rm | (no subject)

In the midst of the numerous irritations of the last few days, I've been thinking about a lot of things. One of them is knowing when to step away from the low-hanging fruit. It's something I went through when I first start submitting my writing for publication, and it's something I've done in other areas of my life as well. It's a good strategy for building cred and confidence, but at a given point it's an irritant and a waste of time, and I really need to start running with those instincts as opposed to waiting for them to get proved to me.

I am a control freak, and I suspect in a past life, a corporate efficiency expert. There are a lot of things I don't know how to do, and that I don't particularly know how to do, but I can often find ways to improve on nearly any process. Of course, a big part of that is the benefit of distance and not having a clue, but it's that observational tendency towards refinement that I think makes me so bloody impatient with nearly everything.

And I suppose looking at the above, A + B is why people meditate.

Meanwhile, the sun came in my window this morning and woke me up at 7. This is good news, as it means temperature aside, I'll stop feeling so goddamn mired soon. Mired in what remains to be seen.

My father called me last night while I was napping, and he was all "I'll let you go have your Saturday night, I know it's important to you." Well, Saturday night isn't important to me, at least right now, 'cause the weather is still crud and I'd been up since early, and I laughed, vaugely hysterically as I wasn't really awake and told him I'd been napping. This probably alarmed him, and it one of those things I need to play catchup to today.

I responded to a Craigslist posting where someone with dental phobia needed a dental recommendation, so I gave them mine. The note I got back included "There's a writer named Racheline Maltese, so if that's you, please know that I've enjoyed her work" which is the sort of weird I don't really know what to do with. (Right, I know, don't be a moron, say "Thank you.").

Now that I'm awake for no good reasn and have a few hours to kill before heading to Hoboken, I think I'll see if Sunburnt Cow does breakfast.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Is this your work?

http://www.iceflow.com/doorknobs/writers/RMALTESE.html (http://www.iceflow.com/doorknobs/writers/RMALTESE.html)

Yeah.

If you'll pardon what seems to be pat response: cool, I liked them, (at least I didn't say, "interesting.") The lines approached lyric and I kept thinking some might be poetic prose considering their length and their prose looking layout, instead of short short short fiction.

A Canadian writer from my town published a book of micro short fiction, (the longest is five pages) that was up for the The Giller Prize (http://www.thegillerprize.ca/), a top canadian literary prize. He is a master of the concise. Worth a look for any short fiction writer.

You probably wouldn't find the book in the states, but you can find it on Amazon.ca: John Gould - Kilter: 55 Fictions (http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0888012802/qid=1078165706/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_2_1/702-4456285-1260018) and get an okay exchange rate.

This would be a list of your published works, too? http://www.writers.net/writers/4790 (http://www.writers.net/writers/4790)

Personally, I have trouble getting back into writing, after getting the degree. It was an intense learning experience for me, so much to learn packed into 4 years, so much to think about. And I always had workshops to write for. I start and stop and start and stop.

How do you balance all your elements?

A very out of date list, but yes.

As for the short short stuff, i do it to keep my hand in, more than anything, and it's a way to excise certain personal obsessions. Two of those pieces are years old, one distilled from a much longer and better piece; the other inspired by my New Orleans travel journal. The more recent one, which actually won, I really really love, and is entirely a product of my high school obsession with homosexuality, Oxford and the 1880s. Randomly mannered prose just spews out of me when bored.

The high school obsessions were:
1) homosexuality 2) Oxford 3) the 1880s or homosexuality at Oxford in the 1880s, eg - Oscar Wilde. Are we talking about: The Disappearance Of Howard. How is it influenced by those things? What did it win?

Writing is just telling stories for me. I mean, I want to say something, too. But that is the tradition of storytelling.

Sadly, prose tumbles out of me without any manners at all. It leaves without telling me where it is going. I simply forget it if I don't write it down write down right away.

Yes, Dissapearance of Howard. It's two characters are men, and it is intentionally, although not specifically set in a world where wealthy you travel as opposed to having actual occupations, which isn't really the modern world -- believe me that story was like 5 times longer before I got it down to the contest length requirement.

And it won whatever D&B contest I wrote it for -- Hayward Faultline I think. heh.

Just I saw the guidelines, and they were instantly about something for me, so I wrote it. I got to do a reading of it too, they're supposed to put the video up on the sight eventually. I really had inordinate amounts of fun with the story.