Tag: writing

Proofing Was Not (but Has Become) my Forte

Published on by Nicole Walker2 Comments

I finished proofs for How to Plant a Billion Trees on Monday morning. I also had proofs due for a companion essay that will come out from Ecotone soon. I went back and forth to ensure that the changes in the one manuscript were the same in the other. I think I got whiplash.

I tried to explain to my grad students last week why proofreading is so hard. “It’s the last chance to see what kind of nonsense you wrote before the rest of the world sees it!” Proofreading is really meant to only capture misplaced commas and words, but I, dear reader, found whole sentences that required reworking. It’s a hard thing to do—write a two-pronged book—one prong about childhood molestation and abortion and the other about forest fires and their capacity for persistence. There is meant to be a metaphor, but if you overplay it, the comparisons sound trite and if you underplay it, the point of pairing the two stories is confounding. I don’t want to confound. I don’t mind complicating thing, but I hope that I also clarify ideas too?

My student asked, “How can you even find typos? Doesn’t your brain just read over them?” “Yes!” I told him. “That’s why there are typos in the first 14 versions I’ve revised.” But at the proofing stage, somewhat like the proofing stage during bread week on the Great British Bake Off, it’s all or nothing at this point. Readers, (hence the dear readers address above) could pull your book apart like Paul pulls apart poorly risen bread. The crust could split. The dough could be dense. Where are the air pockets?!?!

If I put on these “public eyes” reading glasses, then all the flaws out themselves. It feels very precarious—like hiking down a sandy, slippery Grand Canyon in shoes with no tread—what if I miss something? What if this doesn’t read like I think it reads? What if the whole project makes no sense and I wind up in the middle of the Colorado River with neither boat nor paddle?

For people less self-conscious than I, they with more self-confidence, maybe this process doesn’t feel as discombobulating. I feel like I’ve been a box with a bunch of rocks and shook about by potential audience, doubt, and also hope. Bruising! That’s what it is! As bruising as all these metaphors.

I’ll stop talking about this book for a bit and turn my overly metaphorical eye to larger concerns, but let me tell you, after I finished proofing, I took a nap for an hour. Then 6 hours later, I went to bed and slept until 8:45 a.m. That is super late for me. No surprise, I suppose, after all this baking and downhill slide-hiking.

The Hard Stuff. And the privilege to write it.

Published on by Nicole Walker1 Comment

I live a pretty privileged existence. Today, for example, I woke up at 7. Drove my son to school, ran my dogs, came home to host a couple of Zoom meetings, made lunch from leftovers I’d cooked the night before, emailed my friends at other universities about to recruit undergraduate student to our Masters of Fine Arts program here at NAU, finished proofing my book, Writing the Hard Stuff: Turning Difficult Subjects into Meaningful Prose, then sat down to write this column. Who has time to write in the middle of the day, you might ask. Writing is, actually, part of my job. Writing is hard. It should be easy but you have to think about premises, themes, sentences, arguments, audience, images, word choice—it’s like juggling 16 balls in your brain. After I finish writing, I will prep for class and send 14 more emails. And then, I will grade and give feedback to manuscripts. After that, I will teach a class where my graduate students and I will discuss premises, themes, sentences, arguments, audience, images, word choice of their essays for three hours. My job is hard and fun and I am very, very lucky to be able to do this work.

The Washington Post, which has become increasingly conservative since Jeff Bezos became the owner, published an article with the title The Sweetheart Deal for Academia is Over. Since I canceled the WP right a year ago, I couldn’t access the piece, but I could imagine what it said. Something like, universities are socialist systems that support research no one cares about and that teachers don’t teach enough and they’re separate from the communities in which they are ensconced. Not that these people didn’t go to college. It’s an “education for me, not for thee” kind of reporting.

Legacy media has targeted universities so long and so unvaryingly that real trust in higher education has slipped. At a presentation by the Dean of College and Letters, Dr. Julie Piering reiterated that slip saying that in recent polling nearly two-thirds of Americans don’t believe that the cost of higher education is worth it.

Grim news.

But, she said, if you flip the question and ask, do you think a college education benefits society, the numbers flip as well. Two-thirds of people do believe that a college education betters our communities.

            Sometimes, universities don’t communicate what they do very well. Mainly, because universities try to speak as one monolith. Universities do so many different things toward different goals, it feels nearly impossible to account for them all. Recent funding cuts have revealed some stark realities: funding for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and child cancers was slashed in the early part of the year. Many of the medicines we rely on come from university research. Even if people are unaware of how much influence colleges have on health care, once you make a list, it’s pretty easy to say, OK. STEM folks. You make sense. Science, Technology, and Engineering? We do like computers that go fast and buildings that stay standing. Math? Well, you wouldn’t want people to just go to school for STE programs.

            Sometimes, people use the acronym STEAM to include the arts, which I appreciate. But we in the rest of the college need more letters than that. Education. Philosophy. Psychology. English. History. Perhaps we could use the heading Humanities, Art, and Social Sciences but even that feels too wide. Psychology may be more obvious as to its use, whereas dance may less clear, but the arts and humanities inform nearly every element of our lives—from movies and TV shows we watch, video games we play, concerts we attend, NFL halftime shows (dancing AND singing). If we find the technology behind computers useful, what we use the computers to do—watch art (film, shows,), study texts (all I do all day is read manuscripts), and try to make Facebook and Instagram posts that people see (It takes a special combination of artistry, marketing, and rhetorical skills to get your one line of prose to be liked, or even loved), write, make reels, make films, make posters and flyers for people to attend all the cultural events that the College of Arts and Letters produces each month from plays, poetry readings, visiting lectures, piano recitals, dance performances—the stuff that enriches our lives is the stuff we use STEM for—we need to use the STEM to get to what we want to see and create and produce. And, if you need numbers to correlate to meaning, according to Arizona’s Commission on the Arts, in 2023, arts and culture contributed $15.8 billion to the economy. Art is work. And economically fecund work at that.

If universities are getting more expensive, it’s because, in Arizona at least, the state only provides 12% of its funding. The rest is either raised through foundation campaigns or paid for by tuition. If we went back to funding universities as we did in the last century, tuition would be so inexpensive, it would be silly not to attend. I still think it’s smart to go to college—another number?  A person with a bachelor’s degree can earn significantly more than someone with only a high school diploma, with some estimates suggesting a 61% to 86% higher annual income, or a lifetime earnings premium of over $1.5 million. Plus, we teach students how to adapt. Their critical thinking skills helps them pivot to a different career. Some folks with STEM degrees might have to start over.

            I don’t want academia’s “sweet deal” to end. I want the opposite. I want everyone to have a sweet deal. I want everyone’s work to be meaningful to them. I want everyone to have a flexible schedule and sometimes work from home. I want everyone to do their “art,” and be supported for it. I want everyone to be able to do work that is both fun and hard. Instead of making sure everyone is miserable, maybe we could find a way to privilege everyone.

When Fascism Stumbles and Falls

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People say we’re not doing enough enmadden me. “We,” my fellow engaged Americans, are standing on street corners, calling their congresspeople, filing lawsuits, boycotting businesses, talking and waiting for people who have gone Maga to come back, making jokes, making art, writing songs, sending postcards, getting out the vote, sending money. It’s nearly a full time job working against the regime and it’s insulting to say that we’re not doing enough. Of course, if you me “we,” the unengaged Americans, well that’s true, but they’re not getting your admonitions either.

Writing things on bullets—unverifiable nonsense coming from the FBI, and nothing come from other  from job numbers, from climate

Fasicsm so fast that they’ll trip and we’ll gather up the failed system and push not for a return to normal but a reach toward better. Big social changes with a new democratic party, lowercase letters, that might even change its name to democratic socialist (although that’s probably too charged) or Worker’s Party (which is too Marxily charged), but maybe like the Everyone Party. Everyone including the animals, rivers and trees! Or The Party of Everyone Except Billionaires. PEEB for Short!

How could this happen? I have heard great stories of people turning against the fascism one by one. Often, it’s by having someone not ideologically bound, but open-minded, to listen to someone who has questions about the direction the country is going. The wall of die-hard MAGA people can be splintered by one right-directed postcard, saying, or question. The more splinters, the weaker the wall.

Big ideas like general strikes and massive protests are hard to organize. Not so much because we don’t have the will but because we are such a huge country—it’s one of the things that will save us. We don’t have to be ideologically pure. We can just keep our many, varied mouths moving and our many, varied ears listening. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her author’s note at the end of her new book Dream Count wrote, “Ideology blocks different ways of seeing and art requires many eyes.”

There is a reason teachers, artists, writers, journalists are silenced. It’s not only because we talk and put our work and words into the world—it’s because we also listen to the people and the world. As we listen and make and do, we lift someone up, change someone’s mind, save someone’s life, one by one. I don’t know if paying attention to the tiny details counts as a philosophy. William Blake’s there is a world in every grain of sand though resonates. One postcard, one FB post, one conversation at the grocery store, one meal, one instance of pointing to another person as a hawk lifts off from a tree branch whether you’re in Central Park or Mobile, Alabama.

On one of my attempts to get people to send postcards of facts to random people in red states, I noted that it would just take 100,000 of us to send 1,000 post cards to reach the 100,000,000 or so who voted for Trump. When my book, How to Plant a Billion Trees was on submission, Harper Collins wanted to publish it, but marketing came back and said “we really need her to have 100,000 followers.” (Not that everyone needs 100,000—just that this book and I would need a big following). But my point is, 100,000 people could be inspired to send 1,000 postcards. We don’t need all hundred million people to change their minds, but if we can note that health care, food, housing, clean air and water, renewable energy, no genocide, Universal Basic Income, natural resource preservation to enough people, a small percentage will join PEEB! (exclamation point required). We have to be ready when the fascism falls to pick everyone up and in so lifting them, we will become the country we deserve to be.

Edited to note: In my latest blog post, I wrote about the new party, The Party of Everyone Except Billionaires.” When I told Andrea Askowitz about it, she said, “PEEB? PEEB sounds ridiculous.” But hearing the word upon her lips, I recognized the incipient future. PLEEB! As in we Plebeians versus the Billionaires. Now I just have to make the L stand for something. I thought of Love but you all already think I’m a cheesemeister. So far, we’ve crowd sourced Party of Liberty for Everyone Except Billionaires.”

What even is politics.

Published on by Nicole Walker1 Comment

Is there anything that has no politics? Maybe politics isn’t the right word, because polis has its roots in the name of Aristotle’s classic work, Politiká, which introduced the Ancient Greek term politiká (Πολιτικά, ‘affairs of the cities’). Polis denotes city/town. Politics implies policy and police, the connotation means social system and social system might mean consequence or even simply effect, but originally, polis had a local sense—that which I can affect as a citizen.

Journalism, even very early writings written by travelers, including Herodotus and Thucydides, stretched the meaning of politics from its local association to global consideration, but those who could effect change still operated on a local basis. The feudal system avoided politics by installing kings by divine right. Politics, as Hilary Mantel made clear in Wolf Hall, happened behind the scenes. But in our current times, due to social media, politics means everything. Last night, I watched a film about surfing. How lovely to take a break from The Pitt—a medical drama whose political context is, when our community foregoes mental health care, physical health care, educational ambition, neighborhood and family support, it all ends up in the ER. Or, when watching Somebody Somewhere where people outcast from society find their own company, but still struggle. Or when looking on Facebook and seeing just a speck of a book and wonder if friend’s book will be prized or ignored based on who uplifts it, who lends their name and prestige to it. I’m sitting with my cats and wondering how often they kill birds and know I can’t tell Facebook that! Or, thinking about how environmentally unsound it is to have dogs—what animals died to manufacture, industrially, on a global scale, pet food?

But this surfing show, 100 Foot Wave, seemed so politically free. For the first five minutes. How self-sufficient a sport. Paddle to a wave. Step up on a board (made of plastic, not entirely free of harm) and ride a wave. But then the waves became too crowded. Now we need a boat with a two-stroke engine to drive us out to the less-populated bigger waves. Now tourists flock, even in the winter, to Nazaré, Portugal the town where hundred-foot waves are promised. Now the two-stroke engines slip carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and gasoline/oil mixtures into the ocean.

At a faculty meeting, we discussed how we writing professors use AI. Some faculty ask their students to ask ChatGPT to generate an essay, then ask students to write their own and compare them. The students prefer the homegrown essays. At least for now. During the meeting, a post popped up on my screen (which, if I were my colleagues, I’d be annoyed—who has their screens open at meetings?) that more energy will be used than all the homes in Wisconsin to power a data center for AI. One of my colleagues compared AI to a car. She said you like that it’s there but you don’t want to use it all the time. You need to exercise your brain just as you do your body. That’s why we have treadmills. I thought, or, we could have built a non-automobile world where you had to, say, walk to work, thereby requiring neither mechanized transport or exercise.

Online, it never ends. Israel is storming into Gaza after bombing, then starving the people. How much more death. Off the coast of Venezuela, our government killed people on boats with no evidence of their drug trafficking and even if there were evidence, no right to torpedo people out of the water without a declared war (and even then?). Also off the coast of Venezuela, the ocean current that usually comes this time of year to stir up nutrients to feed the fish which feed the Venezuelans didn’t arrive. Also, inside Venezuela, a glacier that provides water for a huge number of the population, has shrunk to near uselessness. Also, it’s hunting season for wolves in Wyoming. Also, my university just got its budget cut again. Also, Trump canceled another wind farm. Also, the Supreme Court is young and ugly and may overturn a 2007 ruling that regulates greenhouse gas emissions. If glaciers, boats, and wolves are political, what isn’t? How many times a day can I be made mad.

I’m not the only mad one mad. It’s not only me who finds everything political. Cancel culture is politics. Someone’s mad at me for feeling sorry for the kid who shot Charlie Kirk. Rebecca Solnit is mad that people are calling resistance against the admin a lost cause (I am also mad at they who are giving up the fight). Democrats are mad at the Dems. The Republicans are mad at the libs who they have fully owned but still blame for political violence that is perpetuated mainly by them. The politicians are mad at the politicians. Adam Schiff is mad a Kash Patel. Kash Patel is mad at the meme-maker who voiced and animated a baby who looked and spoke just like him.

Trump was mad a Stephen Colbert so he had him fired for his politics. Trump, or the FCC, was mad a Jimmy Kimmel, so they fired him for his speech which they called political. I’m mad that so much power rests in one politician’s hands that he can quell speech. I understand that yes, in a capitalist economy, there are consequences for what one says, which isn’t the same as denying free speech. But if you and your buddies are buying all the media outlets AND firing people for speaking their own thoughts, that is tantamount to suppressing free speech.

I do feel for Tyler Robinson who shot Charlie Kirk. I feel badly for Charlie Kirk even though I thought he was a bully. I feel bad about Melissa Hortman, state legislator, her husband and her dog who were shot in Minnesota. I feel bad for the professor at Ball State for saying that she was sorry Kirk was killed but that he himself did sow violence. I feel bad for political violence. I feel for all the kids who are made constantly mad. I feel for the kids who are mad but say they’re not political. Politics is everything and everything is maddening? Who can tell the difference between politics and anger?

The question is, what to do with this madness? I was talking with a friend last week as we listed all the horrors. She asked how come I didn’t sound upset. I told her I was upset but that I spend so much time being upset, I have my anger pretty measured by now. As you can see from above, I spend a lot of time thinking how little actions like driving two-stroke jet skis contribute to global warming—as if one individual action can have planetary consequences. Climate Change, like social media, makes us think broadly and also angrily. The only solution I can find is, ironically, in the opposing premise above: I do think one action can have planetary consequences. Or, rather, I do think local action can make a difference. Or, if nothing else, is the antidote to anger. Every action I’ve taken (as opposed to internet scrolling or news reading) has lessened the anger. From delivery food at the Food Center to marching at the protests, from writing fact-filled postcards about the Big Beautiful Bill to collecting clothes for people in Ukraine, when I’m doing something locally, even if it’s for global causes, I’m less mad. And truly, none of these things is really political. Most of us, on the ground, are just working to make as many things better as we can. Even those who really just want to ride 100-foot waves. I’m sure if I were in Nazaré, Portugal and met the people who worked in the city, I would probably even learn to like the boats. (Also. I canceled Disney and Hulu because they fired Jimmy Kimmel. Anger has its place!)

It’s Not Hope but It’s the Beginning of a Plan

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On election day, I took my dogs on a walk and finished listening to the audiobook Parable of the Sower by Olivia Butler. This dystopian story begins in 2024 with a slightly-worse-than-it-is-right-now vision of Los Angeles. The middle class have built walls around their neighborhoods. The poor have no homes, sell their bodies and drugs to survive. But in the book’s version of 2025, then 2026, things get worse: angry mobs, high on a drug called ‘pyro,’ crushes through the neighborhood’s defensive walls and sets whole communities on fire. Eventually, our narrator, Lauren takes to the road, cultivating a small group of people she can trust as they try to survive with only 3 guns, a little cash, and some dried meat and fruit between them. I won’t spoil the end of the book, but I will say, this group coalesced into a community that might survive in a place with a little water and some fruit trees.

Tuesday, I had meetings and manuscripts to read. I made oven fried chicken thighs and mashed potatoes. I cook when I’m nervous. That day, we ate at 4:15. Later that night, with my friend B, I went to the Orpheum where the Democrats hosted what we thought we be a celebratory event. I cheered Susan who I met when she and I organized a rally for Proposition 139—the Arizona Abortion Access initiative—in Flagstaff. We’d gathered in front of city hall with friends like Sanjam, Angie, Ann, Rima, Julian, Emma, Joan, and Erik. I starting work for reproductive rights after an essay entitled, “My Abortion at Age 11 Wasn’t a Choice. It Was My Life,” that I wrote for The New York Times after the Dobbs decision came down. Publishing this piece opened paths for me to work with bodily autonomy advocates like Maggie in Washington DC, Andrea in Florida, and Jasmine in Arizona. I gave interviews to print and television reporters: Haruka, from Tokyo, Maria from Valencia and the amazing Valentine from Paris. I told my abortion story on stage along with other abortion storytellers—another Nicole, Liz, Matt, Dominic, Nilsa, and Dr. Caren. After our presentation, I attended the after party. Dozens of women came up to me to introduce themselves, to tell me their abortion story, to share with me about the story about the time they experienced sexual assault, to thank me for putting my story out there. I’ve had the same experience at every event where I’ve shared my story. Others share their back.

Tuesday night, at the Orpheum, I said hello to Shonto. I ran over to Aubrey to give her a huge hug for winning her election. Jonathan spoke to the audience to tell us how Apache had run out of ballots, so they were trying to figure out how to get more. James grasped my hand. Pamela patted my shoulder.

As the votes came in, the mood shifted. B and I left before we could see what would happen in Pennsylvania. We shared a cigarette. I hadn’t smoked in over 20 years but tonight seemed like a good night to start again. I came home and found my husband scrolling and scrolling. I said, “Your eyes can’t change the news,” but he couldn’t stop trying to make it so. I took a melatonin and tried to sleep. In the morning, my son came upstairs and squeezed my shoulder. “I’m sorry, mom.” I told him I was sorry too.

On Wednesday, I moved like molasses. My body didn’t want to enter the day any more than my mind did. It took me a while to get it together, but I managed to walk the dogs. Not only did I have to stop the storm of ideas in my head—I have to move. I have to buy a gun. I should get seeds. The characters in Parable of the Sower wished they had packed more seeds—but, because I finished that book, I needed a new one. I started Naomi Klein’s 2014 This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus the Climate. I knew it would be at least as depressing as I felt. 10 years ago, we needed to act full-throttle, full-throated on climate change. But then, we elected Trump two years later. Now we have him again. A dark hope rises in me that he will drive us to the brink where we finally see into the abyss and our mindset is collectively and purposefully shifted. But I shrink from that darkness because we’re just as likely to fall headfirst into the abyss as we are likely to change our fossil fuel-ish ways.

I came home and read Alison’s manuscript, The Rejection Lab. Sarah, my co-editor at the University of Georgia’s Crux series, and I thought today would be a good day to read about rejection, race, dating, Benjamin Franklin, Cotton Mather and the whole history of trying and losing. At 11:00, I realized I was going to be late for work. I rushed around getting ready, which was the only time I hadn’t felt near desperately sad. Panic is a good distraction from sorrow.

I made it to school with a minute to spare. I thought I was OK but when I walked into the faculty meeting, I burst into tears. Seeing my friends, Monica, Angie, Karen, Geetha, Oscar, Erica, Bill, Christine, Calinda, made the election results real. I felt their sadness. I reckoned with my own. I streamed tears while we discussed new Annual Review policies. They’re not called Annual Reviews anymore, was the upshot.

I had to run to teach my class. I almost cried when I saw my intermedia creative nonfiction students but kept it together. The students knew I’d been working hard on the election, even as I hadn’t directly told them what my politics were, because that’s against the rules. But it’s not against the rules for them to guess. They looked at me with pure empathy. And so, did I. They would have to live longer with this travesty that me. Still, we were there together for that hour. I was so grateful for the essays we read. They were brilliant—each one differently so—one was about a rug, another about the ocean, another about bones, another about where our old laptops go to die. For 75 minutes, I felt a reprieve. Then, I had a beer with Sherwin Bitsui. Then I went to dinner with my husband and son. Then, Lawrence and I had a glass of wine.

That evening, we faculty attended a talk by Sabah. I saw Jeff, KT, Bjorn. We nodded at each other, as if to say, “Can you believe we made it to a talk after what we’ve been through today?” “Yes. And in fact, I’m glad you’re here.”

There are a lot of names in this story. I drop them on purpose. These are people who, if we had to walk a long road north from LA, that I would trust to have with me. These are people who are going to stand up for me, for our trans and gay brothers and sisters, for voting rights, for bodily autonomy, for working to act on the climate crisis. These communities will band together. They will listen to my stories and tell me theirs. We are locked arm in arm. They can try to break us up, but are links are strong.

Of democracy and the climate, technology is not going to save us—not polling technology or internet technology or SpaceX or coating the atmosphere with a thin layer of sulfur dioxide. What’s going to save us is stories of this goofy, beautiful world—stories like Gary Kristensen who road 48 miles in Oregon in a boat made of a pumpkin. What’s going to save us is the story of the dams coming down on the Klamath where now salmon spawn in their ancestral grounds. What’s going to save us is your story and my story and Alison’s story, Grace’s, Ben’s, and Hayden’s. We build our communities by telling our stories. My hope lives because we keep telling them.