Oh. My. God. My brain has turned to tapioca pudding. Mmm, pudding.

This weekend was spent reading and writing more in a compressed time than I have ever done. Here were my assignments:

1. Write a short story and make fifteen copies. Due Tuesday.
2. Read two stories and critique four more. Due Tuesday.
3. Revise four position papers. Due Tuesday.
4. Read the last hundred pages of Fury. Due Tuesday.
5. Read all of The Blithedale Romance and write a seven-page paper on it. Due Wednesday.

I finished #1 Saturday, resurrecting one of my Clarion stories, eradicating anything remotely Norse about it, and renaming it "Don't Blink". I think it's much stronger now, and shows I'm definitely not squeamish about torturing my characters. Well, maybe a little squeamish, but I still did it.

I got #2 accomplished last night (no jokes from you, ya sick bastards), surprised that some of these people were even allowed into the fiction workshop. It's a graduate level course; you'd think they would have learned the rudimentary basics, but some of them...whoa. There was one that I basically said had no redeeming value and the author should pretty much toss in the trash.

#3 is three-quarters done, three position papers revised today. I have one paper left to revise, the one I did on Beckett, which some of you may remember. I'm finding it hard to even revise, because the original subject matter is still as incomprehensible as ever.

I finished #4 on Friday, while riding the bus back to the park-n-ride after class was over. It's a phenomenal book, but the ending bugs me. It seems so different from the rest of the novel, and is more over-the-top than the story deserves. It's like Rushdie looked at his book and thought, This just doesn't have enough action. I know! I'll cram a hundred pages' worth into the last scene! Plus, he moves the setting to a little island in the middle of a revolt, where it was almost exclusively in New York for all the chapters preceding it. Though I'm not crazy about the ending, I'd still recommend it for being a helluva novel with some of the most perfect writing I've ever seen.

The reading part of #5 I finished yesterday around noon, and am now trying to write a seven page paper about Hawthorne's use of solitude. I needed a break, hence the journal entry.

***

It looks like the chapbook is finished and has been sent to the printers/copiers. From Janet's experiences in dealing with the design and formatting, I'm not sure if we're going to do this again. Or if we are, we're going to allow much more time to work on it; half the problems have been in getting it finished in time to take to World Fantasy. For a first-hand account of her frustrations and tribulations, check out today's journal entry. If you don't want to buy a chapbook after reading that, you've a heart of stone, my friend.

And my review of Kyler's newest album went up yesterday at GMR. It's a CD I keep in nigh-constant rotation within my car's CD changer. I hope my review will help her sell a few more copies.

Crap. Back to the grind. I neglected to mention that I took the afternoon off of my day job so that I could keep working on this stuff. But my fall break starts on Thursday, so I'll work that and Friday for eight hours. It'll actually give me four hours more than my regular schedule, which will be good. Upcoming stuff includes reviewing Little Gods for Mssr. Pratt and writing an essay/proposal for a $2500 scholarship (both by the end of October), reading "Benito Cereno" by Melville, rereading The Body Artist by Don DeLillo, and lots more reading and writing. Into the breach I am.

---

Now Reading:
The Body Artist by Don DeLillo

Stories Out to Publishers:
5

Books Read This Year:
40

Zines/Fiction Mags Read This Year:
34