Shiny Things

I have a lot of stuff weighing me down right now. A beloved cat has gone missing, and despite everyone's kind reassurances that cats are good survivors, I have very little hope. I am wrestling with my worklife - I am working way too much and trying to decide what to put down, coming once again to the conclusion that adjuncting isn't worth it, even if I do love teaching. Oh, and I just found out that three of my second grade daughter's peers are leaving the school in the next month. And the Republicans have officially gone woman/child-hating insane all over this country, not to mention poor people-hating, public employee-hating, art-hating, and so forth. I may blog about some of these topics. I have so many thoughts gnawing at my skull, I had better write them down somewhere, here or elsewhere. Oh, and my beloved grandmother is declining, and I can only watch from afar as my mother is sucked into caretaker overload. I am feeling very, extraordinarily not shiny. Then in the m

Some people engage in live blogging. I blog 10 days after the fact. That's just the way I roll up in here. In my first 3 hours at the AWP conference, I discovered 8 writers that I (and by extension, you) need to read. First I went to a session on "Short Story into Novel." There I encountered these six people (books, and bitly-ed amazon listings included): Alan Heathcock – VOLT - (In his words, 2 failed novels became the bulk of this collection. He is a funny self-deprecating guy in a porkpie hat. I have the impression his stories are bigger than that.) Heidi Durrow – The Girl Who Fell from the Sky - ( Girl was rejected 48 times before it landed a publisher, and now is on the bestseller list. Of particular interest to me: it has “three beginnings” because of multiple perspectives, which is something I am struggling with in my BiP, too.) Alexi Zentner – Touch - (Zentner has such lovely sensitivity to language just when speaking off the top of his head, I expect his pro