Freezing to death is probably not something on anyone’s mind this sweltering July day in New York. However, I was thinking about it because recently I went to an exhibit on polar exploration at the American Museum of Natural History.

You may be familiar with the story of Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott. Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer so determined to conquer the South Pole that, growing up, he slept with his windows open to train his body to deal with the cold. Scott was both less prepared and more desperate, (an enticing combination from a novelist’s point of view). They both set out for the South Pole in 1910. Amundsen got there first. Scott, battered by bad luck, poor preparation and bad weather, died soon after reaching the Pole.

Endurance, sacrifice, luck, talent, preparedness are all issues we talk about in the novel writing class that I teach. (Not to belabor a point, but aren’t all writers explorers and aren’t some of us doomed?) More importantly though, I’m transfixed by the image of Scott in his final days. There he was, truly in the middle of nowhere, freezing, surrounded by people who were dying, and what did he do? He wrote. One of the things I believe, and probably say a lot, is that characters have to struggle because only then do we know who they truly are. That’s why although I respect Amundsen, and would prefer to be on his team, my heart always goes to Scott. Yes, it was all his own fault, but he handled it with grace.

Anyway, as I nestle into my sweltering box of an office, with my two trusty sled dogs by my side, I imagine myself somewhere colder and more dramatic. How about you? Who are your heroes?

I’ve been silent these last few months, but not because I’ve been quiet. In fact, many good things have been happening and so I’ve been running, chasing after them. I have also, literally, taken up running, which is quite an accomplishment. I would not describe myself as a natural athlete. My preferred form of exercise is walking my dogs. Unfortunately, they’re both getting old and don’t want to take long walks in the woods. After our last excursion, when I had to carry my little white dog up a very steep hill, I pointed out to them that it would be simpler if I just took up long-distance running. They seemed happy about that.

So once a day I go trooping off into the woods. After about five minutes, my heart is pounding, my face is red and I’m slippery with sweat. At about this point the high school cross country team swoops out. No matter when I run, they run soon thereafter, though I very much doubt they’re waiting for me. They’re all strong and young and they pound by, but they always salute as they pass me, which I think is cute. Periodically older people run by, who I usually know, because I live in a small town. They invariably yell, “How’s the next book coming?” I always say it’s coming along fine, which I think is the case.

However, on a more tangible front, I did recently find out that one of my short stories is to be published by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. This was a real treat not only because it’s a great magazine, but also because it represents the first new fiction I’ve had published since The Fiction Class came out. (I had a story published in 2009 Best American Nonrequired Reading, but I wrote that ten years ago. And of course I’ve had a lot of articles published since then, but it’s not the same.)

So that brings me back to running, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned about publishing it’s that it’s like a very, very long run. You keep running and you feel like you’re going to keel over. But when you stagger, exhausted, toward the finish line you say to yourself: That was sort of fun.

So what’s up with Bloomer readers?

Please welcome a fellow Gotham teacher to Bloomer. Sonya Chung is the author of the debut novel, Long for this World. Here’s a post by Sonya:

Students often ask me, “When did you know you were a writer?”  The question is so laden, so bursting with adolescent angst. 

And I don’t mean that in any kind of condescending way. I have come to think that we never really grow up, not in our most tender, verdant souls; that adulthood is a very nice and useful idea that allows us to function in a complicated world and give wise-ish advice to people younger than us; that we are always both hungry for attention/recognition/love and terrified of it – that look-at-me/don’t-look-at-me contradiction being, a friend of mine who studies adolescent development tells me, the hallmark of adolescence. 

(Case in point: my debut novel, LONG FOR THIS WORLD, was just released earlier this month, and I find myself, on a moment by moment basis, oscillating between hoping that a major literary publication, or maybe a more mainstream publication, or a hip-and-smart blogger, reviews it; and counting the seconds until I can go crawl back into my quiet little anonymous (i.e. un-googlable) life and finish writing the next book.)

So the question, “When did you know you were a writer?” is an identity question, a self-worth question, a personal freedom and fulfillment question, a nascent creative soul’s hungry question.  And loaded into the question seems to be a ground-zero that tethers the asker to a primary or base identity — something presumably more real, more acceptable, more common, more stable.  To be a bank teller, you apply for the job and show up every day for work; to be a writer, you have to know – via, perhaps, some mystical experience – that you’re a writer. 

Hmm… Marilynne Robinson said it best: “You are a writer when you are writing.”  My God, how simple – simplistic? – and yet how true.  Do not roll your eyes, reader, as if I’ve heard that one before.  As we evolve in our work lives, piecing together various kinds of work to earn money, step-by-tiny-step nudging out the non-writing stuff and making the writing central (or at least that which is writing-related), I find it to be even more starkly true: I am not a writer when I am doing a reading and answering questions about the writing of my novel.  I am not a writer when I am grazing on wine and cheese at a fashionable literary awards ceremony.  I am not a writer when I am teaching, i.e. talking about craft and helping others with theirs.  I am not a writer when I am Facebooking other writers or keeping up on literary blogs or rearranging my formidable bookshelves.  I am not a writer when I am drinking coffee in Brooklyn at the table next to a handsome, bookish type named Jonathan.

I know I am a writer when I am writing.  When I am working with words, when I am making ideas and characters come to life with language.  When I am laying out the pages on the desk and taking my blue ball-point pen to chunks of text that I know don’t work in the story, when I am losing myself while typing a paragraph where something terrible, or euphoric, or quietly illuminating is happening.  This may sound naïve, and perhaps you will find me here blogging in five years saying something different, but I feel strongly that I must be an honest book tourer/literary speaker/teacher; I must be writing while I am talking about writing.  Otherwise, I feel like a fraud.  Even if it’s just an hour of work on novel #2 in the morning because that’s all there’s time for, or even if I’ve been working on the same damn narrative arc problem in a short story for three months, I know that I cannot stand in front of you, dear asker of the question, and exhort you to “show, don’t tell” or “up the emotional stakes and conflict” or “quit your day job! Art first!” if I am not myself at the writing desk, messing with words, living in the trenches (and heights) of which I speak.  I certainly cannot talk about “when did I know I was a writer” if I have not just come from, or am on my way to, sitting down to write (or, in many cases, rewrite).

YOU are a writer if you are writing.  No kidding.  THAT is “how it feels” to be a writer; nothing more, nothing less.  I sit with my students, who’ve been writing three stories per ten-week session, along with analyzing all the wonderful master-writer readings and thoughtfully critiquing one another’s work, and I tell them: right now, you guys are writers.  Someone once said, “The secret to staying married is to not get divorced.”  The secret to being a writer is to not stop writing.  Show up for work.

Today marks the second anniversary of the publication of my book, The Fiction Class. Two years is a very long time in publishing. If I were to convert that into dog years, my book would be a very old dog. However, here we are, not exactly coasting onto the best seller list, but not yet on the remainder table either. In fact, last time I walked into a Barnes & Noble, I saw ten TFCs face out on the shelves. So, what have I learned in these last two years?

1. Librarians are more important than I thought. I have to say librarians were not even on my radar when my book came out. Only afterwards, when my husband figured out how to figure out which libraries were ordering copies and how many, did I realize just how many books libraries buy. Not only that, but librarians organize book clubs, recommend books. If I could do it over again, and hopefully I will, I’d send a letter and bookmarks to each library in New York.

2. Independent bookstores are more important than I thought. I knew they were important, but I didn’t realize they mattered quite so much. I’d read so many articles about the decline of the independent book store that I thought they’d declined. Which maybe they have, but they still have a lot of clout. Plus, they chat with each other. Make a friend at one bookstore and you’ve made friends at a lot of bookstores. If I could do it over again, I’d send letters and bookmarks to each independent book store in New York and possibly wider.

3. Barnes & Noble is important, which I knew, but not just as a corporate entity. Its stores are run by people known as CRMS and they are as passionate and lovely as everyone else in the book business. (Which is not me being snide. I mean it truly.) I read so many articles about the heartless megastores and so on, but I found the CRMs to be incredibly supportive. I’ve saved the names of all the CRMS I met and I will send them letters and bookmarks. (You notice a theme.)

4. People like writers. It’s an odd thing, but true. I spent so many years with a chip on my shoulder, fulminating about not getting published, being angry every time someone asked about anything. But what I realize now is that people were just curious. They find authors an interesting breed. They want to help. I am dumbfounded at the things complete strangers have done to help me—recommendations, introductions. One woman invited me to stay at her house in England. More importantly people have trusted me enough to share very personal information.

It’s been a great ride and I can’t wait to see where it goes. How about you? What have you learned in the last two years?

One of the most intriguing parts of being a new author is that I’m often confronted with unfamiliar situations that require an ethical response, or at least a polite response. Such as:

If someone reviews my book, should I comment? I don’t mean bad reviews here, thank God. What I mean is if someone writes something friendly and nice on her blog about The Fiction Class, should I respond? The obvious answer is yes, but it’s not so simple. For example, recently I read a blog that had a very nice discussion of TFC. Then I, all enthusiasm, posted a friendly comment. Immediately the discussion stopped and everyone went away. I could see the problem. It’s like discussing sex with your friends in front of your mother. No matter what you say you’re in trouble. On the other hand, doesn’t one want to acknowledge people who say nice things about you? I’ve resolved this by using a fifty fifty rule. Half the time I respond and half the time I don’t.

Another conundrum: Should you give yourself five stars on good reads? If you haven’t been to www.goodreads.com, you should go because it’s wonderful. Readers review books and give them a ranking from one to five. Mine was 3.45, as of this writing, which caused me a tremendous amount of depression until I happened to be looking at Anna Karenina and saw that was at 3.9. Taste varies. However if I gave myself a 5, I could bump my ranking up a little. But would that be right? I decided no, though I could be persuaded otherwise. (And I did ask my brother to give me a 5.)

A corollary of this is, do you have to give your friends good reviews? That’s a tough one. I’ve met a lot of people who’ve written books and I like most of them. The problem is that if I give five stars to everything, then I’m devaluing my critical reputation, such as it is. Which is more important: friendship or integrity? I resolved this by not reviewing books by friends, for the most part, but then you get people mad by not posting reviews. I plan to resolve this issue by becoming more friendly with people who don’t write books.

Here’s another one: If you are at a book signing with another author, and her friends come along to buy her book, is it okay to look pitiful so they will buy yours as well. That’s a no-brainer. Of course.

Finally, if you talk to someone who mentions they belong to a book club, should you immediately mention your own book? And a corollary would be, if you are leading a book club, should you recommend your own book? In this case I didn’t but only because I knew that everyone in the book club had already bought it.  And at the moment I’m only leading one book club.

Such are the issues that preoccupy me. What do you think? What would you do?

Bear with me. This is a long story, but I hope an interesting one.

A few weeks ago I had to make an announcement at church about the book club I’m leading. We were reading THREE CUPS OF TEA, which we all liked. After the service my minister told me that one of the elderly gentlemen in church wanted to talk to me about the book. Praise the Lord, I thought. Just what I need. However, in my continuing efforts to lead a decent life, I called up this gentleman, who proposed that I stop by his office on Thursday morning. Even better, I thought. 

He had a small office on Main Street of my town. He met me at the door, smiling, charming, very old. He had a tall, elegant, beautiful secretary. She offered me tea. I noticed that on his walls were photographs of him with every prominent person I could think of from the last thirty years, among them presidents, astronauts and financial leaders. It turned out this gentleman had lived a fascinating life. He’d been a player in some of the news stories I’d worked on when I was a reporter at FORTUNE Magazine. I had a great time, was pleased that I met him. Then he told me he’d written a book. Would I like to read it?

You have to understand I am fanatical about preserving writing time. I don’t talk on the phone during the day, etc. etc. But I figured I’d gone this far. I might just as well go the next step and so I took his manuscript. I put it on my kitchen table and ignored it for the next week. But then, one afternoon, I picked it up and wound up reading the whole thing in one gulp. It was great.

This next part is where I hope this story gets interesting. I knew he’d want to know what I thought of the book. I wanted to give it back him, but when I stopped by his office a few days later it was closed. I couldn’t just leave the manuscript on the front stoop. Our town is safe but this was his life’s work and I didn’t want a dog to come along and pee on it. I could have given it to him at church, but I didn’t want him to have to schlep it around. So I thought, what the heck, I’ll mail it to him. That way there will be no confusion.

So I went to the post office. I should say that I spend more time in the post office than anyone in America. I’m always mailing out letters or bookmarks or presents or care packages. So I’ve come to know the postal worker quite well, plus, her son wrestles on the same team as my son. I believe she’s from Kenya. We always settle in for a chat when we see each other. When I handed over my package she looked at the address and said, “Main Street?”

I said, “I know. It’s ridiculous. But…” and I started to explain the situation.

She cut me off and said, “But I’ll just deliver this myself. I meet with them every afternoon for tea.” It turned out she and this gentleman and his secretary were good friends.

Why does this all matter to me?

Because I love the fact that these three people, seemingly so different, are friends. Because in learning about the connection, it changed the way I saw each of them. It also made me realize how much I love finding connections in my writing—two characters who seem unalike but share something in common. There’s something combustible about those moments of discovery—there’s energy in it. There’s also surprise, communion, friendship. All good things.

So here is my holiday greeting to all: May you have many connections!

The other day I was talking to a friend about what we were reading. We talked about the subject for ten minutes until I remembered I had just written an essay on that very topic for two great blogs: What are Writers Reading and America Reads. (Of course, I didn’t mention the blog posts to my friend because it seemed presumptuous to cite myself in the middle of a conversation.) However, I did think friendly Bloomer readers might be interested in what I wrote, so, here it is:

Every October when the finalists for the National Book Award are announced, I go out and buy the five books. (I consider that to be my annual Christmas present to myself and the book industry.) Usually I haven’t heard of any of the books, which is part of what makes it so much fun because it exposes me to work that is completely unexpected (and occasionally disagreeable.) After all, most of the time when I sit down with a book, I’ve carefully chosen something I think I’m going to like. I believe it’s important, especially for a writer, to expose myself to new voices.

So far, I’ve read only one of the five books—AMERICAN SALVAGE by Bonnie Jo Campbell. This is a collection of short stories published by the Wayne State University Press. The book itself , a paperback, has a surprising physical heft to it. The cover is smooth and heavy and the pages thick, the type gorgeous. It made me realize how beautiful a book can be—even leaving outside the words that are in it.  The stories in the collection are intense, occasionally funny, occasionally so bleak I felt like someone had put a rock on me. A few of them I loved. The first story, titled “The Trespasser,” is about a family that comes home to find that a trespasser has been living in their house. I loved the way Campbell handled the omniscient point of view, something I’ve always wanted to try in a short story. My favorite story, “Falling,” was about a woman who has to come to terms with a young man who betrayed her trust. The characters were flawed, but good-hearted. The final paragraph was very moving—I love a story that ends with hope of redemption.

Next up on my list of NBA nominees is LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN (Random House) by Colum McCann. Then IN OTHER ROOMS, OTHER WONDERS (W.W. Norton & Co.) by Daniyal Mueenuddin,  LARK AND TERMITE (Alfred A. Knopf) by Jayne Anne Phillips and FAR NORTH (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by Marcel Theroux.

How about you? What are you reading now?

I always try to say yes to things, which has worked out pretty well, with a few horrifying exceptions. So when fellow Gotham teacher Masha Hamilton asked me if I’d be interested in helping with the Afghan Women’s Writing Project I said yes and immediately forgot all about it. Several months went by and then she said, “How about now?” With the result that for the last few weeks I’ve been teaching a writing class on-line to a group of young Afghan women and what an experience it has been. What stories they have to tell!

The other night I had an e mail from a young woman, Shogofa, who wrote a lovely essay about the smell of rice. Her family was hungry, but her neighbors had rice; the smell of it was tormenting her. So her mother hugged and comforted her, which made her realize that her mother’s smell was so much more important to her than that of the rice. Then her mother died, but before she did, she asked her husband to take some of the little money they had, to buy her daughter some rice. She wanted her daughter to have that comfort.  The story was heartbreaking, but also inspiring and full of love and intelligence. What a joy to be able to connect to people like this.

In Masha’s words, the Afghan Women’s Writing Project, was “begun as a way to allow the voices of Afghan women—too often silenced—to enter the world directly, without any mediation.” The women, some of them students at Kabul University, some of them survivors of refugee camps, some of them witnesses to hardships of life under the Taliban, must make their way to a computer, which is a struggle in itself.  The teachers, who sign up for a rotation of a few weeks, post lectures and exercises.  (Write about a place that was important to you, for example. Or, write about a smell.) There’s so much about Afghanistan in the newspapers, but it’s just not the same as reading an account by one woman, as I did the other night, of her meeting with Afghan President Karzai. One of the most important aspects of being a writer is having something to say, and these women definitely do.

So, if you’d like to read more, please go over to the blog site, which is where a lot of these essays are published. You can find it at  http://awwproject.wordpress.com   Then please comment on their essays and add your words to theirs.

Sola! (which means peace.)

First off, some very exciting news. My story, “Triplet,” has been selected for the anthology 2009 BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING. Dave Eggers was editor, Marjane Satrapi wrote the introduction and, as of two days ago, the book was featured in displays in every bookstore I went into.

Which brings me to the next point which is that my story was originally published by anderbo.com, which is an on-line literary magazine edited by Rick Rofihe. One of the subjects my students spend a lot of time talking about, especially toward the end of term, is what do editors want. So, I asked Rick some questions about that and here are his answers:

SB:  Can you describe Anderbo in three words?
RR:  Fiction. Poetry. “fact”.
 
SB: How many submissions do you get and how many do you publish?
RR: We put up about one poet every 3 weeks; one short story every 5 weeks; and one non-fiction (”fact”) piece every 8 weeks. The anderbo.com  acceptance rate is less than 1% overall; probably we receive submissions from 10 poets (up to 6 poems each) daily, along with, say, 4 story submissions and 1 “fact”. We have a LOT of editors weighing in on the fiction, editors who are pretty much more analytical and articulate than I’ll ever be.
 
SB: What qualities does the ideal Anderbo story have?
RR: They’re not what I call “situational/ensemble”; that is, the protagonist gets most — maybe 85% — of the story’s word-space. The light’s on the main character most of the time in the site’s best stories, I think.
 
SB: Do you ever like something, but think it’s not quite there and give the author suggestions?
RR: I might try to lead them to water: only sometimes do they drink….
 
SB: Do you publish works by debut authors?
RR:  Most seem to be. Of all those ones so far, probably Kayla Soyer-Stein’s work was most instantly-astonishing to me: her poem, “To My Landlord”  and her novella, “We Were There and Now We’re Here”

SB: What sort of work would you like to see more of?
RR: Good, well-structured, 1500- to 2500-word stories are not as plentiful as I’d hoped….

Only once in my life have I been punched in the face. So far. And that was a direct result of my writing.

I should backtrack to say I grew up in the Sixties on Long Island, in a neighborhood that was middle class and homogeneous. There were a lot of war veterans on my street and one of my favorite memories is of my neighbor, who had been a parachutist.  On weekend afternoons, after he had a bit to drink, he liked to hitch up his son to a parachute and that to the back of his car and then he’d take off down our road. I can still see my neighbor’s son floating over Cynthia Drive, his father red-faced and gunning the engine.

However, my mother was concerned that my upbringing was too sheltered. Why she wasn’t concerned about my brother I don’t know, but she decided to send me to a camp for children from the inner city. It would be a learning experience. (I’m reminded of Woody Allen’s great line about how he was sent to an interfaith camp where he was beaten up by children of all races and creeds.)

I’m small now, but when I was young I was like a whisper. I had pale white skin and was always either bruised or eaten up by mosquitoes. I was not a threat. However, I did have a journal that I wrote in faithfully. Every night I wrote down my thoughts and put the journal under my pillow. Of course it took all of 23 minutes for my fellow cabin mates to figure this out, and so every day after I trooped off to breakfast, they read my journal out loud and laughed. Unfortunately, I only found this out later.

There was a girl in our bunk who was an Amazon. Huge, powerful, strong, and I wrote down in my journal, meaning it as a compliment, that she could have been the leader of the Black Panthers. She didn’t take that well. I, oblivious, walked into my cabin one afternoon. She held up my journal, read it out loud, lifted me up by my neck and punched me in the face. She got into trouble. I spent the rest of the week with a bandage over my nose and the next summer my mother sent me to a camp where we put on musicals.

But I still remember the horror of the moment when I realized she was holding my journal. That was actually worse than the physical pain. It was the feeling of exposure. People who didn’t know me were reading my words and criticizing them. It’s something I think about at the start of a new semester. I understand when I see how nervous my students are about having strangers read their work and I sympathize. We all just want some mercy.

How about you? Have you ever gotten into trouble with your writing?