Thanks, Isabel Allende! I've decided to try out a little something for a book of great beauty, the Botany Story, which is to switch between first and third person (but still always following the same character, the botany professor). I don't know how well it will work, as I'm obsessed with my narrator, but the problem is is that he strays away from plot often, and I need a little bit more control over it. Also, I think he sounds too much like me, and perhaps if I stay a little bit away from him, that will happen too. So we'll see. We're all post-post-post-post modern here, so anything's possible structure-wise, so I might as well experiment. It's a big intense book after all, and I won't be able to work on it all spring (snif) because I'll be working on the translation of Benedetti's book for my Honors project.

Speaking of Isabel Allende, I've totally forgotten to post up what I *did* get to read after I left Paris. While I only got fifty more pages into Middlemarch, I was able to finish House of Spirits by Isabel Allende. Just yesterday, I finished reading Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, in the original French, yay! I'm going to be reading a book of shorts by that guy who just won the Nobel Prize this week, although I doubt I'll get through the whole book. Anyways, we'll see about that too.

Myself, I need to work on being back in the States again. I'm finally home, but I'm afraid that I've been gone so long, that that might not really be the name of this place anymore. I'm going to do some work today at Java Zone after lunch, and I'm letting myself work on whatever fiction I need. Because I need it to feel more in place, I guess.

Oh, God, Mika. I know for a fact that my taste in music is terrible, but I don't care. I love Mika.

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

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!

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!!

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.

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?

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.