I Have Become Accustomed To Rejection

I received a personal rejection today from Quick Fiction which, in some ways, feels like an acceptance. I love Quick Fiction. It is one of the most wholly satisfying magazines out there from the first story to the last story, in every issue. They said my story was beautifully written but didn’t tell enough of a story. Fair enough. I have a clearer sense of what to send next. And not to be immodest but the story in question is beautifully written and it’s odd and it will find a home. I do, for the record, write stories that tell stories, but most of those stories are very long. The shorter stuff I write, the stuff that has been rejected so often as of late that I worry I will never again see another acceptance, tends to be quirky, offering glimpses or insights or moments. I don’t think everything needs to be a story. I am enjoying, as a writer, even if know one loves it, writing things that stretch how I understand what makes a story. I always want to try to become a better writer, a better person, a better everything.

I read “Do You Have a Place For Me” for the Orange Alert podcast. I was nervous while reading it so I read very quickly. I love this story. The whole podcast is great. You can listen to it here.

While I think Dish TV is run by evil people who are interested in extracting as much money as they can from their customers, I must confess that the picture quality is the best I have ever seen. Their HD and non HD channels alike, make Charter’s picture quality look like the fuzzy transmissions we used to get with the physical antenna on the television in my childhood home. My eyeballs are basically orgasming all the time.

It is strange and familiar, being back in the (real) Midwest. The summers are ungodly hot and humid and I love it. Right now, the sky is dark and the sky is swollen. There is thunder rolling nearby. At any moment, the sky will explode and it will rain hard and heavy and just as quickly, that rain will end and the damp ground will dry and the heat will linger albeit, perhaps, with a slightly kinder quality to it. As I drove to the saddest, most depressing Wal-mart I’ve ever had the displeasure of frequenting last night, I saw lots of teenagers in parking lots hanging out in cars or on cars or near cars and I was reminded of how dull small towns are in the Midwest, and how the young people create their own activities that involve sitting around drinking, flirting, hanging out, fucking. They wear the same clothes as big city kids, though slightly wrong. Their hair styles are a year or two out of date. They have wide eyes, dulled by boredom.

The rain is here now. I can hear it on the roof, see it through the balcony doors, falling at a sharp angle. Rain feels hopeful to me in how it can wash everything clean.

I’m going to freak out about not finding a gym yet in about two days. If I have to go to Snap Fitness I am going to be so goddamned aggravated but I will do it if I must. I had a perfect gym situation. I feel lost without my trainer. I don’t want to undo the progress I’ve made. I can’t… I just can’t. I need to get this off my chest. Believe it or not, I really liked my routine of gym in the morning, gym at night that I had gotten into this past year and for the past three weeks I’ve been, gross and slothful and that makes me panic. So. Universe, work this out for me.  My sanity and fathleticism are at stake here. I realize I sound slightly deranged here but if you understood how hard I’ve worked and how far I’ve come you would get it.

There is a man taking a nap in my bed because he is tired. No, he is exhausted. It’s a long drive from the middle of nowhere to… the middle of nowhere, and then having little sleep, and then having the light of God beaming into the bedroom at the crack of dawn–that’s a lot for someone with a normal sleep schedule. He is snoring and I am not bothered, not that I ever was. In fact, I have left the bedroom door open so I can listen to that snoring. It is a reminder and a comfort. It is a presence. Even when a relationship is not perfect (and really what relationship is?), when you share a complex history, when you are dealing with difficult things together, you have a very strong bond that cannot be dismissed or easily forgotten. You can’t just walk away. You have to unravel yourself and when you look at all the ways you are tied together, the complex, bloody knots holding you together, you start to wonder if it is even possible.  The kitchen is unpacked. I have empty cabinets because there are a lot of cabinets in the kitchen which is strangely narrow. My bedroom is mostly unpacked. I have built in shoe racks in the closet which for me is like, sex on a stick. Also, washer and dryer were delivered today, brand new. Now, I didn’t order these appliances, the landlord did so they’re a weird off brand I’ve never heard of but that is really not the point. I have a washer and dryer under the same roof as me. I’m going to do laundry (J brought his LOL) and I’m going to be joyful all the while.

You should read this. I don’t think there’s a better advice columnist out there. I would like to meet her some day and just have coffee. But she’s more than an advice columnist. She is one of the finest writers I’ve encountered in recent memory. Her writing is elegant and lush and graceful. I want to write a thank you letter of some kind to Sugar because in every column, there is heart and true empathy for the damaged souls who are reaching out to her, hoping she will hear them, hoping she will answer their question, hoping she will hear them say, “I need help,” because sometimes, it is easier to write your sorrows down for a stranger than it is to say to a friend, “This is what’s going on with me.” Anyway. If this week’s column doesn’t shatter you, you have no soul, and that’s fine but I worry for you.

There is a fly in my apartment that persists against all reason. I want this fly dead. I said, “If you do one thing before you leave, kill that fly.” He puffed up his chest and is pleased to have a project tonight. I am going to write tonight because I need to write and he is going to play WoW and we’re going to watch movies and etcetera and it’s going to be like… a normal night and tomorrow we will have a normal night and then I will have to hold on to the memory of those normal nights for a month and then another month and then who knows.

There is a tan line beneath the ring he gave me so now when I am washing my hands or otherwise have the ring off, I see the paler band of my skin and I am reminded that he gave me this thing that means something but not what you think. On the inside, there is a name. I like to run my finger over the engraved letters. I do it when I’m nervous or stressed.

Sometimes I think I do my best writing on this blog because I’m not thinking, I’m just running my virtual mouth. Sometimes I take stuff from here and make it into a story. Those are rarely rejected. There is a lesson in that, I’m sure.

I am being rejected by sleep but editors continue to ignore me this week. Terrible balance, that. I slept maybe three hours Saturday night. Never went to sleep last night. I did, however, finish my dissertation. Now I have to wait to see if my committee thinks it’s defensible. If it’s not, I will probably lose it and also lose all hope. I think maybe I am a robot. I just said, “I AM A ROBOT” out loud in a robot voice. Sometimes I forget myself and do this in public. I do that quite often, really.  Sometimes, I also walk like I’m wearing ski boots and then I imagine they are gravity boots, holding me to the ground. Sometimes, I walk on campus and pretend I am cross country skiing. Some people would call this crazy. I’m not. That’s what all crazy people say. After I click “Publish”  I’m going to go fall into my bed and try to power nap. I put fresh sheets on the bed Saturday night because the dirty sheets were… maybe alive. Normally I change the sheets all the time but with the dissertation and other stuff going on, I’ve let lots of things slide. I love clean sheets. I’m very excited about what’s going to happen in my bed. Don’t be dirty. Well, don’t be too dirty. Just a little. No, more than a little. In Central Park in Omaha there is a huge slide that is like several stories high or that’s how I remember it. When I was a kid we would go there on Sundays and my dad would walk with me up the stairs and go down the slide with me so I wouldn’t be scared. I don’t wish my parents a happy mothers or fathers day on Facebook or Twitter or whatever. They’re not online like that and you’d best believe that’s deliberate. They keep asking me to make them Facebook pages and I keep “forgetting” because if we’re Facebook friends, that would be awkward. My dad’s company has a Facebook fan page I made but he doesn’t know how to view it or access it. That was deliberate too.  I like to limit them to Google and AOL. They still have AOL mail which I find terribly charming. I recently encouraged them to transition to iPhones so I could troubleshoot technical issues they have on a system I know. My dad still hasn’t set up his voicemail. By recently, I mean four months or so. Every time I call his US phone and he doesn’t answer, I am reminded that he needs to set up his voicemail. This won’t happen until the next time we see each other. When I go home, I have to fix their phones, their scanner, and their wireless network. They save up technical problems. They have a pool though so I forgive. Tonight, for the first time in a year, I can write, for fun, without feeling like I should be doing something else. I’m so excited just thinking about what I’m going to write tonight. I’m a nerd. If my committee is okay with my dissertation, I am done with school work for the rest of my life other than my defense for which I feel strangely prepared. This is a moment.I am sort of proud of myself. I’ve been neglecting my fathletic program for the past ten days to get the diss. done. I feel bloated and sluggish and hideous. I require fatness to feel my best. Fatness is fat fitness in case you weren’t familiar with the vernacular of fathletes. It is not to be confused with the other fatness though there’s that, too. You know I’m totes gonna write a book called Fathlete. I hope no one steals my idea before I get to it. My chesticles are sore. I am telling you too much.There is something really sad about the Internet, how we share the most mundane personal details and elevate them to the status of news or interesting information. I love that about the Internet. I care about the trivial details of your life. I am Jabba the Hut. Do not look at me until the end of the week. Even then, just look through me. My trainer is going to abuse me terribly this week. I’m excited about that too. Now I have only one last goal to accomplish and I will have done everything important I need to do outside of interpersonal relations. Even then, you probably don’t want to look at me. Quasimodo. Drama queen to the 10th power. The apartment is also in a sorry state. You know an argument is going to be stupid when you say something like, “Hey, I’m exhausted. Would you mind helping with the cleaning?” and the response is something like, “Babe, I work all day” because the implication there is that you don’t work even though you’ve been killing yourself working on a little 202-page thing called a dissertation and had to use lots of big words while doing so and for that you deserve extra credit. Maybe someone is implying its not work to watch the Law & Order: Criminal Intent marathon all day in the background. I cannot be sure. I’m not saying this happened but if it did happen, someone got hung the eff up on and hasn’t had their calls answered for three hours now and is gonna understand how silent my silent treatment can get. Imagine the quietest quiet you’ve ever known and make that a little quieter still. I’m ten times that silent tonight. I know what a catch I am all bloated and bitchy, thanks. I’ma promote myself now. If you don’t want to read my writings you are done reading for the day. My alter ego wrote a story I like. Sometimes I feel like wearing a different outfit. I wrote another story that I’m kind of proud of too. Yes, I write the same story over and over. We’ve established this. I wrote about all the bad stories I’ve ever written. I posted the first chapter of the first and only novel I’ve ever written–a novel I didn’t remember writing until last night when I found it on my hard drive. My favorite part about the end of this chapter is the TWIST ENDING that is so blatant and outrageous. Dramatic tension! Intrigue! Even after skimming the novel I only vaguely remember writing the thing and it’s super long too. Sadly, it’s beyond saving. I won’t delete it but I won’t be doing anything with it either . The good news is that I know I have the ability to write something novel-length. Bodes well for the novel I need to write this summer. Say what? In the spirit of the most interesting people I read on the Internet, who make me jelly with their excellent writings, bless.

All is strangely quiet on the writing front this week. Yesterday, I turned in a draft of my dissertation to the graduate school. They gave me a score of 20/20 because I know how to read directions about formatting and such. They actually grade the formatting, apparently. So unbelievable. I plan on turning in a draft to my committee on Thursday that will, I hope, resemble a final draft. I feel like maybe I might actually defend and I’m pre-freaking out about that now. I am starting to feel panicked about my moving date which is sooner than I’d like but I have a ton of prep to do for three new classes and a bunch of other stuff so reluctantly, leave I must. I’ve started packing very slowly because I’m purging crap but I haven’t gotten much done. Sometimes, I pack and someone unpacks what I’ve just packed. It’s annoying. I hope by now it’s clear that everything I say is annoying I actually find charming as all hell. I’m watching basketball for god’s sake. What is happening to me? Let’s legalize polygamy so we can all have our cake and eat it too!

(Lakers are gonna crush the Celtics. Mel Bosworth is going to be so damn happy and that makes me happy.It is good when my friends are happy.)

I needed gas so I pulled into the BP station because they pump your gas and I was alone and I hate pumping gas.The BP is locally owned. I was waiting for the attendant and I looked up, saw the sign, remembered how BP has basically killed the ocean. I drove off and I kept thinking about it all and I felt bad because the guy who owns the BP station, Dave, is really quite nice and when my battery died once he came out and put a new one in my car and when my car got stuck in the snow, he came and pulled me out and on and on. Boycotting BP is really hard in a small town. It’s not black and white in a place like this where you know the owner because he pumps your gas and helps you out. The evil corporation (and yes, they are evil) doesn’t feel the effects. The whole situation is terrible because the only people paying for it are those who can least afford it which is the way it always goes where big corporations are concerned.

I received my contributor copy of Gargoyle 56 today. It is massive. Consider buying it because there are works from Kelly Davio, Meg Pokrass, RYAN BRADLEY, the outstanding Shellie Zacharia, and a bunch of other fine writers.

I have a story in the issue called “How the Girl in the Glass Sheds Her Skin.” Here’s an excerpt:

In another state, in a city near an ocean where the air is always thick with salt and smog, Sasha meets Ryan, an endurance athlete—all muscle tightly coiled around bone—who pushes his body, submits to his human frailty, tries to rise above it. He teaches her how to transcend her own frailties. They spend hours running along the coast. They find euphoria in the agony of their worn bodies. At night, they soak together in a deep bathtub, drink red wine. They compare wounds. They never make love.

When Sasha’s womb stops bleeding, she knows she has found the depths of what her body can endure. She leaves Ryan a note, tucked in a worn pair of sneakers, thanking him for helping her with the cartography of her body. She drives across the country to the other coast where life is colder, moves faster. She meets Ivan, a Russian butcher, who is big and raw and cruel. He is open about his appetites. He reminds her of something she once knew. He doesn’t care about who she is or who she was, never asks questions so she never tells lies. He loves her and the way the bones of her face hold strong beneath his fist. He loves the way her body bends away from his so that he can trace the secrets she carries in tight knots along her spine. He loves the taste of blood on her lips, and how bruises flower along her shoulder blades. Sasha’s womb bleeds again. She allows herself to hope it might one day sustain life. She tests the newly marked cartography of her body. She has endured worse. He touches her. He is greedy and indelicate. When he falls asleep on top of her, still inside her, she drowns in him.

The rest of the words that go around these words are decent. I’ll post it to Fictionaut in a while. I’m looking forward to reading the Gargoyle issue after my life becomes my own again some time in July.

Let’s talk about the June issue of PANK. I don’t normally do this but I’m going to break some of this issue down. It’s our best issue yet. I said this last month and in April and in March and I will say this in July but come on! When you see what’s in this issue, you’ll understand.  When you see what’s in next month’s issue, you will understand. Rinse. Repeat.

First, you need to read Look Away Dixieland. When I was the weekly guest editor at Smokelong Quarterly, there were two stories that blew my mind and because the submissions there were, at the time, blind, I had no idea who wrote them. One was The Strain of Collusion, which I ended up choosing.  The other was Look Away Dixieland by Emily Howorth. The story was so smart and crisp and quirky and interesting that I asked Dave Clapper to send the writer a note mentioning how much I had enjoyed the story and invited her to submit it to PANK. She eventually did and I snapped it right up.  It’s the last paragraph (which reminds me of Erin Fitzgerald’s writing actually) I love the most but the whole thing is awesome or awes, if you will.

James Tadd Adcox’s Diseases, Disorders, Breaks is another favorite.  I was fascinated by this story because it was both familiar and foreign. I love stories where the writer builds a new world and does so in subtle ways. When a writer can do world building in a short story I am even more impressed. James Tadd Adcox impressed me with this strange new world of his and also with the dense prose and language tricks throughout the story. You can also listen to him do something neat with an except from the story.

I had an opportunity to read an advance copy of Melissa Broder’s When You Say One Thing and Mean Your Mother. With a title like that, the book is bound to be good and it was. I was really excited to see her name in the submission queue and you’ll find poems from her in PANK 5 and the June issue that are precise and pretty much perfect.

Anne Leigh Parrish is one of the most underappreciated writers out there. She should be as acclaimed as a Lorrie Moore or Annie Proulx. I first read a story of hers many years ago in the Virginia Quarterly Review and her work stayed with me. Parrish’s  Snow Angels is  a lovely story about a complicated family and as I read it the first time, I did not want it to end. All of Parrish’s writing is like that. Her work pulls you in very slowly and by the end of the story you start to feel a weight pressing down on you because she has pulled you into her world so expertly.

I have a real penchant for writing that uses human anatomy in interesting ways. Kaitlin Dyer does that in her poem As Lovers Do. This poem is visceral and beautiful and there’s a really interesting juxtaposition of reality and the impossible I find unforgettable.

Victoria Lynne McCoy demonstrates the power of a great title with her poem On the Day It Became Legal to Rape Your Wife.

Teresa Milbrodt is another writer who should be a household name. Her story Blue will appear in PANK 5 and she has a story in the June issue as well as another forthcoming issue of PANK online. Milbrodt is really imaginative and she does things with magical realism that make me believe in the impossible. When you read Blue, you will understand. In the meantime, start with Mr. Chicken, then go find other great writing of hers.

It is a real pleasure to publish a writer for the first time and we have the privilege of doing that with Johnny Peters’s Science. After I read this odd, charming little story I refused to believe he had never been published. Each paragraph could be a story in and of itself but somehow, they fit together. It’s uncanny.

A lot of people have been discussing Ocean Vuong’s poetry and rightly so. His writing is erotic, at times poignant, always sensory and engaging.  As I read these poems the first time, I thought, “These are visual,” and I really love that when I feel like words make me see something.

I didn’t quite know what to think of Ani Smith’s How to Do Your Makeup Like a Star when I first read it. Was it a story? A poem? Should I take it literally? Am I reading the subtext correctly? Any time writing makes me think, I know it’s good. Smith’s work in the June issue made me think.

There are these poems. Words that come to mind are masterful, moving, meaningful. I can’t say more. It would be awkward but know that sometimes as an editor you get really lucky and this is one of those moments.

Finally (and really I’m in love with everything in the June issue), there’s this story by Dave Thomas. There’s an attention to detail in this story I find remarkable. I also love how this story speaks to modern fatherhood and there’s a sadness to the ending that makes my heart break a little.

At Necessary Fiction, I write about publishing and feeling exposed and bad waitresses. You can also see words from Tim Jones-Yelvington and xTx. There’s so much amazing writing coming in the next two weeks. I remain thrilled and honored that Steve Himmer invited me to be the Writer in Residence and just… humbled by how every writer I approached, said yes without hesitation. That’s some kind of wonderful.

Outstanding submissions: 23

Rejections: 1, form

I received another form rejection from Caketrain, though they did add a personal note at the end thanking me for supporting Caketrain.I quite like Caketrain. I would like to have a story in Caketrain. I am increasingly certain that will never happen. I am probably too grounded in gritty/realism for their aesthetic. This time I sent them a magical realism story I thought would be right up their alley. If that story can’t crack them, nothing will. Alas. Onward. Onward. Onward.

I am in the throes of an insomnia bout that is… sucking. I can’t think clearly. I need to think clearly to wrap this dissertation up. I have to finish the last two chapters Wednesday and Thursday and I will and then I will revise and then I will turn in a book and after that, defend it. The book is full of ideas and opinions! About students as writers and the way faculty talk about students as writers and how we need to stop bitching about students and calling them bad writers because they are NOT! They are young, they are learning, they are not bad. There’s a difference between imperfect and bad. My dissertation is all heart and I’m pretty damn proud of that. I do back that heart up with data. I’ve been number crunching this week. I think that’s what has been so hard about this dissertation. I’m not a numbers person, but I have tons and tons of data (92 student respondents, 247 faculty respondents, Likert scales, tons of questions, WTF?) and I have no idea what I’m doing with it. Yesterday, I actually wrote the term Likert scale about eleven times and I thought, “WHO AM I?” I went into the humanities so I would never need to know what a Likert scale is. That plan really didn’t work out.

Now that I’ve put you all to sleep, please wake up.

Work pressure is literally about to break my skull. There may, in fact, be bone fragments streaming through my blood. There was a scheduling error  and it looks like now I’m defending on the 28th. I am no longer going to state definitively when I am defending because I no longer believe it will happen. I am trapped in a purgatory of someone else’s making. I am relaying this information calmly but know that inside my head, I am punching a wall with a broken hand and using very foul language. More bone fragments.

When this is all over, I’ll talk about what the past month has been like and you can marvel at how I mostly held it together.

Some day I’m going to write about insomnia and how hard/annoying/lame it is. Hell is lying next to someone who is sleeping soundly and trying not to punch them in the face. Still, I get things done. Tonight, I went through my Inbox, for real instead of in a half-assed manner. Instead of reading e-mails and firing off quick responses or not dealing with whatever the sender needed, I addressed almost everything in the manner required. My general e-mail policy is to read immediately and respond within a day but sometimes people ask me things that require thought and I can put that sort of thing off indefinitely. There are four people on my instant reply list which means even if I’m working or busy  or crabby or checking email via my phone, I’ll generally and happily write back even if just to let them know hey I got this. If you’re my parents or my boyfriend or a very special awesome person you are lucky! Or I am lame and eager to please. I wish my Inbox could stay the way it is right now, with all requests, queries etc., addressed and filed away. My Inbox feels clean and hopeful and accomplished. I want to fall asleep in my Inbox.

Lesley Ann Warren is an interesting actress. She is quite attractive but her voice is strange, at once watery and gravelly. Her voice confuses me. She gives the same performance no matter what she’s doing. It’s kind of hilarious. So many actors get by on one trick. The same could be said for non actors. I’m pretty sure I do, get by on one sad little trick.

My movers have given me a window within which they will both pick up and deliver my stuff. Their windows are like the cable guy’s windows only they last days and cost more. I like definitive things. I like facts. I like control. I don’t have control. The movers have control. I am trying to surrender my sanity and my savings to them gracefully. That’s not going very well.

Several years ago, there was a book released called The Surrendered Wife, a self help/crackpot philosophy suggesting women should surrender every single decision, minute or major, to their husbands. There was a lot of feminist outrage about the book. I find the concept pretty horrifying myself but some days I think, yes, please make every single decision for me today. Tell me what to do. I will obey.

I’m late to the party but I’m pretty sure this is one of the reasons why she’s one of the 20 writers under 40 in The New Yorker. “The consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of their dignity.” Haiti has a single story too, in most people’s minds. I worry that I contribute to that singularity sometimes.

Please read Elizabeth Ellen’s “Stalking Dave Eggers” at Bookslut so we can talk about it. I may not shut up about this essay for the next long while. I have been reading this thing over and over. It made my cry. It is so honest and masterfully written and heart breaking but in a really quiet, subtle way. I met Elizabeth Ellen briefly at AWP. She was tall and slender and gorgeous and confident and she wore killer shoes. When I say killer shoes, I mean KILLER shoes. I thought, wow, this chick is bad ass. Her life must be fucking perfect.  It is really easy to make assumptions about people, to make judgments, based on cursory information. I hate when people make assumptions about me or judge me and then I turn around and do that same thing and I would like to not do that as much. I read Stalking Dave Eggers and I thought, even when you think people are really different from you, they often are not. Sometimes we’re all the same in our individual ways. Life is hard for everyone and it is easy to get so wrapped up in your own bullshit you forget that everyone has a story. Everyone has their bullshit. If you read this essay, some of this might make sense. This essay also really speaks to the power of online communities and how they can help you through difficult times and how you can get so wrapped up in really intense relationships with people you’ve never met. I felt like less of a pathetic loser for having significant online friends after reading this. I felt less… alone. Anyway, read it.

If you have not reached a saturation point with my writing, you might want to check out Used People at >kill author and A Brief Accounting of What Took Place When Dottie Kauppi Won $67,000 on the Deluxe Double Diamond Mine Slot Machine at Metazen.

To recap: I just cannot handle Lesley Ann Warren’s voice.

I haven’t been rejected today but I am having a great hair day and we need to talk about that. I am still at work so that is dulling the shine of my great hair day, but still, I’m pleased with my coiffure. I woke up this morning and I thought, I don’t remember the last time I didn’t just pull my hair back with a headband. I thought, “Self: You have been looking like a crazy lady lately. Your hairbrush misses you. You have stopped caring about your hair because it is falling out. That’s no excuse for neglecting yourself.” I washed my hair enthusiastically. I combed my five hairs and used my hairstyling equipment and products. I was so pleased with the results I had an impromptu photo shoot with myself.

As for the falling out thing, that is still happening, I am alarmed. I’m going to deal with it in Chicago or St. Louis this summer where there are like, real dermatologists.

Then I went to the package store to send my youngest brother something he accidentally had shipped to my place. I included a really passive aggressive note. Let’s just say a picture of a pig was involved. He’s going to love that. Anyway, the lady at the package store said, “Wow. What did you do with yourself???” She was just so shocked and I realized, oh hell, I have been looking tragic. The thing about being in academia is that you can look mediocre and you’ll blend right in. I don’t want to be that professor who just stopped caring so I’m going to try to comb my hair every day. Baby steps. In all fairness, though, working out a lot is really a good hair day killer. I could probably relax my hair once every two weeks.

I tried to take a decent picture of my hair style but then chopped off the top of my head. Still, though, the sides are banging. Also, I have a neck now and that’s pretty fabulous. And as you can see, I’ve been working seriously today because my glasses are on my face. This is a rare occurrence. I don’t know why my hand looks like a Hulk hand. I’m sad about that.

The voting for the Million Writers Award is now open. Vote your conscience–me, or PANK contributors Rachel Swirsky or Summer Block. For real, their stories are outstanding. I will not blog of this matter again until May 30.

For the record, I am not being sarcastic when I say I am excited about Tyra Banks’s new book. Is it going to be bad? Absolutely. Am I going to love it? LIKE SHOWGIRLS. I hear tell that my Chicago friends (YOU ARE MY FRIENDS WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT) are planning a performative release party for Modelland. I am peeing myself for this, in advance.

I wrote this about obsession. Me? Obsessive. Never.

Seriously, though, my hand. WTF? Scary.

Outstanding submissions: 19

Rejections: 1, semi-personal, Ninth Letter

Another day, another Ninth Letter rejection, the we like you and want to see more but we will not publish this story that means so much to you and that you put your entire heart and soul and blood into. May this note console you. I am consoled. I am so consoled that I did that annoying thing and took them up on their offer to see more, immediately. I generally try to put months between submissions, to cleanse the literary palate, if you will, but I actually had something really good and so I sent it out to two places and Ninth Letter is one of them. We shall see.

We know I like pictures so let’s rock this:

Yes, that is baby elbow dimple or as I like to call it, delicious or better yet, dimplicious. I want to put whipped cream or peanut butter into that dimple and go to TOWN. Ugh. This is my favorite baby in the world until my niece arrives in August and then they will be tied for favorite baby. Speaking of favorite baby–cannot stop buying cute pink dresses for the little lady. They are so tiny. And miniature patent leather shoes in pink. I’m only human. Someone please confiscate my credit card and Internet connection.

I didn’t realize how much I got/bought at AWP until we unpacked the box and suitcase this week. J said, “Are you really going to read all that?” I said, “Yes, sir, I am.” He said, “How?” I said, “I have no idea.” He said, “Call me sir again.” I did.

Let’s deconstruct this parking job in front of my building. Situate car at an angle? Check! Take up two spaces? Check! Make one of those spaces a handicapped spot? Check! WTF? Honestly.

You may recall I have a bit of an obsession with Subway and how people behave in Subway both in front of and behind the counter. Let me deconstruct what happened at Subway today when I went to get my Turkey on wheat for lunch. There are three people in front of me and about eleven people behind me. Employee A. is at the cash register ringing up a transaction. Employee B is dipping bread in oatmeal so the bread can be baked. Employee C is doing something RANDOM in the back. No one is making sandwiches. At 12:30. I was just done.

So I get back to my office and yes, construction right outside the door and in the ceiling above my office. Plus construction man ass crack. It’s a fine day. As I write this I hear sawing and banging and annoying conversation.

Have I discussed my bra crisis? I’m in that frustrating place where I have two kinds of bras–those that are too big and those that do not yet fit quite right so I can either walk around without support in the too big bras (not tenable) or I can walk around with porn star boobs, that is, my cups runneth over. Some people find this thrilling. Ahem. But not me. I don’t want to buy new bras because I keep having to buy new clothes via the weight loss project and I’m feeling miserly. The crisis came to a head yesterday when I was running at the gym and had to hold my chest. I held on to the girls for dear life so I looked a little insane. It was awkward. I broke down and ordered some bras from the Internet. They should arrive next week.

Shome Dasgupta kindly asked me for my thoughts on reading. I referenced Dan Brown–just keeping it real. I read mass market paperbacks.

One more thing! I got asked to blurb something. It was so flattering and surreal. I felt like a grown up.

Outstanding submission: 17

Rejections: 1, personal

I received a really nice, really personal rejection from Puerto Del Sol. It is always nice to see an acknowledgment that my work has been read and considered by a human. The phrases “great intensity” and “impressive style” were used and let’s face it. I love compliments so I will be sending them more when submissions re-open.

You may notice I take a lot of pictures. I do so because I’ve lived through some hard things and the past few years have been the best of my life and I don’t want to forget any of it. I’m going to brag now.

On Friday I received a little recognition from the university and was named a woman of promise (?!) and there was a fancy luncheon and I got a gift bag. The gift bag is cute but I forgot to take a picture of it. Trust me on this. The food was, of course, terrible. I pretended to be a vegetarian. I had to get my picture taken. I had to stand up in front of a room full of strangers so that was pretty traumatizing. I got through it by thinking about my cute gift bag and how excited I was to get home and see what was inside. I didn’t want to be tacky and do that like right there in front of everyone. As I sat through the lunch and then lots and LOTS of talking, I kept thinking, maybe there’s something magical inside that bag. Maybe there’s a little tiny baby inside that bag. Maybe there’s money in that bag. You will be sad, perhaps, to know that inside the bag was a program, some promotional items from the university like a pencil, a very nice glass object that I will use as a paperweight in my new job and a university-branded water bottle that I will use at the gym. Below you will see the empty room. We were all standing awkwardly in the corner waiting to be told what to do.

Below is what I ate for lunch. The theme was Asian cuisine, approached with a broad, industrial culinary stroke. It was sad. You can’t see my face here, but after I took this picture, I dejectedly moved food around the plate and thought that this was good for my weight loss project. I mean really. The food had a disconcerting gray pallor to it.

I was cheered by tulips.

For dessert, we were served a mystery substance. I was very frightened by this. I asked the professor sitting next to me, who is on my committee, “What is this?” There may have been panic in my voice. I worried that the substance might morph into a terrible alien creature and attack us. Then I poked at it with a spoon. It was cold and congealed and shifted slightly when it came into contact with pressure.

I eventually learned that it was some kind of sorbet. Terrifying.

The luncheon itself was quite nice. A bunch of fantastic alumnae who have accomplished awesome things where inducted into the President’s Alumni Council and then the women of promise students were recognized and we got certificates. Academia loves to bestow certificates. You are excellent! Here is a piece of paper to commemorate that excellence! I keep all mine in a folder not because I don’t care but because I don’t want to be obnoxious and get them all framed. I have a mother for that sort of thing. In all seriousness, I was very honored to be recognized. Only one person from every department is selected. I felt special on Friday. I’m not done bragging, I’m afraid.

That night, my department chair and his wife threw a lovely reception for the five of us in our program who are completing our PhDs this semester and moving on to tenure track positions this fall. Look at this fancy spread in their terribly fancy home.

I am, believe it or not, a very picky eater so I murmured pleasantly and just admired the display and thought about hotdogs. The universe was determined to make me lose 7.1 pounds that day and it’s for the best.

We are blissfully removed from lots of nonsense up here in the UP but the Tea Party has managed to find us up here in the North Woods. The good thing about this sign, I suppose, is that all the words are spelled correctly.

The books I ordered from AWP finally arrived, my having shipped them. I am pleased but have had not the time to really enjoy my loots. See how I pluralized loot? That’s a quirk I get from my parents who butcher English in ways that keep my brothers and I endlessly amused–I mean, we’ve basically re-enacted my dad’s NPR interview about 511 times. My dad calls rubble rubbles so now I try to pluralize everything. LOOTS.

Ummm, how cute is that bag, for reals? PLURAL.

I was feeling pretty good over the weekend and J was craving something sweet and I was feeling like baking only I had to bake something I would not eat. I said, if I do this you have to worship me all week and do as I say and he said, how is that different from other weeks. Sassy. I made fudge. I admit I tasted it. It was awesome.

On Tuesday night, I taught my last class at MTU. Around half an hour before class one of my students stopped in and asked if she could borrow my key to get into the classroom. She wanted to just sit there and study quietly. I said sure, no problem. I continued grading until class time, gathered my belongings, and went to class where I saw my entire class, there, on time, in a room filled with balloons and cakes and cupcakes and other treats. They threw me a party, y’all. I was so shocked I had to excuse myself. I ran to my office, cried a little bit, grabbed my camera (of course!) and then we partied. I can complain with the best of them but at the end of the day, I am truly blessed. No matter how much I bitch, please know, I recognize my blessings.

So yeah, that happened. And it happened at the end of a really hard day when all I wanted was to do something violent or run into a wall or lose some teeth so it meant that much more. I’m still overwhelmed by the gesture and the elaborateness of the festivities and I’m humbled to know that maybe I’m a good teacher and make an impact once in a while. Seriously! They baked those cakes. They used fondant. They made little frosting flowers. OMG.

I have a story in Sententia #1. You should buy Sententia. The issue is stacked with talent including work from Mary Miller, who is like my favorite writer behind the woman of my dreams who is the alpha and the omega of my favorites. I would like to talk about this more but I don’t want to make things awkward. Just understand that there’s writer crushes and girl crushes and then there’s THIS and I’m all about THIS.

Here is an excerpt from my story in Sententia:

Ever. Happily. After.

This is a fairy tale. There is a princess who is not a princess but we will call her a princess because every fairy tale has a princess. Her name is Tanya. She’s the daughter of a mechanic and a housewife. She has two brothers and two sisters. She is the middle child. She works at the JC Penney’s hair salon. She has a pretty face. she is often told because she is pretty face fat, which is not to be confused with Discovery Channel fat, but she is large enough she can’t buy clothes at Old Navy. Tanya is not unhappy. She stands on her feet for eight, nine, ten hours a day listening to old women gum their way through their sentences because they left their dentures at home. She rolls their thin white hair with tiny rollers even though she thinks putting a perm in someone’s hair is a crime, a real fucking crime. Still. There’s not much she can do about it. Old women want what old women want, and at the JC Penney’s hair salon, they want their hair tightly coiled to their dry scalps so when they wake up after falling asleep in the oversized chairs in their living rooms, their hair still looks freshly done. Other women come to the salon too. They come to get their nails done or to get cheap A-line hair cuts or blow outs and it makes them feel, for an hour or two, like they’re not in a small town at the end of the world, which is the edge of Northern Michigan. The salon is brightly lit with shiny faux-marble floors and mirrors lining three walls and in the middle, rows of sinks abutted by hair dryers. There’s something fantastic about the lighting in the JC Penney’s salon—no matter what her physical flaws, the warm lights and the reflective surfaces make a woman glow and look like the most beautiful woman in the world.

This is a fairy tale. There is a prince who is not a prince but we will call him a prince because every fairy tale has a prince. His name is Elmer. He’s the son of a drunk and a coward but it could have been worse. That’s what Elmer tells himself when he thinks about his life. He works at Applebee’s and he loves his job. He tells himself that too because the work is steady and there’s free food to be had and because he has a small weed habit and his dealer lets Elmer pay for product with Applebee’s gift cards. The dealer, whose name is Tommy Tommy though no one knows why, loves Applebee’s because he sees the restaurant for what it is—a place where you can have microwave-prepared food brought to you.  Tommy Tommy recognizes the hustle and he appreciates it. Elmer also loves his job because every time a member of the wait staff leaves the kitchen, they have to say, “walking out.” Elmer amuses himself by saying “walking out” in a different voice or intonation each time. This habit does not endear Elmer to his coworkers. Elmer has long hair. It is long and thick, hangs well past his shoulders. He is very proud of his hair. It makes him feel like an outlaw, especially when he’s biking to work on his ten-speed. When Elmer was in high school, he dated a girl named Cindy Daavettilla and she always tasted like mouthwash and even though she wouldn’t have sex with Elmer or even give him any head, she did brush his hair every afternoon after school. As she brushed his hair and worked product through the long locks she said, “No matter what happens between us, promise me you’ll never cut your hair.” Elmer’s heart pounded fiercely when Cindy said such things and the hairs on his arms stood on end. Her words sounded a lot like love so he promised and even after they broke up only seven weeks after they started dating, he continued to keep his word. Now, nine years later, Elmer’s hair is so long the weight of it makes his neck hurt, but he remembers Cindy sitting on the edge of his bed, his head in her lap, her skinny knees pressing against his shoulders. The memory of it makes the pain go away.

Outstanding submissions: 17

Rejections: 1

I queried The Missouri Review a second time and my story had been rejected and an e-mail was sent only I never received that e-mail. I kind of want to see that e-mail or know when it was sent so I know just how long it took past the original 100 day query and the 257 day response. Was there a personal note? Do they want to see more? Did they address me Dear Writer? So many unknowns. I’m now mad about the $3 submission fee but I will get over that next week when I send them something else. I met a nice person from TMR at AWP, named Michael Nye. It was great to see that humans are involved in the editorial process. I had, to that point, assumed it was a legion of highly literate robots handling business.

I’m feeling pretty frustrated with my writing right now. I’ve said this before. I’m sure it’s a bit repetitive at this point but I’m pretty sure that constant frustration is one of the hallmarks of writing. Relative to all the great things about writing, the frustration is insignificant but it nags at me. I want to take my writing to the next level and yet things aren’t clicking yet so I have to be patient and focus on improving my work. I have to walk before I run. I have to remember these things even though I want to run. I want to run fast and hard. Also, I would like to secure the services of an agent. I would like to work on my novel which is an expansion of one of my favorite short stories. I would like to have the time to accomplish these goals but that cannot happen until I finish my dissertation which I intend to finish by May 5 so I can defend on June 16 at which point I will enjoy waking up without the cloud of the dissertation hanging over my head raining on my parade, putting clouds in my coffee. Have I expressed enough clichéd sentiments yet? Ultimately, I need to temper my ambition with reality, but not so much that I become complacent. If you have any leads on how to accomplish all this, let me know, and we’ll market it and get rich.

My hair continues to be a source of frustration. My current theory is that the shedding is dissertation related.

I hate the show CSI: Miami. I hate the ginger who plays Horatio. When I look at him, I think of the word “smarmy.” He is an overactor.

VH-1 is trying to class up their offerings for black people but I’m sorry, there’s not enough bleach to ever scrub away the memories of Flavor of Love and For the Love of Ray J.

I have a couple things out in print right now.

In Annalemma 6: Sacrifice, my story “How.”

Here’s an excerpt from that story:

After the bar closes Hanna wipes everything down and washes all the glasses and empties the ashtrays. She and Laura, who also works at the supper club, will sit on the hood of Hanna’s car in the back alley and hold hands. Hanna will lean against Laura’s shoulder and inhale deeply and marvel that her friend can still smell good after hours in that dark, smoky space where men don’t hear the word no. If the night is empty enough, they will kiss for a very long time, until their cold lips become warm, until the world falls away, until their bodies feel like they will split at the heart.  She and Laura never talk about these moments but when Hanna is plotting her escape, she is not going alone.

Hanna’s twin sister Anna often waits up for Hanna. She worries. She always has. She’s a nervous woman. As a child, she was a nervous girl. Their mother, before she left, liked to say that Hanna got all the sisu, the fierce strength that should have been shared by both girls. Hanna and Anna always knew their mother didn’t know them at all. They were both strong and fierce. Anna’s husband worked at the paper mill in Niagara until some foreign company bought it and closed it and then most everyone in town lost their homes because all the work that needed doing was already done. When Anna called, nervous as always, to ask if she and her family could stay with Hanna, she had not even posed the question before Hanna said, “Yes.”

Hanna and Anna are not openly demonstrative but they love each other wildly. In high school, Anna dated a boy who didn’t treat her well. When Hanna found out, she put a good hurting on him. Hanna pretended to be her sister and she took the bad boy up to the trails behind the county fairgrounds. She got down on her knees and started to give him head and she told him if he ever laid a hand on her sister again and before she finished that sentence, she bit down on his cock and told herself she wouldn’t stop biting down until her teeth met. She smiled when she tasted his blood. He screamed so softly it made the hairs on her arm stand on end. Hanna still sees that boy around town once in a while. He’s not a boy anymore but he walks with a hitch and always crosses to the other side of the street when he sees her coming.

On the nights when Hanna and Laura sit on the hood of Laura’s car and kiss until their cold lips warm, Anna stands outside on the front porch, shivering, waiting. Her cheeks flush. Her heart flutters around her chest awkwardly. Anna asks Hanna if she’s seeing another man and Hanna tells her sister the truth. She says, “No,” and Anna frowns. She knows Hanna is telling the truth. She knows Hanna is lying. She cannot quite figure out how she’s doing both at the same time. The sisters smoke a cigarette together, and before they go in, Anna will place a gently hand on Hanna’s arm. She’ll say, “Be careful.” Hanna will kiss her twin’s forehead, and she’ll think, “I will,” and Anna will hear her.

I have two copies of Annalemma 6 to give away. If you want one, say so in the comments. Otherwise, go buy the awesome issue, damnit.

I also have a story in Broken Plate entitled “Technicolor Girl.”

3.

When Rosa gets home, she stands on the balcony off her bedroom, places the latest telegram in a basket beneath a paper lantern. She lights it afire with a stick of incense, and watches as it flies away leaving a streak of bright white orange against the dark night sky.

4.

At night, Rosa thinks of Dr. Canard, the specialist her parents consulted when she was a child. He adored Rosa and the curiosity of her, the perfect smoothness of her gray skin. He would lift her into the air, twirl her around once, sit her on his examination table.  He would palpate her arms, thin legs feeling for veins rolling beneath the cellular sheets of gray, curious as to the color(s) her blood ran, the tint of her organs, the hue of her breath.

5.

Rosa fell off the roof of her childhood home at the age of nine. Her tibia broke cleanly, piercing her gray skin. She was inconsolable as her father ran her to the doctor’s office, yellow tears streaking angrily down her sunken cheeks. Before he set the bone, Dr. Canard made a daguerreotype of her broken body, her open wound. She stared at him as he held the camera holding polished silver plate over her bleeding leg, waited as the image of it burned. She enjoyed his disappointment when he learned her blood ran red.

You should buy this, too because it is also excellent.

This is what’s great about rejection–even when all you’re hearing from the submission front is deafening silence, you’re probably encountering rejection in some other part of your life. This week, as with most weeks, I am being rejected by sleep. It is a little after 8 in the morning and this is a time of day I am neither well-acquainted with nor fond of. And yet, here I am, still awake. For most of you today is Wednesday but I’m on like a very long Sunday.

Insomnia is a frustrating thing. I wish I understood the why of it. I’ve tried all sorts of things–going to bed early, shrouding myself in absolute darkness, Nyquil, Benadryl, melatonin, wine, exercise, counting, reading, listening to music, having my back rubbed, dancing in a figure eight while pounding my chest, prayer, deep thinking, drum circles, whatever. No matter what I try, it is really hard for me to fall asleep and stay asleep not to mention my ridiculous hyper realistic, violent dream problem. My dreams are like movies only there’s no popcorn or Jujubes. Last night, or tonight, or whatever, I went to the bedroom and got in bed. Had a bit of a chat. I left my phone in the living room so I wouldn’t be temped to play with it. I read hoping it would make me sleepy. It didn’t. I popped a melatonin, watched part of a lifetime movie. And then, lights out and more chatting and eventually I stared at the ceiling for about three hours. I closed my eyes. I covered my eyes with a blanket. I thought about all manner of things. I had very interesting thoughts. I wrote a story in my head. Finally I got intensely bored with my very interesting thoughts and came out to the living room, read some more. And now, here I am. This is, perhaps, the most boring post ever written. Listening to someone talk about their insomnia is about as interesting as listening to an old person talk about their sciatica. Oh my aching back.

I’ve always been a weird sleeper. When I was a kid, I walked in my sleep. My parents once found me by the mailbox. Another time, they found me asleep with my head in the refrigerator. When it came time to go to boarding school, they were terrified I would sleepwalk in a strange place and get chopped into a million pieces. For whatever reason, I stopped sleepwalking when I went away to school and that’s when the insomnia really kicked into high gear. I’ve learned how to function pretty well on very little sleep and I generally get a lot done with all the extra hours I’m afforded by this issue. The saddest thing is that I quite love sleep. I think sleep is fantastic. I love my bed. I love crawling into the warm space in my bed. I love my blankets. I am looking for the kind of pillows they have in hotels. I’m not having success with this and it has been an expensive experiment but still, sleep is amazing and I would enjoy more of it. Insomnia is lonely. I think that’s what frustrates me most. Eventually everyone falls asleep, as well they should, and you’re left alone with yourself and when you’re sick of yourself, alas.

I went on a great walk yesterday. I felt fathletic. I moved briskly. I hope to go on a great walk today too. I start up with my trainer again tomorrow. It was supposed to be today but she had to cancel. I’m glad about resuming the torture. We had a routine. I became accustomed to that routine.

I’m just loving the group of students I’m teaching this semester. They are so energetic and engaged and hilarious. They crack me up in class and out of class. I can’t believe I only have a few weeks left of teaching at this institution. Come August, new school, new students, new everything. Wow.

Have we talked about Monique’s leg hair yet? I think about this a lot. I strongly support a woman’s right to do with her body as she pleases and I respect her sass for baring her unbare legs boldly. At the same time, sometimes I see pictures of her hairy legs and I get upset. I was sick for the past week and didn’t feel like doing much of anything. Even then, the one thing I did was shave my legs. I am not super girly but I’m quite regimented about hair removal. NO matter how bad I feel, a smooth leg always cheers me right up. I just felt myself up. It was nice.

This is a blog about rejection. I dissect the things and people that reject me and obsess over it all. I have to break from this blog’s primary mission today for just a bit. Please indulge me. I have a touch of news. I wasn’t even going to say anything until the release date approached but then someone announced it on HTMLGIANT which was very nice but surreal. My first book, Ayiti, a short collection of words, will be published this fall by Artistically Declined Press. This has all happened so fast that in some ways it doesn’t feel quite real but it does feel very scary (why, I don’t know) and very exciting, and I’m truly honored that Artistically Declined believes in my book enough to want to publish it. I saw a mockup of a cover for the book and my name was on it. That was awesome. I really appreciate the kind Tweets and e-mails and Facebook messages I’ve received. It is so…humbling to feel this level of generous support. I do not feel deserving but I am very much appreciative. I hope the book does not disappoint.

I told my parents about this thrilling development and they were parentally proud but they also asked, “Is it from a big publisher?” Family–always there to keep you grounded. They’re like most people–if it’s not in Barnes & Noble it isn’t real. I’m teaching them about independent publishing, slowly but surely.

I recently did an interview with Tres Crow. He asked me very thorough questions requiring me to think hard. We talk about all kinds of things–the themes in my writing, editing, my research, the writers I admire and on and on and on. I also refer to my future child as a damn baby.  It’s kind of interesting, in a solipsistic kind of way.

My short story, Boys in Drag is up at Everyday Genius.

My big toes have issues. They just do.

I’m really liking the new show, Parenthood on NBC. It’s good. It’s hella good.

I’m reading Normal People Don’t Live Like This by Dylan Landis. Outstanding. I think you guys would love it especially if you were once a teenage girl.

If you’re looking for an amazing book of poetry, I direct you to Racing Hummingbirds by Jeanann Verlee. I read it last night and it is one of the most powerful collections I’ve ever read.

I filed my taxes. I am getting a federal refund and have to pay state taxes. I always have to pay state taxes. Michigan taxes are crazy but I don’t believe in complaining about taxes because I’m such a fan of infrastructure. Instead of complaining I will simply say, that’s an unfortunate sum to have to pay to the state of Michigan.

I’m going to pay my bills now.

Another day, another rejection, but this time, it’s personal. An editor at Miracle Monocle invited me to submit some work to them which was so flattering. I get a thrill from that sort of thing. I do. I am that writer.  Yes, I admit it. I sent them a story about an elephant only not. There were some “adult” themes and language in the story so they passed. They said, “The writing itself is excellent, but the subject is just beyond where we’re willing to go right now.” I understand, and it’s a fair assessment. I write about lots of things that go beyond, that wander into uncomfortable places and I know not every magazine can include that work in their aesthetic.  I will send them something else but I was mildly disheartened to be rejected after a solicitation (something I have myself done as an editor, it happens, it’s all good).

The rejection felt like the golden boy you always liked asking you to the prom and even though in the back of your mind you knew something wasn’t quite right, you got dolled up in your tacky satin dress with too many ruffles and practiced extending your wrist for the corsage and wore lipstick in a color your mother disapproved of and painted your cheeks with dark red blush and you stood at the base of the stairs leaning against the railing staring at the front door, ignoring the sweat beneath your hosiery, how it trickled down your legs and into your shoes, and you waited–you waited as your parents slumped into the family room willing to concede defeat while you told yourself he would be there, he would take you to the dance and then you told yourself maybe he was hurt, and was trying to get to you only he couldn’t and so you cry not because he’s not there but because he is alone on the side of a country road somewhere, with a wilting corsage resting on his chest as he bleeds to death and all the while, at the Studebaker Inn on Highway 41, there is an empty motel room where a bottle of cheap champagne is sitting in a bucket of melted ice and the bedspread is neatly folded at the edge of a bed waiting for your first kiss and your first everything and you hold onto these terrible sorrows until Monday morning at school when you see the golden boy and he looks right through you as he walks on by. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that bad. I cheer myself up immensely when I write.

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