I met Janet Dale in a fiction writing workshop in 2009 and we became friends and writing partners. We’ve written together, edited together, and collaborated on many pieces. We wrote a chapbook together and are currently working on another series of pieces for a collection.
Her poetry chapbook ghosts passing through came out on September 6th, and I celebrated her book birthday here. You need to grab a copy of her book! She has a fiction background, as you can tell from how we met. But she also writes CNF along with poetry, so you get a bit of everything in this chapbook.
These poems are haunting memories you grasp for and miss but can never forget. Dale relates love, loss, and memory to science, physics, and outer space. Poems include Morse code and inspiration from Buzz Aldrin and Sylvia Plath, which gives you an idea of the diversity in this volume.
– me
Read the kind words she has to say about Won’t Be By Your Sidehere.
Today’s the day! My debut chapbook, Won’t Be By Your Side, is out from Alien Buddha Press. Get your copy here and share a photo with me! Check out all these sightings in the wild…
Visit the publisher’s spotlight to read the first story in the collection. You can also listen to me read it aloud on the recorded reading. My section starts at the 53-minute mark, and I read 3 other stories.
My friend Janet Dale‘s debut poetry chapbook, ghosts passing through, is out TODAY from Alien Buddha Press. These poems are haunting memories you grasp for and miss but can never forget.
I’m honored that she created some in our shared writing workshop, and that she wanted to use a photo I took of the dilapidated Central State Hospital on our adventure 11 years ago.
Read a few poems on the Alien Buddha blog and then order a copy for yourself. Also see how her art is inspiring others, as with this amazing collage.
Sometimes I see a submissions call for works on a theme and I think, I have something like that somewhere. And I scroll through my archives and dust off something old and revise it a little bit before sending it out. Because much of my past writings are short stories that I had to push to make them hit the word count for writing workshops. It seems natural to cut them back down to the flash-length pieces I originally intended them to be.
However, something about the spring weather makes me want to tackle massive projects. So I dusted off something else, something much longer than a short story. It’s a novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo in 2010.
I’ve struggled through many years of NaNo, but this one happened pretty naturally. I’ve even revised the novel a time or two, but it was always a half-ass effort, never knowing for sure what I intended to do with it.
But the story has been sticking in my mind lately, and I decided this is the project I want to take on this spring. And since the novel is actually based on a short story, I wanted to revisit that original work to compare the two.
My dad loved this short story when I wrote it. I was in college, sure I’d be a famous author one day, cut working as a graphic designer to get through school. So I formatted the story into a book layout, designed a cover, printed it, bound it, and gave it to my dad for his birthday. (Yes, I’m cringing that I thought this was a gift.)
And I even made a barcode sticker…
Anyway, now I’m incredibly glad I did that, and that he kept it! Not long ago, I lost all my documents from 2003-2018. Now I have a hard copy of the story I can type and save in a dozen different places. (My dad also saved a few other stories I’d given him to read, so I have those too!)
I re-read the story and actually really love it. I can clearly remember when the idea came to me, but I didn’t remember how I wove the pieces together to make it work. And now, loving the original story so much, I feel invigorated to tackle the novel. And finally do something with it. So that’s where I’ll be for the foreseeable future.
“Just a Little Crush” is published in an anthology you can find HERE.
“Douglas Fir Give Me Heartburn: Exploring the Magic of Christmas Eve on Sesame Street” is published HERE.
Another one-sentence flash is forthcoming from Rejection Letters.
The last acceptance is a chapter in the Antiwrimo novel that will be published by Thirty West next year.
I wrote a hybrid chapbook with a friend and we submitted it to 7 places (included in my total numbers above). It’s still out at 2 places. We have a list of other presses to submit to in the new year.
This year I became a Priority Editor at Flash Fiction Magazine. I’ve learned so much about reading, selecting, and editing stories for publication. I’ve loved working with authors and feel just as excited to email them about publications as I am about my own acceptances. I also worked as a judge for one contest and will do that again in January. In the new year, I’m taking on new responsibilities, including leading editorial meetings and hosting their Zoom events. I love having my foot in the door of another publishing outlet, along with Split/Lip Press, which I’ve been with for a year and a half now!
In more personal writing news, I took a week-long flash workshop with Nancy Stohlman this summer and a 7-week course through SmokeLong Quarterly this fall. I’ve done a few one-off workshops too, with the likes of Kathy Fish, Tommy Dean, and Gotham Writer’s Workshop. In each course, I’ve read extensively, pushed my writing limits, and met amazing people. I’ve even started a workshop with one group, and we’re still going strong. Getting feedback from other writers and giving them mine as well has helped me grow so much as a writer.
I typically take my “new year” as birthday to birthday, but as someone who loves fresh starts and goals, I’ll follow the calendar year as well. I already made resolutions on my birthday and am well on my way to reaching them. As far as public resolutions go, I don’t have anything concrete.
I want to submit more this year, especially since I’ll be starting in January instead of April!
Hopefully that means I’ll publish more as well.
I need to work on REVISION. I have so much work that I write and then put away. I’m in two critique groups and get amazing feedback, so I need to take advantage of the help these writers are giving me and really revise my work. I like the idea of it more than the actual action…
I’d like to continue to grow in my publishing roles to really make the most of the experiences.
I’d like to write a chapbook of my own, or perhaps a novella-in-flash.
I’m already scheduled to take another workshop with Kathy Fish in January, but I might look to take more in summer or fall.
Apparently, I’m lucky to blog once a month, getting this one in just under the wire. And I’m only writing because I’ve been reading about blogs lately, like old-school blogs. Blogs you read if you were in your 20s in 2008. Blogs that connected you to others or inspired you or created friendships.
I’m someone who used diary-x and LiveJournal. I met two of my best friends through LiveJournal, and we’re still close to this day, so I’m no stranger to connecting online. Blogs did that. And I miss that. But I also understand the need to be professional, especially here, in my writing space. But if it’s my writing space…
And off I spiral.
I look at my life and can’t believe I’ve been making a living as a writer for over a year now. If you told my eight-year-old self that this was possible, I think she would have been thrilled, but skeptical. Yet here I am, still thrilled, still skeptical.
But that’s not what it’s about tonight. I’m thankful for those jobs, grateful for what they’ve given me. But tonight is about creative writing. It’s about cracking my shell and inspecting my process as it happens.
Getting an idea. Writing. Revising. Reading aloud. Revising more.
I won’t submit this piece until later, so I’m sure more revision is to come. If you told my twenty-year-old self that this was possible, she would have smirked in your face. (She hated revision.)
But I feel like I’m twenty again. I’m grateful that I don’t have a full day of college courses and work waiting for me tomorrow, but there’s something invigorating about staying up late (shhh – to a single parent, 9:45p is indeed late) and writing and focusing on creativity and forgetting about the endless To Do lists and have I cleaned but did I call and how will I manage drop off and pick up along with…
Not tonight.
I feel lucky to write and get paid for it. I feel lucky to write because ideas won’t leave me alone. I feel lucky to submit and get rejections and try again. I feel lucky to be part of creative writing workshop groups that let me read and critique great stories and give me necessary feedback on my own work. I feel lucky to read and edit other people’s writing, to send them acceptances and take part in their excitement in some small way. I feel lucky to work with an amazing press and support their fantastic team and writers and readers. I feel lucky to be so connected to the literary world while still knowing there’s so much left to explore.
All my life, I’ve wanted built-in bookshelves. It’s something I’ve dreamed of since seeing Beauty and the Beast. Except I don’t need the rolling ladder, because I’m already tall enough.
My dad is a talented carpenter. You can point to anything in my parents’ house and many things in my house asking, “Where did you get that?” and the answer is, “My dad made it.”
As I transitioned to a life working from home, I commissioned him to make a standing desk. He not only made a standing desk, but he made it so the top level was removable. I can sit or stand and work at my laptop or write by hand. I couldn’t have imagined something so good, but he threw it together with scrap wood, promising to make something better whenever I needed.
He built bookshelves for two rooms of his own house and I’ve admired them frequently. But I’ve previously lived a somewhat transient lifestyle. I moved apartments every year, moved away for grad school, then traveled for months at a time while keeping my things in a storage unit. My furniture is hand-me-downs. To date, I’ve only bought two tables, a bed (all 3 I still have), and one couch (RIP). Even though I’ve lived in my own home for years, built-in bookshelves seemed like a commitment I wasn’t ready to make.
But the pandemic changed everything. It helped me see what I valued in my life. I made a major career change. I focused on myself and my writing. And I knew that I was finally ready to commit to built-in bookshelves.
Cue wood being impossible to find and insanely expensive if you were lucky enough to spot it. (I could write an essay about me being ready to commit when it wasn’t possible, but I won’t. You’re welcome.)
However, my dad is amazing, and he kept looking. Finally, he found some wood and starting building my bookshelves. I helped as much as I could, which was mostly holding things in place, staining the wood, and aligning the shelf mounts to hold as many books as possible.
All of this to say… look at my bookshelves! And THANK YOU, DAD!
Allison Renner Writes 