quotables

greetings from day 40/32. i’m still writing, y’all. today, while the rest of new orleans was at the parade celebrating our boys, i was at the writing table, exactly where i wanted to be. lately, these quotes pretty much sum up how i’m feeling:

No more talk about the death of the novel; the novel will be at your funeral. ~Richard Price

I’m not a workaholic. I’m an artist with a body of work needing to get done. RT @gapingvoid

I never want to see anyone, and I never want to go anywhere or do anything. I just want to write.~P. G. Wodehouse

onward!

Books: Barnes & Noble Discover Awards: Best Debuts , Undiscovered Writers – Barnes & Noble

Books: Barnes & Noble Discover Awards: Best Debuts , Undiscovered Writers – Barnes & Noble.

i’m doing the happy dance because my fellow rocket girl and partner in wine barb johnson’s book is a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award for her debut collection of short stories More of this World or Maybe Another!

A writing career becomes harder to scale – latimes.com

A writing career becomes harder to scale – latimes.com.

writer dani shapiro gives us the goods on what a writing life looks like these days.

Call it stubbornness, stamina, a take-no-prisoners determination, but a writer at work reminds me of nothing so much as a terrier with a bone: gnawing, biting, chewing, until finally there is nothing left to do but fall away.

fess up friday

the 36/32 edition

the fraction of the title refers to my way of tracking my 32 days of writing. as of today, i’ve written every day of the new year. i met my 32 days of writing goal as inspired by the ann patchett article. and i’m still writing on day 36. i am thisclose to completing a significant chunk of book (over 10,000 words) so i am committing to continue the everyday writing until i get this section done. i’ve learned a lot during these 32 36 days. i think that this challenge came at a perfect time in my work. the beginning of the year is a great time to me for solidifying goals. this practice really helped me to live my priorities. how many times have i said how important my writing is to me, but haven’t made the space for it? my friend horton humble (a fantastic painter) always says, from the work comes the Work. i showed up for the everyday work and the Work, showed up for me.

onward!

Resolved: Writing is a job – washingtonpost.com

my friend Carleen Brice posted this wonderful article from writer Ann Patchett about writing being a job. i was never had any real regular habits as a writer until thesis time for my mfa. out of necessity i got up and wrote almost daily under threat of not graduating. after graduation, with the gift of wide open days to try to write, i ended up watching endless episodes of law & order and er in the mornings. i stretched out cleaning and errands to ridiculous proportions. finally i got aholt of myself and decided to treat writing like a job. for me, that means getting dressed, putting my make up on and getting outside my house.

i do a pretty good job of showing up at the writing table. for the past year or so i write almost every day. i write until i feel like i need a break, then i take one, still when i looked at my outline and the amount of work that needs to be done on this draft i was disheartened, discouraged and on the brink of a meltdown.

despite showing up almost every day, i’m slow. very, very slow. so, i know the answer is more time at the writing table. and as usual, here’s the universe confirming that if i just follow my own compass and get the work in, i’ll be just fine.

Oh, say my family, my friends, my readers, it is a job! Maybe so, but for a month I want it to look like one. I want a job like my husband’s. He is a doctor who leaves the house between 7 and 8 in the morning and comes home between 7 and 8 at night, and in the 12 intervening hours he works. Imagine that. No lunch dates, no waiting on repairmen, no speaking at book clubs. Don’t get me wrong: I love the freedom my work has afforded me. The fact that I can walk away from a difficult scene in my novel and go to Costco with my mother is the greatest job perk I could ask for. But so often these days become packed with the smallest of obligations that squeeze into my schedule like one more bullish child pushing onto an already over-crowded elevator — until even the one hour I pledged is choked out. What I propose for 2010 is a real work day that would require not just a change of scheduling but also a change of mind. The trick, after all, is not to convince the rest of the world I need to be working. The trick is to convince myself. –Ann Patchett

via Resolved: Writing is a job – washingtonpost.com.

nighttime: the birth of a story

callaloo desk

i am so very pleased that my short story “nighttime” has found a home at torch, a wonderful online journal featuring african american women writers. this story was one of the first stories i wrote (or one of the first that i would consider a story). in my 08 i made a resolution to submit to at least 12 publications. i dug up this story and put it into the literary lotto.

i wrote it at my very first writers workshop, callaloo in 2004. the photo above is my desk at callaloo.  i actually blogged about my experience there and the evolution of that story here: this gift , writing in the dark, & writing in the dark, pt 2 .

enjoy!

Torch :: Jamey Hatley.

learning to fly 2009

this year i made what i thought was a simple resolution–be more jamey in 2009. i think that accomplished that goal, but first i had to figure out what that meant. i had been on such a journey with my writing that most of the “me” went into trying to become a writer. i had my head down for years, just doing the work and all of a sudden i was a bonafide writer. i had my first fiction publication in a national magazine. i was profiled in galleycat. i appeared on panels for the louisiana book festival and at the words and music festival.  i was starting to trust my writing process. that part of my life was shoring up, but when i started to look around at the other areas of my life, they didn’t exactly look familiar. it was time to get rid of the crutches that i had assembled to prop me up along the way, the tricks that i no longer needed. it was startling when i realized that the goals that i had set for myself at the beginning of my writing journey had already been realized. it was time for new dreams,  bigger dreams but i faltered at the threshold. i didn’t think that i was ready to move forward. really, i knew that it was time. i was just scared to move beyond the space that i had worked so hard to create.

2009 had other plans. , 2009 pushed me out of the nest like a baby bird and forced me to fly. to my surprise, i found my wings. but then i was left to remake my nest and find my flock. i’ve been reading some wonderful books along the way. style statement by danielle laporte and carrie mccarthy. wishcraft by barbara sher and the creative habit by twyla tharp. also some fun fluff books like the bombshell manual of style by laren stover and french women don’t sleep alone by jamie cat callan.

so here, at the edge of a new decade i’m dreaming up a new, shinier, bigger, brighter, juicier world.

join me?

onward!

she’s all rocket

i often say crazy people love me. by crazy i mean the spectrum from actual mental illness to eccentrics. they seem to gravitate towards me and i can’t stop looking. a few months ago my friend penelope was in town and we were having a coffee at my neighborhood spot when a very wobbly, very drunk woman stumbled down the sidewalk singing. her hair was red and there was something otherworldly about her. i kept trying to catch the lyrics to the song. her voice was just so insistent, so urgent i couldn’t look away. she locked in on me and promptly fell over into the street taking a cafe table with her. she made it up again, only to fall–still singing in that eerie, insistent voice. the second time she rose on her knees and looked right into my eyes. the song was something about having one foot on a star and one foot in the grave. she needed me to hear it, and i did. her friend came to collect her and they disappeared down the street (mind you it was broad daylight).

later, the friend returned. he stopped and apologized for his friend. and said this:

some people are like matches. they flame. they burn out quickly. but, this one, she’s all rocket.

he went on to say that she spoke several languages and had many degrees. since then, she’s all rocket has become a kind of touchstone for me. the highest compliment. the need to go all the way there.

here’s to all the rocket women (and men)!

jamey’s a galleycat

the wonderful Jeff Rivera interviewed me for his series on writers of color for the publishing website GalleyCat. Here’s a sneak peek at the piece:

Jamey Hatley suspects that she is a “novelist by temperament.” She is currently using this temperament to expand her short story, “Dream Season,” (Published in Oxford American) into her first novel, making Hatley an up-and-coming author to keep your eye on. Viewing herself as a storyteller, Hatley’s interests lie in the equal development of both “character and plot… stories with complex characters in difficult situations that get progressively more difficult.” Hatley explores “the wins and losses in post Civil Rights Movement America,” within Dream Season. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther is certainly a difficult and tense enough situation – but add the element of twins born at the exact same moment and the consequent death of one those twins, and you obtain the premise of Hatley’s novel-in-progress.

click the link below for the full story:

Interview with Jamey Hatley – mediabistro.com: GalleyCat.

notes from a nola walk

a cascade of black leaves, the barely perceptible shift in light that whispers fall (even if the temperature says otherwise), a pole now rusted and folded into an angle that suggests a giant bendy-straw rising from a creamy hunk of stone–all that remains of a World War 2 monument. the flag that must have flown there only a memory, much like the people it was supposed to honor.