Arsenic Lobster poem! + Writing Happiness + Music!

Hey everyone!
Arsenic Lobster just published one of my poems: Check it out here: http://arseniclobster.magere.com/380301.html

A huge thanks to Arsenic Lobster for publishing my work. It's a great journal, so you should definitely check out some of their other entries. I have a lot of respect for their quality and creativity. It's also just a lot of fun to look at the artwork and layout of the journal. It means a lot to me to have my work featured there, and to see all the wonderful things they have published :)

I'd also like to take a moment to say how happy I am right now, with both my writing and my life in general. I'm now officially writing as a columnist for The Trinitonian, my school's newspaper, while also continuing to work on my poetry and fiction, plus some plays. There were some very rough moments, but in the end, pushing forward made all the difference. Inspiration has nestled itself in the palm of my hand, and I don't think it will be leaving anytime soon. Just keep on writing! Everything you want is within your reach. What matters is that you go and get it. Reach for it, work for it...and it will be yours.

To end for the day, here's some music. I'm starting to open up more about the kind of music that I listen to, and it's been so rewarding to find other people who respect, and even share, my tastes.

https://youtu.be/clKAdQnwJ7A

Feel free to share your musical inspirations! Rob Thomas and Matchbox 20 have given me some amazing inspiration for my writing. There are other bands which have also inspired me greatly, such as Lifehouse, Goo Goo Dolls, James Blunt and Christina Perri. Simon and Garfunkel are pretty awesome too. Getting back to the piano -- to Scarlatti, Lyadov and more -- is also nice. It's been a wonderful past couple of weeks. :)

Have a great weekend!

<3
Courtney

First Poem Finally Released!!

Hi everyone!!

"Petition on a Concrete Bench Saturday" was just published in the Eunoia Review!! Check it out:

https://eunoiareview.wordpress.com/2015/07/27/petition-on-a-concrete-bench-saturday/


I am so grateful that this wonderful magazine decided to publish my work. A huge thanks goes out to Ian Chung, the editor, and the rest of the staff, as well as the other wonderful contributors and our supporters. Thank you!!!

While you're on the site, you should also check out the poems "E" and "A", among other entries. The style conveys beautiful stories with elegance and grace. I'm in awe of the talent displayed in this journal.

Hope you are doing well. I will post more updates soon!


---Courtney

Second Poem Up For Publication!

Hey everyone!

Hope all is well with you today. I'm back with more excellent news: a second poem of mine is getting published this summer as well!! The poem is called "The World Is Not A Bowling Ball", and it will be published by the journal Arsenic Lobster. They've got some really fascinating work in their journal, so you should check it out here.

I remember the day I wrote the very first draft of this poem. We were reading Matthew Dickman in my Poetry Writing class, and I had to write a response to one of the poems from his collection "All-American Poem". I loved Dickman's poetry (and still do), but I was struggling to find even those initial stumbling words. I didn't even know what I wanted to write about, much less how to write it. On a Tuesday morning that September (the day the assignment was due), I stumbled out of bed and decided that I would respond to his poem "The World Is Too Huge to Grasp", the last poem in the collection and the one that most resounded with me. I was tired (not enough sleep) and a little bit frustrated. (How can I write this poem? I have no idea what I'm doing!!) Finally, with that idea of "I have no idea what I'm doing!" blazing in my head, I began to write to two people: I wrote to the poet himself, for the most part, while the very end seemed to be addressed to a friend. Then I thought: This poem is either really good, or extremely terrible. It's probably not "average". With that, I turned it in.

When I got the assignment back, my professor declared: "Courtney, Matthew Dickman set you free!" I replied happily as I received my assignment. A plus. When I went to talk to my professor a few weeks later about my poetry aspirations (and frustrations), she told me I'd blown the roof off with that poem. Her words ignited a tiny fire of hope in the midst of a week to which darkness had clung like cobwebs and mold. I kept working on my poetry, and felt the liberation spread from that day forth.


A huge thanks to my Poetry Writing teacher and fellow poet classmates, who also gave remarkable feedback on this poem and others. Another huge thanks to friends, family and all those who have supported me throughout this tumultuous but wonderful and rewarding process. I love you and thank you endlessly for helping me pull through.

All best,

Courtney Justus





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Poetry Getting Published For The First Time!!

Hi everyone!!
I have officially finished my first year in college, and bring you exciting news:

MY POETRY IS GETTING PUBLISHED!!!

For months I've been waiting to get that first 'yes' from a literary magazine. The magazines I'd submitted to back in the winter were all saying 'no', even to what I thought were my better poems. I was tired and frustrated, asking myself why they were saying no and if I'd ever be good enough to get published. Sounds a little harsh, but they say most authors are their own worst critic, and that just might be my case.

Anyway, moving forward a little bit, I heard about this literary journal called Eunoia Review through Authors Publish Magazine, which I subscribed to a few months ago. They send me an email every week with journals and other publishers accepting submissions, plus inspirational material for writing. When they sent information about the Eunoia Review, I looked at their main page and decided to give it a shot. Their content was excellent, and they had a commitment to respond to all submissions within 24 hours, which I think is spectacular,

I revised several poems and sent them off, feeling a little bit jittery. When I couldn't sleep that night, I checked my phone and saw I had a new email. It was from them! I opened the email, and it was a YES.

That's right. A short, sweet response in which they agreed to publish my poem "Petition on a Concrete Bench Saturday". Lauren Berry, author of The Lifting Dress, actually saw the very first draft of this poem and liked it!** I am so grateful for her support, and for the help and support given to me from my family, friends and the members of my Poetry Writing class last fall. I am also extremely grateful for the Eunoia Review for agreeing to publish my poem. I'll always remember the moment I saw their email and cried. It's only the beginning. If I got this yes, I can get another one.

For those of you who are struggling to get that first "yes", or simply trying to find a place for their work, know that you can do it. Your work deserves a place and, if you search enough, you can find it. I know I might receive more rejections after this. Okay, I know I will probably get rejections in the future. But I will also get acceptations, and in the long run, aiming for those acceptations, fighting for them and getting them is what matters.

It might sound funny, but I feel like this first "yes" wouldn't have meant as much if it had come earlier on. I remember this poem actually got rejected by the first literary magazine I sent it to, which felt especially awful, since it had been heavily workshopped in my Poetry Writing class, and I regarded it as one of my better poems. But I knew in my heart that this poem deserved a place in a literary journal. Now, it has found that place. And it feels absolutely perfect.


Thanks for reading my blog and supporting my work. I will post links to my work once it is published in late July. In the meantime, you should check out some of the other work they publish here. And keep an eye out for my work!! Late July will be here before you know it!


;)

Courtney

**For more information on how I met Lauren Berry, see this entry.



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Anomie For This Writer

Anomie. It's the most interesting word I have heard of in a long time. But what does it mean? According to my Sociology reading from Conley's "You May Ask Yourself", it's a sense of normlessness or aimlessness that comes when you feel that life can no longer be considered predictable under reasonable means. Anomie may also occur when social regulation is reduced. In this post, I hope to tell you about my sense of anomie and how it relates to my writing.

When I first saw this word, I thought to myself: "Hmm, that sounds familiar!" It feels like a good thing to say that, although looking back, it wasn't such a good thing at first. I moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina in December 2007, when I was twelve years old. I had moved before, but never outside the United States.

Moving to Argentina turned everything upside-down. I had to learn Spanish at a very uncomfortable rate while trying to make new friends and get used to a very different way of life. Things weren't so great between my parents, school was difficult and I had absolutely no idea how to adapt.

After nearly six years, I realized that I could never adhere myself to a particular set of norms. Back in the States, I more or less knew what these "rules" looked like, both said and unsaid. When I moved, I tried to find a new set. With the passing of time, I found a lot of different rules, but many of them changed quickly according to different circumstances and even people. In fact, sometimes it was hard to say if there were any real norms at all. Maybe this frustration came from me being American, while most of the people I knew were born and raised in Buenos Aires. Some of them had changed schools or houses, so they understood what that felt like. But countries? Most people hadn't, with the exception of certain members of my youth group and first non-USA middle school, both of which were international.

At this point, you might be wondering: "What do you mean, you didn't know what the norms were?" Let me explain. If you were born and raised in Buenos Aires, particularly in the area I spent most of my adolescence in, then you knew what kind of actions and attitudes were accepted and not accepted, as well as what kinds of people were well-liked and weren't. There were also a lot of rules that weren't spoken, but felt collectively, and everyone knew what they were. Except for me, the foreigner. And then there was the general fact that, at most private schools, Americans were put down as different in many, many bad ways. (Unless you went to one of those fancy international schools, had a very rich family and became popular easily. I went to one briefly, but it got too expensive, and I was neither rich nor popular.) My brother was bombarded with horrid jokes about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I was called an undocumented alien immigrant (among many other barbarities), nearly thrown into a garbage can (while I had a limp, mind you!) and had my phone stolen from me twice. (It's a miracle I even got it back!)

I tried to learn the norms, in order to fit in. I was still able to make friends (mostly outside of school) and get decent grades, since there were certain "school" and "friendship norms" that applied for both the USA and Argentina. But the more I tried to apply myself to this process, the more I felt like there were so many rules that feel obsolete in quite a few situations, which happened so many times that I came to think that there was a set of norms for Argentineans but not for foreigners, who had to pray to get lucky.

Here's an example of a rule that fell "obsolete": As an American at a bilingual school, English classes were pretty easy for me, and a lot of people looked to me for help. I found, at first, that helping people from my class with certain translations made them very happy, which made them act nicer towards me. But over time, things got to the point where those people would treat me badly even after I had helped them, or would get frustrated after asking for my help and realizing that the translation would be more difficult than expected. People made jokes that I'd always say "It depends on how you use it" or a similar phrase when helping, but it was pretty true. In many cases, I needed more context than what they gave me to properly help them, and if I gave them the wrong answer, it'd just be worse for me. But given my previous experiences, I'm not sure that rule still fully applies, since so many other ones don't.

Finally, I was able to graduate high school, get into college in the United States and start having a more stable life. My sense of anomie has mostly faded. The good part is, I have some great inspiration from my experiences with anomie. In spite of it, I even made some friends who I still talk to today (They are more understanding of us "Yankees", and know full well how immature it is to bully someone just because they are from a different country and are "different" as a person). But now, I know what it's like to feel that you can't rely on anything or anyone. I've lost sleep wondering whether I'd be at the same school or house the following month, because I was terrified of change and loss. Looking back, I feel more comfortable with change now, and I'm grateful for that, but I don't wish it upon anyone to feel like I did.

I hope that my writing can make people feel less of a sense of anomie, or more comfortable with it. Some people might embrace it, and if I can help them do that, help them make sense of things, then I'm grateful.

There will be certain characters in my projects who will feel plagued with a sense of anomie. Christine experiences some of it in my novel "Promises Made, Kept and Broken", which will hopefully be published in 2015. Lance, Jennifer and Meg are three characters from a work-in-progress that struggled greatly with it. Jasmine and Megan, from two other novels in the works, find themselves dealing with it as well. It is even present in some of my poetry.

You could definitely say anomie has been a huge influence on my work. There have been many other influences, ranging from close friends to bizarre situations and even made-up settings and people (I wrote a poem recently in which I mentioned there was a man holding a candle in his mouth while driving through the woods in the dark. I have never seen that happen or even heard of it happening. Imagination is key), plus everything in between. In the end, I want to inspire people and feel inspired, be happy and help others feel the same. Anomie tends to take away your sense of belonging, and I have been able to get it back by reading and writing. If you're feeling a sense of anomie, or anger, or sadness, or simply that you don't belong: I can help you. There is more to life than a struggle for identity and belonging. Somewhere out there are people who have felt exactly the same as you. You may not know them, but they are reaching out to you in one of the best possible ways: through their writing.

Courtney



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