To anyone walking into her office, Karelia Stetz-Waters may seem like a perfectly ordinary professor. Bookshelves dot the walls filled with books, textbooks, and reference works that might make the average student roll their eyes as the thought of being assigned to read. Personal and cultural items are scattered among the texts, and in a corner, a fish tank bubbles away with a few small fish darting around, and a snail oozing its way up the glass. However, a careful eye might spot some differences. From time to time, you might spot a stack of papers tucked away on the corner of her desk, separate from the student papers she is diligently grading. Other times, post-it notes might be crawling up the wall like the mystery snail in the tank, each plotting out an element or idea in a story.
What many might not know is that Karelia Stetz-Water is a English Professor who likes to put her money where her mouth is, so to speak. Not just content to teach writing and literature to students here at LBCC, Stetz-Waters herself is an avid writer in her own right. She has already written a memoir, a thriller, and is currently hard at work on a sequel. She even currently has a manuscript under consideration by a top literary agency in New York who counts among its clients E! News correspondent, Ken Baker, famed film star and director, Richard Dreyfus, and the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama.
Karelia has been teaching at Linn Benton Community College since September of 2007, and has already made an impression.
"Karelia is really great to work with," said fellow English professor, Callie Palmer. "She is always upbeat, which is a really nice attribute in a colleague. It is hard not to enjoy someone who is picky about grammar. I guess that is a bit biased, but one thing we share in the department is an enthusiasm for our calling."
An enthusiasm is not lost on her students. Many current and former students have described her classes as both structure, but fun and engaging. Karelia Stetz-Water sets out to provide an atmosphere that is inviting as she works to help demystify some of the often miss-viewed as challenging aspects of a language it is easy to take for granted. For those lucky enough to take one of her classes, she has found ways to make them seem a little less daunting.
At a Glance
Courses:
• WR 121 English Composition – Exposition
• WR 122 English Composition – Logic and Style
• WR 214 Business Communications – Online and Face-to-Face
• WR 227 Technical Writing – Online and Face-to-Face
• ENG 105 Introduction to Fiction
• ENG 106 Introduction to Poetry
• ENG 208 African Literature
Video of Karelia speaking about her experince as a writer, and reading from her memoir, Suburban Love Stories.
Credentials:
Bachelors of Arts in Comparative Literature from Smith College, 1999
Masters of Arts in English with an emphasis on Queer Theory and Lesbian Fiction from University of Oregon, 2003
Question and Answer - Karelia Stetz-Waters - November 7th, 2011
Cory Warren: What classes do you teach here at Linn-Benton Community College?
Karelia Stetz-Waters: I teach writing 121, I teach technical writing 227, primarily online. I have also taught intro to poetry, intro to fiction, African literature, business communication and I will be teaching writing 115 for the first time.
CW: So, with all those papers to grade, how do you find time to write, yourself?
KSW: I write in the mornings, and on/in the evenings and the weekends, and I try to be very organized and disciplined about my work at work so that I can get my grading done in a 40-hour workweek, as opposed to bringing it home. I also tell my students that that works out well for me and well for them because I'm here, grading, and happy to be doing it. I know myself; if I was grading papers at 8 o'clock on a Saturday night, I would resent it, and no one wants their work read by someone who is resenting doing it. It works out well this way.
CW: What opportunities outside of classrooms does LBCC offer for students to explore writing?
KSW: we have the poetry club. We have the 'fooling around with words' conference, which takes place in April, which is just a writer's conference. Course, we have the creative writing classes, credit and non-credit. Then, hopefully our students are connected with all the neat things that go on in our community; there are always readings at the libraries… all sorts of stuff going on in Albany and Corvallis. Therefore, those are all available to our students.
CW: What is it like as a Professor to be writing a book during school?
KSW: I think it’s a great way to share my student's pain. Their writing a lot, they are pressed for time… they are struggling with the different parts of the writing process… writers block… revisions…. Praise and rejection, and it’s good for their instructors to be going through the same process. Admittedly, my word count is larger, and higher, but the experience is the same, and the five-page paper to a first-year student is just as big as a 50,000 words manuscript feels to me; I have just been doing it longer. And when a student who has been doing it as long as I have been writing, they too will be able to tackle a giant project, so I think it really keeps me honest about what it feels like to be a writer, which is good because it helps me sympathize.
CW: I have always felt self-conscious about people who are grumbling about a two-page paper, and I turned into a five-page paper that I wrote the night before. Therefore, it is keeping up with what the students are doing.
KSW: And I really believe that writing is like long distance running: a lot of doing it well is just putting in the time, a lot of being able to write a long document comes from writing many shorter documents, and practicing on the ability to run a marathon comes from running many shorter races. We all keep working on our skills, whatever the starting place were at… we just keep going forward.
CW: So, it is like 'Practice makes perfect'. As a teacher, you don't want to lapse into 'Well, I've got my degree, I've done it, so I'll judge them on what they're doing', but your also doing it yourself, so you're keeping in the mindset of how you form an idea, and how you put it on paper?
KSW: I certainly think there are a lot of different thing an English Professor can do to work on their professional development; writings mine. Some people research, some people do academic scholarship, some people do various different community/club activities, so I think I would never make it a requirement to write a book, but for me, it is a way I stay connected to my profession.
CW: What attracted you to writing in the first place?
KSW: I have enjoyed writing since I was a little kid, and I think I enjoyed having control over stories.
CW: Having got a few books under your belt, what advice do you have students looking to pursue writing as a career be it fiction, technical writing, or journalism?
KSW: I would say that it is important that students are realistic about the limited financial opportunities that writing presents. I think that writing professionally — either technical writing or creative writing — is enormously fulfilling, and worth doing. It is not something I would recommend as a primary source of income.
CW: What are you working on right now?
KSW: Right now, I am working on a sequel. The Sequel is called Sold, and it is about human trafficking. It is a sequel to my previously book, which was called Stumped, and that is a thriller about a serial killer, and the thriller is currently under review with my agent, which means she is reading the manuscript. If she likes it, she will represent it. If the editors she pitches it to like it, they will pitch it to the publisher, and if the publisher likes it, it will be published. Therefore, getting back to the question of a career in writing, you can see there are many points on the path in which any given work can be rejected, so it is a long process, a lot of it has to do with the vagaries of the market, and what people think will sell, which is an ever-moving target. But my hopes are high that the agent will like it, and that will get the ball rolling, plus I will have a sequel reading and waiting whenever the time comes.
CW: Now is this the same agent who represented your memoir?
KSW: it is.
CW: basically, even though the memoir did not sell, or has not sold yet, the process of getting an agent through your memoir has been positive because it built a working relationship that helped with your fiction works?
KSW: Yah, so it took about six months to find and agent for the memoir that I wrote in 2007, and the woman who was the first to offer representation was prestigious, so I was very excited to have her as my agent. She was not able to sell the book, but having an established relationship with her definitely made the process of pitching my new book much faster. My agent is very good about responding to initial queries; writers tell stories about not hearing from agents for nine months, or two years, if ever, and that is not my agent. She specializes in finding new authors, and is very responsive to letters, so it was not a long process to get in touch with her the first time, but the second time it was certainly much easier, friendlier, and simpler.
CW: So that is something a writer can think about. Getting your foot in a door can take a while, but once you get it in, keep at it, keep in communication with your agent even if they may not be able to get you a book deal on your first, they might be able to get you in the subsequent works?
KSW: Yah.
CW: Do not allow yourself to get discourage too quickly?
KSW: Yah and that would be advice I would give to all writers. First, there is no point of writing unless the person loves the process of writing, because there is no guarantee that you will ever be published, make money, or be successful in the public forum. But you are a success if you enjoy it. Second, every major writer has a story about how many hundreds of rejections they suffered; whether it was rejections from agents or publishers, or books that never were sold, then one day, someone discovers them, and it is enormously satisfying.
CW: I kept telling myself, eight rejections was nothing when J. K. Rowling had fifteen. Therefore, what would have happened if she had stopped at 14?
KSW: Right.
CW: No one would know who she is, and she would have probably given it another go with another book, but if you have something to say, and you have a story to tell, do not sell yourself short.
KSW: I believe that you do not even start counting until you have had at least fifty rejections.
CW: I was reading on your website that you have a book with Dystel and Goderich. How long have you had your fiction manuscript with them?
KSW: they have no accepted it yet. They're just reviewing the manuscript.
CW: Have you just gone through the query process? Have you gotten a request for a full manuscript for review at this point?
KSW: maybe a week or two ago they asked for the full manuscript.
CW: So you are still in the heat of things. Is there anything else you want people to know about you? Any quirks or funny stories about your life that have helped you keep perspective as a writer? I know, that is a broad question.
KSW: That is a great question, but I cannot think of anything off the top of my head.
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