Stephanie Vanderslice

Author, Professor, Blogger, and Huffington Post writer

Want to know where I’ve been?

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I’m back, from a hiatus of sorts during which I went in for outpatient surgery for a benign ovarian cyst that turned into inpatient surgery for endometriosis (not serious, just invasive) and a partial Oophectomy. This means removal of one ovary but I just like to say it and write the official way because it sounds like something from Dr. Seuss. Oophectomy, toofectomy, roofectomy–see I can make up words just like him! Anyway, I’m recovering well but it took a lot out of me.

A few updates. The Mount, Edith Wharton’s house, has raised close to a million dollars but not without the controversy that is detailed in a recent New Yorker article. You can read an abstract of it here. They’ve also received another extension until May 31 and plan to open for the season in hopes of bringing in more money. I’ll keep you posted.

Time laid up means time to read, namely, Leonard S. Marcus’ magnum opus, Minders of Make Believe, the first ever history of children’s publishing in America from colonial times to the present. Absolutely fascinating stuff, IMHO. Children’s publishing has some entertaining personalities he lavishes attention on, especially in the twentieth century, such as the legendary Ursula Nordstrom, May Masee, Margaret K. McElderry, Maurice Sendak, Bennet Cerf, Dr. Seuss, Goldenbooks (a personality in themselves) and my personal fav, Louise Seaman Bechtel. It’s a monumental work and a fun dishy read at the same time. Bravo LSM, who is also coming to our university next spring as part of the Artist Residency Series. Can’t wait to meet him.
Other good laid up reads: Kaye Gibbons’ A Cure For Dreams, read in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down, and Aranzi Aronzo’s The Cute Book, a wonderful, easy craft about making felt mascots that even I could do.

Visited Heifer International in Perryville yesterday on a class field trip. Despite it being a bit too much physically (my incision, which frequently holds conversations with me, was virtually shouting yesterday afternoon, ) it was truly inspiring. We toured the global village and saw how the other 75% of the world’s population lives and learned all about their programs to feed, clothe and school the poor by providing them with livestock. We also learned the 7 M’s of livestock that help lift people out of poverty: Milk, Money, Muscle, Meat, Motivation, Manure, and Materials. I am thinking of starting a Read to Feed program with my own kids this summer wherein you can get a free starter packet to encourage your kids to read to raise money to send an animal to a family to help lift them out of poverty. Check it out.

Classes are over and I have several writing projects, well, right now the novel and the book on creative writing in higher ed, that I need to devote serious attention to but it’s been a slow start.
I’ll keep you posted. The next post, in fact, will be another short one on writing in keeping with the thread I started a while back asking about people’s revision habits. Stay tuned.

Bye y’all,
Steph

What Poets and Writers passed up. . .

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Here’s the skinny. . .

In the next to last issue of Poet’s and Writer’s magazine Dan Barden wrote an aptly titled “rant” against workshops. You can read it here.

I wrote the following in response. They elected not to publish it. Hence, here goes:

Dan Barden’s “Workshop: A Rant Against Creative Writing Courses,” (March/April 2008) once again calls attention to issues that have troubled writers for years about the workshop. In fact, Barden and others who despair enough to rant might find solace in the recently published crop of books that explore teaching creative writing both theoretically and practically. In Anna Leahy’s Power and Identity in the Creative Writing Classroom: The Authority Project, Graeme Harper’s Teaching Creative Writing, Steve Earnshaw’s The Creative Writing Handbook, and my own anthology with Kelly Ritter, Can It Really Be Taught?: Resisting Lore in Creative Writing Pedagogy, to name just a few, Barden will find essays by fellow writers who have also struggled mightily with the pedagogy of the workshop, who examine it closely and who often suggest concrete ways in which instructors can revise it so that actual learning he questions does take place. Supporting these writers’ effort’s by availing ourselves of the growing body of knowledge that explores creative writing pedagogy is critical and empowers all of us who teach the subject.

Stephanie Vanderslice
Conway, Arkansas

It had to get out somehow. Talk to you soon.
Bye y’all
SV

What kind of reviser are you?

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I think what I appreciated most about Trent Lee Stewart’s visit to UCA last week was his humility and the way this humility underscored that there is no one way to be a writer, that it’s about finding out what process works for you. 

This was most evident when he talked about drafting.  He says he labors over his first drafts so that when they’re finished, they’re more or less finished, requiring just a little tweaking.   He doesn’t enjoy subsequent revision because of the amount of time he puts into those first drafts (given the time element, I wouldn’t then call them first drafts but that’s another story).   But then he went on to add that he knows lots of writers for whom revision is the whole point and writing the draft is agony.

That would be me.  Sure, there are times when the “flow” is going pretty well in the drafting process, but most of the time, first drafts really are the hardest parts for me.  I just can’t WAIT to get to the point of revising, tinkering, tinkering, tinkering.  This makes novel writing, which I’m in the midst of, hard because the first draft seems to go on forever and I’m just dying to get to the revision.   The fun, “phew, the basic creation is done,” part when I can fuss over words and sentences and, in the relaxation of revising, get all sorts of new ideas to enrich the writing along the way.  Your basic carrot at the end of the stick.

I’ve tried the “revising as you go along” thing but it just doesn’t work for me.  When I do that, I end up obsessing so much that I revise the same three pages for weeks and totally lose track of the story itself.  Definitely a no-no when you’re working on a novel.  Gotta keep the big picture in view.

So, at this point in your writing life, what kind of reviser of you?

And now, a word from your friendly garage sale connisseur

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Diverting COMPLETELY from writing, words and books for this entry (don’t worry, I have a juicy new book to review in my next post) I have three pieces of advice for those holding garage sales this season and because my grant writing post seems to get a lot of hits, I’m also hoping to grab the attention of anyone venturing into garage sale retail.

So, after a particularly frustrating few hours this morning, I offer these words of advice:

1. Please, please, please give directions or a well known cross street or subdivision in your ad. You want it to be EASY for people to find you, not so hard we have to give up. Yes, I know there’s mapquest, but if the internet is down, as it was this morning, I have to wing it. I hate driving around and around! Gas is expensive and time is money!

2. Decided, for whatever reason, NOT to have the sale you advertised for TODAY? Or, maybe, the ad in the paper put the wrong date? Please, please, please put up a SIGN saying so. I know you feel guilty, but I’d much rather know so I can drive right by and keep going instead of driving around and around trying to figure out where the sale is or if it’s on or not.

3. Got lots of antiques? Sell them on consignment at an antiques store. No one wants to pay a fortune for something at a garage sale. We want a deal, at least a reasonable one. Hint: this may be why a lot of your stuff ends up unsold at the end of the day.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. Tomorrow is another day!
Bye y’all,
Steph

We have another winner!

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Cindy Hoppes, commenter extraordinaire, has won The Observation Deck, by Naomi Epel.  I’ll probably get it in the mail Friday, Cindy.  I have your address.

Looking forward to: A Q and A session with novelist Trenton Lee Stewart of Flood Summer, Mysterious Benedict Society and Mysterious Benedict Society and the Perilous Journey fame in about twenty minutes.  I have not read the former, but the latter two are wonderful about four quirky gifted kids and their adventures saving the world from adults under the leadership of the infamous Mr. Benedict.  I got a preview copy of the Perilous Journey at the Arkansas Literary Festival 2008 this past weekend and have kept the kids in thrall reading from it each night since.  Based on the length of their adventures and the size of the type, as well as the limitations of my poor eyes, even with new glasses, we probably won’t finish it until July or August (it took over three months to read the first book together) but it’s nice to have something meaty to look forward to every night.

As a writer, I also find that reading quality writing out loud each night, as Mr. Stewart’s writing most certainly is, is good exercise for my “ear.”   

Severe weather is expected tomorrow, in fact, most likely, a repeat of last Thursday except during the day.  Sigh.  I suppose we were due; we’ve gotten off pretty lightly in the last few years.  Of course, my other trusty go-to-weather guy, Mike Francis, would be on vacation this week, so I guess Brett Cummins will have to fly solo. Nothing against KATV, or KTHV, but you have to have one station you can anchor to while you switch back and forth and KARK, with Francis, Cummins and Jason Kadah is mine.

It all started with Mike Nicco, who’s now doing weather out in San Francisco (lucky him, except for the earthquake threat, nothing serious). I’m not sure how qualified he was but there was something about him I just trusted. Now Francis and Cummins, I’ve checked their stats and they completely know their stuff weather wise. They’re both degreed in meteorology.

I can’t wait until we’re through it, hopefully by Friday morning.

Take care, take cover and

Bye y’all,
SV

 

Twisters, Tomes and Giveaways

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“WOw. One minute you go to sleep and the next minute you wake up in the bathtub”

                                        Will Vanderslice, age 7, musing on last night’s events

 

It all happened rather suddenly. At eleven last night, I was upstairs glued to the tv keeping storm vigil, as I usualy do during severe weather.  Everyone else was asleep.  I was tracking the tornados that kept raking over Hot Springs and then following them through Little Rock and beyond.  KARK’s trusted meterologist Brett Cummins (he’s so serious, so earnest) had just explained how these tornadoes had formed out ahead of the squall line and those were therefore the most dangerous.  As opposed to the line of storms in the squall line heading toward Conway.  These were strong, but not as much to worry about.

Hmmm, I wondered.  Then what’s that little spinning arrow showing rotation just west of Conway? 

I kept on wondering but no one on any of the local stations said anything about it, focused as they were on the pummeling of Hot Springs and Little Rock.

Then the tv went out out. 

Ok, no cause for alarm yet, this can happen in a hard rain.

Then the sirens went off.  Time to “put your tornado plans in place,” as Brett says. I sprang into action, dragging the boys out of bed and downstairs and John out of bed, and all of us into the downstairs bathroom.  Even though it only happens once every couple of years (Thank God), we know the drill.  Boys in the tub, John and me on the floor outside tub, squeezed between the commode and the wall, all of us with the twin guest mattress over our heads, waiting.

Jackson, bless his heart and his God given ability to sleep through anything, just curled up with the sleeping bag and went right back to dreamland.  Will sat up with us and shared the countdown until 11:45, which, as you might imagine, went like this:

“How many more minutes?”

“About twenty.”

“How many more minutes?

“Nineteen.”

And so on. You get the picture.  Thankfully, the warning expired at the predicted time, the boys all went back to bed and I stayed up to make sure that the excitement was, indeed, over for the evening.  The sirens were for a funnel cloud north of us, but on the whole, Conway was spared, though poor Little Rock and Hot Springs are in serious recovery mode.

I haven’t forgotten the giveaway, I’m going to do the drawing this weekend and announce the winner of The Observation Deck in my next post.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading and writing and rounding out the semester.  Visiting classes to observe the finalists as part of my job as committee member for the Teaching Excellence Award Committee.  I really like visiting the different classes and feeling like a student again.  Except, No Tests!  So far, I’ve enjoyed learning about Neurological disorders in a nursing class and am looking forward to an honors class, a biology class and a speech pathology class next week. 

Reading.  The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeanette Walls, for a lively new monthly women’s book club I’ve joined.  A rollicking, crazy retelling of her childhood with a wild, nomadic family.   

Old Friend From Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir</a> by Natalie Goldberg.  I used up almost a whole post-it note pad marking up all the great writing exercises I want to use in this.  As good or better than Writing Down the Bones, the most accessible, sensible book on memoir I’ve read.  However, Goldberg’s tendency to tell you, in one way or another, to write for just ten minutes, got old really fast.  There was the old standby, “write for ten minutes,” my favorite.  Simple.  Unassuming.  Never goes out of style.  Then there was:

Go.  Ten Minutes. 

or

Ten Minutes.  Go.

or

Give me ten minutes on. . . or, Go ahead, Give me ten minutes.

I completely understand the purpose of these short assignments, you write with a concentrated burst of energy and if the piece demands it, you go back later.  Presto, subjects for longer essays. 

I just didn’t like feeling like I was in boot camp.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti’s novel The Boy Who Dared, based on the true story of sixteen year old Helmuth Hubener, who defied Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany and hung for it.  I read it for more novel research (one of my characters is a Nazi Youth member about Hubener’s age).  It could be quite compelling at times but at others, felt more like summary than scenes.  This may be because Bartoletti knows the subject so well; she won a Newbery Honor medal for a nonfiction book about Hitler Youth. 

A fun book called Garage Sale America, by Bruce Littlefield (a must click link!).  Ah, he captures the spirit of the sport perfectly.  And the beauty of it: I got this relatively new book for 2.50 at a flea market where everything in the booth was half off. Bruce would be so proud!

It’s that time of year again, folks.  Spring is in the air and bargains lie in wait at on sawhorse tables all over Central Arkansas.  I went early today for an hour and a half and let me tell you, if I was in the market for antique furniture, I would have hit the jackpot.  As it was I scored: a great vintage apron ($1), a vintage toleware tray($1) and a funky wood sixtie’s lounge-style painting ($1). Not much, but not bad for a rainy day either and I’m only getting started. . .

That’s all for now–look for the winner in the next post–

Bye y’all,

SV
PS $563,000 has been donated to far to Save the Mount. George Soros, are you reading this?

 

 

 

And where have YOU been?

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I had planned to write at least a couple of entries on this Ozarks getaway.  But life intervened.  First, I got sick.  In fact, the entire family got sick, to the extent that you would have thought that there was a competition to see which of us would cough up a lung first.  Mornings around here have been a veritable symphony of hacking that is only just finally winding down.

But it wasn’t the flu or anything serious.  Just a hard core cold making the rounds and a general malaise that made me feel like doing very little except lying around reading and looking forward to my next Sudafed.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to.  Do much, that is.

Next, our internet connection started getting weird, no doubt related to the fact that the condo’s connective wire was loosening.  You can only be tripped over by a seven-year-old a certain number of times before your connection starts to go.  So the knowledge that while I was writing a post, the internet connection might suddenly disappear, as it has been doing in the last few days, was a powerful disincentive to write.  Finally, I just decided to write a simple entry to get back in the game, and paste it in.  Ergo. . .

Reading.  I have done a lot of reading, which I was hoping for, and a lot of “not answering the phone,” because it doesn’t ring!  Whee!!!!

We have holed up in a nice condo with two story windows that look out on Table Rock lake.  We’ve read (more on that below), watched more tv than usual (Enchanted, the Parent Trap, Spiderman, Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (sigh) and HGTV out the wazoo), and spent way too much time on the computer when the connection was good (me on Ebay and the kids on Yugioh Cardmaker).

I have gorged on shelter magazines and finished Love and Consequences and Finding Your Child’s Strengths.  Love and Consequences, a is gang “memoir” that managed to make it to the Faulkner County library in spite of the fact that Penguin pulled the hardcover from the shelves, a la James Frey, just days after it was published.  Turns out it is utterly fictional.  Not just a few “characters combined here and there, some names and places changed,” but entirely made up.  Check out the controversy here.

Conclusion:  It stinks in any genre, fiction or non.  I can’t believe it got published.  The writing is horrible.  Nuf said.

Finding Your Child’s Strengths.  Pretty good if you’re interested in the material.  Check out the strengths movement here.

Now I’m heavy into the Hermione Lee’s Edith Wharton biography which is living up to expectations—well done, Ms. Lee! (she’s British).  It is definitely the best bio yet.   But here’s the issue.  It’s 750 pages of dense stuff.  Normally this wouldn’t be a problem if I hadn’t already read a bio of Wharton, during what could be called my “Edith Wharton period,” some years ago.  I must confess I am someone who is spurred ahead by suspense and new information.  Which is rather subtle when you’ve already got a pretty good idea of the author’s life.  But on page 50, I’m not giving up yet!

I’ll end with an update on the crusade to save Ms. Wharton’s historic house, The Mount.  They got a $30,000 grant which has meant a reprieve until April 24.  They have raised $550,000 ish on their way to 3 million dollars.  Spread the word, people.  This property desperately needs saving.

Till we’re back in Conway tomorrow,

Bye y’all,

SV

Dispatch from Kalamazoo. . .and a new collection

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Ok, I am very worried.  The piper comes calling on March 24 (one week from Monday) and The Mount has only raised about 544,000.  That means they have a long way to go.

They’ve been getting a lot of press but has any of it been national?  CBS Sunday Morning?  The Today Show?  Come on folks, we need some major exposure. 

Thanks to my typewriter collecting friend, Monda (any news on the Corsair?), I have taken the plunge and started collecting tin toy typewriters.  I got my first one before I left town and am watching another one ebay that Monda tipped me off to.  It ends Monday, when I’ll be on the train, but hey, if it’s meant to be, it will happen.  I’ll bid before I leave.  You can see my first one here.

I lean toward the more graphically interesting types that also happen to be cheap.  I’ve noticed that there’s precious little info about collecting toy typewriters on the net. Maybe if I get more into it, I’ll write some.

Kalamazoo has two antique malls/stores within walking distance of the hotel.  Before we started work on Friday, I purchased:

Three Little Pigs Golden Book from 50’s–it was cheap and I’m a haphazard LGB collector (is it less than 3 dollars, is it vintage? Sure, I’ll take it. What the heck.)

A Wade china sheep for one of my shabby chic printer’s tray collages. 

A $3 ziploc bag of various passementerie remnants, also for my collages.

A tiny 1953 book on Staffordshire animals that I may give to my friend Steve because, for some reason, it made me think of him.

One dozen dappled blue and gray robin’s eggs (also for the collages and whatever else I think of).

A tin box with an elf.  Not sure what I’m going to do with it but it called to me.

Worked all day today on the 2008 Rural Sites Resource Development Retreat this July,  then ate like a queen, in true Writing Project tradition at a local nouvelle cuisine restaurant called Sprout. In the last two days I have had butternut squash THREE TIMES.  Heaven! Tomorrow, we work from eight till twelve, when most people are leaving.  I have to leave Monday because that’s when I can make the Chicago train.  I have work to occupy me most of that time though. 

One week till spring break. The family and I lucked into a timeshare in Eureka Springs (thank you, Uncle John!) where we (I) plan to read, watch a lot of movies, and prowl around Eureka, maybe even Branson or Berryville for day trips. Basically the goal is to get away and do nothing (though if I could make it to a few antique malls, solo, that would be fine too). Appropos for this week are some big fat books I got for my birthday, the new translation of War and Peace and Hermione Lee’s recent biography of Edith Wharton.

I’ll keep you posted–

If you have any spare change or connections with national tv, consider using it to Save the Mount! 

Bye y’all,

SV

More about the Mount. . .

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And don’t forget the giveaway for comments between now and March 31.

Thrill of thrills, my “memory piece” about Edith Wharton’s the Mount made it to the
help save the mount blog, here. They edited it beautifully and even added an interior photo. The best treat are the pieces from other writers that follow.

I’m in Kalamazoo, Michigan today for a Rural Sites network meeting for the Natioinal Writing Project–not sure how much I’m going to be able to post if at all, but we’ll see.

Bye y’all,
SV

And it’s off. . .and more about Edith Wharton’s Home

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Finally finished my essay, “Once More to the Workshop: A Myth Caught in Time,” and emailed it to Dianne Donnelly, who’s editing a collection on the current state of the workshop for Multilingual Matters.  I had fun with it, weaving in relevant quotes from E.B. White’s oft-anthologized “Once More the Lake” (read it here) in order to make the point that the “traditional” workshop has been mythologized to the point that it is a frozen icon–much like White’s lake, and his essay.  In it, I also got to give my two cents about Dan Barden’s essay (he call’s it a rant, and rightly so) in the most recent issue of Poet’s and Writers, in which he demonstrates a complete lack of awareness of recent research and writing on creative writing pedagogy (recent meaning of the last say, ten years).   Honestly folks, how many essays do we have to have re-inventing the wheel (the traditional workshop is problematic?  really?  what a concept!) before we move on!

In other news, apparently, the fight of save Edith Wharton’s The Mount has garnered quite a bit of attention and now, an official blog at helpsavethemount.blogspotcom. All the important donation  info is there, new photos, and, soon, stories from readers about the influence the Mount or Edith Wharton has had on them.  I duly contributed.  As I mentioned in a previous post, this historic site has had quite an influence on me.

Also baked bread this weekend, in order to make sure my husband and kids have a good stock while I am in Kalamazoo later this week for the Writing Project, and spent a delightful half day with my favorite almost-three-year old sprite, Lillian.  We blew bubbles, built with duplo blocks, drew with crayons and cut with scissors–or rather, I assisted with the latter and was formally dubbed a “good helper!”

At some point I’ll post a recipe for the bread; very simple, my husband’s family recipe, but there’s nothing like it.

That’s all for now.  Don’t forget about the giveaway.

Bye y’all,

SV

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