Juniper Summer Writing Institute

So, among many other things that have happened, I was accepted into the Juniper Summer Writing Insitute at UMass. I've applied to a good amount of summer workshops, and I've gotten into two (that one and the one at Indiana University). I'm definitely going to the Juniper Institute, because it seems to be highly lauded, and is at one of the *top-ten* schools in the country. The other one is at a school I absolutely adore from a paragraph I read about and visits to its website, but the program itself is for just about anyone. Which is fine, but that all depends on my summer job.

Currently I'm doing summer job stuff, and I've been meaning to see if anyone in the Hispanic Studies Department is interested in having someone do research over the summer, so I need to make sure I do that. That's not really writing-related, though. So sorry to get on that tangent, I'm just thinking about it lots lately.

As for how writing is going, I'm working on an expansion of the Los Angeles story, and then I'm working on some creative writing applications for next fall. I'm really busy, but I'll post something better soon.

--Me!

A Long Overdue Update

Well, it's certainly been a while, that's for sure. I've got a completely legitimate explanation: I'm taking 17 credits this semester. Some of my friends are going through totally intense stuff. Really, the only reason that I'm posting something right now is because I'm feeling a little bit lonely, it's midterms, and I don't want to work on my Philosophy of Language paper just yet, even if Frege's a fabulous guy.

Writing's been going pretty well; I realized that if I write stories that are closer to the truth--such as the one I just wrote called Berkeley, California--I should try to write them in the third person. I should also try elongating them, as my story will be end up being carried more by plot than character. I turned an intense portfolio of work for a competition here at school for the Creative Writing department, so now a bunch of my works are in tip-top shape, which is GREAT! This includes the titles Red, Strange English, The Naked Diner, I'm Just Joking, and Sleeping with Scarlett. I was describing the stories to a friend of mine and I realized just how bizarre my stories can seem sometimes. Anyways, I had a friend look over a couple, and she asked, "Why aren't you a creative writing major?" That's always totally flattering. But, hey, philosophy and comparative literature make my writing more wonderful than creative writing classes, and that's about it.

I bought the 2008 Pushcart Prize on Amazon.com, as well as Mary Gaitskill's short story collection Bad Behavior (published by Vintage--I found out about her reading an article about her in Poets and Writers Magazine). Anyways, the collection of Puschart Prize stories was actually quite horrendous...the writers certainly had good ideas, but the stories felt ridiculously unpolished, messy, rushed...I was very shocked that they had won such prestigious awards. Perhaps I know too many amazing writers here, because I felt like they certainly could have written the prize-winning poems, and that they had some skills that the prize-winning stories were lacking. (To be fair, I've only read the first three stories and the first three poems.) Mary Gaitskill's short story collection, however, is absolutely amazing. She's wonderful. Her writing is clean and thoughtful, and intricately beautiful. It's also very disturbing. I'm a little bit over halfway through the collection, and I'm very grateful for the writing she's given to the world. As for the magazine I just mentioned, I bought a subscription because the one I bought randomly after a dinner out of town at the Barnes & Noble was totally fabulous.

I'm working a lot on philosophy, which certainly makes my writing far more organized and logical. I'm taking three classes, although one of them is a private reading. Plato's really great--I'm reading Republic and it's very beautiful, although it's got some contentious issues (just like any philosophy, but I would even say more than usual). So, that's my Ancient Philosophy class. I'm also taking a Philosophy of Language class, which is totally mindblowing, so it's great (although a little bit confusing). Aaand I'm taking a private reading in the Epistemology of Emotions with Professor D. Ganson, which is totally great. So I'm writing a bunch this weekend.

My Honors project is going fabulously, but anyways, I'm getting very distracted by a friend, so I'm going to go! And get dinner!

Adieu!

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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.'