Dear Friends,

I hope you can make it to the Word Pirates reading tomorrow night. Marcia and I have been working really hard to make it awesome. I will be reading an essay. Here are the details:

Petaluma, Calif., May 15 – Word Pirates, a professional writing group, will host its second annual reading on May 15. True to their name, the Word Pirates will commandeer the Phoenix Theater to tell tales that could rouse a dead man.

Last year’s standing-room-only reading featured local artists, gripping stories, and a surprise pirate duel. This year’s event will be even better. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m., with pirate-themed appetizers, grog, and surprise entertainment. Then the Word Pirates will read original pieces created in the group during the last year. This event is free and all are welcome. Peg legs and parrots must be checked at the door.

Word Pirates Reading
Date: Thursday, May 15
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Place: The Phoenix Theater – 201 Washington St., Petaluma
Cost: Free (donations welcomed)

Reading at the Event: Robin Cadogan, Noelani Price, Morgan Elliott, Joy Lanzendorfer, Ross Lockhart, and Marcia Simmons.

For more information, visit www.wordpirates.org, e-mail wordpirates@gmail.com, or call 707-782-0971. Arrr!

I am doing a lot of writing lately. For example, I’m writing book reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle and PopMatters, an article on Pacific Leatherback Turtles for Bay Nature, an article on product placement in fiction for The Writer, I get to see Billy Collins read (again) for an article on poetry I’m writing for the Pacific Sun, I’m going to be a judge for a book contest run by Writer’s Digest, and so on!

On top of that, Marcia and I are thinking about having a second Word Pirates reading sometime in May. Last year’s event was a big success. There was even a pirate dance. So, as Word Pirates nears its second birthday, it seems like a good thing to do again. You are invited! And it will be free.

Other new ventures include writing for the The Compulsive Organizer, which I blogged about yesterday. But tomorrow I plan to post about making vegetable broth! (UPDATE: post here.) Kyle and I have also been very social since getting our dishwasher. Apparently, doing dishes was the major reason I stopped having people over before. Now that that’s not an issue anymore, my house has turned into Grand Central Station.

And yet somehow I had time to make some jewelry to list on my Etsy store. Here’s a pair I plan to list sometime later today:

I like when life is busy like this.

Ladies and Gentlemen Writers (Writers and Writeresses?), introducing the Gender Guesser. (More from me about this application after the link.)

I know, in theory, that I’m supposed to write about writing on here, but I never seem to do it. I think writing is always going to be a private endeavor for me. As for writing-related links, I’ve been posting that sort of thing over at the Word Pirates blog.

Still, I think I should write something about writing on here. After all, it’s one of the biggest parts of my life. So, here are two writing-related things I started in the new year that are working so far:

* I’m focusing on what I produce, not what happens to the writing after I submit it. In other words, instead of focusing on what an editor thinks of a query, I make the goal about writing the query itself. As long as I write X in X period of time, I’ve done my job. Beyond that, it’s out of my control. This keeps me from going crazy. If editors ignore me or reject me or fail to see how X is a good idea when other, non-competing magazines are jumping on the same idea pitched by other writers–well, fine. I tried. I’m just doing my job.

* I’m reading one new literary journal a month. One is all I can make time for, but it’s a lot more than I read last year. Lit journals are full of cutting-edge story structures and new ways to think about writing, so they shake up inspiration. I’m actually dreaming of new ways to write short stories because of this new habit. I highly recommend reading lit journals if you do any kind of creative writing.

Oh! Bonus writing thing: Marcia and I are going to Writers with Drinks at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco on Saturday. Aimee Bender will be reading. I really liked her short story collection Willful Creatures. Hooray!

Last night some of the Word Pirates and I went to a panel of nine literary journal editors at San Francisco State University. Did you know that the Bay Area has the highest concentration of literary journals in the United States? I didn’t.

The panel included editors from McSweeney’s, Zyzzyva, and Instant City. It was interesting to see the faces behind these magazines and hear their thoughts about publishing. Afterwards, we went out for drinks and talked about writing.

A couple of observations:

* We all liked Howard Junker, editor of Zyzzyva, the best. He was straightforward, funny, and insightful. He also wrote about the panel on his blog.

* I learned about Sidebrow, an online journal that “seeks fiction, poetry, art, essay, ephemera, found text, academic inquiries into mathematics, economics, & the sciences, political analysis, and literary, cultural, & art critique.” I find this site a little confusing, but also intriguing.

* I don’t like the word “community.” I realized last night that that word means nothing to me. It’s a big abstract word, and an ugly word to boot. When people use it, my eyes glaze over. This is a personal tick of mine.

* I do like Michelle Richmond. This is the second panel I’ve seen her on, and she is delightful!

* If Word Pirates ever do create a literary journal–and the idea has been thrown around–it will be online. Distribution sounds expensive and labor intensive.

* Speaking of that, Eli Horowitz talked about the packaging methods McSweeney’s uses. It is true that a journal shaped like a cigar box or that uses a magnet to hold three smaller books in place is more interesting to look at and handle. On the other hand, they must be so expensive to print and distribute. How does McSweeney’s do it?

* Awhile back, I submitted to Zoetrope and received some comments back with my rejection, which I took as a good sign. Apparently, I was kidding myself, because according to three separate accounts of people who have worked there, Zoetrope almost never publishes anything from the slush pile. For example, in the comments of this post, a former reader for Zoetrope shares how an editor who worked there for six years knew of only three occasions where they published stories from the slush pile. This particular site calls for a boycott of Zoetrope, which initially I was against (as you can see by my comment), but now I think it may be beyond boycotts: You are probably just wasting your time submitting there.

I have been in hiding. It suddenly started to seem like a ludicrous thing to do, putting my personal thoughts up on the Internet. So I’ve been putting my thoughts in places they belong–a real journal, my head, the ears of loved ones, my actions. But here I am again, posting something.

Our Word Pirates reading at the Phoenix Theater went extremely well. For some strange reason, I was not nervous when I read. In fact, I was infused with the sense that I can do this. I wish I felt that way more in life. But I wasn’t the only one who read well–everyone did. I am impressed with how the six other writers pulled together short, tight, entertaining pieces for the reading. And on top of that, we even got a big crowd.

A lot of my time has been taken up with small changes. I have been rearranging how I do things a bit. These life/work experiments are all too new to tell you if they are working yet, but I am hoping they will help me change some bad habits.

For example, I have stacked my day so that I do all my writing in the morning, and everything else, from blogging to IMing to reading the newspaper, in the evening. The theory is that I should use the freshest part of my brain for work and leave the rest for left-over stuff.

I have also been writing what I want. I’m attempting to no longer be ruled by the drive for money, and instead be ruled by my artistic impulses. So instead of pushing that idea for a short story off so I can send a query about green building designs, I am using my time to write the story. This is harder than it might seem.

And I’m drinking water. I have been thinking a lot about water. It’s this life-giving force, this all-sustaining liquid that everything is partially made up of… and I dislike it. That doesn’t seem right. So I am trying to drink only that for a while. And eat lean protein. And sit in silence more. That kind of thing. Boring to talk about, boring to adjust to, but worthwhile…? Let’s hope so.

One more thing: My Technorati Profile.

I’m in the process of re-designing this site. So you may have to look at some weird things for awhile, like the current banner, for instance, until I have time to make a new one. In the meantime: You’re coming to my reading, right?

My writing group, Word Pirates, is holding its first, and possibly only, reading at the Phoenix Theater in Petaluma. I will be reading for 7 minutes or so, a short story called Search of the King Cobra. Also reading: Morgan Elliott, Robin Cadogan, Noelani Price, Marcia Simmons, Steve Reid and Lindsay Riddell. There will be artists, cupcakes, swashbuckling and more!

I have been busy. The New Year is full of writing and I’m in a good place mentally about it, and about life in general. That wonderful focus I got at the beginning of the year hasn’t left me yet. If I could feel like this all the time, I wouldn’t have any problems with my career.

Here’s a run down of what I’ve been doing:

1. I have finished one major project and am having readers look at it.
2. I am making significant progress with another major project that has been kicking around in my head for a long time.
3. I have a lot of deadlines to fulfill.
4. I’m preparing for the Word Pirates reading on February 8.
5. I’m working on the Petaluma blog.
6. I’m pitching for new articles to write.
7. I’m organizing my documents, submission tracker, life, et. all.
8. I’m reading a lot… I mean a lot.

So that’s why I haven’t been posting. Also, I really wanted to post a video on here yesterday, but YouTube/Word Press won’t let me. I have no idea why and it makes me sad.

Regardless, you should check out this YouTube video of writer Margaret Atwood talking about myths and religion. I agree with her about human nature being the same throughout time. We have a tendancy to look down at people in the past as though they are stupider than us, but in reality, I think they were just like we are today. As she says, just look at the myths–our desires, our fears, our dreams are the same now as they have always been. That goes for all humans, everywhere. It is maybe the very thing that makes us human to begin with.

I originally posted the following for the Word Pirates, but since I still more or less agree with it, I decided to post it here as well. You can also read about the wine tasting I did this weekend over at my Petaluma blog.

Lately I’ve been thinking that I should have more established ideas about the function of creative writing. Is it to entertain? Communicate? Recreate emotions? All of the above? Chekov thought that the writer serves as an observer of life. Is that what I’m doing? Virginia Woolf thought that writing illuminated the otherwise isolated subjective experience. Do I agree?

Word Pirates is the closest thing I have to my own ideas about writing. Co-founder Marcia and I generally agree on these issues. For example, we both think that writing shouldn’t be boring. That sounds like a no-brainer, maybe, but you would be shocked by how much is written with no particular thought about being entertaining. Today’s writers are fighting tremendous odds–TV, Internet, short attention spans, et. all. They have to grab the reader right away and hold on tight.

Or, we both agree that writing should clearly say something. We want stories, we want a point. We aren’t the type of readers who can slough through a bunch of experimental poetry and feel like we got something out of it. And there are other things: We think short stories should be short, that essays should not be naval gazing, that pop culture is actually important, and that humor is awesome.

As for the deeper aesthetic meaning of art, I don’t think Word Pirates has gotten there yet. However, I do think writing, particularly creative writing, serves several purposes. Writing:

1. Puts you in the head of an individual in a way that nothing else can. It bridges culture gaps, age differences, and even death. After all, you are literally reading someone else’s thoughts. As such, it teaches you ways of thinking that you would never be able to understand without it. I think you could read the entire history of China and still not understand a particular kind of Chinese thinking the way one single Lu Hsun story could teach you.
2. Serves as a critique of the world around us. Nothing gets at the problems of our culture and government like art can. The writer is someone who explores the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual impacts of our social systems, which is an essential and important role.
3. Connects us to each other. Often this comes in emotional connection. You’re reading along, and then suddenly you realize that a character is describing an emotion that you believed only you had experienced. It’s like finding a friend who truly understands you. You are filled with amazement; you feel less alone. But writing also inspires connection through everything from new ideas, innovative language use, and an entertaining story. Language is communication, and communication is what binds people together. Fiction writing is communication distilled down to get at the places where language fails us–those unturned stones of the mind that we know and don’t know about at the same time.

I think that this is my basic opinion of why creative writing is important. But I could be leaving something out. If so, what?

We have another interview up at Word Pirates. This time Marcia interviewed Ellen Parker from the online journal FRiGG. Take a look.

BTW, Word Pirates really need a logo. Does anyone (who can draw) care to make us one? We are not picky. It should be a pirate and he should be writing. Or it could be the skull and crossbones with say… pens? Help greatly appreciated.