This and That

My virgin interview, with Dzanc author Henning Koch, is up at The Nervous Breakdown. I'm also interviewing a fabulous lady next week whose debut collection is fantastic, so stay tuned!

On a personal note, I received a fellowship from the Hambidge Center for two weeks this summer. Whether I'll be putting the finishing touches on The Tide King or working out the new novel that's been fermenting in my head, the two weeks of solitude will be so welcome.

I have a story forthcoming in the May issue of The Northville Review that I'm excited about. There is a cat named Tupac in it. I know a cat named Tupac. They are not the same Tupac, but I hope you read it, anyway.

Finally, I'm happy that the spring issue of jmww will be out early next week. I'm finishing up proofing and other small housekeeping bits, like making the formatting a little bigger. Maybe I'm getting old, but when you think your own journal is too small to read, you've got to make some changes

Inheritance

It was sad, but not surprising to read in the Baltimore Sun this morning that there will be no Polish Festival this year. Although the festival plans to be up and running in 2012—albeit in a different location (the city raised permit and sanitation fees this year, and the organizers can no longer afford to hold it in Patterson Park), there really aren't that many old Poles left in the city. I should know, since almost no one older than my mom's generation is alive.

Yesterday, we met and had dinner with my dad's side of the family to discuss some things we had inherited after my grandfather died in December (he, along with my maternal grandmother, both passed). My aunts brought out some old pictures they'd found in my great aunt's house (she also passed away in December, along with a cousin). I was so touched to see my relatives, pressed faintly into photo paper, a reminder of the old weddings, beach outings, holidays. I wished I could slip into the pictures and know them. As a child until I was a young adult, I didn't care so much about my heritage. Polish people were the butt of jokes, and our blue-collar, working-class family was not the association I wanted to advertise to my new friends at college.

But as an adult, I became interested in my grandfather's time in World War II. But only after dementia had riddled his mind. Similarly with my grandmother and her recipes. My great aunts, uncles, grandparents have all died over the years, but I was too busy with work, with writing, with relationship problems, to do much more than attend the funeral and promise to keep in touch.

We received a sum of money from my grandfather. Enough to take a trip overseas, maybe something fun, or to save. Yet, I would give it all back to have a second chance to live my roots. These are the riches, I've realized too late, that my bones crave.

Say Yes

Yes, yes, yes to the band Deerhunter. They have that je ne sais quoi I've been looking for in a band for years. Only a few bands/singers have really wowed me this way—Sonic Youth, Sleater Kinney, Throwing Muses, Nina Simone, The Smiths, Sloan. It's nice to be excited about music again. I've also been listening to a lot of shoegaze music, mostly The Daysleepers and Working for a Nuclear-Free Society, to which a friend introduced me.

Since my whining about running a few days ago, I managed to get in 10 miles. I feel like crap, but I'm sure it'll be worth it. It's nice to spend a few hours away from the fire. The problem is I have too many things burning in it to be away for very long—finishing the novel revisions, two novellas, the spring issue of jmww to upload, two interviews to post at The Nervous Breakdown. I like staying involved in the writing community, but sometimes you just need to sit down and mindlessly watch a marathon of "The Facts of Life" or something. I wish I had cable.

I have never been good at doing nothing. I think it stems from my feelings of inadequacy as a person, as a writer, as a woman. Not that it's ever good to become complacent, but I have hard time saying no. I'd rather say yes to life and burn out, like some fabulous firework, then live long and slow and wait to die.

The Hard Stuff

I have not been in a running mood for several weeks. I don't know whether it's because the weather hasn't been warm enough to run outside, but I can't even convince myself to get on the treadmill at the gym. Running is the most efficient way for me to maintain my weight, and I've had no running injuries, per se. The only thing I can think of for my reticence is that, often, running is hard and in my dwindling free time, I want to do easy, relaxing things. Although I'm not even sure what easy is—I think it's just having a drink at the neighborhood bar.

But I always feel great after my run; notsomuch after a few whiskeys. I need to convince myself of the big picture. Kind of like proofreading. Last night the missus and I printed out and read through the latest incarnation of the story collection that I've decided to shop around. I've read it once on the computer and made a few edits, but we discovered, when I printed it out, that there were many, many more mistakes. It's strange, because half of the stories have been published online and I swiped the final version from the journal's website.

It makes me think that most journals proofread like we do at jmww, ie, infrequently. Sure, I'll read the story while I make its html page and spot check the html page for basic typos and formatting when it's online, but most corrections we make actually come from authors, who spot something after it's been published. So, assuming other sites function as such, each of my stories has a typo or two in it. Multiply that by 10-12 stories, and at 20-24 typos are in the collection. (Actually, I have to admit—there were more than 20.)

But this is not the fault of the journals. I need to take responsibility for my deficiencies. I'm a terrible typist; sometimes I even type a similar-sounding or -looking word rather than the one I mean. I don't write stories in longhand first, and I can't seem to find any errors while proofing my work on the computer. (Although, I admit, it's harder proofing your own work than the work of others.) What does this mean for the great electronic revolution? I don't know, exactly, except maybe I should advertise again for a proofing intern at jmww. Anybody interested? I write great recommendations if you need them, and I buy beer, too.

As for me, I am going to print everything important of mine out from now on—paperless society be damned. I already feel better that the latest version of my collection (big thanks to the missus) is very clean. I'm confident that it will be rejected on the basis of other deficiencies rather than sloppiness. ;) But this is a lesson I should extend to jogging, too. You can't avoid the hard stuff. You will become a sloth. Strong mind, strong body, strong work. You can rest when you're dead.

Morning thunder

We woke between five and six this morning because of a sudden thunderstorm. The window was open a crack, and the atmospheric turbulence swirled around the grey-pink dusk of the room, sending Shirley off the bed and clicking back and forth across the hardwood floor, an occasional dive under the dresser. The thunder's guttural whisper closed in on us, releasing a shower in its wake, a reminder that spring would be here in a few days with its requisite rains and pollens and blossoms. I forced my eyes closed, knowing I'd need that extra hour or two of sleep when early afternoon came, such that it has, now, but it was too delicious to miss. I pulled at Phuong. I felt very loved. I stayed awake and watched the night fade into morning.

Only Shirley was very unhappy by these developments. A shaking, panting mess, she crawled between our heads after pacing the floor for a half hour and laid on my pillow, her brown marble eye looking at me until it was safe to go to sleep.

The Neverending Story

My insomnia appears to be creeping back. I suppose it's fueled by stress. I've been overwhelmed at work for as long as I can remember, although I don't want to complain because times are tough for others and easily could be just as tough for me at any time, since I'm a freelance editor. Still, I lie awake at night and do pseudo math, fake equations running through my head that I try to solve. Or I try to edit medical papers, or revise my novel, even as I know I will forget mostly everything that pours through my circuits when sleep comes in the late morning.

I'm mostly fascinated by memory. I think about the porch of my grandparent's old house, where I live. The house is maybe sixty years old, not old at all, and only they have lived in it. Its memories are all theirs. I think about how their miniature schnauzer used to prance the porch in excitement when we came over as kids. I stare at those bricks, that mortar, now, and can't believe that thirty years ago that dog was alive and we were alive and did it mean anything, really. This memory that I cannot prove existed because I remember it, and I don't know why my brain remembers Ginger the schnauzer, the heft of her dry, curly hair, but not my password for my online banking. I look through the storage downstairs at my grandparents' things and they lived here, too, but I don't understand what it means to me. Or what my living here will mean to the next inhabitant, what I will leave behind.

I think about an older woman I used to work with fifteen years ago and wonder whether she's dead.

I think about catdog: how did catdog go to the bathroom?

Interview on Maryland Morning, March 18th

Gregg Wilhelm and I will be on WYPR's Maryland Morning, Friday, March 18th, 11 am, to talk about City Sages: Baltimore. What a nice one-year anniversary for the anthology!

Here Comes Your Newest Nervous Breakdown

I'm now a contributor for The Nervous Breakdown. I'm excited to interview you if you've got a book or a story you want to talk about or are just really itching to talk to someone and you can't afford therapy. Okay, don't crowd.

Seriously, though: look for my interview with Dzanc author Henning Koch and others soon!

Poetry Workshops in Baltimore That You'd Be a Fool to Miss

Two amazing Baltimore poets, Barbara Morrison and Justin Sirois, are holding workshops that begin in April, for beginners and advanced alike. April no longer has to be the cruelest month, at least for your work:





Write Here Write Now: Poetry w/ Barbara Morrison
Presented by CA & CityLit

4 Thursdays: April 7-28. 7pm to 9pm
Adv reg $100, $90 mbrs, Walk-in $110, $100 mbrs.

Inspirational, stimulating, and occasionally goofy, this workshop will wake your creative instincts just in time for Spring. Led by Baltimore poet Barbara Morrison, the class includes poems to read and share, in-class writing exercises, and take-home writing assignments. With feedback from your peers, learn new ways to revise your poems, face the blank page and invigorate your poetry. All levels welcome. Barbara Morrison is the author of the poetry collection Here At Least.

More information & to register, contract Creative Alliance:

or call 410-276-1651


Text Message/Poetry + Fiction: With Justin Sirios
Baltimore Museum of Art

Saturdays, March 19–April 16 2–3:30 p.m.
$75 Members, $100 non-Members

Led by Baltimore writer Justin Sirois, this class will encourage experimentation, invite failure, and help writers of all stages refine their poetry and fiction. Activities are inspired by Seeing Now: Photography Since 1960, pop culture, video games, commercials, comedy, and film. To register, call 443-573-1832 or e-mail programs@artbma.org.

Best authors in MD

I was searching for an old story of mine on the internets to send to someone and found this link from CBS Baltimore: Best authors in MD. I'm not sure how I got on this list, but it's a honor nonetheless! (Is it me, or does Laura Lippman totally look like Cybil Shepard in her author picture?)

In the Writers' Studio

I just finished an interview recently for my novella May-September, and it was so wonderful to be asked really thoughtful questions about the story, my motivations, the character's motivations, etc. Interviewing is so hard to do (at least when I'm the interviewer), and to make an interviewee feel like you've really interpreted, devoured their work, is such a good feeling. When you're a writer and someone has responded to your work in such a thorough way, it's like you've won the National Book Award or something. At least that's how it feels to me. Maybe there's a little Sally-Field-at-the-Oscars neediness, too. You get my work! You really do!

The funny thing is, I struggled to write the novella May-September. The story itself wasn't difficult to write, but I didn't anticipate any sort of audience for it. In an industry where everything you do must build on the success of the last book or collection or story, to write a story for oneself, that you may wind up putting in a drawer and letting no one else see, is a big risk. But May-September haunted me. I needed to purge it before I could move on. As soon as I opened the document on my computer, words filled it until the story was finished. What a sweet reward for it to wind up in the Press 53 Open Awards Anthology and to have such a nice interview from one of the industry's nicest people (hopefully it'll up be soon).

Fault Lines

I had the fortune of spending time on a jury trial last week. I always get picked to serve during jury, so my passive aggressive anger at the justice system begins the moment I receive my summons notice and doesn't end until the verdict, at which time I reflect on my service and am glad that impartial, discriminating folks such as myself are chosen—if my day in court were coming, I'd certainly want my case heard by a jury of my peers.

What is interesting about many trials I've served on is that direct evidence, even circumstantial, is often lacking, in criminal and civil alike. Therefore, as jurors, we hear an elaborate "he said, she said" volley between the defense and the prosecution. Oftentimes, we can't tell who's lying. And, since the burden of truth is on the prosecution, I have never been on a jury that has voted to convict or award damages, etc.

The whole incident left a short story/novella swimming around in my head. I want to tell a story of two people, as told to an impartial observer, whose events of their shared history do no match up. I want to reader to feel like I did during those days of the trial—that the real truth of the matter was never to be discovered, that the pieces we tried to fit together formed an incomplete puzzle, and we couldn't fill in the missing holes with our logic. And yet we tried so hard, because of our need, as humans, to have fault lines among people. In the end, though, you always come after the explosion, and there's never enough to reconstruct. The only thin you know is that ignition was fierce.