Digging deep & putting it out there

Last week a few things happened that got me thinking about the extent to which I do (or don't) dig deep and put real emotion into my writing.

1) One of my writer friends, Elizabeth Gibson, tweeted me, lamenting that some of her writing seems emotionless when she reads it.

Although I've never had this exact thought about my own writing, I think I get it. (Actually, for the last year and half I've felt pretty excited when I write something light-hearted and fun that I can read aloud without crying. It's happening less and less.) It's a fine line to walk. I mean, maybe you don't want to cut your heart out and pass it around on a platter, but you do want to give readers something to relate to, right? Something to connect to?

2) A mere day later, I came across this blog post by Tiffany Lawson Inman about putting emotions into your writing.

Interview with author Jay Ponteri (Part II)

Last Friday I posted Part I of my interview with the fabulous Jay Ponteri, author of Wedlocked, a memoir published earlier this year by Hawthorne Books, and a creative writing faculty member at Marylhurst University. Part I was about Jay's writing and writing process. Today I'm happy to bring you the final segment, in which he talks about publishing with Hawthorne Books and gives new and aspiring authors a bit of advice.

How did you find your publisher?  
I know what presses publish what because I'm an avid reader and bibliophile. On any given day, If you go to the Blue Room at Powell's, you might find me. I was there one hour ago. This is a costly hobby, but it pays off when you need to consider what distinguishes one press from another. I think I sent this book to like six or seven serious small presses of unconventional nonfiction---Hawthorne being one of them---small presses that take chances on young writers without an agent / representation.

Interview with author Jay Ponteri (Part I)

I met Jay Ponteri in 2009, shortly after I began working at Marylhurst University, where he's Associate Faculty in the English department. For a while we both had offices on the same hall, and I knew him as the slightly distracted, somewhat-rumpled creative writing instructor who brought his adorable son to work with him on occasion. Although I never had the chance to work with him directly or to take a class from him, I was aware of the work he was doing - most notably, running show:tell, an AMAZING summer writing camp for teens - and had heard of him as a wonderful teacher.

When I heard a little over a year ago that Jay had written a book about the failings of the traditional model of monogamous relationship, my ears perked up. I'd been interested in and thinking about alternative models of relationship for five or six years at that point; I had no idea that was something Jay was interested in, too, and I was dying to hear what he had to say.