writers is funny people.

looks like tuesdays are good blog days for me. i have my writing classes on tuesdays, so that makes sense--i'm all writery with the thinking tuesday evenings.

tonight the class discussed a short story by Djuna Barnes, "Ladies Almanack: July". amazing writing crammed into a two-page litany about the excesses of love and how silly/fantastical they are. i think also that lesbians were involved, but that's more of a gut thing than an aspect confirmed by academic analysis. but beautiful language; the story should be read aloud. find it, if you can. (we're using a collection of post-modern short fiction called "Innovations", edited by robert mclaughlin. i found my copy on www.amazon.com for about $.40 plus shipping.)

other events in my writing life: uhh...lots of reading this week. reading and critiquing classmates' work. which is an education, for sure. i've got a long way to go, but i've come some of the way on my own. i feel all right about it.

upcoming deadlines: three contests in the next six weeks; a recommendation letter requested by a writery cohort in the next four weeks; homework out the ass (continuous); and those countless unfinished stories that call out to me, plaintive and booty-hurt. when will i ever get to them? must harness yard squirrels for greater power generation. see? one more thing on the list.

what else? i've been writing a lot of dark fiction the last few years. almost all of my stories and some of my few attempts at poetry are dark and weird. that's how i characterize my writing when people ask. "dark and weird", i say. and they shrug, probably assuming i'm a hack. well, i don't blame them. people who write dark are clearly look to shock and appall. they're giggling behind their fingers, waiting for the reader to get to that one spot, the one with the spurting blood and scraps of gray matter, and usually tentacles or fangs, batwings flapping about. that's what we write about, right? that's the assumption, anyway.

i can't really say why i keep revisiting the same themes using the methods i do. maybe i need to keep doing it until i get it right. maybe i'm a skipping record, hoping the kiddies will spin along with me on the go-round. but it's not out of my system, yet. i may visit uplifting and flirt with joy once in a while, but there's something about the scarred that draws me in, still.

about tonight's blog title: i was thinking about people who write, about how--no matter the style or subject or goal--people who write understand each other. we work through the same puzzles, the same hurdles, have many of the same urges. i imagine it's a symbiosis common to people who pursue artistic . . . pursuits. (i me like wordings. *rolls eyes*) i'm not fluent in painting or film making or music, so i can't say. but i get goosebumpy when i'm in a room with people who write when they're talking about the writing. i restrain myself from thumping my chest and declaring us all Clan Mates Of the Order Of the Pen. barely. i mean, i don't really know these people. as much as i toodle about online with other people who write, i don't get the same physical rush. there's something to be said for carnate proximity. carnate? yep. i said it.