Tagged With: Writing
List of Requirements
Stuff you must do when staying at your childhood home: 1. Read all your old yearbooks. Illustrative Example “Kristen. You are the only one of your friends that I like, and one of only 3 that I would nail.” 2. Play with your old toys. Sunbathe. Concurrently. Illustrative Example 3. Finish your story already (plus … Continue reading
Silence and noise
My favorite writing cafe is being overrun by Brits lately. I don’t know where they’re coming from; it’s like an ant invasion. You can see the flood but can’t figure out how to stem it. Dear Brits: you are all very well in your place (i.e. Britain) but I find your sexy-swoony accents distracting when … Continue reading
Jaws
I haven’t written here for a week because I’ve been working on my real writing. (I think of this blog as fake writing, which is weird since so far it’s the only kind of writing I show to people. Except dog journalism, which I also kind of consider fake.) But for the last 36 hours … Continue reading
Forks road trip: the living dead
We used the bathroom and bought chips at a gas station in one of the numberless three-building towns on Highway 101. As we left, the woman behind the counter dully called out “See you soon.” See you soon? “If we were in a horror movie,” I said as we pulled away, “that would mean ‘See … Continue reading
Mrrow?
Woke up with a cold staring me in the face like a cat I forgot to feed. Outside, a protest has been going on for two solid hours; my neighbor’s roofers slam their hammers in bone-juddering syncopation; the cars roll by with a constant swish-swish-swish like wind in the pines. At last, enough noise to … Continue reading
Yi cin reads
People like to ask how my writing is going. It’s polite and supportive, a nod to my chosen profession rather than an embrace of the totally valid other opinion (that I am a dilettante with no chosen profession who can’t get it together). Still, it’s a hard question for me to answer. I think it’s … Continue reading
About writing
Samuel R. Delaney, in his book About Writing, says “Writers are people who write.”* My heart sinks immediately whenever I read that old truism, thinking of the short story that’s been stalled in my fiction folder for three weeks now, thinking how little fiction I’ve written at all. I forget that I write every day, … Continue reading
You are spearing that tomato and I don’t want to hear another word about it
I hate authors who do that dippy routine about how “the characters tell me where they want to go and I just follow,” invariably followed by a specific example of that time when the author wanted to do one thing and the characters wanted to do something else and they had a long argument and … Continue reading
Shop Talk
I submitted a short story for publication today. I have never submitted my fiction before. It took me about half an hour to write, and while I know I ought to sit on stuff for a week or more and then revise, I didn’t think my sudden burst of confidence would hold out that long. … Continue reading
Bend over for tax time!
I made just over $7000 last year, which puts me in the millionaire’s circle for people who can almost afford to starve to death in style. Given that I made an annual income that would just barely allow me to make my rent in a residential hotel in Topeka, shouldn’t the feds be giving me … Continue reading