Eight weeks ago I was thrown into the deep end of a course I’d never taught before (not exactly) in a community college I’d never been to, with seven students I didn’t know. We met every Wednesday night between 6 and 8 pm, after work, hungry and tired, in an empty boardroom somewhere in the…
A friend told me the other day that the novel she just finished was not the one she wanted to write. Isn’t that the point? Isn’t that the sound we hear as we tap, or type, or scribble? The sound of our own heartbeat, and maybe we’re panting a little, maybe even sobbing, as the…
I woke up late this morning. To bird song. And if you’ve ever woken up to birdsong in Australia, you know that it never fucking stops. It’s not like birdsong in America, which politely diminishes by mid-morning, and by noon is just a distant memory. No, over here, it’s a constant, euphoric shake rattle and…
Done and done. For now. Lucky to have readers I trust, mothers in arms and combat veterans. An adapted excerpt picked up by Spinetingler, coming out in April.
I want to say Carver’s style with Dennis LeHane’s heart but McClanahan’s stories mess with both.
Truman Capote likened the finishing of a novel to taking your child into the back yard and shooting it. As a parent, I’m intrigued by the mind that could have created that sentence. Still, I take his point. I was all but undone by the completion of my previous novel, cried for days, became physically…
One of my favorite rejections to date came from an editor who knocked back my submission but told me by way of consolation that one of my colleagues—an enviable Irish wunderkind—got in instead, and how proud I must be. The editor went on to say that my story (which has since been published elsewhere) was ‘a little too dry, a little airless.’
‘She talking about your story,’ said a supportive friend, ‘or her vag?’
250 words down and it settles in. A great calm. A sea of words to keep me afloat. I stop looking for land.
No products in the cart.