I finished Draft 0 of a story today, a story about a cup of spoiled milk. I think it’s called When my father left my mother. Tesfa found a cup of spoiled milk in our house once, and brought it up to show us, while we had guests over. Those guests haven’t ever visited again I’m fairly sure.
I wanted to write twelve stories this year. I think I’ve written nine. Plus faerie story work. So maybe that’s not too bad. I came into the year in a distance-ed creative writing course that was not working for me, and I pulled through, which is better than I might have done.
It might only be eight stories though. I should go count.
In 2015, I’m trying to plan. I’m going to do a conclusive proofread of the faerie story. I think it’s the first of a pair or a trio or a dodecalogy. But I will proof it and test it (i.e. read it to Tesfa) and maybe start sending it around to YA publishers.
With my nine/eight new stories, I will make a book, adding in a few of the older ones that aren’t too MFA-y. I had some interest last year from a publisher, but I didn’t follow up very well, so I’ll more more proactive in 2015. I know short story collections aren’t a big sell, but maybe I can make a poetry book of rejection letters or a mural or something.
I’m going to read Finnegan’s Wake. I have established I will do this by not caring about understanding it. I will read it phonetically, the same way I can read Russian phonetically (I know the Cyrillic alphabet) but only understand maybe one word in twenty. I think Finnegan’s Wake will be like that. Considering I couldn’t get through Ulysses, Dubliners, or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I am likely engaging on a fool’s errand. But I will read ten pages a day. My copy is six hundred pages, so it shouldn’t take too long. Then I will read the Bible. Then I will read the Quran, which is meant to be read aloud, and in Arabic, but I will read it anyway. And the Bible I will read is the New Jerusalem, because I have a copy, and unlike most Bible’s I’ve found, the pages are regular book pages, not that thin tissue paper nonsense that rips and you can see the words straight through the other side.
So that’s 2015, big books and sending things out to publishers. Also saving money for an overseas trip. And I think I should make some more friends. So if you want to be my friend or have an idea where I should go on holiday, feel free to let me know.