Glossolalia Flash Fiction is a pretty new and very small literary journal which publishes stories under 500 words.

I sent a heavily (and, dare I say, effectively?) cut-down version of a six- or seven-hundred word story I wrote last fall.

Cut to the chase: I'm getting published. It's mainly an online journal, but they do offer print copies and print subscriptions, and they supposedly publish less than 25% of unsolicited manuscripts.

Read: Happiness.

More info: here.

So this is how my semester is going:

Academically:
Poetry class: Loving it. Still getting a feel for it, but really enjoying the shorter form.
Novel class: Really difficult. As expected. The professor doesn't insist we write a whole novel in one semester, but we do need to write 150 pages of one. Working on that. He's been bringing the manuscript of his current novel into class and talking about his writing process too. Very cool stuff. We also had a visiting writer (Tom Franklin) teach one class period of writing talk and one period of workshop.
Existentialism: Really good discussions on individuality, free will, theism/atheism, the human condition, etc. I'm pretty much destined to declare Philosophy as a double-major at this point.
Jewish Literature: Really really interesting. Best literature professor I've had so far (read: he can actually get the class to talk about stuff, and only reads into what's ACTUALLY ON THE PAGE.)
Grammar class: Actually not a killer. Really confusing at first, but once you GET IT, it makes a lot of sense. And the professor is a curmudgeonly hippie-like insane man who makes me laugh very hard on occasion. Many in the class hate him.

Spatially:
Living with a roommate (thank God) and not in a depressing single. Also, in a building with carpets, in the center of campus, with a printer downstairs... it adds up.

Religiously:
Having very interesting discussions with the university Chaplain about a number of issues, including, but not limited to: Gay issues, sexual ethics, sin, marriage, other religions, biblical authority... basically stuff that a lot of people take for granted or see as black and white, but that Chaplain, because he's so cool, is willing to have very intelligent and meaningful conversations about.

Romantically:
Let's just say that for once, there isn't "nothing to report."

Careerily:
I got my first rejection slip! It's fancy.

Little Children by Tom Perrotta. Satire about suburban life, full of perverse affairs and a child molester. Often vulgar, but actually funny in places, and a really good ending. Not for the easily offended.

Cotton Song by Tom Bailey. Second novel by the professor teaching my novel class. Prose is pretty much perfect, setting excellently drawn. Story is a bit overcomplicated. Enjoyed a lot, but I think I liked his first better.

Selected Stories by Andre Dubus. Really wonderful collection. He incorporates faith and religion into his stories very deeply and without pretension, which is one of my personal goals as a writer. Really good stuff.

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III. Toward the end, one of the most suspenseful books I've ever read. He sets up a situation where everyone is horribly at odds but nobody is really the bad guy, which makes for a pretty tragic story. I recommend it.

Meditations from a Moveable Chair by Andre Dubus. Collection of essays written after a car accident crippled him. Makes me ultra glad I have legs. Some of his more spiritual essays also feel pretty insightful. I personally got a lot from it.

Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Book on mindfulness meditation, recommended to me back in spring. Can't say much about this one, you'll just have to read it. Depending on how aware you are of yourself, it may change your life. It certainly has had a noticeable effect on mine so far.

Just one more month of summer break, and so much more that I want to read! However I may not have as much time now that I started my novel. Speaking of which - writing it has me extremely excited, and I've been uneasy twice already with the things that have come out of my mind and onto the page. The story I wrote last fall about the guy burning frogs pretty much pales in comparison to some of the stuff that's going to be in this one. I can't wait to work on it more.

Cheers!

The list continues, in chronological order if I can remember right:

The Good Mother by Sue Miller. This one started to annoy me about halfway through because it looked to be shaping into a somewhat trashy romance novel, but luckily that didn't happen. I'd even dare say the second half was better. Overall, pretty engaging except for a rough patch in the middle.

Hell at the Breech by Tom Franklin. Mostly very well done story about an 1890s town in the south and the massacre it ends up home to. A few moments were too over-the-top for me to take seriously, but otherwise not a bad read. I've met the author through SU's visiting writers program, and will again in the fall.

On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner. Somewhere between a memoir and a "here's what you need to be a good novelist." Very insightful and relevant to those who write. Also: a quick read.

The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III. Probably my favorite of all the things I've read for my novel-writing class (every book in this post is such). It's about a stripper, an Islamic extremist, and an estranged abusive husband. And darned if I didn't care a lot about all of them by the end. Seriously a good book. Makes me want very much to go read his other novel, House of Sand and Fog. I happen to love what I've read of his father's work as well.

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich. Pretty thorough portrait of two American Indian families, with a few too many liasons and affairs and marriages and relations to keep good track of without referring back to the family tree in the front of the book. Also a few too many chapters culminating in said liasons. Overall, there's really beautiful language throughout, and the author's choice of which people's lives to show us and which scenes from those lives is very smart and efficient. Worth a look.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Very easy to get through, engaging characters, and enjoyably unpredictable throughout. Definitely a good study of how to unfold a story dramatically.

That's all for now, but it's not over yet. And soon I get to go exclusively into pleasure reading again.

House Bill 5535 could double funding for the Peace Corps over the next two years. Urge your congressmen to support it!

That is all.

The list for my Novel-Writing class is like ten books long, but I'm cramming spme pleasure reading in there, too. Here's what I've read so far this summer.

Lisey's Story by Stephen King. Truly a heartfelt and meaningful peace of writing. My favorite by King to date.

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. Scarily possible. An important book.

Duma Key by Stephen King. A good read. You can tell he cared about what he was writing. And some of his prose in this one is brilliant.

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. A very clever satire, with a good amount of hilarity. However, fairly easy to put down.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Nice voice and emotional punch. Very effective. Good stuff.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Very short, very engaging. Again, you can tell it wasn't written just for money.


That's the start of it. Much more to come by the end of the summer.

So today is a milestone. Sort of.

Today my first submission to a publication outside of my college will be mailed. And in around twelve weeks, I'll either get my first rejection slip, or... published?

It's definitely a big step. For once I was able to read a short story I'd written and say, "You know, somebody might actually go for that."

Throughout me Advanced Short Story class this past semester, each student had to give a presentation that included information on a literary journal, and I had New England Review, a journal of Middlebury College in Vermont. I liked what I saw, and this past week read up on what kind of stories they're publishing and of what quality.

So here goes nothing. I'll have to wait and see, and hope that I didn't somewhere miss an important piece of information like "we don't accept unsolicited material."

Here's to hoping.

It's official. I'm taking a poetry workshop in the fall. (Also a novel-writing workshop, but who's counting?)

In that spirit, here's a poem I wrote the other day. I'd say it's the first truly serious attempt at poetry that I've made thus far. I wasn't just messing around with this one.

That said, I acknowledge my lack of experience in the field, and offer that as a warning if this happens to be cheesy/unoriginal/tritely worded/lacking structure, etc.

Let me know what you think? Critiques welcomed.
( Stem and Whale )

Observation twenty:

God does not want us to try by ourselves; God does not want us to do nothing and just rely on Him; God wants us to try because we rely on Him.

I may have to take a religion class or two at some point.

A week or two ago, my Asian Lit class took a field trip to a small Zendo (or Zen Buddhist monastery, though it was just in a big house), and we did both sitting and walking meditation, which I found very rewarding.

Now, there's a lot I disagree with in Buddhism; no self, deification of enlightened individuals... stuff really fundamental to (at least some versions of) the religion.

But the amount I gained from the meditation brought to my attention that religions other than mine may still have a great deal to offer that doesn't in any way contradict mine, but that because of vastly different histories, mine simply doesn't focus on.

Hence, possible religion class. Off topic, I'm planning to take poetry at some point, too.