Bacon sweater

Something had been wrong with a few weeks. I was sleeping right. Out 10 min into head on pillow. Dreams all normal, at least for me. Usually my sleep is so scattered and violent, I actually started to get scared when I was just having normal person dreams: if I got stuck in that permanently I don't know what I'd do. I need the raw.

However thankfully, my post 3 AM bedtime has returned, and last night I can't remember what happened, but I know I had on the bacon sweater.

I usually sleep with my hands in fists. When I do not cut my nails sometimes my hands will almost bleed.





Final version of EVER has been turned in, and now I am on to editing SCORCH ATLAS for publication. I think I have 2-3 more weeks until it is due, I should probably check on that.

I spent about 5 hours yesterday line editing the first section of 2 sections in the longest story in the book, 'Seabed,' which was one of the first stories I wrote in the collection, and before I had fully gotten into the mind of what the aura of it would become. Editing in that way is grueling, but I am really beginning to see the texture of the whole thing take shape. Fortunately a lot of the stories feel mostly right where I want them, and it's more just the ones that I didn't have the full-on mindset for when they were created that I am trying to make exactly right.

I think this kind of encombing method for the stories has come out of my recent drive to buy up all the Lish-edited Knopf titles from 1977-95, and seeing how a lot of those books have such a singularity of pitch and 'this is a whole' to them even though the stories are often so widely toned and of different natures. I really want this book to have that object feel to it, and studying those singularities of text has been really great and invigorating. So we shall see.

Editing is such another beast to germinating to me, in a way I think I like it more, as you really begin to see the thing under the thing, but I think also my that disruption in my sleep pattern came from spending more and more time on editing rather than getting new words out: as if my blather contained made me more normal. A rash of new stories though has got me back in the bubble, though I am going to try to put those aside for the next two weeks at least and really get this into what it should be.







Also continuing to work on the collaborative book with Sean Kilpatrick, which is essentially at this point the script for a very destroyed anti-porn blacklisted by Stalin for how the slum grease would appear on his necktie when he watched, then pushed through several gelatinizing devices that were then stored in the brain cells of an 8 year old Autistic child to be deformed by their terror puberty.

When I was reading through what we'd done I thought: if my employers, or my mother, or anyone who knows me sees this...






I am talking to myself.

We are going to go see Synedoche New York in a couple hours.



It looks pretty interesting. I am by no means a Charlie Kaufman buff, though I really like BEING JOHN MALKOVICH and ETERNAL SUNSHINE, but you can't really go wrong with Phillip Hoffman. 'Adaptation' I thought had a great start but I hate the meta-unraveling of the story into a Hollywood style script, even though it was a funny idea, it seemed too forced to me. Plus I hate Nicholas Cage. Goddamn I hate that guy. He reminds me of someone coming through a burning room to save you wearing no shirt and with pantyhose on and with his face stuck in one endless 'impregnate me' expression.










I reread party of RICKY'S ANUS for the first time the other day since finishing. What in the name of god have I done. If anyone ever sees this, something will happen: either my scalp will be removed or my scalp will be removed and there will be a tiny white donkey cooking grits.

OK I will say it: God it's fucking good.

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Editing Snafu Avenged + New Lamination Colony

Just got an email from HARPUR PALATE accepting the 'TOUR OF THE DROWNED NEIGHBORHOOD' story I discussed about 10 days ago wherein FAULTLINE wanted to accept and then tried to get in the butt, causing my decline. No request for Frankensteining from HP. Looks like waiting paid off.

Speaking of rewrites, I am finally getting together the new issue of LAMINATION COLONY. It's got some sick shit in it including an incredible 'epic-length' poem from fellow Georgian IAN DAVISSON called ACHY MUSCLES which will crush several skulls, as well as a totally new face for the whole site, and the lost works of DICK PALACE. I'm stoked on it. Somebody send me a weird video collage or a picture of their mom or something.

Maybe I should erase my pissy post from earlier today.

No.

Long Post About Editing + New LC Submissions Call

Rather strange submission snafu this past week: got an email from Faultline editors, saying that a story I had sent them 'TOUR OF THE DROWNED NEIGHBORHOOD' (one of the shorter pieces from SCORCH ATLAS) was one of 5 stories out of 500 that'd been sent to them that were being considered for an upcoming issue. They asked for an electronic copy, which I sent. Then 2 days later, they said they wanted the story. They did, though, have some editing suggestions, which I always more than welcome. I've had some stories greatly improved by editors between acceptance and publication (most recently Todd Zuniga from Opium cut about 15% of a story they are publishing in Opium.print 6 or 7, 90% of which I totally agreed with and felt that the story was made 'better' by the edits). I do not feel 'overly protective' of my work. If someone with a clean eye and 'good taste' can see something in a work that I did not see, and the improvement genuinely makes the story 'clearer' then I am all about cutting and rearranging, as long as I have final say.

The edits to the Faultline story, however, were much more 'overhauling' than I expected. The story is about 1500 words, made up mostly of lines that describe the condition of a neighborhood pre and post underwater states. Most of the lines begin with 'This is', and then explain different parts of the neighborhood, however concretely or 'intuitively'.

The 'new version' of the story rearranged the order of the lines, taking the ones that seemed to most follow one another in a 'narrative' sense and lining them up so that the 'narration' followed a 'path'. It cut about 30% of the story, aiming at the lines that had less palpable narrative sense. Lines that just described parts of the neighborhood without referring to the inbound sense of narration that somewhat involves characters. It also cut what the editors considered a 'surreal' moment, in the midst of what they considered a 'strange but real' story.

The story is about a neighborhood underwater, I'll say again.

They did not want a 'surreal' moment in a story about a neighborhood underwater.

Anyhow, the story the way they had it was basically not at all what I'd written. It was chopped up bits from the original, reordered to try to form a 'narrative'. They'd cut all the lines that I liked most, the ones that just said things and didn't have 'meaning' that contributed to the 'arc' of a story that did not mean to have an 'arc'.

After thinking about it a lot I wrote them back and told them I didn't want to publish their version of the story because it did not feel like the story. They were very kind about it, and there was no ill will of any sort, the specific editor was very nice and polite and understanding and they said maybe we could work on it to come to a compromise but with the week as busy as its been with my house still gone and etc., I haven't even had time to think if I want to redraft the story. Which I don't.

All that said, I am confused about how that happened in the first place. If the story was, as they said, chosen out of 500, why would they want to take it and completely rearrange it? What was it about that original that made them think it was worth choosing out of 500 stories if they then did not want to publish the story they had chosen?

The more I think about it, the more I get confused, and the more glad I am that it has just kind of fizzled off.

I should post both versions of the story here so you can see how drastically different they are. I'm really not being picky. Two totally different stories.

For me 'editing' is less about 'pride' or 'identity' than it is about what you are creating. With the Lish editing Carver shit a couple months ago, to me that's a great example of how editing can improve a story and should be published with the edits, but even that is subject to extreme controversy. No one can say 'for sure'. Two years ago I might have jumped at the chance to be in Faultline. In fact, back then I sent out all kinds of crap on whims just trying to get in anywhere, not even rereading what I was sending to make sure it was 'good' in my mind, let alone in anyone else's. I was so hungry I would often eat my tongue. It's funny, I guess, the amount of time it took for me to figure out 'what I want to do' may or may not line up with someone else's idea of 'what should be done' and that in the end it doesn't really matter anyway, where your words end up, if they aren't worth reading in the first place. It took me a long time, too, to finally listen to the most common things a lot of journals have on their submission guidelines 'Read an issue to see our taste.' How often I sent stuff to journals with no idea, and let my rejection pile grow and grow and grow (not that it's stopped now), just because I didn't even know that X journal doesn't tend to run stories like Z.

It's pretty funny too seeing how many people still haven't realized that. Even in going through the ample but not nearly as heavy as other places I imagine submissions queue for Lamination Colony, I never fail to be amazed how once a week or so I get a straightforward love story or ABAB poetry. This is an online journal. You didn't even bother to look for two seconds to read and see that I mainly publish stuff about shitting or titties or homes that absorb their owners or so on and so on and so on. Wouldn't your family feel weird when you send them out a link to your Lamination Colony published sestina about winter weather and they accidentally click on Sean Kilpatrick's story and read "The woman a floor below us began her menstrual cycle. I could distinguish the bloat and grind of her expanding uterus, hear the egg leak."?

Actually, fuck: for the next issue of Lamination Colony I am going to accept 100% of the next 10 items sent to me. Put 'X' in the subject line. That's all. You will be in the next issue. Only the next 10 though.

Here's the catch: I can edit the pieces however I want to. I can delete the whole damn file down to the word 'and' and insert all my own words around it. I can meld your story with another one of the 'X' submissions. I can paste the definition for 'sputum' into the speech bubble where your narrator says the line that you felt most defined him as a character in your mind and that you felt really proud about while leaving your writing computer to go eat broccoli with whoever you are dating. Or I can keep them just as they are and say I wrote them. I can do anything I want.

The stories submitted with an 'X' in the subject line will be published under my name. You'll get credit too, but on the front page there will be 10 pieces by me in my magazine. You'll be mentioned somewhere, but you are insignificant in the outcome. Your words, my choice.

If you are game for that, send me anything, and go ahead and tick your next publication off in your bitchass submissions tracker list. We're also still open for 'regular' submissions and the next issue is going to be snazzy.

Two Lines I Just Deleted from a List On Christmas Eve

40. There is no great enough gap to comfort me between external and internal circumstance which is why my life is fairly impossible to live. *
41. If I could simply feel a little less uneasy. That would help.^

* Diane Williams, interview with elimae

^ William Gass, THE TUNNEL, pg. 107.

Gordon Lish's Edits of Raymond Carver

The New Yorker has run a copy of one of the stories from the Raymond Carver manuscripts. They show how the story was edited by Gordon Lish. Whole pages cut out. Whole paragraphs added by Lish. Even names of characters changed. The whole last 2 pages is cut and Lish writes a new ending paragraph.

Reading through it, so often Lish is right. His cuts definitely improve the story when they are taking away things that make the story too sentimental seeming. A lot of times the edits are cutting things that reminded me of things you seem in workshops that you wish you could say should go, but that most people do not. The edits often improve the story.

Cutting the last two pages and several pages before that seems awfully extreme. It changes the entire story. Whether the story is better or not, I'm not sure. It's hard to say such a thing. I like the paragraph Lish ended the story with better than the way Carver wrote it.

I like extremes.

I imagine Gordon Lish believes in absolutes.

I often believe I believe in absolutes though I will not argue them except with certain people.

It is hard to imagine what Carver must have felt. But he let the changes continue. I believe his last book CATHEDRAL he did not show to Lish. I'd like to have gotten to hear some of Lish's lectures.

It's funny reading stuff Lish edits and stuff Lish writes. He loves to say one thing and then say it again and again slightly differently. Things other people would definitely cut, he used and exaggerated.

Everyone should taste some Lish, though when I got obsessed with him a little his style started to rub off on me and my writing got really bad. Like unreadable. Though there are certain lessons I have learned from him (or things I've heard attributed to him) that have made me a better writer now, I think.

I think he used to talk about having one word, and every other word followed from that word one after another, like association. A whole story would germinate from one sentence germinated from one word. Not stream of consciousness. Association.

I use association.

I mean that in several ways that are hard to describe.

I read an anecdote one time about Lish showing up for a lecture with a spot on his shirt where he'd spilled something and then pretty much ruined the shirt trying to wash it out to the point that the cloth was ripped through.

His book EPIGRAPH is about how the narrator's wife is dying in another room in his house and he's going in to help her but he sees a little speck of something on the carpet (I forgot what he calls the speck but it's something strange) and then he gets so obsessed with the speck that his wife dies while he's attending to it. Or something like that. It's hard to tell certain things about his writing.

It's hard to tell certain things about anyone's writing.

It's hard to tell certain things.

It's hard.

Part of the World

read Robert Lopez's 'Part of the World' last week in a couple hours straight. another book i just couldn't put down. the voice had me from the very first page. i love books where nothing much happens and it is just the way it is told to you that keeps you reading. they are rare, but robert has completed killed it in this one. everyone should go to the calamari press website and pick this up immediately.



yet another in the list of books i've read recently that i need to write reviews for. falling behind in that category. i've been finding it hard also to keep working on the novel i've been trucking on for the past 6 months or so. there's a whole subplot that needs a facelift and i can't quite bring myself to pick it up. so i'll wait for that motivation. in the meantime i've been having a blast working on a series of shorts set before/during/after some form of apocalypse event. i can foresee them eventually running together and becoming a larger text but right now i just like working on each alone and finding tiny threads that interweave.

i can't seem to bring myself to write stories longer than 2000 words. its either less than 2000 or greater than 60,000. i don't have much that fall in between. i think that comes from the fact that i have trouble reading short fiction of a longer length, because i like, once i really get into something, for it to keep going and wrap me up. usually when reading pieces that are 4000-7000 words i'm just getting amped up by the time it ends. of course there are a billion exceptions to that trend, but i'm just a lot more picky about it.

plus it seems just a lot easier to place shorter pieces in publications. if something takes up a lot of space, it better earn it. maybe i'm lazy. maybe i have ADD. i dunno.

reminded today of how great brian evenson's story 'The Intricacies of Post-Shooting Etiquette' is. i think that's the story i've been trying to write since i started.

actual work

editing is tedious. i finished a draft of my novel and i've been putting off starting on the next draft for 10 days now. i have been working every day for the past 6 months and it feels very strange not to work but i can't bring myself to start. i will start today.

i will start today.

i can't think of a decent title for the book either. i have a list of titles but i'm not sure i like any of them. i'm not sure what i like.

PEDOPHILE

NEW TONGUES FOR THE NEW HEAD

RUIN

THE SUM OF ALL FUTURE LIGHT

TOMORROW IS ALSO NOT YOUR BIRTHDAY

INVISIBLE CHOIRS

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GOODNIGHT

i dont know about those.

submitting work to magazines is hard work. its a second job to support a job that pays in nice feelings.

i got a job writing reviews of local businesses for yelp.com in atlanta. my reviews are at blakeb.yelp.com. that's been pretty nice. temporary for now, though it may renew after 2 months. i hope it renews. i like the job.

i also have a possible paying freelance gig writing short profiles of strange peoples for a new online magazine backed by a porn company. that should be also fun.

moving is a bitch. maybe that's why i haven't been editing. i've been so busy moving.

i am going to edit now, goddamnit.