If Ezekiel could see it, why not me

(A Chinese dwarf, courtesy of the Met; my alter ego) As a follow-up to my August 4 posting, I’ve done it, revisited my not-yet-published fiction. Deleted: several paragraphs on what a dumb schmuck I am. Yesterday I submitted one of the revived stories to a contest and charged the fee. Thank you, Chase. On the 21st of I sent off another of these revived stories. Not for a contest but there’s money if they take it. Two stories now out there, waiting. Last month I pulled together a novella I’d started again years ago. Found a reader who has a great eye. So now it’s ready to go asking for what it's worth. It's a delight. Two stories and a novella. Then a novel is collecting dust, all the dust there is in my Cloud. The one solid piece of advice I was given in grad school was: Leave New York. I don't belong here. I never have. I wonder if I'd feel better about my work if I'd moved. I'll be back to this blog in September. Ezekiel? Read the skies. Was he in pain?

The Dry Spell Is Over

Art by Fan Zhou

Sometimes writers don't write.  It is not the end of their writing life.  It is not the end of all creativity on  Earth evermore, though some writers, such as this one, harbor such fears like they are creaky wooden vessels and the harbor teeming with thieves and conscripted sailors.

I'm not sure I know what that means, but shivers are sailing up and down my spine, matey.  The main news here is good.  Yesterday I didn't think I could write.  This morning I got up and wrote.  By "got up" I mean made two cups of coffee.  By wrote, I mean remembered I title I decided on just as I was falling asleep.

Sometimes you get lucky and don't forget what you were thinking of the night before.  I got lucky.  Perhaps because title of my newest poem, "Rolling on the Floor Killing Elves," is not subtle.  Perhaps because it is, in some form, archived in a series of comments, a conversation I had on FB with another poet.  Whose name I withhold merely to protect her.

Who besides Sarah Sarai wants to be associated with "Rolling on the Floor Killing Elves."  It may be dangerous to explore so much about spanking new work, but, well, I'll find out, soon enough.  The thing is, the poem starts silly and self-evolves into a vehicle for dreams remembered and not, and a family member who never, until last night, visited one of my dreams.

I love creativity and the process.  I love seeing words spill out of me in combinations I never before knew.

One more possible reason for the end of the siege.  Last night I submitted two poems to a journal for which I tailored the poems. The poems weren't requested.  There is no guaranty they will be accepted and a great margin of possibility they will be rejected.  I wrote them after being told by an editor who had accepted one of my poems, once, my new work wasn't quite what this editor's readers were looking for. So I had, against all belief in the possibility of doing so, tailored my work.  Then discovered the journal was closed to submissions.

But, lo! these many months later, submissions were opened, I tried.  When one door opens, so do many many more. Keep your doors open, universe.  Sarah Sarai is moving on in.

Horny for Creativity. The Tendency to Create.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, / But in ourselves, that we are underlings." Okay.  So there is no word, mood, conviction, delineation of the condition by Shakespeare I dispute, but each piercing of our veil is state-dependent, maybe plot-, story- or historical-fact ("fact") dependent.  I am no Caesar; whatever tragedies allotted me have been lived.  I'm sure of that, and my surety is interesting.

I can't say another plane won't fly into a building, that my neighborhood won't become a shrine, again, to the lost; that the unpleasant, the shouldn't have happened happenings or memories from the past won't spring to action like Civil War reenactors.  I can say my response and assessment instincts are changed.  All that damn positive thinking has its impact.

Trying to break what feels like a creative dry spell I found this quotation:  I can always be distracted by love, but eventually I get horny for my creativity. [Gilda Radner]

Amen, sister. Point is, well, a sigh. The impulse to explore this further has, as they say, fled. Seeding the fallow is what I'm doing, is the connecting thread and threat to this posting, my working out impulses and letting them work me creatively, however, whenever, but, preferably, soon.

Hey, does underling mean what we take it to mean, not that we (I) are beneath the fatey stars, but that we are under some a boss, the law, some (any) power. Whatever. We're not in control. Lack of control forces our hand, makes us trust. Calls us to a belief in the tendency to create.