several thoughts // not a real blog post

1) I am really behind on my Infinite Jest reading. Just got past page 100 and should be on like 210 if I want to finish by the end of the summer.

2) Ordered The Children's Hospital from the McSweeney's garage sale for five bucks. Looks interesting. Lots of imagination going on, from what I can tell. I think someone I know said it was shit and they couldn't get past page 20.

3) Keep getting more and more books and not reading them (The Children's Hospital will most likely never be read).

4) The Dollar Store tour will be here in Albany on Wednesday night. I'm going to read a story that is a remix of a Raymond Carver story and my dollar store item - a plastic ice cream cone. Everyone will be staying in my apartment on the couch, sleeping bags, and lots of blankets.

5) I'm at work and it's really quiet.

6) This entire blog post is basically twitter.

looking at question

This morning I am opening up email.

The third email I clicked is a series of interview questions for an online journal to be posted next week. The second question asks if a specific piece of writing "played a part in my success today."

I think for writers the idea of success is really difficult. I see it as different levels, something like:

1)Actually write something
2)Start submitting
3)Get accepted into journal with a 20% acceptance rate - feel confident
4)Publish in more journals, maybe 1-3 with an acceptance rate of >5% - more confidence
5)Publish a chapbook - sell between 20-100 copies (confidence and feeling of success depending on reviews and copies sold)
6)Write a perfect-bound book - novel, short story collection, book of poems, etc
7)Find a publisher who does a print run of 500 to 1000 copies.
8)Start getting reviews on book and obsess over sales and googling reviews.
9)Do between 1-10 interviews where you don't act like yourself
10)Maybe submit to more journals and think "i've already done that"
11)Write another book
12)Begin to question why you are writing
13)Try and make next book "better"
14)Just want more in way of sales, reviews, interviews, blog mentions
15)Keep writing and keep wanting more

Not sure where that went. I think the life of a writer, if there is one, is ultimately tragic. You're constantly trying to push yourself to do more and I wonder if that will end one day.

One of my biggest fears is that my imagination will shut down.

Everyone in my office is talking about Michael Jackson today.

I'm sitting here trying to think if I feel successful about my writing.

I think the answer is no.

I feel happy about my writing and that good intelligent people are reading it. I don't think I will ever feel successful.

I think if I really felt successful I would let out a big sigh and recline in a leather chair and be smoking a cigar and put my hands behind my head.

I wonder if Don Dellilo feels successful. I wonder if Cormac McCarthy does. Maybe.

If success = money made and copies sold, then 1% of all writers probably feel successful right now.

Maybe I'm in a bad situation. I check my Goodreads 3-5 times a day. I've thought in the past "if 300 people add my book i will be happy" and then thought "if 400 people add it, i will be happy" and now think "500 adds is a lot and will be enough."

I know. I've done the same thing with sales.

Trying to be as direct and honest as possible.

The Failure Six could possibly be reviewed as "a failure."

The Failure Six is designed to be a sophomore slump book.

I've thought this morning on if there is a goal in writing.

I should try and answer this interview question now.

I'm eating an apple.

Cleon Peterson

Artists have a really big impact on me. Most of the visual aspect of my writing comes from looking at art. I know reading and writing are connected, but without artists I don't think I would be the writer I am.

Part of this is that I can not believe what some artists can do.

I'm currently looking at Cleon Peterson's destructive/chaotic /imaginary mind-blowing works. Cleon creates an entire new world in his paintings. His use of simple colors (black, red, and white) has a devastating effect - think 1980's Miami Vice covered in violence. I feel like his paintings burn into my eyes. His imagination is shocking good.

From Cleon:

"I have always had a brutal sadistic perspective and for some reason my sense of humor usually ends up taking things to an uncomfortable place. I am always drawn to narratives that evoke a sinister or devious side of culture, the tragic movies where everyone dies or where the hero winds up ordinary. I think there is a truth everyone can relate to in feelings of struggle, desperation, pain and failure. The grey area between the dualistic nature of authority in our world is where these paintings live."

+++++++++

hi

Claudia Smith wrote a review of Light Boxes for Gently Read. I respect and enjoy Claudia's own fiction, so for her to say such nice words means a lot. I believe a collection of her shorts are slated to be published by Future Tense at some point. Look for it. Read the review here.

I did an interview/conversation with Ben Brooks who will have his first book published by Fugue State at the end of this year. Ben is wildly talented. When his book, FENCES, is published, everyone should get a copy. It's insane in every good way. Read the word talk here.

My new project is writing a series of "number stories" similar to the number stories in the chapbook I WILL UNFOLD YOU WITH MY HAIRY HANDS. I want to write between 35-40 of these and make it a full-length book. These stories are really fun for me to write. I think Jesse Ball said something about his last book feeling like a huge vehicle with dozens of wheels and it could just go in any direction he wanted. I feel the same way about the number stories. I can twist sentences and use imagination in new ways.

Word is that Greying Ghost is going to do a third printing of the chapbook, 100 copies, with a new cover/design.

I was at work for 12 hours yesterday.

I need to pay rent today - $850.

This story by Jimmy Chen is really good.

The New Yorker publishes an interesting/different story that is solid. Here. (thanks adam for pointing this one out).

I have a really fat stomach now. I don't know what happened. Well, I do. I've always been really skinny but in the last year something has happened and my belly got really big. I think I've gained about 15 pounds in the last year and all of it is right at my stomach. It's awful. I'm both skinny and fat. I started jogging. I'm drinking a kombucha right now and eating more fruit. If writers have diets I would like to know. I wonder what Don Dellilo eats other than babies. Does Jonathan Foer eat salad all day?

Booooooooooof (punching self in stomach).

Footnotes

1) I'm currently reading INFINITE JEST - part of this "infinite summer" thing and have a strange interest/obsession with massive novels now. Like a "it may be fun to write something like this." As of now, my books keep getting smaller and smaller. In the year 2012 I'll have a novel that is 700 words.

Thus far (page 50?), INFINITE JEST is incredible and with each page it feels like my head is expanding.

2) There are two(2) contests to win a total of four(4) copies of THE FAILURE SIX. Both are through Goodreads. One will be drawn by me, and be pulled from the people who mark the book as "to-read." The other can be entered by not marking the book as "to-read" but just clicking ENTER TO WIN on the book page and the Goodreads people select it from some kind of machine.

3) Recently completed an interview/conversation with Ben Brooks that was really fun to do. Now looking for a home for it. Might post here. Ben also has a book coming out from FUGUE STATE early next year.

4) Thanks to James for setting this up. It needs footnotes now.

5) Why is Jimmy Chen so funny?

6) I might have to come into work tomorrow for a few hours. I'll just bring INFINITE JEST and read it and be blown away by the talent that is DFW.

7) For anyone who hasn't seen this, thank you Molly Gaudry:

Preorder The Failure Six

Is it time for a dance party?

THE FAILURE SIX (a novel) published in January 2010 by Fugue State Press, is now available for preorder.

If you preorder it's a very reasonable $12 with free shipping and you'll get the book earlier - say around October - hot off the printer. Yes.

Preordering is kind of like a dance party but not really.

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THE FAILURE SIX has a cover design by Zach Dodson, illustrations (6) by Chris Pell, and an excerpt will appear in the next issue of New York Tyrant.

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From the publisher: In The Failure Six, a group of messengers, who work for a vast bureaucracy, all struggle with the same task - to retell the life story of a woman named Foe who seems to have lost her memory. The irrepressible emotions of the messengers - and Foe's clear need to be left alone in her amnesia - make for a strange, unaccountable, untellable story.

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In this town, speech is accomplished through stacks of paper so tall they touch the sky...the floors of a teahouse are built in seconds...and a mysterious character named DH threatens the town with bombs and his "Deliverer" who wields the world's most expensive revolvers. The Failure Six is a mystery grounded in Kafka, Gogol, and human dreams.

this is Ernest and he is a failure

oh no

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