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I'm not writing here as much I as I was, am I? I think it's because I'm
feeling pressure to write - to write well, that is. Not that you guys get
the dregs of my writing, but you do get something more - spontaneous -
than my fiction writing (what there is of it). I sat down to edit my story _Watercress_ to submit to Mary Anne's Aqua Anthology. It doesn't need an edit, however, it needs a total overhaul. I wrote this story a year ago, and, even though it's really the last story I bothered to *finish*, I'm feeling as if my voice has matured since then. Actually, that's not surprising at all: a year ago I was a MESS. This story makes me cringe in parts because I'm disgusted with the petty concerns of the main characters. I'm also bored bored BORED with the first section of it. My rule with fiction (or writing in general) is that it's only good if *I* want to read it over and over again (usually because I'm so pleased with the way it came out). If that doesn't happen, then I'm inclined to want to wash my hands of the whole story. Problem with _Watercress_ is that there's a stellar middle section that needs to be in some story somewhere. Another problem is that I've been reading almost exclusively science fiction and fantasy for the past year, so I've got that itch to be much more creative with the world my characters are living in. By the time I make all the modifications I want to this story, it's going to be a completely different piece. Not that that's a bad thing, but it sets me much further back from having this story ready for submission - the deadline of which is a mere 13 days from now. Meep. Last Thursday I went to hear the hot b.phlexsi parmella (my friend Byron) read/perform his poetry. Man, he sizzles. It was good to hear all the different styles he uses, one after another. One poem was more "rap" like, the next one was almost entirely sung, the next was back and forth between singing and biting commentary. His love/romantic poetry makes me weak in the knees - it's very honest, with both the bitterness and the yearning coming through at you, drawing you into the emotional world of the speaker. Byron's got some talent there, yup. After Byron read, I went ahead and signed up. I read second after he did (he was the featured reader of the evening), and my poem, The Stroll went over very well. Sex really sells, as we all know by now. A couple of times I heard myself getting that inflection that some poets do when they're talking about love - that pretensious, almost British pronounciation of words. I struggled not to go there, and I did pull out of that by the end, but I sure disgusted myself by doing that at all. (That's what I get for always cold-reading my stuff and never bothering to practice at home ahead of time. I'm a spontaneous kind of gal these days.) Still, I managed to put some eye contact and lots of inflection into my little erotic piece. The announcer (I've forgotten her name) said afterwards that I was a first time reader (I didn't bother to correct her - the other time I'd read something completely different, A Country Schoolyard, so it's not surprising they didn't recognize me) and she said she hoped I'd come back. It's always nice to know your audience appreciates you. I should go back there to read more often. If I do it enough, maybe I'll write enough to actually to a featured reading of my own. That would be good for my ego, I think. Anyhow. I'll try to remember to tell you more about my weekend sometime soon, but as it usually happens, other stuff will happen and that will fall by the wayside. Ah, well. | ||
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