Sleeping With Scarlett, etc!

So, I finished Sleeping With Scarlett, and sent it to friend whose opinion I respect--they really liked it, so that's great. Here's an excerpt:

She shook her head, smiling. “I slept with you for no professional reasons. I just liked you.” The waitress put a candle on our table as they dimmed the place again. Scarlett nodded towards my kir and I nodded back. I handed over the glass and she tried some. “Kind of sweet,” she said after taking a large gulp. “Like you, when I saw you the first time, back at the museum.”

I still have to edit it, but anyway, this is great news! This means that I only have to finish up The Disease and I'll have the rough draft of my Los Angeles/ Strange English short story collection done! After that there will be the rough-rough final draft, the rough final draft, and then the final draft, which is only really temporary, depending on the effect of the passing of time on the work.

As for all my other projects, I'm following what was planned in the last post--except, I want to finish the very beginning draft of my Honors project introduction by New Years. So, that and the short story collection have priority. I'm almost done reading the Allende.

Everything!

First of all! I've got so many papers, papers, papers! Oh mon dieu! So I'm really busy with that...so I can only dream, presently, of doing any writing of my own. Either way I hope to submit some stuff before I leave Paris. I'm leaving in less than a week!

Projects I've really had the urge to work on lately:
-Botany story (reading the Modiano has given me a good way of thinking about structure when it's got to do with self-discovery and being adventuresome, yet intelligent.)
-Finishing up the short story collection of Los Angeles/ Strange English. It's almost finished! So I should make a point of doing that before I leave for Uruguay, and if I don't finish it by then (which is likely), I should finish it in Uruguay. No ifs ands or buts because I have a lot of work starting in the Spring (with Honors!), and I would like to do some fun writing this winter, which does not mean finishing up stories and editing them but starting on totally new things! Like...
-Working on a short story project this Winter Term (on my own, not for credit) about a cafe in Paris. I'm thinking my reading in French (which is my real winter term project) should help with this.
-Sometime in my writing life: interviewing my grandmother for stories. I did this a while back, in high school, but I'd like to get my memory refreshed. Perhaps do something Duras-style, about photographs, or something like that. Hmm. Something to think about, anyway. Thanks to Isabel Allende for this idea, since every magical realism writer does this. And speaking of magical realism...
-finishing up the magical realism novella. I'd like to get that done this winter, too.

Reading Projects:
Finish reading Isabel Allende by end of Uruguay trip (because I'm still pretty behind on it).
Finish reading Middlemarch. I'm about halfway through. I want to have that finished by the end of Winter Term.
Winter Term project--reading a bunch of modern French writers.
Read something by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the original language (starting Winter Term, continuing during the year).
Get into a poet. I haven't done that in a while.

At this very moment, I am dancing to Mika and writing about the Algerian War. Yes!

Elisa

May I just mention that Patrick Modiano is totally fabulous?

EXTRA EXTRA

EXTRA EXTRA:

This week:
None.

This month:
Mon. Dec 15- www.richardburgin.com (Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers)
Mon. Dec 15- www.calwriterstv.com (Masters Literary Awards, $15)
Tues. Dec 16- http://crazyhorse.cofc.edu (Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, $15)
Mon. Dec 22- www.scratchcontest.net
Wed. Dec 31- www.uah.edu/colleges/liberal/english/whatnewcontest.html (H.E. Francise Short Story Award)
Wed. Dec 31- webdelsol.com/NorthAmReview/NAR/HTMLpages/NARtoday.html (Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize, $18)

Voila!

Honors, Papers, and Sleeping with Scarlett

So! I got accepted for Honors! I keep remembering it and it feels sooooo unreal! It was way scarier than any sort of place I've applied for publication, because, as opposed to just judging only my writing, people looking at my application were also judging my work ethic and my ability, and eventually, me. So I'll be workin' mah ass off next semester and the one after, especially since I'll be finishing up two majors. But I'll have a summer inbetween to work, too, if I need it. I'm going to be translating a book and then I'm going to be writing an Honors paper. Yikes! Michael and I can angst together, although his will probably be super-hard--he's going to Honors in philosophy.

Papers--I'm putting together currently a really intense paper on Marguerite Duras' The Lover and it's totally driving me crazy. I'm writing about something that I've found impossible to find in JStor. I'm a little scared that it might totally suck, but at the same time, it's a totally badass idea.

Sleeping with Scarlett is going well. I'm going to translate it into French to show the un-translability of things ultimately in a presentation for my conversation class. Oh, man. What a sad story. It's totally my goodbye to Paris, too...I can tell I'm really going to miss this place. Excerpt time:

“Oui,” I said, practicing the native language. “Let me just get my tie on.” I took out a green one from the fake wood drawers, where I kept a couple watches and some spare condoms.

“Real men don’t wear ties anymore,” she said, grabbing the tie from my hands and throwing it back in the drawer. After sex, we walked over to the nearby Metro stop and we took the eight line to Bastille. It was a little cafe she said she had come across, where people recognized her but weren’t rude and wouldn’t ask her for anything, except the three euros sixty for a hot chocolate. She ordered her usual chocolat chaud, and I ordered a kir d’alsace, some sweet wine.

“So I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said, sipping her chocolate slowly.

Light in August

So, due to the fact that the book I just read for English class--Maryse Conde's Crossing the Mangrove--is based on a helluva lotta Faulkner, I get to have a great excuse to read my first of his. The prof recommended we all look up some info on the intertextuality of that text and of another--Faulkner's Light in August--so guess what I'm reading this week! That's right. Light in August. I'll be visiting The Red Wheelbarrow on Friday, I think, to get a hold of the book.

My God. Summertime by Gershwin...may be the best song I've ever heard...

Work so far!

Okay, well, I finished part I of the magical realism novella much faster than I thought I would. My friend who is very picky about fiction she likes--and knows a lot about magical realism--read it and loved it. So that's a good sign! It's called The Beasts We Knew, and takes place from 1860s-1920s Spain and Connecticut, two quite different places. And there might be a short stop in England, but I'm not sure. So, I can send that off to Spiral on Monday. Alyssa's going to take a look at it, who has done lots of work in genre fiction, so that will be helpful, too.

Here's a little something from it (yes, I've been sucking at putting up excerpts lately, so I'm starting again):

I never believed any of those stories they told when I was younger, when I was intent on growing up, but suddenly, I was with child, and when I gave light to a baby boy, I knew that there was something within him that I could never let go. I was fifteen years old and being a mother had made me more beautiful. It doesn’t matter who the father was, only that I wasn’t one of those girls who made up stories about ghosts or gods. His father wasn’t human at all, and ghosts and gods as any Católica knows are very human, and that’s why people make them up, because all humanity wants is more and more of us. I never told anyone about his father, and whenever asked about it, I would give very human descriptions without giving any lies: big hands, strange smile, wouldn’t take no for an answer. They just smiled and looked at me like I was the monster.

Currently, I'm finishing up the short stories in the Los Angeles collection: Los Angeles, The Disease, and Sleeping with Scarlett. Today, Sleeping with Scarlett seems to be the biggest focus. I'm considering translating it into French (it takes place in Paris) for my conversation class, but, we'll see about that. It would be exciting to talk about Scarlett Johansson's body in French. Totallay. Duffy's great to listen to for working on this. Here's a little something from that, too:

“Oh,” she said in her low voice. “Oh,” she repeated. I couldn’t stand looking at her and walked away, fingering my pockets for a second cigarette. I was a cameraman. Moving things like this woman I walked away from shouldn’t be burning into my eyes the way she was. But the important thing is, that’s what she was doing. And that meant something. I headed for the doors as fast as I could and took a taxi home. The Paris sky, that meant something too.

I'm hoping to have all the Lost Angeles short story stuff finished by Sunday, so that I can start to focus on my new projects.

That is all!

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs--and Duffy

I'm kind of totally considering perhaps becoming a writing professor...or at least doing it for a while. It seems like a good idea to teach, especially when it's in the arts. I don't think I could be a professor in anything else, but writing seems like it would be fun to work with. This is just based on how much I love looking at friends' writing, etc. And I read all of the time. And it's a good use of the MFA I'm hoping to earn in a couple years from now.

I'd ask for your opinion on it, my dear nonexistent reader, but as you don't exist, I don't know if you can really give me an opinion.

Also: I'm totally loving Duffy. She makes me want to become a rockstar. Oh how old dreams constantly come back.

Spiral, etc

Spiral submissions coming up--due in like a week. I've agreed to edit Alyssa's submissions, in return for her editing mine, even though, I'll still do it if she doesn't have the time to look at mine. I'm hoping I'll be finish part I of the novella, but I have a back-up submission if I'm not able to finish it (but I really, really, really want to !).

Writing's not going as quickly as I wish, considering the little amount of work I have presently in comparison to what I was working on before. But I can't write when I'm exhausted, and since I got back from the States, I can only write so much per sitting. Hopefully, some time today at Starbucks will change that. (Yes, there are Starbucks in Paris!)

I'm cleaning my place currently. That helps me think.

New projects:
-Putting together a story for a friend. Inter-war era Paris, perhaps New York too. Very glamorous happenings, despite economic depression in the states.
-Want to put SOAP in the 50s. Totally. Screenplay it up.
-Considering asking Harris Lapiroff if I can put one of his poems to a comic strip. His poems have a very youthful feel to them, which can be good or bad sometimes, but I think that as he gets older this youthful feel will be more and more appropriate--perhaps due to its feeling of nostalgia, or something. Here's the poem he wrote up that I like:

How I Long to be Found in a Time Beyond Love

November when air is warm with climate change,
I pray for nuclear winter, another ice age,
a snow that falls soft and lovely and enduring.

You and I wandering the streets of Albany
and out to the beach, flakes of aftermath
dropping one by one by one onto our limbs
weighing down until we move no longer but only
sleep compressed under thousands of pounds of powder,
found millennia later by excavators
with tinted goggles and laser drills.

Our pictures on the news,
us kept below zero in a block of ice
preserving our perfect bodies.

An archeologist leading a tour points and says
see their strange clothes, the way they wear their hair
see the way their eyes light up at one another
and the way their fingers twine.

Something I could totally never put together myself, but that I nevertheless enjoy. Am also reading a totally shallow book called Cliente in French by Josiane Balasko. It's about an escort boy and this older lady. Figured if I'm going to be reading in French, especially before a superserious private reading in January, I should read something superly awesome. Therefore the purchase as well of some French slam-poetry and Persepolis (ohgodIlovethisbook). I've read everything by Marjane Satrapi, but only in translation. I'm so excited to read her in the original! Oh...and I bought something by the Marquis de Sade.

Elisa

Brussels

Well, that was unexpected. I went to Brussels for a day trip and I can't stop really wishing I'd stayed longer. I'm considering going back, at a certain point, perhaps next summer. Anyway, I found this cool article on a writer who lived there for a while:

http://www.pmc.edu/mfa/interviews/bosselaar.html

Reading I've Done Recently...and other things...

So, I guess I should update y'all on what readings I've been doing lately...

So, I finished up Benedetti's La Tregua (whilst taking a break from Allende's Casa de las espiritus), and it was absolutely fab. I'm still waiting to hear about Honors...but I've decided to apply to a creative writing workshop if I don't get accepted for that...and then do some translation work over the summer.

I know I mentioned before that I was reading some other books; I finished Duras' The Lover (English translation), and I also finished Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse, which was challenge, but totally awesome. I'm currently working on Maryse Conde's Crossing the Mangrove (English translation) for class, Paris in the Fifties (for class!), and, finishing up Allende's Casa de los espiritus.

Other things:

I really want this program for MFAness....It looks so fab...: http://iub.edu/~mfawrite/about/
Of course it's amazing so who knows if I'll get in. But it's very international-like, and reputable. Two very good things.

I really miss philosophy classes. As usual. But I will be taking 2-3 this next semester, so...

I will be doing a reading in French literature for Winter Term...so I will be able to continue studying...yay!

--me.

Writings Website!

I put up a website with documents of my writings on it! Yay!

Here it is:
http://writersonthemarina.jottit.com

It's not nearly as fabulous looking as this one...but that's not the point. The point is that it's easy to navigate through my documents and works-in-progress.

--Elisa

EXTRA EXTRA

EXTRA EXTRA:

This week:
Sat. Nov 22- www.scratchcontest.net

This month:
Sun. Nov 30- www.fishpublishing.com ($30/story)
Sun. Nov 30- www.glimmertrain.org ($15)

Voila!

Current Projects

So, now that I got all midterms and travels to Barcelona and the Honors Application finished, I've got some low-stress projects I'm working on. Going to be

-finishing up part one of the magical realism novella (I'm working on it so that I can submit each section of the three for a serial publication in Spiral)
-continuing to edit the botany story
-considering writing up a screenplay version (or a musical version?) of Socrates on a Plane, but in the 50s...
-finishing up the stories in Los Angeles (Sleeping with Scarlett and The Disease)

So, it's really just all some catching-up work. I hope I get this all done by the time I head over to Uruguay, so that I can continue some serious work on the botany story when I get there.

If the Honors proposal gets accepted, I'll be starting working on the Benedetti translation in the spring! If not, I'll probably be working on that during the summer.

That's all!

Oh, and wait, I wanted to advertise something my friend put together: http://iomoth.wordpress.com/2008/11/17/photocomic-incomplete-from-summer-2008/

It should take about three seconds to read, and it's very good!

Writing Class & Honors

So, I'll be taking a writing class in the spring with Prof. Watanabe and this other guy whose name I can't remember (Matambo perhaps?). I think the guy was an Oberlin alum, so that probably means he'll be cool. The class is called Geographies of Displacement, it's only 2 credits (otherwise I wouldn't have room to take it!), and it seems cool because I think it's going to be half writing/ half reading, and it's about exiled writers. There will be many visiting authors for the course. It sounds good, and I'm surprised it's not in the Comp Lit department ('cause I'm sure to get Comp Lit credit for it).

I'm going to be turning in my Honors application at the end of this week; in case you don't remember, I'm hoping to translate Benedetti's La Tregua (The Truce) for the Honors Project, and then writing up something on the practice of translation in relation to the theories of translation. Prof. Ali and Prof. Faber have agreed to be my advisors for it, so all I have to do is hope that my crummy GPA in the school (3.3ish when it has to be at least 3.5) doesn't get in the way. I'm considering mentioning my writing blog in the application...We'll see...

I've been sucking at posting in general lately. I'll put up the EXTRA EXTRAs soon. Promise.

--Elisa

EXTRA EXTRA

EXTRA EXTRA:

This week:
Fri. Oct 31 (Halloween!)- www.tebotbach.org ($25, First Book Award)
Fri. Oct 31 (Halloween!)- www.danaawards.com
Fri. Oct 31 (Halloween!)- www.glimmertrain.org (Family Matters)
Sat. Nov 1- http://tampareview.ut.edu/tr_prize.html
Sat. Nov 1- www.fccj.edu/wf
Sat. Nov 1- www.wwph.org (Annual Book Competition, DC Area)
Sat. Nov 1- www.briarcliff.edu/bcreview (Briar Cliff Review Competition)

Voila!

Suddenly, everything around me is changing.

I'm becoming more competent at everything: reading, writing, organizing my time, dealing with writer's block and just writing, writing, writing, reading, reading. I think it's a couple things: (1) I'm really homesick, (2) I visited two museums this weekend and (3) getting more fluent in my other languages is having an astounding impact on my English.

It all started with the Centre Pompidou. As a result of said museum, I finally started on 'Sleeping with Scarlett,' a short story about beauty (and, yes, Scarlett Johansson) and just aesthetics in general (I would love to show it to a philosophy prof sometime who won't judge me for the popular icon use--or perhaps I will and change their mind). I also worked a little bit on 'The Disease,' which is a reaction to a kind-of-well-known short story a friend sent me a while ago--it involves a lesbian and an oxygen tank, and talks about love. And music. I also began work on a serial novella, that I would like to submit through my friend's Oberlin publication, Spiral (I may have spoken about this in my last post...). This novella involves a bunch of crazy stuff, like fate, incest, reputation, curses, love...anything you'd expect from a genre-type story that I write, especially when it's semi-magical realism, in French-thought, Spanish-thought, and English-thought (it takes place in Paris, Montevideo, and a small town in Connecticut).

Today I did some work on some poetry (tried at a sonnet--it's been a while!), reread some old stuff, and worked on some nonfiction that's really hard to get through--I ended up crying a little bit because that's what happens when I face my honest feelings about things. I also printed out the botany story, finally, so I can rewrite it, and the rewriting's going very well. My narrator has a more distinct voice now, and now that I know more what it ends like, I'm adding in little things to the beginning that show that he knows how it's going to end, too (because it's written like a confession). Best of all, this week I had been thinking, and today I finally picked up Benedetti's La Tregua. Finally. I think reading Allende has made more comfortable with my Spanish, and finally, I see the blaze of Benedetti's writing, its sharp beauty, its disturbing sorrow. I'm going to apply to translate that book--if not also others--for an Honors project. He's not translated in English. And I know, I know, oh God, I know that he will be so beautiful in this language.

My goal in all this: Be respectable. Grow up as a writer. Honor literature and language, but most of all...the so many billion ways that humanity can experience itself--in other words, honor life. If I do that, even if I'm not famous, etc, then I will find my life worthwhile. Not just as a writer, but as myself.

PS- I really, really miss philosophy classes.

How Everything Goes, Presently

So, I guess I'm going to post again on how is everything is going. Sorry about the lack of entries, but after all, I am in Paris! While my quinoa cooks, I'm going to type up a little bit about how everything goes.

I finished my magical realism short story, so now my projects I'm working on intensely are buffing up the botany story, a magical realism novella in sections (that I will submit to the genre magazine at school, Spiral), and anything else that I happen to stumble upon. Here's an excerpt from the story, originally titled Tunnel of Love (after the Dire Straits song), currently titled Strange English:

I’m sitting in the sand, the Oregon shore, that ocean, the tips of your fingers, everything blue, you open your mouth to say something, and I watch your eyes flashing devotion, but those words still within you are something else, that I can only hear now, as this man gasps and grunts, the way no American boy would dare to do, with your thin bones and light hair, all men like you can do is run, dissipating slowly into air. It all ends as I look into your eyes, emptier than the others I have seen, and this man in front of me, bellows, whispers in anguish, the name of a city which I will later learn, in one of our few last meetings at the coffee shop on Baker Street, and is as split as his heart and as our lives, a blue body of water running through, like a sculptor’s cut, like a ruptured front line.

That's not a very magically realistic part--there's a part with ghosts, and that's the part--but, I really like the trick with tenses I do, which doesn't make much sense here, but does in the context of the rest of the story.

As for reading, I read Colette's Cheri and Camus' The Stranger for my English class recently, I finished an *abridged* version of La Bete Humaine in French for my class (because it's really, really long), and I'm now working on Bonjour tristesse by Francoise Sagan, also in French. I finished Swann's Way pretty recently as well, in English. I'm currently reading Allende's La casa de los espiritus in Spanish, and it's absolutely amazing, and Benedetti's La Tregua is next. As for English reading on my own, I'm a little bit behind. But it's probably a good thing to do some work in my other languages, if I wanted to keep them in good quality.

I e-mailed Prof. Faber and he agreed to work on a translation project with me over the summer, so that's very exciting! I need to pick a poet I enjoy. I should head to a bookstore soon and delve.

I've been listening to Cat Stevens and Billy Joel a lot lately. It's very uplifting. I'm in a really good mood lately, even if I seem to be constantly coughing. I'm going to be doing some grunge work on the botany story TONIGHT and TOMORROW because I decided to make my characters better people so I have to change the plot a little bit.

And that is that, presently!

EXTRA EXTRA

EXTRA EXTRA:

This week:
Wed. Oct 8- www.missourireview.org/contest/
Sat. Oct 11- www.indiana.edu/~inreview

This month:
Mon. Oct 13- www.indianareview.org ($15, fiction prize)
Wed. Oct 15- www.louisville.edu/english
Wed. Oct 15- http://cwp.fas.nyu.edu/page/wsr ($12)
Wed. Oct 22- www.scratchcontest.net
Fri. Oct 31 (Halloween!)- www.tebotbach.org ($25, First Book Award)
Fri. Oct 31 (Halloween!)- www.danaawards.com

Voila!

Update!

So, everyone, clearly I haven't really been updating this blog for very long. Apologies! (Although, I really don't think many people read this blog, so perhaps I'm only apologizing to myself...) Anyway, I really think I should give an update on how everything is going.

I traveled to London to visit Tevi this weekend, and brought a couple friends with me from Paris, and it was absolutely wonderful. As usual, travel did a lot for my writing: I worked on one short story (Strange English), started a new short story/novella (something having to do with a curse), and did some work on the botany story (which I haven't done in a very. long. time.), all on the Chunnel! Both on the way to London and from.

I also bought a new program, recommended by Harris, for only 35 bucks, called Scrivener. You can find details here:
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.html
I'd recommend the program no matter what if you have the cash to spend--if you have a good income, or whatever. If you're very unorganized as a writer, then this program will obviously give a really good benefit. I'm actually unorganized most of the time, but when it comes to my writing, I'm not--I just feel that time goes against me a lot of the time. So, this program will help me with concentrating better while writing, as well as being aesthetically pleasing enough that I will work with it often. I'm expecting it to up my long-prose by 20%, my short stories by 10% (they don't take as much research, and in general, I have more practice at them), and screenplays probably by something like 50%. (Poetry is far too manual for me, so I don't think I'll be using Scrivener for that.) However, I think in general it will make writing more of a pleasure, mostly because of the 'full screen view' that I really enjoy--it makes your writing look like it's already in a book, I think. Anyway, look at the details if you're interested. I don't think it's a necessity, but if you're serious about writing and have the money to spend, I'd say buy it.

As for books I'm reading right now, I'm doing a lot with trilingual reading:
In English: Middlemarch by George Eliot; short stories by Vladimir Nabokov, Swann's Way by Proust (this is assigned, so it gets preference maintenant)
In French: Bonjour tristesse by Francoise Sagan (assigned), La Bete humaine by Zola (assigned), L'Amant by Marguerite Duras (the English version is assigned later, and I've already read it, so I figured I'd have a try at the short French version)
In Spanish: Casa de los espiritus by Isabel Allende, Eva Luna by Isabel Allende, La Tregua by Mario Benedetti (preference--I've been meaning to read it for so long!), and some poems also by Mario Benedetti.

So...I'm hoping all this reading will be wonderful! As, I hope, will be the writing! Also, I'm submitting the story I'm working on currently (Strange English) to a competition on the 25th--to find out five days later if I made it...Ahh!!

EXTRA EXTRA

EXTRA EXTRA:

This week:
None.

This month:
Mon. Sept 15- www.calwriterstv.com (Masters Literary Awards)
Mon. Sept 15- www.uncg.edu/eng/mfa (Robert Watson Literary Prize)
www.opencity.org/rrofihe.html
Mon. Sept 22- www.scratchcontest.net

Voila!

Paris!

Now that I'm in Paris, my mind has cleared for new types of writing. Turns out none of my Sept. 1 contest are actually viable (they all have word limits that I don't make in any of my current stories, or have changed their deadlines to later), so that's good because I don't have to stress out about them and can concentrate on my writing. I've made My Dearest Tomcat into a personal project (a way to practice writing that I won't try to publish), but I'm sure it will have its own effects on the rest of my writing. So, that one's easy to work on because I don't have any publishing deadlines. So, I'm working on the same old projects:

-Benedetti poetry translations
-botany story
-short stories in Los Angeles
-France short stories
-read La Tregua for Benedetti novel translation

I might add more on as the semester continues. It's a really great environment, because as France attracts many artists, people here are very artistic and thoughtful! Yay! I'm very excited about writing here.

Los Angeles, etc

I finished writing the Los Angeles story (yay!), and editing it, as well, so I'm going to be working on finishing up a couple more stories (Devil's Den, and another one I started about a man with an oxygen tank (it's from the point of view of a lesbian?)) I think after these two, I should try to put together a collection. I'm going to be writing a story about/in Prague (I'm there now), but we'll see if that goes into this collection or not. I guess it depends on how the short stories develop while I'm in Paris--if they're *all* Europe-oriented, I'll put the Prague story in there. If they're all Paris-oriented, however, I'll put the Prague story into the Los Angeles collection. I'll be working, in Paris, on My Dearest Tomcat (which I might change to Mon Chere Ohio?), and on the botany story. I'm going to go now, to do some handwritten work on one of the three stories I need to work on.

EXTRA EXTRA

(sorry for the delay, folks.)

EXTRA EXTRA:

This week:
August 8- www.givalpress.com

This month:
August 22- www.scratchcontest.net
August 29- web3.unt.edu/untpress/conest.cfm (for a short story collection)
August 30- www.unt.edu/untpress
August 31- www.usc.edu/scr
August 31- www.glimmertrain.org (short-short fiction)

Voila!

Short Story Collection!

So, I'm thinking of putting together a short story collection. I'm thinking of naming the collection Los Angeles/ The Angels, or something along those lines, when I combined the style and themes of my writing with the fact that I noticed that there are always beautiful women in my stories. One of my stories is titled 'Los Angeles,' so it's appropriate. (The one I started yesterday and is going swimmingly.) The fact that some of my stories are half spanish/ half english, and all of my stories have a feel of escape and travel, make the bilingual title work, I think. When I met up with Prof. Chaon last February, he mentioned the idea of 'ghosts,' and then hinted more at the idea of 'spirits,' and I think the latter is more what's going on with my stories: there's a certain pull, a certain magic, but more of a charming, beautiful sort than something spooky or fatally sad. The only truly sad people are my narrators, and by the ends of the stories, there is always some sort of feel of redemption even for them (hence why 'angels' seems a bit appropriate).

Readings!

And now, my new readings!

The Cider House Rules by John Irving, and
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane!

I e-mailed Prof. Hall for philosophy recommendations, so I'll be picking either one of his or Prof. M. Thomson-Jones's recommendations next week, in philosophy (either ethics or metaphysics, respectively).

Now I am off to a Mark Knopfler concert! Must go! (With FA-LA-FELS!)

Scratch Contest

I totally just submitted 'The Mortgage' to www.scratchcontest.net. I think I might have done it wrong, though, because they were really unclear about the submission dates and their different contests...So I either applied for the monthly one...or the quarterly one...We'll see...I paid $10 for the entry, so whichever entry is worth ten bucks, that's the contest I applied to. Here's a short excerpt from 'The Mortgage':

The intoxication is as heavy as the flowers sitting in our kitchen and as the air outside. That’s what it’s like. You pour yourself another glass of wine and I watch you, waiting for you to return to my side. This is what it’s like. This is what it’s always been like, Ellen. You know that.

Oscar Wao, etc.

So, I just wrote a beautiful entry on Bertrand Russell (and also on Oscar Wao, which was not as kind), but I accidentally deleted it, and there was nothing I could do to get it back. So, that is kind of sad. But, anyway, I will summarize what I said, which was something like this:

On The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (by Junot Diaz): I didn't like it very much, mostly because the author was trying to do way too much. There were a lot of things he didn't know, and he tried to cover it up with different narratives, but that just ended up sounding kind of awkward. If you haven't read any bicultural stuff and want to get a start, or are interested in books related to the Dominican Republic, then I'd say read it. Otherwise, there are other books in the bicultural/hispanic vein that are far better, and more polished. However, it's a short read, and entertaining (especially at the beginning, where it's very fresh), so since it's summertime, I'll recommend it as a summer read. Most of the problems were structural, but I think topic was also a problem: Diaz was doing too many things, and with such a short book! It annoys me that he got so much credit from critics for talking about so much cultural stuff, when what would have probably helped the book so much would have had it be an important part of the book, as opposed to the entire point of writing it.

I'm also finishing up a volume of Bertrand Russell's essays, and those are fucking (s)excellent. He writes very beautifully, with wondrous and complex arguments, and yet with a prose-like style that retains the personality and rhythm of good prose, but is not lost within itself because it is held together by the strong structure of logic. (I'm not very good at being logical, but Russell's big into that.) Even though I'm not very interested in religion, he writes so well that his essays are worth reading in this book. The essays I've enjoyed the most are "Why I Am Not a Christian" (the very famous title essay), "What I Believe," "Nice People" (a hilarious sarcastic piece), and "Our Sexual Ethics." Even with the essays I didn't enjoy entirely, they all had little gems of beauty within them. He's also very idealistic--even more idealistic than I am! I guess, perhaps, that's why his writing is so beautiful, in the end. Even though he sees the murky mess of problems, he can still see the solution shining through behind them, and more importantly, a certainty that these solutions will eventually break through. So even in the dirtiest of problems, you can find little things that make the entire existence of humanity worthwhile. I should stop while I'm at it on Russell, except to say that, I totally understand now more than ever why so many girls were shagging him. (Plus he was all, women should have sex with whomever they want.)

Having read these two books has made me decide that I really should just cut out the substory from the botany book. I'm going to keep in the actual events from the substory (it's just a story fifteen years earlier, from when the husband and wife met), but they will be seen only from the husband's fifteen-years-later view. I was, as Diaz had done, trying too much, and it wasn't worth it, with the really amazing voice that the husband character has developed. He doesn't even yet have a name, and I am in love with him. Having read Woolf and Russell have done very good things for this book, so I should see who else they hung out with so I can get better at putting all of this together. I'll have to cut some chapters, unfortunately, so while three weeks ago I had five chapters, I'll now only have two. But I have less to write, as well, so that's good. Here's an excerpt:

She slowly lowered the book on the ground, got a hold of my hands, and returned the favor by slowly sliding her lips against my knuckles, palm, wrists, taking one hand and then the other, possessing my hands in hers greedily and lovingly, like fruit in sweltering summer. Yet the weather tonight was not unbearable; the breeze came in time by time to whisper along with my own words against her ears, fingers fumbling through her wild head of hair, pulling closer and closer our sutural substance: souls saved by touch and rhythmic breath.

See why I'm in love with my narrator?

Extra Extra

EXTRA EXTRA:

This week:
July 22- http://www.scratchcontest.net/
July 23- http://www.opiummagazine.com/

This month:
July 31- Best of Ohio Writer Contest (for residents of Ohio, only). http://www.pwlge.com/
July 31- Glimmer Train Family Matters Contest. http://www.glimmertrain.org/
July 31- http://www.munsterlit.ie/
July 31- http://www.writingawards.com/

Voila!

Extra Extra

EXTRA EXTRA:

This week:
None

This month:
July 22- http://www.scratchcontest.net/
July 23- http://www.opiummagazine.com/
July 31- Best of Ohio Writer Contest (for residents of Ohio, only). http://www.pwlge.com/
July 31- Glimmer Train Family Matters Contest. http://www.glimmertrain.org/
July 31- http://www.munsterlit.ie/
July 31- http://www.writingawards.com/

Voila!

Henry Miller, etc

Henry Miller's The Tropic of Cancer was awesome. Recommend it to anyone who won't hate a book if it's racist/ sexist/ intolerant, etc. The guy's got a heart, guys (sort of). Anyway, the writing was spectacular, so, that was awesome. I'm finishing up The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (read it on the busride back from NYC, no air conditioning for four hours, yikes!), and will be reading Bertrand Russell in a few days! Oh, joy!

My writing...let's not talk about that. I'm totally, entirely behind. But I started writing a story sort of based off one of my mom's Uruguayan friends who I found hot this one time in LA and all they talked about at dinner was school shootings from their childhood, laughing about it the entire time.

Harris, just by talking and being himself, has been somehow helping me lots with writing lately. It's awesome.

Botany Comic Strip?

I would, love, love, love this woman to do the graphic novel version of the botany book, if I ever finish it, because she values the same things in characters as I do, and understands how funny life can be in the most dire situations. I'll bet you she likes Woody Allen movies. This is the comic strip she's currently working on:

http://friendlyhostility.com/

Her strip, friendlyhostility, and her other one (boymeetsboy I think, or something like that?), are superb. Perhaps I should shoot her an e-mail about this idea. Hmm...

Books I'm A' Takin' To New York

La Tregua- Mario Benedetti
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao- Junot Diaz
Assymetries in Time- Paul Horwich
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov- Vladimir Nabokov
The Tropic of Cancer- Henry Miller

and, a random copy of Avery, a literary magazine, that I impulsively bought for $1 yesterday at a used bookstore, because Prof. Chaon's story was in it--I figured I'd do him the honor of reading him, since he's done the favor of reading me. (Alyssa said, "Oh, I hear he's actually good," so, I hope I'll enjoy it. It's also a good sign that his story is the last. They must have put it there for a reason.)



"NYC, just got here this morning, three bucks, two bags, one me!"

Extra Extra

This is a new addition. The "extra extra" entries are for whoever reads this, who's interested in writing, and wants to see some good contests to submit stuff to. There's a lot of different places to look for for applying, and I'm only listing stuff that's in my agenda--so, if you have specific genres you write in, or specific themes, you should look up some additional stuff for yourself. If you're interested, though, I tend to go towards (in no particular order) (1) literary, (2) hispanic/American literature, (3) experimental/ magical realism, and (4) translation. The themes that carry through my works tend to be (in no particular order) (1) family, (2) socially incorrect relationships, (3) academic/intellectual (like randomly mentioning famous authors, or something), (4) sex is a big one, (5) beautiful women, (6) music, and (7) quirky characters and events. So, if any of your stuff matches those, I highly suggest you apply to the contests I post up here.

So, the "extra extra" section will look something like this:

EXTRA EXTRA:

This week: None
This month:
July 22- http://www.scratchcontest.net/
July 23- http://www.opiummagazine.com/
July 31- Best of Ohio Writer Contest (for residents of Ohio, only). http://www.pwlge.com/
July 31- Glimmer Train Family Matters Contest. http://www.glimmertrain.org/
July 31- http://www.munsterlit.ie/
July 31- http://www.writingawards.com/

Voila!

K a Day- 5 Pages

The 5 pages for the botany story, unfortunately, isn't working. I'm going to try to make up for it while at work, for these days I messed up, but I'm going to start doing between K a Day (so 1000 words a day) TO five pages, with five pages as the goal per day (but not the minimum). I think I'll post a little something from the book:

“Okay,” I said, “Now that that’s settled, I should get back to my wife.” I began to pick up some bags.

“You aren’t going to brush your teeth?” she asked.

“I’m terribly prepared for this kidnapping,” I said. I turned around to tell her good night as I opened the door, but she had already fallen asleep, on top of all the covers her mother had warned her about. Her mother had probably warned her about people like me, too. But I think if her mother knew how I quietly watched over her young daughter tonight, small thing breathing softly into stained sheets, and if she knew that I saw this girl as my daughter too, as another responsibility and as a beautiful addition to this world, I do not think that she would see me as she had expected to. I think she would be happy that, although unceremoniously, her daughter and I had become acquainted.

My Dearest Tomcat will be the title of my collection of letters I think. Bound to change? Probably, since I haven't even started writing it yet.

Ah! Hahh..

So, turns out that the new substory didn't work at all with the botany story, so that's completely out of the picture. It made Daisy into a complete bitch, muddled up the story, made the botanist's wife act far more intelligent than she wants to (even though she's actually smart), all this stuff that just made the characters do things that I would never, ever want to happen. However, it makes for a good beginning for something, so I'll see if I can play around with it a little bit.

So, I am getting quite serious about writing every day while I am in Europe with the fam, so I was thinking I'd do it in France, too, although in the form of letters. I will be missing many people when I'm abroad, and I'm thinking that it will be a sort of part fiction/ part nonfiction thing. Because it will be in letter form, there won't necessarily be a straight narrative, but instead, little snatches and bits: I have promised myself that in each letter, there will be some sort of call back both to Paris and to whatever I'm missing from back home. Kind of like a metaphor of places, I will relate both of them to one another. Something like that.

I'm also considering, for my honors project (if it gets accepted...), to write a story about a gay couple in Uruguay, or something like that. It wouldn't be terribly political--gay marriage is legal in Uruguay, and people aren't very religious--so if anything, it would be just a cultural thing. It would also be modern-day, so there would be interesting to see what influence (and what not-influence) there is by the US within Uruguay. So, because of this, I really need to "get on it" with my writing. I'd really like to say that I've finished stuff, but for now all I've got to show is some short stories. I need to have a book written to show that I can do anything within a time constraint. So, I need to finish the botany story, or at least get 3/4 of the way through, this summer, and I seriously need to get to the Mario Benedetti translations.

So, here's what I have to do (writing-wise):

Summer:
- write 5 pages a day of the botany story (this will kill me, and will be flexible while traveling)
- every 2 days, a Benedetti translation
- 1 short story every week (or every 2, depending on inspiration)
- write-something-every-day while in Europe with the fam
- write a 'little something' everyday, more like a writing brainstorm than anything else
[I'll continue this for a while, and if I get into a good rhythm, I'll approach SOAP. All I have to do is convert into a screenplay, and it's so much like one already, that that shouldn't be so bad.]

Fall:
-every day, write a letter, while abroad (try to play around with language, bring in some French)
-edit 8 pages a day of the botany story
-make SOAP into a screenplay, 5 pages a day
-do/try out a long Benedetti translation (La Tregua, anyone?)
-1 short story every week (or every 2, depending on inspiration)
-convert stuff into manuscript format

Depending how all of this works out, we will see what happens in the upcoming future.

As for reading plans:
this week: finish Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, start and finish The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Horwich isn't as necessary as before (because the substory didn't work for the botany), but if I want to make the substory a short story, I still may need to use it--so I will read it between breaks in reading Junot Diaz. I will be taking the bus to and from NYC this weekend, so I will have time to be reading.

next week: Must read Bertrand Russell. It's been too long and I love him. Also interested in looking at some Quine, because of stuff I like to do with language. So, we'll see about all that. Interesed in, fiction-wise, some Edith Wharton, Henry James... Because philosophy is heavy, I will allow myself to read something shorter by the fiction authors. Will be continuing the Horwich, most likely.

week after next: Should go back to reading a book from the botany list, most likely The Botanist and the Vintner (Christy Campbell). Will read whichever philosopher's left over from the last week, and will e-mail a few professors about stuff in the aesthetics-realm (since this will be a botany-focused week).

Ah!

Ah! I've an idea and I am quite happy about it. This is for the botany story--I was trying to figure out different ways I could tell the sub-story, which is supposed to tell the past of the husband and wife, but everything kept sounding too much like the present story. But, I made myself read Woolf's Orlando because I knew it would make a difference, and then I watched The Fall, which was recommended by Russ. Result? I have a beginning for the substory. Yay! This also means that it is likely that the story will go back to its old title. Instead of The Botanist's Daughter, it will be called something along the lines of, Stealing Daisies: One Of The Many Adventures Of Dr. Henry Pollan and His Wife/ Little Lady/ etc., which makes it much more appealing, I think, but also, much more appropriate for the ridiculous content of this book. So, here is the beginning of the sub-story:

He was a man made of stones and ash, but was given a heart of petals. She, on the other hand, no one knows how she came about, but many have said that one day she decided to exist, and then did so. This makes his question to her in 1986, 'Where did you come from?' much more relevant than he would have guessed at the time the question was asked. But I'm getting ahead of myself. On with the beginning.

Also, I e-mailed Prof M. Thomson-Jones to ask him for more readings on time, now that it seems that I'll be playing around with it for this part of the book. I'm a little behind on writing, but ahead on reading (I randomly read Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpeter of Maladies last weekend), so I'll only be bringing two books and a magazine to the beach this weekend: Readers & Writers mag, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, and Horwich's Assymetries in Time. I need to find a new fiction to read next week, but I'm thinking I'll read some Bertrand Russell because I want to bone him, and I also just finished reading one of his friends (Woolf), and because the way he thinks/writes will be very good for the botany story. Damned story. It's like singing opera: when it finally comes out it seems so effortless, but it's the hardest thing in the world.

Freelance Travel Writing

I'm considering doing some freelance travel writing for WT next year--probably in Uruguay (they're looking for South America). I don't have any writing samples yet, but I could write up a few when I visit Europe with the family, just for sampling. I could also offer to send some when I'm in Europe next month. I think it's good that I have a lot of future promise (with my education in French coming along) for travel writing, so I'll emphasize that too, I think. Right now I'm looking at LonelyPlanet, but let's see where else I could possibly apply. This is exciting. I'm seriously considering it.

The Naked Diner, etc.

So, I finished my short story called The Naked Diner! Thank God I got away from the sci-fi theme--it was headed in that direction, and that genre never works well for me because I'm not original enough. So, for this week, I have left (1) Benedetti translations, (2) finish reading Orlando by Woolf, (3) start screenplaying work on SOAP, and (4) work on some poems, if I can. Next week, botany story! (And continuing screenplaying work on SOAP.)

Here's a bit of The Naked Diner:

“Have you selected what you’d like yet, sir?” She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, but it might just be because she’s nude. In fact, I’m sure that’s the reason, the mix of her brash nudity, showing all she’s got to give, and her polite stance, quiet voice, use of the word, ‘sir.’ I’ve never seen anything like that before. She’s the purest woman I’ve ever seen, because she’s got more to hide from me than any other woman. She gives herself last, her body first. And she’s blonde. I’ve always had a thing for blondes.

Well, I guess I'll get to the Benedetti later today. Right now I'm working on a short story called, 'The Naked Diner,' which is exactly what it means (although, with some sort of existentialist doubt, etc, black coffee, missing shoes..etc.). The Virginia Woolf is amazing, and will be a great thing to read for the botany story--so I'll have to get back to the botany story next week, as I imagine I'll be finished with Orlando by the end of this week. Work, as my boss is not here, is even less work than it even was. Which is why 'The Naked Diner' is coming along so smoothly, and why I might have a story and some translations done by the end of today.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being narration-style is getting to be annoying. The overbearing-author thing isn't subtle enough for me, and this guy is so contemporary that you'd assume that he might have figured out what he was doing...I'm more forgiving if that sort of stuff happens with, say, Thomas Hardy, because he hasn't had as many authors he's been able to read...You must always expect more from newer writers, even though, quite unfortunately, they're the ones who usually end up being worse. But, anyway. Now I've decided, again, to change SOAP into a screen play.

Europe...Among Other Things

My plan: while on vacation in Europe with the family, I will write one short story every day, or a poem--although poems usually take much longer than a day for me, but we'll see what I can do. I'll edit everything on the planeride back, then I'll be back a day, and then off to France for study-abroad. (I don't understand the logic of traveling thusly, but my parents affirm it's the best thing to do.)

I've been meaning to write a poem lately, so let's see if that happens...perhaps I will just do the Benedetti translations instead, as I had been planning to do this weekend anyway...Translations always help my writing in general, though, so perhaps I'll work on a poem and some of the botany story after working on the translation. So, this weekend, I should start revising SOAP, and do somewhere from 1-10 Benedetti rough draft translations (this is of poems--not prose).

I'm basically halfway through The Unbearable Lightness of Being, so I can probably get that out of the way soon. Metro rides make a great thing for reading. It's a touching subject, but I think that's more on a personal level than with the actual level of the writing. Too bad it's a translation, I can sense so terribly how much is lost there. Perhaps I'll learn Czech after French? We'll see how quickly I learn French. I'm advanced in the language lab and in the homework thus far, so I'm doing some outside reading from books my brother has lent me (he took French in high school and has a bunch of books). I should have known that French would consume me this way. The same thing happened with the English language, and that's why I read so much; it took such great effort for me to learn it, and language has seemed so powerful since then.

I would like to add, this blog has made a huge difference in my writing: not just how much I write (which has expanded), but just, how I feel about writing, how much I read, and how confident I feel about the whole thing. I recommend it to anyone who takes writing seriously.

I'm putting in an excerpt from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, because I've been meaning to since I started reading it:

Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colorful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles. It looks as though the dead are dancing at a children's ball. Yes, a children's ball, because the dead are as innocent as children. No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler's time, in Stalin's time, through all occupations. When she felt low, she would get into the car, leave Prague far behind, and walk through one or another of the country cemeteries she loved so well. Against a backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby.

For Franz a cemetery was an ugly dump of stones and bones.

Socrates on a Plane (again!)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being has taught me that it's okay to have a narrator who's overbearing, as long as you give the rest of the characters enough credit. So, I'm going to give SOAP another chance at being written in prose. That said, I have to basically rewrite the entire thing. That is, have the text next to me, but have a completely new word document opened on my computer. I'd really like to work on the old typewriter if possible, though...I'll see how much it costs to get that thing fixed.

Experiments in Ethics

Experiments in Ethics (by Kwame Anthony Appiah) was an amazing book. It was a fast read--it's not too long--but very engaging, complex, and like a piece of art, better the more you applied from the outside world to the text. I just finished it now during work (instead of looking up information on Uruguay...well, while looking up information on Uruguay...). I did extend my coffee break, and read it on the Metro, but no matter! It is finished, so all my intense reading today was totally worth it.

The entire time I referred to Appiah as a she, and I could never figure out why, and it turns out he's gay (looked him up on Wiki!), so, as Alyssa puts it, "That's probably why you thought he was a girl." Now I'll be connecting him to Michael in my mind all the time, because I miss Michael very much, but that will make my appreciation of his work even more awesome, so it's a good thing. I was very moved by the book as a whole, and was almost moved to tears this morning, but it's not a very appropriate thing to do during a coffee break, especially in front of a cafeteria full of employees. It felt like a mix of philosophy, very fun journalism (a la Freakonomics, a la The Omnivore's Dilemma), and literary criticism.

The entire book centered around ethics, but did so in such a way that it would show the faults in many ways we look at ethics, and then show that these faults, once we are aware of them, allows us to better our ethical views. The way he played around with ethics was absolutely wonderful, and it makes more sense now to know that, other than being affiliated with philosophy, he's affiliated with comparative literature and translation. I'm considering e-mailing him and letting him know I'm a fan, and that I'd love to talk about the criss-cross between comp lit and philosophy. This is especially important because many consider the two to be quite opposite one another (i.e.- East v. West dichotomy), but once you bring cosmopolitanism into the picture, the exact opposite happens, and there are many things the two subjects have in common with one another. (Come on. Everything relates back to philosophy.) I'm also apparently, for a while, the only person at school to double major in Philosophy and Comp Lit, so it'd be good to talk to someone who's a big fan of both (even though, Prof Deppman is big into philosophy and literature--but he focuses on continental philosophy, mostly).

This book, and George Michael's song 'I want your sex,' have made work today quite wonderful.

Benedetti Translations

I think I'll start some poetry translations of Benedetti this weekend. That'll help me get into his voice...I should really read La Tregua, I've decided, but that'll have to be not this week, since I have to finish the Appiah, and begin and finish the Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Submission!

Well, I offically submitted to another contest, and I just did that...good thing I did, considering the contest is over at midnight XD. It's through New Millenium Writings (www.writingawards.com), in case you're curious about that. I submitted my new short story--this time titled 'The Mortgage.' I would have loved to submit 'Red,' but they said short-shorts had to be a certain amount, and it's a little bit longer than that. Oh, well. Perhaps I should see what happens if I cut my short-shorts, although they already seem short enough. Anyway, I've got to finish the Appiah book, because I'm having a book discussion on The Unbearable Lightness of Being on Sunday. So. That's that.

Love to all!

The Mortgage/ The Dead Pledge

So, I've finished the short story! It was just like any other story I write, but by forcing myself to extend it to 2000 words or more (it's still pretty short, but not a short-short), I was able to have it go in directions I only thought possible if you were writing something of, say, the length of a novel. But it was an inbetween of the two, and I loved doing it. Editing is still in line and all that, but, I'm just very happy to have finished my first good real short story (in my college career, anyway--there are plenty I've written in the past). It's titled 'The Mortgage,' although it was originally titled, 'The Dead Pledge.' I'll switch back and forth between the two, but truth be told, 'The Dead Pledge' was far too hard to figure out unless you were thinking of mortgages. Maybe I'll be a jerk and title it 'The Mortgage and/or The Dead Pledge,' but I think I'd only do that for a comedic piece, which this certainly is not. Here's a tiny bit from the beginning:

It all begins around the time my cup’s half empty. It must be a trick of the midday light, but I swear on this house I’m sitting in, that I see those slender legs, ankles crossed, sitting at the window. Your hair changes color every week, and today it’s some sort of auburn, with little wisps of blonde in the front. A couple strands hit your smile. Oh, good, you’re smiling today. It lights up your entire face, did you know that? You look down and nod slowly—of course you know, I’ve told you a thousand times before. When you look up, you aren’t smiling.

Books I've Decided To Read, in the next couple months or so

Experiments in Ethics by Appiah--I'll be finishing that one up this week.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera.

And, before I go to France, at least, The Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.

There are of course the other books I spoke of, but those are the kind you can flip through randomly; what I mean to say is, the books just mentioned are ones that'll go stale if you don't read them with enough time on your hands.

Socrates on a Plane

Today my boss was talking to me and he said, "Sit down. I want to tell you a story." And that's when I realized that my almost-finished SOAP has to be made into a screenplay. Damned revelations.

After some thought, I've decided on Virginia Woolf. She hung out with Lady Ottoline Morrell and Bertrand Russell. She's got to be cool--and her writing. Well. It sounds astounding.

In other news, I've started writing at work...I started doing it during lunch break...and now...well, it's unstoppable.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-392840/Lady-Ottoline-Morrell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Ottoline_Morrell

Readings

I guess it's always important to write about what books you're in the midst of reading, if you're going to have enough confidence to write in general. So, here goes with the summer books:

Gracias Por El Fuego (Thanks for the Fire) by Mario Benedetti. I'm considering translating a couple of his books for Comp Lit, whether or not I do Honors. So I'm reading up on him. The book itself is *really* political--about Uruguay--so on the one hand I feel very comfortable with it (it's Uruguayan), but on the other hand I don't (it's about politics). My mother tells me his best book is La Tregua (The Truce) , and says I should read it, but she says it's terribly sad. I know what it's about--a widower who falls in love with a young woman at work--and I don't know if I could handle reading that considering preference for older men. But perhaps that will make the read all the worthwhile. Look Benedetti up here if you want... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Benedetti. Super-famous, only has had one book (of shorts!) translated into the English. I'm considering contacting his publisher next time I'm in Uruguay, although if he's in Spain, I should give it a try while I'm abroad next fall.

Experiments in Ethics by Kwame Anthony Appiah. This was recommended from http://www.ethics-etc.com/ (and I recommend that site to you). It just arrived in the mail yesterday, so I haven't started reading it yet, but I'm planning on doing a tiny bit of that while waiting for Kate today for lunch. So, hopefully, that'll be good.

The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan. One chapter left in this one--I read it for my botany book, and I'll be done with it soon (reading Pollan--not writing the book). I recommend ANYTHING by Michael Pollan. I heard he's kind of a jerk, but I want to bone him anyway. He has a very yummy love for thinking.

I'm up for reading some Edith Wharton or Haruki Murakami, but I'd love some recommendations. I'm also in the Raymond Carver mood, but I think I've read everything by him...why did he have to die? Got any recommendations?

I'm starting up a new short story today. Two goals: (1) make it good and (2) make it long enough to be an actual short story, as opposed to a short-short (which is what all my short stories are right now).

Sneak Peek: Wiki says, 'The term [mortgage] comes from the Old French, dead pledge.'

Contests!

So, I sent out an excerpt from the botany book today, to Glimmer Train, which is a pretty presitigious literary magazine, but what I applied for specifically was 'The Fiction Open,' which actively looks for new writers as opposed to already-published ones. You can check it out at www.glimmertrain.org if you like, by becoming a member (which takes like, two seconds). What's great is that you can do it all via internet, and don't have to deal with annoying mail, SASE (self-addressed-stamped envelopes), manuscript formats, etc...Here's a little portion of what I sent--you can skip it if you want by just scrolling down the block-quote.

Before I could finish comprehending my thoughts on the playwright, Lilly opened my door, grabbed my hand, ran with me, and took my love in the middle of a golden field. It all seems very romantic, this much is true, but the romantic version doesn’t account for the scratches on my knees and dirt stains on Lilly’s dress, or for the kidnapped child sitting in my car, or for the fact that my wife and I were officially criminals. Quite articulate criminals, perhaps, but criminals nonetheless. All these worries disappear amidst an orgasm, but return when the rest of the world creeps back into your own.

Anyway, after that, I typed up a manuscript version of 'Red,' a short story I put together during January. Prof. Chaon had read that and loved it along with another story ('I'm Just Joking'). They're apparently both very Raymond Carver-y. I'm sending it out to the Writers' Forum Short Story Competition, hosted by Writers International Limited. (You can find them at www.writers-forum.org.) I'm very, very lucky that my parents support me on my decision not only to be a writer, but that they have always supported my decision to write. This makes it easier to have to pay entry fees, as long as postage fees are paid all the way to Dorset. I will also leave you a piece of 'Red,' and that will be the last for you. Au revoir.

When I touched the corners of her paper, I thought of the corners of her mouth. I could feel the heat of her thoughts as I traced the pen marks through the paper. But I didn’t unfold the thing.

C'est une blog!

This is my first post on my blog! Welcome, everyone! I love writing, John Cusack movies, exclamation points, Amy Winehouse (and/or Mahler), and hummus.

nota bene (sp?): We will not speak of rejections on this site. That's not good karma. Unless it seems proper to do so. But perseverance is what matters; as long as you are true to yourself, nothing else can be more obvious.