Finishing Someone Else’s Sentences
I’m working today on finishing fiction that’s not mine. It’s a contest to complete a Shirley Jackson short story–if you think you’re up to task, try your own hand here. What strikes me is that it’s a story about stealing, and though Shirley died in 1965 and her family is sponsoring the contest, something sits strangely. Sitting and reading and knowing someone thought that every word, every comma, every space on this page spoke just right. And she had a plan or she didn’t. And the reader in you might like it or she might not, but the writer in you yields, for a moment, to another.
Writing between a Rock and a Hard Place, or a Garbage Can and a Vent
Sometimes when things aren’t going my writing way, I need more of something not going my way. Because sometimes, something that shouldn’t work, does. I shouldn’t be inspired by the smell of rotting banana peels or the awkward huffing of a ventilation fan, and shouldn’t shouldn’t be the most important word in a sentence.
Poem promo update: I just finished putting flyers in the doors of all my neighbors. I can’t yet promise any poems fully in Dutch, so we’ll see if I get any takers. As always, to take your free poem, click here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/165156186/custom-poem-for-25-cents-free-shipping?ref=shop_home_feat.
christine PS stocke 