Day 7 VCCA: Slow and Steady
Some mornings, it feelslike Mount San Angelo (the knoll VCCA sits on top of) is all tucked in, artists
still asleep in the Fellows Residence and the starlings not even rustling yet.
As in Texas, I’m finding morning is a powerful time to write. Since
I’m composing a new story, this also means I spend several hours a day reading.
I don’t know the exact ratio, but I do know every time I’m in the first ten
pages of a new piece I also read hungrily.
Last week’s fiction? Ron
Rash’s The World Made Straight.
Rash’s The World Made Straight.
Last week’s nonfiction?
Kim Barker’s Taliban Shuffle.
Kim Barker’s Taliban Shuffle.
This week’s fiction?
Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Once Upon a River.
Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Once Upon a River.
This week’s nonfiction? Helen Benedict’s The Lonely Soldier.
It’s slow and steady here as I adjust my fiction-writing process (more about that soon), but it feels worthwhile. I’m adding full-length short stories to the war stories manuscript even though it’s already out at a few presses. If it gets rejected, I’ll feel like I have a head start on making some of the changes I want to make in the manuscript. If it gets accepted, I’ll have things I can add in place of a few stories I’d like to take out.
Meantime, I had my first-ever interview as an editor go live on the web recently, and I have to say it feels really good. Oregon writer Jim Harrington interviewed me for his Six Questions series, which can be read here…and please, if you write flash fiction, consider submitting your work!
