Creative Writing Essentials Wraps.
Eight weeks ago I was thrown into the deep end of a course I’d never taught before (not exactly) in a community college I’d never been to, with seven students I didn’t know. We met every Wednesday night between 6…
Tag writing
Wait for me.
A friend told me the other day that the novel she just finished was not the one she wanted to write. Isn’t that the point? Isn’t that the sound we hear as we tap, or type, or scribble? The sound…
Tweet f*%@king tweet.
I woke up late this morning. To bird song. And if you’ve ever woken up to birdsong in Australia, you know that it never fucking stops. It’s not like birdsong in America, which politely diminishes by mid-morning, and by noon…
New novel gone to readers
Done and done. For now. Lucky to have readers I trust, mothers in arms and combat veterans. An adapted excerpt picked up by Spinetingler, coming out in April.
Scott McClanahan’s Collected Works Vol 1.
I want to say Carver's style with Dennis LeHane's heart but McClanahan's stories mess with both.
Day Too.
How do you dig yourself out of the hole of shit? You don't. Alone isn't an option.
Day 1
Subbed four stories this week, sold one so far. So now, everything ‘in progress’ is now outbound and I am in novel mode. My brain can barely function. Those stories meant a lot to me, they took all I’ve got.…
Tricky Truman
Truman Capote likened the finishing of a novel to taking your child into the back yard and shooting it. As a parent, I’m intrigued by the mind that could have created that sentence. Still, I take his point. I was…
A new post up on The Nervous Breakdown…
One of my favorite rejections to date came from an editor who knocked back my submission but told me by way of consolation that one of my colleagues—an enviable Irish wunderkind—got in instead, and how proud I must be. The editor went on to say that my story (which has since been published elsewhere) was ‘a little too dry, a little airless.’
‘She talking about your story,’ said a supportive friend, ‘or her vag?’
It’s a fix
250 words down and it settles in. A great calm. A sea of words to keep me afloat. I stop looking for land.