From an "Attic Office" virgin...er... right.

Sara here.

Since I, too, am inept at google docs and apparently need to spend some time figuring out how google's latest big mechanism works, I am going to post here. My first entry, be nice. And it's only a very rough first draft. But, better than that: it's a true story.

“The Pied Piper”

By Sara Lyn Rice

It came out like angry

jazz—but silver

from the Professor in the gold-rimmed eyeglasses:

Put on your headphones and earphones,

block out the sound

of the wheels, the silence.

This train is straight, inbound

to Harvard Square. I ain’t never seen

Obama there—in the neighborhood.

I’ll tell you where it’s at, bitch.

I don’t want anyone

stupid thinkin’ the President

is gonna save they ass right now.

In 1962 the cops were walkin’ around—you read

about 1962!—trying to arrest me, for a something

I didn’t do. There wasn’t

no Miranda, you didn’t get the rights.

I got a God who takes me away

from black, white—

Florence Nightingale, give me another healing,

Betsy Ross, sew me another flag, one with different stripes.

He abandons his soup to the floor of the train. It sits without spilling.

I’m takin’ my coat off

this train—I’ve lived in it,

will die in it... Yet.

That’s what your life is: yet. Yet,

it ain’t over. Oh, but it will be someday.

Remember

that

oh

yeah.

He stands up, never falters. People stare, try not to.

You think this is dramatic?

Just call me the Pied Piper.

Talk with your mouth

and not your hands.

That’s my last lesson,

a black lesson, muthafucka.

Then he crosses himself. People get off.

Amen.

Writers Weekly is a load of doggie-doo?

Hi all,

A few things:

1. Great postings! There's such diversity here; a lovely change from workshopping pieces of the same topic/concept.

2. Katie, thanks for the comments! I find them very helpful, and am going to try and get my fanny (best word ever, btw) in gear and start commenting on things as well.

3. One thing I think this blog could use: submission hints! I'm collecting a decent body of work thus far, and am starting to snoop around for places to submit (paying or non-paying, reader fee or no reader fee). I know Writers Weekly lists a number of publications looking for submissions, but my professor told me that stuff was crap (I think she forgets that unlike her, I have yet to publish in the NY Times or Washington Post...or write 9 novels), and the best thing to do would be to find particular essays/stories of my favorite writers, see where they've been published, and start submitting there. Does anyone else have any suggestions? Craigslist is great if you want to write Porn reviews...I'll admit, I did it, but just ONCE. Made twenty bucks, but had to take a scalding hot shower afterward. AND they told me it was 'too literary' and 'not titillating'...titillating, what a yucky word.

4. Book suggestions! What's everyone reading these days? I know it's hard to read for pleasure while still in school, but even if another online blog, news story (perhaps on writing, publishing, etc), or some quick read comes to mind, let us know!
I'm karate-chopping my way through all things canonical, and am actually enjoying a good deal of it! Just finished Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms, and am now reading Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita (Pevear and Volokhonsky translation...they're a hot couple). So yeah, throw us some good reads!

Lastly, let's post pictures too, just for fun. Of anything. yeah...

~Stace

Success!

Just wanted to say how awesome it was to read all the postings this weekend. You people are damn good writers, so thanks for letting me read your stuff.

Like last time we posted, I took the liberty of making some comments on the pieces. I hope this helps, but let me know if you don't want that. I was hoping to get some discussion going about the pieces we've put up. I know that as I'm trying to keep the writing going post-undergrad workshops, I would really appreciate some feedback. Like, I'm thinking of sending out to a couple of new lit journals, so if you guys wanna share thoughts on what's been posted, it would help me out a ton.

In other news, I am now slightly employed. I'm going to do some very part-time work for the professor I worked for this year. I'll be reading her chapter drafts of her book before she send them to her editor at Yale U and giving her editing/comments. Tom, as the expert, could you tell me if this counts as freelance editing?

And finally, since Allie is bad at introducing herself, I'll introduce her. We lived together for a semester in Bath, England and both did the creative writing tutorial with an Oxford-educated "freelance" professor who put us down all the time and oozed smug from his pores. When she's not applying for law school, trying to eradicate childhood poverty, or teaching with Teach for America in Denver, she enjoys sarcasm and a glass of red wine. And she writes a mean fiction story.

I'm not really very good at titles, or introducing myself, so I guess I'll just vomit something up in this space - I don't think I have access to the google documents. As a warning, I have been surrounded by 10 year olds for the past year and a half and have not written in that time, so I'm feelin' a little shaky about it. (the beginning)


"The Navajo Nation"

Helena, with a cathedral-work of veins coloring her calves, kneels in the enclosed dirt space in front of her home. Nothing is sprouting from the soil she’d spread six weeks ago. She stares at the barren enclosure and wipes the back of her hand across her nostrils. When she stands, her knees creak, and her elastic-waistband shorts new from the Wal-Mart in Gallup ride up her inner thighs as she walks back into the house.

There are three window-unit air conditioners stationed in the kitchen and living area, blasting her with frozen waves when she comes in the front door. Her landlord had snapped at her the previous week when he came to fix the leak below the sink. “You’re gonna blow out the whole neighborhood if you keep running with that many BTUs,” he told her. Whenever he calls her refers to himself as “Mr. Berkway, your landlord,” as if Helena would not have recognized his heavy southern drawl. He is hardly older than Dave and already owns three houses on the lot. Another of his tenants, Meredith, from the down the road, told Helena that he’d gotten a law degree at Clemson University before coming to do “God’s work” with the Navajo nation. Meredith had smiled when she said that, while Helena tripped over her stomach, her loud, smoke-infused guffaw rippling through the desert air.

“BTUs?” Helena had asked. Mr. Berkway looked up at her from where he knelt on the kitchen tile.

“It’s sort of like the amount of power you use. You’re using too much. I’m surprised you don’t blow a fuse every time you turn these ACs on.”

“Must be okay ’cause I don’t turn them off and on,” Helena suggested.

“You mean you leave those running all day and night?” Mr. Berkway then stood up in the kitchen, his wrench in his right hand, his left hand exploding into the air, punctuating his question.

“You mean to stand in my kitchen and tell me that you turn off your air conditioner at night, Mr. Berkway?”

His face had begun to flush with color, but he knelt back down on the tiled floor and began wrestling with the plumbing again.

Anyway, Helena feels just satisfied with her stubbornness on the units now as she did then, when she smirked as Mr. Berkway fixed her leak. In just the few moments in her garden, beads of sweat had formed on her temples, and she can feel heavy moisture gathered in her armpits. She walks into the kitchen to pour herself some iced tea. Dave had given her a Mrs. Tea maker for Mother’s Day last year, delivered to her door gift-wrapped from Amazon.com.

I just learned "vomited" only has one T

Dear Blog,

I came here to share the exiting news that I had received my first check for freelance writing. I also planned to share with you an enthralling, heartbreaking parable illustrating what it feels like to finally be paid to write.

Then I remembered I worked as a technical writer for a year after graduating college. So, yeah, they paid me (a lot more than this silly little freelance job) to write and I didn't even realize it.

The moral of this story is that writing is writing and money is money. (I prefer morals that don't actually mean anything and leave you feeling the uneasy desire for actual wisdom.)

On an unrelated note, I "blog[ged] it up" (translation: "vomited a poem") on Google Docs. Okay, I'm a day late, but nobody's paying me to write silly poems about sunshine. And yet, I still manage to have posted one. What I haven't managed to do is ignore the fact that whenever I write a poem it seems to support moral viewpoints that I do not. Also, you already know how betrayed by meter and rhythm I feel.

Blog it up

Blog is not a synonym for "vomit." Unless by "vomit," you mean an explosion of awesome.

Due to the fledgling success of the last posting party, and Tom declaring himself "always ready for a good writing deadline," how about everybody try to post something by this Friday? (Dan, you're off the hook if you want, since you just posted.) Either put it up here, or put it in your folder under Google Docs. Just a little somethin-somethin.

And feel free to browse past postings and comment. I'm thinking of sending some pieces out to a lit journal soon, so I would love to hear anything you think.

Stacey, I promise we'll be better than those two-faced workshop students.

An Explanation and Three Poems

Hi all,
I don't know most of you, but I've seen some of your writing (specifically what is on this website) and as someone who until last year thought "blog" was a euphemism for vomit, I am terrifically impressed by what you guys have created here. I'm still a junior at BC, but it's nice to know where English majors go after they graduate.
On the front of interesting news, I've met with ODSD (now called SPO) twice this week in regards to starting a slam poetry team at BC. If anyone is still in the greater Boston area and wants to help/participate in that be sure to let me know! Right, so I promised Katie I would post some writing, sadly the aforementioned slam obsession has taken a horrendous toll on my written work (or at least made me horrendously self-conscious about it). I wrote a few short things while I was driving across country this summer. It's not much, but until I can remember how poems work it's what I've got.


Reading Old Love Letters in Cody, Wyoming

1.
Cody is the unfinished lullaby blowing in the plains.
Drunken sons relive the past with blanks and bullwhips;
they grind their footprints into the orange dust.

2.
The hotel clerk drinks cold coffee from a gallon jug
sun-split lips moving, murmuring endless
incantations.
And they wonder where the legends come from.

3.
Overheard were the French tourists outside the firearms museum
with wide eyes
at the plateaus of this powder keg geography,
at the sacristies of these wind-cut cathedrals.
They will search six languages for the proper words.

4.
Sometime in September you were thanking me
for the best year of your life.
Love is in the bedrock here,
antique love,
bloody love,
the early love
that never leaves.



For Lauren, who was not at the Iowa State Fair

I expected at the Iowa State Fair
something vague and meaningful.

Not, that it would be the grass.
Or the sharp, electric, way
the grass felt
pressed flat or in handfuls

as I sat waiting, hillside.
Near the talent competition, ten and under
with so many decades of flawless pageantry
ushered on stage,

I missed you and your mistakes-
-amongst the other things I missed,
the hollow milk bottles
and most of the red paper star.

I left with nothing oversized or soft
or stuffed with tissue paper that crunched
at the touch.

I left with nothing.

I left for once embracing the sunset
in chain links and Chevrolets,
with light feet on static grass,
humming
in the purple gray dusk.



Babel
Before the tower fell,
every word was perfect
and nobody ever said
I made you breakfast just because

::Cricket Noise::

Howdy,





So I had my first official 'workshop' Monday night, which was on the piece I posted regarding my fantabulous German roommate. The response? The students, who are brutally honest and usually give me mixed, yet fair reviews of my stuff thought it was hilarious. The professor? Seemed to like it by the way she talked about it. Then I got home and read the comments...

"Okay, so all you're doing is complaining"


"I don't feel sorry for Eva. You sound obnoxious."

"It's really hard to like you at all, when all you do is bitch."

"This is very one dimensional. You put yourself on a pedestal, expecting the reader to sympathize with you. YOU ARE NOT A VICTIM." (The part in Caps was actually in a different pen color.)

Lastly,

"Stacey, this piece is not an essay; rather, it is a list of complaints about your roommate, and the fact that you do nothing to take a stand for yourself makes me hate your character even more. Give it more dimension, okay? Thanks."


Soooooo yeah. But to be honest? I'm doing alright. Talked with the other students, and knowing that they've been honest in the past helped me see their comments and suggestions in a better light than the prof. So maybe birds don't rest their wings on window perches, and some of the chronology is a bit off. But I wasn't trying to solve literary cancer; I basically did just want to complain. Next time, I'll throw myself under the bus. Relax, not literally. :)

...and never mention the fact that I dressed like an obnoxious, slutty school girl AGAIN. hehe

Let's keep on writing/posting!!!

PS I'll be at BC all weekend, in case anyone wants to meet up.

Don't Be Scurred

It really was blogtastic. Shana, Tom, and Stacey: thanks so much for posting last week! It helped me fill an unemployed afternoon, and besides that, the pieces were awesome. I didn't know if anyone wanted me to, but I couldn't resist, and I made some comments on the pieces (they're on G-Docs) if you're interested. Maybe that could be my job. Maybe somebody will pay me to have opinions and give suggestions. A professional suggester.

Shana, I hope this experience is easing your fear of the blog. I really liked reading your work (since I never have before). The blog is your friend.

So don't stop. I need to know what happens at The Butter. Post again next week?

I'm still scared of blogs

Let's talk about why in some other forum, but I did post something onto google docs. It makes me sound like an alcoholic, but I have more words than Tom.

Hope everyone is well! Katie, I have no idea why Harvard didn't hire you but keep trying!

I'm in.

891 words posted. That's almost 1,000, which is almost 10,000. Novel here I come.

Also, I can officially write "Freelance Writer" on my resume. I write things like, "Warning: this e-card may induce excessive giggling and infinite smiles." Yeah, cheesy e-cards is where the money is. I'm rich with creative fulfillment.

Once a Bum Always a Bum

Time to bring it back to the blog.

Tom's freelancing, trading words for dollars. Stacey's facing the tough crowds of MFA workshops. Kyra's working in New York, and Liam's off being poetic somewhere. Shana and Katie Bartel have dropped off TAO's map, (my guess is they've gotten into alpaca farming). Kim is terrorizing freshmen finance majors. And I want some people to write with, goddamnit. We need this blog more than ever! The internet is the answer.

So, let's get it on. Newcomers, if you're there, welcome. I'm just gonna put this out there: anyone who's interested, post something by this Friday (October 10). Post whatever. Just not too long (let's not get ahead of ourselves)-- a poem, a few pages of prose, you know. If Google Docs isn't working for you, say somethin. I can't fix it, but I know a guy.

Please?

Love,
Katie