The Written Picture

this is a beautiful way

I brought this book home from the library. It's a children's book, but that's OK. I have a child's heart.

It was about e.e. cummings. Really, I knew little of him except that he says that the world "is puddle-wonderful" in one of my favorite poems. But nothing about him as a writer.

The illustrations were so sweet. 

They made me want to keep a little book of drawings. And write. Not stories, just tiny sentences next to tiny drawings.

I read and read and thought about how often I say no. No don't write that, it's silly. No you can't try that, you might fail. He wrote in an upstairs apartment in Greenwich Village where he could look out and see the sky. He liked how words sounded. He liked how they looked and he drew poems using typed words.

I'd like to do that: draw poems.

I would like to start saying yes to all the things I love.

e.e. wrote this poem:

who are you,little i

(five or six years old)
peering from some high

window;at the gold

of November sunset

(and feeling:that if day
has to become night

this is a beautiful way)

Stories and an interview!

I had two stories out at the beginning of April:

Last Resort came out in Pithead Chapel.

And The Tiny Woods came out in Midwestern Gothic. You can purchase a copy of Issue 17 here. Also they interviewed me! Read about my process and how living in the Midwest has shaped my writing here.

P.S. That picture up above of the truck on the highway is mine! They rotate their header pictures, and this one happened to pop up.

Links to all of my stories can be found here. Thanks for reading!

Like Magic Waiting

I have a new story out today at TriQuarterly Magazine. I wrote Like Magic Waiting last spring after a late snow, long before the cicadas were singing in the trees or sunlight glimmered in the leaves. Long before anyone could be out in the tall grass of an open field searching for magic.

You can find a list of all of my publications here. Thank you for reading!

Writing Reminders

Here's a list I made up for myself years ago and add to every so often. I'd like to say that it's on a faded crinkly slip of paper tucked inside an old scratched up leather notebook that I pull out with trembling fingers. But it's not. It's just a document on my computer with an appendix on my phone. Not so much "rules" (do-this-or-else) as it is a simple reminder to myself about the stories I love, the stories I want to tell.

• Every story is a mystery
• Every story is a love story
• Every stand alone should trail off as if there's a sequel
• Every sequel should be a stand alone
• Every beginning is the end of something
• Every end is the beginning
• Every story should begin at an end with hopelessness and end at a beginning with hope
• Images should haunt
• The harder the moment the more beautiful it is. The most macabre scenes have the most breathless beauty
• Make it hard for everyone. Then harder.
• Leave everything unresolved until the last second. Explain at the last possible moment
• Every beginning of every chapter is the first line of a whole new world. Same with every last line.
• Images should have a beginning middle & end.
• Weave a silver thread of poetry thru every page. One gleaming strand.
• End on an important word that makes the whole thing feel like it's sinking down deep

Guest Blog Post!

What could be cooler than guest blogging for one of your literary heroes? I got the chance when Deanna Raybourn put the call out on Facebook and Twitter for people to blog for her over the month of December. What's even better is that anyone could. You didn't have to be a New York Times Bestselling author. Just someone who blogs and reads her blog.

So, without further ado, here's my post written about my favorite thing to collect.

PS I love Deanna's books. I found out about her when she wrote a pep talk for Nanowrimo. But when I read the first sentence of Silent in the Grave, I was hooked. Best. opening. ever.