Paul Crenshaw
@PaulCrenstorm
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Four time Best American Essayist. Newest collection Melt With Me
Lawrence, Kansas
Joined September 2017
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Melt With Me, my next collection of essays, is now available for preorder from
@ohiostatepress
. ARCs coming soon, if anyone might be interested in reviewing it.
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Nightmare phone call yesterday: "Prof Crenshaw, why you didn't teach your class today? Where were you?"
Guys, this college where I adjuncted 1 class LAST FALL, gave me 3 classes without telling me. No email. No phone call. No contract.
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I dont know, have we considered that literally everyone is burnt-out, whether editors or academia or assembly, because working 40-50-60 hours a week your entire fucking life just to be able to "enjoy" life a few years at the end isn't a sustainable fucking model for anything?
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All right, Gen X-ers, prove something to my younger daughter: Do you know Jenny's number?
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Gen X-ers, help me prove something to a youngster: when you were a kid and you stayed home sick from school did you watch The Price Is Right?
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@emilySteinberg
I mean, I have taught without a contract plenty of times, but I kinda need to know I have classes, at least.
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What tired horror movie trope are you? I’m either “car won’t start,” “no signal cellphone” or possibly “murdered while having sex.”
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Love story:
10 years after my dog died my daughter and I still spell out the word “walk”
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“Drunk History” but it’s drunk writers describing the narrative arc of classic novels.
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Just submitted some poems but misspelled poem so it said "Please accept my porn for consideration," so there's that. How are you?
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There aren't rules for where commas go, there are just vibes
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To answer questions: I did not take the classes because I had other obligations.
Besides scaring me, I’m fine, economically and professionally. But this is proof, if we needed it, of how many actual college professors get treated like dogshit simply because they aren’t TT.
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Emerging is cool, but where are the awards for disappearing writers? Where are the awards for disintegrating? Fading slowly away? Vanishing, evaporating, dispersing? Where are the awards for submerging beneath a pile of blankets or leaves deep in the woods, never to return?
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I guess we're going viral, so here: if you want to help the plight of one particular adjunct, buy my forthcoming book, please:
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Hey if I say "This is your brain on drugs" how many of you picture a skillet and a fried egg?
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I don't normally announce acceptances but I just sold a short story. I haven't sold a short story in a long time, and this is one my favorites I've ever written. (Also been trying to sell it for like 5 years.)
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We should be teaching tone in poetry by having a couple who's been married for a long time get in a slight argument in front of the class.
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The worst thing about being a writer is feeling like you need to have Insta, Twitter, a podcast, a substack, a lit column, 80k followers, fancy shoes, a weird hat, a raven, voodoo dolls of your enemies, immoral tattoos, a good mac n cheese recipe, and a lightning-struck tree
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I love writing nonfiction because it's cool to read 17 articles about 80s Satanism to get half a sentence that will probably get cut later.
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Saw Times New Roman trending and thought it had been murdered by that bastard Garamond.
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If you grew up in the 70s, 80s, or 90s:
1) did you roller skate (in rinks)?
2) what roller rink songs do you remember?
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You ever love a book so much you hold a grudge against people who don't like it?
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The thing you dont know about Gen X is that every single school day we saw someone vomit and then the janitor poured this really gross cat litter on it and everyone just walked around it for a few hours.
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It’s one day post Roe v Wade in a country where 30k people die each year from legal guns and we’ve given up fighting COVID, which means someone, right now, is working on a “How to get that beach body back in time for the 4th” article.
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If you’re a person who always figures out what you should have said two or three days after the conversation in which you should have said it, then writing is the thing for you.
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I turned 50 today and the weirdest thing about it is that in my mind I’m still 27.
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I'm saying this with all due respect, but if you keep a story for 3 years and then decline it like this, maybe you need a better system.
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Listen: you don’t have to write. You really don’t. The world will not end. Not much will change. I know this seems counterintuitive, but once you realize this, and choose to write anyway, then you can begin.
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Every movie I watch my main goal is figuring out how the people afford the house they live in.
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The hard thing about writing is that you have to learn how to write the thing you’re writing every time you start something new. Your skills get better, so you don’t have to learn how to write every time, but you do have to learn how to write the thing you’re writing.
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The penalty for mansplaining used to be much more severe.
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I might also be "cranky old codger who warns them young whippersnappers not to go to the ole Murder House" but isn't listened to.
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Occasionally I see a younger writer say they've given up on a piece after X number of rejections, and X is almost always a very small number of rejections, like 4 or 5. My friends, if you're giving up after 4 or 5 rejections, your writing career is going to be very short.
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Do you think about rhythm when you write? Rhythm of the sentence, of the paragraph, of the page, of the piece?
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I don't know who needs to hear this, but writing is really fucking hard. You should struggle at it, because it's fucking hard. It's so fucking hard. Every bit of it is hard, from writing to revising to publishing to seeing it out in the world. It's ok to acknowledge this.
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Can I still submit my essay if it doesn’t move the moon to teardust or shake the surface of the sun? If it doesn’t “remove the stripes from zebras” or “stun our editorial team so hard we forget what planet we live on”? Can I still submit, lit journal guidelines?
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Fantasy novel, but all the characters are named after fonts: Garamond, Arial, Avenir, Corbel, Constantia, Angsana, Eras, Kalinga, Kokila, Mangal, Malgun, Quire, Sylfaen.
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I may have said this before, but it's worth repeating: if you are stuck or just generally down about your writing, go back and read the pieces that you love the most. Don't read critically--just read to remember who wrote those wondrous things.
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I got a personalized rejection from Paris Review, asking for more work.
It was still a rejection.
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Unpopular opinion: I actually love all those short stories we had to read in high school like “A&P” “Hills Like White Elephants” “The Lottery” “The Necklace” “Araby” if for no other reason than they were my introduction to literature.
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Did your parents reuse the Cool Whip container after Christmas or were you rich?
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Being fully vaccinated does absolutely mean you can sit outside on a gorgeous Sunday and still be sad.
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I don’t care if you have an MFA. I don’t care if you write everyday. I don’t care if you write lit-fic or genre. But if you sometimes see a small shed or a room with a bay window or a screened-in porch and think “that’d be a good place to write” you might be a writer.
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Am I the only writer who not only thinks writing prompts are not good, but that they’re actually harmful?
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MFA vs. writing a secret novel on your lunch break and selling it for 100k.
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You have to write every day to be a writer. You must also: have a raven for a pet; wear rings made from the finger-bones of dead writers; eat only gruel; drive a chariot; own a small bust of yourself where your raven perches; have a suit of medieval armor made from books
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CDC says you no longer have to proofread your work before submitting it.
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Can you explain this gap in your resume?
Can you explain why not working constantly from the time you’re old enough to drive to the day you die is somehow a problem for you?
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When I was your age we had to walk 10 miles in the snow to the Post Office to snail mail our damn lit journal submissions.
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I would really like there to be biographies of just average people. Like some guy who managed a Tire Barn out by the Interstate. Was a decent person, had decent kids. He got by. No celebrities or politicians, just Mark from Tire Barn.
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My Boomer dad texting my Gen Z daughter about the colonoscopy I had today.
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If we’re really going to try to define Gen X then we need to talk about how often we were told we would encounter quicksand in our lives.
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I wrote 1600 words of dialogue yesterday and one character nodded 317 times.
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May you have the writing persistence of your alma mater emailing to ask for donations.
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Hey how many of you would be interested in a thread or substack on how Puscharts and Pushcart nominations work? Every time I open for readings I get questions about it. Might even cover Best American, too.
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What's the weirdest place you've ever slept? Ex: I used to work at a grocery store, and early Sunday mornings I would hide in the milk cooler and sleep off my hangover.
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42 years ago, on July 27th, 1981, Adam Walsh disappeared from a mall in Hollywood, Florida. I was 9 at the time. I've been writing an essay about Adam Walsh, and Etan Patz, and how those two cases changed the face of America, and I think it may have broken my sad old heart.
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alternatives to “sorry we cant use your work”
negatory on your tiny story
this essay’s a bit of a messay
the diction of your fiction caused a bit of a friction
the writing’s not exciting
your poem’s not flowin
saying noes to your prose
not here, shakespeare
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Got a couple of hours to read for Pushcart nominations. Drop links here. Published this year only. Please no DMs or emails.
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As someone who has written about the Satanic Panic of the 80s, let me offer a counter-argument: No, it isn't. Right-wing evangelicals have always been afraid of any power, real or imagined, magic or mystical, that doesn't come from the church. That's all it's ever been.
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Most people don't know this but Gen X's full name is "Generation X-Wing Fighter."
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I like to think I've written some decent last lines, but is there an ending better than this one?
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Honestly dont know what y'all are talking about--my MFA taught me a lot about publishing. For instance, in grad school, you can spend all Saturday helping someone move in 90 degree heat and get paid 1 beer and 2 slices of pizza, and that's a lot like publishing.
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I got a particularly devastating rejection Friday from an agent. I got a bit drunk Friday night. Collected myself yesterday. Busted out 2k words this morning. The only way you lose is by quitting.
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Lit journals: We want stardust and unicorns. Preambles and iambics. Alliterations and algorithms. We want what we’ve never seen, what’s never existed. Prose must be between 1107 and 1109 words, quadruple spaced. Author’s name must not appear anywhere on the internet ever.
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Essayists--what is the one essay that you, yourself, have written, that slays you? The one you can't read out loud because it chokes you the fuck up. The one that hurt so hard to write you still feel it. If you have links I'd love to read. DMs also open for this ask.
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Going to read for Pushcart noms for a few hours. Link them here. Has to be published this year, in a lit journal. No DMs or emails, please. Only your work (or, if you're an editor, you can link 1 piece you really loved).
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I made some more alternatives to “sorry we cant publish your work”
That’s gonna be no, Edgar Allan Poe
Not today, Hemingway
Not good, Margaret Atwood
Letting this one go, Alice Munro
Get lost, Robert Frost
No you go, Victor Hugo
Not at all, Roald Dahl
Gonna pass, William Gass
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I hadn't written fiction in over a year and was missing it. About the same time I had an idea for a novel. I started it Nov. 8. I finished it this morning. It's a beast at 129k words. I normally hate this kind of tweet, and the revising starts tomorrow, but fuck I feel good.
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The most dangerous and insidious thing happening in this country right now is that giving a shit about others is being branded as "personal choice" while actual personal choices are being systematically stripped away from women.
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It’s been over 40 years and I’m still sad about Where the Red Fern Grows.
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Why do you write? It's hard. It's full of rejection. There's not much money in it for most of us. There's not much recognition. 90% of writers I know hate it. So why do you do it?
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Ok, Twitter, I need some actual help for an essay: Without looking it up, do you know the name Etan Patz? Please answer only with yes or no, where you are from, and how old you are. Thank you. (If you dont know, I advise you not to look it up)
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“What’s your writing process?”
“I scroll Twitter every morning until I’m pissed off enough to go try to change something.”
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Just taught my last college course, ever. So long academia. You will not be missed.
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Today is the official release for my 2nd essay collection, This We'll Defend. If you could show it some love by adding it to your Goodreads, ordering it, RTing this, or posting pics, I'd be eternally grateful.
#WritingCommunity
#essays
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I hear people all the time say they want their children to learn not to quit. Screw that. I want my daughters to quit every shitty job they ever have, every asshole boss, every time they're treated like they don't deserve to be there.
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Someone tweeted yesterday about defining writing success. I'm writing way too early in a dark room on a rainy October morning. I want to go back to bed, I have no book under contract, and no one waiting for what I'm writing. I'm doing it anyway.
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I have one spot left for Pushcart nominations this year, so I'm going to read for a bit: link your work here--one piece only, please, from a lit journal (not blog or substack). No DMs or emails. I'll read for a couple hours.
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My forthcoming book is going to be considered for the National Book Award. Just considered, and I have to pay to enter, but for a poor rural kid who didnt know he had permission to write, didnt even know it was a thing you could do until he was in his 20s, that's pretty cool.
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Do you PERSONALLY know anyone? At all? No names, just yes or no if you've ever met another human being.
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Tiny Window: new lit journal I am starting. Will be accepting submissions starting 4:11am Tuesday morning. Will read for 8 seconds. Will respond (?) within 4 years. No sim subs. No writing anything else while waiting. All submissions in Wing Ding.
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My best writing advice for getting started each morning is to tell yourself you're only going to write 300 words or one small scene or get your characters out of the kitchen and into the car. 95% of the time you'll keep going. If you don't, you still have 300 words.
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I don’t know, maybe we could just fucking enjoy a writer’s work without our little bullshit takes on their life.
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Julian Sands has gone missing while hiking, and I really hope he is found safe, but I also need to stand on this hill and say that he would have made a much better Lestat than Tom Cruise.
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Look if I can hand-write an essay sitting at my mother’s dining room table while my stepfather slurps his coffee and makes old man noises and my mother asks me 17 times if I want breakfast, you can write your thing today.
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So, apparently lots of you were scared of quicksand in the 80s. I also remember being scared of (or being told to be scared of): playing records backwards, Satanic cults, D&D, acid rain, and Bigfoot. What else?
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Queen’s Gambit: girl who beats every man in the world still has to listen to men telling her how to be better.
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The cool thing about this time we're living in is that all of a sudden you can just start sobbing.
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