Jessica Rowan, of a.lobster fame, has asked for more activity within our writing community. She has noted that RV Writers is thus far a poorly formed idea. I take partial blame for this lack of activity, but her most recent post echoes my own question: "where were you?"
Without participation, this blog won't work. Let's keep our eye out for fellow writers. Let's scream our url to the entire valley. Let's get talking.
You'll note that I've revamped the links to reflect Jessica's suggestions. The first new link is "Challenges." Currently, I've listed one challenge courtesy of Writer's Digest, but welcome additional challenges whether they derive from a literary magazine like The Sun or Speak Easy, or whether you create something on your own.
The "Critique Me!" link offers works submitted by writers right here in the valley. Their names are removed so as to make the critiquing process easier, for when we know the writer, we usually hold back from honest criticism. We will note if the author wishes for a lighter touch or for us to focus on particular parts of the work. Submitted works can be from any genre—fiction, poetry, essay, etc. Write to rvwriters@roguewriting.com to submit a piece. We already have the first piece posted, "Lady Sings the Blues," and the author has requested a heavy hand. When critiquing a piece remember, there's a difference between contstructive criticism and antagonistic criticism.
Of course, I've added a link to "Upcoming Events." Check these events out and help keep our real time culture of writing alive in the Rogue Valley. We most prominently seem to post events in Ashland, but realize such events occur all over this place. Let us know if you know of any happenings in places like Medford, Central Point, Talent, Phoenix, Jacksonville, White City, Shady Cove, Eagle Point, Gold Hill, etc. Then, show up. Community depends on participation.
Finally, we have links to our friendly neighborhood bloggers, to helpful writing resources, and to local 'zines. We hope to develop these links to ungodly proportions; help us do so by sending us the web addresses. Also, let us know if you'd like to join our team of moderators. I need help spreading the word and keeping links updated. Does anyone wish to create a flyer we can post around the valley to let others know about us?
I would like to make one final note: Jessica has asked some very pertinent questions regarding writing. Read her post titled, "Ok, I might have lied..." and tell her what you think. Until next time, I bid you all adieu.
2.12.2006
WD's Assignment #194
Each month, Writer's Digest presents its readers with an "assignment." I usually check these out and tell myself it seems easy enough, that I'll bust something out and send it in. I have yet to write word one. So as a way of present our community with the Jessica Rowan-suggested challenge, I shall offer each month's assignment as my challenge.
Your Assignment #194—Write Sale:
Entries can be included in the body of an email (no attachments) to wd-assignment@fwpubs, or mailed as a postcard to the following address:
Deadline is March 10, 2006 for publication in July's issue.
Other magazines like Speak Easy and The Sun offer themed writings as well, and although I'd like to say I'll research these, I ask for your help in presenting these challenges. Self-created challenges are equally welcome.
Your Assignment #194—Write Sale:
You're in your home office when you hear the doorbell ring. You answer the door to find a salesman touting the latest high-tech writing gadget, which he promises will change your life. He's so convincing that you give in, not even batting an eyelash at the steep price. Write the salesman's presentation that resulted in the sale. There are other houses he'll need to visit, so keep your entry to 75 words or fewer.
Entries can be included in the body of an email (no attachments) to wd-assignment@fwpubs, or mailed as a postcard to the following address:
Your Assignment #194
4700 E. Galbraith Road
Cincinnati, OH 45236
Deadline is March 10, 2006 for publication in July's issue.
Other magazines like Speak Easy and The Sun offer themed writings as well, and although I'd like to say I'll research these, I ask for your help in presenting these challenges. Self-created challenges are equally welcome.
Lady Sings the Blues
Billie Holiday ruined my marriage. I had no idea she slammed heroine, or that her love was a venereal disease. I just fell in love with her through her songs.
“Listen to her range, Alan.” My wife loved to flex her psychiatric muscles first thing in the morning. “Why do you think she can bring you up and down, make you go from angry to happy to horny to so sad you want to kill yourself?”
Once again, a perfect version of “All or Nothing at All” destroyed by my ranting wife.
“She was the equivalent of a modern-day crack whore.”
That woman of mine ripped the nearest poster of Billie from the wall and shook it at me like trash the dog spilled.
"This scrawny ass and skeletal face of hers ain’t natural, sweetheart.”
Strung out, loose slut, tramping to success. Phrases my woman usually uses to describe the love of my life. Skank, druggy, and home wrecker are a few others.
I often received emails from that wife of mine, with anti-Billie links pasted into them. After a rash of these harassing, paparazzi, bullshit letters, I tagged her as a spammer.
“I lost all my addresses because of you, damn it.”
“Perhaps, you should have considered that before you sent all that junk.”
She liked to accuse me of not wanting her anymore – not Billie, my wife. She accused me of imagining her as “that wretched woman” when “in coitus.”
“Never forget, dear wife, Billie brought us together. Never forget that night on the pier outside of Romano’s. The night we stared at each other, listening to the salty waves lick the pylons below us. Do you remember how we could taste the salt on our lips? Or, how our souls seemed to bore into one another, but we could do little more than open our mouths as if to speak? Then a man smoking a Swisher-Sweet held open the door of the little Italian joint and let Billie croon out our song, the song that solved it all, ‘Don’t Explain.’”
“Don’t remind me.”
Then we’d roll in opposite directions so I could dream of Billie. She sang her blues as we shared a pigfoot and a bottle of beer. She’d sing “Them There Eyes” to me in a crowded club and end the song by dragging me backstage to make her “really sing.” And I’d maul her only to wake to my squirming wife pinching my ribs to make me go back to my side of the bed. I rushed back to sleep to spend the rest of the night searching my dreams for my diva.
***
“What the hell were you thinking last night?”
“It’s just one of those things.”
“Again with her?” My wife tossed her chair on its back and kicked it across the tile floor. “I can’t take this much longer.”
I thumbed the Billie Holiday action figure tucked away in my terry cloth robe.
“Where do you live, Alan, ’cause it sure isn’t with me.”
My forefinger slid up along the doll’s thigh, past the slit where the legs met, down the other thigh, then back again, wearing a groove in my flesh. All the while, “I wished on the Moon” ate at my brain.
“I’m inclined to think you a grave robber. I could deal with a cradle robber easier; at least little girls are alive.”
The old necrophilia argument. My wife had an argument for every day of the week. She used to think I was fine and mellow. Now, she liked to speak low of me to those arrogant and wealthy rapists, I mean, therapists who asked at the fancy cocktail parties. She liked to say, “God bless the child who’s got his own,” and those who knew Billie’s songs roared with laughter, and those who didn’t still chuckled from the condescending tone. Most my wife’s friends call me “strange fruit,” another joke at my expense I’m not sure how to take.
“I have a new 45 needing a listen, you know.”
“When was the last time you went with me?”
“You know I’m not into your crowd, Sarah. They’re too damned uptight.”
“They’re not uptight. They’re well educated, an example you should emulate.”
I dug deeper into my lounger and grabbed for the cellophane-wrapped album on the side table. “I prefer easy living, that’s all.”
My wife smacked the LP out of my hand so hard it zipped across the room to snuff the candles burning below the autographed photo of my beloved Billie. Burnt wick and cooling wax scorned my nostrils.
“You want some Billie, Alan? I got one for you.”
She thrust out one of her hips and lay her hand upon the shelf the pose formed. The other hand crooked toward me as she began to sing:
Just like my old lady to pick out the parts that serve her best. Guess that’s why I didn’t care when she grabbed her scarf and muffler and threatened to never return if I didn’t say those three words.
“I am sorry?”
The door slammed. A pane of red glass popped out and shattered on the threshold behind her.
***
That woman of mine is so prone to tantrums. I just hoped she wouldn’t come back ready to harp me to death. Billie kept me company, soothing me past midnight. We went to bed together and woke together at 5:30 in the morning. She dimmed out of sight from the light-blue filtering in from the sun rising through the curtains. Two pillows lay indented from my knees and I could smell Sarah, Aussie Brand hair spray and chalky foundation. But, she wasn’t there.
I felt the emptiness before I saw it, the feeling that space has expanded around me, offering my body the odd sensation of ultimate relaxation and breaking tension, sprawled yet stretched.
Most of Sarah’s things vanished with her assumed return in the night. I slept through it all, dreaming of Billie. She even left a yellow post-it note:
Press Pause, Sarah
Then I wondered if I knew my wife at all. Was she capable of vindication? Had she set some booby trap as payback for my “neglect”? No, not my wife. I pushed the button and heard Billie:
The song played on to speak of returning and staying together, giving it a go one more time, but that wife of mine was nowhere around – just Billie singing “Monday blues straight through Sunday blues.”
“Listen to her range, Alan.” My wife loved to flex her psychiatric muscles first thing in the morning. “Why do you think she can bring you up and down, make you go from angry to happy to horny to so sad you want to kill yourself?”
Once again, a perfect version of “All or Nothing at All” destroyed by my ranting wife.
“She was the equivalent of a modern-day crack whore.”
That woman of mine ripped the nearest poster of Billie from the wall and shook it at me like trash the dog spilled.
"This scrawny ass and skeletal face of hers ain’t natural, sweetheart.”
Strung out, loose slut, tramping to success. Phrases my woman usually uses to describe the love of my life. Skank, druggy, and home wrecker are a few others.
I often received emails from that wife of mine, with anti-Billie links pasted into them. After a rash of these harassing, paparazzi, bullshit letters, I tagged her as a spammer.
“I lost all my addresses because of you, damn it.”
“Perhaps, you should have considered that before you sent all that junk.”
She liked to accuse me of not wanting her anymore – not Billie, my wife. She accused me of imagining her as “that wretched woman” when “in coitus.”
“Never forget, dear wife, Billie brought us together. Never forget that night on the pier outside of Romano’s. The night we stared at each other, listening to the salty waves lick the pylons below us. Do you remember how we could taste the salt on our lips? Or, how our souls seemed to bore into one another, but we could do little more than open our mouths as if to speak? Then a man smoking a Swisher-Sweet held open the door of the little Italian joint and let Billie croon out our song, the song that solved it all, ‘Don’t Explain.’”
“Don’t remind me.”
Then we’d roll in opposite directions so I could dream of Billie. She sang her blues as we shared a pigfoot and a bottle of beer. She’d sing “Them There Eyes” to me in a crowded club and end the song by dragging me backstage to make her “really sing.” And I’d maul her only to wake to my squirming wife pinching my ribs to make me go back to my side of the bed. I rushed back to sleep to spend the rest of the night searching my dreams for my diva.
***
“What the hell were you thinking last night?”
“It’s just one of those things.”
“Again with her?” My wife tossed her chair on its back and kicked it across the tile floor. “I can’t take this much longer.”
I thumbed the Billie Holiday action figure tucked away in my terry cloth robe.
“Where do you live, Alan, ’cause it sure isn’t with me.”
My forefinger slid up along the doll’s thigh, past the slit where the legs met, down the other thigh, then back again, wearing a groove in my flesh. All the while, “I wished on the Moon” ate at my brain.
“I’m inclined to think you a grave robber. I could deal with a cradle robber easier; at least little girls are alive.”
The old necrophilia argument. My wife had an argument for every day of the week. She used to think I was fine and mellow. Now, she liked to speak low of me to those arrogant and wealthy rapists, I mean, therapists who asked at the fancy cocktail parties. She liked to say, “God bless the child who’s got his own,” and those who knew Billie’s songs roared with laughter, and those who didn’t still chuckled from the condescending tone. Most my wife’s friends call me “strange fruit,” another joke at my expense I’m not sure how to take.
“I have a new 45 needing a listen, you know.”
“When was the last time you went with me?”
“You know I’m not into your crowd, Sarah. They’re too damned uptight.”
“They’re not uptight. They’re well educated, an example you should emulate.”
I dug deeper into my lounger and grabbed for the cellophane-wrapped album on the side table. “I prefer easy living, that’s all.”
My wife smacked the LP out of my hand so hard it zipped across the room to snuff the candles burning below the autographed photo of my beloved Billie. Burnt wick and cooling wax scorned my nostrils.
“You want some Billie, Alan? I got one for you.”
She thrust out one of her hips and lay her hand upon the shelf the pose formed. The other hand crooked toward me as she began to sing:
Love me or leave me
Or let me be lonely…
I want your love
But I don’t want to borrow
To have it today to give it back tomorrow
Just like my old lady to pick out the parts that serve her best. Guess that’s why I didn’t care when she grabbed her scarf and muffler and threatened to never return if I didn’t say those three words.
“I am sorry?”
The door slammed. A pane of red glass popped out and shattered on the threshold behind her.
***
That woman of mine is so prone to tantrums. I just hoped she wouldn’t come back ready to harp me to death. Billie kept me company, soothing me past midnight. We went to bed together and woke together at 5:30 in the morning. She dimmed out of sight from the light-blue filtering in from the sun rising through the curtains. Two pillows lay indented from my knees and I could smell Sarah, Aussie Brand hair spray and chalky foundation. But, she wasn’t there.
I felt the emptiness before I saw it, the feeling that space has expanded around me, offering my body the odd sensation of ultimate relaxation and breaking tension, sprawled yet stretched.
Most of Sarah’s things vanished with her assumed return in the night. I slept through it all, dreaming of Billie. She even left a yellow post-it note:
Press Pause, Sarah
Then I wondered if I knew my wife at all. Was she capable of vindication? Had she set some booby trap as payback for my “neglect”? No, not my wife. I pushed the button and heard Billie:
Good Morning Heartache
You old gloomy sight
Good Morning Heartache
Thought we said good-bye last night
The song played on to speak of returning and staying together, giving it a go one more time, but that wife of mine was nowhere around – just Billie singing “Monday blues straight through Sunday blues.”
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