Of Elsewhere
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 […]
Apologies first for my long absence. I’ve been writing like mad and am more than halfway through my (dire) first draft of Evernost the simple novel. In the rush of this, I haven’t found time to blog, unfortunately– especially since I have other projects underway in the interstices. Excitements because I have turned my illustrated […]
This is going to be another short and boring post, and I have a good reason: I’m trying to plow through a relatively bare-bones prose rendition of Evernost’s plot by Christmas or earlier. It’s supposed to be quick and bad, like the spring section of Evernost that I completed last summer. At present I have […]
At some point I wrote that I preferred the literature of conviction to the literature of perception despite lacking all conviction myself. I speculated that this was because I took malicious pleasure in all the scenes where people prove how right they are and how absurd their opponents are (a pleasure that in me has […]
Of Elsewhere 