My Table of Contents mock-up for Writ in Water with fictional authors and titles. I’m excited to report my Editorial Board has reached the point where I can fill these slots with actual submissions, but I’m sad I have to lose these placeholders.
Tag: Blogging
My little brother made this (what is this color? shiraz? faded rosewood? stale wine? crushed beet?) sketch of me. Follow his Instagram here.
Rejection Letters from 2016
In the interest of clearing out my Rejects Page (which is in the menu above) to leave space for a new slew of letters, I’m posting my prose and poetry rejections before 2017. Consider it much needed spring cleaning.
Read if you’re in need of emotional support— the kind that only a little schadenfreude can provide.
Unfortunately due to time constraints we had to cut this from my wedding
OFFICIANT
[Version A] I asked Desmond and Julie when they first knew that they were in love. Des said the first time she farted in front of him, or in other words, at first-smell. Julie said that “the first time I told him that I loved him, I knew right then that it was a lie, but I needed the money.”
[Version B] I asked Desmond and Julie when they first knew that they were in love. Des said, “when I first laid eyes on her Dad.” Julie just stared enigmatically into the distance and said, “Soon.”
Unfortunately due to time constraints we had to cut this from my wedding
OFFICIANT
“Before we begin the ceremony, I would like to begin with a passage from the Bible because I think it elucidates the relationship between Desmond and Julie accurately. This is from 2 Kings 2:23-24: ‘From there Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy.” Elisha turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.’ Des, Julie, you two are like those bears in the woods. Whatever the Lord calls on you to do, you do it, and you do it together.”
Define Man in Two Words
That’s the challenge I posed to my Humanities course. I made it clear that I was using the gender-neutral variety of “man” (meaning I wouldn’t accept a “cheating pig”), that I wanted to avoid unrewarding labels like “Homo sapien” and “human being,” and that I preferred an adjective paired to a noun, or a genus and specific difference.
Think, I said over confused glances. What makes man different from every other living and non-living thing?
Their answers were wonderful.
Desmond Write has style
I commissioned my friend Phil Kiner (check out his Behance, Twitter, and Instagram) to make an official business card for Desmond, Write.
Originally, I was thinking the card should feature the California Flag Bear made of the night-sky, like this:
It was elegant (that’s Phil’s mock-up), but Phil pushed me to find a design that better represented my personality. Something writerly, sophisticated, sloppy. Finally, we envisioned what would become the final result: a bespectacled bear eating ink like Winnie the Pooh and spilling it everywhere. It was my spirit animal. It was me.
And when Phil sent me the final proof, I was not disappointed.
The Front
The Back
If you’re looking for a professional graphic designer or an artist-in-general, Phil should be your go-to guy. Phil’s currently accepting commissions and can be contacted at pbkiner@gmail.com.
Don’t be a crap hatch. Do it.
First post about Writ in Water
This past week I opened the submission period for Houston Baptist University’s debut literary journal Writ in Water. The submission period started on the 8th of November (i.e. on the same day as the US Presidential Election), will conclude on the 8th of February, 2017, and the journal will be published digitally on May 1st. Writ will be accepting short stories and poetry, and although the publication is affiliated with a Christian college, the submissions will not have to be religious in nature. Instead, Writ’s editorial board is seeking literature that combines good writing and the human experience.
Writ is the result of months of deliberate planning and meetings, but I have wanted to start a literary journal for a long time – since childhood, in fact, when I first read an issue of The New Yorker and wondered about the lives of editors-in-chief. When I began working as the Writing Coordinator of HBU’s Academic Success Center, I realized that my life goal could also benefit the college community, especially its emerging writers and artists. The Success Center, after all, doesn’t only serve struggling students with their grades – success comes in a variety of forms, including publication.
The Academic Success Center and HBU Administration were very supportive of the journal. My conflict was naming the thing. Trouvaille, which is French for a lucky find or discovery by chance, was considered, along with Numinous, a word that means a strong spiritual moment or the presence of divinity. But Writ in Water had three aspects which won out in the end:
Aspect One) On Mount Sinai, as recounted in the book of Exodus, Moses received two tablets of covenant law. These Laws were God-writ and therefore eternal. From this we have derived the idiom “nothing is written in stone” to signify that nothing else is permanent, perpetual, or predictable.
Aspect Two) The phrase “writ in water” comes from John Keats’ deathbed request to not include his name on his gravestone. Instead, the young feverish poet who “foresaw his death with brutal clarity” wanted only the mysterious line: “Here lies One Whose Name was Writ in Water.”
Aspect Three) The Bible, too, has a context for water, as God’s Word, as God’s Intervention, as the Holy Spirit. Isaiah 44:3 says that God will “pour out water on the thirsty lands and streams;” Corinthians 12:13 that “we were all baptized into one body… we were all made to drink of one Spirit;” and Jesus says in John 3:5 that “no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” Appropriate metaphors for a Baptist institution.
From these wells I draw my inspiration.
Reference
Stacey, Michelle. “Writ in Water: The enduring mystery of Keats’s last words.” The Paris Review, 23 February 2016.
Six Word Memoirs
Every year, I have my students introduce themselves by writing and sharing six-word memoirs. The guidelines are simple. An evocative, original story in six words. These memoirs don’t have to be a narrative, but they must be biographical and significant. With my students’ permission, I publish them anonymously in SMITH Magazine’s Six Words on a profile that’s slowly becoming a catalog of high school woes. Here are a few of my favorites:
Always super hungry. Always super eating.
Die laughing at your own dying.
Caring but still no one cares.
Dreams go up. Rain comes down.
Always stressed and never well dressed.
So many achievements, so little recognition.
Daydreaming to find my future endeavors.
First day of school, have homework.
My mind – brighter than my future.
Napping and I’m not even sleepy.
School today takes my life away.
I have wasted perfectly good wrists.
I won “most nihilistic outlook.”
They probably just had an extra trophy.
Life is meaningless.
Desmond, Write 