“The first kiss plummeted him down a hole and popped him out into a world he thought he could get along in — as if he’d been pulling hard the wrong way and was now turned around headed downstream. They spent the whole afternoon among the daisies kissing. He felt glorious and full of more blood than he was supposed to have in him.”
Denis Johnson, Train Dreams
I was asked to write an essay about revision. It will come out some time next month.
I have a few new stories that will also be published next month.
I finished a draft of my novel, Believers, which clocked in at about 100K words. I’m currently revising and honing it down (I talk about this in the essay mentioned above). My goal is to be “done” by the end of the summer.
Some good writing advice here.
I really want to see Moonrise Kingdom.
An excerpt from the novel-in-progress…
It’s a weekday, a Tuesday, but the Costco parking lot is packed. Karen manages to find an orphaned cart and, once inside, starts navigating the aisles and the shoppers and the darting kids. Costco always overwhelmed her, all that space and the endless items for purchase. It’s usually best to have a list, but she does not have a list, this is a dangerous impromptu visit, and so she wanders from section to section. She buys cookies and snacks and an assortment of juices (apple, grape, kiwi, mango) for the visitors. Plus paper cups and plates and napkins and more. The cart quickly fills. She realizes she’s hungry and so she says yes to every sample item offered to her, the people wearing their doctorly white jackets and rubber gloves and smiling, smiling, smiling. Suddenly it seems very important to have a vast quantity of oatmeal.
