my interview in american literary review

My interview in American Literary Review seems to be inspiring a lot of responses, despite my fears of self-disclosure, or rather probably because of my fears of self-disclosure. I tagged Sarah Fawn Montgomery and Sejal Shah on Facebook because their own self-disclosures meant a lot to me, and they both responded, and were both interested in Ashley's question about self-care (Ashley Balcazar, my interviewer, is also bipolar), which was cool. A speech counselor who has treated my son's stutter for years wrote to me about the schizophrenic brother she'd been ashamed to acknowledge her whole life. If my own confessions open up the discourse around shame and mental illness just a little bit, then it's worth it. I'm going to talk about Grant Faulkner's substack post on "sharing" tonight in his class (he needed a sub), and I was struck by this insight: “By sharing your stories, I suspect that you won’t find shame—you’ll find enlivening connection. People will appreciate your moxie and your generosity. They’ll applaud you for telling their story, the one they can’t tell themselves.”

I had my writing group critique a new very short story in group yesterday, which was a nice change of pace. Working very methodically through revisions of The Lunatics' Ball in Grant's accountability group, though. That's 3+ hours every M and W, often spilling over into the next day, and I'm excited by the progress I'm making. Worried about variations in voice, which I'll try to deal with once I've finished compiling the manuscript of newly revised pieces. I've been working on the academic voice at least.

Just read proofs for my tiny micro "Ode to My Cat," coming out in Sweet in a week. I should do an mp3 recording (optional), but feel very busy right now, and using Garage Band on my Mac for recordings always involves reinventing the wheel somehow (how to turn off the metronome, for starters!).  I think I can record on my iPhone. Maybe I should try that.

A rejection of a reprint for the UK FlashFlood. Depressing, but since what I sent is so old, not super depressing. It's a big party on Flash Fiction Day with new flash posted every few minutes, and it's fun, but I can celebrate work by others this year. I've been part of it a few times, rejected at least once before, maybe twice. Tons of writers are posting their FlashFlood acceptances on twitter right now, a very few have posted their rejections. I think I've had enough self-disclosure for this week.