Of Elsewhere
I’ve been too distracted by other projects to want to blog lately. Evernost continues to evolve, with excitement and sometimes drama. For a long time I’ve vaguely wanted to write myself into it as a lying narrator and alter-ego of a major character or two. So I’m trying to write a coherent or semi-coherent account […]
I have a lot of balls in the air right now. Grad School Bug is almost but not quite dead, but I’ve written this 20-some page paper on Diana Wynne Jones that I want to try to edit and publish. Unfortunately, I can’t motivate myself to work on it anymore now that it’s preliminarily done. […]
Today was a good day—beloved visitor in town, goal accomplished, meeting with friends in ten minutes—but I didn’t get a chance to write much of a blog post, so this will have to do. The accomplishment is the relevant part of all this: I finished my (theoretically eventually) publishable Diana Wynne Jones essay, minus some […]
I kind of, deep down inside, want a lit PhD. I mostly don’t, and, as a result, I don’t, you know, have one. But the undead body of a desire for a lit PhD keeps clawing itself out of its grave, and this time my main reason for wanting one is: I want to write […]
So, one of the supposed Rules of Writing is that one should use “active” verbs instead of “passive” verbs, and usually this boils down to avoiding forms of the verb to be. In an effort to drill this into our tender high school brains, a teacher gave us a handout with the following sentence: It is the act […]
I mentioned earlier that an agent requested my manuscript Pet. Last Tuesday, she turned it down in a kind and personal way. I am disappointed but grateful for and pleased by her kindness. I’m also a little relieved. I’m growing increasingly dissatisfied with Pet itself. I’m doubtful about the quality of the verse; I am definitely interested […]
I mentioned that I took a free, local poetry class last year, and one of the really excellent things about it was that the teacher asked lots of insightful and provocative questions, and I found myself thinking much more about my assumptions about what poetry does and how to read it than I do on […]
This year I’ve been writing a lot of poetry. It is fun, interesting, rewarding, and also potentially crucial to Evernost—if the thing really does want to incorporate poetry. As a result of this, I am in the process of submitting a (regular-length) chapbook manuscript to several contests—out of the desire to motivate myself to produce […]
This is a brief and heterogeneous update post. First, I am trying to put together a chapbook of poetry to submit to real publishers. Um. this is a challenge. And probably premature. But I’m trying it anyway. I may send out some individual poems to publishers as well. I am also trying to figure out […]
Well, the title is something of an overstatement. I am not convinced that either Evernost the imaginary place or Evernost the real writing project will ever be complete. There is poetry to be written and illustrations to be created and new plots to explore and innumerable whatchamacallits off to the side. What is complete is […]
Of Elsewhere 