Oh, that Nano hangover...

It's true - I have a Nano hangover. 

First of all, yes indeed - I made it.  50,461 words.  The last few days were rough ones, but I muddled my way through it and I can count myself among the winners of nanowrimo once again.  No need to hold your applause.  I will quietly wait and gracefully accept your accolades....

Now, then...  The hangover.  It seems like the two times that I have successfully completed the fifty thousand word count, I have been utterly defeated at the end of the month; just no interest in writing (or reading, really anything to do with literary pursuit whatsoever...).  There's something about that daily deadline that just leaves me wanting to run away a bit at the end of November.  And therefore, that is why I haven't updated my blog before today (well, that and a whole lot of other craziness that no one probably wants to hear about...)

An odd thing happened a couple of days ago, though.  I opened a word document and I started to free write.  Without a deadline.  Without shooting for a word count that I could brag or moan about.  Those of you that have been reading my (increasingly boring, I imagine) blog posts about Nanowrimo will perhaps remember that my whole point in undergoing the process this year was a grand attempt to get the creative juices flowing.  I'm going to go ahead and tentatively say that it was a success. 

The first harsh edit of my 50,000 word document chopped it down to just over 26,000 words.  That sounds pretty awful, but it was honestly more than I had thought would remain.  I'm sure that it won't all lead to pieces that remain viable, but the fact that I have several new stories to play with (and quite a few bits of poetry) is definitely a nice starting point to be stuck at.

Not too much else as far as news these days. Swimming in quite a few rejections this month - must be a lot of places trying to clear through their backlog before the end of the year.  Have had a couple of fiction acceptances (and my first non-fiction acceptance), though.  Nothing I can talk about quite yet, but some possible good news on the fiction front.

It's interesting that my prose acceptance rate is running so much higher than my poetry acceptance rate over the last year.  I'm thinking tentatively of running an end of the year blog post with some numbers, though I'm not sure that would be all that interesting to readers other than myself...

Oh well...  I am past Nanowrimo for the year.  And maybe starting to get past the Nano hangover.  Time to revise and rethink where I'm submitting some of my poetry apparently.

I'm not one for New Year's resolutions, but I may give that a shot this year.  Apparently, I work better under a deadline...

Nanowrimo day 23 - (insert witty title here. I just don't have it in me.)

23 days in.  I figured I should try and fit in one more update before the end of my 2014 nano journey.  I’ve actually been plugging along at a pretty good rate.  With one week left to go, I am well past the 40,000 word mark (hovering just over 43,000 this morning) which allows me to kind of coast through to the end.  I tried to push myself to go above and beyond on some of the days that were going well so that I could get to a point where I could get away with a lower daily minimum towards the end.  My daughter only has one day of school next week and we’ve invited family up for Thanksgiving, so I knew ahead of time that the end of the month was going to be rough for writing time.  (I wonder why they chose November in the first place.  Seems like a tough month to write a novel in, but perhaps that is the point.)  Rather than try and run a marathon at the end, I thought I would try a few sprints to get a bit ahead of the game if at all possible. 

It’s funny.  A week ago, I was having a hard time even imagining the endgame, but I had a couple of days there when the words just came at a pretty good clip and I didn’t allow myself to stop when I hit the bare minimum.  My record for a day last week was somewhere just over the four thousand word mark…  (I thought it was pretty darned good, at least.)  My word count jumped up quite nicely, leaving me where I am at now.

Which, for the last two days, has been a curious place.  I’m not sure if I burned myself out a bit (or more than a bit) making that harder push, but the words have been slow going.  You’d think only having to hit an average of 800 words a day versus the regular 1,670 would take the edge off of the stress a little bit, let the words flow more easily.  Apparently, though, I work pretty well under deadlines and more stressful situations.  (Maybe if I fall behind, the stress will kick me into high gear again.  Ha.)  At any rate, I am – at least for the moment – ahead of the game.  And even if I am struggling a bit right now, it is a good feeling to have, considering how worried I was that I wasn’t going to make it.  Who knows…  Maybe I’ll even plow on straight past that fifty thousand word mark.  I’m not going to automatically stop at that point if there are days left, even if I’m a little burnt out.

     In non – nano news, I received a poetry acceptance this week from Arsenic Lobster.  It was a breath of fresh air since I was running with quite a few straight form rejections and it is a place that published my work back in the small press days (he says as if he is some kind of mainstream breakthrough artist these days…) – always nice to see a publication from that time in my life that is still around and thriving.  It’s amazing how a string of rejections can impact the actual writing… 

 

I’m keeping to my promise, though (to myself) to not deal with the submission side of the game while in the middle of writing for nano.  Which is much more difficult than I thought that it would be.  But for this month at least, it’s all writing and no dealing with the other side of the “business.”  I have a feeling I’m going to need a couple of days off come the first of December.  I could use some hobby time that is a little more mindless right about now.  Then I'll dive right back into sending out my words, waiting for them to come back to me.

 

Nano day 16: Oh, we're halfway there...

     If you started singing a Bon Jovi tune after that title, then you’re my kind of person.

 

     I’m surviving nanowrimo this year.  Yesterday marked the halfway point of the month and I hit the halfway point for word count (25,000) two days ago, so that puts me ever so slightly ahead of the game in terms of shooting for the bare minimum.  More importantly, it puts me a whole lot of words ahead of where I failed out last time, so it’s already a win in my book in a lot of ways.

     I say that I’m surviving, but it really depends on the day.  The last two have been particularly tough to even struggle towards that minimum goal, tough to even get started if truth be told.  There have been days along the way that have veritably flown by, hitting the minimum some time in the morning (and often continuing on from there).  Days when I felt like I might actually have something to say (that people would actually want to read).  Days when I can call myself a writer and not feel like a complete and total fraud for saying that.

     I would say there have been at least five or six of those days along the way.  (And I think for most writers that would be a pretty good percentage.)  And then there are the days like yesterday and today.  The days when I’m walking uphill, when I feel like I am moving through quicksand, when every. single. word. feels like a struggle.  The worst part about those days for me is when I finally do get to a respectable word count and I look back to find that I have written absolutely nothing that I will keep – that every word I have typed out in my monumental struggle will be ceremoniously deleted come December first when the number of words no longer matters and I have to actually think about quality rather than quantity.

     It is days like those that make me come close to throwing in the towel.  When several of them come in a row without any real breakthroughs or moments of awe from the muse is when it starts to get really tough to continue.  That’s when I start to wonder if this grand experiment is worth it at all.  And honestly, on those days it probably isn’t.  Most of the time, I hit my minimums without anything that I will keep.

     But in the grander scheme of the month, I can come back to the positive side of looking at it.  I will probably end this month with more revisable work than I have written in a good long while.  It’s no novel, but I have several possibly nearly complete stories, some poems, even a couple of short non-fiction pieces that seem like they could grow into something more.  (I have never submitted any non-fiction pieces before.  At least none that I have actually called non-fiction.) 

     I really don’t want to see what the final word number is once I start deleting come the first of December.  But I think that I have some decent writing mixed in among the crap.  And that’s really the point of this exercise.  As I said, so far I see it as a win.  There are just days (like today) when it certainly does not feel like one.

     In non-nanowrimo news, I have signed two publishing agreements in the last week – both for short stories.  It is amazing to me how much legalese I have to wade through for magazines that don’t pay.  (Well, I’ll get my customary contributor’s copy, but….)  And strangely, the contracts stress me out.  I know that none of my stories are plagiarized and that names have been changed to protect the innocent, etc.  But I somehow feel like I’ve been caught with my hand in the cookie jar.  Weird, isn’t it?  I suppose it’s the same concept as why I get nervous every time a police car drives by me, regardless of what I’m doing, why I panic when I have to go through security at airports…  I suppose I have more than a healthy level of paranoia.  At any rate; yay, new publishing agreements! 

     I have read very little this last week, so I don’t have much to say on that front.  Right now it is all about writing and the push for ever more words. 

     I’m past the halfway point.  Less than 25,000 words to go.  Hopefully some of them will end up brilliant.  Or at least passably useful.

     Wish me luck.

Day ten, continuing on...

A short note today.  I’m in the middle of another string of rejections and the push for ever more words in my nanowrimo document.  (Currently racing – ever so slowly – towards 17,000.)

 

It’s a good sort of melancholy here this morning.  Quiet and empty.  Beautiful snow slowly spiraling out the window.  I’m sitting here typing with hot coffee close by, hoping for inspiration while battling the ever encroaching thoughts of the giant to do list that floats over my head.  So I push for the word count while watching the world whiten out the window. 

 

Narratives I’m enjoying this week:

 

-James Richardson’s collected poems and aphorisms – a really excellent collection (and I’m not one to typically take a shine to collected volumes for one reason or another).

-The Walking Dead season 1 and 2 by TellTale Games – Some fantastic character narration in this point and click title.  While there are issues (both technically and narratively), I feel this is one of those games that show where writing in video games is headed, at least I hope so.   Kirkman’s Walking Dead is sort of a cultural juggernaut right now, but I think there are some moments in these games that are the best written moments across all media.  (Make sure to avoid the action game based on the tv show – video game mediocrity at its finest.  And if anyone reading this has an interest in the narrative art of the video game, please seek out Tom Bissell’s fantastic book Extra Lives:  Why Video Games Matter if you have not read it.  It’s an excellent starting point to a serious look at the medium.

-Poemcrazy: Freeing Your Life With Words by Susan Goldsmith Woolridge.  Helping me to get the creative juices flowing on those mornings when it is hard to make the words flow.  Also internet searches for writing prompts has brought some entertaining things my way over the last week.

-Just starting a new graphic novel – American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. 

 

Back to the word-count race.  And hopefully today brings something inspired – or at least workable.

 

To today, then.

some words on day seven

Nanowrimo, day seven.

 

The brilliant sheen of a clean page.  The crushing weight of it.

 

It is day number seven.  I load up nanowrimo.org and see the not so delicious curves of the zero – that starting point for each day – just staring back at me.  Today’s a tougher one for some reason.  My motivation seems to also be residing somewhere near a zero level of its own.

 

That said, I’ve done ok.  I’m nearing 11,000 words (and this blog post should take me past that point easily – yes, I’m cheating and writing my blog post in my nano document.  Like I said, no motivation.  I had to start somewhere to get those words flowing, right?).  That puts me at an average words per day somewhere right around where it needs to be for me to hit my goal.  I’m not one hundred percent positive, but I think that I may already be past the word count I hit in my tragically failed 2012 nano attempt.  That in and of itself is a big win for me.

 

The first four days were smooth, easy even.  I was absolutely shocked how well the words started flowing once I got over that first morning.  It’s why I love nanowrimo.  Somehow, it just *works* for me – worrying more about quantity than quality, trying not to allow myself to revise as I go, just push push push for that word count.  It makes me feel like a writer when most days I feel like all that I am is a “reviser.”  (And yes, I know how important revision is to the life of a writer.  Doesn’t mean that I have to love it unconditionally.)

 

My document is a barely contained entropic mess.  When I get stuck with one story, I move on to something else – to a completely different narrative, to a memory, to some poetry…  Yesterday morning, I started an exercise writing traditional 5-7-5 haiku and got a little out of control – now there’s a page and a half of haiku in the middle.  It’s the nice thing about “cheating” at nano – when I get tired of characters or get stuck into some crazy plot corner, I can move on to something else.  (I honestly have no idea how I did it in 2011 without cheating.  Even if the novel sucks, I’m secretly proud of myself for making it through that.)  I put three asterisks on the left margin of anything I would like to return to – first lines, mired plots, answers waiting for their questions…  Scrolling through the pages quickly this morning, there are at least ten spots in the left margin where I see asterisks.  It’s a good “problem” to have.  Anyone who reads this blog has a pretty good idea of how absolutely scattered I am.  Working this way seems to really work for me.

 

That said, I don’t think I have anything actually finished yet.  (as in first draft finished…)  The majority of my document so far is one story – maybe four thousand words?  It’s a story about friends in college at its most basic level.  But it quickly became about a lot more for me.  Loyalty and secrets…  It was just working and kept going.  I was ecstatic.  But when it stalled was when the motivation became harder.  I really want to push this story somewhere.  It was walking along with me so smoothly…   I feel a little betrayed by these characters right now.  Silly but true.

 

I have the beginnings to five or six stories, maybe more.  Some of them are only a sentence or two.  I have some really long stretches of prose in broken lines that may someday be poetry.  Some swatches of prose poetry.  A couple non-fictional recollections and musings…  In short, I have a whole lot of little bursts of somethings that I am hoping, hoping will become cohesive in the long term.  In the short term, I let them be whatever they are.  This month, all they have to be are numbers.

 

NaNoWriMo - Let's go!

 

     For the uninitiated among you, November is National Novel Writing Month – nanowrimo for short.  The challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of 30 days.  I always thought of that as a crazy, impossible task, particularly for someone who was more known for flash and micro fiction than for any narrative of any length.

     Then in 2011, amidst a long long dry spell, I decided to try it.  And you know what?  It was liberating in a way that other writing projects hadn’t been in a very long time.  I shot for the word count, not caring so much about the direction of the plot, not caring about quality.  Just pushing for that 1600 or so words a day.  And I did it.  I ended with a novel just short of 60,000 words.  Now, it’s not a novel that I will probably ever try to revise (though I make no promises – there were a few scenes, even complete chapters that I really liked.  There’s some promise despite its issues…).  It’s not a very good narrative.  I changed main characters midway through.  It took thousands of words before it really found any kind of direction whatsoever.  And when I was done, I felt more burned out than I had felt for a very very long time.  But I had done it.  Me – whose longest story prior to 2011 was probably 800 words.  *I* had written a novel.  I had proven that I had it in me.  I had proven that I could still write.  And I learned that I apparently work better under a deadline – a lesson that I need to keep reminding myself of, honestly.

     Unfortunately, I didn’t follow through in the following years.  In 2012, I tried but fell far short of the necessary word count.  I was scattered and just couldn’t make anything come together.  (Truth be told, I was in a pretty bad place mentally and emotionally and I think that had far more to do with it than I was willing to admit at the time…)  Last year, I didn’t even try.  You know, I can’t remember why I decided to pass on it.  Maybe because of my crushing defeat in 2012.  The same reason that I considered passing this year as well.  But I decided that I was going to go for it again this year.  Sort of.  I’m cheating.  And I’m ok with that.

     Luckily, I have had quite a few of my short (flash and micro, still, despite finishing that novel…) stories accepted this year in various places.  The problem is that I am running out of polished, finished stories to submit.  It’s definitely a nice problem to have, don’t get me wrong.  But I have written very little fiction in quite some time.  And so I am cheating at nanowrimo this year – I am not going to try for a novel.  Instead, I am going to try and write 50,000 words worth of short stories (and poetry, if I become inspired along those lines…).  Hopefully, it will give me some pieces worth revising and finishing up, but I am going to try my hardest not to worry about that as I go along. 

     The first day hasn’t gone so well.  Yesterday, I came down with some crazy stomach bug that my wife brought home from somewhere (she was sick last week) and spent the night huddled on the bathroom floor.  Today, I’m dizzy.  My head feels like every single sound is a fireworks display.  Pushing the words from my head down through my fingers into the keyboard seems like a monumental task.  But I know what happens when you fall behind with your word count, so I am persevering.  So far, it is all junk.  But I’m exercising.  And if I can hit the daily word count feeling like this, I think it can only get easier from here on out…  Right?

 

     Regardless, if you’re a writer and have never tried nanowrimo, I definitely recommend it to you. It’s one of the hardest things you can try, but it is really exciting at points, too.  The days the words just flow out are brilliant…  You’re reminded (if you’ve lost the feeling like I have) of what it feels like to simply overflow.  It’s an odd thing:  The word count can become your muse.  Today is the first day, so you have plenty of time to catch up (in 2011, when I completed my novel, I actually started a week late…).  Join in.  And if you do, let me know your progress.  I’ll be updating mine throughout the month.  (Today, so far, I’m at roughly 1200 words.)  You may not end up with a novel, but if you fail, you still wrote – probably more than you would have in that same timeframe.  And maybe you’ll end up with something truly great out of it.

 

     And if anyone has any particularly helpful writing exercises or prompts, I’d love to hear them.  I’m going to need help to get through this – at least with stories that are worth going back to…

On teachers and teachings...

     When I was young thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up, most of the time I came around to teaching.  More than anything else, I wanted to teach.  Initially, I wanted to teach young children - I thought I would love to teach elementary school.  That dream fled when I experienced a half-day of teaching first graders during a career day (I want to say I was in sixth grade?)...  A half day that left me crushed - tired, hopelessly tired and defeated.  A little melodramatic for a first career day, but that's exactly what I felt.
     Somewhere around that point, I decided that I would like to instead teach high school.  And then I went to high school.  I imagine even the teachers who impacted me, who truly taught me there in those halls had no idea that I was even paying attention.  Hell, for too much of the time, I wasn't paying enough. 
     Entering college, wandering through those days (years) of undeclared status, teaching was still with me.  I long flirted with the idea of continuing my education until I could teach university classes.  (I of course wanted to avoid teaching intro classes - even then, there were limits...)  So many teachers at UW truly changed me and changed how I looked at the world.  I wanted to have the chance to have that influence on people.
     Eventually, life spun me in a different direction.  Other things were required of me and I went other places.  Part of me still wishes I had been able to follow through and end up teaching.  I look at those I know who do teach and am continually impressed with their resolve despite low pay and near constant bureaucratic struggles.  I have a hard time believing 100% that I could make it as a teacher - I am absolutely *not* a subscriber to the "those who can't, teach" philosophy.
     Most of all, though, I am grateful for those who have taught me, those who truly changed me (for the better, I like to think), those who were there for me.  Now that I have a daughter who will be entering kindergarten next year, I am thinking even more of teachers.  I only hope that she can have some of the same riches that I was given.  I know I will forget some people (and I feel awful for those I do forget), but I want to say thank you to some of the best teachers I have had the pleasure of learning from...
     In the early years:  Mrs. Britton (who took care of me in first grade), Mr. Dunham (who fostered an early love of words), Mr. Brecht (who let me opt out of advanced reading because I hated the book we were reading and I couldn't stop reading the one that the other group was assigned), Ms. Buscaj (Thanks for A Wrinkle In Time), Ms. Gustafson (who taught my class a whole lot about life in a really rough year), Mr. Pentland (Who probably had no idea I was listening in between my bouts of desperately trying to impress people in his class, typically by being an idiot), Mr. Gasser (who put up with a lot, almost always with a smile)...
     And at UW:  Diane LeBlanc (who took a small-town kid who thought he was worldly and open-minded and started him out on a whole other quest without ever putting him in his place), Alyson Hagy (What could I possibly say?  You are still teaching me.  You are truly selfless and giving.), Sharon Doubiago (Who taught me that it was ok to write about sticky, messy truth and gave me a semester that absolutely changed my life.), Colleen Denney (Who taught how to *see* art.  I can't think of a less melodramatic way of saying that.), Paisley Rekdal (who was kind to my poetry and patient with me)  Phil Holt (who managed to make the driest classic literature come alive in such a way that made it feel so fresh and fascinating), the "two Susans," (Susan A. dragged me kicking and screaming across the degree finish line and I appreciate that a lot more now than I did at the time.)...
     As I said, I'm sure there are others that I am forgetting at the moment.  And that says nothing of the other amazing teachers I know in my everyday life that I've never had the opportunity of taking actual classes from. 

Basically, thank you to all of those in the profession.  Know that you are appreciated.  Not enough by the country that we live in by any means...  But you change lives.  Daily.  And in my opinion, that's pretty darned cool.

A quick update on recent (and not so recent) online publications...

I still feel like publishing things online can feel more than a bit transient.  Between that and the fact that I am horribly scattered and forgetful, I thought that I should occasionally update here with a list of links to places one could find my work online.  Hopefully, there's something here that you haven't read or something that you would like to read again.  If you really like something of mine (or anyone else's for that matter...), consider dropping a line to the editors of these places.  You would be surprised how little feedback many of these editors see from their work...  As this is the first time doing this, some of these poems and stories are much older.

Story Problems, a prose poem, can be found on Red Fez:  https://www.redfez.net/poetry/2037

Two flash fiction pieces in the first issue of Kysoflash: http://www.kysoflash.com/RussellBreak.aspx
and http://www.kysoflash.com/RussellConversation.aspx

Another recent tiny little fiction piece:  http://microfictionmondaymagazine.com/2014/07/14/microfiction-monday-seventh-edition/

Two poems of mine in the October issue of The Birds We Piled Loosely: http://birdspiledloosely.wordpress.com/

A poem I'm really proud of in Apeiron Review:  (I'm on page 93)  https://www.scribd.com/doc/241230479/Apeiron-Review-Fall-2014-Issue-7

Another poem featured on Melancholy Hyperbole:  http://melancholyhyperbole.com/2014/09/23/the-second-dream/

Another recent short story: http://www.sonderreview.com/#!read/cfvg

An older short story about a blind date: http://www.pindeldyboz.com/crblind.htm

A little bit different...  http://arseniclobster.magere.com/archive/issuesix/russellcc1.html

Three poems featured on Poetry SuperHighway in 2013:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/2013/09/september-23-29-2013-c-c-russell-dominic-bond/
My feature there in 2005:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/2005/07/psh-poets-of-the-week-401/
And from 2004:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/2004/03/psh-poets-of-the-week-436/
And from 2003:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/2003/05/psh-poets-of-the-week-504/
And from all the way back in 1998:  http://poetrysuperhighway.com/psh/1998/07/psh-poets-of-the-week-729/

A much older poem from Oyster Boy Review: http://www.oysterboyreview.org/archived/13/RussellC-Mike.html  and an older flash fiction piece from there as well (one of my favorites of my older stories...)  http://www.oysterboyreview.org/archived/05/russell.html   If you dig around the archives there, there are a few other old poems of mine.  I'm not saying that they are any good, but they're there.

Another old poem from Impetus:  http://theimparchives.tripod.com/25/russell.html

I think that's most of what's out there right now in the world wide web as far as my words go.

Comic books and short stories (and shadow-boxing with the muse)

Apparently, my attention span is fairly short these days.  Taking a look at my Goodreads feed the last few weeks reveals a literary diet completely consisting of graphic novels and short story collections. 

I'm also apparently scattered - right now, I'm reading two different poetry collections (Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno's Slamming Open The Door and Allan Safarik's Advertisement For Paradise), a collection of short stories (Tamara Linse's How To Be a Man - which opens with one of the most amazing stories that I have read in a very long time, the title story for the collection.  If the rest of the collection holds up to that standard, I'm in for quite a treat.) and two more graphic novels (Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers and Flight Volume 7).  Whew.  For someone with a tenuous memory, that's a lot to keep straight.  If what someone reads says something about their personality, I would assume that *how* they read it has a little something to say as well.  I'll leave that deduction up to you.

I used to think that as a writer I had to focus on one thing.  Only poetry, only prose, genre-fiction or literary, etc. etc...  I'm slowly coming to the point that I am ok with being just as scattered as an author as I am a reader.  I understand the business reasons for a tighter focus, but I've found (through much trial and error) that it is just much better for me not to fight inspiration when it seems to come so seldom.  Not to mention that it is difficult to see writing from a business point of view when the money I dump into supplies/submissions far outweighs any income I've received thus far. 

So, then, what are my new random projects that I am allowing myself to entertain?  I've written a sci-fi story (or else the beginning to something much larger that's sci-fi in nature...), I am at the very beginning of plans for some video poetry of one kind or another, and I am toying with the idea of finding an artist who would like to collaborate on some comic book styled art to accompany poems.  Who knows if any of these projects will actually go somewhere, but if I allow myself to play, perhaps... 

On yet another tangent, (though more related than others...) for anyone interested in comic art and poetry, check out Bill Sienciewicz's ad for Mtv from 1991:  http://brianmichaelbendis.tumblr.com/post/95283141965/bill-sienkiewicz-1991-mtv-artist-series-ad
This ad, torn lovingly from Rolling Stone (or Spin, perhaps) hung lovingly on my college room walls for many years.  I actually still have it today.  *This* is the kind of thing I would love to accomplish.  And hey, if anyone wants to track down the original art and buy a gift for me, well...

Here I am.  I'm rambling on my blog (again).  I'm listening to my entire musical collection on shuffle, playing with a new poem that doesn't want to go where I want it to go, the first two lines of a new story that feels like it could be good, some ideas for a poetry video - possibly involving Lego, trying to remember a fantastic line of poetry from a dream last night that I told myself several times I should just get up to write it down, tracking some packages that should be arriving soon, reading my Facebook feed...  Too scattered to even know where this blog post might be going.  Maybe that's the simplistic metaphor right there.  (Or else I'm reaching for depth where there is none.)  Regardless, this is where I am today.  I'm learning to just roll with it a little.

The clouds had nothing to do with it.

cool air and some manic rambling regarding motivation

It is a beautiful fall day here in Wyoming.  Perfect temperature for opening all of the windows and doors while I sit around in a jacket and enjoy the cool air coming through the house.  Tomorrow, there's a 60% chance of light snow - yes, in early September - and I cannot wait.  Of course, it most likely won't snow and everyone will have to listen to me complain about how the weather forecasts are never right.  But for now, I love this feeling; fall coming on, a cold front pulling in, the leaves starting to turn enough so that they hiss and crackle in the breeze...

Fall always makes me a bit manic.  This week, I'm all over the place.  Cheating.  Anything to keep me from actually writing.  Today, a long morning coffee break, web browsing (I should seriously cut off all net connection.  I'd have probably finished five novels by now...), updating my Goodreads, reading my Facebook feed (a few times), running errands that could probably wait, catching up on e-mail, reorganizing my hard-copy submission files (I am helpless at keeping things updated electronically - it's old-school for me or I'd be even more of a mess), playing with the cats...  I've been up about 7 hours or so and I have basically accomplished nothing at all.  If I was my boss, I would be in serious danger of losing my job.  Oh, wait....

I suppose I still find myself waiting for my muse far too often.  Sure, I know that success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration - that's the cliché I'm looking for, right?  But, yeah... I know it.  And I put the mantra through its paces.  Just do it.  All you have to do is write.  Or my favorite, from Sharon Doubiago's workshops back in the day:  Just don't lift your pen from the paper:  Don't.  Stop.  Writing.  Maybe that's what I need for motivation - a professor to give me homework.  I'm obviously not too great at being my own boss.

So, here we go...  I've finished a short little blog post for the day.  The sun is higher in the sky - a little solar warmth mixed in with the cold air.  I'm done cheating for the day.    At least for now.  Let's do this thing.

Selling your soul for your art (or just being melodramatic about it...)

I recently received an acceptance (from a magazine I won't name) after having my story short-listed for awhile.   The acceptance said that they would be sending along some notes on the manuscript for me to go over before publication.

When the story arrived with their notes, I felt like I was given a failing grade in junior high.  All of these notes, redactions, reasons why things didn't work.  I don't mind saying that the first thing that kicked in for me was the writer's ego.  Frankly, I wanted to just flat out say no.  Maybe it has just been a long time since my college workshop days, a long time since I've had peers workshop my stuff at all.  Maybe it is because so many literary magazine/site editors these days are simply "yes or no" folks and I very rarely am asked for revisions.  Whatever the reason, I am positive that much of the blame rests on me.  But my first reaction was more towards the flight end of the fight vs... internal debate.

And then I sat down, printed out both versions (yeah, I still prefer paper to screen if I want to actually think about what I'm reading...) and read them together.  And you know what?  The editor was right.  What they proposed made the piece a lot leaner and meaner.  There were less needless tangents, less extraneous words.  The story got to the point and stuck there.  It was much stronger for their "interference."  The editor was absolutely right.

What I'm unsure of still, however...  While the piece is stronger, I do feel in a way that my "voice" or style was edited out of it to a point.  I know that this has been discussed at length by people so much more well-spoken than I, but it's definitely something playing on my mind.  Are we (the collective we, though I suppose I am particularly referring here to the Western We of the literary community) editing the writer out of the work?  I don't suppose I'm one to talk since I regularly go on tirades against strangely-denoted dialogue in fiction, but I wonder how much of their individual style most writers are willing to let go of in a particular piece in order to see to it that it actually ends up in a form that might be read.

(I will say as an aside that I did suggest a couple of changes that I felt reintroduced some elements of the style I had in the story initially and the editor was happy to work with me.  This is definitely not a tirade against this particular editor at all - I am quite happy to have worked with them and wish that I had this sort of dialogue with more editors, honestly.)

At any rate, it's a question that is keeping me occupied lately.  I would love to hear thoughts in the comments section if anyone feels the spirit move them.

In other publishing news, I received my contributor's copy of Firewords Quarterly today and it is an absolutely beautiful little perfect bound volume.  I definitely recommend checking them out at firewords.co.uk and incidentally, the editor suggested a change to the poem that appeared in this issue that absolutely worked and made it stronger - and made it even more authentically match up to what I would consider as my "voice."  So there you go, I suppose.

A Tale of Two C.C.'s

So, here I am, trying to (re)break into the print world.  Now, typically, I would go off on a tangent here about how lonely the publishing world is.  But is it possible that there are two of me?

Not exactly, it turns out, but I was surprised to find another C.C. Russell out there a couple of weeks ago.  I was bing-ing my name (googling is a much better verb, but I'm a cheapskate and I like getting gift cards for doing searches, so I stick to Bing) as any vain author would do to see if my recent story publications were out there yet.  I found that if you don't modify the search (I usually search for C.C. Russell poetry or C.C. Russell fiction or somesuch), the first entry that pops up is:

C.C. Russell, author of Beautifully Broken

Hmmm.  Well, while that sounds a bit like a title I would have used in the 90's (Who am I kidding?  I'd probably still use it...), I didn't write it.  But...  but...  OK, I admit - as silly as it sounds, it was a little bit of a crushing moment.  Ever since I started using C.C. as my pen name in '92 (Thanks, Jen.), I've been looking forward to seeing just that:  C.C. Russell, Author of...  Honestly, it kind of sucked to have it be someone else (absolutely no offense to that other C.C. Russell out there - kudos to you.) and it made me sort of have an existential "name" moment.  Should I give up on the initials and just go by Craig?  Come up with a different pen name entirely?  Certainly, I'm at a point of fame (or lack thereof) that any options are really possible.  While I've published poetry and stories here and there for a couple of decades (Holy crap, I'm old), it has been many years since my last chapbook was availably for anyone to purchase. 

I ended up really considering the whys of C.C.  I started out using it because it sounded more "writerly" to me, as silly and basic as that is.  Quickly, though, it became more.  As I took gender studies classes and read books like Jeanette Winterson's amazing Written on the Body, I became more and more interested in gender as an author and how your characters are seen based on the gender that readers attribute to the author of a piece.  I enjoyed writing stories with female narrators or with characters of an indeterminate gender.  Leaving my name genderless, I felt, brought less "baggage" to those characters and stories.  (It was also interesting to see what editors and other writers who first met me through my words expected me to be.)  It did create a couple of awkward moments (I was invited to contribute to a couple of women's writing anthologies in the mid to late '90s, which I definitely took as a compliment), and I never seemed comfortable with people calling me "C.C." in person.  It almost created a second identity for me and I have found that to be both useful and off-putting at times.

I strongly considered dumping C.C. and going less formal.  Craig Thompson and his most-incredible graphic novel Blankets taught me that it's ok to write under that name, after all.  But in the end, I've decided that I'm sticking with it, keeping the pen name.  Hopefully, there's room for two C.C. Russells in the author world. 

Just some notes this time around.

Yeah, I've been a little quiet, a little invisible.  I'm still figuring all of this out.  Time, that is, I suppose.  Life.  You know, the little things.

I am going to attempt to update at least bi-weekly soon. 

At any rate - just a quick one this time around with some publication details.  (Yes, the rejection streak ended in a big way over the last month...

I have a flash piece featured this week:

http://microfictionmondaymagazine.com/

And a previously published poem was featured a couple weeks ago on Red Fez:

http://www.redfez.net/poetry/2037

Two Flash pieces accepted in Kyso Flash.  http://www.kysoflash.com/  They're just starting out, looking for submissions and the editor is amazing - one of the nicest folks I've been in touch with recently in this lonely business of submitting.  There is a reading fee, but they refund it + pay if you are accepted.  If you write Flash and have stories complete, check them out.

And lastly, two poems were accepted for Grasslimb:  http://grasslimb.com/  It is a very cool little journal that I have long loved.  (They also pay for poetry which is fairly rare with the "little guys.")

And that's the end of my publishing news (for now, only, hopefully...). 

It's a rainy day here.  Feels closer to fall than summer.  And I am definitely ok with that. 

Thanks for checking this out.  I'll try to have something more thought-provoking next time.

Solace,

C.C.

The power of a few small kind words.

I received a rejection letter a few days ago that ended with the line:

"There were some fine images here. Do keep us in mind."

After the massive string of rejections I've piled up in my inbox over the last few months, I have to say that it's at least slightly empowering.  Sad that it has come to that?  Maybe.  But it is true that a kind word here and there is far more important than we often give it credit for.  I try to remember that in my daily life - that each sentence could be a lifeline to someone or just another slight push.

It is a cool April here and I'm missing friends long gone.  Stumbling through National Poetry Month without the words.

The lifeline was needed.  So, thank you. 

Why I don't understand blogging (and why I secretly love it)

In 2005, I started writing posts on Livejournal.  As I was worried it would be, it was a melodramatic mess most of the time.  Which was probably (definitely) what I needed it to be at the time - I needed to whine.  I needed to work through all of the junk words pouring out of me like so much pseudo-literary diarrhea in the hopes that getting them out would make something stick that was worthwhile.

And you know what?  It worked.  Some of the best writing of my life came out of those few years (though very little of it actually appeared in that journal).  Part of it was where I lived, the friends that surrounded me.  Part of it was the job that I had, the time that I had to read and write.  Part of it was what was happening to me in my life at the time.  Part of it was the intense homesickness I was feeling - how lost I was.  But part of it was pouring out all of those "junk words" into a disposable format where I didn't have to worry about anyone taking it too seriously (or reading it, really, if I am to be honest with myself).  I loved it because I could be brutally honest (while still trying to write to impress) and no one would pay much attention.

But I come back to that term - junk words.  The truth is (and apologies to my writer friends if you are reading this) I seldom read author's blogs.  I think it's because I feel like I would rather read their "finished" work, whatever that means.  In this day and age, all writers are expected to have blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, Instagram...  From what I understand, agents won't even take you in without all of these things.  And sometimes I wonder if forcing writers to be "on" all of the time - so socially active - doesn't take something away from their writing.  Every minute I think about what I will type on this blog is a minute that I'm not writing. 

[Of course, that all circles back to what one considers to be valuable "writing."  It's something that I am working on within myself - the division between internet publishing and print.  (And that will definitely be something that I address at some point in this grand experiment...) ]

So, there it is.  In essence, the blogger questioning the reason for blogs while (backhandedly) praising them as he starts his own.  Probably not the most original opening blog post, but it's what I have right now.  (Without making it the same melodramatic mess I came up with back in '05, at any rate...)  I have a blog - doing my civic duty as a writer who is hoping to one day need an agent, who is hoping to one day have fans - fans that may have no interest in reading my blog because they only want to read my "finished" work.  No worries - I understand.