I'm in December's Inkblot! [Episode 4, Story #2] I didn't realize this until I got a piece of email from someone who wrote me because the story is set in Santa Cruz, and she lives there. I know the area because I spent a very shiftless summer on the beach down there, going over the hill every time I could convince someone to give me a ride over.
Anyway, I'm excited and gratified. It's been a while since I had anything published, and I'd forgotten just how much of a rush it is. I'm now starting to consider finishing a couple of stories I've gotten halfway done or so, and submitting them at dead tree publishers.
Maybe that will be one of my goals for 2000: submit to at least five different dead tree publishers and see what happens. If I get published, well yippee for me. If I get rejected, that's almost more valuable, as it'll tell me where i need to improve.
I don't write because I want to be published. I haven't expected to make a living from writing for about ten years now. Yet I still do it. i consider myself a passionate amateur, who's strong in some areas and weak in a lot of others. I like criticism, hearing what people like and don't like, finding the weak spots I never would have heard.
I once said to a lover, "I don't think the world needs another poet. I mean, really."
He said, I think the world just might need you, though.
The quest for publishing is in some ways the more selfish and nerve wracking things to do I can think of. Did I mention egotistic? Egotistic, too.
Still. Can't hurt to try my hand, can it?
all the princesses are doing itit's a perfect summer morning, waves
smashing up on the pebbled shore,
tattered fog scratched away from the sky
this blue like my brother's eyes.
We're digging for sand crabs.found a big one
here's a good place
the wind pulling words from our teeth.
there's a rhythm to our digging.
follow the wave out
dig toes into the rippling sand
and when the wiggles are felt
plunge hands into the surf, under sand,
scoop up great handfuls and plop them into buckets.
we're hunters here on the beach.
In my mind I am a long-legged bird,
beach comber, raccoon, last member
of a dying race, driven to the coast.I do not know who my brother is
in his head on the shore.
perhaps he is an eight-year old
sent out to dig bait with his sister.Perhaps he's an agent in wartime
or a marginal piper. or
a fisherman, himself.If he plays a role I'm unaware.
bare toes dug in the sand, I run
legs flashing
to the next rich sand bed,
the crabs fearing my seeking toes.
Oh, and I did this today for a friend of mine. Just a wee bit of design.
how goes the war?
I found the girl who swiped my pheromones.
