So, do I really need a Literary Agent?

I know that was your morning meditation... so I wrote about it- over here:
WRITE BY THE WATER: writers retreats



What are your thoughts?

Shopping on a Limited Memory.

I am a list maker.
Not the kind of person who needs to stand up and state her case in a room of over-caffeinated nervous people wearing polyester, but the kind of person who can be found in grocery stores across the continent clutching scraps of paper: milk, juice, tampons, frozen pizza, birthday card, gyzzopft, bananas... isn't there always ONE unintelligible thing on the list?
Did you know there is a whole website of found grocery lists?
well, there is.
and a book.
But of course. there is always a book.
Probably soon to be a movie too.
Featuring the folks that left this list in their cart. ( That might be an X-rated movie.)
I always thought it would be funny to write up a fake list and drop it by someone who would be shocked to read it.
Extra large condoms, vaseline, zucchinis, red bull
dropped next to Grandma

Hmm. Might be a whole new way to meet people.

So..Not because anyone might think my lists are x-rated, or even sensible, though I do use headers for dairy, produce, frozen and organic... shut up. But lately, I make all my lists on the Blackberry. Much harder to lose. And I never have to be cryptic.

One of the items today in the memo section for today, pre-grocery store stop was for a kid birthday gift. A tween who wanted makeup. Hello ULTA.
While shopping, I get a call from the hubby who wants expensive cologne. Ok. But not on the list, nor was the cologne for myself or the eye pencil, which the girl said, in a sort of familiar way. "This slate green will be great with your green eyes. You need to have this."
I do? Well, okay. I'll take it.
Funny thing was when I got home I found out I ALREADY had the same eye pencil. No wonder the pitch sounded so familiar. Let's just hope the hubby doesn't already have the same cologne.
i know, it's not like it goes bad or anything...


Tonight, I am going with some friends to hear my pal Jack Riggs read from his new book, The Fireman's Wife. Hopefully we can convince Jack and his cool wife to come out and have a few cocktails with us afterward. I need a good "fireman themed" drink for Jack.
THIS looks a bit too froufrou.
Seriously, what kind of fireman drinks that?

More than anything else, I believe in myself.

That's pretty much a successful life in a nutshell, isn't it?

And a good way to share some excellent news that I have been sitting on for over a week.

I won a scholarship to a prestigious summer writers workshop in NY - I've been assigned to the amazing AMY HEMPEL for the small group work, and will be able to study with many of my other fav writers, like Matthew Klam, Melissa Bank, Meg Wolitzer, here's the whole list--

Alan Alda Melissa Bank Billy Collins E.L. Doctorow Christopher Durang Jules Feiffer Ursula Hegi Amy Hempel Kaylie Jones Matthew Klam Patricia Marx

Frank McCourt Carol Muske-Dukes Marsha Norman Joyce Carol Oates David Rakoff Robert Reeves Roger Rosenblatt Garry Trudeau Derek Walcott Lou Ann Walker Hilma Wolitzer Meg Wolitzer

I KNOW. I am a very lucky girl.

In case you are not familiar with Amy's work:
The Collected Stories (2006) was one of the New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year and a finalist for the PEN-Faulkner Award. Hempel has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2000), United States Artists Fellowship (2006), an Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and an Ambassador Book Award (2007).

The best non-required reading.

TIN HOUSE.
I am a whore for this literary magazine. Every time a new one arrives I DEVOUR it. It makes me think I am not nuts. It makes me want to be a better writer. It makes me believe I am. It talks to me like a lover on a train going nowhere fast. It sinks into me and changes me and I like being liquid black and white, rubbing words over my skin and feeling uncomfortable, naked, raw.
Aldous Huxley said,
"But I don't want comfort. I want God. I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
I might be Aldous Huxley.
or maybe I am just a little writer girl who wishes she knew Miranda F. Mellis and could party with Stacey Richter.

PS. Here's TIN HOUSE story for you mouse lovers/haters out there.

Why I make lunches everyday.

Two Lists of Complaints. BY STUART ZEHNER

- - - -

1.

Complaints
My Middle-School Students

in Korea Had About Our

School's Food.

"The rice is cold."

"The kimchi is dry."

2.

Complaints
American Middle-School
Students Would Have If
They Were Served
Korean Food.

"There's an entire fish in my soup."

"The fish in my soup still has eyes."

"The fish in my soup with eyes is full of fish eggs."

"What is this?"

"They made me eat off a metal tray with chopsticks."

"I was served a vertebra."

"This salad is clearly made from the bush in the front of the school."

"I told you last week I don't like fish eggs!"

"The menu says we're having chicken anus for lunch."

"The live baby octopus you served me stuck to my throat and died."

"There wasn't any pizza."

"This is dog meat."

"It's too spicy."

"The rice is cold."

"The kimchi is dry."

Mr. Shields hoped historians would find his minutia meaningful.

Thanks to this great teacher, I am reading obituaries today.
The title above is a direct quote, as is this:
An impish, balding man, he mimicked the inventor Buckminster Fuller, who documented his life in what he called a chronofile by pasting letters, bills and all manner of pieces of paper in a huge scrapbook for 68 years. Among other things, Mr. Shields taped nasal hair into his diary for DNA study by future scientists.

This is what I call GIFT material. There is no one to piss off and no one to contradict. I can let my imagination do what it was designed to do, and give homage to the dead by lettting their character live again-- in a new body and slightly different conflicts.

this is just one of the great things I took away from a weekend writer's conference and workshop.
I have the best non-paying job ever.