Category: writing

Revising after Rejection: Re-Seeing, Re-Listening, Re-Hearing

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

It’s a little hard to believe that this post was six months ago. People often look at something like that and say “I just don’t know where the time went.” I feel that way a lot.

In this case, though, I know where the time went. In fleeting moments between my day jobs (I have two, others have even more) and the things that in the end, matter even more, I wrote two new stories and did a lot of revising to a novel manuscript.

Raquel Beatriz helped me with editing. She’ll be seeing more soon.

I revisited one of these stories this week. In a way, even though I know where the time went and how I spent it, I don’t exactly know how I produced these particular words. I know that read a lot before going to bed every night, I know I listened to creativity-boosting loops (I mean, it’s worth a shot), I know I did mental and physical exercise, and I know I took a scalpel to some Sherwood Anderson.

I know I listened to “The River” and “Brilliant Disguise” on repeat for weeks.

I know that earlier today, I deleted Twitter.

Chris Cocca's avatarChris Cocca

Like most necessary things, writing is hard.  Communicating mental images or flashes of memory or triggering smells with tools that are, themselves, none of those things, takes work.  Doing so in ways that makes sense not just to you but also to readers takes even more work. 

I submitted some things to a great journal a few months ago.  Even though the work I shared wasn’t ultimately accepted, I’m quite pleased with the feedback.  Having given myself some time and space, I’ve come back to the piece they particularly liked with new eyes and ears.  (Revision is always, literally, re-seeing.  But it’s also re-listening and re-hearing.)

I greatly appreciate what the editor here is saying, and the time he took to say it, and the time he and the rest of the team take thinking deeply on these things:

We are writing with mixed news. While we are not accepting…

View original post 156 more words

The Quotable Eugene Victor Debs

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition.

A great refusal of the cult of personality by someone who could have exploited it.

You might recall that Debs ran for President of the United States 5 times, the fifth from jail.  This is from his statement to the Court upon being convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917:

Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

I listened to all that was said in this court in support and justification of this prosecution, but my mind remains unchanged. I look upon the Espionage Law as a despotic enactment in flagrant conflict with democratic principles and with the spirit of free institutions…

Your Honor, I have stated in this court that I am opposed to the social system in which we live; that I believe in a fundamental change—but if possible by peaceable and orderly means…

Standing here this morning, I recall my boyhood. At fourteen I went to work in a railroad shop; at sixteen I was firing a freight engine on a railroad. I remember all the hardships and privations of that earlier day, and from that time until now my heart has been with the working class. I could have been in Congress long ago. I have preferred to go to prison…

I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men…

Eliana Dockterman and Katie Heaney Consider Privilege, Affection, and Elizabeth Holmes

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

Eliana Dockterman isn’t wrong about Elizabeth Holmes’ privilege. I haven’t seen Alex Gibney’s HBO documentary yet, so I don’t know if the thrust of Dockterman’s brief Time review (that Gibney fails to connect the privileged dots as part of his narrative) is accurate, but I do wonder why Dockterman doesn’t mention herself that Holmes’ dad is a former Enron executive.

Dockterman’s breakdown of the Holmes-as-siren trope is probably right on: “Though the documentary suggests that Holmes essentially seduced her famous male board members, who included Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, that seems suspect: any woman will identify Holmes as a CEO desperate for the Valley to forget her gender. (She wore black turtlenecks, lowered her voice several octaves and publicly declared she did not date…”

A few days ago, Katie Heaney asked, regarding Holmes’ now well-known vocal affection, What Kind of Person Fakes Their Voice? I’m not a woman, but I just assumed it had to do with heading off gender bias. Dockterman’s points about Holmes wanting “the Valley to forget her gender” make all kinds of sense to me.

Educational Inequality is Everywhere You Look

~ Chris Cocca ~ Leave a comment

I’ve had crush on Aunt Becky for like 30 years. All the jokes about waiting for her forever aside, the college admissions scandal sheds light on all manner of inequality.

Just one example: This Mom Went to Prison for Enrolling her Son in a School Outside Her District

Brothers and sisters, we need to move beyond a zip-code or a township/city/borough/county line determining who has access to quality education. Schools with million-dollar tech labs a few miles from schools that can’t afford books. There’s nothing moral or American about that kind of abject inequality. Don’t at me with bootstrap stories. We’re talking about kids who haven’t been able to make any choices, and about the cycles of poverty or privilege they find themselves in.