Ugly Drafts
novel writing, new chapbook out, AWP, plus what I'm reading
I’m coming off ten weeks of exchanging ten short stories with my art wife and boy are my arms tired.
Next up, we’re working on novels and I am scared shitless. This week, we assigned ourselves outlines. My draft is feeling drafty and my ideas feel like they aren’t ideaing. But something I’ve learned through our exchanges is that if I show up, eventually the ideas will come and they tend to come out better than I expect.
I think I’ve written before about the experience of having to adjust to my bipolar being medicated. I can’t rely on periods of mania to carry my writing momentum. Which is a good thing. Because I can keep developing a writing practice that is steady and within my control rather than being subject to random cycling.
Buy This Chapbook
I’m in a chapbook that recently came out, DuetDuet. I’m paired with the poet Sara Matson. My poems are all titled “Another Universe.” Here’s a popular one:
I have a tremendous penis in some other universe
I mean, my dick is the size of a planet
with moons orbiting its girth, my penis
has its own dawns.
Thing is, my heart is also very, very large
in order to pump blood to my giant hog
but no one ever asks about my big, strong heart
it’s all “dear god is that a monster cock blotting out the sun?”
and “do you want to join my intergalactic circus, freak?”
and I am always very sad in some other universe.
I mean, in this one, my heart is a regular size
my penis is micro and moonless
I mean, in this one I am only a sad freak
some of the time.
DuetDuet is available for sale at three different sliding scale prices. I’m really proud of this set of poems and Matson is an incredible poet to be paired with! Get your copy from Pity Milk Press.
AWP
I’m going to be at AWP Baltimore with Taco Bell Quarterly. I’m booked on two readings that week. March 5th at 6pm I’ll be at the Palm Room at the Belvedere reading for Fruitcake and March 7th at 5:30pm I’ll be at the Hotel Indigo Baltimore Downtown Edgar Allan Poe Room for Troublemaker Firestarter’s reading.
What I’m Reading
I love the movie Midnight Cowboy and I went and read the book and boy howdy what a book. Joe Buck, the protagonist, is a lonesome himbo cowboy trying to make friends and make it in New York City as a hustler. I loved the prose, although the book is problematic in its treatment of race and fat characters. If you haven’t seen the movie, I recommend it, it’s free on Tubi right now. If you like the movie, I recommend the book, which is available on the Internet Archive. The movie is a fantastic adaptation.
I finally got around to reading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five which was a harrowing book to read over all. I’d read a chunk of Vonnegut’s work before and I see why this one is considered his crowning achievement. I’m glad this one missed me in school because I wouldn’t have appreciated it as an adolescent.
I’m in the middle of You, From Below out of Split Lip Press. The book is written in second person and does a good job in that offbeat POV. The story reads like a fairy tale, with “you” encountering all sorts of strange characters while you seek to deliver a message you don’t know the contents of. I’m excited to see where this one goes.
My friend Jes, who wrote one of my all time favorite novels My Volcano, told me that there are many faces to a novel, not all of them pretty. I’m keeping that in mind as I move forward on my project. If I can love it through its ugly, awkward stages then maybe I can see it through to the finish line.
Make art. Abolish ICE. Free Palestine.