Debut novelist and MFA colleague, Courtney Moreno, ready to launch "In Case of Emergency"

If you're in San Francisco tomorrow night, you may want to head on over to Booksmith for an evening of New Voices, New Stories: Exceptional Debuts from Writers to Watch. The writer to watch, in this case, is Courtney Moreno, a former USF alum from my MFA program whose writing has wowed me since the first time I heard her read during our initial summer session of 2010. Her debut novel is In Case of Emergency.

That year, Courtney's fiction was also nominated by the department for the AWP Intro/Journals project. After her 2009 LA Weekly cover feature article, "Help is on the Way," was chosen for The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010 anthology published by McSweeney's (click the link to buy her book online, hint hint!), the independent, SF-based publishing company asked her if she was working on anything. No agent. No query letters or synopses to submit while awaiting rejections. A writer's dream path to publication, no?

Our ragtag team celebrates turning in the tome!

Certainly. But nothing is ever as 'easy' as it seems. I do know that while the rest of us grad students each suffered through multiple revisions of an MFA thesis so it would be deemed acceptable by university standards, Courtney had to simultaneously transform hers into a first-draft novel worthy of a 'publishing powerhouse,' as an NPR interview with Dave Eggers describes McSweeney's evolution from just a 'quirky quarterly.' Not to mention the numerous, painstaking revisions she put in to create the polished result.

I'm excited to say that Courtney's 'knockout debut' has already met with much success. The hardcover hit stores last Tuesday, but the book's gathering steam with great reviews from Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly, and more. It made the Huffington Post's Best Books for Fall 2014 list:

"Reminiscent of Leslie Jamison's essay on medical acting in her collection The Empathy Exams, Courtney Moreno's book uses the coping mechanisms she learned while working as an EMT to color her narrator's painful past. Moreno confronts both physical and psychological trauma, expertly blurring the lines between the two."

And it's at the top of SF Weekly's Fall Arts 2014: What You Need to Read list:

" 'When conducting the triage of a multi-casualty incident, start by taking charge.' Thus begins Courtney Moreno's debut novel, which follows noob Piper Gallagher as she learns the ropes of the busiest Los Angeles emergency response unit. The narration, which reads like an instruction manual Gallagher has put together to prepare us to join the team, relays the traumas of the job, punctuating the seemingly counterintuitive hands-on lessons she learns ('do not treat; only label') with all-organic nuggets of wisdom: 'There's nothing as painful as desire; wanting something only reminds you of your shortcomings.' "

It's been a couple of years since I made my weekly Tuesday forays into the city to immerse in great literature, and it goes without saying that I'm beyond thrilled to take part in tomorrow's launch.

Supporting the Writing Life: Part 2

JOIN A WRITING GROUP/ASSOCIATION:
As a reader commented on my last post: "Hearing how someone else is crafting a piece, what thoughts they had when they introduced this or that, helps us all gain perspective." I couldn't agree more. Writing groups vary, from the formal workshop structure of a creative writing program, to informal arrangements where participants read their work aloud or problem-solve the process of their writing. Writer's associations are often arranged regionally or thematically by genre.

Still on winter break from the pressures of my MFA program, I attended a great gathering Friday at the Pens & Pints Writing Bonanza with Petals and Bones. Squeezing into a booth at a whiskey bar with a dozen others and eating a bowl of mac-n-cheese while sipping my Irish coffee (what was I thinking--caffeine insomnia anyone?), I reveled in the camaraderie and humor that often go missing from the high stakes at school. The silly prompts delivered on their promise of prose that was "comedic, sassy and lively." As I'm a bit gun-shy on writing quickly (oh, imperfection!) and impromptu reading, the practice of writing for five minutes without stopping and then having to yell over the din of the bar loosened up our nerves and brought the fun back to the craft.

What writing group format do you prefer? What writer's associations have you found helpful?

TAKE A WRITING CLASS:
By taking a one-time class or a full course--whether through a college or university, an extended education program, a conference retreat or a bookstore--you'll accelerate your writing. Classes range from full-length programs where students and instructors give written and verbal feedback on work (often without comment from the writer), to brief workshops where a presenter lectures on a topic and offers writing exercises. Online or in-person, writers also develop new writing concepts and the vocabulary for it, such as a lede (or lead) in a journalistic piece.

I've taken a personal essay class and a fiction-writing class through my local university's extended ed program. They lasted four weeks each, with in-class exercises and outside writing assignments. The instructors were published and prolific writers, though some participants hadn't written much before. (It was my first, and only shot at fiction thus far.) Little did I know at the time that the grades I got would later count toward acceptance to grad school. Before entering my MFA program, I also took an eight-week travel writing course with Don George at Book Passage. The essay I began there later won an award and I used a revision of it as my writing sample for graduate school applications. I'm still trying to get that story published!

What writing classes have you taken and what did you learn from them?