Brief brief:

I've been working on several pieces for performance lately.
3 for the slam
and one for a series I've been invited to be a part of tomorrow night.
So excited!

As promised: (books!)

A short preface: I have been a pretty serious student for the past five academic years (4 years undergrad L.A. studies graduating with 40+ extra credits and the past year spent DEEP in grad school). This meant having fewer opportunities than I would've liked to read exactly what I wanted. And now for the first time in about 4 years I have a giant stack of books on my nightstand that I got to choose! This makes me gratuitously happy. It's kind of ridiculous.

I just re-established and updated my goodreads account with my summer and fall reads so I have a good reference for the books I want to talk about.

Yesterday I finished reading The Eyre Affair. It was deliciously childish. The action never dipped too far into overbearing. I was surprised every time I put it down that the amount of "action" type stuff that had happened (as the snooty reader in me finds such things in most cases to be fluffy overkill). It reminded me of both Harry Potter (in it's complexity level and attention to detail) and Roald Dahl (in it's clearly playful and unashamedly ridiculous moments). It brought canon literature (perhaps a bit too classically wesatern/euro loaded) into a blissfully public and hilariously diluted cultural pastime. I thought the protagonist was a pleasantly strong female character although I could definitely feel that the book was not written by a woman. The world itself and the problems it presented are the true gems of this book (and hopefully the series!). It was dynamic and playful. Stylistic to the point of being unpleasant to some I am sure, but totally up my alley. And worth trying out if you want a ludicrous escape from academic ideas and conversations about literature.

The writing group's first meeting is drawing near and my mind is spinning like a beehive with wingfuls of ideas and anxiety. My short list of books/readings to bring looks like this:
Writing Down the Bones--N. Goldberg (my favorite book about writing to date)
(essay) Poetry is Not a Luxury--A. Lorde (she gave beautiful and precise words to what I have long believed about poetry)
Writing Without Teachers--P. Elbow (he uses cooking metaphors to great effect to illustrate writing processes)
(poem) A Ritual to Read Each Other--W. Stafford (I am going to post this poem later and write more about it)
Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women who Write--G. Brandeis
And a copy of the Evergreen State College Writing Center's yearly publication Inkwell (which I co-editor-in-chiefed last spring)
(I'll also be bringing copies of my chapbook but don't intend for them to be a focus of the meeting)

Making this list has actually put me in the mind that maybe this writing group should have a collective library of books about writing/for writers/suggested by other writers. Wouldn't that be amazing?

This list has also made me want to make separate post on a few of the resources listed. I will probably make corresponding posts for Writing Down the Bones (which is a truly phenomenal read), Poetry is not a Luxury, and A Ritual to Read Each Other. Also I think I should design a post around the article I wrote for Inkwell, perhaps feature another as well if it seems appropriate.

For the writing group I still need to hash out what I want the meeting to look like in case things oscillate toward the awkward. I also need to compile a list of games and activities I think writers would like to play/do.

Looks like I've got my work cut out for me! See you next time folks!

To jump right on out of the starting gate:

While mulling over the actual starting of this blog lots of things have accumulated in want of an expressive venue:

First I must give credit to this article which my lovely housemate passed on to me:
which was definitely the straw on my proverbial camel's back. Reading it made me realize that I was being silly by stopping myself from using an additional outlet which is totally available for my using. It helped me push over the final flimsy hemming and hawings.
I liked the article a lot and think it would be especially helpful to writers who feel illegitimate. Essentially the message of "you are not your work" was amazingly succinct powerfully logical, and totally digestible.
My only point of possible divergence would the point about "never-ending edit". I actually do think every piece of writing has endless editing possibilities (not to say that any of them are perfect or even better!). Editing should never be done toward the purpose of perfection but towards appropriate and effective in a particular context (the old diatribe of "keep the audience in mind" is one piece of that). No single edit of a piece of writing can cover ALL the bases. But if you set your sites on a few bases important to your message/cause you have much better chances of effectively covering them.

Second order of business:


I made a giant mess of chapbooks(50) back in September (between applying to 4-5 jobs per day). Pictured (apologies about the quality of the photo better versions to come) above is one example. Some of the covers are different (which I love). It is comprised of 27 poems taken from the April-August sections of my blog. Based on the general feel and progression I chose for the poems I called the chapbook Romantic Breathing. I spent about 6 hours selecting the poems, layout and progression. Each individual book takes about 20 minutes to do the cover art and put together. I'm selling them for $5. I have been trying to carry a few with me everywhere just in case the opportunity arises to show and maybe sell my work to folk. It has been a wonderful experience and I hope to come out with another in February or March. If I continue writing poems at this rate perhaps a chapbook will become a biannual affair (which is almost too exciting to imagine!!!!!)



Two weeks ago I was invited to perform pieces from this book (and some others) as the featured poet at an Everett open mic I have been attending since high school (that's 6 years, whoa). That was really exciting and encouraging. My whole family came and I wasn't nervous at all. The best part was watching my father really enjoy the stuff I was reading. I realized at several points during my performance that I am an incredibly gestural as a poet. Sometimes I would end up rocking as I was reading the words or grabbing little bits of the air as if to shake them into the sensations of a particular personification. It was a joy. I hope to find more performance venues


And lastly (as I recognize that this post is getting overlong) I am so happy/anxious/proud to be the main organizer of a writing group. I moved to Seattle in September and have since been getting more and more involved in my writing. One way this has manifested is through my attempts at getting the writing group started. The first preliminary meeting is this Sunday! I have so many ideas! I don't want to group to be any one thing or have any one writing goal beyond getting writers together. Rather I hope that the meetings and event themselves can be the things which hold goals (like a particular meeting for line edits or an one for idea talk or one for writing games, to share prompts and to trade books etc...). This is a subject I intend to document in the following weeks.

For my next post: books I've been reading