Deborah Bogen

Funny that after writing for three days about how great the journey to self-publishing The Wych of Lepyr Cove has been, about how helpful and cool the kids who read the book were, about how I was sure I could do this thing --- I'd wake up this morning exhausted, my confidence eroded, my vision blurred and grey.

So this is the yin/yang thing going on --- first the high of the book release, then the low that's partly fear and fatigue, but maybe more than that. A brand new YA thriller was released yesterday - it's both sexy and bloody. Wych can't hit that mark. And the internet PR world turns out to be a bit daunting. There seem to be hundreds (thousands?) of reading and reviewing sites that the savvy use to get the word out. Each one comes with a special protocol you get to learn as you try to join the fray --- and hours and days pass as the computer screen becomes the universe.

Enter Maureen Miller - a very successful novelist. Maureen answered a question I had posted to her. It was a probably a simpleton's question and we are complete strangers, so I never expected to hear back. But I did - I heard from a person, a human being, a kind stranger, a busy writer who took the time to encourage me as today's roller coaster leaves the platform with me white-knuckled in the front seat.

Thank you Maureen. Not just for the answer, but for being a breathing thing out there in cyberspace who is willing to lend a hand. And thank you friends and family who have not yet told me to get lost as I come to you with another request for help.

I wanted to end this with something wise and witty but the vault's empty. Think I'll take a walk and get back this tomorrow.  Read More 

Those were kids who love books - the kids I was looking for - the kids those agents said would not want to read about 1) the 13th century; 2) a large institution like the Church; and 3) three heroes working together.

But they did. The kids, I mean. They did like it. We met at their school. I was nervous. There I was face-to-face with students whose ages ranged from 13 - 16, and all of them were enrolled in the Arts School's creative writing program. They showed up with notebooks filled with actual notes, with comments and suggestions (good suggestions), and with questions.

The boys said I had to rename my characters since I was using unfamiliar 13th century names and had somehow chosen too many that began with "W." Too hard to keep straight. Okay - I took notes - they were right, I needed to fix that.

They told me which characters they liked best but they loved having all three to choose from. They liked reading about how those three characters interacted - because dealing with peers is a big part of their day. Best of all, they wanted to know what would happen in the next book. They had things they hoped would happen, and things they hoped would be explained. I took more notes, but by the time were were done they had convinced me they truly liked the book.

Perhaps the best comment was one I received later in an email from a girl who couldn't make the meeting. She said she liked the book because it was "defiantly" not what she usually got to read. That became my favorite freudian and motto. "Okay, I thought, so much for the agents who say they know...I'm defiantly going to publish this thing anyway..."  Read More 

I wanted something different. I wanted to be driven by a different kind of hunger. I had done some serious thinking about my desire for old school legitimacy. For "real publishers" and all that entailed. That desire had power. And it was common, quite ordinary. Human. Silly, maybe. But compelling too. I was not above any of that.

Fast forward to a summer when I wrote "The Wych of Lepyr Cove." I had fun. Real fun. It was hard work - all day hard work, but it was rewarding on at least 16 levels. It was new, trying fiction, relaxing into telling a story in a fairly straight-forward fashion, finding a way to talk more directly about things that mattered to me (how do we relate to the giant institutions who control so much of our world; what do we do with our mistakes, our failures, our accidents and our guilts; who can we trust; how do we find our people, our real people; and then how do we live in the complete world while protecting our smaller sphere, those who are most our responsibility, most within our purview?)

The summer flew by as I sat at a kitchen table in a rented house in Boulder, Colorado. Outside the mountains were gorgeous, the creek friendly and fascinating, the air worth breathing deeply, but I was in that curtained kitchen learning to live in the 13th century with characters who had more to say to me than I had to say on their behalf.

When I was done with the book I liked it. I tried to face getting it into print. My usual pathways did not exist in this world. There were not hundreds of contests where I could send this MS. There were agents, who are gate keepers. They are serious gatekeeper as there really is no slush pile. So I got lists of those agents and I made a good faith effort.

They were kind and I think genuine, telling me they liked the writing, the way I had created the 13th world, and characters who they said they found compelling. BUT they were sure, each of them, that they could not sell the book to publishers. This book had no niche - it was not a book with real magical witches (and the sundry other magical characters that should accompany them.) It had three protagonists and kids, they told me, want only one protagonist to identify with. Worst of all, it was about real history and they seemed quite sure there were no young adults who would be interested in that.

I expected to feel crushed, but I didn't. I still believed in Wych. And I believed in kids and teenagers who I thought had more depth and breadth than these folks were willing to admit. But just to be sure I took the book to students at Pittsburgh's stellar arts school, CAPA and six or eight of them were gracious enough to read it..... Read More 

I wanted in, and not just for the fame and glory - although who doesn't love a little fame and glory? But like a lot of poets I was looking for a home, for the promised land, for the place where the largely unspoken could be voiced. The confusion and pain that fuels many first books, fueled mine. I had to pop the cork in my throat and let that stuff out. I tried to do that artfully, I meant to do that artfully. The contest win meant I had maybe done that artfully. And I was grateful. I am.

When a terrific poet chooses your work from a the big pile it does help. It means something, but I thought my life would change. I thought my life would really change. Nods and smiles here, yes?

Of course in some ways it does. When people hear the word "poet" and look at you suspiciously, you can counter with your book - your published book. So it mattered, it helped - this "choosing" aspect of the poetry book contest world, but.....

then there's the rest. The money! The angst and (almost impossible to avoid) seeing your work only as others see it, or at least as you think they are seeing it, when you don't "win." The idea of poems in competition with each other becomes paramount, and reading can become a matter of best, okay, worst. There's a creeping in of a way of reading that is always judging - losing that first attitude of taking the poem in as its best self and savoring that. The way you fell in love with poetry in the beginning.

So did I stop? Hell, no. After the first book I was scared. Could I really write anything else, anything art-worthy, now that the first stuff, the dead father things, had been written. I got lucky - a good friend helped me enter into continued writing, and yes, book making, as an art form, a construction project, a crafty pursuit - something I could approach playfully. That was fun. And I was sure when I had two books my life would change. I would be noticed. I would feel noticed, validated, loved.

Enter the party scene with the big-wig poets. I was at an unnamed party with a lot of unnamed famous poets who were drinking wine, eating fabulous cheese and talking. This was going to be cool. I was maybe the only unfamous one there. This was intimacy with the artists, what it was really about - where the inner circle relaxed and let their hair down and I would learn me some poetic truth. One of the unnamed famous people who was there is a favorite poet of mine. Really wonderful and as it happened on the short list for a very big (unnamed) honor. We sat around a coffee table covered in art books and the talk started. Not about art - but about that prize, the big one, the big one that would be awarded soon. There was cautious speculation that the famous poet we were sharing a drink with would win. The poet demurred. It was not humility really, so much as a cold-blooded analysis of why the prize would go to someone else (older? sick? just had a great book come out? - the list went on....). Around the artsy table sage heads were nodding. They all had written great books and they all had won big prizes. They knew how these things worked. And the one up for the prize was visibly anxious and hungry for this particular recognition - after years and years of recognition. A light went on - there will never be enough. There will never be enough prizes. There will never be enough recognition. If it's going on here, I thought, in this room, among these winners, there is never enough. So if I go after that - I will always feel this way.

So did I hang it up and just write? Of course not. I have no other way to get my work in print than to take my begging bowl to the marketplace. For books, that means contests. And paper cuts, and large metal clips and over-sized envelopes and lots of money. Lots. Also, record keeping, also keeping the wheel turning as deadlines come and go. Also hoping. Lots of that.

But something was in motion in the back of my mind. I thought about "deadlines" and "dead lines." About hurrying things to make deadlines, about trying to stay in the spotlight - or near the spotlight - or in the same galaxy as the spotlight. It made me tired. I wanted a different something.  Read More 

It's January. New year. New World. And oddly enough New Me. New 63 year old me.

When I started writing I was already old - 47 - and poetry was the art form that called me. I answered and we fell in love. Knowing nothing of the official poetry world I took direction: read, read, read; write, write, write, send out work and of course - enter contests.

I'd been an avid poetry reader since I first sat entranced by Gary Snyder in a coffee bar in Marin County in 1968, and I had a terrific teacher in Doug Anderson who led a free writing group in our town. I knew nothing about submissions or contests so I just tried things. I sent out work and had some early acceptances that gave me hope that the work might communicate in some meaningful way.

After a few years I had a bunch of poems and people kept asking, when are you going to start sending out your MS. My MS? I had a bunch of poems, not a book of poems, but like so many I started sending that gaggle of geese to contests - paying hefty entry fees and trying not to be discouraged by the 'close but no cigar' fact of life which is finaling.

But each time Landscape with Silos did not win, I reworked it. I was getting some chops. I dumped earlier poems, invented new work and tried to build something that held together. I worried - because the central section of the book broke some rules, but I started to feel a loyalty to the book that wanted to be born.

Flash forward three years to a phone call that Landscape had won the XJ Kennedy Award and would be published. On the day of the call I had to write 30 letters to other contests withdrawing my Ms. 30 lost entry fees but it's important sometimes not to do the math. At least the book would happen and I finally had the approval of Big Daddy - even though I did not realize at the time that it was what I was looking for. I didn't just want approval, I wanted anointing. I wanted some mystical poet blessing thing. I wanted to be able to say "I'm a poet" without minding the smirks that often greet such a claim. I wanted in.  Read More