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shame

Today I'm sharing an excerpt from a post, from Ask Polly on thecut.com, which is ultimately about shame and its usefulness in art.

I read this on a lunch break earlier this week, and it was one of those moments where everything else fell away, and I felt that the writer was talking directly to me.
I've been contemplating existential questions lately. Why do I write and create? Does it matter? Why does it even matter?
This is why.
Facing shame with an open heart, on a path to art.

do the thing

Twitter this week has been inspiring, particularly Jenny Bhatt, Chuck Wendig and Quiara Hudes.
Now let's do the things!
And by "let us" I mean "ME."

the motivation

I'm always always always thinking about how I'm spending my time.
Self care is of primary importance these days, n'est pas?
But creating is part of the way I care for my self, and I seem to never have enough time to create.
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See what I wrote there? "I seem to never have enough time."
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Why is that?
I have the same 24 hours a day as everybody else.
Deduct work (9.5 hours/day), commute (1 hour), sleep (8ish) and getting out of bed/getting into bed (1ish) and that equals about 19.5 hours of a 24 hour day.
How do I account for the other 4.5 hours per day?
Good question.
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I'm also working a part time job (4 to 5 hours a week) and a couple of volunteer jobs (4 to 5 hours a month) which eat up some of those hours.
FOMO is real and I have a hard time saying no to happy hours, art walks, friend hangouts, shows, and so on and so such.
Not to mention, the fella in my life and the time I get to spend with family.
These things are important though and contribute overall to my happiness and my fulfillment as a creative person and functioning human being, so they must be allowed, or even encouraged.
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I'm thinking I need to reduce some of the working hours. I'm a half-hearted capitalist at best. Why should I waste more and more years toiling for the Man (even if my employer is led by a lesbian immigrant) when I could be spending time on me, mine, and my imagination?
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This article about women writers over forty inspires me today.

buddhism and open mics

Reading this interview with Charles Johnson inspired me.
I've been attempting to go to open mic's but fear often gets in the way.
Here, he talks about not just reading--performing!
The video gives more examples of his thoughtful, humanistic approach.

the thing of it is

As a published but mostly unknown writer, no one is clamoring for my work.
I get zero e-mails asking when my next piece will be coming out.
No tweets begging for content.
Occasionally a friend will hire me for a project, but mostly I'm on the hustle, sending pieces out, filing the rejections, revising and sending them out again.
I sit down in my writing space a few times a week, and work on short stories, blog posts, videos, bits of a memoir and I wonder--yes sometimes I do wonder--
why.
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It's for myself, broadly. I write to understand.
To noodle through things.
To find some truth.
It's because I have something to say--
that only I can say.
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Today though, I question--
why.

state of confusion

I've been feeling confused lately, and as much as I like to think I embrace it (hi George Saunders), the truth is--sometimes all the confusion is tiring.
I may have to move house, due to arson.
My job is meh, made more so daily by petty tyrants.
My city has somehow morphed from a rainy, arty backwater into a hot property. No more Ballard drivers. Now you dive out of the way of whatever sporty BMW needs to roar past you (only to screech to a halt at the next traffic jam).
And my country...this wonderfully delusional cesspool hijacked by criminal grifters and lowlifes--what more is there to say?
Confusion into creativity, straw into gold.
I know it can happen, I just need to take the time.
Make the time.

riffing

Twice this past week I found myself seated in a Capitol Hill establishment, riffing on a creative piece with a good friend. Trading puns, bad jokes, playing with words until we hit on something that makes everyone's faces light up.
That's it. 
Ooh, put that in.
Did you get that?
One piece is finished--in the can, a two-act radio play presented on Sunday on Hollow Earth Radio. It was a group effort, predictably sloppy in some parts, and surprisingly sharp in others, and in the end, a lovingly-Frankensteined production.
The other piece is just beginning, a much bigger work.
All this plus my own writing and video tinkering equals a tired but satisfied creative brain.

writing begins with

I've been savoring this post from 2014, by Daniel Jose Older.
He was asked about the old chestnut that writers should write every day.

---

Read on.

getting to yes

Ever wondered what it takes to get a piece of fiction published?
I'm not talking New Yorker type of prose. That's a rarefied world and only the lucky few--some talented, some, well, I won't speak ill of the overqualified and undermotivated--but it's a world only the lucky few inhabit.
For the rest of us writers, there's the writing bit. Rough draft, edits, versions, more edits, more versions. Adding, polishing, removing, until you get to the point where you feel ready to share your baby with the world.
Then, you enter the world of submissions. You need to know which journals and magazines are accepting submissions. You need to know about word limits and genres, you need a brief bio and a thick skin because there's no getting to yes without a lot of no's.
Take, for example, my most recent story, "Fast Food and Box Wine," published by Sliver of Stone in October.
I finished what seemed like a solid draft in April 2016. At that point, it was 5700 words long and had a different title. Over the next sixteen months, I submitted the story to 32 different publications, taking a pause now and then, and revising all along the way. Some journals sent form e-mail rejections. Some responded via an online tool. Several  rejected it with comments, or an invitation to submit again.
I submitted it to Sliver of Stone in January 2017.
In September, they wrote to accept the story, now a slim 3500 words.
Publishing feels great! It's a yes, it's acceptance, it's validation, of a sort.
It's also a matter of persistence and timing and yes, writing.
Writing and writing and writing.
You can get to yes, if you're willing to get through a lot of no's first. 

heppy heppy

HNY 2016!
I rang it in with friends and laughs and an 80's band.
Yesterday, weary but not hungover, a cold clear day, pho and thrift shopping with the fam.
Today, writing. Edits to a draft.
And the realization that I might-slash-NEED to confront my biggest writing fear, this year. More on that soon.

today

Today what I can offer is this, from the very grounded and sublime Subhan Schenker:
Isn't it strange that we live as if the NEXT moment is MORE IMPORTANT than THIS one?! In doing that, we miss all the blessings that THIS MOMENT - which is the ONLY moment we have! - has to offer.
Love...
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Oh and this, from a Charles D'Ambrosio interview in Tin House:
It’s a good reminder that you don’t have to indulge a goopy confessional mode to write a personal essay—you’re more mysterious than you know, more naked than you imagine, and whether you intend it or not, you’re going to be exposed.

words

I got some writing advice last weekend.
From non-writers. A fair amount of whiskey was involved. And, I asked for it. I was feeling stuck on a particular story ending and decided to solicit some help.
For me, talking about a story in progress ranks pretty high on the discomfort list, right up there with dental work and public speaking. It's hard to talk about writing and I don't want what I'm working on to sound trivial or unimaginative.
But, I asked, they answered, and I took mental notes. I made revisions this week, and now I'm letting them settle. When I go back in a week or two, we'll see how it feels.
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Trying to find the thread, man. It's a lifelong quest.

nix

Nothing to say, nowhere to say it.

how alive?

I had lunch with my pal from the food bank recently. We caught up on our volunteer job gossip, traded mystery novels, shot the shite. I read your busysmartypants, he said, munching his sandwich. I didn't understand what the heck was going on!
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A co-worker said to me once, off-handedly, You pretty much do exactly what you want to do.
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This is all okay by me. This little corner of the internet is my island. I have visitors on occasion but the words and the music and the pictures and the videos--those are all for me. This is my life now. Was my life then. Who am I when no one I know is around?
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Tin House posted an Anne Lamott quote the other day: "How alive are you willing to be?" It struck me as kin to the George Saunders quotation at the top of this page. Then, then I re-read it and it felt so smug, so I found the full passage and lo here is Ms. Lamott in all her righteous rage. Have you asked yourself lately, how alive am I willing to be?
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x-posted with busysmartypants 

the big red 9

I read at open mic on Thursday, though I didn't want to, especially. What I read didn't get laughs where I thought it might, so clearly I have work to do. The vibe was odd, too, perhaps due to the full moon? The March full moon is known as the full worm moon.
Lunch with a good friend on Friday, followed by beach time with Ms Hammy. Yesterday, a leisurely morning (which can be anxiety provoking)--and then a long bus ride north, with stops at a brew shop, an Ethiopian market, a retail 420 shoppe, and then an afternoon helping a friend move a mountain of wood chips, interspersed with beer breaks and tossing around
a tennis ball for tiny terrier Jack to fetch. We finished the evening at the Viking, with pickle chips and pitchers of Rolling Rock. On the walk home, this enormous glowing red 9 loomed overhead.

the vibe

A weird run today. After spending a day indoors yesterday--completely worn out and fighting a bug--I ran the long route today, a brisk, windy morning. At Starbucks, a cluster of cars trying to get into the drive-thru, and an empty parking lot. I ran into the street, dodging the ginormous SUV blocking the sidewalk. The panhandler who's usually by the exit gave me a "whaddya gonna do" shrug and I said Guess he needs his coffee and we laughed and he half-screamed It's urgent! Farther along, 2 pedestrians, one apparently on the phone but said Hi, another puffing on a Swisher Sweet and called How ya doing.
Seriously?
Srsly.
Next, a dead rat flopped on the path, which I jumped over, last minute. Then, towards the end, I passed a flushed-looking female runner coming the other direction. Next thing, she's running past me, apparently having U-turned and turned on the afterburners. Sprinted past me, and then stopped a few yards later. It's infuriating to be used to clock some lame ass's run. I wanted to clock something, all right.
Now--coffee and words.

well anyway

I'm feeling abandoned and unimportant.
There's no one to discuss this with. How would I even start?
Which leads to, I'm feeling mad at myself for not doing the things I know I love so that the first thing doesn't matter so much. So, enough of the Pity Partie and onwards to photos, music, people, writing, creating, laughs, art, and the night.
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Re-reading the biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, I wish the author wasn't so coyly trying to understand-slash-explain ESVM's dichotomies. Why couldn't she be passionate and an addict and wildly creative and loving and cruel, a terrific and terrible spouse, a woman known widely and not at all? Hello, almost every male writer evar. The sexist double standard endures, no, it flourishes.

Hard to believe

New story alert! "Hard to Believe," in the East Bay Review.
Also, Your Impossible Voice notified me last week that they'd deposited $0.25 for royalties in my Paypal. I'm not sure whether to be happy about it or depressed.
Four more quarters and I can do a load of laundry.

open mic

My buddy hosts a monthly open mic event at a bookstore up north. The Buzzard serves beer and wine so it's more like a dive bar/bookstore. Regulars play Go, at a table up front. The weekly version of open mic features everyone from extemporaneous speakers to a tap-dancer to nervous first-time guitarists. One of the baristas also sings in a band, Little Sara and the Night Owls.
Anyway, the monthly open mic is for poets and writers. Sometimes there's only a handful of readers and we're done by 8.30. Other times, like last week, it's more.
Last week, first-timer Scarlet read a piece, too fast but passionately, about a stoner guardian angel.
I read an excerpt from "Hard to Believe," getting enthusiastic applause when I mentioned the story would be published in March.
My buddy read a few poems, also about to be published, one so hilariously disgusting that one of the  readers/Go players called, "Ewwww," grinning widely as he catcalled.
The barista/singer read from her phone, a piece inspired by The Thomas Crown Affair.
Koon Woon sat in a corner quietly until just before the featured poet. Then he stood up and shared two poems with great depth and beauty. "He won the American Book Award," someone said, and I understood why.
At the end of the night, Noel Franklin, the featured poet, performed, and her poems seemed like more than words, they seemed like her, wrought from pain and experience and love of art. Afterwards, she gave me one of her books. I said goodbye to my buddy and his new friend, a quietly fierce East Coast transplant, and caught a bus home.
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Picture is from a very cold day-hike at Carkeek.