Shake it up: 10 ways to jump-start your writing—and find inspiration—from Julie Stewart

Julie Stewart (at left) and Butler MFA students and alums 

at the July 12 gathering. Photo by Gerry Justice.

On July 12, Indianapolis writer Julie Stewart offered an inspiring presentation about her process and craft for Butler MFA students, alums and anyone interested at the Efroymson Center for Creative Writing at Butler University. 

Here are 10 ideas Julie shared.

 

1.      Make your work a gift.

“Instead of birthday gifts, I send stories,” Julie says. “Give your stories (or poems or essays or novel chapters) to people who you like and who like you. They’ll think they’re great.”

2.      Think big. Then don’t think.

When you start submitting your work, aim high. “Paris Review, not Podunk,” Julie says. Look at where your favorite writers are publishing—there are great lists at the back of anthologies like Best American Short Stories or collections of essays or poetry. Set up your list of places to submit, and start sending out your work. “If rejections come in, don’t give ’em a thought. Just send the piece off to the next publisher on the list.”

3.      Create a parallel universe.

Post-MFA, Julie found herself missing the sense of community she’d had while in school. So she went to visit a friend from the Spalding program. The two tried writing together.

“It was ‘parallel play,’ Julie says. “We were sitting around trying to focus for an hour.” When it was time to go home, Julie’s friend asked: “Do you think we could still do this?”

Now, despite the fact they live in different cities, the two writers write together. They go for walks at the same time. They talk to each other on the phone. Then they sit down and write. “That’s my practice now—to do this walking and writing,” Julie says. It’s not a workshop, but it’s companionship and feedback. “It’s an acknowledgment that I have a reader. Someone is hearing my voice. This is what I love.”

  

4.      Make an idea book.

Here’s the lowdown on Julie’s idea books, which are an important part of her process, especially at the beginning of a project. “I’ve given myself all summer to play in this book,” she says. “I won’t start the actual writing for my new collection till September.”

A. Don’t spend too much money. Buy a coffee table book at a garage sale or Goodwill (Julie got hers for $1).

B. Glue a new title on the front. (Julie’s is a cutout of something her son wrote when he was little.)

C. Make the book a collage. Julie journals on top of the pages of the book. She adds newspaper clippings that interest her. She collages in her kids’ artwork. Then, somehow, ideas start coming together. A story about a swan in a small-town newspaper sparks a theme about invasive species and Trayvon Martin’s killer being let off. “The next thing that pops in my head is all the titles in my next short story collection,” Julie says. “I’ve written this table of contents and things are popping up all over the place now.”

5.      Invest in a writing coach.

 “A couple of years ago, I wrote a check to hire a writing coach,” Julie says. “That was huge.” It’s a good way to take the creative work you’ve done and apply action steps to it. It adds discipline.

Julie Stewart showcased her narrative textiles inspired by personal 

scars after attendees wrote about and shared their own scar stories.

6.      Write on location.

Not just at Starbucks. To mix things up, take your journal or laptop and write where real things are happening—at a soup kitchen, at a graveyard, in a hospital lobby.

7.      Put time before money.

“Grace Paley says ‘Keep your overhead low,’” Julie says. She agrees. Julie doesn’t have a day job, per se. She does what she needs to do to get by, and protects her creative time. “I edit kids’ college essays. I sew and sell aprons. I occasionally work at a women’s dress shop,” Julie says. She doesn’t apply for grants or residencies. Instead she uses all the time she has to focus on her work.

8.      Recruit non-writer readers.

“I like to share my stories with people who aren’t writers,” Julie says. “For example: I’m doing a story about domestic abuse and someone who’s trying to get away. I don’t want to be sharing that with writers alone. I want to share it with someone going through a domestic abuse situation.” Readers who are “real people” vs. fellow writers add authenticity and a different perspective on the work.

9.      Ask three questions.

At your meetings with writers’ groups or writer friends, keep things simple. Julie and her MFA friends from Spalding meet on the phone and ask each other these three questions:

What are you reading?

What are you writing?

What’s getting in your way?

10.  Try this prompt.

One of Julie’s textile pieces, which she showed the group at Butler, is based on scars. “I took inventory of every scar on my body, and wrote it out,” Julie says. She shared this concept as a prompt with the group at Butler. Try it at home!

A. Take an inventory of every scar on your body.

B. Choose one scar and write about it.

About Julie Stewart

Julie Stewart is an artist. She’s a short story writer, yes. But an artist first. She’s a graduate of Spalding University’s low-residency MFA program. On top of writing, she teaches writers of all ages (check out Urban Plot on Facebook). She creates narrative textiles that she hangs from clotheslines. Sometimes she hangs them at farmer’s markets. Sometimes she hangs them at her house. Sometimes she exhibits them at galleries. (She and her work were part of the Binding of Isaac exhibition at the Christian Theological Seminary this spring.) “It’s all geared toward readers and showing them what I’m doing,” she says. Julie’s also a mom or stepmom to seven kids, age 12 to 24, a Great Dane and a flock of chickens. “My stories are my children too,” she says.

Students at the July event enjoyed free pizza from Jockamo Upper Crust Pizza in Irvington (Julie's neighborhood). The next Butler MFA student and grad gathering will be Saturday, August 9. Watch the Facebook page for details! 

Get a real job

Jason Fried's advice to business people. They need you!

Three tips to inspire you to use your MFA outside the world of academia

By Alyssa Chase

This is how this blog was supposed to go. I was supposed to be smug about my fancy job and tell you all how great it was that I could use my MFA every day at work. Then, three weeks ago, I got laid off—suddenly. So there’s a switching of gears
going on.

But I still believe what I was going to say. There are more things to do with an MFA than become a professor or an adjunct. And you can do those things without losing your integrity. That’s not saying you’re not going to get laid off. It’s tough out there. But you can live, and maybe even afford a modest house and have a family and a dog, etc., just using your writing and creative skills. Really-really.

But first, let me get this out of the way. I don’t want to squish anyone’s dreams of becoming a creative writing professor. On the other hand, I’m a truth-teller to the core. I’m married to a tenured professor in creative writing, and I hear too much about the business of universities. I’m not exactly cynical, just realistic. If you want cynical, read this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education about “MFA Fever.”

So…let’s get to the point. Why would anyone want to hire you because you’ve got an MFA? What could you do out there? And how do you get started in the “real” work world outside of academia?

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

1.       You can write. That’s money.

In the bestselling business book Rework, Jason Fried gives this advice: “If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position, hire the best writer.” Why? Because clear writing is a sign of clear thinking: “Great writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate.” Mention that when you’re in an interview!

2.       Content is hot.

Have you heard people talking about “content”? Yeah, it can sound really “marketing”—maybe a little intimidating. Don’t turn your nose up at it. It’s really just writing. These days, companies know they need to offer something useful and maybe even meaningful. And they need writers to create the stories, articles and tips pieces people want to read. Being a creative writer, and using your well-honed skills in storytelling, diction, rhythm, etc., will definitely give you an edge over corporate-style writers.

To get you started: Here’s the scoop on content marketing. Here are some other articles that define content and what it means to be a content writer.

Yeah, there’s a lot of lingo in there. You may not know about SEO, etc., etc. But think about it. Read about it. And don’t say you can’t get a job doing it. I did. More than once. And I’m an English major with a background in journalism. And I’m a semester away from an MFA in poetry.

(Of course, there are a lot of other things besides content writing you can do. More on those later!)

3.       Business isn’t bad.

When I was an undergrad, I remember insulting a friend by saying he was going to “go into business.” Are you like that? Yeah, I thought so. It’s great to have this feeling you don’t really need to be marketable. It’s better to be broke than to sell out. But here’s the rub. You don’t need to sell out. If you work for a company you believe in, and you’re a great writer, editor and thinker, you’re going to be the golden child. You’re going to love what you do.

Here are a couple of examples from my career:

At a local (yet international) travel company, I got to focus on sending people on vacation. I also got to interview travel-industry CEOs and learn what makes them tick.  I got to go to Cancun on business.

Advice from Rework: Mention this
when you're looking for a job. 

At a local (yet international) nonprofit, I got to write handbooks for kids and create stories to inspire people to help save babies in third-world countries. I got to go to the Philippines on business.

It was fun. It was rewarding. And I’m hoping I’ll get to do something that’s just as fun in my next job.

Why you’re unique.

Here’s a last word about why MFAs are special when it comes to the workplace: As a writer, you’re used to rejection. You’ve been beat up in workshops. You’ve had your work ignored by publishers. You know all about revision. That makes you self-aware. It makes you humble. And writing talent combined with self-awareness empower you cope with whatever a workplace throws at you.

West Wind, Esq.

Christmas card circa 1992

John & John

For John Hibbard (second from left, back row), coach, dad and friend, and John Chase (far right, back row), my own coach and dad, in suburban heaven--tennis courts and cold beer forever.  

John & John

The line is violet, gold

in the light, the edge

of a snowdrift, ground glass

lifting in the wind,

settling into a shadowed border.

John crossed over

endlessly grinning,

spirogyra in his head,

tangled in years at a chain-link fence,

encouraging his daughter, her line drive or a drive

down the line.  Now he’s gone.

Gone to meet old friends,

another John,

my father.

Are they spinning

through their days

at that fence, drifting

to the tennis court—

their turn to play, to Saturday

doubles, in sweaty whites, moving

across green asphalt,

pale lines shifting—

a yellow ball tossed by a strong hand.

Let them rest now on a wooden bench.

Let them reach warm palms into a bucket

of ice. I hear them popping silver cans.

Why the name?

Be Merry and Wise is a stolen title. Once the name of an exhibition at the Pierpont Morgan library in New York, it's now an out-of-print book that I can't afford (over $100). But it became a theme for me--that phrase--and a personal mantra. And it's tied into my hopes now, too. More on that later. Here's a description of the book from the Pierpont Morgan library's web page:
"When did someone decide that books might be written and published for child readers? Originating from an exhibition held at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, this bibliographical study focuses on the child as the audience for books in the English language. The authors show how certain creative talents, driven by a sense of purpose, or a wish to make some money, attempted to appeal directly to children, and how the publishing industry came to realise that this audience might constitute a profitable market. As well as plotting the chronological development of children's book publishing, the authors also show how publishers adapted their strategies to exploit this new market. Sweetness and light did not prevail everywhere, but even in some of the most forbidding examples presented here there was a commercial optimism that both merriment and wisdom might be happily combined, within the pages of children's literature."