With that said: commence an actual post

I'm taking a class called Wordlab at Wordspace, and it's really helping me get motivated on the novel...aie, the novel that's been floating about in various forms for about six month now, since first conceptualized last November.  Starting from scratch was the right thing to do.  The punk novella that was supposed to be the first part is cheerily moving on on it's own, a small press (hush hush, won't say who) is interested, I must come up with a revised draft to show the editor.  He thought of a title for it, Scaffolding, which I like very much.

The L.A. Novel that I'm working on now, I'm about...maybe three chapters into it.  It's, as usually, flagrantly autobiographical.  I've gotten so used to spilling my guts by now that it's just like, "typey typey herpes typey typey taking shots of triple sec type bum piss" and etc...It has no title as of yet, and I just changed the main characters name to Ginger. 

But Wordlab, it's been great help so far.  It motivated me to turn out ten more pages for class tonight, which I'm  nervous about presenting, but sort of excited at the same time.

And Featherless.  Right now I am waiting to hear back from three amazing writers, and I am so hoping that all three of them will say yes.  We are trying to get our booking taken care of farther in advance, thus.  Monthly it becomes a rapidly turning wheel, one into another, one stops and the next begins. 

I turn 34 in ten days.  My, I'm getting old.  I still have no job.  I have been floating along this summer on a miasma of SSDI payments, food stamps, careful budgeting and the odd sold book here and there.  I am thinking of trying the ticket to work program once Katie and I are married and the chaos of wedding planning and dual book revisions/writing/Featherless has died down a bit.

My attempt at Katie's Dulce de Leche cake came out looking more like this:
Yet was quite delicious  Not a crumb remained the next morning, when I awoke from my drunken stupor.  Yes, I overindulged a bit in the vodka department, too much stress over too many commitments, a day spent cooking from dawn till dusk, washing sink after sink of dishes, the tension of entertaining when one must put on the bright face of happy house.  We are happy here, in the happy house, and it is true, we are.

But there are those moments when I drop my lipstick and take an extra Lorazepam just to make it through the party.  Perhaps we have been entertaining overmuch.  It is the mania, and it is the hypomania.  Bipolar disorder plays tricks, it plays the trick of , "I'm normal," and the trick of, 'If I take my pills I'm just like everyone else and everything will be normal."  And in many ways, on many levels, I act like and have the capacities of a normal 33 year old woman.  Who hasn't worked in three years.  And who hears voices on the north side of the apartment.  Who will clean the apartment loyally and not leave it until 3 pm each day.  Who thinks her mail is being stolen when it doesn't show up.  Who checks the mail seven times a day. Who takes five pills a day.  Who is a lesbian.  Who has paranoid delusions.  There are many reasons that I am and am not quite as others.

I am working on an novel and it is difficult as always.  Featherless is coming along more successfully.  We are quite excited for August's lineup of poets, which will be announced at the beginning of the month.  There is talk of a combined reality institute and featherless happening, a date has not yet been set for this, it is in the very nebulous planning stages.  I am finding that I really enjoy setting up and holding events.  It is exciting  to watch each one take shape, as we gather the writers and the bartender and door people and frantically run around the day off with veggie trays and then in a warm wash of light it all comes together, in Brenda's beautiful Wordspace.

 

Another day, another morning, and again I'm drinking coffee and typing while Nevada sits on top of my computer and looks at me with those green cat-eyes.  What has happened?  We flyered for two days for featherless #1, after much tromping of pavement and an inadvertent detour into Boyle Heights (oopsies).  Lessons learned along the way: 

• libraries will only allow flyers for free events,
• it is difficult to go into all of those bookstores without buying things (case in point, this pulp novel)
• waiting until afternoon to leave results in hot hot heat and is ill-advised

Other news.  Skylight Books accepted the valeveil duo, so it is in the LA poets section.   This I am very pleased about.

I went through a storm of sending out submissions to journals, online and print, and am now scanning my inbox, hawklike, waiting for responses.  This was perhaps a distraction from what I really need to be doing, which is finishing...or, even, working on the middle of...that book which I began in such a fury.  I feel terrible about this, I have slacked off, yes, it's true.  I got distracted by other projects, I get distracted by the internet, by housework, by pet care, by cooking, by putting on my face, by just about anything, really.

I need to refocus on this, and so semi-public flagellation seems like the way to do it.

It's hot here, the sort of grim LA heat that batters through the windows with no thought to our puny fans and lack of air conditioning.  I'm dealing with it, I suppose.  Summer's far too full of delightful things, of watermelon and slip-n-slides, beaches and BBQs, all that sort of mythical whatnot of which, I suppose I've participated  in 3/4th of thus far.

Featherless is coming along rapidly, our new logo is as follows.  The readers for the first event are Saehee Cho, Alison Carter, and Flint. We are very excited to have such amazing writers on board.

Trying to get the valeveil poetic duo into stores is a goal I've been working on.  It's in the LA Writers section of Stories Bookstore in Echo Park now, and I dropped off a copy at Skylight Books for review, I'm hoping they choose to stock it.

The novel I'm working on has hit chapter 9 and stalled, a bit, as I look back over it and try to decide what to do next.  It's good to take a moment to revise, fix those typos, fix those grotesque lapses in judgment, etc... but in taking that moment I fear I am losing momentum....no, I know I am.

It's in chapter nine that the character is lounging around in the San Diego summer of 2005, the summer in which I kicked a few nasty habits and got my life back together, somewhat.  Oh fie on thinly veiled memoir, the ego-centrism disgusts me and yet I only know my own material so where to go from there?

I realize that I will have to go somewhere very different in the next few chapters, because, as the character moves through the next half of the book, she must gain momentum, not slow to a peaceful and gracious domesticity.  NO!  There must be some sort of climactic somethingorother.  Oh dear, oh dear.  I must think on this.

Meanwhile, the fan whirs, the bunny flops, the cat sleeps languorously on the kitchen floor.

In brighter, happier news, it is springtime, hop-time, and time for projects to blossom.

featherless, a reading series, is having its first event on June 20th at 7:30 pm at Wordspace.  The curators, Katie and I, are very excited.  The three readers will be announced shortly.  Omar Routher is designing our logo, and, judging by the preliminary versions, it should be smashing.

The bits and pieces are coming together.

I'm working on the novel obsessively, still.  I have a rough draft manuscript of nine chapters, with four more in sketchy sketchy hopeful fill-in land.   The problem I'm running into (well, one of many), is that with such an epic scope, that of thirteen years and five cities, it seems that there should be some sort of epic quality to the narrative beyond plink plonk ping pong here's my little life.  I feel that in the last section, the Los Angeles section, I will have to veer far far from the truth of placid domesticity and concoct some sort of explosive climactic whatnot to finish it off with.

Oh dear.