Special Addition: The October Challenge Edition

As if life weren’t challenging enough, I’m heaping yet more on my plate. It seems that would be the case. On closer examination, all of the formalized challenges that I will attempt incorporate items already on my to-do and must-do lists. So before you call me crazy, understand that these aren’t more things but are efficient tools to deal with the unruly stuff of my writerly life. So let the games begin. I hope you join us.

October Submit-O-Rama

Hosted by the magnificent Ms Khara House
of Our Lost Jungle,
aka TweetChat Maven Extraordinaire.

No, I didn’t have to choose the Über Level Challenge. I could have gone for something easier, less challenging.

Here is my alibi: I received a shipment of my old journals and creative writing portfolios this summer. This material spans four decades of writing. Sadly, it isn’t all of my writings. I’ve lost much to crashed and stolen computers, damaged discs, etc.

Here is my confession: I am a published writer, but I’ve never submitted anything …ever…except Op-Ed and Letters To The Editor pieces most of which were accepted and published. My other work was published because I was asked to be included.

Nice batting average. But the difference between a professional and a hobbyist is measured in the height of the rejection pile not on runs batted in. So it’s time to screw my courage to the sticking place (my nod to fellow challenger, Gerry Wilson, and of course, the Scottish play)

Now, here’s the plan:Among that profusion of material from different times and stages of my life was a portfolio as well as an accompanying poetry journal and writer’s notebook. All of the material in that bundle was produced five years ago in a college intensive 8-week creative writing class. I wrote everyday for 8-weeks. The class workshopped the material. In all there are 32 distinct poems, some have as many as 7 saved drafted versions. I also have 3 completed fiction pieces. Don’t even get me started about the fragments in the bundle.

I stumbled upon a forgotten cache. Ms Bell had convinced me to include a timeline of my life in the end of the poetry journal. As in the style of Japanese printed books, the last page of this Top Flight Composition Book began with my birth and I grew older from back to front. Mostly these were geographic markers and household census style data. Some abbreviated important events that I could date or approximate.

Memoir & Backstory Blog Challenge
(OM & BBC)

Hosted by the illustrious
Jane Ann McLachlan
of Join the Conversation

Jane’s challenge is to ship a blog post for each year of your life until the age of 25. (I warned you in Weekend Recap post that October might feel a tad overwhelming.) After we post, we are supposed to share the link back on her blog so that we can comment and encourage, but as importantly, so that we might learn from each other the value in Memoir and Backstory to successful character development. This holds true for both fiction writers as well as creative non-fiction types.

Five years ago, I prepared for this October. And yet, am I prepared as we speak? I am grateful for the kick in the pants that Khara and Jane Ann are delivering to my writerly backside. Where is my resistance? Where isn’t it? And yet, I feel confident, but not completely self-assured. Maybe that is the best frame of mind to approach a long-standing challenge.

Some counter-intuitive strategy.If my goal in the Submit-O-Rama is to increase my pile of rejection slips, then I will gleefully lead with my weakest suit: Poetry. And as stated above, I have 32 finished poems from five years ago awaiting a stamp of rejection. Good and sensible place to start. I don’t think of myself as a poet, so it can’t hurt that badly then can it? I’m hoping for some callouses before I get to the stuff that I feel is more me.

Help a girl out, here.Just to build up a bit of skin before Monday, I would like your comments on variations of one short poem. At what stage in the revision process should I have stopped? Maybe I still need to revise some more? Would you submit this poem? (I’m not going to. It is the sacrificial lamb before the real slaughter commences)

1.
Breakfast of Champions

Geometric perfection
chalky fragility
tap, tap, tap, crack
the primordial ooze
amorphous gel usher forths
the vibrant inner sun.

2.
Egg or
Champion of Breakfast

tap, tap, tap, crack
the primordial ooze
amorphous gel ushers forth
the vibrant inner sun.

3.
Champion of Breakfast

tap, tap, tap, crack
primordial ooze
An amorphous gel births
the vibrant inner sun.

Which version is your favorite? Are there elements of each you like better than any of the current versions? ModPo folks can you give me a close reading? Who’s up for a challenge? Come join us. There is magic in numbers. Any other challenges out there? I am actually involved with two more: TNBT and Chuck Wendig’s Flash Fiction. More on that later in the week.