PHOTO CREDIT: C-Dog, from "The Dead Show" at Label Gallery, which was, I believe, in October, 2003. Seven YEARS AGO!!! I'm wearing a witches' hat and look kind of angry, but actually I'm having a really fun time. All/lots of us performed music that night (C-dog, JC, Andrina, José, me) , which was a sort of birth/re-birth of the Label as a music jam space and a space of magical incantations, and then Righteous Ike finished off the night at 3 in the morning.
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So, in looking over random posts from AlfA blog this morning (holy nostalgia!!!), I came across a post where C-Dog's brother Luis asked in the comments how my book was going.
"Good," I said. "Only a few more long days and then I start talking to publishers."
That was in February 2007.
I DID actually send the book out out at that point, received 13 rejections, and went back to the drawing board, even going so far as to move to a foreign country called Quebec in order to have all the time and space to finish it.
And NOW... NOW I think it's really actually finished. This weekend, I've been going through the 250 or so printed pages on which I've made detailed, line-by-line notes in pen, and am using those notes to do final revisions on my aging computer.
As some of you know, I got a job as managing editor of Concordia's literary publication, which is called Matrix Magazine. Everyone involved with the magazine assures me it's a much easier way to get a book published (through meeting writers, agents, editors, etc) than simply sending stuff out blindly in the mail like I did before.
I was telling Anita the other day that it's so STRANGE to suddenly be meeting and interacting with writers again. For so many years, I've been involved in a big, awesome, bustling, productive community of artists, musicians, and thinkers (that would be you people), but have known almost zero "writers" in the sense of people who have made it a vocation. It's really interesting to be meeting these people and seeing a different side of the art-y world again, even as I'm forever nostalgic for the old.
Excerpt from the book to follow later today...
7 comments:
finding your 'people' is always inspring - and so was/is this!
Appropriate pic for this post. Determination and confidence.
Ha, I can relate to projects taking longer than expected to see fruition. I am contributing to a book right now, and keep telling the poor dude "just one more week, and I'll send you that file".
I look forward to reading the excerpt.
1. Where's the excerpt?
2. I humbly purport to make my living as a writer. Maybe not as a novelist or as a short story writer or as a poet, but nonetheless, as a writer.
3. Yet I get what you mean.
1-- The excerpt is coming, I promise. Tomorrow morning, let's say.
2-- As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to call yourself a circus performer, astronaut, or underwater welder if you'd like. I've never been very protective of titles or people's right to claim them.
But yes, clearly you are a writer, as are many others on this blog.
My point was more specifically about people who work within my specific micro-discipline of the larger field of writing.
3-- Which i suppose you understood. And sorry I missed yr call tonight-- I was working at the resto.
congrats on the editor job!
word verif: monkiqui
monkiqui,monkiqui,monkiqui,monkiqui
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