Saturday, October 2, 2010

BETTER LUCK ELSEWHERE


I recently described my internet foibles while attempting to submit a short work of fiction to the super hip magazine McSweeney's. Well, all's well that ends well. No, it didn't get accepted at McSweeney's, but another literary magazine, Chiron Review, will publish it in their December issue. An older writer tells me this a first-rate magazine, but like so many literary publications, to the most of us the name means little.

Since this is a print publication, not available on the internet, I will post the full story, "Vampire Snippets" on this blog in a few weeks. I think round about Halloween will be a good time for it.

Meanwhile, posts to the blog have been scarce. This is because I am concentrating on the second draft of my memoir. As I edit the first draft, I am amazed at what I remembered. I put myself into a time-warp trance while I wrote the thing. Now the memories often read as someone else's-- did all those things with all those vivid details really happen to me? Alas, there are volumes of it, and so much of it just isn't going to make the final cut.

The whole thing reminds me of journalism. The first draft is like one long interview I did with my memory, now for the second draft I need to sort through the raw material of the transcript for the good parts, and streamline it all and make it into something perhaps interesting to read.

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