Category: Writing Life

Do writers need a reject complex? I’ve been feeling ill-fitted everywhere – rejections mounting – one even had the audacity to tell me “please wait a month before you submit again.” Um, I’m sorry – *coughFUCKYOUcough*. I can wait a lot longer than a month. Believe me. I don’t NEED you to publish my work.…

I’m so disheartened that schools are banning books. And not just leaving them out of their reading list for that year, but FLAT OUT BANNING THEM. How is this allowed?! When did conservative off the map far right Christians get so much power in schools? One of my best friends, Cecilia Galante’s novel “The Patron…

Another rejection today in the mail. This sad little envelope with my handwriting on it, taped wonkily on the back like a SCOTCH brand extra sticky assembly line rolled right over it. The letter inside no better like sending someone a single grain of rice. Dear Poet (that’s me), blah blah no place for you…

Maybe I’ll take a bath. My legs are beat up, I ran into river rocks, a mountain under black water. I’m covered in bruises. “MY WRITING IS MY WRITING IS MY WRITING IS MY WRITING,” Sylvia says to herself, but I feel to me. Why am I looking so far outside of me? I keep…

…is that you’re never finished (I could say until you die, but no one know what happens when you die and you may well be writing when you’re dying into dying out of dying passed dying always writing.) Just give me a pen, I’ll use skin.

A few weeks ago, maybe almost a month ago, I went to a reading at one of the private universities here. There were a few poets, a few fiction writers, a few playwrites. I didn’t stay for the whole thing, I went to see C read. Mostly, the other writers were pretty bland, trite, had…

Dear Rachel Van Blankenship, Thank you for sending us “Red Car in the Future”. Although the editors voted against accepting it, I wanted you to know that I really liked it and I hope you will submit again to our next issue. Thanks again. Best of luck.