Hannah Grieco

Slow gliding into the fall

Are you a bit edgy, excited but apprehensive, feeling yourself wanting to stand tall and say, “Let’s do this.” If so, it may be your season change alert signal going off. Loud little sucker, isn’t it?

Every year I replenish my notebooks and consider adding new desk supplies to my already adequate supply. It takes a long time to realize it isn’t the cost of the equipment, but the dedication to use that should weigh on investments. I have enough beautiful, lush, gorgeous to touch notebooks I never write in – the 70 page college rule notebooks are my go to.

As I sit here in my extremely stripped down office space, I consider the tweaks I want to make for my comfort – and pet interference reduction capabilities. I don’t recall the impetus for the tear down of all the notes, pictures, postcards that had surrounded me, but the lack of clutter now is noticeable and appreciated. Is it affecting my writing? Perhaps. I recently took an old 1600 word story down to 890 words and sent it out. Before that, I expanded a less than 500 flash into a ten-minute play.

I’m looking around and finding it a bit hard to believe I’m as organized as I am now. I really wanted it to be this way, and I made it come true. It’s teeny tiny moments of forcing myself to stop and appreciate how my hard work has paid off that make me say “Yes, but.” It’s the same feeling when I’ve written, published, or won something. “Yes, but.” It’s hard to be alive when nothing is good enough.

No matter. We’re all on our own journeys and apparently this is mine. I meant to take more pictures, but I did the whole scrape, scrub, scour, and paint with the beautiful parlor stove…

… and Husband assembled it in time for our shindig.

Thank you amazing people for stopping by. It made my whole soul happy to share the evening with you…

and Coiletta.

It seems the end of summer rumbles have propelled me back to writing life. I’ve signed up for classes with Kathy Fish, am fairly certain I’ll be attending the Barrelhouse conference masked and in person in October and am mulling taking a Beth Gilstrap class. Plus Community Craft’s series is amaze balls and I want to attend more of those. As well as Hannah Grieco’s Readings on the Pike and Timothy Gager’s Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series. And there are more I’m forgetting

Adding to the abundance of those good things – my critique group exchanged emails this morning. So, as I’m saying goodbye to August, I want you to know that you are pretty great as is. Thank you for stopping by and for the read! You are awesome and you know it. Ciao!

Dear October, What A Lovely Month You Turned Out To Be

There’s a coffeehouse in Hamburg called Comfort Zone and for every dollar you spend there, you get a point. You can use your points for discounts or save them up. After eating there for several years, I reached 1000 points – enough for a special outing and what an incredible experience it was! Whisked off to the Roycroft for a tour and then absolutely delightful conversation over dinner in the library at the Roycroft Inn. I snagged a ride in the convertible back to Comfort Zone for even more magic.  I had pink chips, I played roulette, and I was up at the end of the night. It was a perfect, perfect night. Many thanks to Cindy, Zenia, Zach, Liz – just everyone who made it special.

I looked at my calendar and wowed myself with how many other great people I interacted with this month.  I had a long phone conversation with an old friend to catch up recently. I was able to spend time with the awesome writers Nina Fosati, Gina Detwiler, and  Jeff Schoeber. I met Nicole Hebdon and her husband at an author’s night she orchestrated at the Joylan Theater. The drone of the Board of Education and the Superintendent Search jargon was nearly cancelled out by the first mani/pedi I’ve had since…quite a while ago. I had my hair cut by eight inches and Husband did not notice.  

I drag him out to see the colors at dusk sometimes –

much easier to do now that the upper greenhouse chaos has “settled.”

We went to a wedding. Congrats to my beautiful cousin and Ted.

Online, I’m happy to have “A Lonely Bath” up at Sledgehammer. Thank you J. Archer Avary! Also, I’m thrilled to announce I was longlisted for The Forge Flash Competition…in the nonfiction category. I’m on the same list as Hannah Grieco -and if you know how “holy shit” that is to me, well, it just is.

Another “just is” is November, which will soon arrive, and I’ll be drizzled down a hole called Day One of National Novel Writing Month. I’m also eyeing Nancy Stohlman’s Flash Nano and wondering, “Can I do both?”

Obviously, I’m insane, but at the moment, a touch of happy, too.

Thank you for you. Thank you for reading. I hope you find magic in this scary time, too.

Cheers and Happy Halloween!