embracing the ephemeral

I read a lot of flash on twitter, and now I decided to edit down a previously unpublished cnf micro to enter the #MythicPicnictweetstory contest, which I assume means I can't use it later, since it will have been posted online. But I like twitter and follow a lot of writers there, so maybe it will get just as many readers as an online publication does, at least an online publication in a journal that's not well known.

University-affiliated journals are closing up shop for the summer already, and I'm scurrying to decide what's ready to send out, and where I should send it. "The Lunatics' Ball" is a step closer to getting accepted at F(R)ICTION (I've never seen a magazine with such a hierarchical and lengthy path through editing and acceptance), so it's hard to decide where to send it, especially since there's another short essay from the project that I want to place and I can't send both.

I sent "Madeline's Trunk" to only one journal, BELLEVUE LITERARY REVIEW, because I've had other work come close there and it seemed like a perfect fit. They do readers' reports and included one in their rejection: "Here is one of our reviewer's comments: 'The writer artfully combines several elements - history, psychiatry and imagination -to make a compelling story. She manages to weave her own history/story with the historical one seamlessly. Also brings alive psychiatric practices that today seem ignorant and cruel.'" Which is encouraging.

Submissions are so difficult. I have a set of flash that I think are good that are getting a lot of rejections, so I'm finding it difficult to maintain my confidence in them and keep sending them out. When CAUSTIC FROLIC accepted my story and I pulled it from LONGLEAF REVIEW they said all their editors had liked it and now I'm paralyzed, trying to decide what to send to them, because I'd love to get into their magazine.

​Back to teaching tomorrow, and it's hard after a week and a half off.  Didn't manage to organize my study over the break, which is overflowing with haphazard stacks of file folders and books, or to transfer the Lunatics' Ball project from Word to Scrivener, which may turn out to be easier than I expect. If I ever get to it.

Steve and I took a leisurely last-day-of-spring-break drive down the coast on Friday, stopped in Half Moon Bay for a late lunch, ended up at a CATAMARAN LITERARY READER Lit Chat event in Santa Cruz. We took some potential head shots for publications (I felt weird at AWP when someone said I didn't look like my picture, which is old). The one we liked of Steve is closer up than most headshots, the one I liked most of me (Steve took a lot) isn't head on. Here they are: