“Advice for Writers”: Spotlight on US Poet, Playwright and Translator Zack Rogow, and His Mega-Rich Resource of a Blog

By C.M. Mayo www.cmmayo.com

This blog posts on Mondays. As of 2019 the second Monday of the month is devoted to my writing workshop students and anyone else interested in creative writing. (You can find my workshop schedule and many more resources for writers on my  workshop page.)

This past spring I attended the Associated Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) annual conference and bookfair, where I read from Meteor, my book of poetry, as part of the Gival Press 20th anniversary celebration. AWP is not for the FOMO-ly challenged. In the crowd of 15,000+ conference-goers I missed many events and many friends, among them the poet, playwright and translator Zack Rogow. And it didn’t seem at all right to have missed Rogow for, the last time I was at AWP, it was to participate on his panel with Mark Doty and Charles Johnson, “Homesteading on the Digital Frontier: Writers’ Blogs,” one of the crunchiest conference panels ever. (You can read the transcript of my talk about blogs here.)

Should you try to attend AWP next spring 2020 in San Antonio? Of course only you know what’s right for you. But I can say this much: AWP can be overwhelming, an experience akin to a fun house ride and three times through the TSA line at the airport with liquids… while someone drones the William Carlos Williams white chickens poem… AWP can also prove Deader than Deadsville, if what you’re after is, say, an agent for your thriller. Book Expo it ain’t. 

On the bright side, however, Zack Rogow attends AWP. He is one of the most talented and generous poets and translators I know. Watch this brief documentary about his life and work and I think you’ll understand why I say this:

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Writers Blogs: Questions and Observations Post Panel at AWP (Associated Writing Programs) Conference in Seattle

Apart from getting my picture taken in the book fair holding a loft a giant stuffed fish, late yesterday afternoon I was on the panel chaired by poet Zack Rogow with novelist Charles Johnson (standing in for E. Ethelbert Miller) and another extraordinary poet, Mark Doty.

Doty gave the lie to my rather cavalier assertion that blogging about oneself was narcissistic. I still have zero interest in blogging about my personal life (so far, no tweeting about my food, either!!), but Mark read from his blog a piece about his personal life, a painful story about how his house "bit him," pure poetry, and all I can say is, I salaam.  Do read more over at Doty's blog.

Charles Johnson paid homage to dear Ethelbert, who has long been an angel of both Washington DC and national literary culture.

Zack Rogow's talk, about his go-to blog, Advice for Writers, started out with practical tips for bloggers and ended with a reading from his blog of his new translation of Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo," the poem that ends with one of the most jarringly perfect last lines.

My talk was "Eight Conclusions After 8 Years of Blogging."

To get a sense of the level of things, I first asked the audience, maybe 150 writers, how many had blogs? Up went the overwhelming majority of hands. How many had been blogging for more than 2 years? A sparse scattering. Five years? I counted two hands. Oh my goodness, I felt like Methuselah.

As for the questions, what struck me about many of them (both during and after the event) was their anxious flavor, the concern about the variety of problems a blog could bring a writer. There are valid concerns, of course, and it's good to get one's mind around the genre, or at least take its temperature and a sounding before doing a cannonball into the deep end. But it seems to me that what we basically have here is the very same fear around any writing, any publishing. It's all just "monsters under the bed" stuff, after all. Or, as Rose Rosetree calls it, STUFF, that is, astral clutter, including frozen blocks, in one's personal energy field.

Speaking of clutter, one of the many appealing things to me about blogging is that it doesn't require physical space except for, say, a place to plunk one's laptop while typing. All of my book projects, on the other hand, have each produced a mountain of research files and then contracts and then marketing materials and such, plus a little (well, not so little) library of related books. Finding space is a challenge.

More anon.

COMMENTS

Note #2 Re: Homesteading on the Digital Frontier: Readers? The Whopper-Foie Analogy

Yesterday I posted about my upcoming Associated Writing Programs (AWP) conference panel on writers' blogs, "Homesteading on the Digital Frontier," to be chaired by poet and Advice to Writers blogger Zack Rogow. First of all, when we're talking about "writers" at AWP we generally mean literary writers. And while "literary" and "the market" have been known to intersect, and sometimes clangingly so (e.g., Angela's Ashes, War and Peace), it's more often than not a sad song. Generally speaking, readers are few for literary works, while readers are legion for vampire / naughty whatnot / movie star shenanigans / UFOs / mysteries about murders and/or megalithic structures / anything about making money / bash 'em politics. Herewith the Whopper-Foie analogy:

You want to sell food to the masses, well, they like Whoppers.

You want to sell 5 Star fussy little plates featuring foie, there may be a very few (but, one hopes, highly discerning and loyal) diners.

Whoppers or foie? You decide. But it's pointless to cry / gnash teeth / grumble / spend hours on Google Analytics /FB /Twitter trying to grow your numbers when THE FACT IS, the most people say phooey to foie. (And the people who actually read your book, have you answered their emails?)

Take home point: if you're doing literary work, the numbers -- how many buy your book, how many followers for your blog or your twitter-- are not the only, nor even the main indicator of  "success."

I put "success" in quotation marks because it's just a story one tells oneself, after all.

What is the story you tell yourself? And what is the story you'd like to tell yourself-- and believe?

More anon.

See also:
> Homesteading on the Digital Frontier: My Humble Opinion on Google Analytics and Comments
>Why Aren't There More Readers? A Note on Curiosity, Creativity, and Courage
>So How's the Book Doing? (And How Many Books Have you Sold? And What Was Your Print Run?)
>Getting Started with Websites and Blogs

COMMENTS

Homesteading on the Digital Frontier: My Humble Opinion on Google Analytics and Comments

Madame Blavatsky
Mega-magnet on the digital frontier
(No relation to Madam Mayo...
but one sends a salute on the astral plane)

Gearing up for the Associated Writing Programs conference panel "Homesteading on the Digital Frontier: Writers' Blogs," to be chaired by poet Zack Rogow, whose excellent blog is Advice for Writers. Since I first started blogging back in 2006, writers' interest in blogs seems to have taken a rollercoaster ride from WOW! to bleh, and around-again. 

(Time machine: Gone to the Litblogs circa 2008 and my talk, "Writers' Blogs: Best Practices" for the 2008 Maryland Writers Conference).

Anyway, one thing that has not escaped my notice is that all the writers who turned their noses up at blogging back in 2006-2009, once they have a book to flog, they blog. Yes, they all blog. 

But who reads our blogs? 

Zack asked me about Google Analytics-- something someone is sure to raise a hand about. My (slightly edited) response:

MY HUMBLE OPINION ON GOOGLE ANALYTICS & COMMENTS

I think I looked at Google Analytics when it came out and that was the last time. If you were selling, say, on-line pizza, it would probably be a great tool. My personal opinion is that, for a literary writer / poet-- by my definition, that means one is not writing just for the market, and certainly not following it-- it's a dangerous time-sink.

If one wants to write for the numbers, may I suggest giving up literary pretensions and covering topics involving vampires / naughty whatnot / UFOs / movie stars / money $$$$$ / politics and preferably all mixed together in one super-steamy stew!!

So alas, I am not the one to say anything about Google Analytics. (Though I do mention astral wildlife / UFOs and politics in my latest book. But, um, in a literary sense.)

But I will say this: If one uses tags (or "labels") and searchable words in the titles and provides quality content, there will be readers. How do I know? Because people tell me when I see them, or in an email, or they mention something on their blog.

And also, on my blogger.com dashboard it does show the numbers of views for each post, so I am aware, for example, that my post about Madame Blavatsky works like an industrial-strength magnet, while my mention of a friend's literary magazine excited a cyber snore.

I am not bereft of handy tips, however, and neither am I wholly blind to numbers.  

Tip #1: Providing a link from a blog post to one's own webpage, article, book, or, say, podcast, will help oonch that up in the search engines.

Translation: I might not get crowds following my every blog post, but the people who really want to know about, say, Dr. Krumm-Heller and Francisco I. Madero, may Google and find precisely that, chez moi.

Once in a while I'll google something of mine to see how far up in the list it appears-- another pointless time-sink I occasionally fall into. But only up to the ankles.

By the way, I long ago disabled comments because I was getting pestered by mattress companies in Pakistan or else people I don't know who seemed stuck in a bad day in Emotional Kindergarten. I added a link to my contact page so that the readers who feel moved to do so can send me an email. I sincerely welcome emails from readers; I make every effort to answer, unless it's from a troll. Haven't had any so far! And the Pakistan mattress people go away, too.

More about writers' blogs anon. 

[UPDATE: My talk for AWP: Writers Blogs (and My Blog): Eight Conclusions After 8 Years of Blogging]

P.S. Zack Rogow advises, Don't Avoid the Book Fair. People, the AWP book fair is the point.

Your COMMENTS are always welcome.

Cyberflanerie: Newsletter, Mechanical Turk, Rose Mary Salum, Zack Rogow, William Kiesel on Occult of Personality, Agustin Cadena

I just sent out my newsletter which I used to say goes out 4 - 6 times a year but now say goes out 3 - 5 times a year. Probably more in the 3 x yr range. I figure everyone has too much email so I try to make it something worth surfing around in. If you haven't already signed up, check it out here-- all the new books (my dad's plus 4 -- count 'em-- new ebooks), new podcasts of interviews with Southwest Book Award-winner Sergio Troncoso and with Mary Baxter, painter in the Big Bend, a reading (tomorrow!!) in San Miguel de Allende, and recommended links for writers, news of Ann McLaughlin's novel workshop at the Writer's Center, and Marie de la Fere's eyewitness memoir, My Recollections of Maximilian, a rare circa 1910 English language manuscript from (and with permission from) the Bancroft Library, introduced and published by Yours Truly-- a free ebook. Just go to the newsletter and click to download it.

The photo is from Pinto Canyon Rd, a lonely but gorgeous drive from Marfa (right behind Paul Graybeal's Moonlight Gemstones shop) down to the Rio Grande, where, should you feel so moved, you could chuck a baseball into Mexico.

Cyberflanerie du jour:

An article on the Mechanical Turk (an oldie but goodie from Salon.com)
The future is looking mighty strange...

Rose Mary Salum does the Next Big Thing Round Robin
A Mexican writer, translator and editor of Literal Magazine, one of the finest bilingual literary journals ever

New over on the blogroll (look right) Zack Rogow's excellent "Advice for Writers"

Occult of Personality interview with William Kiesel of Ouroboros Press
The book as talisman and much more. And another, with more on talismanic publishing and the Library Angel

I am intrigued by what Kiesel is doing with Ouroboros Press. I sense that publishing is diverging, sharply, into 2 streams: artisanal publishing (what he does, but I would include some ebooks in this category) and mass market ebooks. And I think we're going to see a galloping development in both over the next few years. On that note, Agustin Cadena, one of my favorite and most prolific Mexican writers-- and my translator-- has just published his new novel, Maljuna Knabino, as a Kindle. This, seriously, is a big deal on the Mexican publishing scene. And I find that interesting because I live in Mexico, I write about Mexico and I translate Mexican writers-- but it's also interesting because Mexico is a leading emerging market. As goes Mexico, so goes the emerging world-- Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and so on.... Right now its digital marketplace is underdeveloped. Most Mexicans still get their books at Sanborns (a nationwide chain that might be described as a cross between Denny's and Walgreen's). Translation: huge potential. And the ebook market is going to develop-- I mean to say Mexican readers will start using iPads and Kindle and Kindle apps--- why just look at all the urban and suburban Mexican (mostly) middle class kids from Tijuana to Merida. They're all texting each other and facebooking with the ease of breathing itself. And I do believe every Mexican congress critter maintains a Twitter account. Watch the audience when (even) the President speaks to any urban business audience under the age of 60-- they're all looking at their laps. So when people say (and alas many Mexicans insist) that Mexican readers won't adapt to ebooks, I say, hooey. More about all this in the next post.

Comments? Please feel free to email me.

Cyberflanerie: Creatives Edition

Poet and literary translator Zack Rogow is blogging his excellent advice--check out his recent post on why write poetry.

Novelist and short story writer Leslie Pietrzyk offers tips and reflections (Agony & Ecstasy) and recipes and a literary magazine-- Redux-- on her marvelous and long-standing blog, Work-in-Progress.

I just love-love-love Swiss Miss for her wide-open eyes and bodacious links-- most recently, to a treasure trove of designers' podcasts.

Over at Creative Bloq, 1000 Free Resources for Designers (weeeeeeee!!!)

Get seriously revved with Seth Godin's Lynchpin talk

I am pretty sure I'd feel more creative wearing some of these cosmic stockings (available from shadowplaynyc on etsy.com

Guest Blogger Zack Rogow: 5 Links re: The Cover of The Number Before Infinity

Zack Rogow is the only poet and literary translator I know who can make an entire auditorium erupt into howls of laughter over the word... embryo. Well, maybe you had to have been there. I was! It happened at an Associated Writing Association Conference panel on literary translation. We've also crossed paths in Montreal and most recently, his class on Latin American Literature in San Francisco's California College of the Arts. As he has just published a new book of poetry, The Number Before Infinity, (Scarlet Tanager Books), I invited him to contribute this week's guest-blog post. An honor indeed that he accepted: Rogow is the author, editor, or translator of seventeen books and plays, including six collections of poetry, three anthologies, four volumes of translation, and a children's book. He's the editor of an anthology of U.S. poetry, The Face of Poetry, published by University of California Press; and editor of two volumes of TWO LINES: World Writing in Translation. Over to you, Zack!

I know you can't tell a book by it's cover, but when Scarlet Tanager Books accepted my collection of love poems, The Number Before Infinity, my first thought was about the cover. I'd been admiring for a long time the work of Mona Caron, the artist who painted an amazing mural that stretches the entire length of the Safeway supermarket at the corner of Market Street and Church Street in San Francisco. The mural celebrates the creation of bike paths in San Francisco, and it decorates the length of one of those rights-of-way with a continuous ribbon of images that metamorphoses from a train to a road to a snake to the track of a bike at the beach looking out at the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

I enjoyed looking at that mural for years when my trolley home from work surfaced from its underground route right at the site of that mural. Then by chance I met Mona at the dedication of another mural she did right near where I was living, and found out she had also done the bike mural, as well as a poster for the Critical Mass bike rides that give us a monthly reminder that fossil fuels are not the future.

For the cover of my book Mona chose to illustrate a poem of mine called "A Map of You," a love poem that begins with the lines: You've become my map, my geography:the Black Forest of your hair, your alpine lake eyes, fathom after fathom, your mouth red as turned Carolina earth, those shoulders like Dover's chalk towers, your Sugarloaf breasts, by your peninsular arms

Mona's initial design faithfully reflected the lush descriptions of the poem. When Mona did the sketch for the cover, the publisher, Lucille Lang Day, who is also an excellent poet and prose writer, was concerned the cover might be too much of a cheesecake image, the usual woman as sex object. Mona modified it so it showed a woman literally sitting on top of the world, sensual but powerful as well.

I hope the book does leave you with that image of the beloved. It also has a number of poems that reflect on the difficulties of love, particularly when the lovers are already committed to others. Yes, it's that complicated a love story. Many people tell me they like poems but often find them dense or inaccessible. I try to write poetry in a way that reaches out to the reader. The book is like a novel or memoir in verse, where each poem is a chapter in the story.

--Zack Rogow

--->For the archive of Madam Mayo guest-blog posts, click here.
P.S. You can order Zack Rogow's new book from Small Press Distribution and also from amazon.

The Wednesday Guest-blog Flew the Coop or, Top 5 Chicken Cams

Oh well! Check out the Madam Mayo guest-blog archive to read previous Wednesday guest-blog posts by yoga, writing & literary agent-blog expert Lindsay Reed Maines, poets Grace Cavalieri, Sandra Beasley and Cathleen Calbert, novelists Eric Martin and Leslie Pietrzyk, King of the Baja buffs Graham Mackintosh, writer and filmmaker David Taylor, poet and artist Christine Boyka Kluge and many more. Next week: poet and web 2.0 diva Deborah Ager, and after that, Moira Egan, Stephanie Elizondo-Griest, Zack Rogow, Tim Wendel and, no kidding, Pickles the pug. More anon.

P.S. Apropos of my burgeoning interest in chickens (really), herewith 5 links:

--->The Flying Skunk Farm chicken cam (featuring Gumby).
--->Hencam (in the UK)
--->Chickencam.tv
--->Thelma and Louise in Belgium
--->Huehnercam. Double Deutsche cam!