I’m doing a reading with a slew of fantastic poets: Dilruba Ahmed, Rae Armantrout, Victoria Chang, Erica Dawson, Oliver de la Paz, RHW Dillard, Matt Donovan, Claudia Emerson, Beckian Fritz-Goldberg, Bob Hicok, TR Hummer, Brian Teare, GC Waldrep.
It’s being held at The Avalon Theatre in Washington, DC on Thursday, February 3rd at 8 pm.
I had the honor of reviewing One Tree Bridge by Dennis Greene, and it is now in print! Here is an excerpt from my review:
“Greene manages to give [hard truths] to us with a beauty of form and sound so delicately balanced that they go down easy. The reader feels the burn of the poems but can’t help consuming more because we desperately need the knowledge. One Tree Bridge is the simplest possible metaphor for existence on our world, yet the message inside the poems is larger than that. The birth and death of an individual, of our species, are simply two stops on the road within an infinite universe. [It] explains that so much of what we think we know about the universe depends on our perspective.”
If you’d like to read the whole review, or buy a copy of the chapbook, please visit The Lives You Touch Publications.
So far, I’m ahead of schedule for NaNoWriMo this year, which means that I’m on schedule. I try to write more each weekday so I can take off the weekends. This is my second year of NaNoWriMo, but I’m writing my fourth novel. It feels comfortable now. I know how to write dialogue and description and I’m moving into the stage where I can work on the artistry of the prose in a way that makes me feel like I’m doing something original. I’ve been writing poetry for years but prose is relatively new to me (Creative prose. I’ve written technical manuals, essays, etc.).
I’ve been pretty lucky with it, too. I’ve had one novel published (it’s a romance and under a pen name) and another slated for publication next year (another romance). These are not literary novels by any stretch of the imagination, but I like them. I’ve been a romance junkie since I was 13. Sci-fi and fantasy are my other favorites so I’ve been focusing on learning more everyday about how to write in different genres for different markets. I wrote the romances very carefully after doing some market research on what sells and what doesn’t.
Marketable prose is strangely more relaxed and more strict than literary prose. I have to be careful how often I use sentence fragments and POV is key. For the romance market, absolutely no fragments and POV has to be third person. That’s just what sells. For sci-fi/fantasy the standards are a little more relaxed, but not so much that it’s terribly difficult to read. The theme can be adventurous, but the writing style needs to not call too much attention to itself. Literary prose? All bets are off! My novel, The Quantum Archives, is a mix of poetry and experimental prose snippets along with straight prose and I’m fairly certain it’ll be a tough sell. I haven’t managed to get that one published yet and I’ve slated it for some more revision in a month or so.
With this nanowrimo I’m trying to write my second sci-fi (The Quantum Archives was my first). I’m hoping this one will be more mainstream because I’d like to sell it. At the same time I’m trying to put more of my literary voice into the work. Then, after it’s done, I’ll need to find an agent. Haven’t done that yet and I’m a bit apprehensive, though I shouldn’t be. After dealing with the poetry world for over ten years and getting rejection after rejection, my skin is pretty tough.
Anyway, if you’d like to follow my progress, my page at http://www.nanowrimo.org is here: chrissiemkl
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Here are Autumn Sky Poetry’s three nominations for the Best of the Web 2011, sponsored by Dzanc Books:
Monet to His Wife, While Winding the Sheets by Kristin Roedell from #19
Sharing Christina’s World by Don Thackrey from #19
Surgeon Finds Tree Growing in Man’s Lung by Laura Sobbott Ross from #18
Congratulations!!
Greetings!
The nineteenth issue of Autumn Sky Poetry is now online.
Read poems and enjoy art by Lia Brooks, Stephen Bunch & Dianne Wilson, Theresa Senato Edwards & Lori Schreiner, Heather Kamins, Jean L. Kreiling, Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, David W. Landrum, Rick Mullin, Sandra Riley, Julia Klatt Singer, Kristin Roedell, Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, Janice D. Soderling, Paul Stevens, and Don Thackrey.
—It’s all about the poetry.
Sincerely,
Christine Klocek-Lim, Editor
The Daily Dish is one of two blogs I read every day, even those days when I’m too sick or tired to turn on the computer (I read it on my phone). Andrew Sullivan’s blog provides me with an understanding of the world I could never find on my own. I lack the political background (or maybe fortitude, I’m not sure) to really figure out how and why people do the things they do in society. The nifty thing about his blog is that in addition to politics, he posts poetry. Where else does that happen? A political blog posting poetry? How strange. Nevertheless, it’s true. In fact, that’s how I discovered his blog: Andrew posted one of my poems on his site and traffic to my website exploded for a day or so. It was kind of awesome. I could’ve just left it at that, except I found myself going back again and again to read the blog. He and his staff also post photos from around the world, mental health breaks, and links to some of the funniest memes I’ve ever seen. Thank you Daily Dish. And happy birthday!
I was going to submit this, but then I didn’t because the due date was an insane day for me and also because I just can’t seem to gather up the energy to submit to yet another contest. I covered that in detail in my previous post so I won’t rehash it here. Anyway, here’s a free story. I wrote it for the NPR Three Minute Fiction Round Five. In a way, I used it as a prompt because even as I was writing it I had a feeling I wouldn’t bother to send it in. The story had to be 600 words or less. It had to start with the sentence: “Some people swore that the house was haunted.” and end with the sentence: “Nothing was ever the same again after that.”
I had a blast writing it. Here it is:
Today I seriously considered giving up writing for good. For about three seconds. Maybe a minute. I’m tired of submitting my book-length poetry manuscript (Dark matter) and having it not make the grade. I love that manuscript. I’m proud of it. I’m tired of submitting my chapbook of sonnets (Cloud studies) and my chapbook of prose poems (Glimpse). I’m tired of trying to find a home for my sci-fi lit novel (The Quantum Archives). Even when a poetry manuscript gets accepted, it doesn’t really sell. Maybe twenty people read it. And then I checked up on the stats for my romance novel (it’s under a pen name and hell no I’m not telling you what it is) and it’s not selling anymore. I haven’t even made enough on it to buy groceries for a month (I have two teenage boys that eat a ton but still). So I seriously thought: why am I doing this?
I thought about all the time I would have if I stopped writing: I could actually finish painting my bedroom or weed my rose garden. I could ride my bicycle every day. Go to the movies. And then I thought about how much I hated ladders and weeding and the future stretched ahead of me empty and rattling. What the hell would I do with myself if I stopped writing? So. I’m almost done writing a new romance novel and I have an idea for another sci-fi book that is so cool I’ve been dreaming about it. And there are those notes for the funny memoir and the next romance novel (mostly plotted out in my head) .
I guess I won’t quit. I like writing better than painting or weeding. Better than pretty much everything else I could do. I’ve worked in offices: I won’t even get into my passive aggressive clothing choices (let’s just say the incident with the tie-dyed tights was not a one-time thing). And I love words. Metaphors get me all jazzed up.
Maybe I’ll just stop submitting.
Christine Klocek-Lim 