Current Issue & Editor's Note
Spring 2009
The 2009 Editor's Note, "Tryouts" by Editor-in-Chief, Chris Wiewiora
I loved the sound of a swish as much as I now love a perfect sentence.
In sixth grade, I wanted to make the basketball team. I wore high top sneakers and mesh gym shorts everyday. On the rare Florida winter I might put on sweatpants, but I envied the kind with button clasps down the side in the tear-away style. Every afternoon, my brother and I played H.O.R.S.E. and 21. In the evenings, we'd watch Michael Jordan lift off from the free throw line with his tongue out of his mouth like a dog, happy to have its head out the window of a zooming car.
After school, I tried out and got cut the first day. I didn't go back the next year, but still slapped my bare feet on the brushed cement under our suburban basketball hoop in the driveway. I continued to stick my tongue out while practicing layups.
But writing isn't a team sport. There aren't little league reading groups or pee-wee workshops. So how does one become a writer? Perhaps it starts with a love of books. A kid crosstrains with reading. And the thought that sparks their movement from eye to page, to pen to page is, "I could write that."
And you start writing. You think you're the best, even though you're making brick shots and tossing air balls. But you practice, practice, practice your editing. Your mom forces you to write a half page in your journal each summer to be allowed to watch half an hour of TV. You read five books to get one star sticker and finally get five stickers for a free personal pan pizza. You are on newspaper, writing articles your fellow students just throw away. You self-publish in a high school literary magazine or photocopy issues of your own 'zine with reviews for punk bands. Then you somehow get into college. You were filling out your community college application the day you got accepted to university. You're a business major and you switch to English, even though your dad says, "What will you do with that?" You're not in it for the money.
Then you submitted your story or poems back in December. Around the end of January you got rejected. So what? You don't care. You're better than The Cypress Dome. Right. Right? But you want to know, "Why?"
I am the editor in chief, the coach, the one who makes the cuts and I'll tell you why. It's about who shows up. What we got was what we got. My fellow editors were like scouts, going through the haystacks of manuscripts trying to find those few needles. We didn't want to see only the same basic highlight-reels. We were looking beyond the straw fiction of boy meets girl, writing about being a writer, or medieval mysteries. We wanted more than pass, pass, shoot. Yes, the three act structure of: get your guy up a tree, throw rocks at him, and get him out off the tree is a good start. But show us a cutback, three steps before a windmill dunk, while just missing a charging foul.
Read about the group therapy of the "Tortured Souls Club" by Ashley Inguanta. Consider whether librarians think in the Dewey Decimal System when reading "Death Customs" by Laurie Uttich. See how a blind war vet transitions through scenes in his life with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as flashback in "Nightvision" by Ed Bull.
Some nonfiction can get too Hallmark-y, but Dave McConnell overcomes that cliche in the father-son "Seeing Red." The fractured style of Laurie Uttich's "Crazy Talk" infuses into the narrative. Glen Bowman's essay "A Good Hard-Earned Sale" reflects on whether or not to 'sell out' in writing, life, the writer's life, a life of writing, or writing about life. Jennifer Larino uses a Cosmo quiz as subheadings in her relationship building on "When Braving The Suwannee River with Your Significant Other."
Take an adventure with Keri Smith's "Hitching to Richmond" and walk a few miles in her "Ode to Old Shoes." Listen to Curtis Meyer's story within his poem "Life Shots" and notice the ekphrasis in "White Dress." Anthony Collins has full right to use form to shape his poem "The Rope." Ashley Inguanta's "is" blurs the line between prose and poetry, like using the backboard as a fourth dimension for double alley oops. Be sure to see the other poetry for its potential, as well.
Even the art stands out with Cap Blackard's funny chicken in front of a fast food menu and the curious multi-colored "Rainbow" rose by Stephen Crimarco. Look at the same "Skyline" location and different angle from a "Chairlift" on a Ferris wheel in Laura Wong's photos. Melissa Simser's "View From the Top" cover photo collects the hodge-podge perspective of artistry in this 20th Anniversary Issue of The Cypress Dome.
So you didn't get in? I never got in either. If you want, you can give me the middle finger and walk away. Or you can try, try again. Continue your writing. You should form a small community of a weekly writing group. You'll want to explain why your piece is so good. They'll tell you it's not as great as you think. You need to listen to their comments, their critique, even if it's all a shit sandwich, "This is what's working, this is not working, this is how it could work." Eat up. Make it a buffet!
The driveway becomes the desk. You write page after page, instead of taking shot after shot. Soon, you start to average better writing, making more sink shots than misses. You keep reading, watching the pros. You subscribe to Poets & Writers, your Sports Illustrated stops coming. Somehow you still get the Swimsuit Edition. Your homepage on your computer is Newpages.com, instead of ESPN.com You read the book reviews more than the sports sections in the newspaper. Author readings at local bookstores become more important than home games. At noon each day you turn on your dusty radio and listen to The Writer's Almanac and skip SportsCenter, even though you still love their goofy commercial as much as Garrison Kellior's gruff voice. NBA now stands for National Book Award.
And along the way, stick your tongue out while writing.
-C.W
