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Edification – Newsletter #107 – August 14, 2022
Edification – Newsletter #107 – August 14, 2022
Dear Readers,
Remember me? Happy Sunday! It’s been a while.
Have you seen the 1998 comedy There’s Something About Mary? One of my favorite scenes is the exchange between Ben Stiller’s character and the hitchhiker, a role largely created and improvised by Canadian comedian Harland Williams. As the hitchhiker elaborates his concept of “seven-minute abs,” sure it will undercut the fitness phenomenon of 8-Minute Abs, Stiller’s character drives him into convulsions by suggesting someone could come up with “six-minute abs.”
On a related note, I’m querying my latest novel.
Related how? Well, I can’t help thinking of that scene as I send my little-bitty excerpts out in agent-requested chunks: Twenty pages, says one. Fifteen pages, requests another. Ten pages! The auctioneer gavel hovers. Five pages – no, give it to us in four! We want your first 1,000 words. That’s too much! No time. Query letter only.
In fact, skip the query. Just tell us what your 90,000-word literary fiction book is about in a one-sentence pitch. Can’t you just scratch a haiku into the bathroom stall, along with your name and email address? Maybe I’ll read it while I take a dump in the next six months.
On a serious note, the querying process demands of an author a profound knowledge of what they’ve written. I’m not talking only about plot synopsis, although that is its own challenge.
I’m talking about something more essential. I queried one agent who asked, in a form, for a summation of what my book was about – without talking about the plot.
And this, in a way, was the question I’ve been yearning for someone to ask me about. At its heart, my book is an exploration of the limits of “individual agency” in the midst of social breakdown, individualism and independence versus the trauma the outside world inflicts upon us.
It’s important for me to think of all my writing not primarily in terms of plot – not in terms of “what happens,” or even a character’s arc. As important as those elements are, for me, a piece of writing (or art) should grapple with a big idea. I need a molten core.
And so I feel optimistic. I’m sending queries out widely, staying organized, and marching with determination that this is a good book. It has a molten core. It has atmosphere. It is a habitable world.
The first chapter of my novel (tentatively titled Wayward West Virginia) was just published in Issue 15 of Leon Literary Review. Introducing the issue, guest editor Sarah Cypher wrote:
“I marveled at how quickly I was transported to the harrowing night in Edie Meade’s Wayward West Virginia, probing the quality of attention drawn forth by its crisp, high-stakes storytelling.”
That’s good, right? It’s good. My chin is up. Confidence is good jowl camouflage. As Larry David would say, it’s pretty, pretty, pretty good. No, but seriously, I’d love to know what you think.
Speaking of habitable worlds, I’ve been doing landscapes (like the collage at the top of this newsletter) since my dad died in May. I haven’t sussed out why, exactly, except that my dad loved the land. Conservation was important to him. He planted thousands of trees. He was a recluse who found true spiritual refuge in his fields and woods and wilderness.
I studied art history in college, and I have a confession: landscapes used to leave me cold. For the most part, I felt little emotional connection to landscapes. What I was most drawn to in art were portraits, and especially self-portraits. Human form and human faces and eyes and expression. These were the optimum modes of conveying emotion to me.
But I had an epiphany. In addition to being rich records in the anthropological, historical sense, landscapes are emotional.
More than that: Landscapes are portraits.
And many times, they are self-portraits by the artist — only instead of the viewer looking into the eyes of the artist, the viewer looks out.
Landscapes are a sublime emotional medium, in both visual and literary art. They are not ornamental, they are elemental.
Okay, that’s enough out of me. I hope you’re well and keeping your chin high enough to clear the rapids through which we’re all passing.
Don’t be a stranger now.
Talk soon,
Edie
P.S. I am way behind on sharing work, which maybe I’ll farm out more judiciously in future newsletters, but I wanted to drop some links to some other recently published pieces if anything strikes you!
All shorties, many of them landscape-centered pieces.
New since May:
Short fiction and essays
“On the Pier” in South Florida Poetry Journal, August 2022
“Fluid Dynamics” in Variant Literature, July 2022
“Quarry Light” in (mac)ro(mic), July 2022
“Marco Polo” in Twin Pies Literary, June 2022
“Freezing Point” in Twin Pies Literary, June 2022
Poems
“Confessional in Ten American Sentences” in Columba, August 2022
“Truck Stops of America” in LEON Literary Review, June 2022
“American Wisdom” in Atlas & Alice, May 2022
“When I Can’t Sleep I Think About Numbers” in The Indianapolis Review, May 2022
Thank you for reading!