Bam! Pow!

Posted my lunchtime short. If only every other lunch were so productive.

Can't wait to read yours. Hurray for playing!

WWST

I'm unfamiliar with Wild West Standard Time. If I'm a few minutes late, I'm sure you'll pardon me, sheriff.

I've uploaded my nonsense to Google Docs. It says 12 PM. Success?

High Noon

Okay, so it's not quite the moment of atonement yet. But let it be known that I've loaded my quick fiction onto the googledocs account. I'll be on the lookout for yours. Bring on the literary shootout.

Re: The Penultimate Post

Katie Moulton,

I don't know a lot about doing readings, having never done one myself. However, I do know one really important thing about this reading in particular: You'll be just fine.

You've got material. Even if you revert back to some tried-and-true lines from your days of Gasson Hall glory, so what? And hey, slip in a few new lines and see what happens.

Tell your anxiety to shut its filthy mouth and ask your gut a few questions. Is this poem ready? If yes, ask it where it thinks the poem should go. If it says second-to-last, don't ask it why (or even lecture it on expanding its vocabulary with "penultimate"). Just trust it. And if it gurgles in response, that's still the anxiety talking. Take a Tums and try again.

And the bio is just a nano about yourself. If you were a nano, what would you be?

Writer Power,
Tom

About the Author:
"Tom Forsythe, born in a land of deer hunters and pregnant teenagers, has since escaped to Boston where he writes and does 50 pushups each day. Embarrassingly, he has no upper body strength and consistently lies about his ability to do push-ups."

Performance Anxiety

I just got asked to fill in at a reading tomorrow night put on by the lit journal River Styx. It's my first time reading in St. Louis, which now seems very, very far from dear old French Press, Gasson Hall, and Brookline Booksmith. ...and I may be freaking out. Just a little.

I have ten minutes, and now, suddenly, it seems, no material.

How do you decide when your work is ready to be read to an audience, if ever at all? How do you order them? How do you write a two-sentence bio, including one sentence which reveals some tragic or embarrassing element of your nature? (Seriously.)

Please help. S.O.S. (Save Our Sonnets?)

Ok, so it's not Poetry...

I just got a piece in my first paying publication, and wanted to share:
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/atoz/

(Yay!)

The Quick and the Read

Today, for only the third time in my life, I received a submission response within 24 hours of initially sending my work. It was a rejection, so I'm batting .333 on short turnarounds at present, but I'm not bitter. Instead, I remain in awe of the efficiency and pizzazz of these quickdraw editors. Therefore, in honor of speedy reads, I hereby declare a showdown. I challenge all of us to complete a short-short story (let's say 500 words or less) by no later than this time a week from today (okay okay, we'll say by high-noon on Tuesday for good measure). Bring your six-shooters and your spurs.