Lucky Charms

Today feels very lucky charms if you know what i mean. i turned in my thesis--all 220 pages of it, but it's missing section 3 and the concluding chapter that i'm gonna be working on in the next 2 months before i turn the entire novel in in late april. it's such an amazing weight off my shoulders. it's magically delicious.

And i got a copy of ink collective in the mail today, and i most def. love it. it's small, tight, beautifully produced, the art and the cartoons are great. and there's something so satisfying about seeing your name in print. sweeter than purple horse shoes and green pots of gold and sweet gray milk.

The Day I Met Dave Eggers

Today i met Dave Eggers,

And he was hella cool. the Q and A session was interesting. i asked him about the literary value of entertainment versus craft, commercial versus literary in his writing and he said that it was really important for his writing to be entertaining, that he liked contemporary writers like barthelme, david foster wallace and rick moody alot, that experimentalist do wonderful, smart things with form, but they don't have a sense of humor. . . which is often so true . . and he wanted that in his writing.

And then tonight, at the book signing, i talked to dave and valentino for maybe 5 minutes or so, i told dave how i volunteered in west africa.

--where were you in africa? Dave asked.
--burkina faso.
--oh, really?
--yeah, i said, and what's crazy is, when i moved to portland, i end up translating for this mauritanian refugee at his political asylum interview at the INS because i speak french and i'm used to the africa french accent, and it was there that i realized how powerful language can really be.
--yeah, totally, dave said.
Valentino nodded.
then i told dave how i just recently sent a story to McSweeney's and asked him if he might consider taking a look at it.
--sure, he said, i've love to. you'll want to resend it because it's already in the machine, but i'd love to take a look, especially if it's about burkina faso. just tell the editors i asked you to send it to me.
--cool, i said,
--what's your name? he asked.
--jackson bliss.
--jackson BLISS? he said incredulously.
--yeah, i said.
--okay.
--and oh valentino, i went on, i want you to know that i wrote my congressmen several years ago on behalf of darfur and he was one of the congressmen who helped passed legislation.
--the sudan act.
--yeah, that's the one, i said.
--thank you.

I shook valentino's hand, dave shook mine, jackson was very very stoked.

When i came home, i read what dave eggeres had written. In:


He Wrote:

Jackson. [picture of a strange blob] <-----Robert, IV


In:


He Wrote:

JACKSON!

so good to know you're here.

Of course, Dave Eggers is being a smart-ass and he writes random stuff like this in everyone's book, but i appreciate the evolution between the first lower case jackson with a period and the second uppercase jackson with an exclamation point. pathetic, i know, but these little things matter when you're an emerging writer. and until dave eggers and me are sharing the same stage or interviewing each other for TIN HOUSE magazine, i'll take this small little moment of writerly connection.

Sad Times in Snow Country

I submitted a short memoir about my grandmama to brevity journal. i would LOVE it if they would pick it up. it's perfect for them. and it's a homage made with so much love and adoration. it's strange, when someone you love dies, you sometimes find that you love them more once they're gone, or at least, you love them with more honesty and less restraint. only cuz you didn't really understand what they meant to you when they were alive, cuz you were blinded by routine, weighed down by baggage, cuz you were afraid of losing them, which meant losing the part of you that is part of them. but once they're gone, you don't have a choice anymore. sometimes you just love them because you're not afraid anymore. i've written about my sobo a few times. i just don't know another way to show her my love except by putting a picture of her on my altar, and using language to capture the things that have slipped through my fingers.

Slowly Finding My Rhythm

Recently, I got the standard rejections from the following journals, but what else is new?:

Chelsea--bitchhes
Bellingham review. hmph.
Greensboro review, though the editor did say he loved my piece.
Blood lotus
Bryant literary review
Iowa review

Yup, a tough day on the homefront, but it's cool. i'm working on my thesis (my nove)l right now so i'm taking a temporary hiatus from submitting, which will be good for me. i've also been working on this essay about technology. it's become pretty tight. i like it.

I Hate Rejections!

Well, it's really my own fault. i submit like crazy and so of course i get rejected like crazy, but usually, i get a few rejections letters, oh, now and then, and then i have time to build up hope, and then another rejection letter, but who cares, it's just one little guy, and then i submit again, and then a few more rejections. but i guess this week is like the week of rejections! cuz i got four more rejections today, all of them online. that's almost 10 rejections in 72 hours. what's up with that?

this sucks.

recent rejections from:

1. the miranda literary review (but a good one: your lyrical essay was creative and really interesting yadda yadda).
2. 6 little things (a nice one: fantastic imagery)
3. vestal review (your shit's too tight for our crappy review--okay, they didn't write that, i'm just fantasizing, that's all).
4. brick Magazine. (again, a good rejection: we really enjoyed reading your essay, but we just don't feel like it fits with our mag yadda yadda).

i realize and acknowledge that these rejections were, for the most part, good rejections. but on somedays, LIKE TODAY, i don't want any goddamn moral victories. i want publications, i want bragging rights, i want a longer italicized scction of my cover letter, i want name recognition, i want journal respect, i want all those stupid things i despise in the male writer's ego and i'm not going to hate myself for it, that's just how i feel today. i've been reading these journals. and admittedly, the stories in them are really good, but my shit is just as good, sometimes i think it's better. i'm sorry if that's conceited, maybe i need this unjustified scrap of writerly delusion to keep writing, but i feel like it's true.

anyway, my strategy, as always, is to submit like crazy to more journals. it's redemption time baby. sure, i'll get more rejections, but as long as the bombers are in the air, i feel like i've got as good a chance as anyone. hit me up kid.

i'm submitting to:

9th letter
sentence journal
mid-american review (x 4 flash fiction--holla!)
hayden's ferry review
bellingham review
new orleans review
alaska quarterly (since they gave me a decent rejection)
bryant literary review
epoch
harper's
tri-quarterly
santa monica review

nothing would thrill and satisfy me more than to publish the very things william rejected, and prove my publishability. i'm using this as motivation. and nothing would heal my crappy mindset than to get my first big break from a kick-ass li journal. i just don't know how long it takes for emerging writers to do this without a literary agent.

god i'd love to know what's in lynn nesbit's mind these days. if you're good at channeling other people's thoughts lynn nesbit, you really want to make jackson bliss one of your clients, he's hella talented and his work ethic is fucking sick, AND he loves:

old people, animals, children, his mom, his brother, writers (who don't reject him literary journals), japanese food, traveling, kindness, hugs, making out, thai food, a mid-grip handshake, a soy chocolate banana shake, birds, moms who love their kidz, anime.

oh well, it's worth a shot.

anyway, i'll see some of you tonight at the sparks prize reading and valerie's par-TAY, by which time i should be feeling much much better.

peace, joy, health, love to youz,

we out,

--j2b

Day of Rejections

Well, today was like the day of rejections, a conspiracy of NO's.

i got rejections from:

the AWP journal finalists. william rejected BOTH of my manuscripts, "The Great Fall" (fiction) and "Masquerade" (non-fiction), and then i got home and there were three more rejection letters from:

subtropics
tin house
alaska quarterly (though this was a good rejection: hope you'll try us again, it read).

let's recount. 5 rejections in one day. man, that's efficient, even for the publishing world.

needless to say, i'm fine with this. i mean, i don't like being rejected, no one likes being rejected, but it's william's call and i'm not personally offended or pissed off about this. he picked the manuscripts that he thought were publishable, and he never seems to think my writing fits that category. that's his opinion, and i don't agree with it, but i respect it. also, i guess what's taking off some of the edge is, i opened up one of his recommendation's he wrote for me--totally wrong and unethical of me, i know, but i did it anyway--for a fellowship i'm no longer applying for, and the letter was short but actually really flattering. i was kinda shocked. he wrote that i was one of the most gifted writers in the program in the 30 years he's been working at notre dame. somehow, knowing he feels that way about me even if he's REJECTED MY AWP STORY SUBMISSIONS TWO YEARS IN A ROW, makes things feel less shitty. of course i wonder, what does he admire if he can't find anything of mine that he thinks is publishable, is it just crude creative raw material? i guess i'll never understand that.

i'm happy for cyu and bee, though. i feel like this is a great for them. they're good writers and i'm happy that they're getting institutional endorsement, that's what they deserve. i wish them well.

my response to all of this concentrated rejection is to:

go shopping with k
laugh hysterically, and maybe watch a sappy romance flick later this week and get a good cry out of it
write this entry
eat well--that always does the trick
blitzkrieg submissions. . .


some of my fiction was recently accepted at:

SoMa literary journal, a geocentric, sanfran journal that's pretty cool, so i'm pretty stoked about that. details forthcoming.

and, today was my last fiction workshop of my MFA career! Holl!

My Critique of Critiques + My Issues with Workshop

Workshop yesterday kinda sucked cuz i thought people were being assholes to me. it sort of felt like people were getting in their last jabs or something. and i'm kinda astonished how my shit gets torn apart the most--no exaggeration--when other writers are turning in deeply flawed drafts of 30 pages stories that don't even have characters, or stories about anthropomorphic bumblee bees, or essays about being a writer (like that's never been done), and they get off easy, and this just proves to me that workshop is sort of like Nietzsche's slave revolt morality theory, and i kinda hate it to be honest. so what, because people write things that don't take any risks whatsoever, we reward that kind of calculated behavior because it doesn't provoke us in any way, it doesnt' offend us in any way. jarrett can tell me there's no STORY in my novel because he's read 4 chapters of it, but it's impossible to make that conclusion without reading my novel since the structure creates a lot of the action, and besides, there are plenty of character-based novels, look at the catcher in the fucking rye, it's a character-based story with some events, but most of them don't matter (except the merry-go-round scene + the ambiguous forehead-touching scene). so, just because i'm not insecure enough to defend my writing, or send people a 2 page explanation of what i'm trying to achieve with these two chapters doesn't constitute a lack of a story. it constitutes a work in progress that is by all common measures, unorthodox.

The other reason i'm irritated, is because many of the things workshop hated most about my writing, are the VERY THINGS that have been published.

"one love" was universally rejected by my classmates because car jackers can't have political motivations or care about social justice--which is a racist thing to say i think, but ink collective picked it up and loves it, and that's a print/web journal out of boston.

"Logograms" was torn apart by my classmates and yet The Pittsburgh Quarterly picked up an older, and much less polished version of that chapter cuz they thought it was great.

"16 love songs" was pretty much obliterated by workshop and yet valerie sayers thinks it's the the most promising and publishable short story i've written in the past year.

this leads me a few conclusions:

1. workshop doesn't help writers get published, and that is our ultimate goal, and in that way it's failing writers. it DOES help with craft, to an extent. but it hasn't helped me get published at all. it's done quite the opposite.

2. young writers don't necessarily know what's publishable because none of us have really published that much.

3. the things workshop nerds get upset about are not the things alot of readers get upset about.

4. there is a crucial difference between what a journal editor wants and what a workshop wants.

5. workshop induces writers to write safely and pre-emptively so they can avoid blood orgies at their expense.

6. the point of fiction workshop HAS TO BE helping writers become better writers, which means, making suggestions that help a writer do his thing better. and yet, so much of the criticism i've been getting is telling me to be a different writer, telling me to get rid of myself in my writing, but our self is in all our writing in some way, and second, readers don't know the writers personally and noone gets mad at salinger for using his life in his stories, or rick moody for writing about connecticut, or nabokov for writing about being a russian lit prof.

7. workshop is textual psychoanalysis, and that's fucked up.

8. workshop was made for short stories, not novels. you can't single out a few chapters and made dogmatic statements about the novel, that's like picking out a few states in the west coast and telling me your opinions on America. that's absurd.

9. i'm done with workshop and i'm so stoked about that cuz i really want to spend the rest of my time working on my novel, a novel everyone seems to criticize, and yet, a novel that several literary agents are interested in. and even if they don't pick it up, that interest is a good sign.

for all these reasons, i'm wiping my hand of fiction workshop. it has its merits for sure, but i feel like i'm over it. i'll exchange my stuff with a few perceptive bright readers, that's enough.

Delilah in Collision published in the Pittsburgh Quarterly

Recent rejections from:

kenyon review
epoch

Recent submissions to:

danforth review
new england review
north american review
nimrod
writer advice

Recent publication at:

the pittsburgh quarterly (the site looks great. i'm so happy about that).

recent--as in, just two minutes ago--acceptance at:

writer advice. it's an edited version of my response, but hey, i'll take it.

Love Affairs of Silverware

I wanna live in san francisco. i wanna live in japan too, maybe date a fabulous urban 日本人 who wears platform sneakers, boas and sparkles on her face.

workshop is too long and i think we should be allowed to take naps in our seats, or go to a vacant classroom and write poems about our life on the chalkboard. we should slip meth to william's coffee so we can get out of class at 1:00pm.

i miss the west coast hardcore. it's mad beautiful there, the cafes are outside, the ocean breathes down your neck, and the sun is always close to you. and the honies there. . . joder.

there are certain days where i feel like everyday i'm not with someone i love, or making love to her, is somehow a wasted day.

also, i have mixed feelings about staying in the US next year. part of me wants to so i can write, fine tune my novel, begin my writing career, and another part of me wants to live abroad, kick it in an expat community, explore new worlds and new cities, and write as consolation.

sometimes i like it when i feel like i can cry, it makes me feel like i'm open, unzipped, exposed to the air, a storm waiting to happen, an unlocked chakra.

today is quiet but beautiful.

::

rejections:

prairie schooner
verbsap ( a nice rejection though, as always)

submissions to:

soma lit journal
the literary review
chelsea
the colorado review

peace and love to youz,

--j2b

Only 4 More Workshops Left! Only 4 More Noodles!

I'm so stoked. i only have 4 more workshops for the rest of my MFA career. i can't explain how delighted i am about this. now some people are scratching their head, like, Jackson, isn't that sad? my god, it's not sad at all, it's the greatest thing ever. don't get me wrong, i'm totally for workshops, i think at their best they can help us become aware of our patterns, conceits, flaws and blind spots. at their worst however, they can be disastrous, they can assassinate beauty, they can become psychoanalytic gang bangs, mere pretexts to lay into people using art as an excuse. and there's an irony, at least with fiction workshops, which is that we actually spend alot more time reading other manuscripts than we do working on our own. well, some people don't do either--suckas. but for me, i put alot of time in my critiques because i want to make people's stories better, and it will be nice to be able to focus on my thesis, and my stories, and just work on that for awhile. so yeah, i'm hella stoked about this. four workshops, that's nothing. anyway, this makes me happy.

now, i need to start cranking up my novel. i'm at the 220 page mark, but nowhere near completion yet. my next character to develop is Ginger Lin, Winnie Yu's shorty. GL is my sixth and final main character in my novel. i'll tell you more about her later.

::

Today's rejections brought to you by SAMURAIKNIVES.com, when killing yourself with a thousand tiny paper cuts has to be done just right, SAMURAIKNIVES delivers. Every time.

Mcsweeney's
Double Room (well, actually, they said, wait until our next reading period. okay, fine).

Literary Journals

Here are the journals that have sent me rejections recently:

The Seattle Review
The Hudson Review
Kenyon Review

And yet, after collecting enough rejection slips to pad my entire apartment with, I feel good about my writing. Call it delusion.

Recent journals I've submitted to are:

One Story
Indiana Review
Glimmertrain
Our Stories
Double Room
Brick
Verbsap
The Missouri Review
Tin House
Ploughshares
Boulevard
Mcsweeney's online
OV Book anthology
Crazyhorse
Quarterly West
Black Warrior Review
Fiction
Iowa Review
Story Quarterly
Conjunctions

Really, these journals are out of my league. not because of talent, but because i'm lucky if readers look at more than one paragraph, but that's fine because i believe in apprentissage. and i feel like things will work out, and when they do, and when they have, i appreciate it even more.