I received another e-mail from Strange Horizons. It contained a link to the galley proof of “Prince Charming”. I haven’t received the contract yet, but at least this helped assuage my ‘it was all a hallucination’ paranoia.
The poem will be published on February 28. Sqee!
All of my MFA applications are in the mail. The rejections should start arriving in a month or two (applaud my optimism). When I applied to Tulane, I knew I’d get in. It was my reach and my safety. Hell, it was the only school I applied to. It was where I had always wanted to go, I had higher SAT scores, higher grades, and more legacies than their average. But about this? I have no fucking clue. 275 applications. 15 spots. I am really hoping that a lot of really awful people are applying to grad school in poetry. I hope the application pool is full of morons who think they’re professionals because they were “semifinalists” at poetry.com. I hope all of their portfolios are filled with lines about their tears, their pain, their blood and whatever else teen angsters are writing about these days.
And I hope that the people who read the portfolios don’t mind reading about car accidents. Bloody ones. With tampons.
What I’m afraid of is everyone who applies has been published. I’m afraid that people don’t apply to MFA programs unless they’ve been assured by their college creative writing professors that they’re guaranteed acceptance. I’m afraid that my best isn’t good enough. Or worse, that it’s just not good.
Originally this entry was being categorized under ‘Writing’ but now I think it unfortunately deserves a cross reference under Angst. Didn’t mean to do that. Oh well.
In happier news, my cat has not left my lap or stopped purring since I got home. I left him alone almost all weekend and I suppose he’s in withdrawl. The good thing is he’s warm and it’s cold. The bad thing is he occasionally slips and digs into my thigh with his claws. Not fun.
I made a New Year’s resolution that I would write a new short story every two weeks.
I have 3 days to keep my promise. Whoopsie. I have however written two new Spec poems and sold one of them to Strange Horizons. That’s good, right?
Ever get the feeling that everything is gonna be okay? I’m sure most people have it all the time. I don’t. But I’ve had it more often than not in the past few weeks, maybe more. Part of it is the Lexapro, part of it is I’m working towards something tangible, part of it is I know a lot more about the speculative fiction market than I did a year ago, and part of it… I have yet to decide. What makes a person snap out of depression? Does the person ever really snap out of it or is it like walking through a drizzling rain. Occasionally there are trees.
I have gotten over the inital lonliness I was experiencing when I first moved into this apartment. Getting a cat helped, so did DSL. Even though I don’t talk to people online as much as I used to, having the option helps a great deal. I do seriously need to clean though.
In the past week I have read two new books: Schism by Catherine Asaro and Sunshine by Robin McKinley. As of late I’ve gotten into the disgusting habit of putting a book down within the first chapter if it doesn’t grab me right away. I almost did that with Schism. If it weren’t for the fact that I had nothing else to do on the Friday night (oh man do I sound sad) I would’ve. Fortunately the novel picked up and I finally finished it about… 5 or 6 hours later. It’s not that often that I read a book in one sitting, so I would definitely recommend it. It is a science fiction novel and there were some character points in the main female that I didn’t quite get, but I didn’t write it. It was also the first part of a trilogy which I knew when I bought it, it just irritates me when I realize I have to wait for the next two installments. As for plot: there are two main factions, the Skolian Empire and the Traders who have a tenuous peace. However the Traders are staging small pin prick attacks on the Skolians, claiming that they were acting in self defense. The main female is a girl whose name I can’t remember because I suck at names, who is so brilliant she’s admitted into the Jag Academy a full year early and without her parents’ permission. She’s also ridiculously cocky, but has to be because her half brother, the leader of the entire army, has chosen her and one of her other brothers as his heirs.
Sunshine on the other hand is a modern/urban fantasy retelling of “Beauty and the Beast”. The main story is that of the character Sunshine who is captured by vampires and left to be dinner, but escapes. And no one escapes from Vampires… She’s also an uber-powerful magic handler, a heritage she had all but completely forgotten. What I loved most about this novel was the voice. It has a very conversational tone and she also makes some really amusing comments at the perfect times. This one I basically read in two sittings, because it was a longer novel. And I never considered abandoning it in the first chapter. It did however take me a little while to realize it was full fledged urban fantasy and not just ‘A regular novel but with vampires’. The magic element isn’t overwhelming, but it’s not as subtle as the beginning would suggest.
And if anyone has any suggestions as to what book I should read next, let me know.
—Describe/Tell—
—[four words that sum you up]: Shy, self-conscious, shy, and shy
—[jewelry worn daily]: None… when I do wear jewelry it’s usually gold
—[wallet]: Red Brighton leather billfold
—[shoes]: Over the summer I wore nothing but flip flops… right now I normally wear tennis shoes
—[cologne/perfume]: Kate Spade
—[clothing you have on]: Ice Pink sweater
—[ready to move on]: Maybe I should admit here that I’m deleting the overly stupid questions like ‘hairbrush’. Who in the fuck asks that?
—MIXED QUESTIONS—
—[wishing]: I had a better work ethic
—[after this]: I should sleep… but I probably won’t
—[talking to]: Kris, Noki, Oliver
—[some favorite movies]: Auntie Mame, Pocketful of Miracles, The Princess Bride, Monty Python Holy Grail, LotR, Star Wars (the originals)
—[something you’re looking forward to]: South Africa
—[last thing you ate]: Boursin Potatoes
—[something your’e afraid of]: Relationships
—[cities you don’t mind moving too]: New Orleans
—[something -or someone- you wish you could understand better]: Myself… that’s a stupid answer isn’t it. Well get over it.
—[miss someone you haven’t seen in a long time]: Katie and Meredith
—[ready to move on]: Sure I guess
—DO YOU..—
—[like candles]: Yes.
—[like company]: Yes
—[believe in soulmates]: I’d like to
—[believe in love at first sight]: I’d like to
—[believe in forgiveness]: What a weird question
—[want to get married]: Yes and No but don’t ask me to explain. I don’t know
—[want to have kids]: No and Yes but don’t ask me to explain. I don’t know
—[adopt kids]: Uhhh… eh
—IN THE LAST 24 HOURS HAVE YOU..—
—[cried]: Probably, I cry often
—[bought something]: A movie ticket?
—[gotten sick]: No
—[sang]: Probably
—[eaten]: Yes
—[been kissed]: No. 
—[felt stupid]: Sure
—[wanted to tell someone you love them, but you didn’t]: I don’t love anyone
—[met someone new]: Nope
—[moved on]: From…?
—[talked to an ex]: No… I did think about Adam earlier today though… weird
—[talked to someone you have a crush on]: I wish… but I don’t have Orlando Bloom’s number
—[had a serious talk]: No
—[missed someone]: Yeah
—[hugged someone]: No
—[argued with a parent(s)]: N
—[dreamt about someone you can’t be with]: No
—[ready to move on]: Sure
—SOCIAL LIFE—
—[best girl friend(s)]: Sarah, Mary, Meredith, Katie, Kris
—[best guy friend(s)]: My brother, Oliver I guess even though he keeps picking on me 
—[boyfriend/girlfriend]: No
—[hobbies]: Writing, reading, I used to SCUBA dive a lot but I haven’t much since the accident
—[pager/cell]: Cell
—[are the you the center of attention or a wallflower..be honest]: Depends on my mood… and how much liquor I’ve had
—[car you drive]: GMC Envoy
—[would you rather be with friends or on a date]: With friends… boys make me nervous
—[job]: SCUBA Instructor/Student
—[attend church]: Yuck
—[like being around people]: Yes
—[ready to move on]: YES… how long IS this thing?
—PERSONAL—
—[who is your role model]: OSC
—[pet peeves]: When people interrupt/talk over eachother… it makes me sick to my stomach sometimes
—[ever liked someone you can’t be with]: Probably
—[ever lied to your best friend]: I don’t think so…
—[ever wanted to get revenge on someone cause they hurt you]: Who hasn’t?
—[cried over the opposite sex]: No
—[rather have a realationship or a friendship]: Friendship… hmmm… friendship with benefits… is that an option?
—[your favorite physical appearence on you]: Don’t have one… and that’s a weirdly worded question
—[are you happy with yourself]: On occasion
—[are you happy with your life]: At the moment, yes
—[but are you happy]: Occasionally
—[what plans do you have for the future]: Teaching certificate, MFA, job, publish, become rich, famous, retire at 35
—[who do you really hate]: I don’t hate anyone
—[who’s your least favorite family member]: Couldn’t say
—[who’s your most trustworthy family member]: My father
—[your deepest secret]: This one time… at band camp… Hmm… secret… secret… tell you what, as a reward to people who actually read this thing, you may ask any personal question you want, and I’ll answer it.
—[ever liked avril before everyone hated her]: That fake punk wannabe? Ew
—[embarrasing moment]: My cousin once told Eli Manning that I had a crush on him. It was terribly traumatic. (I was 5)
—[liked the quiz]: I like that it’s over
Got this from Leeny’s Xanga. She is the queen of blog quizzes. 
4 THINGS THAT SCARE YOU
1. Being alone forever
2. Sea Wasps (type of jellyfish)
3. Relationships (please ignore the contradiction with fear #1)
4. Rejection
4 THINGS ON YOUR DESK
1. Lavendar candle
2. OSC’s Ender’s Game
3. Diet Coke
4. Poems in various states of editing
4 THINGS YOU’RE DOING RIGHT NOW
1. Filling out this quiz
2. Being picked on by Oliver
3. Making a list of the other random crap I need to pack up
4. Trying to think of a fourth thing I’m doing
4 THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE
1. Go back to Prague, Vienna, London, and visit Scotland
2. Win a presitgious writing award. Hugo, Nebula, Rhysling… I’m not picky.
3. Fall so deeply in love I can barely breathe
4. Buy a townhouse on St. Charles
4 THINGS YOU SAY THE MOST
1. Whatever
2. Hahahaha (or some variant)
3. [Insert name], I love you… never change.
4. Facetious (not really but I love that word)
4 THINGS YOU WATCHED ON TV AS A KID
1. Fraggle Rock
2. Star Trek
3. X-Files
4. Cheers
4 THINGS YOU WISH YOU HAD
1. (I’m copying Leeny) An acceptance letter to UNCW
2. My Strange Horizons contract
3. A work ethic
4. Talent
4 THINGS YOU’D NEVER WEAR
1. Stilleto Heels
2. Leather
3. Button down blouse (my boobs are too big, they don’t button right)
4. Tie-dye
4 THINGS YOU’RE THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW
1. MFA Applications
2. Oliver’s randomness
3. Strange Horizon contract
4. Ummm
4 THINGS YOU DID TODAY
1. Played with my kitty (whoa that sounded dirty)
2. Helped Oliver get his bed
3. Saw Phantom of the Opera (I don’t recommend it)
4. Caught up on QC
4 THINGS YOU RECENTLY BOUGHT
1. DSL service
2. Liquor
3. Kitty cat
4. Bookcase
4 BANDS/ARTISTS MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW YOU LIKE
1. Bone Thugs and Harmony
2. Bitch and Animal
3. Miles Davis
4. Crisis (my Uncle’s band)
My fingers aren’t really cooperating with me tonight. It’s about 25 degrees outside and getting colder so I can’t blame them.
It’s been a while since I’ve updated and here’s why: moving sucks. My brother helped me by moving all of the furniture: bed, bar (the essentials in life ;)) while I was left to get all of the boxes. I was excited at first, and stayed excited for a little bit but now… well… it’s lonely. I don’t have cable, I don’t have internet and while I know I can live without these things, the fact that I also don’t have someone around to talk to makes it more… depressing. Oh, I also ran out of Lexapro and haven’t refilled my prescription yet. Someone hound me about doing that. I should be able to take care of it tomorrow night when I go home for dinner.
I did however get a kitty cat. His name was Little Leroy but I renamed him Demos. He’s gray and adorable and purrs all the time. But he also meows all the time. I think he misses the other kitty cat he was living with, Oreo. I came thisclose to getting both of them but fortunately I had the presence of mind to take my brother with me and he kept me from doing it.
Still… I don’t know. I just have this weird feeling. It almost reminds me of last year when I was living in the 7th ring of hell. But at least then I had Sarah and we could escape to Cafe Du Monde at 11 at night and have tarot card readings in the French Quarter by a drag queen. Good times.
I’m lonely. I know it’s lonliness, but it’s confusing because half the time people drive me insane, the other half of the time I want to be surrounded by them. Going to classes helps, but… eh. I guess the real problem is when I’m at home… I don’t care that I’m out of touch with all my friends. But now that I’m in school, I miss them. Meredith, Mary, Katie (the good one, not the one who ditched me), Sarah… meph.
Teacher came in. I’ll finish this later.
Today I registered for classes at ECU. I got lost on the campus while I was looking for the Student Center. Am I crazy or is the bookstore usually located in the Student Center? So I finally find it, at which point my feet were screaming that such torture was outlawed by the Geneva convention, and I can’t find the bookstore. Call me a twit but I was way too shy to ask any of the 5 million students milling around waiting for… something. I don’t know what they were doing, but it looked like a convention. I did get a campus map, however, and decided to head on over to the Bates Building to talk to my advisor. Naturally, it was on the other side of campus. Well, not really across campus but it wasn’t quite the next building over, either. So I took off one of my shoes (because walking completely barefoot seemed too weird) and headed to the Bates building. At this point I decided that I should’ve checked how windy it was outside before selecting a flowy skirt.
Anyway, when I found the building, and then the office, my advisor registered me for classes. 16 credit hours. I have class tomorrow. That’s so weird. He then pointed out where the bookstore actually was but with my luck, when I went over there I couldn’t find the booklet I needed to buy. Since my feet were threatening to separate themselves from my body and leave me, I decided to just fuck it and buy it later.
My heels still hurt. A lot. So it will be flip flops tomorrow.
This afternoon I received an e-mail notification that my poem “Prince Charming” has been accepted for publication by Strange Horizons. I am unbelievably overjoyed. Though I was happy with the poem, the speculative element is slight, practically non-existent. It just rests on the premises of fairy tales. However Strange Horizons has published a fair number of fairy tale poems as well as poems that allude to mythological characters so I hoped that they would accept it. And they have. Squeeeeeeeeeeee!
The hardest part was writing a bio. It’s hard to write a biography without being pretentious or trying to hard or… bleh. There’s this one writer, David Kopaska-Merkel who writes these absolutely bizarre mini-bios which are of course, hilarious.
I keep freaking out that I misread the e-mail and so I run to check to make sure I read it correctly. I’ve done that twice since starting this blog entry.
And it’s not that long of a blog entry.
I had to control myself to keep from writing “OMG THANX!!!oneone!two!!11 I <3 SH!!” in my reply to Horizons (I had to fill out a sheet with mailing address, stuff like that so they can send me my (SQUEE!!!!) contract). I don’t think Mark Rudolph would’ve appreciated it. Although maybe he would’ve been amused. Then dismissed me as a complete friggin amateur and put me on some kindof speculatvie poetry blacklist.
That’s why I have a blog, to release my giddiness to the world in a controlled format. Where only people who are interested in what I have to say anyway are reading it. Right? 
I have finalized my poetry portfolio to send the MFA programs to which I am applying. In order they are: “I Asked What it Looked Like”, “Tampons by a Highway Guardrail”, “Prince Charming”, “A Debutante and her Mother”, “6″ Lac”, “Smell of Burning Suburban”, “Color Theory”, “Kodak Moments”, “Nerve Regeneration”, “Epiphany at Age Five oon the Nature of Acquired Tastes”, “Shower in Venice”, and “Rational Fear of Cockroaches”. 12 Poems. 7 about the car accident and 5 about various topics. Of the 12, Color Theory and Kodak are probably the weakest. But everyone who read the original 20 poems seemed to like Kodak, so I put it in. I’m including Color Theory predominately because it’s a villanelle. I also thought about including “The Ocean Drowns Chadea and her Mother” because it’s a sestina (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite forms) but Ada and my brother were the only people other than me who liked it, so I ditched it.
I also debated heavily as to whether or not to keep all of the car accident poems together. Althea from Codex said I should; however, when I spoke with Timothy Bass he said to put the best work first. Why is the order important? Because when I send this manuscript to UNC Wilmington it will be sent to 3 separate Poetry readers. Each one will read the manuscript, give his or her comments to Mr. Bass and then the poems will be sent to the next reader until all 3 have read them. Sometimes they don’t read the whole manuscipt. What if one of the readers really doesn’t like gross imagery? A disturbing number of my poems have some line about flesh being ripped off or eaten or falling off or something along those lines. So I tried to give them a break by inserting “nice” poems among the blood and gore. But what if the separation weakens the poems? What if they think I’m jumping around too much? Arrrrrrrgh. I could give myself ulcers just worrying about it.
275 is the average number of applications received by UNCW. They accept 15 into the program. 5 in Fiction, 5 in Poetry, 5 in Non Fiction. I’m competing for one of 5 spots. FIVE. That’s such a small number. The other schools I’m applying to have similar statistics. Obscene amount of applications, very limited space.
12 Poems. What if my language isn’t interesting enough? What if my images are dull? What if no one cares about what I’m saying? These 12 poems are the best work I’ve produced. What if my best isn’t good enough?
Finish getting my teaching certificate and apply again next year. And the year after that, the year after that, and the year after that.
In the mean time, getting published in Strange Horizons, Dreams and Nightmares, The New Yorker, and a few other places would be nice.
I’m listening to this song by The Streets called “Dry your Eyes”. The best description I can give it is “British Emo”. It’s so over the top sappy that I can’t tell if it’s for real or a joke. Basically the plot of the song is there’s this guy whose girlfriend is breaking up with him. The chorus goes:
“Dry your eyes mate. I know it’s hard to take, but her mind has been made up, there’s plenty more fish in the sea. Dry your eyes mate, I know you want to make her see how much this pain hurts, but you’ve got to walk away now. It’s over.”
The rest of the song is spoken as he describes the break up scene. The first time I heard it I burst out laughing, which made me feel really bad. You know, in case the song is actually the artist’s attemtp to write a bittersweet, evocative description of a painful experience.
“And I’m just standing there, I can’t say a word. Because everything’s just gone. I’ve got nothing, absolutely nothing.”
Man, I really hope this song is a joke.