Tag Archives: publishing

Raining flowers

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It’s that time of year again. The catalpa drops its flowers, sometimes with such frequency it becomes like weather — a genteel snowfall, say.

The miracle clematis sent forth another flower. I think I can die now. The vigorous spider plants have been dug, divided, and resituated. Check.

So much of daily writing is valorizing getting small things done.

To do: finish This is Happiness. Spend time with happiness. Open the cover of happiness.

Sorry. I’m easily distracted. Finishing an unbelievably well-written novel only gets a slot on the To Do List during heavy news weeks, when most of my reading bandwidth goes to keeping up. Lately (or is it always anymore?): holy shit.

I’m almost (but not quite) ready to get back on the query saddle. Ugh. It helps that I’ve added writing contacts on twitter so that even when I’m avoiding publishing, news about it slides across my screen and gets my attention. Sometimes, the info crosses over into race and misogyny. See: James Patterson.*

It’s cool today and K works from the kitchen table. I have a mole check later but otherwise the day is mine.

Adding smoke to this quilt – 2 silk, 2 polyester

All of a sudden it looks like rain, real rain! Will that send the excited elementary school kids inside? This month’s year-end celebrations include a bull horn with a siren feature. Nice.

* * *

This tweet was part of a Looong thread listing current white male bestsellers.

Once you wade through the outrage, one statement emerged that seemed true: it’s harder for everyone to get published now than it was say two years ago — but the institutional advantages for white men hold.

Hold the sugar

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This pink t-shirt emblazoned with a pithy statement supports The Slave Dwelling Project. Don’t you love getting bling for your contributions? I do. Or maybe this was a straight out purchase. I don’t remember. In any case, this is a particularly good cause, one offering experiences like the one I had with the group in Medford, Mass. in 2014 (posted about here).

Revealingly, when I looked for the shirt this morning I mis-remembered the statement as, “I like my history Black with a little bit of sugar.” Hmmmm. Probably accurate, though my reading list would suggest otherwise (PS, I finally finished all 500+ pages of “The Warmth of Other Suns”).

I love it when friends challenge me. In the wake of the Parkland shooting, a FB friend from high school pointed out two important facts: 1) the number of school shootings being reported by Everytown for Gun Safety is highly inflated, counting, for instance, a suicide in the parking lot of a school that’d been closed for seven months and the accidental discharge of a weapon in a man’s glove box in a school parking lot (no one was hurt), and 2) there are more gun laws in areas with high numbers of POC (which is to say, whites are scared shitless of black people carrying weapons).

Article about Everytown’s inflated numbers here.

Atlantic article about race and gun laws here.

Neither of these points, while well-taken, change my view that Americans are in urgent need of sensible gun regulations.

The non-inflated number of school shootings in the first seven weeks of 2018, by the way, is FIVE. Isn’t that shocking enough?

Meanwhile on a more personal front, the list of items I cannot find is getting annoying. I located the notebook from writing class, but still can’t find my earbuds (I wore them yesterday) or the external hard drive that I back my manuscript up on (I’ll save to a thumb drive ’til I locate it, but really?). That’s been missing for at least a week.

Speaking of manuscripts: there’s a solid chance that my first foray into the publishing world will be a bust. If so, I’m prepared to accept the rejection as a badge of honor. If it comes, the ding will stand as a sign that I’m putting myself out there, while also initiating me into a literary club absolutely littered with rejection notices.

Not a prediction and not feeling of defeat. Just saying.