22 posts tagged “writing”

1. The Theologian is back and I couldn't be happier about it
2. There's nothing quite like hanging with a group of supportive writers
3. My writing friends are so nerdy that they were actually bummed out that they missed the episode of BookTV with D'Ambrosio, Englander, and Lethem
4. There's a guy in my class named Biff
   
5. Cute 20somethings
6. Being able to say "but how would you define meaning" without getting your ass kicked
7. There's a guy in the class who used to work psych ops in the military
8. Tator tots at Grumpy's
   

It is very late at night and I'm just returning home from a night out. Tonight I went to a reading at a friend's house. The author is a Jesuit priest from Nigeria, who had his first short story (and second) published in The New Yorker, and a collection of stories coming out in a few weeks.

Here are the most surprising things I learned:
1. If you get a story accepted by The New Yorker they call to tell you
2. They also will fact-check the hell out of your story, which is kind of cool and fascinating

I got my first official rejection letter. One Story has decided that my story "Imaginary Boyfriend" was not right for their publication. Couple this rejection with my condescending assiness, and I guess that makes me a real writer. Go me!

I can't decide if I should frame the rejection or put it in a scrapbook. The possibilities, they are endless.

I got no pictures.
I got no kisses from Carl.
I got no hugs from Neko.
I got no ass left because I shook it right off during The New Pornographers concert. Hooboy they are some kind of good time.

Now I have to go finish the shittiest short story that ever lived before class this afternoon.

I went to bed at 11:30 last night and slept all the way to 8:30 this morning. This odd for me, what makes it even odder is that I didn't get up until 10:30 Sunday morning and managed to squeeze in a nap from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Can you say hangover? I can say, Hell yes.

The thing with sleeping more than six hours in a row is that you dream your ass off. Here, is a partial list of things I remember dreaming about last night:

• Going to a 4th grade pizza party with my writing teacher/friend Vodo where he was amazed that I ate jalapeños on my pizza
• Taking some sort of high school essay exam administered by Mr. Dahl my 11th grade AP History teacher where I had to write about the ten most ironic fictional characters in American literature
  
• Hiking to Emily Dickinson's house and being disappointed that it wasn't burned down
• Trying to help Hotrod write a short story but getting so frustrated that I made him go play pinball and wrote the story for him

Guess who has a short story due this week? I do, I do. I am not creating anything new this time around but rather re-writing the story "Rocket Scientist" about the physicist who is bound and determined to bowl a 300. Yeah. Rewriting is much harder than writing a new story. Making mistakes is easy, correcting them is harder then hell.

The good people running the HP Writing Contest/Vox Hunt have seen fit to nominate me as a finalist for my post about what inspires my writing.

Go vote for me! Please. If anyone can use an amazon.com gift certificate, it's me.

If I were one to find significance in signs, I would say this is a good one. See, last night I entered my short story "Boobs LaRue" in Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers.

It was scary. It's the first time I've ever really submitted something to a literary magazine. I've entered The Loft's Mentor Series contest (where I was named a finalist this year) in the past, but that's it. Sending out my story was scary as hell. I likened it to how mothers must feel sending their children to kindergarden. Only thing is, I can guarantee that I was in labor much longer giving birth to "Boobs LaRue" than any mother ever.

So yes, I'm thinking that if my writing inspiration is award-worthy than perhaps what I actually write will be too.

Keep your fingers crossed for me (Glimmer Train awards will be announced in January) and go vote.

With all the talk about goals lately, I've been reminded that I too have a goal set for this year. I think I said I had to rack up seven rejection letters (ok, I looked and it was 30, but seriously who am I kidding?) or one acceptance to various literary publications.

We are heading into the 8th month of the year and so far I've got 0 acceptances and 0 rejections. Why is that? Because I haven't sent anything out. But, that will all change come the second week of October.

See tonight, I spent a majority of the evening researching literary rags and entering all the contest/submission deadlines into my Google calendar.  Most of the reading periods are from September to October. So I guess I am right on time? Anyway, it feels like progress.

But then there's the depressing news that 1 in 4 Americans didn't read a single book in the past year. That little stat depresses the hell out of me, but it does not surprise me. I know people who will not read a single book this year and I kind of want to punch them all in the head.

I hate the idea that reading is one of those lofty activities that only literary snobs and academics participate in. While I totally deride people who read shitty chick lit and other crappy books (James Patterson), at least they are reading and I respect that.

What bothers me the most is that people often use the excuse that they don't have time to read. I get this one all the time from people I know.

If they had any idea how condescending that sounds when they say that to someone who reads thirty or forty books year, they'd shut the hell up. Despite what they intend, it comes off as "Oh I wish I lead such a carefree life as you, so filled with unimportant frippery like book reading. I envy your life of leisure, but I am a very busy important person who has things to do."

I always ask these people with no time to read if they watch TV and the answer is always yes. Then I spend the next five minutes debunking their 'no time' excuse and educating them on how they actually have time to read they just choose not to. Why do I do that? Because I am a literary snob.

So the winners in The Loft's Mentor Series have been officially announced, and my name is up there with the other finalists. Yay! I was pretty pleased with my finish when I first found out about it, but now that I learn a little about the people who were actually chosen, I am thrilled. There were four fiction writers who won,  three of them have MFAs, all have been published (something I have yet to do), and one of them even won the $10,000 Tamarack award from Minnesota Monthly.

Holy shit.

I have to keep telling myself not to devalue this, and it's tough. It's easy to chalk this up to luck or serendipity or something other then the fact that I'm a good writer.

Holy shit am I pleased with myself today.

P.S. I promise to quit spamming Vox now.

First the bad news, I've been without cable and internet access since 8 p.m. last night. I've called Comcast so often that they are now avoiding my calls. Bastards. Maybe if they didn't lie to me last night and tell me that everything was okie dokie I wouldn't find the need to call them incessantly.

We had storm sweep through the city last night and apparently on its way out it decided to take my access. Lucky for me the The Vatican is totally connected. Plus it has Guitar Hero (and all my lovely sisters). Allegedly the cocksucking Comcast lying bastards are gonna call me when I can access civilization from Supergenius HQ. Somehow I doubt they will call.

Now for the good news. Remember how I didn't get into The Loft's Mentor Series? Well I got a letter today that told me that even though I didn't win one of the four magical spots in the program. I was picked as a finalist out of the 106 people who applied. Of course I still didn't get in. But even being named to the list is kind of an honor, and just the validation that I could go for right about now.

I recently opined to a friend of mine that August is the February of summer. I hate February. It's the worst of all the months. If February were a rockstar it would be Gwen Stefani. I am starting to develop those kinds of feelings for August. August blows. The only thing that saves August from being the worst is The Minnesota State Fair. And the way I see it, the State Fair is just a wonderful way to welcome sweet sweet September.

August is almost the worst for a myriad of reasons. Much like February, the weather is unbearable hot and sticky and much like walking around in a giant sweaty armpit. Also August is when my worklife reaches the absolute pinnacle of insane crazy bullshit stress. It happens every year. It's the cyclical nature of my job. The only thing that makes the July-August bullshit stressfest bearable is knowing that after Labor Day I can kick back and slack for the rest of the year (oh and use up the rest of my 2 1/2 weeks of vacation). Of course when you're in the thick of it all, it's not so easy to see the other side. Stress, especially crappy stress about work, sucks.

My mind and body's ideal way of dealing with stress is not sleeping. I've had insomnia for as long as I can remember. Even as a little kid I could remember lying in our bunk beds waiting for sleep to come. The insomnia is only exacerbated by stress. And the stress is only exacerbated by being utterly exhausted. It's a vicious cycle that leaves me spending most of my July and August evenings staring at the wall and trying to keep it together.

As I mentioned my job is cyclical and the hellish mid-summer is no surprise. This year I thought I would try something new, something I enjoy, and take a summer writing class. Usually I save the writing classes for the "school" year when work isn't so insane. So I signed up for poetry class with the best of intentions. I thought studying poetry would help my fiction, help me focus on the music and beauty of language. Yeah. Sometimes even I am amazed by my optimism. As you well know, poetry class did not go so well. Of course how could any class where people openly talk about nurturing, filling up, sharing and doing all kinds of things to their souls that they should only do in private go well?

That was until the last few classes (thank god the class is over) when we started talking about Sestinas. I loved the sestina. Probably because when we started talking about sestinas, Jude, the beautiful teacher poet, turned to me and said,, "You will like this one. It's a real challenge." And, as you know, I never back down from a challenge. Even ones I am bound to lose.

So the deal with the Sestina is that you have to write a seven stanza (six stanzas of six lines and then a three line envoi) poem that repeats six words in a prescribed order. That might have been the other reason I loved the sestina, there was a plethora of sixes.

As a class, we choose the six words we had to work with. They were: desire, child, play, bullet, close (like in shutting the door), and rain. Yeah. It looks a lot easier than it was. In fact it was hella tough to write. But, oddly enough, I was kind of pleased with the outcome. Well, except for the part about fairytales and rainbows. And now for your reading pleasure, I present a Sestina By Jodichromeysupergenius.

The twisted covers roused the memory of desire
I rolled over to erase the picture, the rain
of memory could not be stemmed. Like a child
who tries to change the weather, so they can play
I rearranged the covers, making sure to close
my eyes, only to see his body, a sleek bullet.

That last time the sun pierced the windows, a bullet
ending the night before where desire
was not spent. He did bring to a close
any fairy tale I entertained featuring a rain -
bow. I was only a toy for him to play
with. I ignored that he was a child

Who would not be denied his child-
like whims, but he was a bullet
shiny and dangerous. What could it hurt to play
with the object of my desire?
He touched me and I was slick like rain
I panted waiting for him to close

the distance between our bodies. Close!
I whimpered and begged like a child
waiting for him to rain
down on me. Oh but he was a bullet
quick and deadly. His desire
hot and forbidden was not mine to play

with. I could never be more than a bit part in his play
and despite his words, his fingers reached to close
around my nipple, and I drowned in our desire.
It surrounded me, swaddled like a newborn child
and in the rush of orgasm I forgot the bullet
until the morning when there was no rain

to hide behind, only truth. I longed for rain
to wash away our sordid, sensuous play.
Instead the sun shone. My shame was brilliant, like a bullet,
obvious and obtrusive. The door clicked behind, a final close.
I shut my eyes so I could be that child
changing things with the force of my desire.

Tonight I could not stem the rain. I could not close
the memory of our disastrous play. I was a child
wounded by the bullet that was my desire.

When I read the poem out loud in class, I was the one who burst out laughing. I'm sorry but there is no way humanly possible to read a line about fairytales and rainbows without laughing.