A bit of blatant self-promotion:

My story, Daddy's Girl, is up at Every Day Fiction today. If you read and liked it, please give it some stars.

I have another tiny story at Nanoism:
http://nanoism.net/stories/71/

Today’s my first Writing Wednesday! Theoretically, it’s not all that
different from any other day. I mean, I spend at least five days a week
sitting at my desk with the laptop in front of me, but usually there’s
also dishes to be washed, groceries to be bought, meals to be cooked,
library books to be returned, and bathrooms to be cleaned. Today is my
day to turn my back on all those distractions and write without guilt…
even though the car really needs to be vacuumed and the kid is almost
out of clean socks and, oh yeah, we only have one egg left. It’s
Writing Wednesday.

(More at http://jennifertatroe.blogspot.com/2009/09/work-in-progress.html)

New entry up at:
http://jennifertatroe.blogspot.com/2009/09/accountable.html

My story, "Hundred Year Storm" is up at PicFic.
http://picfic.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/hundred-year-storm/

School was scheduled to start this week, but my son’s teacher is
standing with his colleagues and a picket sign on the corner halfway
between the bus stop and the school and his superintendent is
assiduously recording robot calls and filing legal motions while
ignoring the bargaining table, so my triumphant return to daily writing
is rather limping. I am verklempt. I had plans for September. I had
goals. I had deadlines to work towards. I had words frothing at my
fingertips waiting for the seal to be released so they could flow out.
I was counting on having the luxury of time, but instead, I’m faced
with the frustration of uncertainty.


I know there are writers out there who manage to get work done with
small children at home. (I used to be one of them.) I know there are
writers who get up early each morning to write before homeschooling
their children. I know this is possible. I just don’t like it. I want
my September.


My low and high goals this month reflect the fact that school might not
start at all this month. Until the strike is resolved, every day is up
in the air.


Reasonably Low Goal: Submit four pieces to market.
Unreasonably High Goal: Submit twelve pieces, including two previously
unsubmitted stories.


Reasonably Low Goal: Send first four chapters of Things Between to beta
readers.
Unreasonably High Goal: First fifteen chapters to beta readers.


Reasonably Low Goal: Do two writing group exercises to begin generating
new material.
Unreasonably High Goal: Do all eight September exercises.

This weekend, I watched two deer move through my campsite and into the wooded area behind me tent. I saw a pair of Roosevelt elk resting on the river bank across from me. I felt the tentacles of a sea anemone and pet a starfish. I heard my son say "whoah!" in awe and wonder more times than I can count. It was a good weekend.



(more photos)

How could I forget? Two new publications in the past month:

Overboard, in The Shine Journal
and
I won Nanoism's first Twitter-fiction contest. That story is here.

At dusk, the trail through the wetlands glows with a magical light. The
morning power walkers and track teams of the afternoon are long gone,
making way for families on their post-prandial walks, couples holding
hands, children riding bicycles with training wheels. I am jogging up a
killer hill, in the company of my iPod, to a playlist that ranges from
punk to swing to gospel to honky-tonk to middle eastern techno. It
skips from era to era, from country to country, like Dr. Who in his
Tardis (perhaps with less emphasis on England, but not much—my interval
cue is the bong of a Tower clock).

I nod to a gasping older couple as I pass them, trying to ignore the
ache in my calves and thinking about the motley collection of songs
I’ve put together. It has the same problem I always encounter in my
writing. It don’t know where to land. I don’t know where to land. I
don’t know where my power lies. I don’t know how to tap into whatever
it is that lies at the core of who I am. I don't know. I don't know.

Last week, my mom visited me in Seattle. On the way home from the
airport, she pointed to the bobble-hipped Elvis who has lived on my
dashboard for the last eight years. “You like Elvis?” she asked,
incredulous.

“Of course,” I said. “Dad…” I trailed off. She didn’t need any more
explanation. My parents divorced when I was six, but she knows he gave
me Elvis in the cradle.

I’m just past the turnaround point, the fourth bong of the Tower clock,
when he makes his appearance. "Amazing Grace." I’ve hit my rhythm and
the way back is more downhill than up. I pass the couple from the hill
and nod at them again. The husband shakes his head in wonder at my
endurance, which makes me smile. I’m not much of a runner.

The woods are beautiful, but I haven’t lived here long enough and their
beauty—any beauty, really—still sends my mind racing back to the place
I came from. To the mountains and the plains. Elvis gives way to a
country song about going home. “She’s back to her cowgirl roots, back
in her cowboy boots. She’s got everything she thought she didn’t need.”

I have that farm in my blood. Just like I have the speakeasies of old
Chicago in me and, after thirteen years in Colorado, the staggering
profile of the Rocky Mountains on the western horizon too. I have the
rhythms of the doumbek in my belly. I have the screaming, pounding beat
of an angry youth in my feet.

It’s all me, I realize. My power is all of it and more. I encompass
worlds and volumes of worlds. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I hit the killer hill going the other direction and I fly.

A couple of weeks ago, I opened my mailbox to find a familiar
envelope—my name and address printed neatly in the center, a Forever
stamp in the upper right corner, and no return address in the left. The
dreaded SASE. I try to submit by email or web upload whenever possible,
but some contests and journals still only accept mailed submissions
and, inevitably, they send their rejections via slips of paper stuffed
into self-addressed, stamped envelopes. An SASE in the mail is almost
never good news.

Except this one. It contained a check. THEMA bought my story. “The
Matlin Women Can’t Resist,” a slightly creepy, surreal story will
appear in the March 2010 issue, themed Put it in your pocket, Lillian.

I’m excited because the publication of this story will represent two
aspirations achieved. I think of aspirations as different from goals.
Goals are concrete, quantifiable objectives I set for myself. Achieving
or not achieving them is generally entirely within my control.
Aspirations are hopes. They’re things I’d like to see happen and things
I can work towards, but they’re not things I have immediate control
over. This year, I aspired to publish in a print journal and to place a
story longer than flash fiction length. “The Matlin Women Can’t Resist”
just happens to be a full-length short story. And THEMA is a quarterly
print journal.

It’s going to be a long nine months before I finally have a copy in my
hands, but I can wait. Who knows what the rest of the year will bring?