First and foremost there is a wonderful literary event - a small press festival - coming up here in Pittsburgh this weekend. It promises to be one of the most awesome Pittsburgh literary events of the year -- there's to be a bookfair, panels (which I am on one of), a workshop being run by Laura and myself, and events all throughout this month. If you're in the area you should stop on by! It's only $5.00 for panels and workshops and the bookfair is free.
I've begun to slowly, hesitantly send out my chapbook to a couple of presses. I'm very nervous and the amount of email checking that has been going on here is obscene. I like my manuscript and I really feel it works well as a unit. Now I just have to hope that an editor agrees with me.
My husband is going on retreat for the month of August and I'm not looking forward to it. He's a huge help with my son, he makes me food and coffee in the morning, he takes care of me when I've had a really bad day at work, he helps me not despair over things, and he's generally just nice to have around. I'm really really really going to miss him. Is that selfish? He says this is important to him so I'm trying to have an open mind about it, but it really makes me sad to think of him being gone for 6 out of 7 days of the week. I'll survive of course, but I'll be glad when he's home for more than one day out of the week. I'll miss him.
I've been writing a bit lately. Had a very nice workshop this weekend with Crystal, Renee and Laura. I think I've started a new poem. I hope I have.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Thirteen Myna Birds
5 of my poems are up (ephemerally) over at Thirteen Myna Birds! I have a particular fondness for one of them, too. I'm very glad it's found such a lovely home!
Monday, July 6, 2009
Aging
So I've noticed the first tiny fine line on my forehead. Of course I freaked out at first. Then I calmed down. Then I got indignant because I still get tiny pimples on my forehead and I mean come on that's just unfair.
I want to age gracefully. No hair dying or plucking or face lifts or botox. There's one woman I work with who is probably in her late 40's or early 50's who has aged so gracefully - she has white streaks in her hair that are lovely because she wears them so well and so boldly. She has lines on her face that she has not tried to cover or hide or strip away. She's beautiful and she is her age and she's just elegant. This is how I want to be.
Now if I can just find the strength to be it.
I want to age gracefully. No hair dying or plucking or face lifts or botox. There's one woman I work with who is probably in her late 40's or early 50's who has aged so gracefully - she has white streaks in her hair that are lovely because she wears them so well and so boldly. She has lines on her face that she has not tried to cover or hide or strip away. She's beautiful and she is her age and she's just elegant. This is how I want to be.
Now if I can just find the strength to be it.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Small Children and Writing
Over the next two weeks I will have my son with me full time. On one hand this is absolutely wonderful -- we get to work on potty training (something I question his father's devotion to), we get to do fun things together (this weekend we went to the aviary and went out for ice cream with my friend Crystal), and Ben tends to be an all-around good time. You know, except for that potty training thing that we're still having trouble with. It's always something. Before it was sleeping through the night. Now it's the potty. In fact, I am currently sitting with Ben as he sits on the potty.
Now to the down side -- I fear I will get no writing done for the next two weeks. As I've lamented in previous posts it's not like I have a terribly high writing output to begin with, and I fear that none will get done at all these next two weeks. Perhaps I should be working on poetry rather than a blog post?
I'll probably stay late after work, go to a nearby coffee shop and write until the daycare is about to close, and perhaps I'll get a little bit in after he goes to bed. I'll manage. The weekend is usually when I write (this is when his father spends time with him), but his father will be at a convention next weekend and needs me to watch him, and this weekend I got to have him for the 4th of July (and he wasn't at all scared of the fireworks, though he did repeatedly tell my husband and I that we needed to be careful not to get burned by them), so it is to be busy busy mommy time!
Do any of you with kids have any tips on balancing having a child and getting writing done? He's 4 so he's not really all that able to entertain himself most of the time. I haven't had to develop these skills because of my arrangements with Ben's father, so any advice would be appreciated.
Now to the down side -- I fear I will get no writing done for the next two weeks. As I've lamented in previous posts it's not like I have a terribly high writing output to begin with, and I fear that none will get done at all these next two weeks. Perhaps I should be working on poetry rather than a blog post?
I'll probably stay late after work, go to a nearby coffee shop and write until the daycare is about to close, and perhaps I'll get a little bit in after he goes to bed. I'll manage. The weekend is usually when I write (this is when his father spends time with him), but his father will be at a convention next weekend and needs me to watch him, and this weekend I got to have him for the 4th of July (and he wasn't at all scared of the fireworks, though he did repeatedly tell my husband and I that we needed to be careful not to get burned by them), so it is to be busy busy mommy time!
Do any of you with kids have any tips on balancing having a child and getting writing done? He's 4 so he's not really all that able to entertain himself most of the time. I haven't had to develop these skills because of my arrangements with Ben's father, so any advice would be appreciated.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Subscription Drive over at Weave, SPF, publishing, etc.
First, if you have not yet checked it out, I would like to direct you to Weave Magazine's subscription drive. We're attempting to get 30 subscriptions in 30 days and we've fallen a couple subscriptions behind, so we'd really appreciate the purchase if you were to make one! Subscriptions are at a discounted price for the next 4 days only! $12.00 gets you two issues of Weave. $19.00 gets you issues 1-3. So go forth and purchase!
I'm also very excited to say that four of my poems are going to be published in an anthology edited by Naomi Shihab Nye titled Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25. I'm thrilled to get to be a part of this anthology and cannot wait to read the rest of the anthology. The book is to be published by Greenwillow Books, which is an imprint of HarperCollins. Exciting stuff.
In some local poetry news, Pittsburgh will be hosting a small press festival called SPF this upcoming July. The festival is being directed by and was conceptualized by the good people over at Open Thread. If you have a small press and are in the area you should consider getting a table before the July 1st deadline. There are a lot of presses already signed up and, of course, Weave is happily one of them.
I am so very thankful that it is Friday and I am no longer at work. It is a bit sad that I go through the entire week anticipating the weekend. Don't get me wrong - I am extraordinarily grateful for my job. I like my boss. The work isn't terrible. But auditing is certainly not something that makes me get up in the morning all excited. Ever. Maybe some day I'll be able to afford to go to graduate school and get my career redirected somewhat. Or perhaps it's just a grass-is-greener sort of thing and I should be happy with the work I am doing. I'm editing Weave with Laura, I'm running The TypewriterGirls with Crystal, I'm writing, and I'm publishing. Really, I've got nothing to complain about. I just get so despondent at work sometimes. This heavy feeling between my chest and my stomach. If only I could just get past it.
On a less depressing note, this weekend my friend Bill and I are sitting down to talk about the cover art for issue 03 of Weave. I've sent him a bit of the poetry we've accepted and he may be creating a response to the work as the cover. He also does portraits with the poet Huang Xiang that you can take a look at through the above link, and we're also talking about potentially using one of those. I'll also be heading to Windber this weekend for my friends' performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is bound to be an interesting time.
I've noticed I'm terrible at titling my blog posts. Perhaps I should just abstain entirely.
I'm also very excited to say that four of my poems are going to be published in an anthology edited by Naomi Shihab Nye titled Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25. I'm thrilled to get to be a part of this anthology and cannot wait to read the rest of the anthology. The book is to be published by Greenwillow Books, which is an imprint of HarperCollins. Exciting stuff.
In some local poetry news, Pittsburgh will be hosting a small press festival called SPF this upcoming July. The festival is being directed by and was conceptualized by the good people over at Open Thread. If you have a small press and are in the area you should consider getting a table before the July 1st deadline. There are a lot of presses already signed up and, of course, Weave is happily one of them.
I am so very thankful that it is Friday and I am no longer at work. It is a bit sad that I go through the entire week anticipating the weekend. Don't get me wrong - I am extraordinarily grateful for my job. I like my boss. The work isn't terrible. But auditing is certainly not something that makes me get up in the morning all excited. Ever. Maybe some day I'll be able to afford to go to graduate school and get my career redirected somewhat. Or perhaps it's just a grass-is-greener sort of thing and I should be happy with the work I am doing. I'm editing Weave with Laura, I'm running The TypewriterGirls with Crystal, I'm writing, and I'm publishing. Really, I've got nothing to complain about. I just get so despondent at work sometimes. This heavy feeling between my chest and my stomach. If only I could just get past it.
On a less depressing note, this weekend my friend Bill and I are sitting down to talk about the cover art for issue 03 of Weave. I've sent him a bit of the poetry we've accepted and he may be creating a response to the work as the cover. He also does portraits with the poet Huang Xiang that you can take a look at through the above link, and we're also talking about potentially using one of those. I'll also be heading to Windber this weekend for my friends' performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is bound to be an interesting time.
I've noticed I'm terrible at titling my blog posts. Perhaps I should just abstain entirely.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Busy busy busy
I finished up two drafts of poems this weekend, which is quite a lot for me. I usually don't work on more than one poem at a time, either, so this is sort of a breakthrough in a moderately pathetic kind of way.
I know I don't write nearly as much as I should and this has been proven by the fact that I am literally out of poems that I am happy enough with to send out the door in hopes of publication. I have five poems that are in varying stages of completeness, but none that are truly submission-worthy right now. And of course there is the glut of poems that will never see the light of day.
I was looking forward to doing a round of submissions to a number of literary journals I really like that are open during the summer months, but, barring a miracle, this will clearly not happen. My writing hasn't been able to keep up with my submitting.
Submitting is so easy, so, so much easier to do on my lunch break when my mind is still half auditing. It's quicker, it gives me an instant sense of accomplishment, and it doesn't involve switching from that part of my brain that deals with numbers and the rules of hospital accounting to the part of my brain that works creatively. I also get a weird sort of high from having five to ten submissions out at a time, even when they come back as rejections. I can't quite explain it, but I definitely get some kind of rush from it.
Lately I've been feeling pressure (from myself alone) to produce more, as though I am not busy enough already between the TypewriterGirls, Weave, being a mother, working for 8 hours a day, the Pittsburgh Small Press Festival (SPF), and the writing that I do do. Clearly I need to put more pressure on myself.
There is just so much that I want to do, so much that I want to write. I don't have enough time each weekend to get it in and still relax a little bit, and I certainly don't have time during the week.
This is all very frustrating. And let's not even get in to my chapbook angst.
In other new altogether holy crap Gary Snyder is going to be at next year's AWP. I must shamefully admit that I have only recently begun reading Gary Snyder's work, and in part because I saw him in a documentary on Buddhism, but really The Call of the Wild is just as lovely a poem as my dear friend Crystal assured me it would be.
I'm in a panel proposal for the 2010 AWP, so there's a decent likelihood that I will have to be there (oh, the tragedy). Crystal and I are already looking into plane tickets. Hah.
I feel like something is about to happen.
I know I don't write nearly as much as I should and this has been proven by the fact that I am literally out of poems that I am happy enough with to send out the door in hopes of publication. I have five poems that are in varying stages of completeness, but none that are truly submission-worthy right now. And of course there is the glut of poems that will never see the light of day.
I was looking forward to doing a round of submissions to a number of literary journals I really like that are open during the summer months, but, barring a miracle, this will clearly not happen. My writing hasn't been able to keep up with my submitting.
Submitting is so easy, so, so much easier to do on my lunch break when my mind is still half auditing. It's quicker, it gives me an instant sense of accomplishment, and it doesn't involve switching from that part of my brain that deals with numbers and the rules of hospital accounting to the part of my brain that works creatively. I also get a weird sort of high from having five to ten submissions out at a time, even when they come back as rejections. I can't quite explain it, but I definitely get some kind of rush from it.
Lately I've been feeling pressure (from myself alone) to produce more, as though I am not busy enough already between the TypewriterGirls, Weave, being a mother, working for 8 hours a day, the Pittsburgh Small Press Festival (SPF), and the writing that I do do. Clearly I need to put more pressure on myself.
There is just so much that I want to do, so much that I want to write. I don't have enough time each weekend to get it in and still relax a little bit, and I certainly don't have time during the week.
This is all very frustrating. And let's not even get in to my chapbook angst.
In other new altogether holy crap Gary Snyder is going to be at next year's AWP. I must shamefully admit that I have only recently begun reading Gary Snyder's work, and in part because I saw him in a documentary on Buddhism, but really The Call of the Wild is just as lovely a poem as my dear friend Crystal assured me it would be.
I'm in a panel proposal for the 2010 AWP, so there's a decent likelihood that I will have to be there (oh, the tragedy). Crystal and I are already looking into plane tickets. Hah.
I feel like something is about to happen.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Wow, it's June
And I haven't written here since March. So much for actually being a blogger.
I've never been good with keeping up with a blog. I have these ideas that seem grand when I come up with them and then for one reason or another they don't work out.
But I will persevere! I will try to be more reliable!
The past few months have been very busy for me. I got married. Bit of a time-devourer, that. We had a very fun wedding after party and were fortunate enough to also have a Buddhist ceremony, in addition to the legal ceremony. I cried a lot.
There have also been two TypewriterGirls shows (The TypewriterGirls Try Drag and The TypewriterGirls Try Politics) since March. Both went exceptionally well by my estimation - good crowd, great readers and performers, great music, and amazing friends.
I always love putting on TypewriterGirls shows and working with Crystal. She's hilarious (unlike me) and constantly full of energy for the shows. We've been lucky in that we have found talented performers and poets like the lovely Mary Biddinger. We have also had wonderful audiences with good energy who enjoy themselves and are happy to get involved (after a few swigs of whiskey, sometimes). I feel all fuzzy after a show, and that's probably a good thing. In fact, I think I'm still on the high of Sunday's show, The TypewriterGirls Try Politics, today, and I can't wait for the next one.
Show highlights:
- Sing-along/burlesque to "16 Tons"
- Recitation of the Exquisite Corpse which lead to "all the CEOs in all the world" getting behind every detail of the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Citizen Kane... In space!
- Culminating the evening with a rousing and passionate round of Bohemian Rhapsody at the end of the dance party.
You know you want to come to a TypewriterGirls show.
I've never been good with keeping up with a blog. I have these ideas that seem grand when I come up with them and then for one reason or another they don't work out.
But I will persevere! I will try to be more reliable!
The past few months have been very busy for me. I got married. Bit of a time-devourer, that. We had a very fun wedding after party and were fortunate enough to also have a Buddhist ceremony, in addition to the legal ceremony. I cried a lot.
There have also been two TypewriterGirls shows (The TypewriterGirls Try Drag and The TypewriterGirls Try Politics) since March. Both went exceptionally well by my estimation - good crowd, great readers and performers, great music, and amazing friends.
I always love putting on TypewriterGirls shows and working with Crystal. She's hilarious (unlike me) and constantly full of energy for the shows. We've been lucky in that we have found talented performers and poets like the lovely Mary Biddinger. We have also had wonderful audiences with good energy who enjoy themselves and are happy to get involved (after a few swigs of whiskey, sometimes). I feel all fuzzy after a show, and that's probably a good thing. In fact, I think I'm still on the high of Sunday's show, The TypewriterGirls Try Politics, today, and I can't wait for the next one.
Show highlights:- Sing-along/burlesque to "16 Tons"
- Recitation of the Exquisite Corpse which lead to "all the CEOs in all the world" getting behind every detail of the Employee Free Choice Act.
- Citizen Kane... In space!
- Culminating the evening with a rousing and passionate round of Bohemian Rhapsody at the end of the dance party.
You know you want to come to a TypewriterGirls show.
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