Quote for 9-29-10

The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their power.


--Toni Morrison

new paths

I've finished a rough draft of a flash mystery story that I hope to sell to a woman's magazine. I also have an idea for a very sweet romantic story, which is something else they publish.

I'd sent them a poem before, the rejection said it wasn't the type of poetry they accept, though the person rejecting me said that the poem was "lovely."

I started looking at the magazine with a more critical eye, to get a feel for the work-- it's not literary, of course-- and I've decided not to be such a snob and write general/popular fiction and to do it for the money which would hopefully fund a future that allows me the freedom to write literary stuff, of course.

Quote for 9-28-10

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.

--Dilbert's School of Thoughts

Trying to continue to meet those deadlines. Oct 1 is a day after September 30. Yikes. But I'll keep writing, not much else I can do.

Quote for 9-26-10

Some stories are true that never happened.

--Elie Weisel

Quote for 9-25-10

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware off, no shortcut.


--Stephen King
from On Writing

Sept 30 around the corner

A few more contests I might enter. Have lots of story drafts to choose from and the two characters I devised when I was at Antioch.

We'll see what happens this week.

Hint Fiction

The anthology will be released November 1, and there are signings to be held in Pasadena, CA and in New York. More details when I get them.

I'm sooooooooooooooo excited to be in an anthology with Joyce Carol Oates!!!

Quote for 9-24-10

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.

--Orson Scott Card

Quote for 9-22-10

The story arises in the unconscious.

--Dorothea Brande

another acceptance!

A reprint. Yes, another. Am on a mission to get a lot of stories (I have about 30) that have fallen off the web back on it.

If you look to your right, you can see I've been busy putting up links to my online work and my ego wants that list to grow.

Quote for 9-21-10

In good writing, words become one with things.


--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today, I'm going to work on contest entries. Four contests I'm interested in, one I always enter and so far I've won something. It and another of the four take previously published so that makes it a bit easier. The other two, I plan on using the two stories just finished.

an acceptance

a reprint. I'm sending out lots of reprints due to online journals going defunct. Have written two new stories-- one that just blows me away--and I'm in the process of rewriting one that I mentioned a few posts ago. Found some notes I'd made about it/some lines I'd written and so that one needs a makeover.

Applying for another residency and am considering entering a chapbook contest. In the meantime, still writing.

Quote for 9-17-10

Pen, paper, perseverance, and proficiency.

--Duane Alan Hahn

Quote for 9-16-10

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.


--Ernest Hemingway

Stuff pressing down. Stuff as in DEADLINES. Have some anthology submissions that have got to get out to the publishers, an application for a residency that needed to be in the mail yesterday (!), a grant application that I need to request and then return!

Yikes!

But on the other hand, I am the revision of one story away from having that short story collection (finally) finished and complete. Had cold-called a publisher who had said I could send it-- do I do that or send it to the agent I met this summer? Or do I make a second collection and flip a coin? Hmmm


And last night I got the beginnings of a children's picture book dealing with the civil rights movement and James Lawson's nonviolent resistance teachings.

Yay!

Quote for 9-14-10

I make up stories so I can tell the truth.

-- Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

started moving links over from the other blog

my online works. Very slow going. This template is not as convenient as the other one.

I know somebody who knows somebody

and she told me if I wanted her help making my way into the writing industry to let her know.

She'd introduce me to her agent, even. And among other things. Wow. Such generosity.

I'm gonna tuck that little favor card away and pull it out when I need it.

My question exactly

There was an email in my box and it was about that caregiver's anthology that was supposed to come out in 2008 and then was going to come out in 2010 but it's in limbo or something.

I had emailed the woman who had taken over 'cause I was still hoping to get to Ireland but no reply.

The email was from a writer wondering, like me, wt-?

quote for 9-12-10

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

-- William Zinsser

Quote for 9-09-10

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.

--Andre Gide

forgot to mention

I have a poem up today at Camroc Press Review

Quote for 9-08-10

Despite the literary fashion, you have to be attuned to your own ear, your own gifts.


—Richard Wilbur

The poem came back-- with the suggestion that I submit again BUT WITH SEVERAL WORKS. Ha.

Tweaked that story and sent it out. Hope to finish another work today. My goal is to get 50 different/new works out.

I'm at two.

done!

worked on the story. the end was giving me troubles and those logistical things but it's done. a complete, not-so-bad draft. yay.

Writing quote for 9-06-10

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.


--Nadine Gordimer

another poem

The second I've written in uhm three years. Got it out.

Yes, I know generally poems go out to magazines in groups but at this poetry-writing rate, I'd be in my mid-50's before I had that packet ready;-p

A new story

Almost. Had it in my head for awhile. Some logistics to work out but I should finish it tomorrow.
fingers crossed.

Writing quote for 8-2-10

Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?
Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.
Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
Hemingway: Getting the words right.


--Ernest Hemingway
"The Art of Fiction," The Paris Review Interview, 1956