rebeccakuder

Dear Inner Critic—Interview by Ariel Gore

sepia tone image of human, on the floor, with papers and material spread out, writing on a notecard.

I am so grateful for Ariel Gore‘s invitation to chat about Dear Inner Critic: a self-doubt activity book and other salient things. Read our interview here. Ariel’s Literary Kitchen (aka School for Wayward Writers) is where Dear Inner Critic was born, so to share the book’s story there warms my heart.

If you are like me, you know in your bones that these times call for much inspiration and fortification! So please do whatever you can to support independent, collective, human-scale publishing, and eschew the monsters of big capitalism!

Head over to the Literary Kitchen’s Underground Book Shelter to purchase fabulous, unique, humanity-expanding books.

rebeccakuder

Dear Inner Critic: a self-doubt activity book

Dear Everbody,
Great news!
Dear Inner Critic: a self-doubt activity book is now available!
Read more about why you will want this book.
Learn how to buy online at Literary Kitchen, or visit the independent stores mentioned below.
Love,
Rebecca

NOW AVAILABLE:
at Epic Book Shop or Dark Star Books in Yellow Springs, OH
& at Secret World Books in Highland Park, IL
& Online from Literary Kitchen!
(Subscribe to the BLOG for updates.)

**

You’re invited to play!
Devote 30 days to creative freedom; unlock the long con of confidence; and dissolve self-doubt.

Even if you’ve been living with insecurity all your life, today can be different. This book offers a flashlight to guide you through the wilds of self-doubt. Between these covers you’ll find fun and creative strategies to quiet your negative self-talk.

You’ll write, draw, imagine, demystify—and maybe even befriend—the inner critic. You’ll set boundaries and gain room for creativity and joy. Using ingenuity and self-care, these activities let you play your way toward creative liberation.

**

Praise for DEAR INNER CRITIC: a self-doubt activity book:
“Rebecca Kuder writes magical fiction and memoir with a voice so confident and agile, you’d never imagine she struggled with an inner critic. When I heard that she was not only well acquainted with self-doubt but had found ways to befriend it and play with it to the benefit of her art and happiness, I knew I wanted in on the secrets. This guide is a gift. Let Rebecca Kuder’s genius guide you to ignite your own.”

—Ariel Gore, author of The Wayward Writer (Summon Your Power to Take Back Your Story, Liberate Yourself from Capitalism, and Publish Like A Superstar)

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Sears Eldredge (RIP)

(Sears Eldredge, Earlham Sargasso, 1986)

I am so grateful to have known and worked with Sears Eldredge, who I learned this week has recently died. Sears was wonderful, kind, and imaginative. He was my teacher, director, and mentor at Earlham College, and has always been a source of inspiration in the creative quest.

A couple years ago I read his wonderful book Mask Improvisation, and I could hear his musical voice in the sentences. Not only about mask performance/study, this book would be a pleasure for anyone who is interested in character and the psyche, and shows an early awareness of what we now call somatics. A beautiful and rich resource.

(RIP, dear Sears. A true artist engaged in the world. You can read his obituary here.)

rebeccakuder

how to make popcorn

I love popcorn. I make it often. I make really good popcorn. Some of this method I learned from my friend Kassie Maneri. She and her family are expert popcorn makers, one of the million reasons I’m grateful they are in my life.

Over the years I have made a lot of popcorn and honed my skills. Even so, it’s a practice each time to get it just right. You have to pay attention.

Here’s what I use:

  • heavy bottom pan (I use a Revereware saucepan that looks like this. Maryellen (Maneri) says it seemed important to have a loosely fitting lid to let the steam escape. Makes sense!)
  • usually organic popcorn, usually yellow, but white is great too.
  • oil (canola, grapeseed, or coconut or olive oil, if you like the flavors–but usually the popcorn turns out more crispy with grapeseed or canola or possibly coconut oil. Olive oil would be my last choice but it could work.)
  • butter (dairy or vegan), salt, pepper, nutritional yeast, etc. (see below)
  • a wee big bowl (Derry Girls reference!)

Here’s what I do:

Cover the bottom the pan with a layer of popcorn, then add oil. Until recently I used canola, but switched to grapeseed oil, which seems as good, probably better. Add enough oil so the kernels are covered and glossy but not swimming. Leave the pan uncovered, and turn on the heat—on my gas stove, I turn it to level 6 (of 10) on the dial. (Medium high, I guess.) Keeping the pan level, swirl the pan on the flame (or heat) pretty much continually (or as frequently as you can). This will allow the kernels to begin to sizzle and change color to golden. (Kassie referred to this as bronzing. That’s the best way to describe it.) The goal is that all the kernels are at the same basic stage of cooked-ness, if possible. Keep swirling! Once the first kernel or two pop, put on the lid, and turn up the heat to level 8 (high but not full blast). Let the corn pop, continuing to swirl and move the pan until the popcorn is near the lid, the carefully pour out most of the cooked popcorn to allow room to cook the rest. The idea is that you are letting some steam out, which will keep the popcorn crispier. (I’m not a food scientist but I think that’s part of the magic.) Once all the kernels are popped, empty the popcorn into the bowl. Use the same pan to melt a pat or two of butter. I sizzle the butter till it’s clear, for best flavor. Drizzle on the popcorn, then sprinkle salt, flipping or mixing the popcorn so the decorations are evenly distributed. I have recently begun adding many twists of fresh ground black pepper—till it’s visible and it takes a lot of pepper!—this makes it even better. And nutritional yeast is fine, too, if you like it, but sometimes I appreciate the simplicity of butter and salt. Adding all four items sometimes tastes slightly like cheese puffs, which is nice if you are feeling decadent. (Or just shred some cheese over the popcorn, for serious luxury.) Practice makes near-perfect.

If you try this method, please do report back and let me know how it goes. Or share your favorite recipe! My friend Tia said if you put a tablespoon of sugar into the hot oil, you will get kettle corn. I tried this and it was wild and amazing and delicious.

p.s. I immortalized the Maneri popcorn on p. 129 of my novel, The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival:

While everyone settled onto wooden benches, Suspender took the motor from its shelf, and plugged it into the air wire. He fed the reel into the praxinoscope, and flipped a switch. The machine sputtered, flickered. Then pictures. Lo-Lo brought the roll-cart, laden with pans of popped corn, and carnies grabbed handfuls into their laps. “All hail the Maneri method!”

“Oh, what glory to be entertained,” Nelda said. “And fed.”

rebeccakuder

rumination about writing (& revising) essays, before/during a pandemic

Below is some process-related rumination about an essay I wrote, which details an experience from 2018. (The “her” mentioned below is a person I met and subsequently wrote about.) In late 2020, the essay was accepted for publication, and was published in summer 2021. It’s hard to imagine that it was just over 2 years between the event and the acceptance, because of how different everything became. Looking at the essay again—mid-pandemic—brought up thoughts about how weird a gig it is, to write essays. I still feel like a novice, because the essay was my second form, after fiction. I didn’t study what it is to be an essayist (whatever that means) and the requisite sharing/exposing of self without the veil of fiction (even with a sculpted persona at the helm). I find it interesting to ponder/obsess about the intricacies involved. Thought this bit might be worth sharing.

Written on November 21, 2020 (from morning pages)
I started looking at the essay and wow, it’s kind of badly overwritten. It’s sort of cringey! I mean I need to pare down some of the language. I’ve gone really far in making it way too articulate or maybe it’s skirting clever. I don’t like the voice somehow. It’s weird that I am having such a strong reaction to it. I just need to make it good enough & send it back but it’s really hard. I would revise the whole thing (and maybe I will). Maybe it could be that it just feels self-indulgent because it’s pre-COVID, maybe I just need to let it be pre-COVID and not sweat it. It just sounds really full of myself, or something. I think I need to talk to MT about it. It will be helpful to sort it out. I guess I should have looked it over before I sent it. I’ll see if I can just simplify the sentences. Part of it is that with an essay, I captured & canned the feelings and specifics at the time, and I really would write it differently now, I think—? Maybe I can find a way through it without being weirded out by the finished product. Anyway, we’ll see. I wish I had learned her name, or something—I wasn’t really even processing it all, when I met them, how big a deal their story would be. And I don’t want to sensationalize their story, like make it into “disaster porn” or appropriate it. Anyway I’ll just look at the sentences & try to make it better. What’s weird, of course, is that the (name of magazine) will publish it, so in that way, I’ll be exposing the younger me as narrator—it just feels weird. Maybe it’s just the problem of an old essay. Maybe I should put the lens I have now on it, if that doesn’t throw things off. I feel like it needs a date stamp or something. I wonder if that’s relevant. I mean do I need to make clear that it’s pre-COVID-19? I’ll see what I can make of it so it’s still relevant. Or at least so I can stand the sentences & the voice. Such a weird-ass gig. I’m glad the editor accepted it & I will do my best. I know there’s something real in it, and maybe I will work The Body Keeps The Score back into it. I’ll see if that paragraph will work again—I liked having it in there. For one thing it shows a bit about how trauma works, and I think that’s useful. God, this is hard. I mean the decisions & lenses and all that. Having experienced whatever we have experienced, then the work of sorting it, making sense or at least a little bit of order, or observations about it. It’s actually fairly scientific. I don’t know if others think of it that way,  but it makes sense to me. I mean to think of scientific inquiry.

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The work of today / (Onward!)

 

 

scribbled-on page of my novel
page of my novel, under construction

Whenever I’m staring at something like this mess, there’s an urge to whine (and brag?). Both.

The writing process. The glamour.

Ninety more pages like this, single-spaced.

The tired eyes.

This page isn’t even the worst of it!

But I know if I just take the time, nip and tuck, and keep moving onward, the novel will emerge stronger for it.

Onward!

rebeccakuder

(writing about math & the bones)

photo of papers on the floor, writing process
Working at Omega, October 2017

…when you hand yourself over to an hour freewrite about numbers and math, and it all adds up to the shape your bones will be when your body goes to the fire. (& instead of scrawling your usual “thank you” at the end of your freewriting, which Laraine Herring taught you in her workshop—thanking yourself and your writer self for showing up—you write “mic drop.”)

(boom.)
rebeccakuder

Letter to the Inner Critic (11/19/17)

photo of book, confessions of a prairie bitch
Spotted at Dark Star Books

Here’s a leftover I meant to post from my November inner critic letter-a-day challenge (to myself). Uncooked, raw, basically how it came out. Also: in the letter below, where I write “I was born to fly”, I would clarify that we were all born to fly.:

November 19, 2017

Dear Inner Critic,

Well, apparently you are a risk manager and I’m curious what’s the risk? What is it that is on fire? The house already burned down, it’s gone. What are you afraid of? You seem to be afraid I’ll make any noise, that I’ll embarrass you or be noticed (or just seen) and that somehow scares you. You don’t want me to stand out, you want me to fit in & do what the world seems to want safe people to do. But I was born to fly. It’s not a safe thing, but I can try and work and fail and try again. I am a survivor, you know that, and if I fail, or get ignored, or rebuffed, or insulted, I will be okay. I’m stronger than you think I am. Also, I do appreciate your care—I know it’s a twisted kind of caring, the risk managing, the alert and hyper-vigilant posture. I know it’s because you want to protect me. But I need to follow the call and take risks and I need to be allowed to make a fool of myself, and I need to jump off the cliff and trust my strong wings. I’ve been flapping them and practicing with a helmet long enough. The helmet blocks my vision, the pads are too heavy. I don’t need them. I am strong and my body can sustain a fall. Because we work in metaphor and I’m not literally going to jump my unwinged human body off a cliff, I need you to know I’ll be safe, I am safe. I am using my words and my heart for this work, and my body is safe, and my spirit can only be fulfilled if I try and don’t shrink down from your alerts and warnings. I need you to know that I understand the alerts and warnings come from your wounded love for me. How you remember all the hurts and how they feel like they are happening now, but I survived those nasty in the woodsheds, and I can survive what’s to come, so I can do my work, and soar.

I love you.

Love,
Rebecca