The Basement Series: Readers Raising Funds for Lit Camp and San Francisco's Scholar Match

Po Bronson. Photo credit: Nicole R. Zimmerman

On Friday I attended my second Basement Series event, a monthly literary reading (in the basement) at the Sports Basement in San Francisco. Each reading features two authors along with a smattering of writers who submit work on a theme. November's theme was sports, which turned out to be surprisingly humorous with many laugh-out-loud moments.

Award-winning investigative journalist Justine Gubar read from her recently released Fanaticus: Mischief and Madness in the Modern Sports Fan, but it was Po Bronson--best-selling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift, What Should I Do With My Life, and Nurtureshock--who I'd come to hear.

Basement Series. Photo credit: Nicole R. Zimmerman

The Basement Series also functions as a fundraiser for both Lit Camp, a juried writers conference I attended in 2014, and Scholar Match, a local non-profit organization that connects low-income students with free college counseling resources and services that make college possible.

The 2016 dates for Lit Camp are May 12 to May 15 at Mayacamas Ranch. The deadline for applications for 40 slots is January 31, 2016. According to the website:
Applicants should submit no more than 4,000 words of their best unpublished prose.

If you'd like to read more, check out their website or my blog recap on Lit Camp here!

Lit Camp 2014 and Post-Lit Camp Ennui (PLCE)

Well, it's been almost one month since I went to Lit Camp 2014, and it's taken about as long to shake off what one attendee labeled Post-Lit Camp Ennui (PLCE). One volunteer extraordinaire, Thea Sullivan (that darling dame in the photo) defined it with the following comments on Facebook:

Thea Sullivan, Travis Peterson and Matthew James DeCostner
Photo credit: Ian Tuttle

Common symptoms of PLCE: 
Changes in sleep habits
Mental fog
Unexplained sadness
Compulsive checking of Facebook
Continual "reliving" of past experience
Inattention to daily duties
Unrealistic desire to return to fantasy state involving witty conversation, intellectual stimulation, delicious food, festive cocktails, heartfelt connections, and the sense of having found one's "tribe".

Isabel and Nicole at a Lit Camp session

That tribe included 40 Lit Camp members plus several fantabulous volunteers (including founder Janis Cooke Newman) and a host of literary hotshots (editors, agents, writers) who graciously shared their expertise with us during panels, porch time conversations and daily writing workshops. While this formal learning added its usual enrichment to my literary arsenal, it was the informal gathering with said tribe--the ease of communication and depth of connectivity with likeminded individuals all seeking their way with words--that made the adjustment to the normal world so laden with listlessness, malaise and melancholy (all synonyms for 'ennui'). I've since recovered.

Photo credit: Ian Tuttle

Photo credit: Ian Tuttle

I got up early in the morning to swim in the spring-fed pool (solo), hiked the trail past chaparral in the Calistoga hills, heard the echo of Canada geese honking through the canyon, ate fresh meals sourced from the garden that served as our backdrop during sunny afternoons on the deck, fell into constant conversation on the writing life, and--of course--considered the craft of writing for several days, followed up with evening fun, including a much better than expected Lit Camp talent show.

Lit Camp also raised a total of $930 for 826 Valencia with the naming of the 2014 Lit Camp cocktail.

CC, Nicole and Isabel on Polaroid

Here's the recipe for this delicious drink, now known as The 700 Club, in case you have cause for celebration:

2 oz. Bummer & Lazarus Gin
1 oz. Fresh Lemon Juice, or the juice from one lemon.
½ oz. simple syrup
3 dashes Angostura bitters
Ginger Beer
Shake ingredients (not the ginger beer) with Ice and strain in to glass > Top off with Ginger Beer

Literary Grab Bag: Lit Camp, Handling Rejection and The Review Review (with Cappuccino)

This week brought more great news to my writerly world:

Congratulations! You are being offered a place at Lit Camp. We had more than 250 submissions for only 40 spots. Everyone who was chosen represents the very best in fiction and nonfiction writing. It was a pleasure to read your work! 

Mayacamas Ranch, Calistoga, CA

Sponsored by Litquake and the San Francisco Writers Grotto, Lit Camp is an annual spring writers conference that takes place at Mayacamas Ranch, a retreat center in Calistoga, CA. Take a look at the rigorous Lit Camp schedule, which includes a Yoga for Writers workshop; free time to enjoy the hot tub, saltwater pool and spring-fed pond; and plenty of 'Booze and Schmooze' opportunities with writers, literary agents and editors of esteemed publications such as ZYZZVYA, McSweeney's, The Believer and The Rumpus. Oh, yeah, and some writing workshops!


The bad news: A couple of my writer friends didn't make it in. Which brings me to my next topic: Handling Rejection. I happen to know that these two are excellent writers; one just scored an agent and a possible publishing contract for her book. So here are some refreshing perspectives to share.

Helen Dring at Black Fox Literary Magazine makes the claim that "rejections will make you better":

You see, receiving rejections means two very good things. First, my work is out there in the world being read...   

Second, sometimes rejections come with feedback...

In her blog post, Rejections I Have Known, Susie Meserve reveals the good, the bad and the ugly (as well as sweet) in her folder of 282 rejections -- including some nostalgia for handwritten notes.

I borrowed the rejection links above from my weekly shot of The Review Review, which sends me an e-newsletter I never reject from my inbox. Amid all the spam is this constant gem, filled with fascinating tidbits from the writerly front, from interviews to blogs to lit mags to the ever-so whimsical parting words of its founding editor, Becky Tuch, who created the website from the ashes of rejection:

In the spring of 2008, I stopped submitting to literary magazines. As a fiction writer, trying to get my work published felt as futile and inconsequential as trying to write my name on a snowflake.

Here is how Ms. Tuch signed off this week. How can you not love a newsletter like this?

And that you white-tea sippers, you acai-berry chewers, you leafy-green consumers, you who love your antioxidants, you who are a dangerously free radical, you who are fit, you who are strong, and you there, just trying to get through the day without spilling food on yourself, is the news in literary magazines.

Well, it's not white tea or acai (pronounced 'a-sa-ee' -- it rhymes!) that's for me.