"What is not started today is never finished tomorrow."

– Larry Elder

The semester's almost over. I'm putting the finishing touches on my paper for Electronic Publishing, and then I'll just have to print out my final poster designs, and mount them, for Typography. Yay! It's been an interesting semester, heavy on the publishing part of the M.F.A. degree, but I'll be glad to have some time off.

As evidenced by my previous posts, I've got lots of shows, movies, and books to watch/read during that time off, but I'm also going to be working, so that list may not be feasible. I've started a new job, so for the first time since August 2009, I'll be working full time (though it's commission-based). I'm also still working part time for O.T.S. at U.B., although I'll actually be working from home for a couple of weeks, updating the student lab assistant manual, and after that's done, I won't be working much for O.T.S. until February. Then there's the U.B. Post; I still plan on doing layout for the Post, in order to gain work experience in my field.

With all of this work going on, my career goal for 2010 is to make enough money that I'll actually end up having to pay taxes for my 2011 return. You see, I've never worked enough to have to pay; I've always gotten everything back on my tax return because I've never earned more than $7,000 in a year, which is below the limit for paying taxes. Although I'll end up losing part of my income to taxes if/when I meet this goal, at least I'll be making a living wage (and then some)! I just wish I could have found a full time job in my field; that's the next step.

"I believe that the so-called writing block is a product of some kind of disproportion between your standards and your performance...It doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it."

– William Stafford

It's not that I have writer's block, per se; I just don't have time to write anything more than what's required of me for class. At least not in November, when NaNoWriMo starts up.

For one thing, I haven't had time to come up with a novel idea. I've had a few sparks but nothing that I could write 50,000 words on. If I'm going to participate in NaNoWriMo, I want to get some significant work done on a novel. So, I'm going to have to pass on it this year; maybe next summer I'll come up with a project to do next November.

As of now, I'm taking two classes, doing work study in O.T.S. at U.B., doing layout for the school paper (for which I get paid a very small stipend), and now (hopefully) working part-time at another place. I need the money, so I'm hoping that, when I get the call sometime this week, it's good news. The woman I interviewed with seemed very optimistic that she'll hire me. She was impressed with my résumé and fascinated by the story of how I came to be in a creative writing program. If things go well, I might actually have some spending money this holiday season – and subsequently, for that matter.

Having two part-time jobs, and one volunteer/stipend job that I'm using solely for publishing experience for my résumé, is far from ideal. I'd much rather have a full-time job but, as Samantha wrote recently, can't seem to find anything in (or close to) Baltimore.

I'll stick with this for a while, but sooner or later, I'll have to go back to the drawing board and find myself a career job.

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true."

– Robert Wilensky

Okay, it isn't exactly Shakespeare, but I think I've got about everything on my writer's website that I wanted to have by the due date on Monday. Of course, I will add more in the future, but this is it for now. Here is a link to the temporary location (my free U.B. webspace); I'm going to work on transferring it to my rogermarket.com domain – and, thus, self-hosting my Wordpress blog – at some point, but that's not a priority right now. We'll see it on class on Monday, briefly, but I wanted to post the link anyway, especially for those reading this who won't be in class or aren't students at U.B.

While searching for the quote for this title, I found a few more that I loved. Here they are:

"Information on the Internet is subject to the same rules and regulations as a conversation at a bar."
– George Lundberg

"My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into private world of real creeps without having to smell them."
– Penn Jillet

"Hooked on Internet? Help is just a click away."
– Author Unknown

"The Internet is the most powerful magnifier of slack ever invented."
– Author Unknown

"You can't take something off the Internet – it's like taking pee out of a pool."
– Author Unknown

"Can you hear me now? Good."

– Verizon ad campaign

At work today, I ran across an old phone stall (not a booth but a stall) that's no longer in use, because Verizon and U.B. decided that our campus pay phones were too underutilized and that we couldn't justify keeping them.

The phone and phone book (but not its cover) were both gone from the stall, and this sight inspired me to write a rough draft of a short short, which came to 183 words. But anyway, this thing, this stall, was just so

MT

That old pay phone stall is unoccupied, these days, just a black rectangular outline that used to say “Verizon” somewhere. The plastic case that previously held a phone book now hangs empty MT. Passersby think maybe it’s all a result of Baltimore theft, but I know the truth. Of economic woes and phone line underuse but mostly technological advancements. The pay phone is extinct and out-styled; the cellular mobile phone cell phone smartphone reigns supreme.

Just last year, though, I saw this dreaded-out guy, tangling long, messy locks around bony, brown fingers and speaking casually and playfully on the phone that's not there anymore, as if unaware that oral aural conversation was going out of style.

Even then, we were headed toward this, the golden age of Twitter and texting txtng, where people actually know what SMS and MMS mean. And can’t live without them, either one.

The emptiness is upon us the MTness is upon us. Conversations of 160 characters 140 characters. And we’re so stupid; we just keep spilling nonsense.

“Bring us more, make it shorter!”

“Bring us shorter!”

“Shorter”

"Shrtr"

"The sky is falling, and Gauls everywhere go mad from options."

– "Asterix and the Battle of Algiers" by Pranav Behari

In my search for an online literary journal, I stumbled upon an excellent one called fail better. Right off the bat, I noticed the lack of capitals in the title, which annoys me, as a grammar (and consistency) enthusiast, but the contents of the journal almost make up for the missteps of the title. Almost. I'll probably never be completely comfortable with breaking the rules of language, but I suppose there are reasons out there for doing it, and I have done my fair share of rule breaking, as much as it pains me each time. But if you figure out why there are no capitals in the title of this journal, let me know, because I haven't figured that one out just yet.

Moving on, there is a wonderful interview with Aimee Bender in the latest issue, and if you've had Steve Matanle for class at U.B., you'll probably recognize some of his values in it, namely the idea of writing spontaneously—of "improvising," as Steve puts it, of not obsessing about the story for weeks on end. Just write it! Indeed, just last semester, I had Steve for Fiction (not to mention Experimental Forms), and we read a story by Bender called "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt." It was one of the most memorable stories from the class, I think, and so when I saw that there was an interview with the author, I was eager to read it.

And now I want to buy Bender's latest book, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, about a girl who has the uncanny ability to feel the emotions of the people who prepare her food (her mother's lemon cake always brings sadness). While the title of the novel is just plain awesomesauce, the story's description is captivating in a way that most mainstream fiction cannot touch, promising a novel reading experience that only Bender could provide (you see what I did there, with "novel"?). While some call her a fabulist, Publishers Weekly calls her a "spelunker of the human soul." Thus, I contend that Aimee Bender is either a fabulous fabulist or an expert spelunker because, from what I remember of "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt," and from reading about her latest novel, I'm instantly intrigued by her ability to capture the essence of being human in such a nontraditional story form. Magical realism is a tough sell, but Bender is a successful marketer.

Now I just have to decide if it's worth the space on my bookshelf to buy a new book, which is especially difficult because this one seems so promising, or if I should buy it on Kindle or some other e-book reader if/when I get one someday. But that's a whole other issue, for a different day.

Finally, one of the stories in the latest issue of fail better is called "Asterix and the Battle of Algiers," and, as a former student of French, this title grabbed me right away. I have yet to read the whole story, but I plan to do so; with an opening line as great as the one I used for the title of this blog post, how could I not finish it?

"She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her."

– Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I've never read this book in its entirety, nor have I seen any of the (probably) hundreds of movie versions of it, but I did read the first two chapters in undergrad. This is the only line I remember; I love it almost as much as Lady Gaga loves weird and Veronica Mars loves a good mystery.

And with that, I welcome you to this blog about/for literature. This totally and completely electronically published metablog was commissioned by my Electronic Publishing class at the University of Baltimore, which I attend under the banner of M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Publishing Arts.

Hi. My name is Roger, and I'm Fiction. What's your genre?