slugs

Draft #whatever is done, on to other things

Chyo has my book on her Kindle and she’s killing me by either not reading it or waiting to tell me what she thinks. Regardless, I’m not sending it to XO Man until I hear from her. That book has wrecked me, but I feel it’s over–at least for now so I’m off to write other things–including this blog post which is a week late–mia culpa. I was in an editing/polishing zone and I really couldn’t break free until just the other day.

Everything was left to slide, including the garden. Yesterday, I spent most of the day out there and was pleasantly surprised that the minor love I’ve been giving it is paying off–the weeds aren’t out of control and the slugs haven’t devoured my pepper plants as of yet. I hate those slugs. They have an entire yard to graze upon but year after year they hunger for my poor peppers.

The irises have come and gone, but today, two of the peonies were in bloom. Here’s one:

The baby pines either thrived or died. I don’t know, it was bad timing when those saplings arrived. I’m grateful my brother-in-law was here that weekend to help with the planting. This one is the best looker of the remaining bunch:

And the wisteria is beginning to bloom:

Otherwise, it’s a hot sticky day and the last of the plants in the greenhouse were taken outside so I’ll probably clean that room, maybe finish Gina Miani’s Avalon, get further into Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Hell, I might even start a story for The Molotov Cocktail Monster Flash contest. Maybe I’ll even paint.

Thanks for checking in!

(*These are my Creekside Reflections. Your experiences may vary.)

Celebrating a Higher Tier Rejection from the Paris Review

Happy July 4^th(even if that’s not a holiday for you.)

I’ve got to say you look incredible. Have you lost weight? Is that a new haircut? Whatever you did, you’re looking fine. As fine as I’ve been feeling recently…

The Paris Review sends out nominal slips of paper with rejection. I’ve gathered a few. I just got a different one. This one said they liked my work and would like to see more. Fantastic, right? Except now I’m wondering what to send.

I absolutely love and adore the problems I have.

If you’re following along, I am four days into Camp NaNo. The story I’m seeking advice on as a possibility to send to TPR was written in the first two days. Last month I subscribed to The Southeast Review’s prompts–a great (and cheap) amount of inspiration if you are thinking about doing it. End shot: I didn’t do every day’s prompt but I did do most. I wrote what I consider two solid stories. I sent them in as contender‘s for their best story written from the prompts. Rough contest–you had to have them sent in by the end of July 1st. The last prompt was interesting, but what I wrote for it, I couldn’t have revised in time to send–just saying it’s intense, but worth it if you look into it.

Anyway, I don’t expect to win, let alone be a finalist, but I feel really good for having written those stories. Like I said, I’m a few days into Camp NaNo and it is also intense, but this time I’m in a “cabin” and my fellow campers are an inspiration and I love the friendly competition.

There are slugs and weeds in my garden. I’ll be out there soon, combating those beasts, and it’s all good. I’m registered to go to a playwriting workshop. New form. New challenges. New hope.

I think I’m ready.

I do love writing. I probably have a crush on you if you must know. As if you’re reading this, I’m all shimmery from your attention, dear reader.

Thank you.

(These are just my overly happy to be writing creekside reflections. Your experiences may vary.)

Rigid, yet willing to bend

Hi. I’m tightly bound and anal retentive. How do you do? I’ve kept this blog up and running for a while now. I’ve thought about changing the frequency because sometimes awfully wonderful things happen in my life that I want to write about just as much as the sad things that tend to get the ink.

Ready? Here it is: SHEMEKIA COPELAND ROCKED. Not only was she the most talented vocalist surrounded by incredible musicians, she was kind, too. OMG. Husband and I went to see her at the Armor Inn Tap Room for our twelfth anniversary (seriously–has it been that long? I thought I just met this man.) We were joined by Paul, Kim, Charlie and Rick.

I wrote a thank you note and handed it to Shemekia before her set. I thought she’d toss it. She didn’t. She gave good tidings to me and Husband from the stage. It was awesome. And she was so generous to her fans with the pictures she posed for and the autographs she signed…I could go on (hence the frequency debate.)

I digress… During that excursion, the back of my legs hurt because the day before I held a war on the slugs in my garden. I killed at least two hundred. Retaliation, since I had 16 pepper plants and by the time of the slug war’s end, I was down to 5.

The slug war, I could have blogged about that once I scrubbed the yellow goo off my fingers.

Tuesday was the last meeting of the the Ugly Babies Writer’s Group until September. It’s the third year I’ve conducted it and I am wavering on whether it should continue or not. I probably feel this ambivalence every year. My group is great and the owners, waitresses, prep crew, bakers and the line cooks at Julie’s Pizzeria are so wonderful. I’d miss sitting in the “fish bowl” of the private room once a month. I just wish there was more writing to discuss.

Marko is looking to take a break from doing the Celebration Thread in the short story studio at Zoetrope. I told him I’d consider doing it. My son, his wife and my grandson are coming to visit. They are on the road now. I’m not making any plans until after they leave. I told Marko if I do it, I couldn’t start until 1 July and that worked out perfectly for him. I’m hoping someone else volunteers. It’s rough to be a cheerleader when you only have rejections to report, BUT when I was leading the thread before, I put out a lot more submissions, so there is that to consider.

*Sigh*

Well, off to do the last minute things before they arrive. Until next time!

(*These are just my reflections. Your experience may vary.)

Working Theories

Well, aren’t I a bit chagrined to notice how late I am with this post? And surprised. I hadn’t noticed the date and I breezed over both reminders on both my calendars. So much for the “Writing things down so I don’t forget them” theory.

The garden is in and it’s now a race to kill the slimy slugs before they take out all of my pepper plants. They are gross, destructive and stupid. I don’t like having to kill things if I don’t have to, but all of these things have GOT to go!

Wednesday was hell, by the way. It might have put up a mental block on dealing with anything writing related. It was a brutal twelve hours of nothing but rejections. Totally wiped out the ‘happy’ I was having for my acceptance for “Educated Tina” in the summer issue of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. It’s such an honor to be included in a publication that has Dawn Corrigan’s work in it!

In other news, my mail carrier has been doing suspicious things lately. Not just to me, but to my neighbors, too. We either aren’t getting mail at all or we get mail for people who live two roads down. The day I got a credit card bill for someone on Snyder Road, I took it into the post office, handed it to the clerk and asked if my mail was there by any chance. “No,” she said, “They’re all back and no one had anything undeliverable.”

Great, I thought. Is someone else getting my rejections? I don’t know how much the lady’s credit card bill was, but it might have been a fair exchange. I’m trying to work that into a possible theory, but I don’t have enough information to work with.

And my son, daughter-in-law and grandson are coming to visit at the end of the month. I’m excited and have invited people to stop in to visit with him and his family. I don’t want to get my hopes up. I do that enough when I send out submissions, but I do hope everyone has a good time.

Right, so back to the writing challenge I’ve been keeping. I’m doing a modified version of Camp NaNo, I think. I’m putting in a minimum of 1667 words every day, but essays, flashes, and short stories instead of working on a novel. So far, so good, though a short story I started writing about a football player is on its third day and the ending still hasn’t shown up yet. I tabled it for something new today.

Anyway, the celebration of Husband’s & my 12 year anniversary is also going to be late, but it should be good. We’re going to see Shemekia Copeland at a tiny bar and grill. It’s so awesome already since we fell in love with her Turn the Heat Up in the background. The title track is “our song.” To those familiar with the lyrics, it totally works. Husband and I get along great. The one part of the relationship that isn’t great is the most fun to work on. And now you have too much information. Congratulations!

Until next time!

*These are just my reflections. Your experience may vary.