Back to the Point...Eventually

I am easily distracted from the purpose of this blog.

On Friday night, I drafted a post about taking solace in Star Wars after a difficult day last week, and I was all ready to post it today, but it's just not right. This is a writing blog. It's about my life, too, but the rule to which I try to hold is only to write about non-art-related life episodes if I can turn them into writing exercises, after a fashion. My last post, about Zoe - that was good news that I was bursting to share, but I also tried to make it an exercise. To write it in the most artful way possible.

Anyway. Star Wars provided solace after a difficult day. Also, I got a [second] tattoo, see:

It's the lamppost that marks the northwestern border of Narnia, drawn by my talented friend Kathleen and carved on my arm forevermore by Katelyn Crane at MD Tattoo Studio. You can't see it from this picture, but the line work is amazing. After epic waffling, I got it, and I love it.

And that's enough of my life. Answer this poll, would you? Neither response will hurt my feelings.

If I created audio recordings of me reading my work (fiction and nonfiction), would you want to listen to them?

In the last couple of weeks I've had some very disappointing rejections. There've been a few that didn't matter much, but there were others where I felt that the piece and the mag were just right for each other, and the rejection said things like "We loved it, but we don't want it. Send us something else." Intellectually, I realize that this is the best possible kind of rejection to get - it means (crucially) that my work is getting better, and (less crucially, but a nice consolation) that I might get into the mag in the future. But in the act of reading the e-mail, or at night before I go to sleep...these rejections are NO FUN.

And yet.

I got an acceptance, too, recently. An LGBTQ publication called Wilde Magazine is going to publish a short story of mine called "The Hands of Men," in which something really awful happens to a nice closeted young man. The magazine will be out before the end of the month, if I'm not mistaken. This is great news. While I'm less googly-eyed about this story than I am about others I've written, I really wanted it to have a home. And now it does. Hooray!

Here is a short list of the projects swirling around my head to work on:
-Airplane story
-Wikibook
-Weird hypertext story that I don't know how to write because it requires web development skilz I don't have
-Cee story #2
-Noir story #2

And here is a complete list of the projects I have managed to get my butt in my seat and work on:


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Did I mention I got a tattoo?