I had some stuff get published recently. It seems like I used to be stoked for weeks after something got published and now I've had three things go up this past month and I'm already back to feeling like I haven't done anything. Writing is better than meth, but only because it doesn't ruin your teeth.

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In a rare showing, I was able to write and publish an essay. It's about Neko Case, and though everything I do is, on some level, about Neko Case, this is blatantly about Neko Case and how her album Middle Cyclone made me learn things about living in and around solitude, the extent to which I should love myself, and respecting fear as it arrives in all humans. It's up over at The Rumpus, and I'd love for you to read it.

"The year 2008 tumbled out of itself and took with it the things that consumed my days. Within a month I had lost my job to the upholding of liquor laws, my college education to an unavoidable graduation, and my girlfriend to youth and general apathy.

I spent a lot of time in bed, not depressed, but reading depressing things—Seamus Heaney’s Selected Poems 1966-1987, William Matthews’s Search Party, Rick Bass’s In the Loyal Mountains—often out loud. I read Heaney in an impassioned Irish accent, Bass with a gruff-yet-kind tone of wonderment. I read Matthews sitting up, as if at a podium, addressing a faceless sum of the discontinued millions.

There were certain lengths I was willing to go to in order to not be myself."

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I also had a story called "Trace" that I've talked about here before on the subject of "revising old stuff I wrote and wondering if it's all just a big waste of my fucking time." This one turned out decent for being around so long and going through so many drafts. It's up over at 10,000 Tons of Black Ink, and it'd be really great of you to read it.

"My grandmother spent her last several thousand mornings highlighting the obituaries."

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Lastly, the fourth story in my chapbook/cycle Murmuration is out there in the world now. I'm happy with how this one turned out and, like most of my stuff, it ties in with another story: The Honeybreakers are the band that had dissolved and reassembled in my story "Sometimes We Were Young." Here we find them merely dissolving, as seen through the eyes of our faithful narrator. Please read it over at Bartleby Snopes.

"Revising my dreams into the necessary shapes involved going out to the van every night and playing guitar in the street. I waited until after the show, after everyone had locked into the distractions that would take them through to morning. I would strap on whichever guitar I grabbed first and commence to shredding first against the van and then eventually to the center of the street. This was a small reassurance that my life would eventually resolve itself if attacked from compromising angles."

Alex Chilton is bad at talking to girls but really good at musically documenting it. That's always comforting.

My book has a face. Here it is:

Katie Duffy designed it and did a great job. We went through a lot of brainstorming, looking at book covers we admire and talking about big abstract ideas that gave me sweaty flashbacks to the times in college when I actually had to think about stuff. I've done some minor design work for local and touring bands when they come through the area--some of it good and some of it questionable--so I'm not a complete idiot when it comes to design. Still, Duff is a pro, both at art and at telling me that I'm a fucking dickhead.

With this cover, she hit all the key spots we talked about--ephemerality, time as a confuser, open space, redheads--and ended up with something I'm proud to have visually represent my first book. I'll let you do your own interpretation, but I like how it all blends, how there are blue spots between and tons of white space, a big redhead at the center of everything. I'm going to get her some pencils or mescaline or whatever shit artists use. Thanks to Holly Wilson and Terrance Maule for being the models.

I also got a galley of the newest issue of Fractured West, a UK-based literary magazine who accepted my story "--:--" late last year. The issue will be out soon and I'm excited for a number of reasons.

1) Fractured West is a really great magazine that publishes excellent writing.
2) I can now say that I'm an internationally-published writer.
3) Publishing a story with an unpronounceable title, in addition to calling myself an internationally-published writer, puts me in the running to be the biggest dickhead in literature, right next to Garrison Keillor and that dude from one of my college writing workshops who told me his novel doesn't need an editor because his mom read it and said it's good.

Seeing that galley actually made me want to get back on the submission train, but I used up almost all of my A-material on the book. I did find a piece of flash called "Western v. Eastern" and a long-form story called "Shoot Out the Bright Lights" that are both ready to go, so I'm working on sending them out. I also tested the waters with a revision of the story "Trace" (which I previously talked about taking through almost a dozen drafts over the course of four years) and a revision of the story "Backlit" (which is in the same revision purgatory as "Trace").

And, as I did with "Trace," here are two different version of the opening to "Backlit."

That first draft was more of a slow burn. It starts off with a nice line, if not too-easy line--that listing technique with an oddball third item. There's a lot of wasted space, though: that second sentence is essentially pointless, and the stuff about leisure suits and sunglasses doesn't add much of anything except a sort of "look at us being silly" quality to the narrator that isn't exactly appealing. The stuff with Mikey and Jayne goes nowhere after this, too, just some material for awkward conversation and bad segues. Also, whereas the opening section of Draft 7 stops right where it stops above, the first section in Draft 1 goes on for 2192 words, almost the entirety of Draft 7. I think it may have been worth it, to some degree, once the story got moving, but absolutely no one wants to wait four pages for a story to warm up.

The opening in Draft 7 is about as abstract as I get. I think the sentences are all great, though. "Drilled-through with tedium" is a nice phrase, as is "an enthusiasm for new and simple movement." As an introductory section, I think it serves its purpose better. We know none of the characters--even the narrator is obscured by the hazy summary of what is, essentially, the entire story--but because it's so short and the next section immediately goes into both the characters (Mikey and "the rest of us"--the narrator's two other friends--have been cut) and the story, it works. Or, at least, it works for me.

Let's not forget about the writing contest over at HAL Literature, too. It's free to enter and comes with a sweet prize. Here are the details:

"The theme is open to interpretation and can center around China, the history of China, life in China, life after China, life without China, fortune cookies (which actually are not Chinese, but whatever, we don’t care, we are open to anything), grandma’s china plates, Chinese take-out, Shanghai, being shanghaied, stuff for sale at Target, trade deficits, foreign affairs, NAFTA, firecrackers or gunpowder, silk dresses, opium dens or railroads in the American wild west, the struggle of Chinese immigrants to the West, Richard Nixon, Chinatown, or any other conceivable application of the theme ”China.” We might not be ready to read Deadhead stories about China Cat Sunflower, but if that’s what you’ve got, send it in."

Three finalists will be chosen, with first place winner receiving

1) $50 USD, or the converted equivalent to US dollars at the time the award is made
2) publication in Shanghai at www.haliterature.com
3) One copy each of HAL’s Party like it’s 1984: stories from the people’s republic of; and Middle Kingdom Underground: stories from the people’s republic of, as well as a copy, upon publication, of HAL’s forthcoming book I Am Barbie by HAL author W.M. Butler.
4) winning story will be read live, in whole or in part, at a H.A.L. Lit event in Shanghai, China by a regular contributor to HAL residing in Shanghai at the time of the event. Alternately, the winner may travel at his or her expense to perform the piece in person, or send an audio or video recording of the piece along like a literary postcard of freedom and joy.

Second and third place winners will be published online by HAL.

Deadline for entry is September 15, 2012 at midnight Pacific Standard Time. Winners will be announced by October 15, 2012.

FUCKIN' DO IT.

And that's it for me, folks. Stay raw.

RW

I finally got to watch Lemmy, the documentary about Motorhead's Lemmy Kilmister. What cool guy. "Don't die." Great advice, Lem.

I've got some new additions to the (Has Friends) page here. Such as poet Michael Lambert, who I sort of know from college but moreso know from him coming into the record store I worked at and talking about whatever dickheads in record stores talk about. Pavement or fucking whatever. Also, essayist Sean H. Doyle, who I know from the internet, where, I believe, dickheads were invented. Sean isn't one of them, though, as far as I can tell--even if he does like John Bush-era Anthrax. Last, and he's only last because I don't think he yet knows that he's my friend--we've exchanged several e-mails and he's following me on Twitter and JUST LOVE ME ALREADY, THOMAS COOPER--short fiction writer Thomas Cooper, whose flash fiction collection Phantasmagoria I finally ordered, after being a fan of his for years and only being able to read and re-read the few pieces he has online.

Seek these people out and admire them. Be their friend. It's what the internet is for.

I finally submitted a short story to Midwestern Gothic after talking about it for months. I found out on Friday that the deadline for their new issue--on the theme of "nostalgia" and, as always, the Midwest--was on Monday. I immediately thought of a story I wrote a few years ago called "Trace," in which a young boy's eclectic grandmother dies, leaving him and his grandfather to deal with a life without her. That story was awesome at the time--I learned a lot about characterization, shifting perspectives, and revision--but going back and rereading it kind of made me realize how much of a navel-gazing butthole I used to be.

So I hacked the fuck out of it. The story was about 4100 words in the most recent draft, draft seven, last edited on 8/21/2009, and I cut somewhere between 2500 and 3000 words and added somewhere between 500 and 1000 words. I added a character, an older sister named Wendy, and changed the narration from third to first. It's better, and I hope it's good enough.

I think this is actually my most revised story. The differences are pretty staggering. Here is the opening scene to a few different drafts.

From first to third and back. Short to long to shorter. You can't see the space breaks in here, but there isn't one in the first draft at all--it was only a 1200 word story, 300 words of which were talking about popsicles (no idea). The seventh draft doesn't have one until page four, at which point it switches into a whole bunch of other bullshit that also sucks. This newest draft has one of my favorite tricks, the short first section, and then breaks up the rest of the story into several more sections. It's tighter all around, better sentences all over the place.

(I wonder if I can look back through my old writing and pinpoint the exact moment I began reading Amy Hempel.)

There's a writing contest over at HAL Literature that is free to enter and comes with a sweet prize. Here are the details:

"The theme is open to interpretation and can center around China, the history of China, life in China, life after China, life without China, fortune cookies (which actually are not Chinese, but whatever, we don’t care, we are open to anything), grandma’s china plates, Chinese take-out, Shanghai, being shanghaied, stuff for sale at Target, trade deficits, foreign affairs, NAFTA, firecrackers or gunpowder, silk dresses, opium dens or railroads in the American wild west, the struggle of Chinese immigrants to the West, Richard Nixon, Chinatown, or any other conceivable application of the theme ”China.” We might not be ready to read Deadhead stories about China Cat Sunflower, but if that’s what you’ve got, send it in."

Three finalists will be chosen, with first place winner receiving

1) $50 USD, or the converted equivalent to US dollars at the time the award is made
2) publication in Shanghai at www.haliterature.com
3) One copy each of HAL’s Party like it’s 1984: stories from the people’s republic of; and Middle Kingdom Underground: stories from the people’s republic of, as well as a copy, upon publication, of HAL’s forthcoming book I Am Barbie by HAL author W.M. Butler.
4) winning story will be read live, in whole or in part, at a H.A.L. Lit event in Shanghai, China by a regular contributor to HAL residing in Shanghai at the time of the event. Alternately, the winner may travel at his or her expense to perform the piece in person, or send an audio or video recording of the piece along like a literary postcard of freedom and joy.

Second and third place winners will be published online by HAL.

Deadline for entry is September 15, 2012 at midnight Pacific Standard Time. Winners will be announced by October 15, 2012.

GO.

The young adult writing workshop I run every summer ended this Monday. It was one of the best groups of kids I've ever had, and I'm already bummed that they're all going to get drivers licenses next year and not want to hang out with an old shithead like me. I hope they learned something other than "Just be better and you won't suck as much" and "When you grow up, get a shitty job and then don't do it."

In tangentially-related literary news, Ryan W. Bradley and I are working on some music together. He's programming the drums, sending them to me, and then I'm sending them back with guitars and bass. Then he's going to do some rad vocals. Then we're going to tour the world and probably be the best band ever. Either way, I'm going to bang a ton of chicks.

That's all. Party forever.

RW