Is Writing a Team Sport?

Most writers are not also known as jocks. They’re not the kind of people you picture shooting hoops, throwing the touchdown pass, kicking a goal. The stereotype of a writer, forgive me: is bookish, introverted, who doesn’t understand the dynamics of cheerleading other players, or being the supporting player in a larger group. And that same introverted, bookish young writer dreams of being the star all the time: alone at his laptop, “creating,” or in front of an audience, accepting a prize or performing work to a rapt crowd. They don’t necessarily dream of the hard work it takes to make those things happen – a lot of which revolves around acting as a supportive team member. So is writing a team sport, or an individual sport?

For instance, what will your connection to your poetry community be if you never show up to anyone else’s reading, but complain when no one shows up to yours? If you ask for reviews from friends, but never write any yourself? (And I’m including Goodreads and Amazon in that – not everyone loves writing long-form critical reviews, but everyone can write a nice Amazon review.) What happens if you go to a writing group where you listen attentively to everyone’s comments on your piece, but never offer any feedback yourself? If you act as an editor, or a publisher, for a literary magazine or poetry series, yes, it will take time and energy, but what will that add to your understanding of rejections, suggested edits, or book promotion?

There’s also the trouble of group dynamics – again, a stereotype of writers is that they’re touchy, sensitive, crying over a rejection or a bad reading, unable to stand a single negative comment at a conference workshop. If you have a group of people who consider themselves sensitive, or stars, how do you interact with each other in a helpful, non-painful way? I mean, if you’ve been to AWP, you know what I’m talking about: people pushing their books without listening to anyone else, waiting to talk to people they deem “more important” while ignoring those “less important.” Everyone can’t be the star all the time, everyone can’t be “the sensitive one” in a room of 10,000. That will lead to a lot of crying at the bar.

If you think of yourself, sorry for the basketball metaphor, as someone who not only makes the layups themselves, but also stars in “assists” – that is, passes to people who score the points – then I think you’ll be happier and more successful in the long-haul work of being a writer. (I know it might be a surprise for those of you who know me now, but I used to play three sports – soccer, basketball, and track – and was even offered a couple of college basketball scholarships. Yes, even though I’m five four – I was a point guard, it’s a little bit of a support role rather than a forward/star kind of role.) Back then, before the onset of most of my autoimmune issues, my body was more cooperative, but even more than any physical thing, or learning sports skills and learning how to win and lose, these sports taught me that I don’t have to always be the person in the spotlight, and helping the team to a win sometimes means a little bit of sacrifice individually.

So, yes, we have to spend a certain amount of time locked up alone with our notebooks/laptops/typewriters, but we also have to go into the world and find fellowship, encouragement, find your audiences and like-minded friends, find people we can be cheerleaders for, find people we can mentor and be mentored by, find opportunities to pitch in to something larger than ourselves.

I’ve thought of a lot of dream jobs: running a bookshop, teaching part-time at a low-res MFA program, being a publisher, working in PR for writers, running a writer’s conference or retreat (if I ever come into unexpected money, a lot of these things are possible!) I’ve realized that I actually thrive more when I’m slightly more social, when I open my arms to more people. There’s also balance necessary there – you don’t want to be a pushover, or encourage people who take advantage of you or are bullies or otherwise toxic – and it seems to me most women writers are often so nice it’s at the expense of their own writing careers. Being a good team player also means standing your ground and taking the shot sometimes.

I’m working at finding my own balance right now. What do you think of the team sports metaphor? Apt? Or not?

New Poet’s Market 2015 and an Oak Ridge Poem in Outside In

Thought it’s been a tough month-and-a-half health-wise, I have a lot to be thankful for. (Isn’t the season of Thanksgiving coming up? I keep seeing pumpkins…)

First, thanks to the magazine Outside In Literary and Travel magazine for publishing my poem “Oak Ridge Accepts” – with accompanying 1970’s nostalgic photo – in their final issue.
Here’s the link so you can read it: http://outsideinmagazine.com/issue-eighteen/poetry/oak-ridge-accepts-jeannine-hall-gailey/

So today in the mail I got a copy of Poet’s Market 2015. Here are a few pictures of it. (My mom was very happy she could see the picture of me on the back! So, thanks and here you go, Mom 🙂 I’ve got a poem in there called “Introduction to Girl Detectives” – a tribute to an aging Nancy Drew – (along with fellow Seattle-area poets Joannie Stangeland and Judith Skillman) and two articles, one on promoting poetry books and another on giving readings. It really is a great resource and I love it more every year! It’s particularly nice for inspiration on where to send your work during the busy fall season…

A few words for first-time poetry book authors

I have an ambitious, smart, hard-working writer friend who just launched her first poetry book. She is very anxious that it does well, and I remember feeling like that too, when my first book came out. A types especially have this problem. The thing is, that anxiety doesn’t always serve you well in the nerve-wracking ride of first book launches.

So, here are a few words of advice – and please, if you have observations or tips that might make someone’s first-book journey a little easier, leave them in the comments!

—Any reading where you sell books is a good reading. In the course of publishing three books of poetry, I’ve literally done hundreds of readings. Some great, some not as great. Over the years, I’ve learned to be thankful if 1. no one falls asleep or walks out 2. more than six people show up and 3. I sell any books at all. Readings are hard and take a lot of emotional and physical energy, but not every reading pays off. You kind of learn as you go there are good days for reading and bad ones and sometimes you don’t have control over it (one example of a bad one: the day Obama visits your town and all traffic to your reading locale is blocked. That was my second book’s launch. Hooray!) Bars are typically louder than say, a bookstore, and more likely to have rowdy locals not as interested in poetry (but I once did a reading at a wine bar where a completely sauced woman bought everyone’s books and gave us hugs! So, you never know!) Bookstores if they haven’t done promo are more likely to be quiet, but also more likely to be…empty.

—Just like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy told you – Don’t panic. Most books of poetry, I’ve said on the blog before, don’t even sell 1,000 copies. I’ve learned that 98 percent of books don’t sell 1,000 copies, overall. So don’t feel bad if you’re not selling out the hundred books you bought from your publisher right away. It takes time for poetry books to gather steam, along with word of mouth, good reviews, good readings, etc. “Buzz” matters, but for poetry books, it’s more of a slow-but-steady buzz that helps you in the long run. And no one gets rich from their poetry book royalties, not even Billy Collins. (Even he keeps doing readings for golf course time and free wine, I have it on good authority!)

—There are a lot of books out there, and when you’re a new author, making yours stand out is tough. This isn’t meant to discourage people, but there are tons of books being published every year – poets, check out Open Books in Seattle to get a sense of how many poetry books are out there – and it’s hard to make noise when everyone is shouting, so to speak, and some of those people are winning Pulitzer Prizes. The best advice I have for that is to find your target audience and try to communicate with those guys. If you’re got a book about airline pilots, go to airline pilot web sites and events, etc. The problem is, when you’re a new author, no one knows about you yet – it’s sort of the nature of the beast. Yes, I advise people to get a good basic web site, start a blog, get on Facebook and twitter and Tumblr and as many of those things as you personally can stand, but you are still building a presence, an audience, so remember to have patience. The readers will come, eventually. Building an audience is long game, not a short one.

—Do What You’re Best At. Some people are terrific at giving readings and workshops, interacting and glad-handing, but not everyone is. Some people are good at pithy remarks on twitter; I’m not really one of them, but I’m still on twitter. Find the thing you’re best at, and shine there. If this means going and speaking to Chamber of Commerce groups or senior centers or high schools, if this means writing kick-ass articles on the topic your book happens to be about and getting the published, if this means posting YouTube videos about your book…I mean, find and exploit your own talents. Sometimes this means you have to find your talents, but I bet you already know where you’re really blessed.

—Don’t take it personally. Even your friends and family are going to forget about your book, even if you sent them an e-mail and a postcard about it. You and your book aren’t the center of other people’s universes. People will forget about your readings, they’ll write bad reviews of your book on Amazon (yup, my first book, which is my most popular, also has my only one-star Amazon review – and whattya gonna do?) I remember a friend who was angry when her book got four stars instead of five on Goodreads. I mean, that’s going to happen, especially as your book gets picked up by non-friends and family. You kind of have to let it go. You can’t let it personally disappoint you or you’re going to get bitter and you need that energy to write your next book!

—You’re going to write again. So, get on with it. This book will probably not be your one and only, right? So even in the middle of your book tours and promotional work, remember to keep writing and keep sending out your work. Plus, that’ll give you more energy to deal with bad reviews and readings where three people attend, because you’ll be like, “Sure, this is hard, but wait til my next book!” It’s all about the work, your attitude, and your energy. Always be thinking about the next great thing you’re going to write.

When Plans Go Awry, Xolair Diaries Part II with Serum sickness and Immunosuppression

It’s a beautiful day outside, but I am stuck inside with the stomach flu. This also prevented me from attending a long-awaited reading with Natasha Moni and Hollie Hardy at the Pine Box last night, which made me very sad. Here we are with all these plans, months in the making, and then something as ignominious as stomach flu can get in the way.

Which leads me to a bit of a side post on Xolair. (You can skip this if you are not interested in genetic-modification-related biologic autoimmune drugs and their side effects.) Now, my immunologist/allergist doctor said it had hardly any side effects, that it was super safe, and then I had a fairly severe serum sickness response to it, which he was completely surprised by. I also asked him about whether or not it would make me “immunosuppressed,” in the way that steroids, for instance, or ciclosporine do. Well, not exactly, he said – but the warnings on the Xolair info state that you will be more susceptible to illness (and, incidentally, cancer,) as well as to more severe reactions to illnesses you might catch. If I had read that packet on Xolair more closely, then maybe I wouldn’t have been so surprised when, after finally feeling recovered from the serum sickness reaction, I came down with 101 fever and severe stomach issues – probably a virus caught at another reading event. See, because, I say to myself, I should have known Xolair would make me more susceptible to whatever germs are wafting around, and that this outstanding fever – like 101 right now – is a sign that my body is not as good as fighting things like flu off as usual.

So, resting, missing the sunshine-y, 75-degree outdoors, readings yesterday and meetings with other writers tonight, could possibly make me a little cranky. Instead, I try to think about the things we can and can’t control. I could have controlled getting the Xolair shot, but several doctors thought it was a good risk for me, and I agreed. I could have just not gone outside for several weeks knowing I’d be more compromised than usual immune-system-wise, but that’s not very practical. So what can you do when your plans go awry? Well, I try to see the positive (not passing flu to my dear friends) and get as much work done as possible (one review written under very high fever and stomach flu conditions, see how such things affect the writing of reviews?) and just try not to see it as yet one more sign that the universe is, as they say, against me. You can control some things, but not all. Being a writer is sometimes about making appearances, and I don’t like letting people down because of my health, but it is out of my control. Being a writer is usually a great gig for the health-challenged because, as I have indicated, you can do it even when you’re stuck inside and feeling like crap. You can create, but the part of your job that is performing that creation, well, that part can be a little trickier. You can blame Mercury, or the full moon, or bad luck, or fancy $1500 genetically-modified immuno-drug shots, but sometimes things won’t go our way. And then we have to say to ourselves, we can only do what we can with what we are given.

Upcoming Events – Pine Box and LitCrawl Seattle

So, you think you’d like to see me read some poems in person? You’re in luck! I’ve got two big public readings in the next few weeks! As the weather gets darker and rainier, for some reason, we do more poetry readings! Right now, for instance, I’m off to an informal closing event for VALA’s Voices in the Corridor (5:30-7:30 PM at VALA in Redmond Town Center.)

This Sunday, I’m reading with Seattle medical student Natasha Moni and San Francisco sensation Hollie Hardy at Seattle cool-spot bar The Pine Box at 7:30 PM. You can either call us “Poets on the Edge” or “Girls Who Stop Your Heart” (a little joke since Natasha’s new book is called The Cardiologist’s Daughter and Hollie’s is How to Take a Bullet, while mine is Unexplained Fevers.) More info here: http://www.pineboxbar.com/events#poetry.

Later in the month, I’ll be part of this year’s LitCrawl Seattle on October 23. I’m part of dueling poetry reading, Superheroes Versus Fairy Tales. Yes, I’m reading as part of the superheroes, but I could sneak in a fairy tale poem! I’ll be reading as part of the reading from 8:00 PM to 8:45 PM at the Project Room. Here’s the full lineup: Angela Jane Fountas, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Michael Schmeltzer, and Maya Sonenberg, with Evan J. Peterson. And, for the full schedule, see here: http://litcrawl.org/seattle/2014-schedule. There’s an after party directly after our reading at Hugo House that sounds like it will be fun, and you can also grab me and get me to sign (or sell you) a book!