My Writing Progress

This has been a good week for writing. After feeling stuck and unfocused for about three weeks as I settled into my new home, I am finally making progress on my novel again. I'm trying to flesh out four scenes that a reader in Paris suggested could be emotionally deeper, and this week I've made progress on two of them. One of those is my incredibly troublesome first chapter. This time around, it was youtube that helped me out. I set part of the chapter in a cockfighting arena (my novel's called Rooster), and there was some very illuminating (and very sad) footage on youtube about this subject. I set some videos to play and just wrote while I watched them as if I were simply documenting what I saw. The 500 words or so will probably reduce down to a few sentences, maybe less, but the most important thing is that it helped me move forward again, and I think I have some authentic details.

I also had an exciting lunch on Wednesday. Mary Yukari Waters, the writer I've raved about on multiple occasions here, met with me in a great little restaurant called Hurry Curry. I'm going to interview her for this blog and for, The Los Angeles Review, Upstairs at Duroc SmokeLong Quarterly, and this first conversation was very illuminating. Plus, she offered to give me a blurb on my book if I never need it!

The Los Angeles Review officially accepted "Red Man, Blue Man" and a small literary magazine in Paris called Upstairs at Duroc accepted a piece of flash fiction I wrote called "Enchantment." They actually asked me to do a public reading at the publication party, but alas, I'm here and they're there.

My Update On Publishing

At last after a few bland weeks of "I'm not exactly sure what to do with my novel," I have some news to share on a couple of other publishing fronts.

First, my story "Red Man, Blue Man," is currently being discussed at The Los Angeles Review. I submitted it to them a few days ago, and the fiction editor reported back and said "I really dig this story." She suggested a few small revisions and is now asking the other editors if they are willing to accept it. I'm hoping they will, but even if they don't, it's really nice to get approval from the editor.

Second, I found out that my short short story "Sacred Bodies" is a finalist in Opium8's 500-Word Memoir Contest, judged by Tom Perrotta, the author of Election and Little Children. This feels nice for me because Opium Magazine markets itself as a humorous literary publication, and I've always been intimidated by the thought of writing something funny. Thanks to Proust I'm trying to be more funny--mostly by just being honest--and it's actually paying off. They are going to announce a winner of the contest at the end of May, but I'm quite content with knowing that I'm a finalist.

These two bits of news feel especially good because I wrote both of these stories very recently, after I felt like I found my voice. So, hopefully, I'm not just deluding myself, and other people can see my improvement as well.