My Writerly Blog

That's my goal, every weekday, from now until classes start at the end of September. If I can hit it, that will mean approximately 105,000 words in 7 weeks, translating to a finished draft of the La Llorona novel, several new short stories, and a buttload of blog posts. There will be setbacks, I'm sure. Like today - chaotic morning getting out of the house, dentist appointment that ran way late, soccer at 5, movie at 7. 3000 words have to be shoved in there somewhere. And next week is the Edinburgh Literary Festival, which will take up 3 days. Hmm. But I've got weekend buffer zones, which will hopefully help me catch up. And hey, I've done several 90k-in-4-weeks Novembers, thanks to NaNoWriMo. I just need these words out of the way. I need to send stories in to some competitions, to get a few more published. I need to finish this novel that's been hanging over my head as I take on more and more projects. I need to start writing some stories for my PhD proj...

No, there's not much chance I could keep up with things enough to post a weekly update every week. But I wanted to pull together a collection of the things I've been looking at and reading lately. Please add on to it in the comments if you know of something I might enjoy! Chris Joseph's blog Flight Paths Drunken Boat The Iowa Review Dreaming Methods ( Consensus Trance is the most recent, and it's great fun. I particularly love the way the author has incorporated nonlinear and ludic elements in a primarily linear story.) Net Art Commissions on Turbulence ELO's Electronic Literature Collection e-Fiction Book Club Novelr Digital Fiction Show And a short story on the web that I absolutely loved: "Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four Hour Book Store" by Robin Sloan It's interesting to me that electronic literature is already splitting off into a gajillion splinter genres: visual novels, ludic stories, digital poetry, twitter fiction, serials, Flash fiction (...

I've written fiction now for a while, always intended for print publication. The adages there are always "first drafts are shit," "we're not writers, we're REwriters," and "revise, revise, revise." We hear about Hemingway reworking his prose over and over, until he was merely deleting and inserting the same comma. It works for print fiction. It leaves you with a refined, polished piece that (hopefully) no one can poke holes in. Every writer develops a process for their stories. Some sit down and write and write and write, letting whatever may come out spill across the page, the story shaping itself minute by minute. Others plan and plan and plan, like navigators mapping a trip. They know exactly where they're going, and how to get there. I've always been a bit in between. I know where I'm going - I have a destination - and I vaguely know some stops I might make along the way, but I'm usually up for interesting detours an...

It's a lovely week. I teach two classes (same module, twice) for the English department, and on the schedule this week rose two lovely words: "Reading Week." It's a really fancy way to say "no class." So I've only had to focus on teaching my poetry classes, which means I have today (Thursday), and all of tomorrow afternoon to do what I'm meant to be doing every week: writing for my PhD project. What am I doing right now? Paying bills, backing up my computer, researching kilts in my clan tartan, commenting on Facebook photos... Some call it procrastination. I call it warm-up. My list for the day: finish doing my US taxes, run, cycle, ride my horse, write a blog entry, and get 1000 more words down on my story. I'm forcing myself to write on the story for an hour before I can run, cycle, or ride. 10 a.m., and here I am, just beginning to write a blog entry. I'm thinking it's like getting to the pitch an hour before the game, meanderin...

It's been a crazy week already. My ninja plan is in place, and making me feel a bit excited, even though nothing is for sure. At least I have something to work toward. I also, miraculously, through failing to check my calendar and thus attending a very important all-day seminar, got some work done. I know, it was hard for me to breathe for a minute, too. My list of accomplishments from the last 4 days includes: Submission (and subsequent acceptance) of my abstract to the 2009 MeCCSA Postgraduate Conference . I will be presenting my paper "The Shifting Author-Reader Dynamic: Online Novel Communities as a Bridge from Print to Digital Literature." Submission (and subsequent acceptance) of my abstract to the 2009 Great Writing Conference . I will be reading my short story (WIP, but completed by then), and using accompanying visuals and discussion for my adaptation to digital format. A very behind-the-ball submission of my paper "The Shifting Author-Reader Dynamic...

My short story " A Queen for a King " has been published in the October 2008 issue of Electric Spec . Brief description: Mabon’s father warned him about the temptations in the forest. But you can’t stop love, lust, or fairy dust. Let me know how you like it!

My short story "Wish in One Hand" has been published in the Summer 2008 issue of Glassfire Magazine. Brief description: One wants freedom, the other a hole to hide in. Magic and desire drive two women to change their fates. Let me know how you like it!

Welcome to the twentieth Storyblogging Carnival. Previous Storyblogging Carnivals are archived here . Today we have ten entries from some of our favorite writers. Please note: As this is my first time hosting the carnival, I may have gotten things screwy. Let me know if links don't work, etc. Thanks! Enjoy! ________________________________________________ A sarcastic cyborg debriefs by Mark A. Rayner of The Skwib A 325 word short short rated PG-13. Imagining what a Dalek might say to a government interviewer when captured. This is skwibby fiction: stories inspired by news and current events (in this case a New Scientist piece about the nature of sarcasm). ________________________________________________ The Frog Vice-President: A Long Limbed Tale by Jason Pomerantz of Fiddle and Burn: A Daily Comic Strip in Prose A short satire, rated PG. A fairy tale of the present, ripped from today's headlines. ________________________________________________ The Meaning of a Flush by E...

The words “cheap” and “wedding” don’t often stutter-step down the aisle together. The average wedding nowadays goes for somewhere in the ballpark of a down payment on a house – not a shack, not a one-bedroom tin-can, but a respectable two-story with a garage and plenty of schools close by. “The budget of that wedding today was more in the ballpark of the down payment on a Ford Probe. I was so overdressed in my sundress and fancy wide-brimmed wedding hat, I felt like the Duchess of York at J-Lo’s backyard barbecue,” Leslie lamented, flopping on the bed in her dress that Sarah Ferguson would only have worn in her pre-royalty days, slumming it. Maybe. “Your ‘wedding hat’?” Roy repeated, stripping off his dress shirt and tossing it blindly across the room. “I didn’t think there was any such thing.” “Of course there’s not any such thing as a wedding hat.” She twirled the object in question on her finger, admiring its sleek grace, and feeling rather stuck up about how stylish it had ma...

The dogs outside announced his arrival. Charlotte stared at him as he hobbled toward the front door. She wished her mother were here to tell her what to do. She wished there were another way. He rang the doorbell; she reached for the rifle, knowing that today was to be one of those days when the gun was the only thing old Nate Whiting might listen to. Though she’d known it was coming, the chime of the doorbell still startled her. Clutching the butt of the gun – a twenty-year-old .22 he’d given her for her sixteenth birthday – she gathered up the emotions that kept her waking up to answer his call every day, and swung the heavy oak door wide open. “Morning, Dad,” she said through the screen door. He squinted at her, placing her face. “Which one’re you?” “Charlotte, Dad.” “Speak up!” “I’m Charlotte,” she repeated loudly. She cracked open the screen door, letting in a brace of biting winter air, and hollered at the dogs. “Hush up!” The dogs’ yapping trailed off. Her father grunt...

July 9, 2004 1:00 p.m. She said she loved me, and I wanted to kill myself. “Christ, Mother, I know that already,” I snapped at her. How could I not? Over my twenty-two years, I had learned that my mother used the word “love” like a sixth grade English teacher uses punctuation: as a tool. As a garnish. As a manipulator. She drew back from me, and the pearly pins ready to decorate my hair paused. “Well, Louise, there’s no need to be snarky about it. I only try to do what’s best for you, you know.” “I am aware that’s what you tell yourself.” I sighed and gestured for her to resume pinning my hair. I had to: somewhere out in that enormous gothic nightmare of a cathedral a man was waiting for me to walk down the aisle. Waiting to whisk me away to our new home 3,482 miles away from my hovering mother. A man who rarely said he loved me, which at the time was just fine by me. Now, sitting here in an open-air hut in the middle of an uncivilized jungle, I would desperately like to laug...

I lost my virginity to my cousin when I was fifteen years old. We were the same age, but she was infinitely more experienced than I, and — well, to tell you the truth, fifteen is a very horny year. It’s not so incestuous as it sounds; Chrissy is my uncle’s stepdaughter, so we don’t share more than the normal amount of random genes. She’s been my best friend since I was four years old, so it was inevitable that we would do it. After all, that crap about guys being friends with girls and not wanting to get in their pants, that’s just pure propaganda. Generated by us guys, of course, in an attempt to strip off all of our female friends’ underpants. I tongue the memory idly in my brain now as I drive down the flat, two-lane highway between circular fields of cotton and maize seven years later, cotton drifting lazily across my windshield. I could make this drive home from the university in Austin with my eyes closed; all I have to do is aim in the direction that smells the dustiest, bl...