Monthly Archives: January 2011

Friday Wrap-Up

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5:45 PM on a Friday and I finally feel I can post this wrap-up, which means I won’t be heading out to the reading and open mike at Green Rice Art Gallery tonight. I hate to miss it, but I still have two short essays to read and I really need some time to decompress from the week (oh yeah and the reading starts at 7!)

I feel like I’m starting to get into the groove of this semesters schedule, finally. Which means I did a lot of grading, teaching, reading, revising and submitting as the week went on. Granted, a lot of it shoved into this afternoon…

  • Submitted: 4 sets of poems (one set to a contest), 1 short fiction, 1 essay and 1 set of photos
  • Accepted: a set of photos were accepted and I had a poem accepted by a print journal (I had previously been a finalist in their contest!)
  • Rejected: 2 sets of poems (one that was really disappointing for an anthology and then the other with comments), 1 essay I pulled as assumed given the amount of time with no response.

Although I feel like I have accomplished a lot in all the various areas of my life, I still feel I’m a bit scattered and drained (a bit) by how long my to do list still is.

I did manage to also squeeze in another guest blog for 32 Poems which feels very appropriate to mention when speaking of sending work out to editors. It is titled A Mini Editorial Rant. I also wanted to share this post by Leslie McGrath over at Best American Poetry blog with an inside look at contest judging (I reviewed Leslie’s terrific contest winning poetry book from Main Street Rag here previously!).  And, if you have netflix streaming, the documentary Obsence is available. As you might guess, there are some R rated images and language. It deals with Grove Street Press and the boundaries they pushed with censorship. Very interesting.

I think before I head off of the computer this evening, I am going to go to my idea list to try and type something up. It has been a week since I even hand wrote anything. I especially think it’ll be funny to try and write something, maybe, that I think my students would enjoy. I always sneak in some of my own writing as Anonymous (but if any of you are reading this anonymous isn’t always me!) and this semester’s students are not quite thrilled with my writing. Have I become too literary perhaps? Am I losing my accessible label?

Did any of you guys have anything new to add on submitting your work or on anything you are working on? I’m also still reading Thursday Poem share and commenting, so hoping to finish that this weekend.

But, mostly this weekend I want to relax! Wait, do I know how to do that?

Thursday Poem Share

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Rolling on into Thursday and I’m giving myself about one more hour at the computer, so what can I accomplish in that time?

For yesterday’s writing prompt, I talked all about short poems but here I am posting a long poem today that was recently rejected. Your thoughts are always appreciated! It’ll be up here for 1 week.

–and the poem is gone!

-

I recently finished reading the poetry chapbook book Pilgrims by Ken Autrey. I’ve met Ken at a few poetry events and I’d been meaning to read this for a while. If you are looking for an excellent example of how to put together a chapbook that is loosely themed (around travel) then this will be a good one for you to pick up. My favorite poem is titled “Laundry” but I won’t quote it because what particularly stands out in the end is the closure and I don’t want to give that away! But, click through on the link to the title and you can read several poems from the collection and see how to order it.

In additional news, a few people have been asking me about possibly running a “for a small fee” poetry workshop/critique. I’d love to hear from who else might be interested and the following: cost? how many weeks? poems each week or during the month? in that case, a few months? do you want to see work by your fellow class members?

Thanks for any input you can give! As always, feel free to post your own poems and we’ll comment back and forth before I take them down next week.

To poetry! And really to poetry today as I host the first Writer’s Night out in Concord, NC. If you are in the area :)

7 – You downloaded 1 example of role playing porn which involved a bar maid. When you saw the look on her face you said it was just a suggestion.

Wednesday Writing

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I’ve read quite a few books lately that deal with short pieces of literature.

First up On a Narrow Windowsill, the collection of Twitter Lit published by Folded Word Press. Some of these poems and little pieces of fiction are 140 characters or less but not all of them. Some span several possible “tweet” lengths.

The other book I finished was something has to happen next by andrew michael roberts where most of the poems are under 10 lines.

You may want to click through on those to look at a few examples, but I challenge you to try to write something short. Can you write a poem or piece of prose in 140 characters or less? Can you write a poem that isn’t a haiku in under 10 lines? Under 5? Under 3? What about one? And still say SOMETHING.

That’s your challenge for today. As always, I won’t be removing anything you post here today, but rather I’d love to talk about short literature. Do you like it? Do you write it? What do you consider short?

Well..besides me..since this blog used to be named 58 inches :)

Taking Your MFA Questions

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Most people who read my blog know that I attended an MFA program, but I’m still leery about spending too much time talking about MFA’s because I grow weary of the debate as to whether or not they are beneficial.

Last year I did a post about My MFA Journey. I even hint at myself as an Eternal Student in another post and if you go back to blog posts from 2007-2009 you will definitely see a lot about the MFA as I worked through my program including this last post about my final reading.  Feel free to type MFA into the search function on the right and look back. The real meaty ones about the MFA, like I said, are 2007-Jan 2009.

But, in either case, I did a low-residency MFA program and I’m happy to answer questions about the process of applying, going through the program and afterwards here.

I also thought I’d post a link to an article titled Six More Myths about the Creative Writing Master of Fine Arts. And another, bit of a silly link, to a McSweeny’s fiction piece (oh but is it fiction?) about workshopping.

And for a few more links: Lori May’s Low-Residency MFA Handbook which I’m quoted in about my program! And finally a very helpful blog called Creative Writing MFA Handbook.

So prepare your questions, I’ll be brutally honest!

And then back with a writing prompt tomorrow :)

Monday Shout Outs

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I’m coming to you from my lunch break in the faculty lounge before my 1:10 class.

  • First up I have to mention the first Concord, NC area Writer’s Night Out which will be at Dilworth Coffee off Exit 85 in Concord from 5-7 (meet and great session for writers and such) and then an open mike follows at 7. You must sign up by 6:45 to be in the Open Mike. This is sponsored, in part, by the NCWN.
  • Speaking of NCWN. Stop by the site for deadlines on contests!
  • I’m thrilled that my book is including on a little international literary photo/reading journey. Click over to see what I mean!
  • Friday night is the monthly Green Rice Art Gallery reading at 7pm in Charlotte which is hosted by Iodine Poetry Journal and Main Street Rag Press.
  • Recently I finished reading The Lightning Thief. Good start to a neat YA series. Now I should watch the movie, although I still have a Netflix DVD I haven’t watched from about a month ago. I forget about them and only watch the streaming Netflix!

I spent a lot of the weekend grading and doing prep work, so here is hoping the week will not be quite so crazy!

Hope you guys all have a good one. I think I’ll have a post tomorrow with some links about MFA programs. Just cause I have some saved :)

Friday Wrap-Up

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Whew! I feel like I am saying that a lot but this has been quite a week!

I started out the week knowing I would finally be teaching all of my 4 classes (we had snow delays last week) but I ended the week with having taught all four and one day of a two day a week 5th class (that is a whole story in itself).

Besides getting back into the groove of school, I also had a huge to do list that I think I cut in half by the end of the week. I wish I had taken a few more things permanently off of it since I’ll be adding more on Sunday when I plan for next week, but I did get a lot done.

I also had lunch with one of my former co-workers, and for the first time (in a year and a half) I went into my old office. It was great to see so many of my old work friends! I was stressed out by my old job in insurance claims but I loved the people I worked with. I’m going to try to get by more often now!

My new weigh-in day is on Tuesday and I was down 1.6 after a week on the new Weight Watchers program. I think I’m sticking with it pretty well and I made it out to walk 30 minutes each day.

I was really determined to get some submissions out this week and to work on a few revisions so I made myself do that this afternoon over the two hours I had time to spend at the computer.  Here are my numbers!

  • Submitted: 4 things (one was solicited from a newspaper editor so that was neat!)
  • Accepted: first poem of the year! And a second photograph.
  • Rejected: 3 and all from online pubs which made it hard to tell if they were “ink” ones. I wish that more editors would just say: hey this is a personal comment we REALLY mean send us more!!

I’m sorry I’m a little behind on commenting back on all the wonderful Thursday Poem Share comments, but hopefully I’ll have some time to work on that this weekend while I try to grade some creative assignments I had my students do in intro to lit today.

It’s a prep kind of weekend!

So how was your writing week? Did you send out any work? Report in!