. There’s room for growth through good conversation. 9. Attention. They’re alert to the music of the language and understand the deliberate nature of the work. They take the time to read everything aloud to hear the content and language; they appreciate how you say it, not just that you said it. 10. Personality. They have a sense of humor and are personable—they remind you that there’s an actual person behind the edits. Writing is too personal to discuss it at a distance.

photo credit: Marissa Flanagan, 2017 via instagram

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On Literary Performance

As someone who has stood in front of large groups of people with shaky knees and a lump in my throat, I can say that your “performance voice” is your true voice, the one that reverberates within you, the one you hear when you’re thinking. Marcus Tullius Cicero said, “If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be afraid to say it.” Like the reliable narrator in any form of literature, it is just as important to be honest with yourself as it is to be honest with your audience.

Everybody’s voice is different. That’s what makes a performance unique and exciting. We all pull from different resources, and that’s what comprises our style, our tone, regardless of whether we are storytelling, performing spoken word poetry, or singing—it’s the foundation of our voices. Use them. Accept them, but don’t use them as a crutch. I’ve heard the term “finding your voice” many times, and it has a definitive truth to it. Having found your natural voice (and being comfortable with it) can make any performance a great one. Influences can (and should) be a wide, varied amalgamation. For me, it’s a tall cocktail of rock and heavy metal music, Wolfman Jack, and spoken word via the Beat Generation and the local Wilmington, NC group Mics Wide Open. Since I was raised Southern Baptist, there’s a tinge of brimstone preacher in there somewhere as well.

The power of the spoken word is immeasurable. It has rallied troops to victory and offered words of comfort to companions. Sung to the right tune, it can summon tears of sadness or joy, or command revelry. Even today, word-of-mouth is still the best advertising. Do not underestimate the power that rests deep in the folds of our vocal chords.

If there’s any advice that I can offer from my limited experience, it’s to let your passion overwhelm you; let it take the wheel for a while. You are your greatest asset. Fear or unease can quickly become excitement and adrenaline, and that is when you are at your best. If you should ever find yourself in the company of unsavory individuals who would rather shove you down than encourage you, take that adversity and burn it for fuel. Nothing is sweeter than silencing naysayers by individual merit alone.

A quick history recap: in Rome, notable orators spoke from the Rostra, a platform built out of trophies from the Battle of Astura—six massive rostrums, the bronze battering rams of warships, twelve feet long and weighing over a thousand pounds each. It was in war as it was speech; the ships rammed enemy warships, ripping open the hulls, sinking the vessels to the bottom of the Mediterranean. In Rome, the Rostra, and its many orators, faced the senate.

This is what a spoken performance is to me—a battering ram powered by man and wind, meant to puncture and resonate within our core. It need not be violent or political; but it must find its mark. It must be felt before it is heard. You must feel it before you give it sound.

–Kenneth Thies

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Plot Bunnies

At some point, whether you are a new or experienced writer, you’ve probably dealt with procrastination. I’m dealing with it right now. For my writing, the challenge can be difficult. Deadlines are flexible, Netflix calls, and Facebook stands in the way, but these distractions can be beat by keeping a strict writing schedule and sticking to it—what if the main distraction you find yourself facing is another writing project, though? What if the story you’re telling isn’t the story you want to be telling, and you’re considering starting a different piece?      This is what some writers call a plot bunny.      Whether you should follow a plot bunny is debatable. On one hand, you might follow your white rabbit down a hole and end up in a mysterious world of fantastic story ideas—or it could go nowhere. And now you’ve wasted time.      Being a student/novelist, I tend to live in the world of the first argument. There is no rush to write a novel. There is no age limit on being a writer. Most authors don’t publish until they’re way older than I am, and by then, most have more than a few unfinished projects in their desk drawers. Why work on something you don’t enjoy and never plan to publish?      It is also true that a writer is always able to return to works in progress. There is an author I follow on YouTube named Jenna Moraci, and she had some very good advice: take a week to follow the bunny. Write it down, get the idea out of your head, and then return to your novel. “Think of it like having an open relationship with your book,” she says, and I agree. But what if that idea isn’t out of your head after a week?      The answer is simple: keep writing. The only real wastes of time are the days you don’t write. If your first story is going so badly that you can’t write anything at all, don’t be afraid to pick the bunny. If you blank out on both of them, well, that’s when you look at which one you’ve written more of and try to power through. If you feel like you can write about both of them endlessly, pick your favorite or have a trusted friend help you decide. You can return to that other story any time you’re stuck.      You may not have time to finish every story that pops into your brain, but don’t think the stories you don’t finish are a waste of time. There might be something you can pull from it later. I reuse characters in my manuscripts all the time. Don’t be afraid to steal from yourself.      Whatever your opinions on plot bunnies are, know that the only limits in writing are the ones we put on ourselves. It’s okay to get a little distracted, and it’s okay to give yourself a bit of freedom. Set your own pace, and make a decision that works for you. It’s one of the joys of being a writer.      Happy writing!       –Tess Duck

Photo courtesy of Miss Skew, “Bunny” 2009 via Flickr Creative Commons

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On Drafting

The bursting of words onto the page doesn’t come easily to every writer. Some writers favor the revision process over the actual act of writing. The rearranging, trimming, the cleaning up of something rough into something sharp and clear—these are the processes that make good writing great. Refining writing can feel like the ultimate act of invention. It’s so rewarding to see the transformation from a blank page, to words, to something both the writer and reader adore.

But that in-between part is the hardest to get down. All those changes—and which of those changes are the right changes in a piece of writing? You might still be getting the hang of figuring out the best way to draft, so here are some tips :

· Take some time. Some writers have drafts from the same piece a mere twenty-four hours apart, and then drafts more than six months apart from the original writing. The more time spent between drafts, the more growth you can allow the next one. Taking some time away from whatever you’re writing is key to giving yourself, and your piece, room to breathe.

· Get fresh eyes. It’s easy to get into the bad habit of writing, drafting, drafting a ton more, then doing one more draft before showing it to another person. While it’s great to polish your stuff before workshop, it’s also important not to be stuck in your own head when drafting. Fresh eyes, and fresh feedback, are key to freshening up your own writing. Writing may feel like a solitary act, but utilizing a group of trusted readers can make the whole process less lonely and substantially improve your final product.

· Save those trimmings. Keep a copy of all your drafts and never delete them. Sometimes you’ll be working on what you think is the final draft and realize you actually do want to include that scene you cut three drafts ago. Saving all your work makes it possible to look back and salvage certain parts. Saving drafts also helps writers cut closer to the bone of a piece. Many writers hesitate less to delete whole sections (which may have taken hours) if the writing is definitively backed up and saved somewhere, just in case they want to come back to it.

Best of luck to all you writerly folk out there. Keep drafting!

—Chautauqua Editorial Team

Photo courtesy of Wiertz Sébastien “Drafting” via Flickr Creative Commons

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Meet the Editors!

It is fall, and you know what that means: Pumpkin spice, deadly hurricanes, and Chautauqua’s new staff for the semester! Please welcome our eleven student editors as they work on “Wild and Tame.”

Jonathan P. Berrios is a creative writing student, with a primary focus in fiction. He considers his taste in literature extremely diverse, and his love for authors, such as Ernest Hemmingway and Charles Bukowski, is a testament to this.

Janna Coleman is a junior double majoring in creative nonfiction and English. She has lived in the Wilmington area for over a year now. Janna owns an incredibly loud, eight-month-old beagle puppy that has promised she will never get a full night's sleep again.

Tess Duck is a creative writing and communication studies double major. Her publishing experience includes graphic design internships at Wisdom House Books in Chapel Hill and Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group in New York. When she’s not in school or working, she lives in Chapel Hill with her family.

Marissa Flanagan is an MFA candidate in fiction. She is currently the managing editor for Chautauqua and was previously our designer. She enjoys writing and reading about witches, playing with her dog, and spending time with her family.

Katelyn Freund is pursuing her MFA in creative nonfiction. She has previous experience interning at the Missouri Review, both as an editorial intern and social media intern. She was also a founding editor of that literary magazine’s imprint, the Missouri Review Books. Katelyn enjoys cats, the oxford comma, and Cheetos.

Clark Gayton is an author, poet, pianist, photographer, and full-time student. He finds life and everything else amusing.

Sam Grist is a fifth-year senior whose focus is writing fiction. Aside from enjoying the many trades and mediums of art, he hopes to complete school and pursue writing as a hobby, and means of living, throughout the rest of his life.

Summer Hammond is a second-year MFA student in fiction. Previously, she lived in Austin, Texas, where she taught ninth grade reading, connecting inner city teens with amazing books. Inspired by her students, Summer now writes novels for young adults.

Jooweon Park was born and raised in South Korea. After coming to the US, she studied archaeology, photography, music, and English literature. She now studies and writes nonfiction. She loves road tripping and dreams of visiting other countries to learn about the people there.

Kenneth Thies is a graduate poetry student and our designer. He has penchant for ’70’s rock music, cheeseburgers, comic books, and life on the water.

Sarah Wall is a senior pursuing a BFA in creative writing, a minor in English, and a publishing certificate. After graduation, she hopes to work as an editor at a small press, preferably in her home state of North Carolina.

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The Importance of Little Things

I have found that the small, unique details are what really capture my emotion and attention as a reader. I love the unlikely descriptions of family members that bring them to life and make them memorable characters. I love the tiny touches that a writer uses to help me see an image differently than I did before. 

How do we, as writers, make sure the little details are unique and memorable? From my experience, I am the most successful at this when I follow a certain pathway to get to the image I want to describe. For example, imagine I am trying to write a scene with my grandmother in it. Instead of describing her wrinkled cheeks, graying hair, or translucent skin, I first try to zoom out. I focus on everything except the subject (my grandmother) and write down little details about the smell of the room we were sitting in. I concentrate on what was happening outside of the window that day or which cabinet had a scuff on it. Then I focus on my grandmother. I zoom in on small parts of her, like the two hairs on her chin she never could get rid of, the large size of her knuckles, the way she smelled like peaches, the way she pulled down on her skirt repetitively when she was agitated. 

I do my best to add in details that are specific to my grandmother, not just details specific to elderly people. It is easier to apply these same generalizations to our own relatives. My grandmother did have wrinkled cheeks, graying hair, and translucent skin, but so do many other grandmothers. I want to find the things that set her apart or at least make her stand out a little bit. When a reader can get to know the little unique facets of a character, they start to humanize the character in their mind. They remember that Janna’s grandmother is the one with large knuckles and two hairs on her chin. My character becomes someone that the reader should care about because they know these intimate, unusual details about her. 

-Janna Coleman

Photo Credit: Janna Coleman

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Understanding and Healing Through Craft

As writers, we live as creatures overflowing with emotions. Our feelings bleed out into words written down on paper, especially when we can’t express these thoughts to someone else.

Tragedy recently struck my family. To my surprise, my first instinct was to write these bursting, bottomless feelings down instead of focusing on my fiction writing or talking to anyone. Even though they are just words to be read, once written, words have the power to validate pain, life, death, misery, hopelessness, and wistfulness. We give so much of ourselves to our characters and their stories, and now, when we’re struggling to make sense of something that has no sense, our characters and their stories give back comfort and security as a coping mechanism.

Dr. Adrian Furnham examined how writing as a therapy has become a popular phenomenon over the years. “Poets have encapsulated great pain and pleasure as well as awe and awfulness in sparse beautifully crafted words,” Furnham wrote (Writing as Therapy). “The task can require serious introspection: an attempt to make sense of the past. To examine it from various angles rather than simply to try to shift blame onto others.” Furnham examines how writing allows us to evaluate and understand what has happened, how that affects our lives, and how we emotionally react.

We are all trying to understand our new selves in the aftermath.

I’ve included some measures I believe help in trying to heal.

·    Write what happened and your feelings all in one sitting—don’t think about what you’re writing; just write.

·    Write about fictional characters struggling with something similar to what you are.

·    Take ten minutes to write down all the words you can think of.

o  Afterward, read over and circle all repetitive words and words that overpower others. Try to understand the connections between all the words.

o  Draw the words. Even if they’re stick figures and squiggly lines, draw out how you feel.

·    Write a letter—to yourself, to the source of your feelings—even if you don’t send it, especially if you don’t send it.

·    Write about something related to your feelings and/or what happened, but focus on the form, such as writing the piece in fewer than one hundred words, beginning with the first letter of each sentence in alphabetical order, or writing the words in a way that creates an image.

·    Take any of the above activities and save it somewhere special or burn/tear it up, and even say a few words of farewell.

·    Let the words flow in your head in one conscious stream (maybe even scream them out) as you run, shower, cook, and then let those words wash away and don’t dwell on them.

Write a list of what you can do to make yourself feel better. Write a list of what you can do to honor a deceased one, or help others suffering. Begin acting out that list(s), even if it’s one point per week, or month.

--Laura Della Badia

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The Making of a Blob: Rough Draft Revelry

Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend --Anne Lamott

These words arrived as a gift to my spirit as I struggled painfully, once again, to write the perfect rough draft. The truth is, perfect and rough draft don't belong anywhere near each other. My evolving philosophy is that perfect doesn't belong near any creative endeavor, at any stage in the process. However, the rough draft is meant to be a playground where you are free to run around, fall down, and make a mess. Why then do most people who undertake writing give up during the rough draft?

           It is often because we are deeply and desperately uncomfortable with any perceived "mistakes" we make as we write. We are trained in school and later in our work life to see mistakes as bad. The truth is, mistakes are our best teachers. They are necessary to our growth, as humans and as writers. Without mistakes to guide us and lead us to deeper, truer places, we are stale, and so is our creative work.

           The rough draft is a place to practice getting comfortable with imperfectionism. Imperfectionism is freedom. It's where—through wildness and wandering—we find our truest voice and the essence of the story we long to tell. Embracing imperfectionism, I wrote the rough draft of my novel in a year. I wrote wildly, not looking back, for the first time not stopping to edit and fix. By the time I was through, I had seven hundred pages. I affectionately refer to my giant mess of a rough draft as The Blob.

           The Blob has pushed me and caused me to grow like no other piece of writing. From within its abundance of unruly (and downright disastrous) pages, I have had to search for and carve out the essential story. This has given me the opportunity to find and shape my own voice in a new, exciting way. Also, I've had to think hard about what I want to give with my book, how I want to serve potential readers—and then lovingly extract from the mess the richness of meaning.

           Imperfectionism has offered great opportunities and gifts.

           When you approach your own rough draft, rather than thinking perfection...think play.

           As children, it is the sweet imperfectionism of play that yields our identities.

           As writers, when we approach our rough draft with a childlike playfulness, more than happy to make a mess, we create from our truest place. And this original daring shines out luminous and inviting, rich and real, in the revised piece we finally deliver to the world.

           Service to our souls, our stories, and the hearts of our readers requires imperfectionism and the passionate making of Blobs.

by Summer Hammond

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Do We Ever Stop Revising? A Conversation with Julie Rochlin

At Chautauqua our goal is to publish creative works that speak to our themes and values. We work closely to foster a relationship with authors, helping to polish their writing and think differently about concepts or word choice. Our mission is to always value and stay true to their work. Sometimes, the versions we publish don’t always match up with the potential authors see for their work; these pieces are a part of the authors that create them and are always changing and growing.

The poem “I Won’t Wait for the Apocalypse to Bring You Clementines” by Julie Rochlin is one of these evolving poems. Rochlin has revised her poem several times since we published it in our Americana issue. She shared with us the different revisions.

As these poems show, revisions aren’t always large scale. They can be as small as a few words or a punctuation mark, but they can help pieces reach their full potential and impact. Revisions are an important part of the writing process, so we asked Rochlin a few questions about how she revises:

CHQ: How many revisions do you do before you send your work out?

JR: It’s somewhere between 15 and 25 drafts. I think I’d done close to 20 when I sent this poem to Chautauqua. I’m a slow-generator. I write the initial ideas, which usually form the shape of the poem. Then, I spend a lot of time sorting, gathering and discarding material.

How long do you let something sit before you know you're done with it and send it out?

I tend to hold on to poems for quite a while. I work on them. Put them away. Take them out. Make more changes. Put them away. Then, one day, I decide they’re ready to fledge. It can take several years for me to release them.

How do you keep track of your revisions?

I have a Word file called “Poems.” Within that, each poem is titled and numbered as I revise. For example, Tiger 1, Tiger 2, etc. I used to write first drafts exclusively in a notebook and then transfer them to the computer where all the subsequent revisions were made. Now, I sometimes write the first draft on the computer. But, I still like the feeling of writing longhand when I can.

What is your process for revisions? How does it differ from your writing process?

For the initial burst of creativity, I shelve the editor and that birdie on my shoulder that judges. It’s the time to catch thoughts and ideas without stopping to analyze them. Hopefully, I allow the unconscious free rein to bring forth material that can surprise even me. Once that’s happened, I spend a lot of time tinkering with line breaks, word choice, sounds, expansion or deletion of ideas first touched on in the poem. I ask myself, “what does the poem want?” The challenge with poetry is to make it accessible enough to comprehend on a first read, but also complex enough that there’s more to dig up on further readings. This is what I aspire to accomplish when I revise.

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Our submission period is now open! We are looking for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that fit our Wild and Tame theme. Submissions are open until April 15, so send us your best work! We can’t wait to read it.