Seasalt Artifacts

The seahorses are an allusion to a story I had written at the time he whisked off to Hilton Head. They mean "you were not invited but we are not far from each other." Artifacts ferrying adoration across 4 united states of separation, with a smell of sandy mayonnaise.

I write scared

Is there an occupation, an employment, a reason for living that invokes such an anxious, desperate exploration for talent within us? Than writing, I mean.

I'm crying cause I'm scared. I'm crying cause I'm a writer and I'm scared. I'm crying because I'm a lazy writer and scared. I write scared.

And the Internet is my foe. My foe set me atop the temple roof and the entire spread of literature - the past masters, with their  and the current masters, blogging and tweeting - and says "This cannot be yours."

Inadequacy. Books a million. Websites a million. And where is my place in it?

I feel like a goldfish in a hurricane. Yes, I have a blog (where I rarely write). Yes, I have a Twitter account (where I rarely write). But, I'm nobody. A nobody writer and too lazy, I fear, to become somebody!

It's come to the point that I get depressed when I read a good story (usually in my favorite lit mags where I can't get published.)

Too many metaphors. The length of the title destroys flash fiction as a construct. Well, screw you! This isn't for us.

So what? What do I do? I'm a young writer, a sheltered human being, who's only recently fallen in love for real. Only recently living on my own. My stories are often caricatured. Oh, how I miss this! I want to workshop so badly!

"No one writes like you." Says my David.

He's on vacation this week and I'm a little weepy. On Monday he told me that God has been speaking with him.God told him that he hasn't been composing in earnest. "I was trying to impress others and be complicated."

Today he says "No one writes like you." Don't compare yourself. It's a trap. You write. You write.

He's right. Writing, or composing, is creative. This means that every creation and its means will be individualized. Other writers cannot be my measuring sticks. I can study their techniques and learn from them, but I cannot judge my talent by theirs.

Talent and skill are not the same. If I am unsatisfied with my skill, then I should stop whining and sharpen it. If I am unsatisfied with my talent, that's okay, because I need so much more than just that.

Rather, if I'm so afraid, I should stop putting a limit on my experience and write in earnest, paying attention to articles on craft, exercising, and writing what I've got.

My love taught me, "No one writes like you." And, he says. "And I forbid you from reading Hobart."

Anybody's Blog Could Kick my Blog's Butt

Hello everyone who has read my work in [A cappella Zoo, Toasted Cheese, Hawk & Handsaw, Pif Magazine, Cheek Teeth, or other].

If you're wondering why you've clicked on the link to my blog - because it obviously has been abandoned by its addict/roadhog mother - here I am again.

I'm sorry to disappoint you. Recently I've moved from my mom's house to my very first "room of my own" apartment! I am drunk on freedom and devoid of a computer with internet.

As I've been striving to acquire a 5th day on my work schedule for the cinema that employs me, and as I prefer to spend several hours with my fiance on Sundays and Wednesdays, and when I sit down to write I work on "The Good Samaritan Drives us to San Jose" and "Maps in the Back of Bibles" (coming soon!) my blogging days have been mercilessly slashed.

I did not die - though, admittedly, that would have been pretty cool. I am alive. I've just finished the Nobel Prize-winning masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude and began reading Snow Country by Yusanari Kawabata today. I'm receiving rejection letter after letter. Ergo sum.

More to come, stay tuned, yada yada. Good night.

Free Write #1 ... Malapropism is What Adults Do

Aren't children clever? Soon - how soon? Already, they invent it. A way to cut through adults' weedy words. A way to grasp what they want. A way adults can grasp how much they mean it. Literary geniuses. My Hannah sits on her heels. Her strap-on shoes have fallen off four times. This bus that's coming won't let us pack our lives aboard. Just this much; it's so hard to explain. Just this much of you for the fare. This doll can go, this doll cannot. Pick your favorite. They're both my favorite. Again, how clever! If Shakespeare invented words, my daughter's Shakespearean. Is it words she invents or perceptions. Are words perceptions or translations? My thesaurus is not packed. Of my passport and paperclipped money, it is not my favorite. I love to hear my daughter interpret words she doesn't know. A thesaurus is a dinosaur. An oxymoron is a dumb cow. I give her a new word: Irony. She chews the word with her Now and Later, not liking the way turns the watermelon flavor tinny. Something that tastes like metal, she says. Irony, I turned my last English paper in yesterday. All that work and I won't know my grade. All those words I wove. I won't know if they were right. Not Hannah, because that's a child's superpower. The bus is chugging down the street. No, Hannah, sees the mortality of words. Even the paperthin can be split. The note we left on the Women's Mission door: "He will come. We won't be here." Adults reuse words like hard gum under the bus stop bench, chewing and chewing what saliva gradually won't loosen, because they can't find the right ones. But to children, everything is malleable, because reality has yet to pinned down by letters or sounds.

Answers for Are Muffin Tops Collapsible?

Busy!

A cappella Zoo began accepting submissions today and I've been reading and reviewing ever since my David went home.

New discovery: I love being an editor! It's what I want as my career. Throughout high school and college I thought: I'll teach creative writing or I'll be a librarian. Editor was a fallback. Not anymore.

In a different part of the forest, Pif Magazine has published my story "Answers for Are Muffin Tops Collapsible?"!

Good at Denial

"I'll go! I'll go! But you already wish I were gone."

Said the snotty girlfriend. Said the boy atop the slide. Said the suicide bomber.

The Legs Come Off Easily

My short story about Barbie-breaking, the hate of cuteness, and the horror of one-dimensional existence, The Legs Come Off Easily, is now online at A cappella Zoo's website!


I more than merely reccomend you read the remainder of the issue, I implore you (sets spinning her red and white hyptnotist's wheel) from my benevolent heart,

read A cappella Zoo, read A cappella Zoo,

listen to my words,

it's good for you...

Now I will snap my fingers and you will buy me a caramel Frappe.