This weekend I got a very nice rejection letter:

Thanks for entering the contest. This was one of those stories that was close and made it through repeated readings. Ultimately [… notes about the story]. Do try me again with some more of your work.

This is the kind of rejection letter a writer wants to get. I have been getting a lot of them. I really appreciate it when editors take the time to tell me that my work was almost accepted and why it wasn’t. It’s much better than getting a form letter.

That said, creative writing can be so frustrating sometimes! It’s great to know your work is almost there and was almost published, but after awhile you wish you would make the leap from almost to just published, already.

The good news is that my writing group the Word Pirates is definitely helping with my creative writing. Since our first meeting last April, I have finished three short stories that I wouldn’t have written otherwise, and I have several half-finished drafts of stories and essays that I want to get back to. As I’ve mentioned before on here, we’re having a reading in February, so if the string of fiction rejections continues, at least someone will get to hear my stuff.

Italy updates to continue soon!

Note: My Italy trip was huge. I took over 1,000 pictures and went to at least 10 museums, six churches, and three towns. It would be overwhelming to talk about it all in one entry. So I am going to break it up into a few episodes to give you the highlights.

I had heard that California is supposed to have the exact same climate as Italy, but that didn’t seem to be the case when I was there. Italy in October is more like California is in February–everything is lush and green. There was also this gorgeous light covering everything, a swath of gold that filters down from the clouds. It was hard to photograph, but I understand why artists like Italy now.

Girl on the bus from Siena to Rome.

The plants were all familiar — oleanders, palm trees, pampas grass, etc. But everything was slightly bigger and healthier. The oleander blossoms were as big as azaleas and even the dandelions were taller and somehow more elegant. Gardening is a big part of life there. The smallest apartment balcony has an herb garden. Restaurants use piles of fruit for decoration. And who can blame them? Look at the size of these grapes:

Of course, the most interesting part of Italy was the food. I have never eaten so much in my life. On a typical day, we had espresso for breakfast, a two-course lunch, and a two-course dinner. The courses were usually pasta and some sort of meat dish afterwards. We also had wine with most of our meals. In between, there was gelato.

We had everything from cheap sandwiches to gourmet meals. One meal would be in a small nook in a romantic alley while the rain beat down outside, the next would be in a touristy pizza joint. The best thing I had was a meat lasagna that was, without a doubt, the best lasagna I have ever had in my life. I also had wild boar, rabbit, shrimp scampi, and veal, among other things. And the best tiramisu.

Somehow, despite all this, I lost weight. I guess it was from all the walking.

Kyle eating gelato.

I loved the shopping in Italy. The clothes are cheaper and better made than you can get in California. Kyle bought a leather wallet and a pair of dress shoes, both handmade in Italy. I bought a navy coat, two scarves, Venetian glass earrings and necklace, a purple sweater, a green sweater, and a terracotta canister for my coffee. I had to force myself to stop. I wanted to buy everything I saw.

We also really liked the Italian people. They are not the gregarious caricatures you see in the Olive Garden commercials, but they are fun, outgoing, and more laid back than people from other European countries. They are also polite. We didn’t run into a single jerk or rude person our entire 10 days there, and some people were extraordinarily kind to us.

Italian couple kissing while Kyle looks on.

Communicating was easy after awhile. I now like the Italian language. It is beautiful and easy to pronounce. Maybe because of my background in Spanish, I found it easy to understand and by the end of the trip, I was beginning to get snippets of conversation. (Whenever I travel, I am surprised by how easy it is for me to pick up other languages. I really should put more effort into learning a second language.)

An odd caveat to all this is the beggars. In Italy, bands of people work the street, some selling you things, some begging for money, some playing music for money.

Street musicians near the Pantheon.

Actually, the beggars were fascinating. Many of the younger gypsy women would sit holding an infant while rolling their eyes to indicate despair and helplessness. I saw other beggars holding puppies or sitting on church steps fingering rosaries. Then there were the ones who used their infirmities for gain–people with bent spines or stunted limbs, etc. One person appeared to have fallen on the sidewalk. He was lying face-down with his cap splayed out beside him for coins. On his head, peeking through his hair, were large brown boils. I was so surprised, I dropped my suitcase.

And then there was the beggar I saw while standing in line for the Vatican Museum. An old lady came along holding out a green bowl and saying in an elaborately shaky voice, “Signora, Signore?” She took off her hat, and half of her scalp looks worn away, a raw pink wound like she had taken a cheese grater to her scalp. It was weird and certainly didn’t make me want to give her money.

A different beggar woman on the Spanish Steps

Americans love Italy, apparently. We were everywhere. Because of this, some of the Italians were a little wary about Kyle and I. Whenever we ordered a caffe, they would almost always explain that it was Italian coffee (espresso), not American coffee. I can only imagine the reaction they received when some Americans ordered a coffee and got an espresso instead. I saw a similar situation in a leather store. An American woman was having a fit because a wallet she wanted to buy had a small scratch on it. She treated the shop owner like he was a thief who was trying to cheat her. It was embarrassing.

Me, sitting at the top of the Spanish Steps

Part I: Ancient Rome

Part II: Italian Culture

Part III: Art and God

Part IV: Florence and Siena

Note: My Italy trip was huge. I took over 1,000 pictures and went to at least 10 museums, six churches, and three towns. It would be overwhelming to talk about it all in one entry. So I am going to break it up into a few episodes to give you the highlights.

One of the coolest things about Italy was how history is transparent there. It’s not just the fact that modern Rome is sitting right on top of ancient Rome; it’s also how the art in the museums was at one point housed in churches right down the street, and how the churches house the bodies of the famous people who lived in Italy–popes, artists, philosophers, etc. Everything is right there, and you can figure it all out with little effort and without even speaking Italian. It is as close to history coming alive as you are going to get.

One of my favorite things about Italy was the Roman Forum. This mile or so of ancient land was the cradle of the Roman empire. It has the Colosseum, the spot where Julius Caesar’s body was burned, the place where Peter and Paul were imprisoned, and even a cabin that Romulus supposedly lived in.

The Colosseum is huge. At one point it could house 50,000 people. It was, of course, where the Romans had all of their “games”– chariot races, people being chased by wild animals, etc.

Inside, there are several levels you can walk around. There used to be a floor in the center, but it has since been excavated, so you can see the pens where all the animals and such were kept.

The most amazing part was simply how big the place was. It was every bit as impressive as one of our super-stadiums, plus it was covered in marble. You don’t really understand how advanced that civilization was until you see something like that. Also interesting was all the ancient graffiti, most of it crosses and other Christian signs. Supposedly, early Christians were martyred in the Colosseum. Right outside is the Arch of Constantine, the emperor who brought Christianity to Italy. It stuck. Apparently Italy is still 85% Catholic.

I also saw several cats wandering around the Roman Forum. This one was particularly friendly.

Right outside the Colosseum is about a mile of the remains of downtown ancient Rome, called the Roman Forum. Here is one of many pictures I took of part of it:

The three white columns in the center is the remains of the Temple of the Vestal Virgins. Six virgins tended the fire of Vesta, the goddess of the hearth and home. Letting the fire go out was punishable by death. So was having sex — if a virgins was discovered to have been deflowered, she was buried alive about a quarter of a mile away. The virgins lived in houses behind the temple, which you can see in the picture. To the left (not pictured) is where Julius Caesar was burned.

The forum was an oddly pretty place, with olive and palm trees in among huge arches so old, the marble has worn away from time.

At the end of the Forum is a museum and several churches. One of them in built on top of the prison where at different times both Peter and Paul were imprisoned. You can go down into the cramped, dark hole they were kept in. For some reason, it smelled like sewage down there. Kyle thought there was a sewage line nearby. In any case, it was realistic.

After seeing all this, you understand why Rome only has two metro lines. I guess when you have priceless ruins under your soil, it’s kinda hard to dig tunnels for trains.

Part I: Ancient Rome

Part II: Italian Culture

Part III: Art and God

Part IV: Florence and Siena

William Styron died Wednesday from pneumonia. He wrote one of my favorite books from college, Sophie’s Choice, about a Holocaust survivor who has to choose between her two children. Terry Gross has an interview with Styron here. It’s was done around the publication of his memoir Darkness Visible, about his battles with depression. Although I don’t agree with him, he makes an articulate if-not-quite-convincing argument that depression should be treated like any other disease of the body.

Styron wrote three major novels in his life (the other two being The Confessions of Nat Turner and Lie Down in Darkness). It’s really a shame. I had always hoped there’d be another book by him before he died. I don’t know how much his depression contributed to him not writing as much toward the end of his life.

The NYTimes wrote an article about him but it’s kind of insulting — it calls his work melodramatic, his prose purple, and his style grandiose. It says one or two nice things too. His work was often misunderstood. People called him racist when The Confessions of Nat Turner came out because they didn’t like that a white Southerner dared to write from the point of view of a black slave. Now a NYTimes writer says a man who wrote about slavery and the Holocaust had some melodramatic tendencies. Interesting …

Or maybe I’m just defensive because I was a melodramatic youngster, and it’s a little disconcerting to think that Sophie’s Choice might not hold up to fully formed adult eyes. But I still remember it being a cleverly structured novel with a story inside of a story and a painful secret in the middle that seemed to hold up metaphorically to the pain of something like the Holocaust. I suppose one person’s pain is another person’s melodrama.

I don’t usually like books about writing. I just can’t get much from books with titles like How to Write Like Shakespeare or Make One Million Dollars Writing. It’s not that those books can’t be helpful to other people, it’s just that I don’t personally find them useful. Besides, if I’m going to spend time reading, I would rather read novels or essays or, well, just about anything other than a book about writing.

Instead of how-to books, my writing teachers have been:

• Editors
• Writing constantly
• Reading

That last point, reading, is the subject of one of the first book about writing that I have liked in a long time: Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose. In each chapter, Prose dissects the basic parts of writing–words, sentences, paragraphs, dialogue, etc.– by quoting passages of good literature and then explaining exactly how the writer used those parts of writing to blow the reader’s mind.

I suspect all great writers learned by reading deeply and voraciously. Prose apparently agrees:

Long before the idea of a writer’s conference was a glimmer in anyone’s eye, writers learned by reading the work of their predecessors. They studied meter with Ovid, plot construction with Homer, comedy with Aristophanes; they honed their prose style by absorbing the lucid sentences of Montaigne and Samuel Johnson. And who could have asked for better teachers: generous, uncritical, blessed with wisdom and genius, as endlessly forgiving as only the dead can be?

The best part of Reading Like A Writer is Prose’s passion for her subject. She is a hard-core reader, and you can feel her delight in explaining how Virginia Woolf leads you through an essay or the nuances of Henry Green’s dialogue. And while I did learn a few pointers for my own writing, in the end, this book didn’t make me want to write. It made me want to read. Reading Like A Writer is a book-nerd’s meditation on reading disguised as a book about writing. That fact alone makes it broader, richer, and more interesting than most how-to-write books out there. I recommend it to anyone who wants to write, especially beginning writers.