updates: days and publication

I guess it may be strange that the moment I move five thousand miles away from where I was born and raised, I decided that photos are kind of dumb, and chronicles are kind of dumb. I read a few months ago that kids make up half their memories. There is this miraculous little space in our minds where we (hopefully) nurture our imaginations and ingenuity so we'll have it later-- when the world gets real rough, and we're expected wield a battle ax-- the place where our imagination can save us-- and there is a mark against the make believe, a mark against our memories.

So I decided that it is my place to create a world for my son.

                            it is my place to chronicle some things,

but not everything. Not even close. I keep thinking about Dostoyevsky's idea that ONE GOOD MEMORY CAN SAVE YOU SOMEDAY. And how true that it is, and if I'm going to give my son anything, I'm going to let him create his memories.

After all, the greatest parts of my own childhood are the moments I remember; it's the memories that have turned into stories. Those moments I've fleshed out the more and more I've thought about them. 

That's real beauty.

Along with this, I closed most of my social media accounts, and I turned the lock and key on everything. It's kind of funny. It's kind of funny the way life can become this secret thing all over again when you're not your shadow anymore.

What else?

My book is coming along.

All six of the stories I've completed have been picked up for publication. Most recently (this means two days ago), BlazeVOX picked up the title story: "Who are the Fantasy Girls?"

This is pretty amazing.

I finished the seventh story last week and sent it out.

The eighth story, which I'm finally beginning the draft on, is something I've been mapping and charting, changing and seriously avoiding, for at least 7 months. I don't know why.

Yes I do. It's funny and warped. It's desperate and draining, and it reminds me of probably too many things I don't like to think about. But honestly, ugh

It's just going to get more difficult. I know where I'm going.
                                                         I know everything that's happening,
                                                         who it's happening to
                                                         because it's already happened.


I've been going to church since September.
When I was small, we went to church consistently until I was seven.

Then everything kind of fell apart for a while.

I mean, you know, thank God for those memories that save us.
and kindness. Thanks God for that too.

I guess, at the end of all of this, I'll say I feel more alive than I've ever felt.
I feel confused, sensory, all that world Whitman was talking about.

The one I didn't really know.
The one I'm beginning to walk through now.

on writing

I started working on my manuscript about a year ago, and I've had this pressing, focal energy constantly at the forefront of the project. I've written six stories so far, and I've just finished the gigantic map of the next, which is a story I've been wanting to write for a while, but I've avoided it. Mostly, it's because the story is going to make me sympathize with a true-to-form devil, maybe two, and it may make me feel a little guilty too, which is something I've worked at keeping out of these stories.

There is no place for guilt in fiction. 

Tim says my stories are getting more and more autobiographical, even though the sequence, or at least the downfall, is fiction. I think it's the character's response: that pursuit of the other side maybe, that doom I used to run to, full force. It's strange: at those moments in my life, I always knew they were untrue. That'd those moments would just become stories, and for a while, I thought that was cool. I loved to shock people with stories about things I've been through. But then I met some people. And I thought about it. And I think that it's probably a damn shame to be 50 years old and still living life in that compartmentalized way; still thinking about the stories you'll collect and the people you'll tell, but all those people living in the same way are dying in the room around you. And soon, there isn't no one left to tell your stupid stories to. What a wonder. 

Ever since becoming a mom and probably a teacher, it's been easier to write about my history in a way that subtracts me from the scene. My writing doesn't hide behind abstracts anymore; now, it hides behind this banner definition of being fiction, and is that banner ever a freedom. 

There is something comical to all of it: that misplaced, confusing sexuality present in every relationship, those insults that'll really knock you out when you are still searching for that thrill you can keep on repeat. I've always been the girl that laughed to keep from crying or screaming, you know, before things really spiraled. And in a manuscript, it really reads as a controlled hysteria. That's a wild thing to do. Makes everybody crazy. 

So I've been reading biographies lately on those great hysterics in history: the ones who moved 15,000 miles an hour at ease with the rest of the world watching. I've been reading old letters, some of those mod poets, and realizing that most things are mostly only psychically difficult to leave. That brain can really take a hold, convince you it's everything else acting illogically. 

For a while, I defined writing by Borges' idea that everything is fiction. And was I ever single-minded about that. He wasn't meaning that at all. Because does it ever go both ways. To leave it at fiction would be easy. 

It would ignore what maniacs we all can be, the maniacs we inevitably become at certain points of fiction in our chronologies. 

half way there...

only 20,000 more words to go.

"Maps" picked up by the Mangrove Review

yesterday, I got word that my short story "Maps" has been selected for publication for The Mangrove Review. it is the first university literary journal that I have been included in, so it's pretty stellar.

this means that the five stories I have written so far for my manuscript have been picked up for publication, which is a mind blowing. 

my short story "Squeeze Box" has been picked up for publication in an international journal

last Tuesday, I finally finished a short story that I've spent the last six months writing.  I sent it out to three places, all of which I really wanted to publish in, one particularly that is an international journal with a large readership.

within two hours of sending the submission, I received a letter from one of the fiction editors of the international journal. the letter said:

"Welding pays well, especially arc welding (I was a tool maker). Love the story but must see what my co-editor thinks. You probably have it out at a few places and it's going to get picked up fairly soon, so I want you to know I want this story and I think [my co-editor] will, too. Great opening."

I was so stoked. it was the first day of the semester, and I was 5 minutes from walking into a Comp I class that I had never met. we all introduced ourselves, and I told them about the letter, and how happy I was.

I wrote the editor back, and waited.

the following Thursday, my class returned, and one of the groups brought me a pink rose and a card that said congrats! and talked about how excited they were to work with me this semester.

I was blown away. the card and rose were so thoughtful, such a kind gesture, and it was from people I just met. I decided that even if I didn't get into the journal, I was still stoked: 

a stranger at a journal loved my story, and strangers in my class were kind enough to say congrats.

well, yesterday, during the same class, I received another letter from the editor. it said:  

"Dear Kristen: my co-editor agrees. This is a terrific short story and we'd like to use it in our next issue. let us know that it's still available, and send a brief (three or four line bio)."

so that's it. my short story, "Squeeze Box," is about to be published in an international journal. I'm blown away.