Friday, December 30, 2011

Thursday, December 29, 2011

2011 Recap

My writing goal for 2011 was simple: finish this latest draft of my novel Believers.

Well, with two more days to go, it's safe to say I'm not going to make it.

I'm trying to not beat myself up about this. I'm trying to look at the positive.

This is the positive:

I've made a lot of progress on my novel in 2011, more than I have in the past 2-3 years. I feel engaged with the book, I feel like the changes I'm making have improved things immensely, and that I've been able to successfully integrate older material with newer material (I've been working on this book on and off for several years). This is probably the most challenging (and exhausting) thing I've ever done fiction-writing-wise, and it's possible that it's working out.


So yes, there's that.

There's also the fact that an excerpt from Believers was published in The Sun in July.

I was also lucky enough to be a featured writer at an event sponsored by the New Short Fiction Series and the Annenberg Foundation.


And I did a reading back in February.


And several short stories found a home.

Plus there was this nice interview.

Yes, the positive. That's what I'm focusing on.

My writing goal for 2012, then, will be the same as 2011: finish my novel. I've given myself three more months, even though it will probably be more like six.


And that's OK.

Because these things take time.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Revising, Rejections, Wilco

Those are just a few of the topics covered in this interview with yours truly, part of Fictionaut's weekly Fictionaut Five series.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Archaeologists and Artists

More random quotes from my six-year-old son Ethan...

"Why do women wear zucchinis to the beach?"

"I burped for ten hours."

"What the heck is a vagina?"

"You don't know what Justin Bieber is."

"Do you know what I'm going to be when I grow up? First I'm going to be an archaeologist and then I'm going to be an artist."

Friday, December 2, 2011

New Story "Precision" at BLIP

You can check it out here.

This one was inspired by Grace Paley's amazing story "Wants" -- one of those stories that I go back to
frequently.