Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Christening.

Now, gentle readers, starts my nervous hand-wringings and contemptable snappishness.... if that is a word.  I have one short story that was mailed this morning, and another waiting breathlessly to be sent out, both harboring that inextinguishable desire of wanting to show a glow so formidable that when the readers at the respective lit mags lay their furtive glance upon its pages that they cannot help but run to the nearest blackboard and write, in large, swooping hand, "A+++++++++". 

I think that they are good stories.  Probably two of my favorites.  For that reason, I am setting unrealistically high goals for them, namely, getting published.  The chances are slim (I have sent them to highly selective publications) but my hopes for them are anything but.  I should hear back from the one I sent out last month within a month... and the other one about the same time.  Stay tuned for more fumings, rants, ravings, and maybe a particular shade of joy should the story get published.  It will more than likely contain size 72 helvitica at some point during that blog post, should it weasel its way past the editors and into a magazine.

I imagine this post as the glass bottle of milk or champaigne being cracked against the hull of a ship that is departing the harbor for the first time.  So come with me as I begin the slightly painful journey that is "doing this for a living."  The water is treacherous and deep, and the bottom is lined with ships that didn't make it.

-Ken

Monday, February 22, 2010

This may come as a shock to you...

I'm writing some fun stuff right now, and I think I have stumbled across what may be the most providential moment in my writing history.  It is like a precipice that propels friendship down down down and dashes it against rocks.  I think it is so perfect, it may almost be in the realm of cliche.  It's just a simple sentence, but it does several things that I think make it so great, and I wrote it yesterday, so pardon the idiosyncratic nature of this post...

Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking _______.
See?  How fucking wonderful that sentence is?  It's like a writer's madlib.  Just put in whatever, wherever when you need a big punch, and it works out great... here's some examples that I just came up with:
Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking rubber ducky. (Bert finally letting Ernie have it in their three-room flat on the lower west-side.)
Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking revolution. (What Benedict Arnold should have said to George Washington.)
Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about your motherfucking last name.  (Admittedly not as poetic, but equally as effective utturance delivered by Romeo Montague to Juliet Capulet outside her bedroom window. The phrase is changed slightly.)
Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking e-book pricing structure. (Macmillan to Amazon)
Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking rules on what constitutes "decent fiction". (Micheal Chabon against the literary fiction monsters that love to hate.)
 Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking fear of what others think about you. (Roarke to Keating in The Fountainhead.  That is essentially the Ken's Notes to the entire friggin' book, in case you were wondering.)

... and really, it all goes on from there.  Pretty heavy stuff, right?  Anyway, this wasn't too serious of an entry... but you know... you get what you get.

I have 3 followers now!  I feel like I'm heading places, Jerry!  I'm headin' all the way to the top!

That is all. 

-Ken

P.S. -- The thoughts and views shown in this blog do NOT portray the views of any other person other than the author of this blog.  Anything said here was a fictional representation and meant only to be funny.