As often happens when I'm busiest, I've managed to fit in a rewrite of my latest flash and hope to send it out before we leave for Christmas in Scotland. I've also been working on the growing stack of Sylvia Plath books for the Lunatics' Ball flash.

I've been juggling collaborative edits on three forthcoming publications at CRAFT (usually they're spaced out). Got two out to their authors, one is still in progress. I have a number of submissions I'm not sure about. Early January will be busy. We start our contest reads then also.

And I just got an opportunity today that I think will be a good thing (though my first reaction, of course, was no, that will be a lot of work). Maybe not too much work. Definitely interesting. More when plans are firmer.

I put together my year-end summary dejected about a recent flash rejection,  thinking that nothing else would be happening very soon, and this morning I got a bombshell acceptance from Jill Talbot. She's accepting my flash "Little Colored Pills" (originally in Sweet, reprinted in Creative Nonfiction's "Sunday Short Reads") for her upcoming anthology from Columbia University Press, ESSAY FORM(S), and will include "Haunting Houses" (originally in New Ohio Review, also a Notable in Best American Essays) on a supplemental reading list in one of the other chapters.

I consider myself sort of an ex-academic, but I have tremendous respect for university presses and sites where the creative and the academic overlap. So I'm thrilled to be included in an anthology like this one. And thrilled to be in an anthology edited by Jill Talbot, whose work I've admired forever,  and who will be writing craft essays for each section.  

Here's a description of the project: 

What are the different forms of the essay, what constitutes each form, and how do essayists know when to choose one over another? 

In writing essays, we make decisions about which stories we will tell, but we must also decide how to shape them. The form of an essay enhances its meaning, placing it in conversation with the content. This craft book, which will be published by Columbia University Press in 2023, will include both art (essays) and craft (brief explanations) to define and elucidate each form. 
 
Essayists have a myriad of choices with regard to form when writing, and formal choices elevate the level of sophistication in the work, transcending “what happened,” the literal, toward the literary. 

The forms included in this book will include: Abecedarian, Anaphoric, Borrowed Form, Braided, Bracketed, Collage, Collaborative, Column, Diptych, Enumerated, Epistolary, Experimental, Flash, Fragmented, Hybrid, List, One Sentence, Paragraph, Research/Personal Hybrid, Segmented, Triptych, and Traditional Narrative. 

Here's her email (I was also so touched to hear that "Haunting Houses" was a success in her class on "Lyric Hauntings"):

Dear Jacqueline,

Great news! I have selected "Little Colored Pills" as a feature essay for the Triptych chapter of The Essay Form(s). Though you didn't submit it, I'd also like to include "Haunting Houses" as Supplemental Reading in a chapter. I've been trying to decide: Research/Personal essay? Braided? Segmented? It's all three, but which category do you think of it as the most? I feel of it as Braided—the personal, the film, the literary allusions. 

By the way, my students listed "HH" as one of the favorites of the semester yesterday during our final class. The supplemental reading list will include the citation at the end of the chapter.

"Little Colored Pills" will appear with two other triptychs (a triptych!). When I make that final selection, I can let you know.

Looking forward to hearing from you,

Jill

Just so happy. I'm starting to work on something new (toted a 1000-page biography of Sylvia Plath home from the library yesterday, and a collection of letters equally  large). I've been immersed in Janet Malcolm's book on Plath and writing biographies (probably irrelevant to what I'm writing, but a really good read). It feels good to set aside the rewrites that I couldn't motivate myself to do. I know I've done a lot of work on The Lunatics' Ball this year. But I've been feeling like my year-end achievements didn't add up to much. This feels very good.

​Also, I worked at Columbia University Press, years ago, and lived just around the corner.

​THANK YOU  to the following journals and their editors and staffs for publishing my work this year:
 
Creative Nonfiction:
Permafrost
EPOCH (accepted, forthcoming)
The Pinch (accepted, forthcoming)
 
Flash Fiction and Nonfiction:
Trampset
Anti-Heroin Chic
Gone Lawn
Our Pandemic (anthology)
Current
SugarSugarSalt
10 By 10
The Disappointed Housewife
Bending Genres
Fictive Dream
BULL

Assembling my year-end summary and I discovered that the anthology that's reprinting one of my pandemic essays is out:  OUR PANDEMIC, edited by Theresa Green (The Writer's Workout). Don't know whether I'm getting a copy. I'd love to see it, since they allowed color illustrations, and I gave them a very cool medieval mural of Death playing chess.

"Often During the Pandemic" was originally published in LOVE IN THE TIME OF COVID.

I got a flash acceptance today on the flash I kept rewriting. Can't announce where until January but it's a relief to have placed it (and somewhere I really want to publish). And within minutes I got a rejection of a brand new flash that I'd sent out immediately after finishing it a few days ago. I thought it had a good chance and I was crushed.

Almost time for a year-end summary of what I've accomplished in my writing in 2022 and right now I feel like it's been nothing. Not really true.  I have two major pubs, both from THE LUNATICS' BALL, coming out in winter and spring 2023.  But when I started writing ten years ago I was so much more productive! And right now I feel stalled on THE LUNATICS' BALL, unable to advance until I finish some rewrites, unable to motivate myself to do them.