Submitting and Stuff

Tedious. Fucking tedious. I wish everyone was on Submishmash. I hate email submissions, but my plan to submit one story/batch to at least four different journals requires that I submit on submishmash, email, and CLMP. Ugh. It gets confusing and tiresome. Anyway. I official passed 350 submissions (which is more like 400 + because at least 25 aren't registered with duotrope, and there are a good 25-50 that I submitted before duotrope, so really the closest number might be 450 or so. Maybe. I've submitted a lot). Now, I hope this plan pays off and I start publishing. I just got an acceptance from elimae (After an edit...which was actually fantastic...he wanted to cut the poem in half--this is something oliver used to do with our poems in grad school and undergrad). Sometimes the heat of the poem begins at the end. Oh, and I totally ripped off a Joshua Marie Wilkinson line in the poem. The last line line is verbatim. I'm a little nervous about it, but hey, it's out of love, right? And it's actually a line I've tried to "borrow" for years...it was in Chapel, Wolves, Rule, and finally this. "This" by the way is a poem from the thing Chas that I sent out on a whim, not thinking that Chas and I were compiling. Well, it's cool 'cause now we've got at least one poem published from our book/project.

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Mission songs are starting to come. I wrote some Petty-sounding songs, and tried to edge them out a little. We'll see how they shape up.

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I plan on blogging on my other blog, but I'll do that tomorrow.

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Snow is here. I like snow, but I hate driving in it. Idiots surround me.

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I'm heading to the gym in a bit, another late night workout. Though, I'm stoked, I downloaded some new music, thanks to Dave (shhhh, it's illegal), including the new bright eyes, head and the heart, and some shit from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Alright, now, pushups.

Later,

Joshua

I hate waiting.

I've been using this submission manager SUBMISHMASH for most of my submissions, and it's infuriating. You submit and it says, "Received," and when an editor starts reviewing it, it says, "In Progress," then you get an acceptance or rejection. I check this all day, even though, an acceptance or rejection comes to my gmail. But I check it to see what's in progress and what's not. Usually, once something goes "in progress" it takes a couple days to receive and answer, or that's how it was at first, now there are some that have been in progress for three months. I don't think I would be as obsessive about checking, except that 90% of my submissions are also at at least two other journals, so if accepted I have to email the others right away, or if a journal wants one of four poems, I have to pull that ONE from the four. Anyway, my obsession is unhealthy, almost as bad as when I was checking the MFA blog while waiting to hear back from schools.

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Chicago is approaching. In the next few months we may go out for a visit. Our friend who were living there have moved away. So, we're gonna have to make new friends.

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I don't have much else to say. I've been revising and submitting. That's about it.

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Oh, the Facebook film is really good. The tragedy of the relationship between best friends, destroyed from some douchebag who once help Napster. Sad shit. BTW J.T. is a wonderful fucking actor. Actually, the whole cast was fantastic. Fuck Harvard, though. Seriously. It was funny to see a Bill Gates cameo. Nerd alert.

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I've been thinking about about my poems. Many of them aren't even poems, they're snippets from narratives. They're poetic in language, but not poetry. I'm trying to write more "poetry" but my "Trilogy" seems to want to be strictly narrative, so the ones that I've actually had accepted are the ones that stray from the narrative, that rely on the lyric rather than the narrative. I think that's the fiction writer in me. It's made me a better fiction writer. I've been thinking lately, "What if I applied for fiction MFAs?" I wonder. I think I'm having more fun studying poetry though. Fiction, yeah, I still got a lot to learn, but I dissected and read fiction for all of undergrad and grad, so doing that with poetry (something I'm not as understanding or well-verse in) fells like a challenge and something new, even still.

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Back to Criminal Minds marathon, then the gym...maybe.

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Tickles and Backrubs

Joshua

I post just for the sake of it

I could wax on and on about my many projects, but I'm bored with that (for now). I will say that writing songs for THE MISSION TAPES has been fun and different. I never thought I would play regular chords to write songs. They sounds too "nice." But it's fun. I listened to Tom Petty on the way home and then came home, pooped, and wrote a song. Nice, right?

I was gonna work out today, but I'm tired. I've been sick for a few days, and last night I worked out for an hour, and I'm feeling it today. So, tomorrow...hills. Yeah!

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World did two things for me:

1) Makes me want to play music in a band.

2) Makes me wants to live in Toronto.

Seriously.

That movie is great. The director (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and Spaced) is the best. He can do NO wrong. Yet...The film is about hipsters and scene kids, but it spends the whole movie making fun of them, but also showing them love...like, "Hey you're pretentious and think you're awesome, but you are an idiot in so many ways, but that's OK. You are you who are...kind of stupid." The viewers get it, but many of us (ahem) see ourselves in these idiots (taking a band WAY too seriously, trying desperately to fit in, but trying to act like we don't care, and living to meet a pipe dream that won't happen, and if it does, chances are you're be selling out something). Yeah, good times. This is a must own and will join the list with Star Trek and Hot Fuzz.

I'm about to read Lost in the Funhouse. Just bought it for 3.16.

Still reading Dayglo and Beasley book slowly.

Writing a script. Did I mention this. Typed up ten + pages today. I keep thinking of places in B'ham as I write it, only dumping snow. Writing pages of dialogue in the voice of teenagers talking to an old guy in an SUV is fun.

I know I said I was bored talking about my projects, but I lied.

I know I said I would stop writing stories, but I couldn't help it. I wrote a story about a father who gets a visit from an angel (not really, he's insane and always comes to his children with weird claims) and sews swan wings (he made them out of duck feathers, tree branches, and old curtains) and makes his kids jump off the roof. When they don't fly he calls them unbelievers. One kids wings catch a gust of wind, and things get outta control. There's a quarry later in the story. And a dinner table scene that gets me stoked. Anyway, I promise that this (might) be the last story for a while.

I got a rejection letter that asked me to change the ending of an essay about family. I read it again and was all set to do it, but I can't. The ending I slaved over and it took me a month to figure out, and I won't change it. I'm sorry. (It's not like they guaranteed publication if I changed it and even if they did, it's not like i'd sell out, and it's not like they pay). The essay is about my family, where we come from, our histories, and how my mom is weird. The end has this cool line about how we come from railroad men, frontier men, and the wild west, but how I'm not gonna go out get a shovel, a lantern, and a six shooter. But they wrote something like, "We know about your family, but what else?" WHAT ELSE!? WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO KNOW! I'm kidding. But in all seriousness. The essay is what it is, and if it made sense to revise, I would. But it didn't make sense. I will submit to that place again, though. They were fast and liked my shit. So, BOOM.

Without a Trace is a shitty show. Though, when it's on sometimes I don't change the channel. I think I like making comments about how bad the writers are. And how much I hate the main blonde girl in it. She's the worst.

Hung out with Dave Woods. I love seeing the guy. We have good chats and Em likes him. Elliot and Indie too. The thing is, I wonder if he's bored by my family life. I mean, there's nothing to do, but walk, sit around, and talk. We don't GO OUT, really. Unless there's a walk or food involved. He's too nice to say anything, but sometimes I suspect we bore him. Though, I will still call him and bug him to hang out: He is one of my best friends. So, Dave if we bore you and you're toughing it out, you are a pimp. If you actually have fun, then you are a wonderful human being...even more wonderful than we suspected. BTW. Ladies, he's single.

Oh, and thanks for spotting that cheap book for me today.

Whatelse, whatelse, I mumble too myself...

It was Valentines Day. Emily's not really down with that day, but we got Indian Food and ate it as we watched the tube. I don't say this enough, but I love Emily more than anything. And I am a lucky motherfucker to have her as a wife. And even luckier that she bore Elliot (and put her life on the line in doing so). She's the best lady in the land. And, though she doesn't get much free time, she lets me sneak in a few minutes here and there to focus on my dream, even if it makes her life harder at times. I love you, Em. Always.

So many ideas, so little time. I wrote a three page poem the other day, which will end up in fragments in Chas and I's poem/book. I'm still waiting on Chas-ters work. I've gotten a handful of poems and they are great. I feel like I'm manhandling the project so far, but I'm hoping that his poems really take the project from me and it becomes an organic act of organizing, fitting, and revise till we got ourselves a messy, yet composed book.

I'm gonna start pulling certain poems from the submission as they get rejected. Mostly This is the Way to Rule poems, or poems from Chas and I's project that I submitted before it was Chas and I's project. So, by the Spring, I will have less poems out, but hopefully, more journals, as I will sub. submit all of my poems.

I had a good class today. They've been getting better and better. We wrote about Zombies and I tried to explain proper citing, and sentence structure, and transitions with fake Zombie texts I made up. It was a fun time. I also told people that if they turned in a paper with improper citing I would "murder the *&(^ out of their paper-grade." I hope they got the message.

Anyway, I'm all over the place and I'm out. I didn't expect the blog to be this long. Well, Hellsea, I hope you had fun.

I can't never think of a proper title

Hey dudes and dudettes,

I got a cold and I don't feel good, but I wanted to blog, and when I'm done I'm gonna watch Always Sunny and the newest 30 Rock.

I am still submitting like crazy and hope that by Spring I can slow down a little and take it easy, and by summer just sort of submit whenever there seems to be a really good fit. Sometimes, when I submit, I'm just throwing out to five journals (The same story, or batch of poems) based on whether I like them or not. Some are new journals that I don't even know and my poems are feelers. Right now I have 115 submission out to journals/presses (not counting 20 or so who aren't registered with duotrope...sorry Ian can't find the time to set up a spread sheet, though when I do your will be the basis for mine...though, I'll probably have to set up one for each "Batch" and each story considering the volume, oh and congrats on the recent publication). The rejections I'm getting are started to become more personal and more positive like, "While these poems aren't quite what we're looking for, we love the voice, and would love you to resubmit others." Or "This story was deliciously funny, but just not quite right. Please send more, something that might fit better with what we publish." So, now, with all my stuff out, I'm just playing the waiting game. Some of my poems and stories are only out to 1 journal, and my goal is to take those (if rejected) and resubmit to other journals, five at a time. So, I can just wait, and I don't have to play the I-Just-Got-A-Rejection-I-Must-Resubmit game. That's so time consuming. Instead, if I have a bunch out to a bunch of journals, I just wait till they're all accepted or rejected and do it again all at once. One file, five times. I'm am curious how Chas and I will work our little project...though of course I have ideas.

Concerning the Mission Tapes. Em totally fucked up my plan! It's for the better. Originally the band was supposed to be late 60s, then I changed it to the 80s so that I could actually write songs that would fit, and so I did...close to ten songs, but Em pointed out the ages of my main characters and she made me realize that the band would have to be 70s. She played me Cream (I know 60s), but I think that Mission would be responding to bands like Cream. So, I started writing new songs. Ugh. Writing for that era is hard. A lot of real chords and riffs. Not my thing, plus most of my tunes were in Drop D, so now, I tuned my guitar up and started playing chords. And now, whenever I put the band together, someone will have to be wanking away--I vote for Chad, that guy can wank. Anyway, so the project has slowed, which is actually cool, because I will have a chance to actually write the novella/long short story that all the contributors will get. I read a story on kill author that gave an idea on how to structure it. Anyway. I've already got one poet who is "Game." And he's fucking awesome. So, I better get to work.

I've been "hired" to write a script. It's not an adaption, but an homage to "Taste of Cherry." I'm trying to set the beginning of the film up to have a very serial killer/voyeuristic feeling coming from the POV (we don't see who it is for a few minutes). They filmmakers gave me a rough script/outline and asked me to go for it. So, I've written a few scenes already, just in my notebook, and whenever I get some actual time, I'll sit down and put something together. It feels weird to be writing scripts again, though, if YOU pay me, I'll do it.

I just finished a short story about two dudes who accidentally learn how to make things disappear. It happens first with a plane and all the passengers and their luggage fall from the sky in the middle of takeoff. Anyway, I think that's it. I think I'm gonna just submit the stories and call it good. I'll go back to the manuscript and organize it when I feel like I've had enough time (And after I publish a handful of the stories...all ALL OF THEM!).

I've decided to let This is the Way to Rule sit till I get to Columbia. I'll just submit what I have to journals, so maybe I'll have a good chuck published when I start putting it together as though its a symphony. BTW I've published mostly Rule poems. I think.

Congrats to Ian on his recent publication!

Oh, American folks, try Dave's Bread. It's the best. Hellsea, I'm not sure if you can get it across the pond, but it's awesome!

Later,

Joshua

Feb.

Yeah, February is here. I don't have much to say, but I know Chelsea will have a cow if there isn't something to read. ;-)

Nothing new here, except that Elliot is getting huge (and make fart noises with his mouth). Teaching's still what it is. Work is work. We're trying to stay on top of cleaning, laundry, and whatnot, but it's tough with lack of time and our little man. Though, we worked out a system that we're gonna give a try (hey, this should be on my other blog).

I'm in the middle of revising a short story about a disappearance at a lighthouse, and I'm about to type out my Luda story. I think with a couple more stories (a couple short, maybe one longer one), I'll have a decent collection of stories. I'll still laughing about my post where I said I don't like writing short stories (I went back to look for it, but can't find it), where I said it's too hard. And look at me know, thigh deep in stories. I've been having fun coming up with crazy first sentence (or ideas) and trying to carve a story out of it. So, like I said, a couple more. I'm still wait for you readers to throw an idea. The more absurd, the better. Chelsea. I'll write a story about, but give me a trait or a concept, and I'll write it. I.E. Chelsea has fire for hands. Or Chelsea's writes a song so good it kills people. I'm waiting.

I've also got some of Chas's work from our project (I think I mentioned this already). I'm actually gonna try to tackle it on my breaks at work. If not, this weekend.

I'm waiting for a bunch of submission to respond. I'm tracking their response time and many are overdue. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes it's bad. I guess we'll see.

Ian: Have fun in DC. If Mcsweeney's offering crazy awesome subscription rates, call me (that goes for Ninth Letter (and any of my grail zines)).

Later DUDES/DUDETTES

J.