If any of you are saying, “Who the helvetica is David Foster Whatsit?” please don’t go yet! Yes, this month’s nonfiction revolves around a particular person, BUT the meat of the book is about something more broad: writing. The craft, the business, the joys and pitfalls and neuroses thereof. I chose it for this month’s Let’s Dewey This because his insights are so incredibly relatable that I thought you guys – my fellow wordslingers – would like to read them.
A full year ago today, I was honored to have this flash fiction published by Gingerbread House Literary Magazine. This is my personal favorite of my work, so to celebrate its anniversary I am reprinting it here. I hope you enjoy! 🙂
Rain fell the day he went to the shore, to see the place where his wife left him. Grey weighted the clouds like sacks full of stones, sagging closer and closer to the sea. Grey upon grey, water upon water, the sea and sky took hands. The way he once took hers.
She never held his hand long. Always wrenching from his grasp, her flesh still as slippery as a seal. Sometimes she would oblige him, sit shaking like a penned animal as he made hushing noises and rubbed her knuckles with his thumbs.
Please let me love you, he would say. I’ve earned it. I found your skin.
For this week’s post, here is prose-poem I guest-wrote for Ruby Browne’s blog, about the subconscious ways our emotions find their way out. While you’re there, I highly recommend reading some of Ruby’s writings about mental health. She’s amazing.
“DSC_0087” © Harvy, 2012. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
You heard it before you knew what was happening, before you were even fully conscious, opening your eyes to the dark and to the sound. A ghostly sob behind hypnopompic curtains, fuzzing into your dream like an alarm clock. And maybe it was an alarm, in a way. Not the ring-ring-ring kind, but an alarm of another variety. An alert, a Mayday signal from your subconscious, saying wake up and feel this.
You woke after the crying had already started, the pillow wet beneath your cheek. You tried to keep the noise down, so as not to wake him. Because you wanted to be polite in your grief, because you didn’t want him to ask. Because you didn’t know the answer.
But you also needed to get it out. Out of your body as if it were something…
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I am so, so, so happy – like, heart bursting out of my chest happy! – to announce that my short fiction entitled The Selkie’s Husband is officially published at Gingerbread House Literary Magazine! This is my favorite piece I’ve written thus far, and with a journal I adore, so this publication is a personally significant one. It would mean the world to me if you gave it a look. (If not for the story then at least for that wowzers artwork by Anna Dittman – holy smokes!)
Last Thursday I got two acceptance letters for short stories in one day.
Um… WHAT.
Seriously, what weird cosmic fluke is this!? This isn’t me. Who am I? What planet am I on? How does… That is… What!
I’m a slow writer. I’m so slow that I actually forced a 30-minute time limit on this entry because otherwise I’d take too much time away from my other projects, musingly tapping my pencil on my chin for ages. Actually I’m typing this on my laptop, but the pencil thing was a nice visual effect, yeah? If I actually hand-wrote these things it’d be take me double-ages. Triple-ages! But I’m getting off track.
In their threadbare, fingerless gloves the two stories warmed their hands over the bin fire. The flames whipped about like those inflatable tube-men outside car dealerships and the stories were careful not to catch a swipe on their equally threadbare cuffs.
“How long’s it been for you, Fantasy Comedy?” asked one of the stories, blowing hot air on his knuckles.
.
Rain taps the roof like fingers tapping a shoulder.
.
Hey, the rain says.
I’ve got something to tell you.
.
Go ahead, rain.
.
I’m listening.
.
You are alone today.
And what an aloneness it is.
There is space when you are alone. Such roominess is uncommon for you. You feel compelled to test it, to savor it, so you stretch your arms out wide and wave them in propeller circles like that exercise in middle school gym class. All space. Space in your apartment, space in your head. You wave all the arms of your thoughts, hear the airy swish as they feel out their boundary-less quarters.
You can do things alone that you wouldn’t dare in front of others. Secret thrills.
Lately I’ve been hmm’ing and umm’ing over a couple key terms in the publishing world: Literary and Commercial. What are the differences? After some research, I think I’ve got a handle on what these terms mean, and thought I’d lay them out for anyone else who might be scratching their head.
Pointing Telescopes | S. Noel Brady 