By CHAD GAMBOA, KAITLYN JASNICA, SCOTT LAWSON, KAYLA MATTEO and MARY FRANCIS STOUTE
Journalism II
A special panel of alumni and faculty writers will highlight a celebration of the National Day on Writing here at The College of Saint Rose.
The Thursday night panel from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. at St. Josephs’ Hall auditorium will focus on how authors have approached the practice of writing in their individual careers. Throughout the day, a writing fun fair will take place from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. in the Events and Athletic Center.
Panelists include alumni Coleen Paratore, Bryande Murray, and faculty Jessica Loy, Hollis Seamon, Dean Spaulding, Kathy Voegtle, and Barbara Ungar.
While Coleen Paratore relished her time as an undergrad studying English and Communications at The College of Saint Rose, she wouldn’t have guessed then where she would be today.
“As an undergraduate I could not have imagined that I would have 15 books published, all with major houses, in less than seven years,” said Paratore.
After completing her bachelor’s degree at Saint Rose, she attended Trinity College in Connecticut for her master’s degree. She moved back to the Capital Region, where she was raised, and worked in public relations at Russell Sage and then Sage College of Albany.
A few years later, she lost a friend to cancer. She felt that she should create a book to commemorate the wonderful things about her friend for the friend’s son. As a new mother herself, she wrote The Memory Book, which sold more than 10,000 copies.
Then she left her job to become a full time mother and started her career in writing. She spent days with her three young sons visiting the library and reading to them. Her love of reading stems back to when she was a child, when she herself would take trips to the library and get lost in books.
“What I did know was that I loved reading more than anything and I wrote almost daily in a journal, a practice I strongly recommend,” said Paratore.
Her first book, published in 2004, was called How Prudence Proovit Proved the Truth About Fairy Tales. Paratore said the best writing comes from someone who is truly inspired to write about things they know and love.
“Writing offers a conduit into one’s inner world and a medium for drawing one’s purpose out on to the page. It is a very powerful practice,” said Paratore.
As for her visit to writing day, she is excited to be back at Saint Rose.
“I’m delighted to be back at my alma mater to share a bit of what I’ve learned about writing and to hopefully inspire some people. I had amazing teachers here,” she said.
Hollis Seamon, an author and professor of English at Saint Rose, has written Flesh: A Suzanne LaFleshe Mystery and Body Work: Stories and has had stories published in The Chicago Review, Pierian Springs, The American Voice and several other journals.
At the panel discussion, Seamon plans to talk about her own early experiences of writing.
“I was actually just going to show a progression of the original publication of one of my short stories and then when it was picked up to be a story in an anthology…and how I expanded it into a novel.”
Seamon actually didn’t start off writing until later in life. She described herself more as a reader than a writer at a young age. She started off writing non-fiction pieces for local newspapers in Kinderhook, while at home with her children. She later took an advanced writing workshop at Bard College, a class which accepted students based on the work they submitted.
“As soon as I started just writing stories, I thought ‘This is what I want to do forever’,” said Seamon. She also discussed how technology has shifted the landscape in the publishing world.
In the old system a writer typed their work and sent it to a literary magazine where it might take up to six months before a decision was made. It would likely come back rejected and with revisions. The writer would then have to type a whole new copy and re-submit.
“What I think technology has done has made the process way faster, but much harder in some ways because now there’s no money involved, there’s no postage even. Thousands and thousands of writers can e-mail submissions to a literary magazine,” said Seamon.
Literary journals used to only get 20 submissions a month, now they might get over a thousand. It’s easier to get work to publishers, but it has also raised the competitiveness of the field.
For aspiring writers, both young and old, she said, it’s important to remember that rejection is part of the process. Rejection forces writers to strive to do better and constantly perfect their craft.
“If your story is getting rejected and replaced everywhere you send it, there probably is something wrong with the story. Try to be a little bit honest and hard on yourself,” said Seamon.
Trying to be a writer and not do any reading is like trying to be a professional tennis player and not knowing the rules to tennis, said Seamon.
“I read probably 300 stories a year, besides my students’,” Seamon said. “It’s my field, it’s my thing. It’s what I do.”
Another faculty member, Dean Spaulding, is a professor of Educational Psychology at Saint Rose. He has written Methods in Educational Research: From Theory to Practice, and Program Evaluation in Practice: Core Concepts and Examples for Discussion and Analysis. Two additional books are forthcoming. Since 1997 Spaulding has written eight books.
“I work a lot. I have a very dedicated writing schedule starting about 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. Even in college I wrote early in the morning because that was when I wrote my best material,” said Spaulding.
In 10 years of teaching at Saint Rose, Spaulding has developed his style of teaching and his own theories on the class subject. Many of the text books he would have his students get would cover some of the ideas that he wanted them to know, but not all.
Two other teachers at The College of Saint Rose felt that the text-books were inefficient. Marguerite Lodico and Katherine Voegtle combined with Spaulding to write “Methods in Educational Research: From Theory to Practice.”
“The research book was a course we had been teaching. We didn’t quite like the books we were using, so we went together and created what we need,” said Spaulding.
This has been the inspiration for all of Spaulding’s books. In the 1990’s, there were no educationally based books on birds for middle school students. Spaulding wrote one with activities rated with different levels of supervision. In both text-books, Spaulding took information that he found useful from other books and his own personal insight on the subject to create a text-book that covered everything he wanted to teach.
“One of the biggest things to do is to look around and see what’s out there,” Spaulding said. “Look at the current topics…Everything that you want to write about has been written before. You have to prove how yours is going to be better.”
English professor Barbara Ungar can still remember her first experience with poetry. Her favorite memory is when she would sit in her mother’s lap and listen to the poem, “The Jumbles” by Edward Lear. By the age of five, she used poetry as a way to use her imagination and escape from what was going on around her. Writing has the same use for her today. She tries to freewrite in a journal every day. The writings in her journal are the source for many of her poems.
“When I write, it’s like casting out a line into the unconscious: every so often, you feel a tug on the line, and know you have a live one; the more you practice, the greater your chances are of reeling it in. That’s the fun part, once you’ve hooked an idea; I relish the rewriting process,” said Ungar.
Writing is also a way for her to release problems that she is having in her life. Her latest book of poems, Charlotte Bronte, You Ruined My Life, was inspired by her divorce.
“Writing gives you mastery and control over your most difficult subjects,” Ungar said. Ungar specializes in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Literature, Women’s Studies, and Poetry. In addition to her most recent poetry book, Ungar also published the poetry book Thrift in 2005. As far as her writing process, Ungar enjoys the rewriting process.
“I used to go through 100 drafts of a poem, now I’m a bit quicker so I go through maybe 12 to 20 drafts.” she said
Writing is “primal heaven” for Ungar, “No matter what happens in my life, writing about it is a way to deal with it.”
Saint Rose graduate Bryande Murray now works for Eric Mower Associates, a company that specializes in Public Relations, Marketing and Advertising. Murray was hired as an Associate Copywriter where she reads over press releases, ads, and banners for websites. On top of that, Murray has written a children’s book entitled Mommy vs the Monster, a story to show kids something about mothers with breast cancer.
As a writer, Murray says that inspiration is the key.
“Sometimes an idea pops out of nowhere and I will stop what I am doing to write,” said Murray. “Just go with it…you can always come back to it later.”
When it comes to her job, inspiration comes from the client and what her bosses have laid out for her to do. But when she is thrown into a project, there is more work that needs to be done.
“You have to get your feet wet,” said Murray. She advises all writers to have an understanding of what they are talking about. Murray says that once you get the background information, that’s when the stream of thought flows onto the page.
As a writer, Murray doesn’t like just telling a story; what she really enjoys is the power words have.
“There aren’t many things out there that can do what words do…they spark emotion, thoughts and can inspire,” said Murray.
Because of that, Murray believes that any writer should write with a purpose, whether that is a personal journal, writing on social media and blogs, or anything else. A writer must always be weary of what they say and how it is presented.
“I am a firm believer of if you if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say it at all…keep it simple, almost like how you would explain it to your mother,” Murray said.
