I hope you enjoy this interview!

About Sara Bennett Wealer

Sara grew up in Manhattan, Kansas (the “Little Apple”), where she sang in all the choirs and wrote for the high school newspaper. She majored in voice performance at the University of Kansas before deciding she had no business trying to make a career as an opera singer and transferred to journalism school, where no one cares if you can hit a high C or convincingly play a Valkyrie. She went on to become a reporter covering everything from house fires to Hollywood premieres.

These days, she writes event scripts and marketing copy while the sun is out. By night, she writes books for young adults. Sara lives in Cincinnati with her husband, two daughters, two dogs and four cats, and she still sings sometimes when her schedule allows. When Sara is not writing or running around doing Mom Things, you’ll find her at the ballet, or obsessively watching ballet on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Grave Things Like Love

Elaine lives in her family-run 1800’s funeral home that she’s set to inherit, so she’s used to being around a dead body or two. Only no one has asked her if she wants to take over the family business. Enter Xander, the new boy in town with a passion for ghost hunting who makes Elaine feel like she’s transforming from Funeral Girl to Fun Girl. But not everyone is thrilled to see her changing, least of all her childhood best friend, Miles. When Xander convinces Elaine to ghost hunt in the funeral home Elaine must face her fears, in more ways than one.

Interview with Sara Bennett Wealer

Lori Walker: First off, I’d love to hear a bit about how you became a writer. What is your journey as an author? What drew you to YA?

Sara Bennett Wealer: My mom was an English teacher, so I grew up watching her read books and the writings of her students. I especially remember Sunday nights watching Masterpiece Theater on PBS. Mom’s specialty was British Lit, so I got the whole Austen/Bronte/Shakespeare immersion at a young age. I don’t remember what prompted me to start writing, only that I felt an urge to do it and filled up notebooks with stories. I won a big award in 4^th grade for one of them, which encouraged me even more.

Writing was always something I knew I could do well. So when I decided my first choice of college major—voice performance/opera—wasn’t going to get me a career I could live on, I switched to journalism. I thrived in feature writing, especially when I could write about arts and entertainment. But when I ventured into the working world as a newspaper reporter, I found myself getting assigned municipal beats or transportation, or sitting at the city desk on weekends listening to the police scanner and racing out to house fires. One evening I had a revelation: If I didn’t write something that came from my own creativity—something not assigned by an editor and due at the end of the day about a topic I really cared nothing about—then I was going to have a mental health crisis. I literally stood up from the couch, went to my computer, and started writing my first novel. (It never went anywhere, BTW. It was my training book, and [it was] awful. But writing it saved my sanity.)

The voice that came out of me that night was a teen voice. And I honestly can’t explain why I’m drawn to YA except to say that I find many adult conflicts boring. Young adulthood is filled with choices and obstacles and hope and fear and fun, plus so many opportunities to make mistakes that help build you into the person you’re just starting to become. I love exploring all of that, as opposed to writing about career angst or failed marriages or strained family relationships. (I’m not saying that’s ALL adult fiction is about—obviously! But it’s all I can think of when I think about what I might write in that genre, which probably tells you all you need to know about why I don’t write it!)

LW: What does a typical day of writing look like to you?

SBW: I don’t make my living writing novels—I do marketing, so I sort of mash it all together as I’m able. I get up and get my daughter to school, then come home and spend a couple of hours on whatever work needs to be done for my day job. Most days I do a half-hour weights and HIIT workout at home, then I walk the dogs and get a little lunch.

In the afternoon, I do more day job writing, until it’s time to get my kid from school. Then it’s dinner and spending time with my husband and helping with homework until I’m able to sit down and do some novel work. If I’m drafting, I try to get at least 500 words done a day. If I’m editing, I go until I run out of steam. I decompress watching comfort shows on TV (The Office, Dark on Netflix, whatever new thing is out or new seasons of Only Murders in the Building, Umbrella Academy, House of the Dragon, etc.) or YouTube videos of people cooking or thrifting or whatever other rabbit hole I’ve gone down, before heading to bed. It’s all very exciting!

LW: Your bio says that by day you write event scripts and marketing copy. How do you manage to find the bandwidth to write creatively at night? Any advice on juggling both?

SBW: Being a newspaper reporter was great training for writing on command and on deadline, staying fresh and finding ways to keep going even when you don’t really feel like it. Each day I had a story to write that was due by 5 p.m. I turned it in to an editor who would give me feedback in real time (often with not a lot of regard for my feelings—we had work to get done, and I could cry later at home if I needed to). That kind of work ethic has followed me. I know I can’t wait for inspiration from “the muse.” I can’t wait until I feel like writing. The only way to write a novel is to write it, which means sitting my butt down and doing the work.

Now… how do you do that when you’ve got two kids of varying ages and a day job plus other grown-up worries and responsibilities? My advice is to set a daily word count. I tell myself I can stop after 500 words, and I don’t put any pressure on myself to make those 500 words good. I just need to get them done. And I’ve found something interesting happens… once I start writing, I often can do more. Ideas start flowing. The muscle gets stronger as I exercise it. Even when those 500 words feel like a massive struggle of suckiness, I’ll go back the next day and see that what I’ve written wasn’t half bad. And even if I barely made it through those words, and they did truly suck, well, 500 words builds up if you do it every day, and before you know it you’ve got something you can work with to make better. You can’t improve something that hasn’t been drafted yet!

To help with creative bandwidth, I’ll seek out things that inspire me—books, TV shows, my “rabbit holes” of topics to explore on YouTube. It helps to see what other people are doing, what they’re passionate about, how they tackle creative problems and express themselves.

LW: As I read more and more YA, I realize that at their heart, most YA books are coming of age tales that have elements of different genres pulled in—in the case of Grave Things, romance. And YA appeals to teens and adults alike. Why do you think the coming of age tale resonates with such a wide variety of audiences?

SBW: Like I mentioned earlier, young adulthood is the time when we sort of have permission to try and fail and grow and stretch. I think it’s often more fun and hopeful and engaging to spend time with someone who is evolving and just starting out in life vs. someone who’s seen a lot of it already. YA lets younger readers see that they’re not alone, and I think it helps adults appreciate where they’ve been, while also giving a glimpse of what could still be.

LW: Grave Things Like Love has paranormal romance elements. Your novel Now & When seems to have some sci-fi elements in that she can communicate with the future. And your first two novels, Rush and Rival focus on friend relationships. These are pretty diverse types of stories! What is your process for generating ideas for a new story?

SBW: Most of my story ideas come from situations I’ve been in or relationships I’ve had, or a topic that’s captured my imagination. That’s not to say any of my books are autobiographical; those ideas have more been a jumping-off point to explore all sorts of “what ifs?” And the “what ifs” occasionally lead me to some out-there places. In Now & When, it went in a time-travel-ish direction. In Grave Things Like Love, I wanted an element of fun to balance out what could have been a pretty heavy setting and topic, and in brainstorming a romance, I found a ghost-ish story taking shape. (I say “ish.” because the paranormal and sci-fi in my books are often more like fun elements than the whole story. In general, I see all of my books as contemporary, sometimes with a little extra “something” sprinkled in.)

LW: Fun fact about me, I used to work in a funeral home. So I’ve seen the behind-the-scenes stuff and totally get the desensitized feeling of being around bodies and that guilt over being disappointed when my plans would get derailed while somebody was living the worst day of their life and you did a great job of capturing it. I’m curious what your research was like for this novel. You had to have spent quite a lot of time around a funeral home.

SBW: I got the idea for Grave Things while working one of those newspaper jobs I hated so much. I stumbled upon a family-owned funeral home in one of the communities I covered and thought it would make a great feature story. The family was kind enough to let me spend a good amount of time with them, soaking up the atmosphere, talking about the business, etc. I left town for a different job before I could write the feature, but I kept the idea of a book about a teen growing up in a funeral home setting. I’m glad it rang true for you!

LW: Does writing YA affect your social media strategy in terms of what you post and how you interact with followers? If so, how?

SBW: I know it should, but I can’t bring myself to dive too deeply into creating content for things like TikTok because I think it’s worse to look like an old person trying to be cool for a teen audience. (My 13-year-old has drummed this fear into me by letting me know how cringey any attempts I’ve made so far are.) Basically, I try to be reachable and relatable wherever I DO post. So I’ve invested in a good website, and I post on Instagram and Twitter when I think I’ve got something interesting to show, tell or share. I know I should have a much more robust and well-thought-out social media strategy, but I also know social media only really works when it’s something you enjoy doing, and if I’m just going to look like I’m trying too hard, then I’d rather default to a more minimalistic approach.

LW: A lot of authors are creating playlists to accompany their books, but this being a reading column, I’d like to know what your “reading playlist” is. What books should people read after reading Grave Things Like Love?

SBW: Ooh! Well, if we’re talking about spooky season books, I can tell you I’m dying to read The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay. That’s next on my TBR list. Also, anything by Shirley Jackson will get you in the creepy fall mood.

As far as books I love that tell you a little more about my tastes, my all-time favorite is The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. I highly recommend a book of short stories by Nafissa Thompson-Spires called Heads of the Colored People. And for YA books, I love a good bit of subversive humor. Kill the Boy Band by Goldy Moldavsky and Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews fit the bill there. For stories full of heart, I’m loving anything written by David Yoon.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon Affiliate Link where, if you choose to purchase via the link, DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: Interview with Sara Bennett Wealer appeared first on DIY MFA.

Ultimately, this syllabus is a mix of craft books to get you prepared and a list of comp books to keep you on track. But, of course, at some point, we have to stop reading and start actually doing the big project, so there are a few things you need to consider when you start putting together your own syllabus. As well as a few suggestions for picking the right books.

Things to Consider Before Making Your Syllabus

I know, it’s exciting. A reading list you are actually looking forward to conquering! But you don’t want to go in and start adding a bunch of books all willy-nilly because you want to keep the syllabus focused so that at some point you actually do start writing.

First things first, gather your materials. For writers, these are pretty standard: pen and paper, laptop, notes app on your phone, whatever you use to record ideas. You’ll also want your bookshelves handy, whether they are physical bookshelves, on an eReader, or in some fancy spreadsheet you have that lists all of your books. I say this because you probably already have the books you need for this syllabus on your shelves and don’t actually need to spend more money on this project.

Now you need to do some thinking so that you can be sure to choose the right books and the right number of books for your syllabus. So pour yourself a drink, grab your idea recording implements, and ponder the following:

• Think about the scope of your project: What are you wanting to do? 
• Consider your timeline: How long are you giving yourself for the different phases of the project? 
• Consider your existing knowledge: How much do you already know about writing in this genre AND how widely have you already read in this genre?

For instance, I am planning to really devote myself to writing personal essays. I want to develop a regular writing routine and amass a pretty big arsenal of completed drafts so that every so often I can go on a polishing and submitting spree. 

I’m giving myself two weeks to review a couple of craft books I’ve already read on memoir writing before I want to start that regular writing routine. I plan to hit the writing hard for a solid month before I start polishing and submitting anything. 

I am already pretty knowledgeable about memoir and essay writing, but I need to gather and refine this knowledge, which is why I am reviewing craft books I’ve already read. While I am doing the writing, I am going to be reading within the genre. Not exclusively, because I do enjoy novels and I have books to read for work, but I am going to amp it up a bit.

Now we can start making the syllabus.

Your Textbooks

This section consists of your craft books. Craft books are useful for your syllabus because someone who has already done the thing is walking you through what worked for them. You can learn from their mistakes and you can learn what worked for them. Many often have jumping-off points to get you writing by way of exercises, prompts, or journaling activities. As you work your way through the craft books, mark these down somehow; they’ll be useful when you get to writing and inevitably feel stuck.

Chances are you’ve already got a couple of craft books focused on the genre you’re wanting to write in and you’ve also probably already read them. I’ve identified three books on the type of writing I’m wanting to do that I’ve already read, which is great because I can more quickly flip back through them, jot down some notes, and compare what the different writers have said.

If you haven’t already read a couple of craft books in your specific chosen genre, I’d recommend picking one or two and give yourself time to go through them. Just be sure to give yourself a deadline to finish them. 

Whether you’ve read the craft books before or not, deadlines are important here because you really do need to get writing. Like I’ve said, craft books can be useful, but they don’t get words on the page. A lot of times we use craft books as a method of procrastination.

I want to pause here to highlight a fourth book I am putting in this category—Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within by Kim Addonizio. Yes, she talks a lot about poetry because that’s her genre, but the prompts and advice she gives could be translated for any genre. Plus, I think a little poetry practice could only benefit my nonfiction writing. Just think about it.

Your Supplemental Reading

These are the books within your genre. Again, I’m betting you’ve already read a bunch of these and own a bunch more, because I think most people decide to write in a genre they like to read. This is good because you’re already familiar with the genre and how it works and it’ll help save your bank account a bit.

Look at your shelves and start listing authors within your genre, whether you’ve read them before or not. This will probably be a pretty long list. I didn’t look at my shelves and came up with a list of 28 contemporary memoir and essay writers off the top of my head, many of whom have published multiple books that I own. 

Don’t worry. You’re not going to have to read all of the books by all of these authors. The list I made would easily include well over 50 titles by these 28 authors (I’m way low-balling it). I might read 50 books in a good year, but I’m not wanting to forgo reading novels for an entire year. We’re going to cut the list in a minute.

Be sure to write down the authors of your textbooks and read. It’ll give you a chance to see their advice in action.

Now we start winnowing down the list. We’re looking for maybe 8-10 books that you can keep close to your writing space to inspire and excite you. Books that you can pick up when you’re not sure what to read next. Books that you can flip through to remind you why you’re doing what you’re doing, to show you what you’re doing in action.

Look through the list of authors you’ve amassed and start thinking about your specific project. Which ones capture some element of your project? 

For instance, my writing tends to skew more humorous than Joan Didion, so while I love her, she wouldn’t be on my shortlist. On the other hand, Nora Ephon is known for infusing humor into her writing. Her earlier collections are previously published journalism pieces, so those wouldn’t make the cut, BUT her last two collections are more solidly in the personal essay column.

Think broadly here. I included a couple of full-length memoirs, even though I am writing essays because the writing style fits. I added a memoir told in vignettes because that’s something I’d like to experiment with. Another essay collection doesn’t match my tone, but explores themes I’m wanting to write about. And so on.

Again, the point here is to inspire you, to challenge you, and to show you writing techniques you want to try in action.

Also, this shortlist of supplemental reading isn’t set in stone. If you suddenly get the urge to read a book by an author from your long list, go for it! See where it takes you. The shortlist is really to give you some titles to grab without having to think too hard so that you can be reading in your genre while you work on your project.

I want to pause here to highlight another great source to consider: the Best American series. This is a yearly edition of the “best” twenty-ish short pieces in a variety of genres—essays, short stories, mystery and suspense, science fiction. There are a few series they’re no longer publishing (like sports writing and travel writing), but the old volumes are probably pretty easily findable. I love this series because every year they have a different guest judge who is a big name in that field and they write an essay that’s a nice little masterclass. Another thing to think about.

Now that you’ve got your syllabus put together, it’s time to get cracking. 

Happy reading and writing!

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: Create Your Own Syllabus appeared first on DIY MFA.

As a person who mostly writes non-fiction, I definitely make room for fiction in my life. For a long time, I was very selective about the books I would read and stuck mostly to the classics. But the more involved I got on Bookstagram, the more contemporary literary fiction I began reading. This kept me going for quite a while because there’s a lot of variety within that umbrella.

However, the last year has led to a veritable explosion in the genres I read. I started picking up a lot of contemporary romance novels last summer, probably because Taylor Jenkins Reid’s last couple of novels have been pretty good gateways to romance. Lately, I’ve been picking up more YA (probably because of the upcoming Writer Igniter YA Summit) and sci-fi (probably because of the podcast). But I still get a heavy mix of romance and literary fiction and non-fiction as well.

For whatever reason, this topic has been on my mind for a while. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump and have been reading widely to try to break it. But the more I think about it, the more I can see the benefits of reading widely, both as readers and as writers.

Benefits of Reading Widely

You can learn from different genres.

This is a benefit of reading widely that I hadn’t thought of before a recent podcast interview. I was asking the author about her inspiration for the book we were discussing and she talked about how she was inspired by a number of genres, not just the one she was writing in.

She pulled craft lessons from different genres. Sci-fi and fantasy novels do an excellent job of world building. Romance novels do a great job of creating character arcs. And thrillers can teach you a lot about plot and pacing. 

To be sure, you need all three elements within a single story. But when you think about what draws readers to different genres, this rings pretty true.

Sometimes you just need a break from your genre.

Like I already mentioned, I mostly write non-fiction, so if I only read within my genre, I’d never get to read novels. I love novels! They are a great escape for me.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like reading too much of the same thing over and over without a break. Even though I frequently tell myself that it’s a good idea to go ahead and buy book 2 of a series or another book by the author I’ve been reading and loving, I never wind up reading another book by the same author after I’ve finished one. My brain just craves something different and I would venture to guess you’re the same.

It’s definitely important to be well-versed within your genre because you need to know the tradition you’re coming from as well as what’s been done so you can write something fresh. You also need to know what other people are doing currently, again so you can carve out your own niche within the genre. And of course you like reading the genre you write, otherwise why would you write that genre?

But I think it’s important to give yourself a break sometimes so that you don’t get burnt out. 

This leads me to my final point about the importance of reading widely…

It can spark creativity.

Another author I interviewed for the podcast said she doesn’t really have a genre, but she gets inspired by the different genres she reads. She wrote a thriller when she was reading a lot of thrillers and she wrote a sci-fi when she was reading a lot of sci-fi.

I think this makes a lot of sense. Inevitably, whatever we read shows up in some form in our writing—I’ve heard of authors who don’t read or avoid certain genres when they are in heavy drafting mode because they don’t want outside influences seeping into their work—so why wouldn’t it also spark an idea in the first place?

There have been plenty of times when I’ve had creative energy to burn, but no focus for it. The usual things aren’t speaking to me, so I look for a different outlet in the hopes that something sticks. And it usually does. Don’t be afraid to go looking for that source of inspiration.

These are just three of the benefits of reading widely. There are tons of other reasons you should consider reading widely.

Tell us in the comments: What are your reasons for reading widely?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: In Praise of Reading Widely appeared first on DIY MFA.

As you watch a Nora Ephron movie or—better yet!—read something she wrote, you can tell that she loved words, characters, and storytelling. She is famous for having said, “Everything is copy,” which is one of the truest things I have ever heard about writing and art. And she totally lived it! She mined her divorce from Carl Bernstein to write her hilarious novel Heartburn, which she also adapted into the screenplay for the movie.

Meeting Nora Ephron

I had seen her movies, of course. I remember watching You’ve Got Mail in theatres and I was utterly captivated by the power of books in other people’s lives. For me, it was one of those moments where I realized that it wasn’t just me.

But I don’t think I truly met Nora Ephron until after she died.

In 2014, my life (and the lives of my mom, dad, uncle, and grandma) revolved around visiting my beloved papa in one hospital facility or another. It consisted of a lot of sitting while he dozed. I’m not good at sitting and doing nothing, so I made sure to bring books with me. But when you’re constantly being interrupted by nurses, aides, visitors, etc, it’s difficult to get into the groove of a novel.

That’s where Nora came in. I had purchased The Most of Nora Ephron when it came out in 2013 and randomly decided to bring it with me. It’s a long volume, clocking in at just over 550 pages. But it contains multitudes.

Robert Gottlieb, who compiled the volume, arranged it by types of writing. You get to meet Nora Ephron the journalist, the novelist, the foodie, the blogger, and the essayist, among other her personas. 

As I flipped through the book, I gravitated toward the shorter pieces that I could finish in one gulp. These were by and large under 10 pages. And they were funny! It was a nice break to get to laugh when things sucked so much.

After that initial introduction, I began purchasing her individual volumes of essays: Wallflower at the Orgy, I Feel Bad About My Neck, I Remember Nothing, Crazy Salad, and Scribble, Scribble (those last two conveniently combined into a single volume). 

Whenever I finish a book, I sign my name and write the date on the inside of the front cover. Looking back at these books now, I can see that I read them in the days immediately after my papa passed. Those books, those essays, provided the balm I apparently needed in order to get through. Humor is, after all, a great medicine.

Realizing the Larger Context

As time passed and I became more serious about this whole writing thing, I began seeing Nora Ephron in a new light. I still thought she was funny as hell, but I became more interested in the arc of her career as well. She wrote a bit of everything. 

While I don’t harbor any desire to write screenplays, I do want to write essays. I want to write a novel. I want to write about food. I want to write widely because there’s just so much out there to explore. And I love seeing that somebody has done so. 

I know other authors have done it (hello, Joan Didion) but Nora Ephron was the first one I really noticed, which makes her special to me. Plus, her style is more intuitive and natural to me, which is why I gravitate toward her so strongly. 

Essays are my first love as a writer and probably the genre I’ll most frequently write in. And I have to credit Nora Ephron with that. She sparked an interest in personal essays that led me to David Sedaris and Joan Didion, then onto Samantha Irby, Rebecca Solnit, and so many others.

When you start something new and you’re alone, it’s kind of like the first day of high school. You walk into the cafeteria and you don’t know where to sit. Your eyes scan the room. You observe. You try to find connections amongst the people at the different tables so you know where you might fit in. 

Well, as I was scanning the writers’ cafeteria, Nora Ephron looked up, caught my eye, smiled a welcoming smile, and beckoned me over. 

I found my table. And I hope you find yours. 

Tell us in the comments: Have you ever read any of Nora Ephron’s books? What did you think?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: Ode to Nora Ephron appeared first on DIY MFA.

I would say I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t read 1984 before now, but I was a bit of an imbecile in high school and resisted reading a number of books that I was told to read. Yet somehow I became an English major? I don’t know. I want to go back and punch myself in the face sometimes. But I digress.

We’re here to talk about George Orwell’s 1984. The novel has certainly come into the fore in recent years, with the rise of alternative facts, the tendency to discredit journalists, and many attempts to rewrite history by censoring the parts of it that are uncomfortable. Rather than focusing on the plot of the book and its connections with the present, which I feel has been thoroughly discussed, I want to talk about art and ideas and what this book has to say about them.

Why a graphic novel?

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was a graphic novel version. In my younger, snobbier days, I would have scoffed at the notion. I remember that scene from Major League, where the baseball players are reading the classics…in comic book form. The punchline is supposed to be that they can only comprehend the concepts if there are pictures.

But I now feel like graphic novels have a way of enhancing the story, while also, yes, making it more accessible. This artist, Fido Nesti, uses a simple palette of colors, lots of greys and browns, and occasionally blues and reds. This creates a visual starkness of how drab and uniform the totalitarian government has rendered the nation of Oceania. 

One of the things I love about reading is my mind’s ability to paint a picture. But having this visual component to my reading helps rein in that imagination. 

And that’s fully part of the point of Big Brother.

The importance of art

I’ve seen a lot of talk amongst writers that I know about why we should even be making art given the current climate. Isn’t there so much more we should be worrying about? Isn’t there something impactful we could be doing?

But those questions, I feel, miss the point of art. I began reading Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens this morning before sitting down to write this article. In her introduction, she hits on a couple of important points about art and its role in our lives. She says, “Artwork reflects the lived experience, imagination, and ideas of the artist,” then goes on to add, “I find artists furthering and transforming conversations, illuminating new ways to think, feel, connect, and live.”

To me, this means that art and life are inextricably intertwined. Through art, we ask questions, make statements, and engage with the world around us, including those who consume our art. And in order to make art, you also have to take in other artists’ work. Therefore, it’s a full-fledged conversation.

Art is also important because it creates a record of some sort. It depicts current events as interpreted by the individual artist. This makes art inherently subversive because it frequently seeks to challenge the status quo in some way.

How does this relate to 1984?

The novel begins with the defiant act of Winston Smith, the protagonist, putting pen to paper. The very act of putting words on the page forced him to craft a narrative version of current events and past recollections, which may well deviate from the official party line. As you read further, you learn that the party line changes as events unfold and Winston is tasked with correcting written accounts to match these changes in narrative. The government also controls so-called artistic output, dictating the storylines of novels, not just controlling the news and history.

And this is where the importance of art comes in. With art, there is the artist and the medium. There is no entity dictating what the art must look, feel, or sound like. This freedom and ability to express ourselves through our chosen medium is important and priceless. 

So, with all of this in mind, please continue making your art. It really is important. Art has the ability to reach other people and impact their lives. But it is also important on the personal level as a way of engaging with the world around you and giving you an outlet to tell your own story. It matters.

Tell us in the comments: Have you read 1984 by George Orwell? What did you think about how it relates to the importance of making art?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: 1984 by George Orwell appeared first on DIY MFA.

I have long been interested in banned books and have found the banning of books to be problematic. Any time “they” started telling “us” to not read a particular book, I just had to read it. This rebelliousness felt subversive when I was a teenager buying The Golden Compass series because my parents’ church came out against it. But it has grown into a desire to dig deeper, to read these books to figure out why they’re inventing excuses to have them banned.

This changed my thinking about this column. I don’t need to spend my time writing posts that promote the work of current and recent bestselling authors who really don’t need further promotion from me. Their books are good. Their books are available. Read them if you are interested, or don’t.

Instead, I am going to use this column to focus on commonly banned books and discuss why that banning is problematic. I’ll go into some of the commonly invented reasons for the book being banned, then I’ll discuss the larger implications. Some of these books will be re-reads, like the one I have planned for next month, and some will be new to me, like Maus today.

About Maus

Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel recounts his father’s survival of the Holocaust and has a frame depicting his relationship with his father as an adult. Both tales are gut-wrenching and heartbreaking. The tale of surviving the Holocaust is full of hiding and narrow escapes, close calls with death, not being sure whom to trust and for how long. The tale of the aging father speaks to anybody who has dealt with an aging parent or grandparent—the arguments, the confusion, the belligerent behavior—but it’s told against the backdrop of this unspeakable history that creates so many additional layers of nuance.

The genius of the tale is depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. There are also dogs and frogs. This choice plays on common depictions of different groups as different animals. But it also takes the reader out of the factual history enough to grasp the story better by seeing the events unfold with animals instead of humans. 

Banning Maus

Maus was ostensibly banned because of profanity and nudity. After reading both volumes in a day, the profanity can readily be heard on primetime network TV. The one time the author meant a word stronger than that, he used symbols (ie $^&*@!) in lieu of letters. 

As for the nudity, in the first place, mice are already nude. They typically don’t wear pants or any clothes at all when you see them out in the wild. But also, it wasn’t sexual nudity. Rather, the nudity depicted the moment the Nazis took the clothes from the Jewish people in order to sanitize them, but also to dehumanize them. Nor was the nudity gratuitous. There were just a handful of panels with black and white line drawings of male mice with genitalia.

Why We Need to Read Maus

It is no secret that antisemitic acts of violence and destruction are on the rise in the United States and throughout the world. Survivors of the Holocaust are not going to be around much longer to tell their stories. These firsthand accounts are invaluable for understanding history and hopefully keeping it from happening again, for proving the strength of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable conditions and unspeakable acts.

General Eisenhower ensured the liberating armies took photographs of the horrors of the concentration camps as evidence that they actually happened. This was partly to collect evidence for what eventually became the Nuremberg Trials. But also, he had the foresight to see a time when people would deny this even happened. So too, with these firsthand accounts of the Holocaust—they keep history from being wiped away.

The outcry against the banning of Maus has been enormous. I was fortunate enough to procure a copy so that I could read it before they flew from the shelves. A local bookstore partnered with a local synagogue to give people in Tulsa free copies of the books to ensure people have the opportunity to read this important work. Hopefully, there are other such local efforts.

Tell us in the comments: Have you read Maus? What did you learn from it?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: Maus by Art Spiegelman appeared first on DIY MFA.

I’ve gone through my shelves and selected twelve books that I have had for quite a while that, for various reasons, I want to have read by now, but just haven’t. Some are older releases, some are newer ones. Some I have never picked up and some I have read a chunk of. Throughout the year, I am going to finally finish them and I’ll use this column to report back.

Why now? Well, January seemed like a good time to mix things up with this column, just like it’s a good time to mix up anything.

The Reading Challenge Books:

1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
2. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
3. Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
4. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
5. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
6. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
7. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
8. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
9. The Affairs of the Falcons by Melissa Rivero
10. Swing Time by Zadie Smith
11. Yoga for a World Out of Balance by Michael Stone
12. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

A note about the order: These are listed alphabetically because in my opinion there is nothing more fair than the alphabet. I’ll read them in whatever order strikes my fancy.

Why These Books?

Each book in this reading challenge has its own personal reason for being on the list. I’ll run through a couple right now. Killers of the Flower Moon? They shot the film in the next town over from where I live and I want to read it before the movie comes out. Swing Time? I love Zadie Smith, but sometimes her writing makes me feel dumb, so it’s a good challenge for me. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings? I am ashamed that I didn’t read this book back in high school and I need to rectify that. Kitchen Confidential? I love food and cooking and started this one last year and it was pretty badass, so I want to finish.

As I finish these books, I’ll explain the personal reasons for reading them.

Make It Personal

That brings me to my next point about reading.

Reading is such a personal thing. We approach books for our own reasons, with our own thoughts, feelings, and histories. And we set books down the same way—individually. Hopefully the process of reading a particular book leaves us changed in some way, but still the experience of reaching The End is a unique proposition.

I’ll give an example. I read Catch-22 in high school. I loved it. I thought it was hilarious. I loved the logic or lack thereof. I know some people get frustrated with that one because it jumps around. Like with many books I love, I shoved it in my dad’s face and he read it. His verdict? Well, he couldn’t get past the profanity. (Cue major eye roll from 17 year old me.)

But that really illustrates my point. People bring their own stuff to each book they pick up, which makes it a unique and personal experience. No two experiences are alike. And I think that’s beautiful.

DIY Your Own Reading Challenge

I’m (gently) challenging you to look at your shelves and find 12 books that have been hanging around for a long time. You bought them at some point. Now is the time to remember why.

If you’re anything like me, there will be an additional challenge with this reading challenge. As soon as I “have” to read a book, I struggle to do it. I avoid it. But I’m hoping for a little social accountability here.

Tell us in the comments below: What books are part of your reading challenge for this year?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post Book Nook: The Reading Challenge appeared first on DIY MFA.

If I’m not reading, I have to listen to whatever drivel is on the TV at night.

Even when I experienced bouts of insomnia, I couldn’t really focus on what I picked up to get me through the night.

I feel like I might be making a slight comeback since work is starting to slow down for the rest of the year. Fingers crossed because I’m about to go stir crazy!

C’est la vie.

The December Books

A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris

I finished this one and it was amazing. And I felt a little sad at the end. This collection takes us through 2020, meaning it’s going to be quite a while before Sedaris accumulates enough diary entries for another volume. That said, I saw he has a new collection coming out in May 2022. Yes, I already pre-ordered it.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

The thing I like about Sally Rooney is that her writing is smart but fun. A lot of times when I read “smart” writing, I feel dumb because the books are a slog to get through. Not here. It’s like a huge gab-fest with your best friend, where you talk about intellectual, important things, and in the next sentence, you talk about sex, pop culture, or whatever.

I didn’t finish this one because it didn’t quite fit with my mood, but I definitely can’t wait to get back to it.

The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Like I said last month, I really wanted to re-read this one after reading Towles’s newest book. I had forgotten how much I love this story and the writing in it! This one takes you through New York City in the late 1930s and it is just exquisite. A working-class girl finds herself rubbing elbows with the upper class. 

Again, I set it aside, but I can’t wait to go back to it. (I’m noticing a theme here…)

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

I re-read this one in a day. Once upon a time, Nora Ephron was married to Carl Bernstein and their marriage totally crashed and burned. Then she wrote a hilarious novel about it. Revenge might just be a dish best served by Nora Ephron.

I love how she took a painful experience and rendered it in a humorous way. It definitely got my wheels spinning about a novel I’d like to write.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader

This past month I wanted to laugh and read smart things (which maybe wasn’t the best impulse to follow because my concentration was nonexistent). This volume pairs two collections written by Lebowitz. Her pieces are short, funny satires that are definitely a style to aspire to.

I also love that she is a notoriously slow writer. It gives me hope.

Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

As I was trying to make progress on a project for NaNoWriMo, I was reviewing Save the Cat Writes a Novel, which gives examples of the different types of novels. I was looking at road trip novels and this was a suggestion. I don’t typically go for YA, but this sounded like a lot of fun.

Amy has just gone through a family tragedy and has to make her way across the country where her mom has taken a new job. She doesn’t want to be in a car, let alone drive. So her mom finds a friend’s son who needs to get across the country as well to drive with her. The route is planned out, but they decide to go on an adventure instead. 

I definitely want to get back to this one because it’s just cool. Also, I get the sense that there’s more going on than we’re told, so I want to get to the bottom of it.

The Bone Spindle by Leslie Vedder

One of the new perks of my job is getting to read for work! I got access to an arc of this one for an upcoming episode of the podcast and was thrilled to sit down and read it. I haven’t finished yet, but I think this one is going to be a blast and that you should definitely keep an eye out for its release next month.

The Bone Spindle is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty with some Indiana Jones thrown in. Oh, and Vedder flipped the genders of the main characters. I am super excited to read about how the female rescues the male. And it’s a great buddy tale of the treasure hunter and the bookish historian. This is absolutely the type of book I hope we’ll see more of in the future.

The sad part of all of this is that I am certain I started more books, but I just can’t remember what they were! That said, I know I didn’t finish more than I did. Here’s hoping next month goes better. I should probably focus on finishing all of these half-read books.

Total Books Read in 2021: 36

Tell me in the comments below: What’s on your TBR for December?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post Book Nook — December Edition appeared first on DIY MFA.

This fall has been really disappointing for me in terms of the amount of time I’ve been able to spend reading. Far too often, I have been spending my evenings and weekends sitting comatose on the couch instead of ingesting wonderful words. And I truly hate that, because that feels like so much time wasted, but I simply have not had the mental bandwidth to read. I’m hoping to turn a corner and finish out the year strong.

Anyway, without further ado…

The November Books

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Wow! I pre-ordered this book on my Kindle because I knew I would be out of town on its pub day and I didn’t want to wait to get started reading this one. Amor Towles has the gift of bringing an everyday scene truly to life. He does this amazingly in The Rules of Civility and in A Gentleman in Moscow (which I’ve started and read most of but haven’t finished yet). In fact, The Lincoln Highway made me decide to start rereading The Rules of Civility so that I could savor the world a bit more.

This was a great road trip novel, and he does an amazing job of writing multiple voices that actually sound distinct. It starts off with the simple premise of a boy being released from a juvenile facility in the 1950s after his father passed and morphs into this brilliant journey. I think some of my favorite sections featured characters whose voices we only heard once or twice. 

Highly recommend it!

A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris

I pre-ordered this book close to a year ago, as soon as it was announced (at least I think it was close to a year ago—it’s been a while is what I’m getting at). Sedaris is an auto-purchase for me. I know I don’t need to extol his talent because I’m pretty sure I’ve already done that a time or two in this column.

I love reading his diaries. It’s really cool from a craft perspective to be able to see the evolution of one of his essays from a mention in his diary to a piece in a book or in The New Yorker. I don’t know how so many crazy things happen to him, but it’s highly entertaining reading. (I’d also venture to guess that at this point, people go out of their way to “earn” a mention in one of his pieces.)

Unfortunately, this collection takes us to 2020, so it’s going to be another 15+ years before we are likely to get another collection of Sedaris diaries.

I’m still reading it because I don’t want it to end.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

I had never read anything by Sally Rooney before. I’d heard tons, of course, about how she’s currently the frontrunner as the voice of Millennial literature. I can see it. As I read this one, I saw a lot of myself and my best friend. We talk about high-level stuff, then veer into vapid and silly topics. We struggle with a lot of the same questions about caring about the future and our ability to effect change.

Reading this prompted me to get her other books to see what else she has to say that speaks to me. I haven’t read them yet, but I can definitely relate to her characters and their disillusionment.

Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge

This was another wow book for me. It’s the text of the one-woman show written and performed by Waller-Bridge that became a smash TV show that I haven’t seen. I would love to see Waller-Bridge perform this herself (and perhaps that’s available on the internet; I haven’t looked yet).

I loved the gritty tone and attitude of this text. It was a perfect amount of rawness without being over the top, in your face, ugly to be ugly quality that I really find off-putting. My next assignment, yes, is to watch the show and read Fleabag: Collected Scriptures, which is the shooting scripts of the first season (or first two seasons?) of the show.

That’s it for November. Just four books to mention. I started a few others but didn’t read enough to warrant mention in this column. And I’ll be honest, next month isn’t looking great so far either, but we’ll see.

Total Books Read in 2021: 34

Tell me in the comments below: What’s on your TBR for November?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post Book Nook — November Edition appeared first on DIY MFA.

It wasn’t a great month for me reading-wise. I started off strong, but fell into quite a rut. I did finish kind of strong though, with two that I read quickly in a bout of insomnia. If the last couple of months had a bit of a theme, this month did not. I am all over the place. I’ll just blame that on work.

But as always, I keep reading. Here we are…

The October Books

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisburger

This was my great start! I read the whole thing in about two or three days. I read it a million years ago, back in high school, but came back to it for reasons unknown. I am glad I did though. This was a lot of fun to read. I knee-jerk bought the other two books in the series as well. I am looking forward to reading them at some point.

I love books that are fun and take me on a ride. I think everyone knows about Andy Sachs and her nightmare of a boss by now. Because of my job, I could relate to certain aspects of the job (like sending emails saying “My boss needs this yesterday!”) while others just seemed crazy and I don’t know how Andy put up with it for as long as she did.

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life by Megan Stielstra

Wow. This collection is amazing. I haven’t finished it yet. I am savoring it. Each piece is a great little morsel of amazingness. I first heard about Stielstra on Instagram and on a whim bought this collection. I am so glad I did. I’ve read so many essay collections over the years that it is rare I stumble across somebody new and different. What a gem!

Stielstra does an amazing job of exploring and dissecting the female experience in 21st century America. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I feel like she is a braver version of me and who I wish I would have been. (Though, I guess it’s not too late, right?) Anyway, highly recommend!

The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

This is another insomnia read for me. It’s a book I can just fall into when I can’t sleep that will help me ride the wave of non-sleep (as in, it entertains me and doesn’t just put me to sleep). This is a really interesting imagining of what would happen if the heir to the throne fell in love with an American. It’s about Bex who has to navigate dating the future king, convince his family that she’s all right, and a whole lotta drama.

I’m only about one-third of the way through, but it feels like a ton has happened and I cannot even begin to imagine the twists and turns to come in the remaining nearly 400 pages. The authors really move the pacing well. It could be easy to get bogged down, but nope. Things keep moving along. I’m kind of looking forward to another extended period of insomnia so I can keep reading.

Beautiful World, Where Are You? By Sally Rooney

I pre-ordered this one because it sounded really interesting. Like many millennials, I love reading about the millennial experience. There’s just something comforting in reading about characters who are similarly screwed up.

Every other chapter is an email exchange between the two main characters, who are best friends. They capture that ability to talk about nothing and everything in a single correspondence. It reminds me of the text chain between my best friend and I. Even though I haven’t finished yet, I am really enjoying this one.

Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer

I’ve had this on my Kindle for quite a while, but reading Sara Farmer’s recent post on Modern Girl Detectives, I just had to start reading it. This series is for children (I don’t know all of the various terms for types of children’s books, but it’s for ages 8 and up) that features Enola Holmes, much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft. She finds herself alone in London, solving mysteries like her older brother. I love this concept. Very girl-power.

This was a perfect insomnia read. I stayed up until 6 to finish it and was able to fall asleep happy, knowing that Enola was on the hunt for the next case…

Enola Holmes and the Left-Handed Lady by Nancy Springer

Which brings me to Enola’s next case. Being a left-handed person, I was a bit intrigued by the title. Then I started reading all of the really not nice things 19th-century people believed about left-handed people. I know that historically, we’ve been thought to be evil and had the left-handedness beaten or trained out of us, but this was the first time I really read about it. I must say, it hurt my feelings a bit.

But I am HOOKED on the series! I ordered the next two books to accompany me on vacation. I wish I had bought them on my Kindle for insomnia, but note to self for books 5, 6, and beyond! Seriously, kudos to Nancy Springer for coming up with such an interesting and entertaining concept. And please write more.

There you go. My October books. 

Total Books Read in 2021: 31

Tell me in the comments below: What’s on your TBR for October?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post Book Nook — October Edition appeared first on DIY MFA.