Meditate, Yeah

This week's lessons: Energy is energy is energy. It must be channeled. Also, it's far easier to meditate when you're already in a stoic mood.

Man, I've been restless. My restlessness is positive, and I think the result of the fact that I feel great. Since I got sick before the holidays, I've been really (perhaps annoyingly) healthy with a very-little-dairy, no-soy, super veggie-packed diet. My exercise is the same as before (though now with the addition of weekend walks with the husband), and I have energy to burn. Go figure!

The point here is that I need my mediation more than ever. It is important because I tend toward being a bit restless in general (i.e. high strung), which is even easier when I'm healthy and have nothing weighty to distract the mind. Here's my mediation practice, in case you're curious or restless yourself and not good with mediation either: I begin with a breathing exercise in which I take 20 seconds to inhale, 20 seconds to hold my breath, and 20 seconds to exhale (this is the hard part, and it took me a few days to work up to the full minute breath). I do this until my mind slows enough that I can concentrate on my regular breath. I usually can't just dive right into mediation, so this is what has (mostly) worked for me. Then my ten minutes or so begins. It's a mediation trick I've kept around for years, knowing I'd use it regularly one day. Right now, it's coming in handy.

What else? Well, I saw two movies (very peculiar since I rarely go to the movies): Silver Linings Playbook and Django Unchained. I enjoyed them both. Django Unchained was a cartoon-violent, quick-witted, well-acted, difficult-to-watch, only-Quinton Terantino-could-pull-this-off type of movie. Recommendations for going to this movie: 1. Do not go to a theater that serves beer or other alcoholic beverages. Much of my co-audience was loud and stupid. 2. Do not bring your children. Really, people. 3. Go expecting a movie that treats violence and inhumanity like a piece of surreal (Western-themed) art.

Yesterday, I saw Silver Linings Playbook, which was pretty great. I loved that it was about mental illness but still well done. I found the characters of the policeman and the psychologist wholly unbelievable. I found Robert De Niro perfect, and the rest of it... yeah, pretty great. It was just the right mix of funny and sad and slow and fast. Solid pacing, solid acting.

Writing news: I got a solicitation for my short story collection, which I am preparing to submit this weekend. This is good news, but like all good news in my life, a little unnerving because now I want to re-re-review everything before submitting. I really want this next book to be exactly as it should be. I will not allow myself to hurry to publication anymore. But if you love a thing, let it go, right? We'll see what happens.

Also in writing news, I have been working on the Wallace story (Absurd Hunger) in anticipation of my residency in Vermont. I'm excited about it again and had the realization that integrating some of my favorite short story characters will serve the story well. It's coming together like a puzzle in my mind. A years-in-the-making puzzle. I wonder if this is how it's supposed to go with the long works.

Have a beautiful weekend, all. Be healthy; be well; read a book. Or these: FICTION My husband did all the black and white drawings. I'm trying to get him to do one for each of my stories, though I suppose that's keep him busy a while.

Trying to better myself, damn it!

Personal:

In only two weeks, I'll be grading the finals for my creative writing class. I'll miss my students, but the extra time will be more than welcome. Then, gulp, here comes Christmas. How is it that ads, retail displays and even some holiday decorations go up as early as October, and yet the holiday sneaks up on me each year?

Holiday season or no, I am getting so healthy! Okay, not really, but I'm still trying to eat better. If I am what I eat, up to the last few weeks I'd be packaged in thin cardboard and stuffed in a freezer next to the Lean Cuisines.

Along with trying to reduce milk (switched to almond milk and oat milk), I recently bought a single-serve blender so that I can begin tricking myself (and hopefully the husband) into eating more fruits and vegetables. It has only two days, but I think I've already consumed more veggies than I did all last month, so it's working as of now. I bring this up because I am completely romanced by my blender, and now I want to get everyone on my list a single-serve version, which is quite affordable. This thing is magical, people! It's making it possible for me to eat kale without gagging. Point is, if we exchange gifts every year, and you don't want one, I recommend dropping me an email now.

Here's is my first creation:

• Kale
• Spinach
• A few pieces of kiwi
• A few small strawberries
• Broccoli 
• Mango Juice 
• Protein powder
• A splash of oat milk

There were no real measurements.

And the result? Wonderful tasting, but I drank it too fast and felt like a balloon for a good twenty minutes.

In support of a proposed new, healthier lifestyle, my husband went to Green with me today. This is a guy that wants a fried egg, bacon and extra cheese on his burger, and today he ate (devoured rather) his first veggie burger. What a guy! And the best part is, he liked it. I'm hoping I can make this work long-term. I'm never going to be one of those people who does everything right, but I'm on a mission to do all the holistic curative and preventative stuff I can tolerate without letting it keep me from normal outings. I'll let you know how I do, even if I end up reverting to old ways in a week's time.

Writing:

I was invited to submit a piece to Lost in Thought Magazine by the amazing Robert Vaughan, and I'm hoping I can deliver. I have a good start, so we'll see.

I found out a few of my short stories, notably the first three here at Fictionaut: A Glimpse, Soft like Snow, and Getting There, will be taught in a fiction writing course next term. This is the second college that my stories have been taught at, and I'm over the moon about it.

I've thought a lot about Duotrope's new subscription policy. This is a service for short story and poetry writers (and now even for those looking for small publishers for full-length manuscripts) to find journals that meet their individual needs; and more, Duotrope offers a tracking device for the writer's submissions so we don't, oops, submit the same piece twice and not realize it. Not that I've ever done this... Anyway, Duotrope is now a $50/year or $5/month subscription service, as of the first of the year. I've been discussing this a lot, debating the costs and benefits and rationale with other writers, and I've come to the following conclusion: They should charge! Here's why I've come to this conclusion after an initial response akin to oh-hell-no: 1) It's a service, and there are costs associated with said service, so there should be a fee to cover said costs. 2) Writers should read the journals they're submitting to, and programs like Duotrope are designed to allow a writer to bomb the lit industry with his/her submissions without ever having read many of the journals s/he submits to. And, 3.) There are plenty of other places to find lists of literary journals. Check New Pages. Check Poets and Writers. Check other writers' blogs and bios.

Finally, I'm officially shopping my second short story collection, which is a bit more diverse than the first, topically at least. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I've been tinkering with final novel notes, and after my class is complete (the one I'm teaching), I plan to go at that bad boy full force. Maybe my blender and super-power green veggie and juice drinks will be just what I need to finish this damn novel.

Me versus My Novel
or
The Part of my Weekend I Don't Want to Talk About 

Have a beautiful week, all! Do like me, eat your greens!

Cereal

Um... I mean serial. But cereal seems more interesting as a title right now because It's early, and I'm hungry.

OK, so, my hand is all better (just about), and I'm writing again. The problem is I am now boring because I've been inactive these last few months due to constant pain and whatnot.

So, I plan to revamp this blog for a while. In other words, I will no longer discuss me or my writing life here. Instead.... I will post fiction. Yup. Original, unpublished fiction. It's a serial story that I will be writing as I go, and I hope you enjoy it. I'll post the first tonight Saturday 08/27/11, and the plan here is to add to this story each weekend.

I am undecided as to whether I'll leave up the archives. Perhaps I'll make up my mind as I go, depending on whether my mom is the only person who logs in to read this story. What I have now is a premise. I will write today and post later tonight. We'll see where it goes. And who knows? Maybe my life will become interesting again soon, and I'll go back to the navel gazing.

Hope you join me!

To Begin Again

To Begin Again is going into final editing within the month. I'm thrilled, and I think that given my experiences with Musical Chairs, I've learned a lot about what to do and not do when releasing a book. 
To do:
Tell people.


Don't do:
Tell people everything about my life. 
(I'm kidding.) 


This is a collection of short stories that capture lives in the midst of transition. Some of the pieces are fiction, others are essays. I don't label the pieces by genre. (Some are more obvious than others, but as you might know, I tend to use the first person narrator in fiction; hence, there's a little mystery to the work.)


If you are interested in reserving a signed copy of the first printing, click here and leave your information.