Greetings from Glasgow.

I’m sorry that I haven’t been keeping up on this blog, but moving to the UK has taken up quite a lot of my time.  Also the fact that I won’t have any internet in my apartment until December isn’t very encouraging.

I’m writing today to say this:  It is very helpful (if not essential) to join a writing group wherever you find yourself.

During my first week in my new Glasgow Flat, I managed to stumble upon an open mic night, which lead to me attending a writing group hosted by the nights MC.  I am now a proud member of the Word Factory writing group.

To say the least, my degree in writing is beginning to show its benefit.

I haven’t told anyone in the group that I’ve studied creative writing for five years, but I think some of the members are beginning to pick up on something.  During my first Word Factory group meeting, Marc (the head of our group) explained that over the next few weeks, we will be working on a narrative poem the revolves around the celtic mythology surrounding birds; every member was to select (or be) a bird, we were to figure out the general narrative as a group, and everyone was to write a poem (or poems) that contribute to the story concerning the actions and thoughts of their particular bird.

All well and good.  But then there was the matter of the story.  The story was very general and vague, so someone needed to write out a narrative that would explain everything and keep everyone focused as to what is happening so that the group didn’t end up telling seven different stories. 

The job of writing the narrative was left to me.

I was also given the job of altering the narrative to fit the stories told in the other poems and find the best locations for the other poems within the whole narrative.

I had known these people for less than seven hours, and already their leader had given me the most difficult job of them all.

The first draft of the narrative was a fifteen page epic.

The fifth (and tentatively final) draft, including the majority of the other pieces, was twenty two pages long.

The poem was first performed at the first open mic of November, before an audience of less than one dozen people.

At the end of the evening, my hard work had earned me a t-shirt with a large silk-screened picture on it.

To top everything off, after my first performance at the open mic, the mc openly admitted to the audience that he is seriously considering having me act as a “Featured Artist” for another open mic (regular readers only get 5 minutes to read, a featured artist gets half an hour to read and a coffee mug).  To make everything more wonderful, following the performance of the writing group’s bird poem, Marc issued me an invitation to join a poetry group that would be based out of Glasgow, perform as a group, and tour the various writing conferences and stages.

As a side note, I only started to seriously write poetry two years ago.

On another side note, Since coming to Glasgow I’ve managed to write over a dozen more pages for my novel.  That is the most work I’ve put into that project in a year.

Another Milestone

You folks ready for this?  Here you go:

I've received my FIRST PHYSICAL REJECTION LETTER!  That's right my dear readers, I've received a physical embodiment of disappointment, shame, embarrassment, bitterness, and other various emotional and mental states that may result in many wonderful things (like suicide, shooting sprees, and excessive eating, and joining a cult).  Event magazine was kind enough to send me back my pre-stamped envelope with my manuscript and a little slip of orange paper that claimed "that they would not print my story at this time".  All in all, it seemed rather generic, but exciting non-the-less.  I see this as being only the beginning of polishing a pile of crap into a nugget of gold (or just polishing a pile of crap into a pile of shiny, fancy crap that you might find at a fancy party hosted by some people with strange fetishes).

I think that should do for now.

See you folks later!

Life in the Real World ain't easy

I'll admit it.  All the optimism that I had at the beginning of the summer is slowly dwindling.  I've place my play through its second draft treatment, and now I've got a ways into a short story but I just don't know where I'm taking it.  I probably should have gotten a start on continuing my novel, but that seems a bit in the distance right now.

In other news, I'm still waiting for the response from the two magazines that I submitted to a while back.  To quote Mr. Tom Petty: "The wait is the hardest part".  To quote any person waiting in a line: "waiting sucks".

I found out that my home town has a "writing circle", it's called "after hours authors" and they meet in seemingly random locations after standard business hours are over.  I'm planning on attending, but I'm a bit worried about what I'm going to get myself into here.  My having a degree in writing may either cause them to latch onto me, or lead them to hate me and view me as an intellectual poser.  I realize that I haven't gotten anything published into a "serious" publication, but that doesn't mean that I don't know a few things.

Progress report

I will admit, I never though I'd be this motivated outside of an institution of learning.  I started with 30 pages of a script for a play, and every night since I came back to my hometown, writing every night, it is now over 60 pages and ready for a 2nd treatment.

All those visiting authors were right.  And that scares me.

On another note, I've received my first rejection letter from Electric Literature.  For anyone unaware of what Electric Literature is, it is a e-magazine that claims to publish "the best of new and already established authors".  They are a very attractive publication to submit to because they pay authors more than other publications.  Because they are an electronic publication they don't have to pay for printing fees, thus allowing them to give more money to authors.  My rejection letter was rather generic and read like a automated response, so I'll take this as a good sign that they won't mind me submitting again.

Here's hoping for the best.

Three days into Freedom

I've been officially "out of school" and in my hometown for three days now, and I must say that things have been interesting.

The most interesting thing that relates to writing is my daily word goal.  For the past two years I've attended readings at the UBCO that featured many established authors, and many of them encouraged people to keep writing by setting a daily word goal.  The goal that they told people to usually set was about 200 words, but I've been finding that every night, while sitting in the living room with the TV on, I've managed to hammer out a good 500 words in very little time.  I must say that I'm quite happy with this.  I do realize that this number will probably drop when I manage to secure steady employment, but for now I'll take whatever I can get.

Quite busy, so I've been watching some stuff.

I'll confess, between periods of times sweating over essays, projects, and exams for school, I've been wasting my time on the wonderful internets (not that it should be of any surprise).  This week I stumbled upon two incredible documentaries that I found to be quite interesting

The first is "Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown".  This film documents the life of H.P. Lovecraft, american writer of weird fiction and father of the Cthulhu Mythos.  I have always had an interest in the Cthulhu Mythos since I was in high school, but didn't actually start reading Lovecraft until a couple years ago.  I should have started earlier.  Lovecraft was an extremely interesting man, it's only expected that he should leave behind such an interesting legacy.

The second film is "Dreams with Sharp Teeth", a film that delves into the life and mind of imaginative fiction writer Harlan Ellison.  For those of you unfamiliar with Ellison, he has published 75 books, over 1700 stories and artilces, and has publications in in 40 languages.  He has also won "8 and a half" Hugo awards for his fiction.  However, despite his many accolades and achievements, Ellison will always be known as being one of the biggest assholes in the world of literature.  Don't believe me?  Watch the film.

Hello World

Hello People who might be reading this.

This blog was created in response to a shared desire by members of my creative writing class to remain in contact with one another following our separation after many of us graduate and move on to try and hammer out living in the real world.  So, we're starting blogs.

Yeah.

It seem like a good idea at the time.

For those of you not familiar with me, this blog is to act as a means to encourage myself to keep writing outside of the structured confines of an institution of education.  Who knows how well this will work.

Anyway, thanks for joining me on this ride.  It's going to be slow.