Writing Certificate

I tend to write a poem about whatever comes flowing out of me, then just do small word changes or edits and then call it done. I'm not sure how much re-working or editing I should do beyond that. Would these become more interesting and more moving if I went back and spent more time on them? I don't want to overthink this or over-work these, but I also know that good writing does require re-visiting original drafts.

- Mimi

Dear Mimi,
 
Thanks for this question, Mimi. To help answer it, I went to two of our wonderful poetry professors, to see how they approach revision in their own work and guide students. Their answers are poems in and of themselves!

Poet Shann Ray wrote: “​​For me, revisions are the intricate day-to-day practices of kinship in a long-term healthy relationship. What is the poem asking of me to give it more of: freedom, power, love? Revising, using various methods of revision, seems to bring this about through time. Don't be afraid of 50 rounds of revision: for the 5 senses, for multivalent sonic beauty, for layers of rhythm, structure, plot, and also fire, hope, hate, fear, despair. Keep feeding revision hunger and I believe the poem gets closer and closer to being fully realized.”

And poet Jackson Holbert added this: “Unlike in most other arts, you can’t really destroy a poem through revision. Save versions, so you can always revert back to the original draft if your edits don’t take you where you want to go. You’ll always learn something through revision, so if a poem doesn’t feel absolutely done to you, keep playing with it. You have nothing to lose.”

I love those final words of advice. After all, it’s creative writing.

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A QUESTION ABOUT PUBLICATION SUBMISSIONS

Dear Rayan,
 
For this question, I got help from our wonderful instructor, poet, and memoirist, Caroline Goodwin. Caroline writes:

Well the short answer is, you won't! You have to just take the leap and send it, without really knowing, and with an open mind and heart. For me, nothing I write ever feels quite "ready," and yet these pieces are usually, at some point, "ready enough." A regular practice of reading literary journals, in your particular literary art form, will illuminate some of the elements that the different venues are seeking. There's a lot out there, so I tell my students to look for beautiful journals, attractive websites, venues that they love and that speak to their aesthetic sensibilities.

Then, of course, keep writing and reading and showing your work to your community. It's important to have feedback and to see all pieces as works-in-progress. They will get rejected, and this doesn't mean a thing about their worth or their readiness. Turn them around, and send them out again. Try to make it enjoyable, and make sure you dedicate some time to it regularly. Poets will likely send their work more frequently than a prose writer (fiction or nonfiction). When I began submitting work to literary journals in the mid-90s, we didn't have Submittable or any online platform—just the good ol' USPS. I remember a friend who had 100 poems out to literary journals at the same time. He received 10 rejection letters, in the mail, in one day! 

So, basically, depending on your genre, a piece is ready when it feels ready to you. When it's doing what you want it to do. Try to see the process as an exciting part of the writing life, an opportunity to contribute to the conversation and deepen your creative practice, and a way to get to know and appreciate other contemporary writers in your genre. Most of all, have fun! 

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A QUESTION ABOUT CHARACTERIZATION IN FICTION

Dear Suzi,

Fiction writer Sarah Stone suggests: “Sometimes it works best to separate the imagining from the writing, to sit in a chair with your eyes closed and just spend some time feeling what the character feels in their body, imagining the room, imagining the scene, the sights, the sounds, the smells. Who else is there? How does the character feel about them? Then you’re imagining the character from the inside, instead of the outside.”

Author Angela Pneuman adds: “Not to seem completely self-absorbed, but sometimes I place "myself" as a non-point-of-view character in the story, and imagine what the point-of-view character thinks of me, and how/why. It usually helps me get out of my own point of view enough to feel another character.”

As for myself, I like to start by thinking about what my character wants (because most fictional characters have some sort of external goal or desire) vs. what they need (because that need is usually the most interesting part of their character: a need for intimacy, for instance, or a need for security, or a need for independence). Then I think about where the need originated, and that means exploring their past—their life before the story starts. Figuring that out enables me to start imagining their thoughts and perceptions as they move through the fictional scenes in which I’m placing them.

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Do you have questions for our writing instructors? If so, feel free to submit them to [email protected] for possible inclusion in our next quarterly Spotlight.

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We are thrilled to celebrate new publications, awards, and other writing-related news from our student community.
 

• Judith Ugelow Blak had an essay published, called "What's Sex Got to Do With It?" You can find the piece in the anthology Gray Love: Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60, published by Rutgers University Press, 2023.
   
• Jill Fordyce wrote in to say: “At long last, I have received and accepted an offer for my novel, Belonging. It is with a small independent publisher, Post Hill Press, distributed by Simon & Schuster, release date Spring 2024.” Congratulations, Jill!
   
• Joanne Godley has another new essay, “The Mapouka,” published in Juked.
   
• Susan Moldaw had an essay titled “The Accidental Pilgrim” published in Sweet Lit, Volume 15. 
   
• Simi Monheit is thrilled to announce that she has just signed a publishing deal for her first novel, which she worked on in our Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing. “THE GOLDIE STANDARD will be published by Sibylline Press, Spring 2024! Signed today, March 10th. Would've been my mom's 96th birthday! Happy B'Day Goldie!”
   
• Tara Lee O’Brien says: “I’m pleased to announce that my memoir, Jackpot Junkie: A Memoir on Luck has been published and is available on Amazon.”
   
• Alyssa Lauren Stone had an essay accepted at Shondaland about how Julia Cameron’s seminal book, The Artist’s Way, saved her sanity during the pandemic. You can read her terrific essay here.
   
• Liam Taliesin writes: “Some exciting news to share. My novel Lithium Fire, placed in Winnipeg, circa 1984, has found a home with Bookland Press, who will publish it. I am very much looking forward to working with their team to bring this book into the world. Yes, indeed.” And we are very excited to see your fine novel in print, too, Liam!
   
• Carol Zapata-Whelan is featured in Kaleidoscope: Exploring the Experience of Disability through Literature and the Fine Arts. Zapata-Whelan’s story, “Velázquez's Workshop,” appears in Issue 86, “Unexpected Truths.” The work was selected from more than 400 submissions considered for this award-winning publication from United Disability Services. “Velàzquez’s Workshop” is an excerpt from an upcoming novel taking place in 1600s Spain. The story features a girl and her brother working in the royal court of King Phillip. Carol Zapata-Whelan is a university lecturer, wife, and mother of five who wants to raise awareness and offer hope. “My son Vincent is the world’s first M.D. with fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), which turns muscle to bone. I write to make sense of what’s difficult to understand.” 

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Instructor Writing News

Melanie Bishop, who teaches our course “Write the 'Modern Love' Essay,” was the winner of the 2021-2022 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award, sponsored by The Florida Review. Melanie’s Home for Wayward Girls is available here.






 
Thomas McNeely's story collection, Pictures of the Shark, was just named a Finalist in the 2022 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards. 








Liza Monroy, another “Modern Love” course instructor, had this wonderful personal essay published in LitHub about the parallels between her surfing and writing lives and how each informs the other.

(Photo credit: Matt Edge)






Lauren Kate Morphew has a new middle-grade novel called One True Wish coming out on April 25th.

(Photo credit: Christina Hultquist)






Deborah Johnson published an essay in response to Michelle Obama’s second memoir in The Christian Science Monitor.

(Photo credit: Birney Imes)

...and her piece prompted a tweet from the former First Lady herself!




























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Feature: Interview with Jessie Weaver

Introduction from Malena Watrous

Jessie Weaver was my student back in 2017. She was a teacher when she took my Novel I class as part of our Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing, and she was working on a young adult novel. I remember immediately noticing that Jessie’s work was so wonderfully in sync with teenage concerns. The voice of her young narrator felt pitch-perfect. Clearly, as a result of having taught teens for many years, she understood the population that she was writing about—and for! Her prose felt so natural, fun, and never forced. 

After Jessie completed the Online Writing Certificate program and the novel, I got a chance to work with her again in a one-on-one tutorial. While I had always thought of her as being very talented, it was a joy to see how far she'd come in her novel after working on it throughout the program. Jessie’s first completed novel was a mystery set at a wonderfully moody old boarding school in Ireland. It intertwined the concerns of the present day narrator who was sent to this school by her American parents, and those of her Irish grandfather who works at the school and harbors deep secrets that unfold after he’s found murdered on the grounds. If that sounds compelling, you’re right. Reading Jessie’s novel made me aware of how lucky I am to have this job. It didn’t feel like work, as I flipped pages fast to find out what was going to happen, forcing myself to slow down to savor her winning prose.

Fast forward a bit, and Jessie scored a great agent (unsurprising). While he ultimately didn't sell that first book, an editor who’d read it during the submission round was impressed enough by her writing that Jessie was invited to write a few opening chapters of a new book idea that the editor for this press (Disney Hyperion) wanted to produce. A few other authors were also invited to submit chapters. Based upon the strength of her sample chapters, Jessie was chosen to write the book (again, unsurprising given how fabulous Jessie is!).

That novel is Live Your Best Lie. I share this story because what stands out for me about Jessie Weaver is her combination of talent and persistence. She is endlessly creative and also willing to put in the work that it takes to write a novel from start to finish, and to revise it rigorously until it’s ready for the eyes of the world… And then to do it again if the first time doesn’t work out. Like anyone else, I know that Jessie finds rejection discouraging. But I have admired the way that she doesn’t let rejection stand in the way of her dream. She doesn’t take it as a sign that she should give up, but instead uses what she learned from that last project to make the next one better. This is a hallmark of most successful novelists and fiction writers. It has been truly exciting watching Jessie develop as an author and have her career take off.

I'm not at all surprised that she has found great success. Live Your Best Lie is a terrific novel, and I seized the opportunity to have a conversation with Jessie about the process of publishing it and what she learned.

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Q: Jessie, what keeps you going as an author after you encounter a setback or rejection? 

I think the biggest thing that helped to keep me going was knowing that every author has faced rejections. I read an interview a few years back with a New York Times bestselling author who said she wrote seven books before hers sold. SEVEN. That's when I realized that I am not one idea or one book. The thing that makes an author stand out is voice. I needed to hone mine through different books, and I was confident that if I kept going, eventually "No" would turn into "Yes." And it did! Once you sell a book, your setbacks change, but they still exist. I think the biggest thing is to dwell on the positives instead of the negatives and keep going, no matter what. 

Q: What have you learned from writing each of your novels?

I wrote the first draft of my first novel just before starting the OWC program. I was confident that it was The One. I'd revise it in the OWC, sell it, and bam, instant success. That...didn't happen. So really, that first one taught me humility and how much I still had to learn before my writing was ready for publication. I wrote my second book in the OWC program. It was my first thriller, and writing it made me fall in love with the genre. I wrote some flashbacks that were in third person, which seemed to go over well with all of the agents who read it, so that one taught me that I am a better writer in third person. I did sign with an agent on this book, but unfortunately, it didn't sell. My third book was a sequel to the second...and that one mostly taught me never to write a sequel before selling book one. Ha!

My fourth book is the one we sold, and that one has been such an adventure. It's taught me so much about the revision process. After receiving my first edit letter, I redid the entire structure of the novel. I ripped out fifty pages in the middle and replaced them. I killed more darlings than I care to admit. I learned to dig deeper into character motivation and flaws, and all of these things made my book a million times better. 

Q: What did you learn from any of your Stanford courses (or just the experience of being in classes or in OWC) that has helped you most as a writer?

So much! But I think the biggest thing I learned was how to structure a plot. I wrote my first book as a total pantser, and it wandered all over the place before finding its conclusion. Another piece of feedback I received in an early class has always stuck with me. The teacher told me that my setting was interchangeable, meaning that my characters were existing in front of it rather than living in it and being a part of it. That comment helped me to write characters that interact with their environments, which in turn, helped me to write way better action.

Q: I believe your new book is the first of a projected series? How was it different to write a novel knowing that the story would continue unfolding? 

It is a series, in a way! I drew inspiration from the way Tana French introduces a minor character in one book who will become the protagonist in the next. My second book can be read completely on its own, though it definitely has some carry-over from book one. I think my biggest challenge has been knowing that my protagonist has a set history that's already gone to print, so I can't change her backstory when convenient. I have to work with it. 

Q: What advice do you have for your fellow Stanford writing students who have yet to find agents or publish?

My biggest piece of advice is to find your writing community. You have the best opportunity in the Stanford program to find people whose feedback is valuable and helpful to you. Send an email asking them to swap work outside of class. Be generous with your feedback to other people, too. Your classmates can and will be some of your biggest cheerleaders down the road, so do the same for them! 

I also think it's so easy to get attached to one story, one book, one way of writing, but you are not one story. It's okay to set your hard work aside, knowing that you learned from it, to start something new as a stronger writer. 

Finally, it's easy to grow discouraged in an industry in which the goal post is always shifting. Celebrate every win—finishing a draft, signing with an agent, selling a book, receiving a great trade review, etc., but also things like filling a plot hole or getting your first review on Goodreads. These are all reasons for celebration, so do it big! 


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