Showing posts with label Falling Away at the Edges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Falling Away at the Edges. Show all posts

07 November 2008

falling away at the edges

Just in time for the holidays, my story Falling Away at the Edges is published in Duck & Herring Co. Pocket Field Guide Cold Weather edition. You can read it online or order your own copy of the Pocket Field Guide, complete with some warming recipes for the holiday season.

Some of my characters become particularly endeared to me by the time their story is complete. This is especially so with this story. It reaches back into my teenage years for time and setting, and while the family isn't exactly my own, it treads on the borders of the family chaos of growing up with 6 siblings.

The story itself was passed to me through the community grapevine of a most endearing group of real people with whom I cross paths regularly, if not daily - possibly the most irreverent and riotous group of people I have ever met. I owe much to those who have put out a hand to me in times of need, cried with me in times of pain, and in times of joy or sometimes just moments of hindsight, laughed with utmost abandon.

My life is richer for those people whose paths cross my own. Thanks.

Sherri

19 February 2008

How many licks does it take?

Yesterday was a weird day.

First my story Falling Away at the Edges was accepted by Duck & Herring Co Pocket Field Guide Cold Weather Edition 08. After 62 submissions.

Also yesterday, my story Black Bird was selected as a finalist in the Lunch Hour Stories Magazine 2007 VERY Short Story contest. 2 submissions. It kind of skews the statistics, doesn't it?

Then there's the whole thing about getting 2 acceptances in one day. Against only one rejection: 2-1. Double weird. The good news about the rejection is that it does save me one withdrawal letter.

Here's the thing. Falling Away is a story that came out of a single line that arose from a 5-minute freewrite warm-up about my family history combined with a Christmas turkey tossed out the window. It has been a much shorter piece and a much longer piece. It has been workshopped through 2 different groups, Dangerous Writers and Hot Pages. I love the story. I love the characters. And while it is not my family exactly, the setting is literally in the home of my teenage years, in farm country of southern Idaho. It evokes all the warm fuzzies, if I had any in there from those years of teenage angst.

"Black Bird" on the other hand, is a short-short piece written in a single sitting during the 3rd quarter of a Giants/Falcons game on Monday Night Football immediately after some earlier discussion with the Hot Pages crew about the characteristics of a sociopath. There is a poetic rythmn, no dialogue punctuation, one of my sisters wants to know why I chose that particular name for the girl (it is what it is, Sam, nothing personal), and my dad says it just leaves you hanging. But I guess that was the point.

Eckhart Tolle said, "All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness." Apparently my inner stillness seems to manifest during football. I think I'm alright with that.

Yesterday, I also gave my two weeks' notice at work. The new job starts March 3. Gotta make the doughnuts. It will be nice to get my feet back under me at some point.

In the meantime, I might have to make a run to the store for Tootsie Pops.

Sherri