November 6, 2011. Blip Journal; the progress of a NYC Writer.

Odilia Rivera Santos

I was talking to some writer friends the other day and found most of them are waiting for someone somewhere to do something. Waiting is not something I do well. The sense of autonomy you feel as an independent artist sitting glumly or cheerily at your favorite wifi-enhanced coffee shop is lost when the waiting time comes. The trick is to not let that sense of accomplishment diminish in the waiting process. You have to breathe, and laugh, and continue writing, and take bubble baths, and make hot dinners while you wait. I am waiting too because, as they say, the universe is abundant and full of miracles. But I noticed yesterday I had slipped into my old habit of denying myself pleasure as if being emotionally frozen or deprived of sensuality would accelerate decisions and make decision-makers rule in my favor. I realized this while eating a low-fat mozzarella cheese stick that tasted of cardboard - yeah, it's nutritious, but who wants to eat paper?
I resigned from my last teaching job in January. The bathroom was freezing cold, the toilet overflowed often, there was no place to eat lunch in the neighborhood, classes were cancelled when it snowed - which meant not getting paid on those days, and I realized the sense of deprivation in this place was getting to me, and although I cared for the students, the job was siphoning out too much of my qi.
I walked away and into the dangerous precarious world of freelance writing, editing, translating, thinking if teaching was something I was meant to do, it would materialize in a less hazardous and depressing setting.
One of my favorite books on writing is On Writing by Stephen King; it is an autobiography through the prism of writing as a working-class art. He held some truly frightening jobs through his process of becoming a successful writer -- the worst being one in which he scrapped blood and gore off of hospital sheets while working in a laundry. All the bizarre experiences of his childhood, growing up with a mentally-ill mother were great ingredients for an artist in the making. As a guy with a real working-class mindset I admire, King would probably never call himself an artist. He is a dedicated worker with a clear idea of his skill set.
While perusing through the writer want ads, I often come across the mantra: no pay, but great exposure. These days, it's quite simple to promote one's writing online without anyone's help.
Every job has its risks and annoyances. I am often amazed at how people become completely consumed by their work and how salary dictates how they feel about themselves.
Happiness becomes tethered to titles, material possessions and zeros on that paycheck.

I am thinking about work and writing about work for my next e-book: Work Chronicles, which I will published on Smashwords in November. In the meantime, you can check out my creative nonfiction essays Latinalogue Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I and Latinalogue Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part II: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69697

Writers, be careful not to die of exposure.
http://twitter.com/#!/UrbanBrainiac
http://twitter.com/#!/bezotes
http://twitter.com/#!/latinaauthor

9.27.11 Blip Journal: the progress of a NYC writer

Odilia Rivera Santos

Riding the train from one end of the 2 line to another, you see a little bit of everything: Haitian church goers, Hassidum, Wall Street executives and protesters following their footsteps, young families headed to the lesser known nooks and crannies of Bronx neighborhoods and me.

As I sit peacefully thinking about what best to do with the hundreds of pages of writing I've accumulated, I glance to my left and notice a woman immersed in a book. I think of how many bits of information her brain must ignore to accomplish the task of following a plot.
I return to the New York Times to read an article about drug cartels and their control of a town and extortion plots and I imagine many must consider legalization of drugs to be the best option.
There would be a transition period while drug dealers get used to wearing suits and not carrying a gun while they visit hospitals, buying hospital staff monthly lunches to insure when a sluggish patient needs a crack sample, the grateful workers will reach for their brand of crack.

I fold the paper neatly to peruse later. And wait for the show.
On the train, there's always a show.
A Chinese woman walks into the car, pushing a cart. She plops herself down between between reader and writer.
We look up and make eye-contact, above the head of the Chinese lady, like synchronized swimmers.
The Chinese woman fidgets and lunges at the map and sits down again all the while exuding a diversity of funk heretofore unknown to man.
But you can't make assumptions.
She might be completely sane and have no sense of smell or she may have ingested some herbal medicines, which can make one smell like a donkey for a couple of hours or she might have some physical malady.

We, reader and writer, stand, again synchronized, and bemoan our seatless state during a non-rush hour rush hour.
The Chinese woman, her mission accomplished, unpacks some things from her cart and luxuriates, having inherited a whole subway bench to herself -- a rare event in a city where size 24 often crams into size 6 slots.

https://twitter.com/#!/latinaauthor
https://twitter.com/#!/urbanbrainiac
https://twitter.com/#!/bezotes

The orgiastic pleasures of writing . . . yeah, it's awesome

Odilia Rivera Santos

I am so content to sit in my bed propped up by pillows with my Mac on my lap I forget to eat and sometimes go hours with only water and coffee. I know this is not physically healthy, so I force myself to get up and prepare good snacks, which don't require my full focus. It is a great feeling to listen to the news or interviews with writers or artists. Today, I got up early, posted on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and prepared a runner's breakfast of one slice of bread with crunchy peanut butter and coffee with milk. I headed out for a run and took a long leisurely walk by the river. I felt a bit restless but fought the temptation to get a book at the library to read under a tree. Life is about balance after all. I wanted to use other senses and go on an intellectual fast or put my intellectual mind on a modified fast at least. I thought, perhaps, the intuition suffers if one keeps intellectual parts of the brain too overworked.
I walked around Harlem and saw the door to The Cotton Club was ajar, so I stuck my head in and asked if I could look around. The well-dressed man behind a desk waved me in and I entered, knowing I had been there before but not quite remembering the particulars. Glistening red chairs and small tables point to the fact that the place is for performance and you can imagine an elegant Black audience sipping drinks in semi-darkness as light reflects from sparkling contented eyes - the stuff mundane life aspires to. There's magic in this small space and you can feel it. The man who welcomed me in is the owner, John Beatty and he spoke to me about his Columbia University experience. CU is trying to turn Harlem into an extension of its campus: predominately white and privileged. Mr. Beatty held his ground and CU backed off. Black History takes precedence over corporate greed for once. Mr Beatty said Monday night is the night to drop by.
I had an epiphany about time -- yes, another one. It is ok to change your deadlines if you feel it is best and not everything must be accomplished at a maddening breakneck speed.
I am sitting by the river in the bright sunshine, sunning myself while a beautiful exotic yellow and blue birds screeches from the bridge. It may be someone's very expensive pet and, for a moment, I consider calling 311. But then, I changed my mind because exotic birds should be free. Perched unceremoniously on the bridge, she seems content and does she not have the right to be free?

. . . you can check out my creative nonfiction essays Latinalogue Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I and Latinalogue Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part II: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69697

Writers, be careful not to die of exposure.
http://twitter.com/#!/UrbanBrainiac
http://twitter.com/#!/bezotes
http://twitter.com/#!/latinaauthor

Social Media, Marketing and Getting Connected Part II

© 2011 Odilia Rivera Santos

I spent some time today perusing articles on marketing your books online and promoting events. There is always a point at which one must ask How much can I do?
This is a very important question, because it does require time and commitment. If you don't monitor your Twitter and Facebook accounts, your followers, fans or Facebook 'friends' will get a lot of spam. There is nothing more irritating, online anyway, than joining a fanpage and seeing nothing but ads for açai-induced weight loss and Facebook-has-a-new-dislike-button-click-here posts with a picture of a nearly naked man or woman. If you know you will not keep up with Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and others and you have money to spare, hire a social media firm or an individual geek.

CREATING A WIN-WIN SITUATION
Publish your own paper in three minutes! http://paper.li/
On my previous post, I had mentioned Paper.li with no intention of publishing my own paper, but I woke up this morning feeling kind of Hearst-like, so I decided to give it a try.
It is a brilliant marketing tool because you can post your links and create a paper that reaches a very specific group of readers, there is no maintenance and it's free.
You put in the tags -- tags are words used to connect different tweets. If you use the tag writing grants, every tweet mentioning those words will appear in your paper. You get to put in quite a few tags.
Today, I created The Writers for Writers Daily.
http://tinyurl.com/3bjuz2b
This newspaper is geared toward helping writers with self-promotion, freelance work, and general inspiration. I found some great articles and websites I had never heard of in my newspaper : )
If you post any articles on writing, you will likely end up in my The Writers for Writers Daily; in essence, you are creating a newspaper for you and those most likely to be interested in your work.

EDIT YOUR EMAIL SIGNATURE
We are writers, so we have to be careful about this. Keep the signature short and to the point. The title of your book or name of blog, subject matter, or event and the link. No one will read a dissertation of your work at the end of an email. I must admit to having a very long signature with my info and apologize to all who've been subjected to the excessive verbiage.

Goodreads is one of those sites I don't use very often. It is an online book club where people list all the books they've read or hope to read along with reviews. They have a space for authors to promote their work.
Goodreads Author Program: http://tinyurl.com/qzxanj
I recently included a short essay I had written entitled Lonely Art to see what would happen.

Amazon also offers writers the space and opportunity to advertise for free on their Amazon Author Page: http://tinyurl.com/nlsba5

TEACHING A CLASS OFFLINE
Skillshare
I love writing, editing, translating and reading, but there are times when human interaction is absolutely necessary. I teach creative writing classes and found this great site called Skillshare to advertise your workshop or class and set up payments through them.
http://www.skillshare.com/learn

TIME
I like formulas, so consider this one: for every five-hour block of writing, do one hour of marketing.

Social media is an experiment and we all have to see what works and what doesn't work.
“It is often the last key on the ring which opens the door” - Anonymous -- if I find the author, I'll let you know.

I will teach two workshops in October of 2012: Social Media Workshop for Beginners and Social Media Workshop to Advance Your Business at Breath and Bones Yoga
Limit per class: 7 students.
Bring a laptop to set up accounts and/or learn to connect to networking opportunities
http://www.secure-booker.com/breathbones/ClassSchedule/Workshops.aspx


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If you'd like to take a Four-week Creative Writing course with me, sign up here:
http://tinyurl.com/6fzeo4d
Buy my e-book! Latinalogue, Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I

Writing Ruminations while on Henry Miller

@20ll Odilia Rivera Santos

I read Henry Miller for the first time in junior high school. I was probably thirteen years old. Because my parents didn't speak English, I had to make a lot of their decisions for them; one of the decisions I made for my mother was signing that little library slip asking if a child can take books from any part of the library or only the children's section.
I, as a fourth grader, felt it would be an outrage to have someone dictate to ME what I could and could not read, so I told my mother to sign the all-permission, take-out-any-kind-of-crazy-ass book slip.
Firme aquí
She nodded, as she always did, signed the paper and this is how I ended up reading Delta of Venus and Anäis Nin's journals at 13. Nin was the go-between who took me to Miller.
When I love a particular writer, I read writers they liked. One book would lead me to ten other books and I was always thankful for summer so I could read without the nussiance of stupid elementary school homework assignments.

The only drug I use or abuse is caffeine; I figure if Keith Richards is almost seventy and still alive and performing and his mind seems relatively intact, I can drink a couple of cups of coffee a day.

Before coffee, Henry Miller was my drug.
His exuberance and love of life was something I admired and his pessimism seemed a bit of an affectation, not real. It was Henry Miller who led me to Louis Ferdinand Céline and Journey to the End of the Night. I found Céline's morbid humor very Puerto Rican. I read Journey when I was nineteen, and it is still one of my favorite books of all time; I sat at a coffee shop in the East Village, drinking coffee and laughing with the book as if I had been sitting with an old friend. My old friend Céline had been dust for a long time but still so alive in this work.

I read The Rosy Crucifixion: Sexus,Plexus, and Nexus, The Tropic of Cancer, The Tropic of Capricorn one after another with an understanding that his works were not pure autobiography or merely a description of quotidian life. He was in the process of a series of incarnations, in which philosophizing played a great part, and Miller describes his transformation process with humor, pathos and cruelty.
He was inventing himself and allowing an audience to watch; it is a courageous act to say, as a child, you wanted to be an artist and be free of the societal expectations of family, financial stability and routine. His desire to become an artist was audacious to say the least because he expressed doubt in his own abilities and he lived in a time at which choosing the life of an artist was considered bizarre.
Miller admired visionaries and his parents were conformists.
I guess many visionaries stand on the shoulders of conformists -- somebody has to pay for dinner, right?
Miller's parents were not artists and he dreamt of a life surrounded by artists.
I admired his fight to break free of the norm and the yoke of modernity. As a child, I also thought of being an artist and of serving my art all day long -- going to lectures and performances, taking long walks in the park and hanging out all night in a café in Paris in 1930, when it was so cheap to live there. I needed a time machine though.
Like Miller, I thought of how foreign my choice of vocation was to that of my parents. My mother made pasteles and my father was a carpenter and they both had an elementary school education. One big difference between Miller's parents and mine was that my mother and father loved music and film. My mother sat me down when I was very young to watch Jorge Negrete and Laurence Olivier so I would know what a great artist looked like.

Miller had to create himself from the ground up, following his own dictum: "a man has to save himself."
I believe we arrive in this world with a spark in which lies our true vocation or purpose and through the tedium of all the trouble we get into when we choose the wrong paths, it is dimmed. We are able to find our way back to a correct path through conscious effort and everything else is the Salvation Army Thrift Store. Every time I find myself in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reasons, I think that it is like a visit to The Salvation Army Thrift Store - if you look closely enough, you'll find something worthwhile but if you daydream your way through not only will you not get anything worthwhile, but someone might just pickpocket your ass.
Like Miller, I have found myself doing a lot of jobs, which made no sense whatsoever. When I was a teenager, I worked at the wallet counter at Macy's near the entrance of the store. They hired me without filling out a job application or references because they wanted a pretty girl by the door, but they soon discovered I had some very un-pretty girl-like behavior -- such as leaning on the counter to read The Decameron and biting my nails. I also did my share of telemarketing with a gang of unemployed actors, angry retired ballet dancers, alcoholic writers, and stand-up comedians in-between gigs. I did surveys on everything from cat litter to the Hollywood movies. I used to do a lot of writing at the telemarketing jobs for which I was admonished on a regular basis.

This morning, I have been listening to a series of 1956 interviews with Miller conducted by his friend Ben Grauer. In part 3 of the interview, Miller speaks about how he could never do anything for a buck just to stay alive. He advocates going to the edge and says artists don't really starve in the U.S. He spent a year writing letters to people in which he asked for anything they could offer: money, shoes, clothes. In exchange for donations, he sent people a watercolor painting. Miller was also a painter.
He went out in the streets and begged in Brooklyn instead of taking work he found demeaning such as advertising. But he found begging to be as difficult as a day job.
Although he questioned his artistic ability, he was clear being an artist was the only thing he wanted to do and this was after a long list of jobs.
He experimented with being a regular guy with a wife, a child and a job as a manager at a messenger company, which had originally turned him down for a job as a messenger -- what Miller calls the lowest job possible. He met a woman who encouraged him to quit the job and write full-time.
I know.
Women are awesome.
This messenger job was his last regular job and it was at that point, he vowed to never return to regular work and just write.
After ten years of suffering, his first book was published.
He speaks of survival as the essential aspect of being an artist. We, as artists, work on producing work others may not appreciate until we're dead. In that way, I would consider artists similar to scientists. Sometimes, art, like science, is a continuum in which building upon work already finished long ago will bring forth the greatness of ideas by some unknown personage. In a a scientific continuum, I imagine the aim would be to cure cancer and in an artistic continuum, we might aim to cure mediocrity.

“We prefer a kind of senseless insect activity to a genuine activity which may often be new activity -- inaction do you see? I don’t say to be quiet to do nothing. I don’t say that at all but I say it should have sense -- it should have meaning what we do everyday and the greater part of what we do everyday has damn little meaning” - HM

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My slim volume of nonfiction essays is published!
Latinalogue, Puerto Rican Nonfiction Part I http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69697