Blueberry Country

My mother phoned to tell me that she'd have to postpone her visit from Monday until Saturday. I told her she'd be missing out on the second round of blueberries I bought with her in mind. That's when she informed me you're in the middle of blueberry country.

Certainly there are other countries I wouldn't mind being in the middle of like gold country or lavender country but there's something quixotic about being in the middle of blueberry country that I just can't deny.

And the blueberries are very, very good. Possibly the best I've ever had. So good, in fact, that I'm wondering if I shouldn't go back and buy that 5 lbs. -- yes, 5 lbs. that's half a cat or a whole gallon of water -- box they're selling to make and freeze a couple of pies. I'd be all over it except I'm a little bit afraid after my last pie filling that was 'just okay.' It tasted sweet but it ran all over the place. Should I go for it anyway? Is it worth the second attempt? Will the fact that I'm in blueberry country add it's magic to the pie making process?

Yesterday I found the farmer's market and some of the best peaches and tomatoes I've had all year. The west side of Michigan is living up to it's fruit farming reputation all around. I am happy to say that I found the market with very little trouble and I did not run a single light or stop sign.

This has been an issue.

First off, I'd like to say that I am a very good driver unlike most of the people in my neighborhood who I have seen almost crash into each other waaaay too often for the fact that I have only lived here a week. Second I'd like to say that this town is not for the weak of heart or those with poor eyesight. The street names are given primarily on small signs that sit only at one corner of the intersection. Finding and reading these signs caused me to run a light -- something I have never done before. I was both mortified and terrified after I ran it. The car in front of me (by a good ways) went through and I just followed him -- except it was very red by the time I entered the intersection. I'm just glad I didn't get hit.

I'm also confused by the way these streets angle. Streets that start off running north-south suddenly curve in arcs. I'm okay with streets that run on diagonals, but these guys can't figure out when they're curving and when they're not. Worse is when it's a curvy one-way. I am used to one-ways that operate on a grid but Kalamazoo defies logic and requires memorization of it's drivers.

The good news is that Kalamazoo is safe from my driving for the night. I'm staying in to read the text book assigned to my students and maybe even write fairy tales of blueberry country.

Ad of the Week

It's older but I still love it. It's the Spanish version but that's not really important.

I Hate Undergrads

No, I don't have my students yet, the undergrads I'm referring to live all around me. They are "upperclassmen" if they even deserve the title.

I would start with a picture of team front-lawn-beer-pong-overlooking-construction but I can't find the cord to get such images off my digital camera.

But team-front-lawn-beer-pong is pretty much harmless except for the Coors Light cans that end up rolling under my Honda.

At 5 a.m. this morning someone starts banging on my door.

5: 18 a.m. to be exact.

I am immediately awake.

My leap from sleep is made even more sudden and startling by the fact that I'm sleeping on the futon in the living room not my bed. Last night at 1 a.m. I gave up trying to sleep in my bedroom because of the crazy bass coming through the wall and went to the living room where it was quieter. That music was so loud that I could occasionally even hear the treble.

Meanwhile, at 5:18 this guy is still knocking.

I grab my robe and finally open the door a hand span. There is a guy who looks no older than 17 with this crazy messy blond hair wearing gym shorts and nothing else.

He tells me that he was going to smoke, nods at the open apartment door across the hall, and said he was wondering if I'd like to join him.

This is my new neighbor. Oh.

I've never seen this guy before, that apartment was empty when I moved in, so my best bet is that he's just trying to be neighborly by sharing his weed and has no frickin concept that it is already 5 a.m.

I was polite, told him I had to work in the morning. He was apologetic for waking me. We didn't exchange names.

I went back to bed -- real bed this time -- because even the people with the uber-loud music weren't up at 5 a.m.

Barebones

I made it to the new city and the new apartment. Thankfully I had a whole posse of people helping me lift and tote and assemble.

The place looks really good. Only two big boxes left unpacked -- okay, one big box one really big box left -- and a bunch of smaller boxes which are mostly books. Oh, and all my clothes are hodgepodge. I might end up dressing "cute" tomorrow simply because those are the clothes on top: cute ones and ones suitable for playing basketball not meeting your new boss even if it is an academic setting.

As for my neighbors? I think every male between the ages of 19 and 24 whose hobbies include drinking and weight lifting have moved in around me. I have seen probably a half dozen women who look like they live here and probably two dozen cocky-as-shit pieces of eye candy wandering around.

That's all for now. Tomorrow morning begins my crash course on how to teach a college writing class.

Ad of the Week

It's moving day here. And no, I'm not flying. My odyssey will be completely Honda driven. Well ... the Honda and the u-haul.

MFA Statement of Purpose

I have never seen as much freaking out on MFA discussion boards (or on the MFAblog) prior to the first round of acceptance letters being sent out as I see about the Personal Statement or Statement of Purpose (SoP).

It is not the most important piece of the application -- that would be the writing sample -- but it has to be the most stressful for applicants. My theory is that it's difficult because it's too open ended. We know what to do for the writing sample: we write our own way. We know what to do for recommendation letters: we get someone to recommend. But the SoP needs to be about the applicant, and the university, as well as about the program and why s/he is better than all the rest. It needs to boast and suck up without either boasting or sucking up. And moreover, it needs to be short.

Do I have a magic formual? Nope. No one does. Probably because it's not as important as your writing sample.

The MFAblog's best advice is

a statement of purpose is not a resume in narrative form; it is a plan that outlines the relationship between the candidate's past, present, and future.

(read full article here)

Some things to consider about this SoP: I had recently quit law school and wanted to address that fact. Namely I wanted to say that I wasn't going to be a grad school hopper or a flake, and that I had truely learned my lesson, so I used my SoP to handle that. Some applicants use their SoP to address their research interests or what form or vein they would like to work in. My interests could be summed up simply as "writing contemporary fiction" and being "well read" in as many time periods and literary styles as possible so I didn't go into depth on that.

The first story I ever wrote was “Alfred the Alligator with Stripes.” I was seven. “Alfred” had hand drawn illustrations and an illustrious print run of one. My mother was terribly proud of me. She bound the book in a scrap of green and white wallpaper to make it a “real” paperback and showed it off to everyone. I couldn’t understand why she was so excited. It was just a story; I was making them up all the time. The real challenge was sitting still long enough to write them. By the time my attention span caught up to my creativity I had another monster to battle: my own practicality.

When I went in to meet with my Intro to Creative Writing professor for the first time as a college sophomore she asked me what I was planning to major in. Computer science, I told her. She was disappointed I was not going to major in writing and told me that I should consider it given my current work. I told her it did not seem like a practical major. She laughed and asked me what major from a liberal arts school was practical. I was back a week later with the paperwork for her to sign to become my advisor for my chosen major of English writing.

When senior year rolled around, students from my seminar asked me what I was going to do when I graduated. I told them law school. Really? They all asked. You don’t want to be a writer? I told them glibly that I also wanted to eat. To be honest, it was not a desire to avoid being a starving artist as much as it was the thought that becoming a lawyer would make others take me, my work, and my opinions seriously. However, the more I discovered about lawyers the less I could not envision myself being one. I could not see myself solving the mundane problems of the everyday attorney by wading through stacks of old case opinions written in archaic language. Archaic not because they were ancient, but because judges can be as stuffy and long winded as they like. No one is there to push judges to write something that a reader could relate to or, perhaps, enjoy.

I began talking to a friend who was then working on her senior project in fiction. I began to reminisce about how much fun that semester had been for me and how much time I had spent on my project, a novella. None of the writing I had completed for my seminar project had felt like work. Neither had the readings, rewrites or critiques of classmates’ projects. They were what I got to do in stolen moments, things that I chose to do to push off “homework” until later. I smiled at the memory. I was about to tell her to enjoy every moment of the process, particularly workshop, when she cut through my reverie to state that it was the hardest thing she had ever worked on and could barely make herself write each week. I tried to rationalize the discrepancy in our experiences. Maybe I had just been lucky to have a great professor or an intriguing group of students. They had respected my work and given my suggestions weight. Perhaps they had caused me to disproportionately enjoy the process. But the more I considered it, the more I realized my senior workshop was not an anomaly. Time and again, with different instructors and different groups of students, I had thrived in the workshop environment. I had been taken seriously, both for my own writing and for the feedback I had given others. I realized that the respect I had been hoping to find by becoming an attorney was what I had left behind in my creative endeavors. I realized that I wanted to work with words for the rest of my life. I wanted to teach about words, write about words, read, edit, and write about them again. There is a Confucius saying: choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. In order to lay the foundation for such a life I have decided to pursue graduate education in creative writing.

I understand that I first need to develop my craft. It is part of the problem I ran into when I was seven. I had great stories floating around in my head but not yet the tools to put them down on paper with art or grace. I have come a long way since seven. In addition to my ever expanding attention span, I have earned a B.A. in English writing from DePauw University, completed a novella, won an honorable mention in a local poetry competition and engaged in writing workshops outside of my degree program. One of the most valuable experiences I have had in the past year was attending the Kenyon Review writer’s workshop. At Kenyon I met a group of adults from all walks of life who took writing seriously, and took me seriously for doing what I did. To them writing was not playing or dabbling, it was weighty work. It was the first time I had met such a group of people outside of the writing faculty at my university. By the time I gave my reading to the assembled group, a hundred people with literary backgrounds, I was so enthused that I could not have been prouder or happier, not even if my mother had bound the story up in a scrap of wallpaper.

This essay (or some form of it: shortened, more specific, or split up depending on specific school requirments) was submitted with six applications -- a range of schools. Please note that if you don't apply to a range of schools you had better apply to a great many schools. I was accepted at three out of the six. Five were MFA programs and the sixth was a MA to PhD in creative writing program. Three fully funded and accepted less than 6% of their applicants the year I applied, Wisconsin-Madison, Michigan, Notre Dame. I was in the other 94%.

Ideally, what any applicant reading this will take away is to stop worrying about his or her SoP and spend that energy on his or her writing sample. However, I know that probably won't happen.

2010 Update: I'm now in the final year of my MFA program and because someone asked me for an MFA Progress Update I started writing a series of posts about it including my thoughts from Year Zero of the process (decision and application), Year One (arrival), Year Two (doldrums), Year Two-point-five (figuring out who you are as a writer) and Year Three (or at least the beginning of year three). If you're on this page with my MFA SoP sample, then these posts will probably be of interest to you as well.


2011 Update: I have completed my MFA! I'm also running a series of posts this fall on MFA application season, Reasons to get an MFA, Low-residency MFA programs, How to find an MFA program, and Why you should pay no attention to MFA rankings. To see all at once, follow the tag MFA or MFA application.

Music & TV

Music: so I'm packing up CDs today (yes I still own CDs and I'll still buy new ones if I really love the band). I discovered that I have kept the case for Weezer's Blue CD even though I know the CD was stolen four years ago. And in the universe's strange way of "balancing" things out I have two copies of Avril Lavigne's first CD. I'm embarrassed to say I even bought the first one back in the day, but how on earth did I end up with two?

Project Runway: thank goodness Mr. Whiny Cocktail Dress went home! I was so happy! I was happy to start with when Chris March came back (I totally thought he was going to get fan favorite last season because I just thought he was a hoot) and then that the challenge was to dress drag queens was fabulous. Even more happy that my man Joe won -- gotta represent Detroit.

Who's my favorite? Who will win? No idea. Keith, Blayne and that mousy girl -- you're on notice. But once those three go home the race really opens wide up. Korto is fabulous but she takes big risks which could pay off or could send her home. Stella will go far because she does exactly what she's supposed to: she satisfies the challenge without losing sight of herself as a designer -- how many times have we heard that phrase over the past four seasons? Designers that either don't fulfill the challenge or fulfill it to the point where they lose their own aesthetic go home -- Stella has managed to do both every time (except the grocery store challenge which disappointed me all around).

Okay, back to packing. I'm really starting to detest moving. And to think the woman my father is dating keeps chiming isn't it exciting! whenever this whole moving thing comes up.

Show Don't Tell

Notes on Craft

I have absolutely no idea how many times I've heard the phrase "show, don't tell." I have even less of an idea of how many times I've used it. It's become a critique admonishment that can be delivered quickly and shame a writer into silence. It's also something that for the beginning writer moving up in the world of writing can come with it's own set of problems.

In general, the admonishment is uttered (or jotted down in the margins) when a writer has over indulged in exposition. The phrase in itself, however, doesn't do much for explaining how to get around telling, so the quick fix is said to be show through action or dialog.

Good call. Except that this new directive leads to lengthy passages of dialog where one character tells another character background information that was previously in the exposition. And -- yikes! -- I think I'd rather get it in the narrative. This phenomena is particularly rife in genre writing where writers are pushed to "balance" narrative with dialog and therefore use the dialog to do the dirty work of backstory even if no one in real life would ever sit around and do that kind of information dump. It's even easier to spot in movies. Lesser screenwriters who keenly feel the inability to use narration will introduce a secondary character (someone who has known one of the characters for ever and ever and ever) whose sole purpose in the movie is to tell the lead some bit of the other character's history that he'd never say aloud in a million years.

Basically, making the characters say it aloud doesn't make it shown, not told.

But what gets trickier -- and what I've seen an acquaintance dealing with lately -- is even knowing when telling has become an issue. Because telling is not inherently evil. You're going to have to tell on some level at some point in the story. What the writer has to do is be subtle enough in waht she chooses to tell (and trust the reader) so that the reader can take all the bread crumbs left by the writer and reassemble them into the loaf.

You're gonna have to work with me on the bread analogy but I'm trying.

I recently read a short story by Alice Munro called "What Do You Want to Know For?" If you were to ask me now what the story was about I would tell you that the character was fascinated with mortality, and the histories of people as well as the natural landscape and the history of that landscape. In all likelihood, Munro didn't use any of those nouns in the story, they were just loaves of bread I had reassembled from the different bread crumbs she had shown me. The mausoleum, the cemetery hunting, the mammogram, the searching of county records, the doctor visits, the glacier geography lesson, the interviewing of church caretakers and families that have almost vanished from the county. All just pieces.

And if that was too ethereal for you I've got a quick and dirty trick to share as well: avoid stating emotions.

It made him sad.
She smiled happily.
He was depressed that morning when he woke.
She was thankful to them both.

A person could act sad in a hundred different ways, showing the character behaving in one of them advances the relationship between the reader and the character threefold what it would by simply telling the reader that the character was sad.

Does the quick and dirty rule apply to all writing situations? No. Of course not. But consider it the wax on wax off method of writing. You'll never have to write precisely this way, but if you practice not simply stating emotion then you'll be that much better equipped to block the urge to tell when the situation arises.

Side note: I have recently discovered there are people who honestly don't know that the "wax on, wax off" reference. Sure, there's always one person in a group that won't likely know it, but this was an entire room full of people who were kids when The Karate Kid came out. Sadness.

Packing

Tomorrow there will be a post on writing, promise. But for now I'm packing up my life in earnest as well as running errands and making dinner. I'm just trying to stay this side of cranky. Which I might be pushed over depending on when they call me to come pick up my car. It's in for a rattle and routine service. Expensive routine service. *grumbles* I'm sad to say I'm getting apprasials that start off with phrases like given the age of the car.

So I'm going through stuff before I pack it -- really trying to sort out things and if not organize at least throw away the stuff that there's no use keeping -- but I'm stuck. I've come across all these ridiculous things I've saved for years and years. Part of me wants to keep these things simply because they have a history, but the rational part of me says that there is no point in keeping something I only look at when I have to move it.

So that's the big question facing me: what is the line between crap and memorabilia?

Headless Horsemen (the food post)

If the ginger bread man and your pumpkin pie had a love child this is what it would look like.

I've decided to name these monstrous cookies Headless Horsemen for their gargantuan size, their scary unladylike look and their half pumpkin nature.

Over the past year I've been experimenting with cookies to see if I couldn't fuse a ginger snap with pumpkin pie filling to get a good cookie. The results were varied. But last night's attempt is pretty damn good - although huge in size. I didn't mean to make them that big (see the picture where it takes up the palm of my hand) but they bake nicely this way. They poof in the oven and then they suck up moisture like mad. The air conditioning has been on the entire time these creatures have been living in my kitchen and still they are noticeably moister now than they were when they came out of the oven.


It's been a summer of good food experiments. After going to Gambier, Ohio and eating at the Village Inn I wanted to try and recreate their Corn Cakes and Black Bean Salsa ... and I did! It not only tasted great but it was sooooo pretty.

Speaking of pretty, I would also like to note that it is tomato season in Michigan. Farmer's Market is filled with them the past couple weeks and they're just so lush looking that they're hard to not smile at.

I also did the world's best stir fry last night! I got the timing down perfectly for how each vegetable should cook -- a first for me -- but I didn't take pictures of that one.

As you might have guessed from all my fabulous cooking successes, the writing's not going so hot.

If you haven't already left my blog to run to your fridge after all this food talk only to discover that you really, really need to go to the grocery store, I'll ask you to put off shopping for just a few more minutes.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by the new website and made the launch party such a great success! If you haven't gotten a chance to check it out yet don't worry, a few things have changed but the site isn't going anywhere. Actually, as soon as I get my feet under me after my move there will be more stuff to see.

Arriving yesterday on the web was the first installment of Carful of Witches (which I continue to read as "careful of witches" because sometimes dyslexia never leaves you). The author, Emily Kajsa Herrstrom, is yet another "internet acquaintance" I've made over the past year.

And because it's getting to be that time of year again -- MFA application time, that is -- I'll be posting the statement of purpose (or one draft of it) that I used in my applications last fall. Look for that post later this week.

Ad of the Week

"Puddles"

Counting Down and Getting Ready

Days 'til moving: 8
Days 'til orientation: 10
Days 'til I start teaching: 19
Days 'til I start workshop: 24

Things to do before then: don't ask

I'm feeling pretty calm about this whole moving business, which I shouldn't be because immediately following the move I will be thrown into orientation for new instructors/TAs. They finally informed me of what my pay rate will be and I was pleased to find it equal to my pre-grant tuition. Yea for not being (entirely) slave labor!

The text book, however, is completely scaring me as to the kind of students I'm going to encounter. I really need to remember that these will be college freshmen but dang if it hasn't been a while since I've dealt with college freshmen academically. I know what she's expecting when she walks into rush, but I don't know what she's expecting when she walks into College Writing 101.

I mentioned all this to my mother and she retold me something that supposedly happened to me my first year of college. That after the first paper in either my freshmen seminar class or my college writing class that the prof laid into us, that none of us were writing on the college level except the two A's he had given out and that anyone who had not received an A needed to make special arrangements to see him. Figuring I had a 2/15 chance of getting an A, I prepared myself for the worst.

My paper had gotten an A.

I remember none of this. But my mother tells me it happens and I can't imagine how else she came up with it other than me telling it all to her. And my not remembering is only further proof that I have no idea what I'm getting into with freshmen.

Not a Bad Wednesday ... Scratch That. A Good Wednesday

Project Runway totally sent the wrong designer home. The whiny boy who keeps talking about how he has such impeccable taste (but doesn't) really needs to go home. He should have left last week and the fact that he's still around is more a testament to dumb luck than his skill. My father says the guy is still around because the producers think he makes good TV. But this kid is just whiny ... that's not drama, that's annoying.

Segue. Yesterday was a good day for me as a writer. I worked on a short story that I had begun at the Kenyon Workshop and realized that I'm a lot closer to having a finished first draft than I thought I was. Yea!

The story started off as a prompt from a picture of a woman walking in the desert. I've been jotting down notes on it then and again, thinking about the characters for two months now but I haven't been able to get back into it long enough to work on the story as a whole until yesterday.

The story is going to end up being a lot shorter than I thought it would. 2000 words isn't a terribly long story, but the style of this one is very brief, pared down, even. Then again I think my stories always surprise me with their length because they going from being all these pieces and scraps of fabric to being knit into one another, just one piece instead of taking up my entire workbench.

Length aside, I'm just excited that I'll have something to take to workshop now!

One of my goals for the summer was to have two new pieces of short fiction that were at a point that I could take them in to workshop. As someone who likes to write beginning drafts that skip around and don't always connect with the thought before, getting a draft to the point where someone else can read it and think it coherent is an accomplishment. I also hate workshopping stories that are honestly "first drafts." I want as much time to edit as possible so that I don't embarrass myself.

At this point I only have the one story finished, not the two. But I'll take one over none! And who knows, I might not use it at all this semester. It depends on how the workshop class is structured, I might not get the opportunity. One way or another, it is a good feeling to walk in with a back up -- one that isn't from my application packet!

I've heard tell of that practice as well: that sometimes when first year MFA candidates feel overwhelmed by grad school or stuck in a writing rut, they pull the writing sample from their application packet and bring it to workshop. That practice has it's pros and cons. Perhaps you've never gotten a chance to workshop the pieces you sent in with the application and you now have the opportunity to have knowledgeable people give feedback. Okay I can see that one. But where you're shooting yourself in the foot is that you're not using the time to write anything new. (Although you could counter that argument by actually writing just not bringing it to class.) An MFA is nothing if not time to write with deadlines to push you forward -- or so everyone keeps telling me. It's also an opportunity to learn and apply those skills to writing immediately. And you also have to consider the fact that your professor might have been on the application committee and, as I've discovered through impromptu phone conversations, they remember these stories.

I just wanted to walk in with a short story in hand just in case. In case I want or need to go first. In case I get stuck or swamped or pressed for time. And after seeing that it took me two months to go from original concept to a draft I'd be willing to let someone else read, I might just need a back up.

One last bit of great news: I got a copy of Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg yesterday! I was in love with the book after only reading the preface and introduction. I'm tempted to read the whole thing in one sitting but I know that's not a very helpful way of consuming a book on writing.

Pilobolus

Here is my latest video find in the world of strange, funny and wonderous:

How to Take Rejection

If you take a look at the time stamp on this entry you had better believe what you see. It's 6:50 am and I've been awake for almost two hours -- something I haven't done since I stopped working the morning shift at the coffee shop. The reason for my early morning exuberance is that today I am the person solely in charge of getting the garbage to the curb before 7:00 am so that the recycling guy doesn't go off on my ass. Seriously. 7:30 does not cut it even if you don't try to put out the recycling because you're obviously too late and you just want to leave the garbage. Yelling will occur.

So I managed to wake myself up at 4:45 am because I was so worried about the fricking trash hitting the curb at the right hour. At 5:15 I figured what the hell, I'm awake, and got it over with. Now the sun is just pushing over the trees and it's feeling very morning-like. Kinda nice actually.

On the topic of publication, submissions and rejection I've been editing and shopping around my poetry again. I don't think of myself as a poet but it keeps me moving.

Nannette Croce recently posted this wonderful article where she tells it like it is about rejection slips and what they really mean and which ones should make your heart flutter with joy and which ones tell you you need to move on to a different magazine.

Meanwhile I got a throwaway little red slip from the Mid-American Review (print). MAR was smart and took a page out of credit card companies books and in my SASE they sent not only my rejection slip but a plug for subscribing to the magazine, a plug for their upcoming conference/workshop, and a plug for something else which I cannot recall. Pretty damn smart way of both targeting your audience and getting someone else to pay for postage! I am in awe of their cunning!

Then there's Dennis Cass, who likes to drop his suggestions for your life and your public persona as a writer. I guess that's okay since he only "wants you to be more awesome." His take is that writers should not blog about rejection if they want to be more awesome because it's completely negative. Additionally, when blogging about rejection (particularly rejection of book length manuscripts) many writers get snitty and mean about the agents/editors sending the form letters. Actually there's an entire site (an entirely ludicrous site) devoted to reading things into form rejection letters and making up gastrointestinal problems that the editors have which caused them to write such cruel sentences like "this isn't right for our publishing needs." The fact that people take offense at these form letters completely boggles the mind: the world does not revolve around you to the degree that people who have never met you care about you enough to hate you. The website is complete crap -- but more than a little like watching Jerry Springer. You can read another (thankfully sane though extremely frustrated) reaction to it here.

Anyway, I think it was David Cass that suggested that there were a couple-three ways of doing rejection tales well. And perhaps the "Epic of Rejection and Publishing" would be the way to go. I'll work on an introduction shortly, because epics can't begin in the middle.

What a Lovely Wedding!

The second wedding of the summer was a wonderful event. It was held outdoors and my gift to the bride was the perfect weather that accompanied the day. Okay, okay, I'll order her something online as well. They asked guests not to physically bring gifts to the wedding because they've already moved out west and the wedding was being held in the bride's home town outside of Indianapolis. I mention all this because I love the advent of gift registries, and online registries ... that will mail directly to the happy couple without me trying to remember to bring the goofy thing to the wedding! Last time I hand carried a gift I left it in the hotel room and has to post it afterwards anyway.

It was so good to see that group of people. I never realize how much I miss people until I see them again after several years. The great part however was that we could all just pick up where we've left off.

This year is average for weddings. I only have three to go to so far. Last year was a bumper crop that involved six invites that I sadly could only make four of.

Long story short, I believe in big weddings. Not huge bridal parties but lengthy guest lists. Now, there is nothing about me that screams money, society or clout. I like big weddings because I've made a lot of friends who are truly great people to be around and when I'm at these events I see how happy they all are to have an excuse to travel however far to see each other again.

What is literary fiction?

Damned if I know. Actually, I hold the "I know it when I see it" position. I've tried again and again to define it for people over the past couple of years with hit or miss success. So now over to agent Nathan Bransford for his take on it.

Ad of the Week

BBC wins for best commercial for the summer Olympics, or at least so sayeth the Speak Coffee.

Some Poor Bastard Owes Me

I've mentioned before that I'm a reviewing editor for an online literary magazine (I read slush). But last night before I sat down to read submissions I read a short story by Alice Munro. More specifically I read the short story "What Do You Want to Know For?" which was a 2008 O. Henry Award winner. It's an amazing little story.

After reading that I decided that it wouldn't be fair to read slush until the next day.

Yep, someone out there owes me.

Website Launch

Today is the grand opening of Eileen Wiedbrauk.com, the website I've been working so hard on for the past month!

More to follow shortly ... or you could just go there and check it out ...

edit: wow. spamming all your friends on facebook is a lot of work. That took about 45 minutes. Sheesh! So much for the "ease of networking software" when I can't even quickly and accurately spam over two hundred people!

That's taken up such a vast chunk of my life! I'm behind on everything just trying to get this site up so that I can only do minor work on it during the move/orientation.

Getting Back in the Groove

Great news! This blog broke 1000 hits in a month! Yay for the month of July! And here I was all excited that June had broken 800 hits just to find this new information out today. I can't tell how many of those are unique hits because of how my counter is set up but who cares about that at a time like this.

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time running around doing errands, visiting family, and other things necessary to life that aren't writing. But now ... I miss my stories.

This means one thing: I need to get back on the pony.

And I need to get back to regularly blogging -- I apologize for last week's flimsiness.

Coming up this week: a report from the Relief Sale Quilt Auction and a discussion of "show, don't tell" and what that really means.

Ad of the Week

I absolutely love this song, it's "All These Things That I've Done" by the Killers. Oh, and tis the season for Olympic-ness.

Long Week

It's been a week of errands and preparations, but sadly not much writing. I have a finished living room. Well, it's in pieces and boxes but it's been purchased and lugged home and it's waiting to be put on the truck. I've also been sorting through things I've managed to collect over the years and I have a whole box of strange and wonderful (toys, knickknacks and art supplies) that is going to my cousins.

This weekend is the quilt auction in Northern Michigan. It's a Mennonite relief sale and I've been to probably four out of the past five or six years worth of auctions. They sell all sorts of donated items at the auction block, carvings, handmade wood furniture, needle point, refurbished bikes, bric-a-brac, but none of that ever goes as high as the quilts.

These quilts are pieced by machine but they are almost entirely quilted by hand on a frame. When machine quilted quilts showed up the first year the women went all a twitter -- and the quilt went for a third of what other quilts of the same size were fetching.

You never know how the prices are going to run, it depends on who is in the crowd. I've heard that the relief sale in Goshen, Indiana usually has the highest prices because people in the know from Chicago drive down for it. There a queen/king quilt of exceptional color and pattern will go for $8,000 easily. I've seen quilts go that high in Northern Michigan but not often. Some years the best pieces only fetch $1,200-2,000 and some years they keep breaking $3,000. We'll have to see what kind of year this one will be.

I remember seeing one piece the first or second year I went, a "wedding quilt" meaning it was all white and actually a single piece of cloth, that had over 500 hours of hand stitching invested in the quilt top. Needless to say it was done by a quilting group rather than one woman.