writing in progress

unsure if this is interesting to anyone but me but i felt emboldened by thinking about the transparency in publishing talk recently to write something like this. envisioning this as part one of two parts, one about work in-prep and my plans/goals/work done for them, and another about previously published stuff and insider details and thoughts on it, both in terms of mags and book presses. this is the first part, about what i'm working on or have worked on but have not published, might not ever publish, etc., which is dumb because i have only published one book, of barn poems, which was ~60 pages, whereas all of this stuff totals like ~400 pages maybe, or something.

the writing i am working on

1. i have roughly put together a collection of flash/short stories. my working title has been Today is Totally Fucked but in trying to pitch it i've moved to calling it Everything is Totally Fine. it is currently ~60 stories, ~24k words. some stories are only a sentence or two, some are as long as ~2k words. some of the stories have been on Hobart, X-Ray, and Maudlin House and the Neutral Spaces blog, although everything pulled from there has since been very reworked. the genesis for the project was, originally, a plan giacomo and i had about starting a bear parade-style website that would only do dual/collaborative ebook things. i wrote ~6 stories and he wrote ~8 poems, something like that, that complement each other well, and he coded it up so it'd look really nice. he's since repurposed those poems for Chainsaw Poems and Other Poems and i've rewritten my stories in some drastic ways for this collection.

a few weeks ago i emailed a pitch for the collection (and an excerpt) to yuka at soft skull via her catapult email, based on richard chiem doing the same thing, which he said in an interview on either other ppl or zero point fiction, for King of Joy. i feel like it will be ignored for three reasons: 1) i'm a nobody, 2) the stories aren't good, 3) soft skull has, as of march, stated they only accept agent-submitted pitches for fiction. i have also dm'd gian at tyrant books to 'shoot my shot' and see if he wanted to read it, and he responded favorably and asked me to email it to him, which i did, but haven't heard back yet (i don't know the typical timeframe for any of this), and i have low/zero expectations. i queried an agent i found listed on a blog who said he responds to all queries, saying that i simply needed help pitching to soft skull and/or melville house, and that otherwise didn't want/need any other agent-like help, but he responded (quickly) saying he doesn't represent fiction anymore. clash has expressed interest based on twitter interactions and me asking leza if they'd be interested in seeing it as well, although christoph edits the fiction for clash, and he may not like it.

i don't currently care about getting this book, which feels like my 'best' current project, on any other presses besides these 4. even though i like several presses, i don't feel a desire to move 'laterally' from clash to a similarly small press, which feels like something a lot of people do, but i don't see much purpose in it, personally. i have vague thoughts about liking it when an author stays on the same press for multiple books, in the way that bands do this on record labels, and to work toward a more clear aesthetic/expectation/working relationship between author and press - this could be another blog post i think. anyway, i feel 90% certain it will come out on clash in the next year or two, and i hope that they don't feel bad about me trying to pitch tyrant and soft skull, or for assuming they'd even want to publish it, but i feel like this is normal, writers trying to move onto bigger presses that invest more in galleys/reviews/etc. anyway. these stories are very much in the vein of bear parade stuff but i diverge in certain, and i think, important ways, although i have a fear that this influence will be too 'obvious' and people will view them as imitative and derivative of this style. similar to how i felt self-conscious about people thinking the barn poems were 'stupid', i feel like people will think these are similarly 'stupid', or maybe worse, both stupid and derivative.

2. some of the stories cut form the above collection i think, maybe, will be reserved and rewritten for another Untitled collection that will be tonally distinct from TiTF/EiTF and more internally consistent. i currently have 3-4 of these stories, and one, about a mattress, is about ~7k words and i feel like needs to keep growing. another one won an award hosted by mythic picnic, because it was published on wigleaf, and they sent me $150, which i donated to the Minneapolis Freedom Fund (this was, i think, maybe, the only time i've 'accepted' payment for writing, aside from a smaller version of this same prize...or something...for the same story). sam pink dm'd me to compliment a version of one of the sections i had posted on the neutral spaces blog, but i think he only read it because he logged on to post his own story or poem, but it was still nice to hear that he liked it. other people have complemented the 'no future' story on wigleaf in private correspondence. i haven't spent much time 'compiling' this collection, mostly on writing/fleshing out stories which i think will be a part of it, so far.

3. i have a document i am calling Normal Stories which consists of generally longer, sadder, more boringly literary fiction stories, most of which have been published on, for example, soft cartel. a few of the stories have not been published. i like them but am struggling with what they mean in terms of my voice/brand/whatever. i will most likely not do anything with this collection.

4. i sent jenn from x-ray a ~12k word story called Bobby DiGiorno will Fucking Die based on a sort of solicitation for a vague idea about starting a print or ebook-only (?) press for manuscripts about this length. this reads confusingly - i wrote it, then sent it, because of its length. jenn has put it into a google doc with suggested edits i haven't looked at in a few weeks but seemed fine/good/minimal when i first looked. it is about pizza brand-sponsored lifestyle icons acting as sort of like the face of/machinations behind the ruling class in the near future. it has a bunch of silly shit in it and i like it, i think it's a fun story. cavin has read a couple iterations of it. i just remembered that i sent it to ben devos at apocolypse party as well, who declined to pursue it, citing a stylistic shift in the press, which is reasonable. at the time, on sending it to him, and still now, i felt/feel conflicted about whether i want it to be a book at all, but i think it's maybe important to just make books instead of otherthinking this.

5. to celebrate/promote giacomo's book on ghost city press this year, i wrote Chainsaw Blurbs and Other Blurbs, as an homage, also, to his book of blurbs for my book. i like the idea of us writing books of blurbs for each other. i really like the longer pieces i wrote for it, or repurposed from other older writing, especially. it will be limited to 50 copies. we haven't announced it yet, though, so, haha. whatever. i think people will like it. it's 50 blurbs, about ~8k words.

6. i am collaborating with giacomo on a long-form poem. the google doc is currently titled POEM. it is a stylistically rigid, intentionally ambiguous stream of consciousness that loosely centers around being in heaven and thinking about celebrities. it is currently ~6,666 words. i think it is funny and insightful and we are both enthusiastic about it. we've had some pretty extensive discussions concerning the poem and how it relates to, comments on, or conveys sexual relationships, gender, and celebrities, in the process of writing and editing it. giacomo is very thoughtful and a good person. collaborating on it has been fun and invigorating. here are two lines from it: "Thinking about an octopus while rinsing Bill Gates’ underwear in the sink / Thinking about an octopus doing laundry in the sink because Alexis Bledel’s washing machine is broken"

7. i have been compiling and writing more small poems. i kind of want to do an old-school digital chap kind of thing with them, maybe get other people to make similar ones and make a site for them all. i also wrote something like 75 more barn poems as part of a fundraiser for bail funds a few weeks ago. it was very taxing but i feel good about maybe 50 of them, as barn poems. unsure what i'll do with any of them.

8. i have two abandoned/whatever novels called Yarn (~65k words) and Give Up (~50k words). Yarn was basically the first thing i wrote, before everything else here, and i'm not sure how to describe it. it is vaguely 'normal' in terms of literary fiction and 'higher stakes' ideas like death/birth/power. it is sort of 'mysterious' and uses lots of made up words and explores themes of cognition from a philosophical/linguistics perspective and how societies are, or could be, eventually, structured. it tracks different perspectives and i employ a lot of different voices/narrative conventions and i focused a lot on sort of complex, strange phrasing and avoiding/pre-empting idiomatic cliches. it was inspired by the snippet of out of the world that knausgaard included in book 5 of my struggle, the scene of firefighters looking at a burning building. cavin has read a draft of it and thinks it should can be easily finished and that it should be published but i'm less sure. in my head i feel like it has 'big debut novel energy.

excerpts from Give Up have been on sleazemag/derelict lit and the neutral spaces blog. it is about a grad school dropout / in-school suspension supervisor mostly feeling depressed and eating junk food, thinking existentially and thinking about existentialism, and dealing with a dead father/sense of home/place/purpose while living in the midwest. it was very much inspired by lars iyer's spurious novels. it was basically the second thing i wrote. i've sent versions of it to some people but i think only no glykon and nick farriella read/skimmed it. nick had good feedback using fancy mfa terms and no glykon complemented the internality of it, i think. i submitted an early version of it to a metatron contest and tried querying one agent about it. i feel a sense of regret/idiocy about both of those things, in retrospect. for a long time i felt optimistic about it, about publishing it, about being critically acclaimed, etc. but have since considered it more or less abandoned in a way that feels freeing. i briefly considered completely rewriting it into a long-form narrative sequel to 50 Barn Poems, which i would call 50 Barn Poems 2, but i don't have the energy for this, i don't think.