Because People Keep Asking
I’ve been getting a lot of queries lately about my consultancy. Here’s how to get started working with me.
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Fuck You, Pay Me #12: The Fine Art of Applying to Writing Residencies
Library box, Monrovia, CA | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
This is part 12 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
Thinking about applying for some writing residencies? This year, I applied to 14. That was … a lot. Now that we’re at the midway point of the year, I thought I’d consider what I’ve learned from the process thus far.
How It Started Back in January, I was updating and tidying my About page on this website, and as I did so I realized how impactful some writing residencies I’d done over the years were. So I thought, well, I should apply to some more this year. Would I get in? Who knows. Surely I wouldn’t if I didn’t try. I poked around on the internet and deduced I would probably apply to around 12 to 14. I’m the kind of person who is good at going full tilt rather than steadily doing something over time, and because the application deadlines for these various writing residencies were staggered over many months, this would also be a lesson in slow progress and sticking to a long-term process over time. By the way, if you don’t know what a writing residency is, you basically go somewhere and write. There are also residencies for artists. It’s a way to devote yourself fully to your project or escape your kids or see what happens when you create in a new space. Some charge money (I only applied to one of these), some pay you a stipend, and some feed you every meal and reimburse you for travel. In any case, over time I developed a list. I would apply to Ucross, Jentel, VCCA, MacDowell, I-Park, KHN, Millay, Monson Arts, Marble House, Headlands, Hedgebrook, Loghaven, Yaddo, and Mesa Refuge. I chose these residencies because they were the best of the best or they were somewhere interesting or they seemed cool.
How It Went There’s definitely a learning curve to applying to writing residencies. By the way, I should start out by saying that there’s a fee to apply to every residency to which I applied, but either all or most will wave that fee — it’s anywhere from I think the lowest was $25 and the highest was maybe $60 because that one was with a late fee and the average is probably $35 — if you ask or share that you have financial needs. At first, you don’t have all the things you need to apply. Without exception, you need some sort of material to submit. It’s pretty common for them to ask for 20 pages of your novel or nonfiction project or whatever thing you’re working on, but some asked for less (I think the most requested was 25 pages). Also, they often want an artist’s statement — like what your work in general as a writer is about — and oftentimes they also want a statement about the work itself — like this novel or what have you is about blah blah blah. I think all of them wanted a bio or some version of it. And then there are various other things like when you can come and if you have any special needs and if you have done other residencies what you have learned from them. Without exception, the ones I applied to do not ask for letters of recommendation but do want contact info for two to three people who can recommend you. Additionally, most of them use either Submittable or SlideRoom to manage the applications, and that makes it easy for you to see on your end what you’ve done and where it’s gone and what the status is.
How It Kept Going To be honest, at the beginning I didn’t do a lot of research on what I was “supposed” to do while applying because I kind of wanted to just figure out for myself. Over time, I did think more and do more research about what does and doesn’t work when applying for a writing residency. The big realization I had which is super obvious but wasn’t at the time was that as the writer applying for the thing you hope to get, you’re very me focused. Is my writing sample good enough? Is my bio impressive enough? Will these people think I suck as a writer and / or human being? Why am I doing this? But at some point I read something written by someone who, you know, reviews these types of applications, and I saw it more from their end. In a way, it’s a lot like applying for a job. It’s not just your skills or your resume, it’s also about whether or not you’re a fit — for their cohort, or their ideology, or their brand. So I tried to be a bit more me and a bit less saying what I thought they wanted me to say. Instead of trying to be perfect and impressive, I tried to show that I was creative and inventive and curious. You are going to be around other writers; I mean, they want to know who you are. Not just how you write.
How It Continues to Go Another thing I discovered that I hadn’t realized beforehand was that a fair amount of these applications are read blind. Which is to say they are read by people who are part of a review jury who are looking at your writing sample that doesn’t have your name on it and doesn’t include your bio. In a way, this is mortifying, like, why did I even spend all those years building out my bio only to have it not matter and what if my work on its own sucks? In another way, it’s great, because it levels the playing field (or makes it more level or at least seeks to do so), and it’s just your work out there, naked and free and exposed and waiting for the chips to fall where they may. I would also like to say that if you are LGBTQ+ or a person of color or are a writer with a disability, I would strongly encourage you to apply, as these writing residencies are very interested in diversifying their residency cohorts. Many of these places have pages on their websites where they show past residents, and you can see there is a wide range of experience levels and identities of all kinds. Writers. And poets. And composers. And artists. And interdisciplinarians.
Where It’s At Right Now As of today, I’ve applied to 14 residencies. I’ve gotten seven nos. Another one put me on a waiting list, and then I was pulled off the waiting list and got a residency. Yay! That made me feel like all the time and energy I had spent was worth it. I have yet to hear from the other six, and some I won’t hear from until the end of the year or maybe even early next year, and some are for residencies that aren’t until next year. The residency I got will take place later this year, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m so glad I tried because it really helped me act like I believed in myself even when I didn’t feel like I should, it pushed me to position myself as a writer doing important work that says something about the world, and it made me remind myself of all the things I’ve done and have overcome. In any case, I’ll probably apply to more writing residencies next year, but half as many.
In closing, I would like to add that as I was readying to publish this post, I pulled my tea bag out of my mug, and the tag on the end of the tea bag read: “Relate to your greatness and not your weakness.” Nuff said.
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Really love this animated W Magazine profile of Amanda Lepore’s Life in Parties. Savage. Individual. Super hot.
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All American Official Necking Team
This short story was originally published as part of the Significant Objects project in 2009/2010.
I reached my hand into the drawer, withdrew it, and looked at what lay in my palm. “ALL AMERICAN OFFICIAL NECKING TEAM,” the pin read. It was hard to reconcile the words with my father. At this point, he had been dead for nearly 15 years. After he had passed away, my mother and I had stood over the dining room table upon which sat a large box that contained what was left of him. Cremains, the man had called them. My father, I had longed to correct him. Thankfully, my mother had been willing to share what remained of him with me, his only son. My father was a skyscraper of a man — six-foot-five, Ozymandias hands, a brooding forehead — a great man, really — and so, he had left a great deal of himself behind. I dipped a teaspoon into the mound of his ashes and placed three or so tiny shovelfuls into a plastic bag. I fastened the bag with a twist-tie. I put the bag in a small wooden box that smelled faintly of the peach tea it had once held. Later, my mother handed me a bag of his things, which, to be perfectly honest, I had forgotten about — until today, when I spotted it in the back of the drawer, behind my wife’s underwear, and reached into the leather case and pulled the pin from it.
I imagined my father had won his place on the All-American Necking Team sometime during 1953, his senior year at Brooklyn Preparatory. I knew what he looked like back then from photographs: a young man with deep-set eyes undershadowed by dark circles, his long form gangly with the awkwardness of his youth, a thin tie knotted at the base of his bird-like neck. Once, my mother had told me about his penchant for drinking Zombies, about the time in the middle of a party, he had proclaimed, “I’m a tree,” and then fallen flat to the floor, how she had stolen him from another woman older than her, who had a child — and in the remembering, my mother had smiled. But that summer, his father, my grandfather, a frustrated CPA with a roaring temper fueled by an abiding love of Four Roses and the failures of the Brooklyn Dodgers, had fallen dead of a heart attack while taking the IRT subway to work one day, and my father’s life had changed forever. Instead of trundling off to some Ivy League college, he had stayed in Flatbush, enrolled at Brooklyn College, and dutifully taken care of his mother, a woman I’d never met, whose name was Rose.
Looking down at the pin staring up at me like a Cyclops, looking through this portal into a time wherein I was nothing but a flickering flash in one of my father’s constellation of neurons, I wondered who this all-star necker was: my father, a young man not unlike myself, or something else altogether — a man beyond my understanding now relegated to a past that lay on the other side of a bridge where the land was so dark that I could no longer see him.
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Go for a Ride
This is a photo I took yesterday at the wonderful Imagined Wests exhibit at the Autry Museum of the American West. The exhibit is about how the American West exists in the imagination in many forms, from art to movies to objects. Since the novel I’m working on that’s set in the adult movie industry is also about California and the twin myths of the American West and the American Dream, I found the exhibit very inspiring. In fact, it gave me an idea for an extremely important scene that appears late in the book.
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The Porn Library Recent Updates
Awhile back I created The Porn Library, which is a compendium of books, movies, art, and more about the adult movie business. Recently, I’ve added a few more. They are The People’s Porn: A History of Handmade Pornography in America by Lisa Z. Sigel, Smutcutter: How I Survived Porn by Sonny Malone, and Sexytime: The Post-Porn Rise of the Pornoisseur by Jacques Boyreau. Got a suggestion? Submit it here.
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Scenes From My Life as a Sex Journalist
A Good Used Book
I really enjoyed visiting A Good Used Book. You can visit them in Historic Filipinotown in Los Angeles or online.
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The Writing Residencies
In January, I was updating my About page, and I realized how impactful doing various writing residencies and fellowships had been and how I’d made some great friends doing them. So I decided I would apply to some writing residencies this year. I did some research and estimated there were about twelve to fourteen to which I wanted to apply. The deadlines are staggered throughout the year, so I couldn’t do them all at once. Last weekend, six months later, I had applied to fourteen. So far, I was waitlisted by one that turned into an acceptance, I’ve been rejected by six, and there are seven more I haven’t heard from yet. Later this year, when I’ve heard back from all of them, I’ll write one of my Fuck You, Pay Me posts about it. Applying was a good exercise for a variety of reasons. It required perseverance. It demanded an investment with no guarantee of a return. It prompted me to think about my work as a whole and individually in a broader context. Next time, I’ll probably apply to half as many because fourteen was a lot! But I’m glad I did it. It taught me a lot.
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The Boy Who Wore His Heart on His Sleeve
This short story was originally published by A Shaded View on Fashion Fiction in May 2010.
She had been waiting forever, it seemed, for a boy like this one, who wore his heart on his sleeve. Now, here he was, sitting across from her in this dimly lit restaurant, his arm on the table. The exposed, bloody organ was attached to his sleeve with what appeared to be a safety pin. Across the table, he was looking at her expectantly, his head cocked slightly to the left, like a dog listening for a sound only he could hear, the right side of his mouth pulling up slightly, as if he was unsure what she was thinking. Judging by the tangle of threads unraveling around the gaping hole in his blue sweater where his heart should have been, he had carved himself open to retrieve it. On his sleeve, the heart was shaking and shuddering, straining against the pin’s grasp. They had found each other on an online dating site three days previous and met for the first time 17 minutes ago. Now, here he was, looking eager and hopeful, and it was up to her to figure out what was she supposed to do next. She looked at the boy uncertainly and tried to hurry up and decide what she was going to do about this boy and his still-beating heart before the angry waitress returned and demanded to take their order. Is it too late? she said. The boy’s face dropped. Late? he said. Too late to put it back? She nodded her head at the heart. Oh, the boy said, looking down at it. Slowly, the blood was seeping into his napkin. Soon, it would spill off the table and pool on the floor, making a mess. I don’t know, he said. The boy had no idea if he could singlehandedly un-pin his heart, stuff it back into his chest, and darn up the sweater in such a way that no one would ever know that he had stood in his kitchen in the fading light and removed his heart from his chest with a serrated steak knife, all for a woman whom he had yet to meet, a glowing collection of pixels that was her smiling out at him from the computer screen. It was too late to pull his arm off the table and put it in his lap. She would know what he was doing, and he would bleed all over his trousers. From somewhere behind him, he could hear the hard clanging of pots in the kitchen, the frantic barking of the chef, the buzz of other couples in love cooing at one another in the candlelight. Shit, he said, under his breath but loud enough that the girl would hear it. All of a sudden, he decided he had had enough. He reached over with his left hand and unfastened the safety pin holding his heart to his sleeve. Here, he said, taking his heart in his right hand. Standing up slightly, he leaned across the table and deposited the heart on the plate in front of the girl sitting across from him. The girl poked at the heart with her fork. Interesting, she said, sounding like a forensic pathologist. He had no idea what she meant by that, but he knew at that moment that if she would continue saying things like this while stabbing at his heart with the tiny tines of the silver fork in her hand, he could be with her and stay happy forever. In that moment, it seemed anything was possible.
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Fuck You, Pay Me #11: How to Be More Creative
This is part 11 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
Lately, I’ve been working on my novel-in-progress, which I’ve mentioned previously, and which is set in Porn Valley. Previously, I had published and was promoting my memoir, so this was a change of gears, from nonfiction to fiction. As a way of strengthening my fiction muscle, I created a project. Originally, it was called 30 Days of Smut, and the goal was to write 30 sex-related (not erotica) flash fictions in 30 days. Pretty quickly, I fell off that pace, but I continued to write anyway. Ultimately, I revised the project to 30 Days of Smut and generated 30 flash fictions in a couple of months. The exercise was helpful. Why? I’ll explain.
STRUCTURAL
I don’t believe in that whole idea that if you do something for 10,000 hours, you can master it. I mean, c’mon. But I do believe that doing something repeatedly can be beneficial and perhaps more importantly it can take you to places you wouldn’t go otherwise. So, as I stated in my introduction, I set up an informal structure within which I would be creating. I broke my project down into 30 bite-sized steps. All I had to do was churn out a flash fiction a day, and I had accomplished that day’s goal. That went along swimmingly for the first few days, but then something happened; life got in the way, as they say. I have no idea what it was, and it doesn’t matter. I thought about quitting as soon as I failed to meet my daily quota for the first time. But I didn’t. Instead, I kept at it. I changed the title of my project to cross out the 30 (as in days) part, and then I was no longer failing at the project I had intended. Instead, I was succeeding at the project as I had re-imagined it. The first 10 stories are about a porn addict, an adult store mannequin, a male porn star, a phone sex operator, a voyeur, that voyeur’s voyeur, a sex writer, a dominatrix, an autocannibalist, a fan of the autocannibalist, and a male stripper. None of those people, their internal lives, their curious thought processes would have existed if I had given up. Here is a line that I like, from “#6: The Sex Writer,” who has a challenging dating life because of her job: “No one wanted to take her home to their mother and say, here is my new girlfriend, the one who writes about bukkakes and gangbangs and CGI futanari.”
CRITICAL
How long did it take me to write each approximately 150 to 250 micro-fiction? Not long. I’m pretty sure it was maybe 15 minutes at the most. I mean, it was probably more like 10 minutes maximum. I wrote the story directly on the webpage I had dedicated to the project. I drafted it straight through without stopping or thinking. Then I published it. After that, I went back into the CMS and lightly revised the story, not really changing it so much as cleaning it up. If the story wasn’t perfect or not up to some standard in my head, oh, well! It was done. Finally, I added a photo to accompany the story (each story is paired with one of my photographs). Mission accomplished. With every story, I was one step closer to my goal. This uncensoring-the-self aspect of the project was the most important component and the most additive to what I was doing at the same time: working on my novel. I wasn’t so much exercising my fiction muscle, I was starting to realize, as I was shutting off the critical part of my brain and giving the creative part of my brain room to run around and kick up its heels and get a little wild. Stories 11 through 20 are about an avatar, a robot, a cougar (I was watching the second season of “MILF Manor,” which is totally insane, and which apparently deeply affected me or at least gave me a rabbit hole to go down), that cougar’s cub, that cougar’s cub’s ex-girlfriend, that cougar’s cub’s ex-girlfriend’s father, that cougar cub’s ex-girlfriend’s mother, that cougar’s son, a vagina, and a penis. Here is a line that I like from “#19: The Vagina (After Frank Kafka’s The Metamorphosis)”: “One morning, when the unidentified woman who may or may not have been a writer of stories about sex woke from troubled dreams, she found herself transformed in her bed into a vagina.”
MAGICAL
Is writing a little bit magical? Maybe. On the one hand, doing this project was easy. Bang out a few hundred words. Post it online. Do the same thing the next day. One the other hand, it was hard. In all likelihood, I suspected, no one was reading any of them. Why bother? Also, why was I sitting around writing weird short fictions about people who had curious fetishes and bizarre sexual desires? Wasn’t this whole thing sort of embarrassing? There was a chatty person in my head—let’s call her Susan—who thought the whole thing was pretty dumb and pointless. But Susan isn’t much fun, is she? And what did Susan ever do? Her job seems to consist of sitting on the sofa and criticizing what other people are doing. In any case, I was able to ignore Susan and keep writing. And my novel kept getting better. Because I was reminding myself that writing isn’t a job or a task or a list to be checked; it’s imaginative play, it’s the self on the page, it’s your unbridled mind running with the bit in its mouth. Stories 21 through 30 are about a sex club, a group of robots, a husband, an inflatable woman, a donor, a fetishist support group, a dating app for anglerfish, an AI wife, a woman who watches extreme pornography, and an ER murse who, well, it’s a little strange. Here is a line that I like from “#22: The Robots”: “Still, the nighttime bangings and clangings and humpings continued, a symphony of clashing steel and rubbing metals, a chorus of robot lovemaking.”
In any case, you can read all the stories here.
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The Toronado
The main character of my novel-in-progress, which is set in the San Fernando Valley’s adult movie industry, drives a 1966 Oldsmobile Toronado, which is a favorite car of mine. I really liked watching this old ad for it.
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Estate Sale (Green)
A shot from an estate sale in Encino, CA. Follow me on Instagram for more of my life in L.A. photographs.
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Basquiat in L.A.
This morning I saw an amazing Jean-Michel Basquiat show at Gagosian Beverly Hills: “Made on Market Street.”
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Canoga Park
Two porn stars shoot a scene in Canoga Park in the San Fernando Valley. Photographed by me in April 2009.
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Books I Read in 2024: The Crying of Lot 49
I could make neither heads nor tails of Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. It’s not like I don’t like literary experimentalism. I mean, I read Ulysses twice and cite it among my favorite books. But this book by Pynchon was beyond my grasp. The only part of it I liked was the part that took place in my hometown of Berkeley. From what I’ve read, Pynchon didn’t think much of this novella either so we’re aligned in that regard.
Books I Read in 2024: Victory Parade, I Hate Men, My Friend Dahmer, The Crying of Lot 49, Machines in the Head, Big Magic, The Valley, End of Active Service, An Honest Woman, The Money Shot, Atomic Habits, Finding Your Own North Star, Crazy Cock, Sigrid Rides, Your Money Or Your Life, The Big Sleep, Eventually Everything Connects, Smutcutter, Shine Shine Shine, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, Confessions of a Serial Killer
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Thank you, Travis and Sigrid
I’m a longtime fan of Travis and Sigrid, who, if you don’t know already, are a famous duo in London. Travis is a cyclist, Sigrid is an all-white, blue-eyed, deaf Norwegian Forest cat, and together they ride around the city, bringing joy and excitement to all they encounter, including quite a few celebrities over the years. Recently, Travis wrote a nice post about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, on his Instagram feed, which was really kind. Make sure to follow Travis and Sigrid on Instagram and order their book, which I highly recommend: Sigrid Rides: The Story of an Extraordinary Friendship and An Adventure on Two Wheels.
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I Cannot Help You Get a Job in the Porn Industry
Since I have been writing about porn industry for nearly 30 years, I get emails from people who are trying to break into the porn business. The emails are always from men. Mostly these men aspire to be porn stars. (I would estimate I have received hundreds of those. [Scratch that. According to this 2016 post, at that time I had received approximately 700 emails from men wanting to be porn stars. That means by now that number must be over a thousand.]) Today’s query is from a guy who thinks I am a porn editor (like I edit porn movies) and wants to know how he, too, can become a porn editor. I am not, and I cannot help you with that, bro.
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In a Mood
I got these stickers a few months ago and use them on a regular basis. I don’t have a to do list, but I do nearly every day have a SUCCESSES list, which is where I write down what I’ve accomplished that day. I started adding these stickers at a certain point. Today’s is COULD USE A HUG. They’re fun and ridiculous.
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