I’m reading Adrienne Rich’s poetry collection, The Dream of a Common Language. Despite the fact that she passed away just this year, it was fairly difficult to find a copy of this book online. Rich was a poet I greatly admired while I was an undergrad, and I still do. I feel some kind of kinship with her and I’m not sure why that is. I’m still trying to figure that out. She’s also one of the few poets who actually writes tolerable love poems. That’s really difficult to achieve at this point, I think. I love how her poems read like stories and aren’t these entirely inscrutable, abstract puzzles within meta-enigmas, and how they’re concrete, visceral, and so immediately emotionally charged. They’re like sudden jolts of electricity.

In other news, I’ve sent quite a few stories and poems out to various publications. I’m still waiting to hear back from most of them. Unfortunately, I did not win the Indiana Review’s annual poetry prize. Haha. Maybe I’m better at writing short fiction. I still can’t really tell.

1. One of my old creative writing professors was named a Guggenheim fellow. Pretty fantastic. A friend of mine called my attention to it and we reminisced about our days in fiction workshop at the Biscayne Bay campus and our quick dinners at Taco Bell.
2. Huh. Here’s something new I learned today: apparently, Emily Dickinson used to love to bake a lot. Here’s the original recipe for her coconut cake.
3. About a month or so ago, I read Edith Wharton’s book called The Writing of Fiction, which gives her opinions on writers and advice on the writing process (from novels to short stories to genre fiction, like horror). Here’s her story, “Copy: A Dialogue,” which was published in Scribner’s Magazine in 1900.
4. I recently watched Martin’s Scorsese’s documentary, Public Speaking, on the writer and social commentator Fran Lebowitz. Here’s a video clip of Lebowitz discussing the posterity of Jane Austen. I love the idea of how readers should view books as doors rather than mirrors.
5. I don’t know about the readers of this blog, but I’m a largely introverted person. In fact, I’m probably the most introverted person I know. Ever since I was little, this has been treated as a huge issue in pretty much every facet of my life. Then along comes Susan Cain and her TED talk. She is the author of the book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, which I plan on reading sometime hopefully this year (my to-read list is getting ridiculous again, of course). If you’re an introvert, you may find it reassuring to be reminded every once in a while that you shouldn’t feel ashamed of who you are.

In the meantime, I’ve been experimenting with the setup of this blog. I’ve installed a new comments system, which seems more efficient. I was bothered by the fact that I couldn’t reply to people after a certain reply amount was reached. Hopefully this took care of that problem.

I’ve also started updating my little writing section. l’ll use it to keep track of my future publications as well, once more of my writing finds a good home.

I found something buried in one of my bottom shelves today and I thought I would dust it off a bit and share. Back in high school, I took advanced placement English classes that not only required a lot of reading and essay writing, but a lot of creative projects as well. One of these projects was putting together a scrapbook for the character Janie from the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. On the pages, I tried to capture several of the most significant scenes, themes, and images in the book. I’m glad I still kept it. It was probably one of my favorite projects.

(A somewhat late carousel. I found a lot of things last week, but I just forgot to keep track of some of them. Sorry!)

1. No Pulitzer Prize was given out for the Fiction category this year. It was quite hilarious to see the deluge of sarcastic and infuriated comments by writers about the Pulitzer committee on Twitter. But here’s Ann Patchett’s much more reasonable reaction to it.
2. I like this post about pseudonyms and writers’ identities, especially as someone with a half-pseudonym kind of thing going on.
3. Speaking of pseudonyms, a writer who goes by the internet name of xTx has a really great story in The Collagist (which is probably my new favorite online lit journal, by the way).
4. My sister has been pressuring me into reading The Hunger Games for a while and I caved. I’ve just finished the first book of the series and I’m beginning to read the second. At first, I wasn’t sure whether it would be something I would enjoy, but I have – more than I expected to, anyway. There’s also this great personal essay by Roxane Gay that helped to persuade me as well.
5. This story by David Foster Wallace is very chilling. I think it will stay with me for a while.

So I guess this is technically my first ever publication in anything! This week, Paste Magazine ran my review on the novel Zazen by Vanessa Veselka. It’s featured in Issue #42 and on their front page in the books section. Exciting. It’s a book review (about a fairly inscrutable book), but I also discuss rebels, dystopias, and Never Let Me Go.

You can read it here.

I’ve started to use Duotrope to track my submissions and the subsequent rejections/acceptances. It’s useful for organizing everything simultaneously. Maybe this is a bit too obsessive for some people, but I’m the type that keeps lists and likes to pin things down so I don’t go completely crazy.

I’ve also been helping read through more submissions at Hobart. I really hope we end up publishing a novella or two. But I’ve been talking with the editor and we’ve noticed how most of the submissions have been largely disappointing. There’s a few really great ones, but it made me realize just how many rejections will be sent out anyway. It’s made me realize how rejections are constantly happening everywhere out there and how everyone will need to keep trying again and again. It was sobering. Maybe that’s why I’m not as angry and dejected as I thought I would be with my own rejection.

1. Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves, writes a letter to a girl from OKCupid and it’s pretty hilarious.
2. I came across a really fantastic blog called The Book Cover Club, where people read books and then design new covers for them. Check it out!
3. I’ve always been a fan of surreal art. Here’s A Cadeira Alta, by Brazilian artist Marcel Caram.
4. The details about J.K. Rowling’s newest novel were recently revealed. She has written an adult murder mystery, which is what people were speculating. It’s called The Casual Vacancy and it will be released on September 27th of this year.
5. I found a generator that emails you rejections. It supposedly prepares you for the impending pain of failure. I’m sure I’ll be making proper use of it soon.
6. Lately, there have been a lot of creative projects popping up all over the place via Kickstarter, plenty of them book-related. I really wish I could support them all! One of them that drew my attention in particular was Wollstonecraft, a charming series of children books about Ada Lovelace and Mary Shelley, dedicated to teaching young girls about history and writers and giving them positive real-life role models.
7. This week, a post of mine went up over on ReadLearnWrite. It’s about growing up as a boy who really didn’t read on his own until much later than you would think. It’s also about getting other less enthusiastic people into books (including my own family).

I’ve also sent out some writing to journals, as well as a national poetry contest. I’m getting a bit crazy I think. I have to start somewhere though, I suppose – may as well be that! If I don’t win, I’ll just quit writing forever. No big deal.

I think I handle rejection pretty well, if you ask me. If you really want to know my secret: I’ve been prepping myself with this special rejection generator.

1. Apparently, there’s been some book banning going on in Arizona in regards to the Mexican-American immigrant experience. I’m still regularly shocked and appalled by the racism and censorship that is allowed in this country.
2. A graphic novel adaptation of the classic children’s book A Wrinkle in Time is coming out this year. Check out the cover.
3. I read a story about a father’s struggle with his little daughter’s cancer. It follows the family’s grieving process and how they cope with her illness. Utterly brutal and sad, but also deeply beautiful.
4. I found a new place to get books: The Book Depository! Free international shipping, and their prices are actually pretty good too. Excellent.
5. I discovered The Safety Pin Review, a relatively new literary journal that features 30-word fiction and shows it off on the back of shirts around town by the journal’s “operatives.” Love it. Now if only I can teach myself to write fiction in thirty words or less.
6. I’m pretty sure I’ve listened to Catgroove over a hundred times throughout this week. I’m also pretty sure electroswing is my new favorite thing. Parov Stelar is amazing. All of his music is going on my MP3 player as soon as possible.