After seeking an artistic way to share my writing with more people, I’ve designed two handmade chapbooks that I’m excited to share with you all. They are now available to buy in my Etsy shop. Each book has a cardstock cover and is printed in small batches. Until the end of October, you can get 25% off when you order both chapbooks. Just use code OPENINGSALE at checkout.
Enter the mirror world: whales grow feet and walk into Target, monks without heads perform bizarre rituals, and lovers are trapped in a prison of their own making. In each strange tale, we learn a little bit about our own world.
24 pages, contains two short stories and two prose poems: “A Natural History of Headless Society,” “Singing of Migration,” “Disjoined by Neptune’s Might,” and “Illuminations.”
Choose a spiral off the expressway, any one will do, into the land where neighborhoods bear names of the topography they replaced…Enter the Sprawl. In these four stories, we meet young people seeking connection and meaning within impersonal landscapes rampant with social inequality and alienation.
24 pages, contains four short stories: “Sprawl,” “Being Here,” “The Storm” and “Tough Guy.”
Take advantage of the launch sale! Until the end of October, get 25% off when you order both books. To claim the discount, use code OPENINGSALE at checkout.
Browse the full collection and get your copies today at ValerieLutePress.
I hope that each of these little books can bring some beauty into your life. Thank you for supporting my writing and small press. Please help spread the word by sharing with fellow book lovers!
Greetings! I’ve loved staying home with the new baby, but I’m looking forward to getting back in the classroom.
This spring I’m teaching Bob Dylan as Literature & Inspiration at Arlington Community Education. What’s that all about? From the fairy-tale simplicity of “Girl from the North Country” to the surrealist panorama of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” to the autobiographical narrative of “Sara,” Dylan’s songs have transported listeners to worlds real and imagined. In this literature and writing class, we’ll examine the literary forms of surrealist poetry, lyrical ballads, and protest songs and learn how to apply these techniques to our own writing.
The class is at Arlington High School on Tuesdays, from May 21 to June 11, 7:00 – 8:30 PM. You can register at the Arlington Community Education website.
Like Catherine, the love interest in A Farewell to Arms, I recently experienced stalled labor, resulting in a C-section. I wrote this email to Heavy Bored host Andrew Wittstadt the other day.
Hi Andrew,
Thought you might like an update. When we discussed [Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms], I was pretty unworried about pregnancy and labor complications. But I ended up having serious complications at the end of my pregnancy and actually needed a C-section. Not only that, but I had a bleed on the operating table! But luckily it’s not 1917. One thing that they do differently now though, is that even though a C-section is a major surgery, they keep you awake so you can experience the birth of your child. But that also means if things go wrong, you are lying there listening to them talk about an arterial bleed and calling for back up and discussing whether or not to perform a historectomy. Pretty scary stuff, but modern medicine is amazing.
The baby was healthy and perfect from the beginning, but I’ve had a bit of a recovery. I have some conditions they are still monitoring.
I’ve attached a photo I took while writing this.
–Valerie
If you haven’t listened yet, Andrew and I discussed Hemingway’s legacy, anti-war literature, and reading A Farewell to Arms while pregnant.
My discussion about Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms with Andrew Wittstadt on the Heavy Bored Podcast
What does it mean for a work of literature to be universal? In the Ken Burns and Lynn Novick documentary, The Vietnam War, there is an interview with a female North Vietnamese soldier. Before she left home to serve the communist cause, her parents gave her a copy of A Farewell to Arms. She helped to build the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the illicit road through Cambodia and Laos that brought armaments to the Viet Cong in the south. At night, when the work was done, the road she had just built would be bombed by the Americans. While she was huddling in a trench, waiting out the bombardment, she would read A Farewell to Arms. She said the novel connected her to all the soldiers in history who ever suffered in war.
Join Andrew and I as we discuss Hemingway as a universal writer, a white male writer, an anti-war writer, and more.
To celebrate the final week of my chapbook sale, I’m talking about the inspiration behind both books, Sprawl and Illuminations. Each book was written at a different time in my life and emerged from completely different influences and styles. While Sprawl is a conventional short story cycle exploring politically charged topics around class, gender and sexuality, Illuminations veers into experimental forms and fantastical elements in order to create a dreamscape. Order both books to take advantage of the sale. Until October 31st, you can get 25% off the total order when you order both. To claim the discount, use the code OPENINGSALE at checkout in my Etsy shop.
Sprawl: Tales of Suburbia
Choose a spiral off the expressway, any one will do, into the land where neighborhoods bear names of the topography they replaced—Spring Creek Woods, Lakeside Farms, Autumn Oaks Manor.
In writing Sprawl: Tales of Suburbia, I wanted to challenge the conventional narratives around suburban America as places of conformity and whiteness. Inspired by my hometown of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I wanted to reflect the diversity and class conflict I witnessed growing up. In traditional suburban literature, such as Richard Yates’s Revolutionary Road, the characters are privileged WASPs in a suffocatingly homogenous culture, who are struggling with ennui despite their material comforts. But this is outdated. In the 21st century, America’s suburbs are not only racially diverse but now experience a greater rate of poverty than cities. The book’s opening, “Sprawl,” is a sweeping panorama of this landscape, before zeroing in on the experiences of three young people in the subsequent stories.
Illuminations
By March, faithful reader, I found myself in the Land With No Heads. As you know by now, I had felt lost and loveless since the day I returned from overseas to find Ashley had abandoned our apartments, but I did my best to throw myself into my new ethnography. There was only one road in this country, which reduced my sense of aimlessness.
Illuminations begins with an epigraph from Authur Rimbaud: “I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.” In these four pieces, I abandoned literalism and concrete meaning in order to explore the unconscious mind. While immersing myself in the writings of Kafka, H.D., and Rimbaud, I became interested in how imagery can create free associations that trigger unexpected depth. I experimented with different writing styles, from iambic poetry to 19th-century travelogue, in order to take advantage of the sound and voice associated with each form.
Thank you for joining me on this journey into my creative inspirations and explorations. As an emerging writer, it means so much to me that readers like you have connected with my work enough to purchase these chapbooks.
If you haven’t already, don’t forget to order your chapbooks today! You can still get 25% off when ordering both books until October 31st. Just enter the code OPENINGSALE at checkout. I hope these chapbooks resonate with you and allow you to see the world in a new way. Thanks again – it’s readers like you that make writing life such a rewarding adventure.
Writers today face many distractions that can derail productivity and impact the writing process. With so many websites, apps, notifications, and rabbit holes competing for our attention, it can be challenging to focus and make progress on writing projects. Fortunately, Google Chrome offers some handy extensions that can help writers take control of their environment, build better habits, and optimize their workflows.
In this post, I’ll highlight four of my favorite Chrome extensions for improving focus, tracking time, limiting distractions, and catching errors during the writing process. Whether you struggle with procrastination, losing time to research tangents, or just need help enforcing good writing habits, these tools can help you manage your online time and energy more effectively. Read on to learn how StayFocusd, WebTime Tracker, Unhooked, and Grammarly make me a more productive and proficient writer.
1. StayFocusd
StayFocusd is a Chrome extension that helps people stay focused on work by blocking or limiting access to distracting websites. Some of the ways StayFocusd helps keep me on my writing task include:
Block distracting websites – Writers can use StayFocusd to block time-wasting sites like social media, news, YouTube, etc. during writing time. This removes distractions.
Set writing time limits – StayFocusd allows setting daily time limits for websites. Writers can use this to define writing goals and limit time on non-writing sites.
Focus during writing sessions – With distracting sites blocked, writers can get into a flow state and avoid wasting time toggling between apps/sites.
Limit Internet research – The blocking features can also limit time spent going down research rabbit holes online, keeping writers focused.
Prevent procrastination – StayFocusd is useful for procrastinators – blocking sites makes it harder to procrastinate on writing work.
Set nuclear option for writing – The “nuclear option” blocks all sites except a whitelist. Writers can whitelist only writing apps/sites to force focus. Combine it with the Pomodoro Technique for extra focus.
StayFocusd gives writers more control over their environment and habits to minimize distractions and stay focused on writing. For me, it’s an indispensable productivity tool. I use it to block social media, news sites, and online retail, but you can personalize it for your own biggest time sucks.
2. WebTime Tracker
WebTime Tracker is a Chrome extension that tracks how much time you spend on websites and applications. I find it helpful to track my time especially when doing background research for writing projects. Its key features for writers include:
Track time spent writing – The extension can track time spent in word processors/writing apps to help writers know how much actual writing they are getting done each day.
Identify productive writing times – The productivity reports can show writers when their peak writing times are based on when they have longer writing sessions. This allows for optimizing schedules.
Track research time – Time spent researching and gathering material can also be tracked separately from writing time to analyze efficiency.
Analyze habits – Writers can look at usage trends to see if they are procrastinating, identify what steals their time, and adjust their habits accordingly.
WebTime Tracker aims to make you more aware of how you spend time online so you can focus on being productive and minimize distractions.
3. Unhook
Unhook is a plugin that works with YouTube that I only recently discovered. I was reluctant to use Stayfocusd to set limits on YouTube because I used it for exercise and medication, but kept getting stuck in video rabbit holes. The website works hard on its algorithms to keep us users on the site, after all. Unhooked is my way to fight back. With this plugin, I only use YouTube for what I need. Here’s how it works:
While on YouTube, Unhook hides related videos, comments, shorts tab, suggestions, homepage recommendations, and other distractions.
When you navigate to the YouTube homepage, you no longer see dozens of videos that may be unrelated to the content you went there to view. Instead, you see only your subscription sidebar and the search function.
After you watch a video, Unhooked prevents Autoplay and hides the recommended video feature, allowing you to move on to your next task.
Unhook has made it easy for me to use YouTube only for what I need and then get back to my writing. Its settings are easy to customize, so you can block only the YouTube features that are most distracting for you.
My YouTube homepage after installing the Unhook plugin.
4. Grammarly
You’ve probably seen the ads. Grammarly is a popular Chrome extension that provides grammar, spelling, and punctuation checking. Since I’ve started using Grammarly, I’ve had fewer typos in my work than relying on built-in spell checkers alone. Grammarly can do all the following, and more:
Catch grammar/spelling errors – Grammarly’s real-time checks identify writing mistakes as you type, allowing writers to catch and correct issues early.
Enforce style rules – The extension can be customized to check for style guide rules on aspects like punctuation, capitalization, passive voice, etc.
Improve clarity – Grammarly provides readability scores and suggestions to help writers make their work more clear and concise.
Perfect tone – Grammarly provides tone adjustments for making writing more formal, casual, or business-appropriate.
Save time editing – By handling basic editing tasks like grammar and spelling checks, Grammarly allows writers to focus their efforts on higher-level content improvement.
The internet presents both opportunities and obstacles for writers today. While it offers useful research materials, it also enables infinite distractions. Using extensions like StayFocusd, WebTime Tracker, Unhooked, and Grammarly, writers can control their online environment to minimize distractions and optimize their use of time.
Give these tools a try to become more focused, aware of your habits, and productive with your writing. Install one or all four to block distractions, track your time, limit YouTube, and catch errors. With the help of these Chrome extensions, you can build the habits and environment for writing success.
Let me know in the comments which extension sounds most useful for your workflow. And if you have any other recommended Chrome tools for writers, please share! I’m always looking to further optimize my process.
Narrative with Valerie Lute 