Blog to Watch and WIOTD Returns!

Announcing the debut of Zombiesandcream, the new blog of my friend, colleague and local zombie guru, Robin Becker.  No, not the poet Robin Becker, the novelist and nonfiction writer, Robin Becker, whose literary zombie novel is about to take the publishing world by storm. You’ll find it on my blogroll. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did.

Wardrobe issues have been relatively subdued recently, until this morning’s conversation:

Will: I can’t wear that shirt. It’s a Yugioh shirt. I only wear Yugioh shirts on Saturdays.

Dad: But you don’t go to Yugioh tournaments on Saturdays any more. So you can wear the shirt during the week.

Will: Nope. (shakes head) Doesn’t matter. I only wear Yugioh shirts on Saturdays.

Dad, choosing his battles: Fine. Go pick out your own shirt.

Ah, the very arbitrary nature of our obsessions.

Could this be the offspring of a woman who has a “Sunday-only” coffee mug and always reads the Sunday ads starting with Walgreens and ending with Target? You decide—

May 1, the MS is in the Mail!

So I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks because of number of looming deadlines, the loomingist of which was May 1, the date to get the revised manuscript Teaching Creative Writing: A Practical Guide and Sourcebook to our editor at Fountainhead. Because we were transforming it from a basic textbook to a professional guide, we had a lot of revising to do, all of which has made it a substantially meatier book, I’m happy to say. I’m also happy to report that since Wendy Bishop’s Released Into Language: Some Options for Teaching Creative Writing went out of print ten years ago, this book is going to be the only one of its kind.

Kelly Ritter, my longtime collaborator and I, wrote it with an eye toward what would have helped us out when we just started teaching but it’s so much more than that, thanks to the editor’s suggestions, which were a ton of work but have made it a much better book.

So yesterday was the deadline, preceded, of course, by the closest thing to an all nighter I have experienced since college. But when I told the editor I was going to email it to her she asked me to send it on a jump drive instead. I could have translated that to mean, “take a little longer, I don’t need it this second.” But I wanted, I needed that book in the mail so that I could turn my attentions to all the other work and family demanding them or at least luxuriate in having one less thing to worry about. So I scrounged myself a jump drive and a padded envelope and that baby went out late yesterday afternoon! This time next week, probably earlier, it will be in her hands–and one step closer to publication.

If you can’t tell, this post is basically one big sigh of relief. Aaaah.

Bye y’all,
SV