My graduate project on border issues

Immigration Stagnation

I wrote this article for a longform journalism course. Really proud of it, though I need to do a bit of tweaking to it.

 But I was already past deadline and my teacher was like, Uhmmm

You can read it here:

It's about Black dolls

Boo hoo but not really

 I did not progress past finalist for the de Groot Foundation Courage to Write contest. (Insert sad face.) I was in the top 5% and that's nice. That $7000 would have been nicer.😂

Yay!

I am a finalist for something. 

Can't say yet till the organization makes their formal announcement but I'm dancing around the kitchen!

Letting Go

 I wrote a story years ago and it was the best one I'd ever written. Wasn't my favorite GJM story but I admired its voice, structure, and language.  

Won me some prizes and money--I had to withdraw it from a contest once where the prize was $$ and the publication of a short story collection. The publisher told me the judges had chosen it as the winning story (insert sad face here) but  maybe the other, later awards made up for it.

I was applying for a fellowship and I wanted to use it but the story went over the page limit. I tried to squeeze as much as I could but there was just no making it fit the # boundary. Though I was frustrated and sad (I felt "safe" with the story because it had won prizes previously), I sent some other work.  I won the fellowship but I continued to send that story to other things.

I'm letting go of that work now. 

Love it and love what I did creatively then--but as S.E. Hinton would say: "That Was Then, This is Now." 

I've got something new that I love and am proud of. Not my favorite, and the story I've been writing about still is "my best to date" to me for several reasons, but I'm happy with this new piece, feel pretty confident about it.. 

It's what I'm sending out tonight and I'm not freaking out/worrying about my submission! Just need to stop procrastinating--but the time deadline is Pacific Time not Eastern so I've got an extra hour😂😉😏

Although I really don't want to be up past midnight. So I'll go get it done. 

Well, that was a year

So much--whew! Number of lives lost is staggering (thanks to the orange idiot), how quickly gun violence returned was not surprising but is very disheartening, anti-maskers and anti-vac --a big grrrrrr to you.

I have a lot of sanitizer I'm giving away. LOL!

Things here opening up completely July 1. The state is giving away 10 million dollars to those vaccinated--quarter mil to four persons at a time and then 5 mil straight up. But it was so difficult to get people stimulus checks-- insert sad face here for many. 

I did a chapbook with my daughter/her artwork paired with some stories.

It's called Colored Girl and is available on Kindle

Hope to do a book signing in a few months.

Have to resubmit to some festivals because they are postponing til 2022, and that's okay with me. 

I am applying for a writing-thing that I've wanted for a long time. Deadline is Monday and that's why I'm up procrastinating by blogging-ha!

I also submitted to something huge although that waiting-til-the-last-minute bit me you-know-where because there were a few mistakes as I was working on it just minutes before the time deadline. But what I submitted is good, man, it's really good so I hope they'll overlook some things. 

(Am convinced I will never learn or change my ways 'cause I'm up right now. . . )

I won something. I was one of the eight finalists  for the 2021 Daisy Pettles Writing Competition. Came in 2nd runner up.   Blog post about it here

good things

 I'm teaching creative writing next semester and I've got a reading in October (next year/God willing, the creek don't rise, and there's a vaccine).

I want this year to end and I don't

 Whew!

What a time, what a time.

I have several projects to finish and back in March--when time felt like it was not moving at all--I thought I had, well, time!

Now it's almost November and I'm cursing the procrastinator in me. (Although these are days of distraction.)

Gonna go look at the moon and then get to writing.

The first page of this novel I piddle with now and then was on the short list for a "first page" contest.  Inspired me to spend some more time on it.

I thought I know the plot but nah; the MC is telling me and I'm just writing it down.  Am about 58 pages into it.  Clinging to some pages I wrote previously even though I'm sure none of them will fit into what the MC's tale truly is.

The plan (can we laugh here 'cause, well, me and my plans!) is to write on it every day in the new year/decade. 

The plan, the plan. . .