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Joe (M),
You may feel like your story’s locked up, but the poetry is flowing out of you! I love this piece and your tight attention to the way the shapes of both sounds and the poem itself play together.
I think that right now is a strange and painful return to who we all once were: cultures who looked death head-on. We’ve distanced ourselves from it and have spent decades evading the topic. Now that there’s a pandemic on stage, I feel like it’s everywhere we look. My husband’s older brother just got diagnosed with esophageal cancer and is only in his mid 30s, and my husband’s cello mentor also just got diagnosed. He’s never experienced the death of someone he was close to, and while it hasn’t come his way yet, I think he sees it. And it is a metamorphosis from one phase into the next. When we first started seeing each other, my dad died very abruptly and violently, and even back then I knew that it changed me way into my roots, and that one day everyone experiences that cataclysm.
It doesn’t make it suck any less. Maybe the whole point of life is to find our commonality? Maybe the pandemic is just teaching us to look at death again as a culture, and accept it in a way that eventually helps us develop healthier grieving practices?
I don’t know, maybe that last one’s the optimist in me.
Hey, all~
How’s everyone’s writing going? It’s been a strange journey for me since quarantine. One minute I’m on fire, and the next I just sit, looking at my patio garden, thinking about absolutely nothing.
In the past month, I’ve written a complete story from beginning to end, and am somehow almost finished with it. Don’t ask me where that speed came from; my last short story took a whopping two years. My husband says it’s my best work by a longshot – and he can be (at my request) pretty cutthroat in his feedback, so that means a lot coming from him.
I also made the decision to stop writing for a sex/relationships blog I’d been working with for the past 9 months. The content has gotten less thoughtful, more like a content mill. Everything right now (especially living in Portland) has felt so uncertain, and I just can’t justify pouring my soul into something in the name of money alone. When I got to write about the Stonewall Uprising and queer identities and communication with intimacy, it meant something. But now? . I wasn’t put on this earth to research dating websites and dental dams, was I?
ANYWAY, the weekend after emailing my editor to tell her I wouldn’t write content anymore (very lovingly), I stumbled across this ten-minute talk from Ethan Hawke that really spoke to my soul and reflected the exact choice I’d just made. Thought y’all might get something out of it, too.Hope y’all are finding meaning day by day <3
Jumping on this thread late. Life is so tenuous, and I guess there really is no point other than following things that bring us joy and trying to bring joy in other people’s lives. I’m sorry about your friend – that rapid turnaround has to be such a shock for you.
Everyone’s mania around their work manifests so differently! It’s interesting that you can’t stand it when it comes out. Maybe it’s like that part of you is finished. Miles Davis’ habits feel a bit extreme, but I guess it worked for him, right? Whatever gets us all from one moment to the next, feeling abundant about the way we plow forward – because I guess that’s all we can do, right?
I love this poem of yours. The simplicity of the structure really lends itself to the words :). Have you tried submitting it somewhere?
Even if you haven’t, it’s just some magic of its own to write and create. Sometimes a good poem structure can be as soothing as a crossword puzzle, I think.
I haven’t read the novel (yet), but just your input (Joe) makes me excited to see what you’ve cooked up, Kirk!
Ha! It’s true! I always look forward to the things you have to say on here :).
It seems like I’m seriously sleeping on LeGuin here; I thought by reading a good chunk of her sci-fi I was catching the breadth of her work. I just officially added Words are My Matter to my “list,” so hopefully I can remember to check it out this time for real.
Did you have Professor Schwartz? I remember once he said a good exercise for loosening up the order of a story would be to cut each scene into strips and throwing them on the floor, then picking them up. Maybe writing your scenes out on index cards and doing something similar could just help strike inspiration on how else you could lay the piece out? Structure is the hardest part of it all! I’m working on an essay right now that has two different timelines, and the braiding of each thought is the hardest part for sure.
Hi there!
I don’t think we’ve “met” yet, but I just wanted to introduce myself. I absolutely love your surname :). Russian language was my undergrad degree and I lived in Moscow for a few years after graduating!
Anyway, I’ve never read the ones you picked out of the list and recommended; I’ll have to give them a go! I can never read enough on writing.
Haha, thanks for saying that! I like to be thorough. You should absolutely order the book – that epiphany will come barreling through to you.
Yes! Spain! I’ve wanted to move somewhere else for a long time, and Spain checks all the boxes. I plan (barring the pandemic sitch) to visit early next year, and then start preparing for a move there with my husband soon after. Fingers crossed! His first language is Spanish, and I’ve been practicing mine for a bit now, so the language aspect of it should be pretty easy, which is another tick in Spain’s favor!I think the pandemic has made a lot of us turn inward, and that looks different for everyone. Honestly, the breadth of that list is something I can pin on having clinical anxiety. Stillness unnerves me, and in this self-quarantining period I’ve been finding ways to soothe myself by busying myself.
That’s great that you’re reworking old things and making poems and keeping on! It’ll all happen when it happens :). It always does.
Ohhh, I haven’t tried that feature on Submittable! I have to do some digging now to see what it’s all about.
Thanks, Kirk!
I know that whatever happens, it’s going to get accepted somewhere, and I can just move forward confident that I actually and genuinely gave this my very best shot.
I think we mostly missed each other, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it :).
Whether or not a pub allows simultaneous submissions should be clearly noted in their submission guidelines. A lot of places are cool with it, but it’s always good to double-check. Right now I have the story in the inboxes of my three goal pubs – dream big, right?
