You Are Not Your Writing (Jen Intro) (09/21/2019)

This letter is a recap of the week at

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The first time I was paid for freelance writing was for reviewing episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I loved that gig. Really loved it. And, I was good at it! Yet, from time to time, I’ll look back at the few articles that remain archived online, and alternate between cringing and smiling at the voice I employed back then to analyze the Scoobies’ adventures in Sunnydale.  My writing voice has changed many times since then. Most of those changes were a result of maturity and experience. However, just as we tend to judge our former selves for mistakes we made before we knew better, I find I criticize some of my past writing for not being as good as it would one day become.  It’s only in the last year or two that I’ve been able to hold compassion for that previous writing self. It’s not easy though. It requires a certain looking away, a certain kind of dissociation.  I suppose there are some writers for whom this happens in reverse: writers who fear they are one-hit wonders, who after being published think they’ll never be able to produce another novel, another anything good again.  Self-doubt is inevitable when you’re an artist. But, as Zadie Smith counsels in her list of ten rules for writing, don’t “mask self-doubt with contempt.” It’s too easy to cross over from questioning whether your writing was, is, or ever will be good enough to: "am I good enough?" We are not our writing. Not when it’s at its best, nor when it’s at its cringey worst. There’s a certain freedom in this differentiation. It allows us to be more playful on the page or more experimental, as well as ugly, frightening, or mean. One of the works I’m most proud of began with me simply allowing myself (as narrator) to be cruel – knowing that while that voice came from me, may even be a part of me, it was not me.Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here. Jen MaidenbergColumns Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

Psst... Add this to your to-do list this week:1) Polish up that Flash2) Send it to Atticus ReviewSubmit one piece of flash fiction up to 1000 words.READ ON

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

BOOK REVIEWUNBALANCED ACTA Review of ODD BOY by Martin Jude Farawell from Sibling Rivalry Press.Review by Toti O'Brien"Odd Boy refutes the inexorability of cause andconsequence — it entails the paradox of givingwhat one never received."GET THE BOOKREAD THE REVIEW

FICTIONTWO STORIESby Laton Carter"His love for the shapes of letters and their minds-of-their-own meant that he would attend to their universe before the universe of people."READ ON

POETRYWORDS MADE OF STONEby Michael T. Young"and we will have to leave a note to our descendantsasking them to carry our ashes to the white cliffs of Dover,fanning them into the winds like a momentary deltaof salts and lost thoughts."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONHOW TO LIE AWAKE: A RECIPEby Jennifer Brown *Third place in our 2019 CNF Contest"Now the mind is both clear & crowded:pond refracting shafts of light deep insideits algaed, minnowed, tadpoled, snaked, turtled,loch-ness-monstered amniotic broth..."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONON THE BUSby Tim Maddocks *Honorable Mention in our 2019 CNF Contest"Each morning as the bus approached,you could see him jump, jab, punch andpummel the air, spin in circles, skewer his villains..."READ ON

MIXED MEDIAKARMA MANby Karina Bush "The poem exists in both clarity and paranoia, realization that a relationship may be dues for past choices, trapped in a loop of my own creation, no way out except to become karma itself."READ ON

FILM REVIEWHUSTLERS IS FOR WOMEN, BY WOMENA review of HUSTLERS from director Lorene ScafariaReview by Olivia Funderburg  "Scafaria positions her characters not asobjects and not even strictly as subjects,but as agents over themselves..."READ ON

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