Bitlets

I recently made long-distance friends with a fascinating writer of poetry and prose. After I rando-emailed her, she Googled me, sensibly, and found my blog, and read my From Me to You series. She asked in her next email if she could share the series with her students, because she found it helpful and thought they would too. I tried not to use too many exclamation points in my reply, but I was flattered and pleased that I'd been of help. Others have told me they've referred students to the series, as well. This got me wondering whether I should collect the series and print it, or put it in an ebook. Still considering. What do you think?

In the meantime, I've written another installment, which I'll put up next week. It's not about submitting work, as the first five were, but it definitely circulates around the issue of publishing.

--

This week, on deadline, I wrote a thing. I'm not satisfied with it, but off it goes to workshop anyway. (see "deadline".) It's definitely the beginning of something bigger rather than a story that stands on its own, and I'm looking forward to digging deeper into it later. Through this whatever-it-becomes, I will finally wreak my revenge on Casablanca for its mediocrity.

Yeah, I said it. Argue against me. Unemotionally.

--

Reading at present:

Anne Enright, The Gathering. The audiobook is driving me totally crazy so I think I'm going to pick up the paper book sometime this summer instead. The woman reading it is so slow that I lose track of what the last sentence said by the time we're in the middle of the next sentence, and the library app doesn't have the ability to change speed like iBooks does. Fully four seconds elapse between every sentence, which makes me want to scream. I really like the writing, though.

Wendy C. Ortiz, Bruja. Funny and moving and interesting and beautifully detailed. If you are a person who gets bored by other people's dreams, you won't like it. But I'm not, so I do.

Kate Zambreno, Heroines. So good I wish I could take it more slowly than I am. I did not like her novel Green Girl (I believe I'm the only one) (sorry), but I deeply love this.

The Cupboard Pamphlet. I picked up a subscription to the Cupboard at AWP last year, mostly because their tote bags were terrific, and man, I'm glad I did. I read duncan b. barlow's "Of Flesh and Fur" a couple of weeks ago and raved about it for two days, and then I read John Paul Stadler's "Prehistoric", and admired it although it was not my kind of thing. The Cupboard publishes tiny, beautifully designed little booklets, and I have not yet read one that wasn't excellent. Check it out.

--

This weekend I am going to separate literary events on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I guess that's my life now.