I am profiled in the May/June Writer's Village University Recognitions column of T-Zero. Full text and link to website below. Thanks for taking a look!
Kathy
“I am a mother, a wife, an employee, a sister and a daughter. All of these things make me who I am, but I need to honor that writer part of me, too,” says Kathy Kubik of her dedication to writing every day.
Kathy is a poet and a co-facilitator of the Persist and Publish study group at WVU. She maintains her own website and a page on AuthorsDen, and her poems have appeared in dozens of print and online magazines. Her fourth poetry chapbook, Universal, published by Moon Journal Press, is available online and directly from the author. You can e-mail Kathy at Kathy_Kubik.hotmail.com for more information.
“With Universal, I felt it was my strongest book yet, and I was very proud of it,” Kathy recalls. Her three previous books were self-published, so she selected a few noteworthy presses, not knowing how long the submission process might take. “I sent it out, not expecting that Moon Journal Press, my first choice, would accept the book,” Kathy says. “It was even more special because my husband Jim had created the cover art for the book.” Along with their nine-month-old daughter Lucy, they celebrated together with a nice glass of champagne, popcorn and a movie.
“It is about patterns,” Kathy says of her chapbook, Universal, “those connected and disconnected like a broken circuit wire. It poses the question: Why are we here, and what are we to make of this mass of bone and matter? Of the spaces between our paths, and those that intersect, sometimes haltingly. It includes poems that travel through space and time and those places we’ve never visited and those we wish we had. It spans light years and those minutes that tick by slowly. It lays out the sheet that is the sky with the many holes that make up the stars.” Artwork and music inspire Kathy in her writing.
When she first joined WVU, Kathy took many poetry classes. “They really helped me,” she says. “I can’t say enough about the classes and facilitators at WVU.” She shares facilitating responsibilities at the Persist and Publish study group. “I came into the group with only my poetry background and now have drafted two novels,” Kathy says. “This group is very inspirational, and I have learned so much about writing a novel from the writers here.” Kathy has written short stories as well as her poems and novels.
As a second-grader, Kathy remembers writing plays, and starting in sixth grade, she wrote enough poems on themes like the seasons and family life to fill a chapbook each year. Her eighth grade writing teacher encouraged her to submit a short story she’d infused with her poetry to the Young Authors Contest. “My story was picked among hundreds of finalists, and I got to travel to the University of Illinois in Champaign for the ceremony,” Kathy says. “It was thrilling. I never thought other people would be entertained by my writing until then. That was when I knew I wanted to be a writer.
“But the important thing I want to note is that I always was a writer,” she continues. “Being a writer does not happen when a story or poem gets published and then you are magically a writer. Being a writer means that you write. It’s as simple as that. So I was a writer when I was putting together poetry books and plays when I was in grade school.”
Besides caring for her young daughter, Kathy works as a proposal writer for a Fortune 200 company. “My advice to anyone trying to balance work, family and a writing career is that it is possible,” she says. “Many people will tell you it’s not, and you might feel you need to wait until your children grow up until you pick up that pen again.” Kathy believes parents have special insights that need to be expressed while their children are still at home. She also feels that her pursuit of a writing career will be a good role model for her daughter. “I want her to believe that you should always follow your dreams, whatever they may be,” Kathy says. “I can’t teach that message unless I am doing the same thing myself.”
Kathy’s ideal writing day involves getting up early and writing for hours, getting lost in her own words. “The truth is I have a day job and I tend to run late in the morning,” she admits. “I have to steal time when I can.” She wrote an entire draft of a novel in three weeks during her lunches and breaks at work. She also sets aside an hour for writing after her daughter has fallen asleep at night. “An ideal writing day is when I sit down and write,” Kathy says, “no matter what.”
Writing prompts help Kathy when she’s stuck in a project. “When I’m not sure where to go next, a prompt can help unblock the way,” she says. “A great book is The Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves. It has a prompt each day and also writing advice along the way.” Timed writings helped Kathy finish her NaNoWriMo novel draft. She recommends, “Just set a timer for 5, 10 or 15 minutes and don’t stop writing until the buzzer goes off. You’ll surprise yourself by what comes out.
“Trust your writing as something that comes as naturally as breathing,” Kathy continues. “Set aside that hour at night just as you would to brush your teeth or wash your face. Writing is a part of who you are. Honor that.”
Getting poems published can be particularly frustrating. “I think the poetry market today can sometimes seem difficult to break into,” she says. “There are so many contests, and to me it sometimes seems as if you need an MFA just to be considered for grants and awards.”
She finds that reading literary magazines helps her work in two ways. Discovering talented new poets inspires her, and finding a journal that publishes pieces similar to hers opens up a new possible market for her writing. “If you have a dream publication, as I have several, keep submitting,” Kathy says. “Your writing will naturally get better and better, and if you read the publication you are interested in, you will eventually break through. It takes people many times before they are accepted.”
Kathy warns against concentrating only on getting published and gaining recognition, however. “Your work doesn’t need to be in print to be worthy,” she says. “Write what is inside you. Get it all out, and then the publishing will naturally follow because you have something unique to share with the world.”
A people’s heart can be found in their poetic words. In history men and women have stood firmly upon their soapboxes and street corners, rallying the deepest beliefs of people to rise up and be heard. The poetrypages.com has offered that voice a new
This book represents a thirty-day period of my poetry journal. Each poem addresses
the dominant thoughts occupying my mind during the early morning hours of a given
day.
A further collection of poems, many from years in the Middle East, but also the California San Francisco and Central Coast areas (Santa Cruz, Carmel, Big Sur, Berkeley, etc.).
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