Journals on my list

Call it a writer's bucket list (in no particular order and subject to change without notice):

1. Orion
2. Creative Nonfiction
3. Flyway
4. Alimentum
5. The Sun
6. Bellingham Review
7. Outside
8. Audubon
9. Smithsonian
10. Poets & Writers

And the online journals I want to get into:

1. Brevity
2. World Hum
3. Terrain
4. Superstition Review
5. Slate

To Do

• Take one more edit pass at the Hummingbirds before sending them to Orion
• Finish the birding essay (it's in a draft! just write the ending then make it better!)
• Write an essay about taking the bus--this doesn't have to be long, you can do it
• Figure out an angle for writing something about the desert before I have left it
• Expand a couple of CNFtweets into microprose pieces
• Write about those Iberian lynxes and PJ
• Put those "science at an early age" notes together into a draft of some kind
• Get another review together for Xenith

365 days of being a writer: day 209

Not since I quit smoking have I committed myself so successfully to a thing as this writing exercise. I just wanted to note that to myself, out loud as it were.

I'm not always driven. Most days, I would gladly stay nestled under the blankets, surfacing only to read or order in some Chinese food. I have to fight daily against my nature, which would rather put off until later those unpleasant and boring tasks that make up so much of a life.

It seems, though, that I can only succeed in one direction at a time. Either I am running and working out and looking great, OR I am writing every day, submitting, and revising, OR I am knitting great piles of presents and apparel and designing patterns. My brain can't seem to do all three. So, these past seven months, I've gotten saggy and achey, the yarn is dusty and unmoved, but the words have piled up in great mountains.

I would like to think that once school starts, I will be able to spend a small bit of attention on one of the other two. Is this crazy? Will I be too freaked out and exhausted to do anything but school work? Won't there be time for a morning run or swim at the Rec center? Can I knit during lectures? Should I not worry about such tiny things just yet?

The last thing I did this evening (before writing this post) was write for an hour. I drafted next week's 52/250 and started to move around the text in the blackbird essay. I have a market that I want to try it on, and the deadline is April 15th. So much is due on the 15th: I'm glad my taxes, at least, are done.

What's your point?

While cruising Twitter today, I "overheard" an exchange between two of my favorite writers-on-twitter.

@karriehiggins said to @JHammons : I love Wordle. Great tool with students, too! Helped some visualize the point they were really making (or not making).

Well, I figured I would make one for this here writing blog and see what came up. Here it is:

/via Wordle and thanks to @spitballarmy

Wow. I know I use "today" too much, but with a daily entry it's hard not to... but "going"? All of these things I am GOING to do? And how come "write" is only medium-sized? (I'm glad that "motherfucking" is so prominent. It is my favorite curse word, and is applied liberally to people, places, and things.)

It bears considering. And modifying. New Wordle to be posted again at the end of the month.

It's better than wallpapering with the rejection letters...

I finally tacked up all my race numbers and medals as inspiration. My life was never an athletic one, and I didn't finish my first triathlon until I was 34. But these numbers all signify my (demonstrated! not hypothetical!) ability to achieve something that I put my mind to.



Have I put my mind to writing, yet?

File under: what's that called?

Kickplate: The metal plate that connects the doorknob to the door itself. Usually smudgy with fingerprints and punctured by a keyhole.

Pillion: The "backseat" on a motorcycle or saddle. Also known as the bitch seat.

Ear & Chin: Parts of the letter g. The ear is the little bit that sticks out on the top of a lowercase g, and the chin is the part that forms the little interior table of a capital G.

Gorget: On a bird, the gorget is the front of the neck, where a turtleneck dickie might be worn. Male hummingbirds have bright ones, many pigeons and doves, ringed. In the case of knight's armor, its the same idea: picture a shiny dickie--that's the gorget.

Vamp: A portion of the upper in a shoe. The vamp is the band that runs through laces (if there are any) and holds the arch of the foot to the footbed. In saddle shoes, the vamp is often a different color than the rest of the shoe.

Key ward: This is the part of a key made up of grooves and shapes cut so as to allow access to the lock. Old keys had elaborate wards with cut out designs and shapes. Note: the "bit" is the part of key that the ward is cut into.

Bridge (vs Pickups): On a guitar, the bridge is where all of the strings attach to the body (not the neck) of the guitar. The bridge is a terminus. The pickups, found on electric guitars and a few acoustics just under the strings and before the bridge, "pick up" the vibrations of the strings and turn them into electrical signals that can be amplified and transmitted.

Enallage: A deliberate misuse of grammar, to characterize a speaker (or create a slogan): "I eated it" or "We was robbed."

Your free-write assignment is to pick one of these things and write about it.

On dreams, writing, and not winning

First, to those still searching for column results: I did not win the McSweeney's column contest. I did not get a sweet but encouraging rejection note. I saw what you saw on the website.

It's supposed to be good for me to write first thing in the morning.

All night I was up with dreams. Terrible, anxious dreams. First, there was a toddler, supposedly my sister, and she grabbed at a pincushion of mine (to be a brat) and then when I came close to get it, she squeezed the pins, and they stuck in her skin and her clothes. She didn't cry. But then she ran, and the pins lodged into her deeper, and I had to get her to pull them out.

I grabbed her by the legs as she ran past, and she fell down, and then the screaming began in earnest. In the dream it was from them worrying deeper into her skin, not from me grabbing her--she knew it would hurt to pull them out and didn't want me to do it. Piercing, shuddering, hiccupy, terrified crying. I pulled out long pins from her back—8 inches at least, some bent. She screamed louder. Once I was done with her back, and was about to flip her over, she had stopped screaming, but I had woken myself up. That was 1 am.

Then I dreamed that I had won the McSweeney's column contest, but they wanted me to write a column on fisheries, their workings and politics and greenness. They wanted four columns in the next year. I was confused, but when I looked out my bedroom window (from the pink and red room on Mitchell street, when I was a kid) there was a giant, clear lake outside, up to the window sill, full of trout and salmon. So I bravely told everyone that I could do it. I would go back to the library on Holgate, I would find out about fisheries. In my dream, though, my awake mind must have decided that was too frustrating.

365 days of being a writer: day 14

Two weeks in, and this is the first day of zero writerly activities. All I did was work and study astronomy.

OK, that's not all I did. I woke up and did pilates, THEN studied. I worked (and studied on all my breaks) then came home and went to the coffee shop to knit for one and a half hours. I was really hoping for other knitters, and on any other night, would have knit until 9:30, but I came home and had dinner and studied. Now I am going to collapse and dream of electron degeneracy pressure, ever expanding chains of galaxy clusters, the Chandrasekhar limit, and ozone spectral lines as a sign of life on some distant planet or moon. The final is tomorrow after work. I'm praying for a C on the test, which will give me a high B in the class. Fingers crossed.

There have to be days off, I guess. But maybe the next one I take, I will plan to enjoy a bit more.

The star cluster, NGC 602, near the outskirts of the Smaller Magellanic Cloud. It is full of young, hot, blue stars. In this picture, the objects with crossed lines through the center are stars, while the smeary blobs are galaxies, which are hundreds of millions of lightyears more distant than the stars. Image courtesy NASA, ESA, and Hubble Heritage Team

Slater's legacy: other people attempt to quit dramatically

Jason Brown attempted to quit his job at a Chicago Kia dealership after a customer slammed a car door on his hand and refused to apologize. Reports say he ran through the building, up the back stairs to the roof and grabbed at the giant inflatable "dancing guy" outside the showroom--in an attempt, as he described it later--"to slide down him like that dude did on the plane." Unfortunately, Jason got hung up on the "arms" and a gust of wind whipped the dancing guy around in what can only be described as a predictably random way, knocking Jason off and through the windshield of a Sorrento. No one was seriously injured, and the dealership has not pressed charges.

After a San Francisco Starbucks customer complained that his "no-froth quad-shot cappucino" was too strong and not frothy enough, he dumped it onto the counter, giving barista Sarah Nickleson a mild burn on her wrist. She responded by interrupting the adult contemporary Muzak station to tell the entire coffee shop via PA that they could all "Go straight to Hell" for all she cared. She then grabbed a bottle of Torani syrup (hazelnut) and two Odwalla juices and climbed out the drive through window and hopped across the hood of a light gray sedan before running to the BART station, completely forgetting that she drove to work that day.

Nathan Reems was an employee at a busy, natural foods grocery store in Manhattan when an unnamed customer began berating him for a number of reasons, including (according to witnesses who began to tweet about the event while it was happening) 'the cost of free trade mangoes, the illegibility of expiration date on the cage-free eggs, the lack of reusable cloth napkins in the eating area, the general deforestation issues made worse by American's insistence on using toilet paper, and the dine-in tax.' Once the customer began "assaulting" Nathan with his cloth shopping bags, Nathan took off his apron and threw it at the customer shouting at him, "You have no idea what a carbon footprint even IS! You're all nothing but a bunch of over-paid bored bourgeoisie! I hope you choke on your artisan pasta you, non-contributing pieces of yuppie scum" He then jumped onto one of the store's  industrial "U boat" carts and began riding it like a skateboard toward the front doors, tipping over displays of Tom's shoes, Sigg water bottles, gluten-free thumbprint cookies, and Putumayo CDs as he went, effectively preventing anyone from catching him. Unfortunately, he headed toward the entrance which doesn't automatically open and instead of making a getaway he crashed into the door giving himself a concussion and sprained wrist.

more on the glacier hike

it's taking every ounce of will not to go back and edit that last one. but this is FREE WRITING. It is supposed to have typos and verb tense issues and repeated words. these things get weeded later. when the good stuff is winnowed away from the chaff. too many "alone"s are definitely chaff.

that day at the ice field it started temperate. I had on a jacket, hiking pants. it was still the first half of the trip so we didn't stink yet... two showers in 10 days and only one chance to do laundry... the cold air saved us from a true funk, but still. luckily we weren't hiking with our gear, so we could over pack. but by the laundry day, over packing or not, we needed it.

exit glacier, where the trail starts, is a very popular tourist spot--only part of Kenai fjords natl park that is car accessible. the glacier spills out on to the land in huge fingers of ice. braided rivulets stream out from under its weight, they weave into larger streams and finally spill into the Resurrection River. a short mile paved trail takes even those in wheel chairs to view one of the edges of the ice field face to face. the hike up to view the ice field is considered an all day "strenuous" affair. it is a trail that is usually closed in winter, and can be closed for storms the rest of the year. it was completely ok that i was afraid. i should have been more compassionate with myself. every one was afraid, just some of the folks that went uo that day enjoy being afraid and some transferred that fear into blind faith in our guide.

notes on coming down off the mountain, so to speak

Free writing on coming down off of the proverbial mountain and literal glacier. Back in 2005? I just bawled the whole way up, cause a scene--it was embarrassing, but I still couldn't stop. I was terrified to be left alone to climb that mountain alone, and too out of shape and timid to keep up with the group. The trail started steep, wet and rocky. There was a lot of scrambling, and my arms were weak. I thought about all that was waiting for me back home: ridiculously unhealthy relationship, a job I couldn't appreciate, and living scared of everything everyday. It's no wonder I considered the slick edge more than once, more out of intellectual curiosity than actual hopelessness. Like, wanting real hopelessness, instead of this whiny dissatisfaction. I climbed alone, snotty, weepy, wobbly. Up into the treeline, where the trail became brown packed dirt between scrub; the guide came back down to me for awhile to be patronizing and incredulous at all the things I couldn't do or was afraid to try (like driving and riding a bike). He spoke in my direction about just doing it and jumping in and how happier it made him, then left in a cloud of self-congratulatory stink to rejoin the other hikers, declaring me cured. My anger got me up most of the next mile. To the scree, with it's gradual sliding hills and marmots, nestled next to small scrubby plants. The wind picked up by then, cold. There was rain and the gusts were enough to roll the smooth round stones beneath my shoes. I stopped to get my rain gear out. Crying AGAIN. I could see the veils of rain just above me on the trail. The group had been visible for awhile, once the trail had opened up above the trees, but the storm hid them. I almost sat down at one point. The wind and rain, the ice in the rain, slipping, miles above the ice. And pissed. At the guide, at the group, at myself. Damn I am just scared of everything up on that rock.

Assignment 2: from my "getting published" class

Assignment: write a paragraph using the following three words: summer, ocean, trees

Chelsea:
I have spent much of this Austin summer dreaming of the ocean. The Texas sun has been beating me into the dust non-stop; what I wouldn't give to be jumping into a cold wave of saltwater. A breeze becomes reason to rejoice, and when we were threatened by Hurricane Ike, Austinites were secretly glad for the chance at some rain. All we got was a puff of air making the trees sway for a couple of hours as Ike passed us by and headed North. I would have gladly followed him all the way to the Atlantic City boardwalk.