Author: Michael N. McGregor

  • The Three Bin Approach to Staying Alive as a Writer

    The Three Bin Approach to Staying Alive as a Writer

    One of the biggest obstacles the writers I work with as a writing consultant face is a loss of confidence or spirit when the things they’ve been writing haven’t been published. Although editors have sometimes solicited work from me, I’ve never been a writer who knows where each piece will go when I write it. As a result, I’ve experienced this loss of confidence or spirit myself—many times. And over the years I’ve developed a process for countering it I call The Three Bins.

    Here’s how it works:

    Most of the writing I fret over is writing I think should be published or might be published rather than writing I know will be published or writing I enjoy working on whether it will be published or not. Sometimes this should/might writing does get published and I feel a surge of energy for writing in general. But other times—let’s be honest: most times—it isn’t accepted anywhere and after a while I lose not only my confidence in it but also my will to do it.

    Yet this kind of writing is the writing that makes me a writer in the world. That gives me whatever reputation I have. So when I’m not writing it, I feel stagnant and sometimes depressed. To forestall those feelings, I’ve learned to divide my writing into three types—putting it, metaphorically, into three bins.

    The writing in the first bin is writing I love to do and would do even if it was never published anywhere. Let’s call this bin the Joy Bin. The writing in it is the writing that made me want to be a writer in the first place, the writing that sustains my soul as a writer, the writing that gives me the most pleasure. If I didn’t worry about being a writer in any sense other than writing for the joy of it, this is the writing I’d do all the time.

    But I do want to be a writer in another sense: I want my writing to go out into the world and be read. I want to be known as a writer, ideally as a writer who writes wise and beautiful things. So I write things that conform in some way to what publications publish, even if those things start out as writing for myself (which most of them do). These writings go into the second bin. Let’s call it the Hope Bin.

    Most writers who haven’t published much or anything at all spend most of their time jumping between these two bins. As a result, they often develop a love-hate relationship with writing. There is nothing that brings them more pleasure but also nothing that causes more anxiety or sadness. What these writers need is a third bin, one that will give them some of the exposure they desire so they can continue to write with joy.

    Let’s call this third bin the Sure Thing Bin. Into it go all of the writings that will definitely be published. Now I’ve been a writer for a long time and have worked in journalism as well as creative writing. I have hundreds of publications under my belt. So I can develop an idea, pitch it to an editor at a well-targeted publication, and generally come away with a writing assignment. It might not pay much or anything at all, but it will be a guaranteed publication.

    But even if you’ve never published anything, you can do something similar. Hundreds of publications are looking for writing to fill out their pages: book reviews, news items, short profiles, even anecdotes. These publications range from newsletters and established websites to literary journals and trade magazines. It’s true, some of them pay little or nothing, but if a lack of publication is standing in the way of getting your writing done, they provide the one thing you need.

    The key for most writers—those like me who don’t have inboxes full of invitations from editors to write whatever they want and don’t receive seven-figure advances whenever they’re ready to write a book—is to bounce between the three bins. If I’ve been spending most of my writing time in the Hope Bin, working on essays or stories or even a book I think should or might be published and everything I’ve written is being rejected—so much so that I question my commitment to being a writer—I pull myself out of that bin for a while and spend time in one of the others.

    If I’ve lost my joy for writing, I head over to the Joy Bin and work on something I expect to bring nothing but delight. If I feel I’ve disappeared from the writing world because I haven’t published anything lately, I head instead to the Sure Thing Bin and send a query out or offer to review a book or, if nothing else, write a blog entry. Then, when I’ve regained my equilibrium, I return to my work in the Hope Bin.

    This three-bin approach has helped me stay alive as a writer for decades—alive as in visible, alive as in hopeful, and alive as in feeling deep in my soul that writing is waht I want to be doing. In the end, that’s the main goal, isn’t it: staying alive as a writer—waking up again and again with the will to write as well as you can for as long as you’re able.

     

  • My Former Student, Mitchell S. Jackson, Wins Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing

    My Former Student, Mitchell S. Jackson, Wins Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing

    My former student, Mitchell S. Jackson, was just announced as the winner of a 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for his incredible piece on Ahmaud Arbery for Runner’s World.

    And last night he received a National Magazine Award in Feature Writing for the same piece!

    I gotta brag here: Mitchell’s first published piece of journalism was written in one of my classes back in the early 2000’s. I’m so very proud of all he has done since then.

    You can read the Pulitzer citation here.

    And you can read the incredible article Mitchell won the awards for here.

  • An Audio Version of PURE ACT Is Coming Soon

    An Audio Version of PURE ACT Is Coming Soon

    I’ve just learned that an audio version of my book, Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax, is in the works–five and a half years after the book was published. This rarely happens this late in a book’s life, so I’m very pleased. It should bring the book to a whole new audience.

    I’ll pass on more information when I have it. 🙂

     

  • It’s Wonderful!: Don’t Miss the Chance to Live Stream the New Philip Glass Circus Opera

    It’s Wonderful!: Don’t Miss the Chance to Live Stream the New Philip Glass Circus Opera

    I just watched the live stream of the premiere of new Philip Glass circus opera based on Robert Lax’s poems. Wow! It is a wonderful show! If you haven’t bought tickets for one of the performances, you should do so now. It runs through June 13, with all of the shows live streamed for just $12. You’ll never be able to see this show again for that price. If you love Lax, Glass, the circus, opera, theater, spectacle, life, order your ticket now: https://www.malmoopera.se/circus-days-and-nights-in-english
  • My Robert Lax Bio for the Malmö Opera Website: A Tie-In to the New Philip Glass-Robert Lax Opera

    My Robert Lax Bio for the Malmö Opera Website: A Tie-In to the New Philip Glass-Robert Lax Opera

    I was asked to write a short bio of Robert Lax by the Malmö Opera and Circus Cirkör, Swedish co-producers of the new Philip Glass opera, “Circus Days and Nights,” based on Lax’s poems. It’s up on their websites now, just days before the opera premieres in a live-stream event on May 29.

    You can read the bio here.

    And you’ll find more info about the opera, including a link for buying tickets to the shows (which run May 29-Jun 13) here. Tickets are only 100 SK (about $12 US).

    For a glimpse of the show, watch this one-minute trailer, which was just released:

     

  • Buy Your Ticket Now to a Live Streaming of the Philip Glass Opera “Circus Days and Nights,” Based on Robert Lax’s Poems!

    Buy Your Ticket Now to a Live Streaming of the Philip Glass Opera “Circus Days and Nights,” Based on Robert Lax’s Poems!

    Robert Lax fans: You can now buy tickets (approx. $12 US) to watch a live streaming of the new Philip Glass opera “Circus Days and Nights,” which premieres in Sweden on May 29 and has a nine-day run at the Malmo Opera House after that. To order your ticket, click here.

  • Dipping My Toe in Translation

    In order to insure the first German edition of Robert Lax’s 33 Poems would be as accurate as possible, I recently helped the translator and publisher, Thorsten Scheu, with his translation. My contribution consisted primarily of matching the German to the English and, with my intimate knowledge of Lax’s work (and improving knowledge of German), suggesting where the translation might be improved. It was a small part of the overall work, but it was enough for Thorsten to list me in the book as an editor, which delighted me.

    My relationship to German is long and spotty. My grandmother’s parents were German and she grew up speaking German in the U. S., but I don’t remember her ever using more than an occasional German word in my presence. My first real encounter with the language was in grade school. I went to a Lutheran school with German roots and the only foreign language we could study there was German. If I remember correctly, I was forced to learn it from the 4th through the 8th grade.

    I didn’t love the language, possibly because of how it was taught, but when I went to high school I took two more years of it to fulfill a language requirement and then did the same thing in college. One reason I never embraced it more fully was I never thought I’d be in a position to use it.

    But then, just five years out of college, I started leading tours in Europe, including in Germany, and, for the next decade or so, found myself needing to use German every year. To my surprise, I started to like it and I did some studying of it on my own.

    During those same years, I met and then married my wife Sylvia. Her mother was German and Sylvia herself spoke German exclusively for the first five or six years of her life. It was a sad day for her mother when Sylvia told her she had to be careful because this new man in her life knew their secret language. Being with Sylvia and her mother improved my German immensely.

    But even then, I would never have had the confidence I’d need to help with a translation from English to German if I hadn’t decided in April of 2020 to take on a “pandemic project.” While clearing books from a shelf, I came across a Bible written in “heutigem Deutsch”: contemporary German. Sylvia told me a friend had given it to her years before. Since I had never read the entire Bible and I’d already thought about spending some of my pandemic time furthering my knowledge of one language or another, I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

    To keep my new task from seeming onerous, I told myself I didn’t have to read every day but I had to average a chapter a day. I struggled a bit at first but eventually I enjoyed the work more and more, and two weeks ago I celebrated a full year of reading the Bible in German. At that point, I had read 40% of it. Which means I still have a year and a half to go!

    When I first started reading the German Bible, I had to look up words in almost every sentence, but now I can cruise through several sentences at a stretch without looking anything up. It was that growth in my knowledge of the language that gave me the confidence to attempt translation work.

    One interesting byproduct of my German Bible reading and translation work was I found more in Lax’s poems than I knew was there. Because translating slowed me down, I paid more attention to every word and saw how very carefully Lax had chosen each one. Because my German teacher was the Bible, I saw how strongly Lax’s work was inspired by Biblical rhythms and language too.

    These good experiences with a language I once disliked have me thinking about maybe someday trying my hand at translating a German work into English.

    Meanwhile, though, I have the rest of that Bible to read.

    33 Gedichte (33 Poems) by Robert Lax (trans. by Thorsten Scheu) is scheduled to be published in a limited edition of 100 copies by Sprachlichter Verlag in June 2020.

    The image at the top of this post comes from  Roman Kraft on Unsplash.

  • A Year in the Woods

    A Year in the Woods

    I’m nearing the end of what I expect to be the final revision of a memoir I’ve been working on for a number of years. It’s focused on a year my wife Sylvia and I lived in the woods on an island off the coast of Washington State. I was on my first sabbatical as a professor and was hoping for a peaceful year dedicated to writing and living simply. But that year turned out to be something else entirely. It was, as the book’s subtitle says, A Year In the Wilds of Nature, Death and Art.

    With its meditations on solitude, simplicity, living a life of meaning, and the healing power of nature, I’m hoping the book will resonate with people who have spent the past year contemplating those kinds of things.

    Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

    As I neared the fawn, it settled down, not in a conscious way but in the manner of dying. A leg twitched. Then its jaw. Then it lay still. I studied the white patch on its side, the way its sable hair gave way to its black hooves. The eye I could see was still open but I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t want to see the dimming, the dullness, the loss of lucidity I’d seen in the deer that grazed around the cabins. In the end, I looked anyway, and what I saw moved me deeply. The eye looked limpid, liquid, and peaceful, like water I could see to the depths of, and it had a quality to it I hadn’t seen in the living. There is this, at least, in death it seemed to say: an absence of pain. Of fear. Of worry. It seemed the kindest eye I’d ever seen, the kind I wished to turn myself toward animals and trees and people.

  • Notre Dame Magazine Devotes Its Spring Issue to Goodness–With My Essay Leading the Way

    Notre Dame Magazine Devotes Its Spring Issue to Goodness–With My Essay Leading the Way

    The Spring issue of Notre Dame Magazine is filled with good things–literally. I’m pleased to say my essay, “Goodness Gracious,” is the lead piece, but it’s far from the only thing you should read in the issue.

    The issue is packed with good writing and inspiring perspectives, including a lovely piece by a former student of mine, David Devine, on the beauty to be found in the simple act of taking his daughter to a nearby swing during the pandemic.

    You can access the entire issue here.

  • Coming Soon: An Essay on Goodness

    Coming Soon: An Essay on Goodness

    Three months ago, in the midst of all of the post-election rancor, the editor of Notre Dame Magazine asked me what I would think about writing an essay on Goodness. He was tired of reading so much about the badness in the world, he said. I told him I’d take the project on but had no idea what I’d do with it. He seemed especially pleased at my not-knowing.

    Given the times, with death and uncertainty, everywhere, nothing could have been better than spending the holiday period thinking about Goodness. The essay came to me in bits and pieces while I took long walks alone. I knew from the beginning I didn’t want to write some kind of traditional essay, but I didn’t expect the more lyrical piece I ended up creating: a meditation on what Goodness is.

    The issue my essay will be in is at the printer’s now and will be mailed out to the magazine’s almost 200,000 subscribers sometime in the next 2-3 weeks. When it goes up online, I’ll post the link here.

    Meanwhile, I encourage you to think about where Goodness appears in your own life. It’s a much better lens through which to see the world than the ones you find in most news outlets or social media.