Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Small notes of update

- I wrote my first poem of 2011 and sent out my first submission of 2011. I am quite pleased with the poem. I read it to my husband, and he loved it, too, but noted that if/when I publish it, it will make public something about myself that I'm a little iffy making a public thing. I think the trick, for this particular poem , will be the right venue of publication. I'm sorry I am not more specific. That is the nature of such issues.

- AWP is coming up and for the first time in what feels like a lot longer than it actually is I will not be attending. The reasons are multiple. Not enough money. Not enough motivation. Not enough reason. I'll miss it, to be sure, especially when everyone is tweeting/facebooking about how simultaneously awful and awesome the official dance parties are, but some of the friends who I go in order to see aren't going to be there, and DC is expensive, and I have a child in school, and blah blah blah. I was not upset about it, then I was really upset, then I was sort of upset, and now I'm not upset again. I've not been as active in the "literary world" in the past 365 days as I was during the 365 days before. The reasons are multiple. I am happier now.

- I love writing reviews for this blog. I think I might be getting better at it? You know who writes really amazing reviews and I am humbled by? Phoebe North. I was all proud of my skills, then I read her latest review. Har.

- I considered installing a hit counter on my blog, but then decided that I already make up enough reasons to be depressed without creating more for the sheer masochism of it.

- It is about the time of year when Winter issues of literary journals start pouring out. New Goblin Fruit is up (with amazing art/design in addition to lovely poetry, as always). PANK's latest print issue is heading out to contributors and their January online issue is up as well. Artifice just reminded me I need to renew my subscription. I have realized that, in spite of being all online-y I am not hip to the hippest online lit mags. I will rememdy this in the following year, but that is not a resolution, dammit.

- When will the weather be nice in Pennsylvania again? I'm not 100% certain I can wait 5 months to go camping and hike and take walks in my neighborhood and not be freezing my ass off every morning when I get in my car. Listen to me whine. Whine whine whine.

- If anyone knows where I can locate a good recipe for gluten free chocolate chip cookies, I will be very happy and will immediately throw away the monstrosities that I made last night. Good lord. Bob's Red Mill usually does all right, but not in this case. Maybe I'll start reviewing gluten-free baking mixes. I sure use enough of them, and seem to select them completely at random.

3 comments:

Phoebe North said...

- I love writing reviews for this blog. I think I might be getting better at it? You know who writes really amazing reviews and I am humbled by? Phoebe North. I was all proud of my skills, then I read her latest review. Har.


Oh my god! Blushing. Thank you so much.

Funny thing is, the reviews started as something that I just did for myself in my blog, too. And they were all, like, a paragraph long (now I can't write one under a thousand words, it seems). I think it's impossible to regularly exercise one's critical muscles without improvement. :)

Margaret Bashaar said...

I love your reviews - for real. It gives me hope that you started doing it just for the heck of it, too.

I spent the few years after graduating from college not exercising my critical muscles at all, but the sad thing is that I really enjoy doing so - I like writing reviews and reading books with a critical eye as well as for fun.

SavannahSchrollGuz said...

I totally agree with you about AWP (being okay with not going, then feeling like I'll be missing out). I haven't been as involved in the lit world either (I even purposely failed to renew my Poets & Writer's subscription), and I find I'm a whole lot more content, too. I don't know what it is...pressure I guess, pressure to achieve, and sometimes that closes the valves on the creativity flow. :-)