Reading

I recently finished Leave by Shayne Terry (Autofocus Books). It’s about the author’s postpartum experiences after sustaining an injury while giving birth. This book moved me as a human who has sometimes experienced pain (though I’m not a mother). It’s about mothers and daughters, family, pain, living in a human body, loss, measuring expectations and hopes against reality. When I finished reading it, I thought, oh it’s actually about death, another kind of leaving, and sure enough, this is noted in the Acknowledgements. (I like to read the acknowledgements to see where people are coming from, where they’ve been.) I didn’t want to put this book down and was sad to finish it.

“Are you writing?”

Years ago, when I took a con ed writing program, there was another person in the class who was younger than I was, and I was envious of her, because she taught writing classes while I only managed to get a degree in the theory of teaching, never to teach an actual course. She was charismatic, great at talking about her work and the work of others. She asked intelligent questions in class, was funny and quick. I saw her sometime after the program ended, crossing a street in Ballard where I was visiting a friend, so that we encountered each other mid-crossing, a ridiculously Seattle thing, to run into someone while crossing the road. No time to chat, and not knowing or liking each other enough to move this chance meeting to the sidewalk, we both waved and kept going.

“Are you writing?” she called as the distance grew between us.

“Yes! You?” I replied. I was proud of myself for thinking on my feet enough to reply yes, sort of an autoreply.

“Yes!” she said. That was it. She disappeared into the crowd, as did I. I was writing then, probably, so it wasn’t a lie.

I haven’t written much lately except for journal entries where I record my increasingly unhinged sleepy-time-tea fueled nightmares. It’s the busiest time of the year at my day job. I finished a long-form project just in time to submit it for a specific call, and I haven’t started writing something new yet. My mind feels a little…blank? I’ve written more long-form work the past two years than I’ve written short fiction. I enjoyed working on the longer work (two novellas) because I wanted to stay within them, liked spending time in those worlds. But from the publishing angle, it feels like I don’t have as much to show for the passage of time. I haven’t published as much short fiction. And I know why, but it still feels different. I don’t want to submit my short fiction as frequently as I once did. I feel out of ideas though that’s ridiculous. I started writing a short thing the other day, and realized it was about my dead cat. Again. One day I will stop writing about him but this is not the time apparently. I forgot I started writing this specific thing actually, and had that disembodied feeling where you don’t recall writing something and are surprised to find it on your desktop.

Travelling with books

I’m going on a long train journey soon, and I’ll be bringing books and journals with the hope to write or at least feel a spark of inspiration again. Deciding which books to bring when travelling is a thing—what will I feel like reading while on this journey? The books I read while away will overlay my experience of the trip so I have to choose carefully. So far, I‘m packing two novellas I ordered from Evening House Books, since they are light to carry in my bag. I’ve been reading Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson which I should have saved for my trip, since it’s a road trip novel, but I couldn’t wait.

Coming soon

I have work included in the forthcoming anthology from Autofocus, IF I CAN BE HONEST: Selected Prose from the Four Years of Autofocus Lit (2020-2024) – Ed. Michael Wheaton, now available for pre-order. I’ve enjoyed every Autofocus book I’ve read, and am so honored to have my piece, “Take the Bus Home,” in this collection with so many stellar writers. This was a piece “about” riding the Greyhound between home and not-home, Phoenix and Denver, originally published in their journal.

Bunnies

There are more bunnies than usual this year, in the backyard and down the street. I found a baby (young, but looked big enough to be without his mother), my first ever baby bunny sighting, when he scurried out of my path and under a bush. I love seeing them around, am always looking for them when I stare out the windows or go on a walk. I have a new couple of squirrels who visit occasionally for bread and have named each one. I know after a few months, I will no longer see them again, and I always hope it’s because they’ve found a better yard to visit, that they’re still out there even if I can’t see them.

xoxo