Tag: donna vorreyer

Finding the Sweet Spot: Avoiding Impostor Syndrome

I have never been good at self-promotion. It goes against everything I was taught as a child about being humble. Often at readings, I am happy if the host mentions that I have books available, or I would probably never sell one. And now, in the wake of exploding social media groups like Binders Full of Women Writers, I have been suffering from a bit of impostor syndrome.

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As I read through the posts and consider commenting, I think, “Why the hell would a group of successful writers who make a living with their words, writers like Cheryl Strayed, for God’s sake, give a thought to anything a suburb-dwelling, middle-school teacher has to say?” I also have the good pleasure to know many talented young female writers who have accomplished so much in their twenties and thirties that I wonder sometimes why I bother to do this in my fifties. When people throw around terms like spondee or trochee, I feel dumb, second-guessing my self-obtained knowledge, running to Wikipedia to double-check definitions and questioning whether I should have gotten that MFA degree after all.

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And the worst part of all of this? If I share these doubts publicly, these cracks in my machinery, it can sound like I am fishing for compliments or, at the very least, seeking validation. And if I go the other way, sharing all of my successes and good news? I run the risk of becoming an annoying braggart, or even worse, a humble bragger. So how does a person find the sweet spot between feeling like a fraud and being confident?

In sports, the term sweet spot refers to a place where a combination of factors results in a maximum response for a given amount of effort, i.e., the sweet spot on a tennis racket. In acoustics, it is the focal point between two speakers where an individual is fully capable of hearing the stereo audio mix the way it was intended to be heard by the mixer. It implies a perfection in balance.

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So I considered of one of my creative heroes, Michael Palin, who seems to balance so many talents perfectly: comedian, actor, screenwriter, novelist, adventurer, and travel documentarian. His career has been extraordinarily diverse and its longevity surpasses that of most creative people who have specialized in only one endeavor. Imagine my surprise when, researching, I found this Palin quote:

I look at everything I’ve done and wonder, “Why wasn’t that better?” Part of my motivation is from crippling self-doubt – I have to prove myself wrong.

“Crippling self-doubt?” From this man who is so accomplished? If he feels that way, how am I ever to find this balance?

As writers, we often get down on ourselves. After all, we work in a field where rejection is a daily part of the landscape. We all need to break out of this cycle of “crippling self-doubt” and prove ourselves wrong. I have come up with a list of things I have done (or should do more often) to remind myself that I have a voice in the world of writers, even if it is not a loud one, that what I write is important, at least to me.

1. Make a List Make a list of your accomplishments – publications, prizes, nominations, or even personal roadblocks you have conquered (i.e., reading your work in public, sending out submissions). Don’t be shy. Include them all. I’ll bet your list is rather long. Post it somewhere you can see it regularly.

2. Calculate Your Batting Average If you keep records of your acceptances and rejections, calculate your batting average for a “season” – determine a set amount of time (6 months, a year) and I would bet that your acceptance average is at least as good as Major League Baseball Players who were collectively averaging .248 at the end of April. In writing terms, that would be a 25% acceptance rate. High for many writers? Yes. But you also don’t get paid several million dollars to strike out. Consider anything near 10% an extremely successful average.

3. Cultivate Relationships Yes, social media can feed your feelings of fraud. But it has also opened up the world in a way that makes it possible to communicate with a large group of people that you may never have contacted otherwise. After striking up Twitter and Facebook “friendships” with poets whose work I admire, I have been happy and even comfortable meeting them in person and viewing myself as a peer. Start the conversation. Join social media groups of like-minded writers. Promote the work of others, not only your own. Make an effort to attend readings and literary events in your community. When you are a part of a larger community, confidence becomes easier to access.

4. Believe What You Read If you have never had anyone review your work, please do so. Reading reviews of my books helped me believe in myself more than anything else ever has. The analyses and opinions of readers and writers I respect helped me to believe that my work had value in the world and not just in my head. Even when the reviews weren’t completely positive, they still showed that my work moved readers in some way. And that’s what all writers are trying to do, whether we are NEA fellows publishing in The New Yorker or suburban middle school teachers, scribbling in their journals during twenty minute lunch breaks and saying, “Why not me?”

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Sylvia Plath famously said, “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” Defeat the enemy within the external obstacles are plentiful enough out there.

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Donna Vorreyer is the author of three chapbooks: Womb/Seed/Fruit (Finishing Line Press), Come Out, Virginia (Naked Mannekin Press), and Ordering the Hours (Maverick Duck Press). She is a poetry editor for Mixed Fruit, and her work has appeared in many journals, recently in Sweet, Linebreak, Rhino, Cider Press Review, Stirring, and Wicked Alice. Donna lives in the Chicago area where she teaches middle school and therefore often acts like she is twelve years old. Her first full-length collection, A House of Many Windows was published by Sundress Publications in 2013. Her second collection will be released from Sundress Publications in 2016.

Sundress to Publish Three New Titles in 2015-2016

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Sundress Publications is pleased to announce the publication of the following books in the years 2015 and 2016. Ha Ha Ha Thump by Amorak Huey (due for release in 2015), What Will Keep Me Alive by Kristen LaTour (due for release in 2015) and Washed with Hymns and Singing by Donna Vorreyer (due for release in 2016).

Amorak Huey, a former newspaper editor and reporter, teaches writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. His chapbook, The Insomniac Circus, is forthcoming from Hyacinth Girl Press. His poems appear in the anthologies The Best American Poetry 2012, The Poetry of Sex, and Poetry in Michigan/Michigan in Poetry, as well as journals such as Rattle, The Collagist, The Southern Review, Poet Lore, Menacing Hedge, and others. Ha Ha Ha Thump is his first full-length collection.

Kristin LaTour has three chapbooks: Agoraphobia, from Dancing Girl Press (2013), Blood (Naked Mannequin Press 2009) and Town Limits (Pudding House Press 2007). Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Massachusetts Review, Fifth Wednesday, Cider Press Review, Escape into Life, and Atticus Review. Her work appears in the anthology Obsession: Sestinas in the 21st Century. A graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program, she teaches at Joliet Jr. College and lives in Aurora, IL with her writer husband, a lovebird, and two dogitos. What Will Keep Me Alive is her first full-length collection.

Donna Vorreyer is the author of chapbooks: Womb/Seed/Fruit (Finishing Line Press), Come Out, Virginia (Naked Mannekin Press), and Ordering the Hours (Maverick Duck Press). She is a poetry editor for Mixed Fruit, and her work has appeared in many journals, recently in Sweet, Linebreak, Rhino, Cider Press Review, Stirring, and Wicked Alice. Donna lives in the Chicago area where she teaches middle school and therefore often acts like she is twelve years old. Her first full-length collection, A House of Many Windows was published by Sundress Publications in 2013. Washed with Hymns and Singing is her second collection.

 

National Poetry Month Playlist: Donna Vorreyer’s Picks!

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To celebrate National Poetry Month, our Sundress editors are sharing some of their favorite poems, most influential poems, and poems that they are really digging right now. Put them all together, and you have the Sundress Poetry Playlist!

Today’s picks come from author of A House of Many Windows (Sundress Publications 2013), Donna Vorreyer!

Jack Gilbert’s “Michiko Dead”
Jack Gilbert’s “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart”

Until I was introduced to “The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart” in a class I was taking with poet Katie Ford, I had appreciated poems but never really been stunned by one. You know, the take off the top of your head kind of stunned, as Dickinson says. It taught me that image, even if it isn’t perfectly clear or explained, has a power that exposition will never have. That a poem can speak to both the heart and the head. And it has become a sort of ars poetica for me- what better explanation of poetry is there than “How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite.”

After being introduced to Jack Gilbert by Katie, I immediately went and bought The Great Fires, which has become the book I read over and over to keep trying to unlock its beauty. “Michiko Dead” is both heartbreaking and ordinary, just like loss is in life. It explains the ongoing and uncomfortable nature of grief as something we never truly put down or away. It’s also one of the best teaching examples of metaphor. The simple language in the complex extension of the metaphor make it ideal for the teenagers I teach.

 

 

Donna Vorreyer is the author of three chapbooks:Womb/Seed/Fruit (Finishing Line Press), Come Out, Virginia (Naked Mannekin Press), and Ordering the Hours (Maverick Duck Press). She is a poetry editor forMixed Fruit, and her work has appeared in many journals, recently in Sweet, Linebreak, Rhino, Cider Press Review, Stirring, and Wicked Alice. Donna lives in the Chicago area where she teaches middle school and therefore often acts like she is twelve years old. Her first full-length collection, A House of Many Windows, was published by Sundress Publications in 2013.

Sundress Releases Donna Vorreyer’s A House of Many Windows

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KNOXVILLE, TN—Sundress Publications proudly announces the release of Donna Vorreyer’s book, A House of Many Windows. Vorreyer poems take their time. The well-crafted poetry in this book is rhythmically stunning, as each piece whether breathless or meandering, moves the reader along at a precise pace, unfolding feeling and circumstance with artisan-like skill. The focus is on the body as a world unto itself, and Vorreyer maps this body with clear curiousity, yearning and awe.

 

A House of Many Windows is concerned with fate, trial and circumstance, and confronting loss with courage and honesty. It is remarkably subtle how a sense of unease creeps into many of these poems, always emerging from behind a curtain – an ever-present sidekick readers thought they lost pages ago. Vorreyer’s subjects are insightful and fearless, whether they are eloquent in the throes of romantic love or muted by a bittersweet combination of sorrow and a prevailing enthusiasm for everyday beauty. The intimacy of the writing suits the subject of the body, so that readers truly feel submerged in water, or curled into a restless sleep. They are invited to access grief and desire on a carnal level. The speakers treat every day with ceremony, glorify all things natural, and contribute a sense that human beings are united by their flaws. These poems are humble yet expertly built, unafraid to be vulnerable, and constructed with refined, climactic intensity the like of which is impossible to resist.

 

Patricia Smith, author of Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, remarks on A House of Many Windows: “The poems that comprise this enviable collection are unflinching and fearless, crafting new definitions for the definition of woman—as mother, as lover, as flawed and singular being. Donna Vorreyer has written these revelatory verses from the caverns of her own body—her commitment to the breath of each stanza is formidable. And that’s why this book is unforgettable.”

 

Laura McCullough, founder and editor-in-chief of Mead, also finds beauty in Vorreyer’s poetry saying, “these brave, sometimes elegiac poems are about caring, about how one goes on even when the weight of intense feeling is crippling. Desire, loss, the humble and glorious body, the great subjects of what it means to be human are deftly exfoliated in these poems of disassemblage and re-creation.”

 

Donna Vorreyer is the author of four chapbooks: The Imagined Life of the Pioneer Wife (Redbird Chapbooks), Womb/Seed/Fruit (Finishing Line Press), Come Out, Virginia (Naked Mannekin Press), and Ordering the Hours (Maverick Duck Press). She is a poetry editor for Mixed Fruit, and her work has appeared in many journals, recently in Sweet, Linebreak, Rhino, Cider Press Review, Stirring, and Wicked Alice. Donna lives in the Chicago area where she teaches middle school and therefore often acts like she is twelve years old.

 

A House of Many Windows is now available for sale at sundresspublications.com.