It’s been a while again – I’ve been keeping busy with a fiction workshop taught by Robert Eversz and of course working on my thesis. I decided to forgo NaNoWriMo as I did last year (I won in 03, 04, and 05!) to concentrate on those things. I think I’ve in some way outgrown the frantic 50k in 30 days quantity over quality pacing of the whole project – it was great for me when I started, it really taught me how to buckle down and accomplish something and not worry about precision (as proof I am a great english major, I just attempted to write that word as “precisity”) and being perfect the first time around. Since then I’ve learned to work shorter, tighter, and have been much more focused on editing and drafting, which I never really intend to do with the fruits of my NaNo works. Still, it’s a great project and I wish the best of luck to all of my friends currently competing!

In the past month or so, I’ve finished several drafts of a piece of flash fiction, and I’m working on a slightly longer fiction piece that will be part of my thesis. I got a rejection letter from 580 Split that told me I made it to the third round of selections (to which I immediately went out and celebrated with lots of beer), and I was named Fiction Editor of The Laureate, Western Michigan University’s undergraduate literary magazine which I was published in last year. We’re waiting for all our submissions to come in, at the moment, but it promises to be a good – if harrying – time. It’s going to be interesting to be the one handing out rejection letters this time.

The piece I’m focusing right now is unnamed yet, and in early revision stages, but here’s a sample:

I know we’re moving when everyone starts asking how much we’d like warm weather and summers on the beach. Our mother starts complaining about the negative degree wind chill and the Eye Heart Alberta Beef bumper stickers and pretending that she’d love to be anywhere else, and it works on Liz, who has already sorted out all her sweatshirts, overcoats, mittens, and put them in garbage bags in piles behind her bedroom door. She wears sandals and tank tops around the house while thick Albertan snowflakes fall in waves past the windows and she gets away with it.

Dad comes home late from practice looking tired, his longish hair damp and sticking to his neck, curled across his cheekbones. The heavy sound his hockey bag makes as he drops it unceremoniously to the floor echoes in his voice, in the sigh that escapes before he says hello.

“Don’t worry,” Liz says, shivering in her pink flowery flip-flops and taking his hand, “it will be warm and we can go swimming when there isn’t ice.” He smiles at her, ruffles her dark hair and unhooks her small fingers from his as his phone rings O Canada. I wonder if dad likes swimming as much as he likes skating and think of course he must not. Mom takes out leftovers and he tries to smile at Liz as he moves out of earshot. I can hear his voice over the slow murmur of the microwave. We’ve had his favorite three days in a row.

Work In Progress; 2007

I’ve been writing a lot lately, but not necessarily the things I should really be focusing in on. Despite this, I have ideas and I think I’m going out East for my next project, which should be interesting – it’s been a while since Asia’s cropped up in my writing and I could stand to leave Canada behind for a while. Here’s to hoping Thanksgiving (wow…four hours of sleep is starting to get to me in a way even the espresso can’t help – I just wanted to call it Easter break) vacation gives me a bit of breathing room to work.