Body Shop

Motel X, Cabin Y

We all know about the importance of a room of one's own.

Well, I have that- and don't get me wrong- I THANK MY LUCKY STARS FOR IT EVERY DAY- but it does little to infiltrate the boundary-less qualities of motherhood, wifehood, workhood, etc., all of which have little regard for the sturdiest of blueprints or shut doors. And since I've always been a big fan of moving (that is until I stopped completely) I do what I can to create an altogether geographically removed location of my own.

This can be hard when my time is pressed and my budget is zero, but not, thank God, impossible. This past Hannukah I received a $50 Visa card and within minutes to the day, I used it to book a motel room on West Broad. It was less than two miles from my house, so I had to plan everything I wished to accomplish with my 3 pm to 11 am getaway in the less than 6 minute drive. A whole lot of too much- is what I wanted- but I was delighted to give it a try.

I have stayed in some nice hotels in my day, quite by accident, but this one topped them all. The less than glamorous online reviews only made it all the more appealing. "Seedy" someone said. "More a place for lover's trysts than business meetings." Oh boy! Never had I been able to wake up with such an excellent view of the Auto Zone, not to mention the Waffle House where I worked my first job at 16- hired by Bubba Hicks(I sh*t you not); slinging coffee with Doris who smoked through her traech.

Also, I'd invited a girlfriend with similar hopes of accomplishing everything and nothing to join me. I figured she'd keep me on track and off, equally desirable aspirations. We met, on the dot of check-in, laptops and plentiful snacks in tow, giddy with our alone togetherness.

Amazingly, we got work done. We banged around ideas and started stories. We edited. We brainstormed. We ate and we slept. We made repeat trips to the lobby for refills of watery coffee, but that counted as exercise. And even the bad coffee was good: the high water content enabled us to drink three or four times as much. It was luxurious. It was exotic. It was productive. Of course check-out came way too soon. Luckily, I had the long, stop-light ridden two mile drive home to reflect on the thrill of my recent uninterrupted accomplishment.

And also, to begin to dream about my next getaway. No more Visa giftcards have fallen in my lap, but a small miracle has. I have been asked to Cabin Sit for a new friend while she is away for several days on business. Several Days. Several long, empty, rural, (good) coffee-filled days. I might miss the light/noise/air pollution of suburban shopping Hell, but I think I'll manage.

Cabin Y, ready or not, here I come.

short stack

I am a big fan of short fiction.

As a counselor at a creative writing summer camp, I taught a flash fiction elective I called the Daisy Duke. (Also 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover and Candle Making with Leonard Cohen. What were these kids, 12? Geez.)

In college, I wrote a series of one page stories that as a collection won some sort of prize. Really, though, the titles were more memorable than the prose, most of which I no longer have anyway. Although I struggle more with naming stuff now than I used to, here's a short list of some ancient stories I pulled out of ye-olde file, just for fun:

Little Pig
Manuel Noriega, Manuel Noriega
Friends of the Devil
Girl in Love With Life
When Angels Fight With Poison Ivy
Yellow Popcorn, Yellow Bathrooms and Dreams of Wyoming
Southern Comfort
Invisible Witches and the History of My Name
God Made the Train Tracks When He Was Sleeping
An Exodus in Drowning
The Lips of a Loose Woman
The Whore You Could Never Afford
It's Surprisingly Sweet!
A Shotgun and a Bitch
An Exodus in Drowning
Intersection
Reunion
Shrinking
Royal Suburban Girl
Trash Fire
Mutiny
Deliver Me
Love is a Vehicle Like Any Other
The Land of Milk and Honey
Table of Contents
Pretty Little Head

Nowadays, I think these titles are more valuable, to me at least, than any sort of explanation or "story" that may have followed. That's why I am also a big fan of FaceBook status updates. How I love to write just ONE SENTENCE and feel as though I've accomplished something for the day. All that could possibly follow would be dull drudgery (read: writing my book).

In the same vein, last summer I was introduced to the concept of the "6 word memoir" by my friend Anne Soffee, who has written 2 actual memoirs. That are captivating from first word to last, thank God for her, me and everyone, but not every writer is so lucky to have that much good stuff to say. 6 word memoirs, first introduced by Smith Magazine, have made a HUGE splash and I can see why. They are pithy, fun and inject a sense of accomplishment without the accompanying sense of getting chased down, wrung out and hung up like longer prose seem to do.

So naturally I've introduced 6 word memoirs to a few of the creative writing classes I'm teaching to kids at local schools. And they are....AWESOME. From "I am getting an ugly hat" to "Blastoff! Blastoff! Blastoff! Getting boring" to "Get out of my face, dummy" to "Love is my fate, yours too" to "I represent America, and cheese pizza," I am proud of these kids, and a little jealous. They don't worry about whether or not their writing is publishable, or even good, really. They just squeeze out that fresh joy of what they want to say on the page. Ta-da! There I am, in sentence form: newly practiced cursive etched out in #2 on wide-rule paper. Me.

A lesson I will learn from them.

Talk Is Cheap

My good friend Darren, a fine and many times published poet gives this advice: "Save it for the page."

My good friend Slash, a storyteller, performer, comedian and writer advises against revealing your ideas before you have actually executed them.

Sound advice, yes. Practical, wise. Advice I am guilty of betraying on a daily basis.

The other day I was at a gathering of creatives who were discussing the difference between extroverted and introverted artists. It seems clear to me that the introverted artist has the advantage. As far as actually producing ANYTHING worth a goddamn.

That is why I am considering pursuing a line of work in Talking rather than Writing.

Please, let's discuss this idea until it is a bloody pulp. Let's hash it out and grind it into the seventh layer of Hell. Let's meet at the coffee shop to talk about it until there's nothing left.

Another friend- a screenwriter and freelance writer working on her first novel-has a fantasy in which she becomes a dental hygienist who wears Victoria Sweatshirts with lots of bling. I share this fantasy with her. It is so lovely, so alluring, so...easy. So impossible.

How nice it would be to go to bed each night without the nagging, ripping feeling that there is still work to be done. Deep, hard, intense creative work. That won't let me rest until it's over and out and framed and complete. A tangled, gnarled web of thoughts and ideas that have to be expressed in just the right way. The write way. The write, elusive way that requires time and space. Not answering the phone or the door. Keeping my body pinned to the chair, my pen to the page, one lip sealed against the other.

Unfortunately, so far, I have not been to keep my own secrets. To shut it down. To quiet myself. For more than a few hours at a time, anyway. That's why I like to write short short stories. Daisy Duke stories. One page per week. One sentence per day. It's tough though, when I get a book idea. Especially a few book ideas. Ideas that sound fantastic. To talk about. To outline. To graph. Honestly, right now I have some really great chapter titles. Outstanding. Pithy. But they are lonely without their chapters. Naked. And as hard and as I try to drown them out, I can't make them shut up.

To Be or Not to Be a Memoirist (When Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction)

My name is Valley Haggard and I am writing a memoir.

There, I said it. But rest assured, that statement is offered up with a cringe, an apology and enough explanations to assure you that I'm not just like every other self-indulgent narcissist out there editing their over-wrought diary entries from high school. Except that well, I am, a little.

See, once upon a time I wrote fiction. But then weird, interesting, fascinating, tragic, life-changing things started happening to me. You know- crazy shit like falling in love, getting my heart squished, traveling around---essentially the same stuff that happened to everybody who couldn't find a good job after college. I've just never been able to shake these experiences loose when it's time to sit down to write a "story." Even if I get as far as inventing a gutsy heroine utterly unlike myself, suddenly out pops the buffalo head I saw sitting on a picnic table in Arkansas. Or the remains of Hooker, the first horse I ever rode, rotting out in a clearing in the Flat Tops Wilderness Area. Certain images have been so burned into my consciousness that they have overridden every other thing I've tried to write about for any sustained period of time. So while I dabble around the blurry lines of creative nonfiction, I have to tell the truth, ugly as it may be. I am writing a memoir.

My mother, for one, would prefer I wrote a novel. So, perhaps, would everyone else in my book who makes more than a cameo. But other than borrowing certain devices- like plot and dialogue- from the world of fiction- I just don't see what there is to be gained from changing the story. Avoiding lawsuits? Bah. What's the fun in that? Maybe my imagination jumped ship somewhere in Alaska, but I think it's more likely that I've made the full conversion to become a devoted handmaiden to the belief that Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction.

But it's not as easy as typing up my journals or scribbling down what I think you said. At this year's James River Writer's Conference one of the top New York agents said- to roughly paraphrase- that by and large memoirs fall into 2 categories: those by the already famous with huge, exciting lives that can't write for shit OR beautifully written, lyrical memoirs by nobodies about absolutely nothing at all. The trick, my friends, is to strike the balance.

In the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I love reading memoirs. It is a bit of a guilty pleasure because I always feel like I should be reading Moby Dick or Gravity's Rainbow, but please. What I haven't read (or finished reading) is an entire confession unto itself that I'll submit to Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates.

Memoirists who can ride the seesaw of a thrilling life captured by perfect words are the writers to whom I am currently offering virgin sacrifices. One such is Jeannette Walls, whose books I've gobbled up and who I would definitely select as my one allotted companion on a desert island- or Welch, West Virginia- wherever I happened to be stranded. I have had the pleasure of interviewing Jeannette at her rural Virginia farmhouse twice- once in 2006 after the publication of her international bestselling memoir, "The Glass Castle" and more recently- this past September for "Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel" about her spitfire maternal Grandma, Lily Smith. And Jeannette- one of the kindest, toughest, smartest, bravest women I've had the honor of knowing- is far from apologetic about whatever it is she chooses to write.

So, after much agonizing, I've (mostly) come to terms with the fact that I'm writing a fucking memoir. And I've managed to get one chapter smack in the middle of it, Mountain Baby, published by the Writers' Dojo out of Portland, Oregon. It is just one chapter and it is just online but please, humor me while I pretend I won a Pulitzer this year, OK? The rewards of spending so much "free time" in tortured introspective life-revisions are few and far between so I must insist on eeking out this small glory long enough to get me through the next chapter.

Subterranean Protozoa, Reincarnation & Hope

Ever since landing a repeat role as the drummer in our subdivision's Madonna cover band the summer after fourth grade, I've had a hangup around the idea of being famous. Because life is meaningless if your face isn't plastered in gloss on someone else's bedroom wall. Right?

As a more mature adult, it's been my belief in reincarnation that's helped me reconcile the fact that my name is conspicuously absent from Oprah's bestseller list. I have multiple lifetimes to achieve greatness! My soul has been pretty busy building pyramids, schlepping water in pails out of rivers and rubbing elbows with the Queen. Maybe more than that- I'm not sure- the latest Facebook quiz assures me I'm 88% gay, not big news to my husband THIS lifetime. So after receiving several lovely rejection letters from my first-ever national magazines queries (my fave came from Men's Vogue, which I didn't know existed 10 minutes before I sent them a typed up shard of my latest adventure query-style. Turns out they don't. "Sounds like a good idea, but Men's Vogue is no longer," wrote the editor), I've decided THAT article is just another chapter for the memoir. Which thus far exists 50% as a huge unwieldy mess on my hard drive, 10% in the journal that VANISHED from the face of the earth last month, 7% in my witty, comprehensive, beautifully crafted status updates that disappear into the ether of nowhere land and 33% in my repressed subconscious.

Regardless, I seek out my place on the food chain of literary fame and find myself subterranean protozoa, again and again. And then there's always this perspective offered by my good friend and the oft-published author, Eliezer Sobel last November at the Jewish Book Fair. "How's your book coming?" he asked.

"Miserably," I said. "I'll never get published."

"Well, hurry up and get published so you can be miserable AND published like the rest of us," he said.

So last week, plodding through the unsung joys of domestication peppered with a few rare and erotic moments of inspiration, I organized a panel for a local nonprofit on playwriting and screenwriting. You might say I joined the nonprofit so I could borrow someone else's budget to organize such panels, carting in my handful of wildly successful friends from around the country to the capitol of the South just so I can hear them talk.

Of course prior to the panel, I was most concerned with what to wear. After amassing a pile of unsightlys on the sagging mattress, I headed to the local Exxon to vacuum out the inch of dirt, twigs and volcanic sediment encrusting the bottom of my car before driving to the airport to pick up my good friend Bryan, creator of The Philocetes Project. Handing me change for a dollar, the curly-haired Hispanic woman behind the counter said, "Hey, I see you the last Thursday of every month!" I quickly scanned my memory for all of the various cults I attend regularly but came up blank. "You know, The Writing Show!" she said, introducing herself by way of her name plate, "HOPE." "I started going last October."

"No kidding!" I said. "I hope you can come tonight- it's gonna be a good one."

"I'll try," she said. "But it's the end of the month and there are a lot of inspections to get through."

Right then and there I felt more famous than God. Someone recognized me at the GAS STATION!! My whole attitude and outlook on life changed. When I saw Hope later that night in the front row of the audience splendid in a lavender v-neck, I gave her a huge hug and introduced her to the panel.

So for today, fame may not be what I'm after, after all. As I write this, I'm reminded that for a while there in '98, aspects of my life on the farm in Arkansas paralleled Monica Lewinski's and I never envied her press package one bit.

Gainful Unemployment

I have never had a hard time finding a job.

Of course, the kinds of jobs I've wanted have included mopping the floor at Waffle House and scrubbing other people's toilets, but still. Work has always materialized when I needed it. I have never, ever found a job through the classifieds, but just peeking makes me want to fling myself from the closest window. Because my BA in Creative Writing does not qualify me to run a group home or sell insurance or assist in brain surgery. Nor do I want to be an office administrator for the Marijuana Policy Project (this job can be YOURS if you check Craig's List today) or supervise 37 kids for $8 an hour. No, my degree qualifies me for those really special jobs that usually don't get printed in the paper. Stained Glass Maker's Assistant. Cruise ship stewardess. Dude Ranch Cabin Girl. Freelance Writer.

When I got laid off from my desk job at the local alternative weekly last September I felt- in a sad way- part of an historic movement. The downsizing of print media. The big recession of late 0-8. The first job I was ever asked to leave. Historic, yes. Convenient, no.

Because answering phones and greeting people for 20 hours a week provided me with 2 invaluable necessities. a) Health Insurance and b) the unambiguous knowledge that I had "a job." If someone said "do you have a job?" I could answer them without having to think about it. If there was an argument in my home about who was actually employed, I was above reproach. Now- even though I'm writing articles here and there and teaching an odd ball assortment of classes- I don't always know the answer to any of those questions.

Do I work? Yes. I wash the laundry and then throw it in the general direction of the dresser. I scrub the dishes. I pack my son's snack and take him to school. Then I interview dominatrixes and try to come up with witty introductory sentences to reviews of their memoirs. I check facebook and debate about what, who and when to update my status. Then I run out and teach a class across town for an hour and a half, come back, cook dinner, decide not to vacuum and put my child to bed. Does that count? Yes. But is it succinct? No. And does it provide health insurance. Hell no.

Which brings me and every other writer/artist/musician/creative type I know to the same harrowing debate. Is it worth it to risk gazillions of dollars of unpaid hospital bills in order to stay home and fulfill our life's desire by creating art? After a moment of tortured reflection, I think yes. But is it worth it to put my child at risk to stay home and create my art? This one isn't so easy. This is the question that has tortured me for the weeks and months since I have been laid off. Because at the same time that the market is saturated with thousands of people looking for work, I have been picky. I have wanted health insurance, but I haven't wanted it at the risk of a mind numbing, soul eating, blood sucking vacuous 40+ hour a week job copy writing credit card ads. (Anyone out there who does this, hats off! I admire you for your stamina and power of will! REALLY!) But the very thought makes my insides shudder and wilt. I'd rather wear rags and learn how to plant carrots in a front yard victory garden than succumb to the likes of that.

So, today, as I apply for state funded health insurance for my son, finish my article about the teenage dominatrix and revise (again) chapter 2 of my book, I will for now, quiet the inner beast that has raged with doubt and confusion. We might not be able to go out to dinner, but tonight I will revel in the luxury of staying home and eating my words.

don't read this book----yet!

So I finally have a 100% shi^&* first draft!
A friend I spoke with on the phone this morning was shocked I had accomplished the amazing feat of the terrible first draft- or any draft-- because of the nature & consistency of my complaints. That I'm getting nowhere fast. That writing sucks. That I have no discipline and just can't get it together. That nobody will agree to sit down and write my book for me.
But somehow-sometime- amidst my kvetching and canoodling I have managed to come up with some pages. Here and there. Around 150 to be inexact. They lack a consistent narrative drive, lots of threads go untied and I switch frequently between past and present tense. There are 2 or 3 paragraphs I would love to show anyone but all in all it is truly awful. At least it would be if it were a book. But it's not, it's a draft and for that reason I am THRILLED.
It was heartening last Friday night to hear Travis Holland- who just won the VCU first Novelist Award for his book, "The Archivist's Story"- say that he wrote 4 or 5 drafts before striking gold. And I'll never forget Jeannette Walls saying that she wrote the first draft of "The Glass Castle" in 5 weeks and then spent the next 5 YEARS revising it. I was in complete shock at the time and thought she must be an incredibly slow writer (yeah, somebody who covers celebrities for MSNBC would be a slow writer) and that couldn't possibly ever be the case with me. Now I'd be tickled fuscia to think that 5 years was my timeline and the NY Times bestseller list was my destination. Again and again I have to pull my mind out of the gutter of the publishing industry and the end product and whether or not Oprah will still have a book club by the time I'm 40 and just remember to concentrate on my task at hand. Writing. Another draft. Page by page.

Messages to Me with a Post Stamp from Heaven

In the last week or so I have interviewed half a dozen authors and while speaking to each one it was like in the background, behind their voice, God-or somebody- said EXCUSE ME, VALLEY- LISTEN TO THIS!! THIS PART IS FOR YOU!! I will now share experts from our esteemed panels of heavenly messengers that came down to comfort the soon-to-be-jobless woman struggling to write her first book, yours truly.

My students are worried about their profession and I say you know, this is going
to sound unrealistic, but what I wish for you is not a career or your
profession, what I wish for you is that you connect with your calling. Whether
or not you ever become famous, spend your life doing what you love, what you
feel passionate about. There's a wonderful Mayan weavers prayer that they pray
before they start, because each [blanket] is different: Grant me the patience
and the intelligence to find the true pattern. And that's part of being a
writer. Being patient and honest to the process and giving it all you've got,
again and again. Without a stopwatch in your hand. Every piece of writing wants
one more revision than you want to give it. If you love the work, that's bigger
than your own ego. Julia Alvarez, author of "How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent" and "In the Time of the Butterflies"


I think of infusing the book with emotion rather than inspiration. Inspiration seems to suggest that you’re hit with a lightning bolt and angels come out of the sky and music plays, but for me it’s much more about the hard work and putting one sentence after another and developing it and working at it. Kate Jacobs, bestselling author of the novels, "The Friday Night Knitting Club" and "Comfort Food."

I always wanted to be an artist ever since I was a kid. I was
always drawing in the margins of my school books. Eventually I did a Graphic Design course then got a job in advertising. I hated it! They didn’t like me much either – I was sacked for incompetence (hard to do a good job if you have zero interest in what you are doing). I started to do freelance illustration for some publishing companies, doing pictures for
other people’s texts, then decided to have a go at writing a story myself. It was a poem called ‘My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch’. It was published in 1983 and I’ve been writing and illustrating my own books ever since. Graeme Base, the internationally bestselling children's author of "The Watering Hole," "Animalia" and the most recent, "Enigma: A Magical Mystery"

(Sorry Matt, your picture would NOT post!)

Question: Do you start with a word or an image?
It’s almost simultaneous and I don’t mean it for it to sound mystical because it’s the
opposite of that. It’s a lot of literally stumbling through and putting
words on the paper. Stammering around and trying to determine what I want to
say, a tug at the sleeve that this is what I want to write about.....
I’m constantly grappling at whatever it is I want to say. I’m astonished
by these polished poems after a dozen drafts. I would guess I write around 100
drafts a poem, because I’m such a slow learner. It starts with 12 pages of notes
and doodles that gradually get pared down and evolves into a poem. It feels like
sailing in the dark every single time I put pen to paper for better or worse.
There are lots of periods of confusion and exhaustion. Matt Donovan, author of the poetry collection "Vellum" and winner of VCU's 2008 Larry Levis Poetry Prize.

Each of these authors is coming to Richmond in the next few weeks or months and none of the articles I've written about them have yet been published. Email me if you want to know when and where they're coming. These are just examples of the words of wisdom I have inadvertently received as I step out of the workaday world and begin to more persistently grind away at my book!

The New Desk- Empty Again?

About 2 weeks ago I finally got my own desk in the editorial department at the alternative weekly where I work. The phone has my first name and last initial programmed into its face. I have a bookshelf. That's my favorite part of the desk really- the bookshelf. Books are not an easy commodity to store if you don't have a bookshelf, so you can imagine my delight. I even tacked a photograph of my son fishing into the feaux-bulletin board that makes up the feaux-cubicle. When the publisher called me into her office last Thursday I didn't think much of it. I didn't think of the print crisis, the downed economy or the imminent and mysterious sale of our company. Why? Because I'm an optimist. I'm willfully naive. And usually I'm just too busy thinking about myself. So I was shocked that what she offered me, instead of a new freelance opportunity, was a lay-off and a severance package! This is the perfect occasion for me to admit that I have never been laid off or fired before, which some may say is a miracle held over from biblical times. I felt like such a grownup! And part of an historical movement- the downsizing of newspapers, the takeover of technology and the new millennium, etc. Just to be clear, they gave me a signed letter proving that my termination was not performance related or personal or about anybody thinking I wasn't cool enough or skinny enough or beautiful and wonderful enough or anything like that. And they want me to still freelance- perhaps more than ever. It's about not being able to pay for an extra body at the front desk. So, my feelings aren't hurt. Really, I think it's an opportunity for the universe to keep me at my word. I said I would be there for a year and it was 14 months, so God-or somebody- was like- remember what you said?? Your year is up!! Out you go!!! So, for the next two weeks I get to REALLY really cash in on some jokes like if I'm a minute late, "What are they gonna do? FIRE ME??" or if somebody asks if I want anything from CVS, I can say "YEAH! A JOB!" Ha ha. So. If you need a marvellously talented, brilliant, gorgeous new employee that you can pay a lot to work not so much (or you know someone else who does) tell them about me! Or tell me about them! Please, no waitressing positions at Waffle House. Been there, done that.

In the meantime, my dear co-worker is starting to organize a canned food drive for our family Thanksgiving- send the succotash! And now, excuse me, I have to go clean out that beautiful new desk.

Where, oh where, is my weekend away?

I am lucky enough to have a room of my own (quite a feat for a 980 sq. foot house that hosts a boy, a man, a crazy girl (me), a dog, a cat and 6 big, fat fish), but I've shared a nook with my 3 year old who has decorated as if he's a drunken painter marooned on a Mardi Gras float.

Not to mention my husband is drawn to my computer like a fly to shit. He can't help himself, God love him, the moniter is BIG and the leather chair is adjustable. And all he has is a shed, a mock-shed addition and a LA-Z-BOY in the living room that offers an endless view of Koi butt.

So. To put it mildly, I have begun to pine for some time to myself. Not an hour. Not an afternoon. Not even a day. A WEEKEND!! A WEEK!! GIVE IT TO ME!!!

OK. I've calmed down a little. But after all this time strapped into my home-work-wife-mother-worker seat like a good little girl I am bursting! Give me an itinerary, a flight time, a roomate, nasty plane food, a map, a visor, a window seat, a destination, a boarding pass!

Of course nobody on God's green earth has kept me home but me. For Chrissakes, I'm a Cancer- I've wanted to stay home the last 9 1/2 years!

But maybe something in me is finally ready to go on that silent retreat, that writer's conference, that yoga/meditation/kundalini/swamibeyondananda getaway.

I spoke with a woman on the phone today who made it sound so easy. She's gone to writer's retreats for weeks at a time-- for the last 8 years. Since her daughter was 1. And she hasn't imploded. She hasn't lost her identity with her baggage. Her husband and child still speak to her. And right now she's on tour with her book.

Maybe I'll start small. Like if there's something for 2 days. In Virginia. That's free.

If you find it, sign me up and tell me where to go.

why didn't i like the nice boys in college?

Unfortunately, my freshman year at Sarah Lawrence, I was not terribly interested in the special manner of learning that the school could provide, the extensive opportunity to be near NYC, the internships, the clubs and coalitions, the special interest groups or the opportunity for close relationships with my professors.

No. I wanted to party. I wanted sex, drugs and rock n' roll~! (Well, if Leonard Cohen counts as rock n' roll.) I didn't even know it, but the truth- or at least part of the truth, is that I was out to educate my Id. And it did my thinking for me.

I suppose that's why after taking the subway into the city to see Grace Paley it was so easy to let go of the nice boy who'd taken me out. He was studious, sincere, authentic and sweet. I was not. I was deeply invested in finding just the right guy to break my heart. Which I did.

And so, just around the time I accepted my third or fourth waitressing position post-graduation, that nice boy of yore became the Senior Fiction Editor at Viking Penguin.

And he's still nice. So nice that when I called him last year to get an interview about the state of the publishing industry in 2007, he reminisced with me as if I were nice too.

all about me

Finally there is an article all about me!

Of course, all I think about is me, so an article about me is my favorite kinda reading. Join my fan club, and read the article about me, here at Richmond.com. Oh, it's so endlessly interesting. I wish that all of my articles from now on could be all about me, too. Of course they already are-my thinly veiled view of the world- wrapped up in someone else's ideas, thoughts, words. But what I hear, how I hear it and what ends up on the paper, is of course, really just more about me- disguised as someone else.

In all seriousness, you really should read about me. I'm so fascinating. This little preview will whet your tongue and get you revved up for my book, due out in no less than 10 years, which is of course, also about me, (plus an additional 200 pages.)

First of all, I want to thank Catherine Baab, the literary figure writer-abouter at Richmond.com for recognizing my amazingness and choosing to interview me. Catherine is an excellent writer whom I first met when she won 2nd place in the Style Fiction Contest in 2006, for her story, "The Last Reader." She also recently won the Best Unpublished Manuscript Contest sponsored by Richmond Magazine for her novel, "I Love You I Get Good Grades," for which I was also a judge. No connection or relation, purely subjective coincidence, as is all good judging.

Secondly and lastly, I would like to thank my mother and my father for working so hard to make me so great. They let me fall and rise again and they handed me their faults and their blessings on a big, endless platter, over which I still have free reign.

in case you haven't heard....

......the next big thing on the literal and proverbial tips of everyone's tongues these days is open marriage. Also known as polyamory, not to be confused with polygamy.

This is a true case of having your cake and eating it too.

In the last week I've received press releases about 2 books on the subject- "Open" which is a memoir about a woman's open marriage and "Opening Up" which is more of a how-to guide, offering stragegies for such horribly difficult subjects in a 3 or 4 or 5 way such as time management! (Opening Up looks interesting, but I'm afraid the publicity dpt. missed a really great opportunity with their image. There are a mere 2 hands being held! Where are the others? Isn't that what this is all about??)

In any case, yesterday, amidst all of the editorial buzz about Jenny Block, our very own former Style freelancer having written her memoir about open marriage, I had the opportunity to interview her. It was a brief interview only because it got farrrrrr tooooooooooo interesting for me to contain in the short preview word constraints confined me to. (I will write a longer peice for the end of June after I've had a chance to actually read a few of the books I'm writing about.)

Jenny couldn't have been nicer or well, more open. But as much as I admired her and can't wait to read her book, I am equally disturbed. And this is how it should be. This is why her book is practically a bestseller before its even been published.

I mean.... MARRIAGE yall!!! I happen to have one of those myself! We are coming up (next week!) on that proverbial SEVEN YEAR.....what? Itch? Yeah.

It seems that even reading this book or even thinking these thoughts is opening Pandora's box, which ain't always a bad thing. Hell, maybe I'll give Stan the book for our anniversary. Until next time, with love.

HOT SHORTS

211 submissions.

9 readers

One Valentine Richmond History Center Garden

A fruit salad tree

3 talented 20 something-men

a few crazy people

horseradish, meat

and me


And so concludes my fourth season with the style weekly fiction contest.
We did shorts this year- short shorts, flash fiction- daisy duke style.
They were the most fun submissions to read.

To me, they are the most fun stories to write.

Perhaps most interesting however, is how strongly people reacted to the whole event.

Some people have simply never heard of flash fiction. And it made them angry. I guess it's like if we had a contest for the most efficient, modern vehicle and the guy who showed up on his horse had never heard of a car.

One fearless emailer compared this year's fiction issue to an episode of How I Met My Mother. I'm flattered because I am a fan of the surreal, and that is definitely one big fat jump off the deep end.

Other people were deeply hurt by the superlatives or perplexed by the instructions.

Welll, I guess we shook things up a bit, rocked the boat, deviated from the norm, defied expectations and created a new normal.



We can only hope for so much excitement next year.





READ (AND LISTEN TO) THE STORIES HERE

Hello Anybody and Nobody;

I haven't written on my blog in one and a half eons because I'm actually trying to write my book. And check me out, I didn't even put quotes around book this time! Between writing about Richmond's social scene for the Style display-ad department (maybe we'll dissect that irony later), taking bizarre spiritual movement classes for my Belle column, interviewing people who paint ceilings for homestyle, trying to keep track of the plots (or lack thereof) of 14 1/2 books at a time for book reviews, author interviews, vcu first novelist judging events, etc and et al, I just don't have the time I used to. Actually, I didn't used to have the time either. I just fell into time backwards and it carried me for a while.

But! Thanks to my dear friend who is 1/3 agent, 1/3 professor, 1/3 scooter riding hellion, 100% writer and all woman, I now have a plan!!

Last Sunday we sat down on her couch and broke it down.

9 manilla folders.

5 color-coded sticky note pads.

Italy,

New York,

Colorado,

1205 Hillside Avenue,

Arkansas,

road trip,

Alaska,

train ride,

1202 Hillside Avenue.

At last it is beginning to coalesce.

Maybe it is becoming what it already was.

In any case, I am looking for 2 days and a free hotel to carry it there just a little bit faster.

Work History, 16-21

installement 1

Sixteen

I think in a past life I was an Amazon warrior, but now I waitress at Waffle House. I have to wear an apron with my name embroidered on the lapel and an ugly brown bonnet, that's really a visor. I try to slip it off when Bubba, my manager, is in the back, but usually he's watching me through the one way mirror. When the phone rings I have to say “This is Valley. Thank you for calling your friendly Waffle House.” It makes me gag. Mostly I wait on dead beat dads and the widowed old people of the city who want to look at another human face after they've finished their meal.
This place never stops, but there are some dead zones, like between the lunch and dinner rush. That's when everyone gets stoned in the back. Doris smokes through her tracheotomy and yells at the rest of us to shut the hell up for staring. The job I hate most, next to mopping the bathroom, is refilling the monster sized salad dressing containers and mixing together the chunks of ketchup, relish and mayo. Thirty-five pounds of Thousand Island dressing is so wrong. To me it looks like puke, but I got in big trouble for saying that.
Sometimes Carter rides his bike over to visit me, and then I take the visor off whether Bubba is looking or not. Usually when he comes, he tells me stories about his band or the death games he's been playing in the woods with his friends. Sometimes he brings me a cup full of butterscotch chips, my favorite. Carter says to find anything worthwhile in this world, you have to go out there and get it and that he's planning on going to get his in May.
Bubba gets mad at me for talking to Carter and taking my visor off but I tell him, you don't want me to mention the back room to anyone do you? And then he shuts up. Besides, my hair will not fall in the food. It is just my best weapon against growing old and ugly in this diner that never quits.

i didn't blog because of the plagues, i swear

The 10 Plagues of the bad Blogger

1-- 194 style fiction contest entries descended on my head.

2--The rain has decomposed the literary nature of my (soil) (sole) (soul)

3--I've been trying to find the right amount of postage necessary to mail my letter to G-D

4--Instead of giving up yeast, I've given up words

5--The cat ate my keyboard (well, he did throw up near it)

6--MIT professor Dan Ariely's new book "Predictably Irrational" has forced me to write an

article about it.

7--The plague inbetween death of the first born son and boils is writer's block

8--When I took the Continuum class called "The Body as Sacred Ground" I accidentally tilled, aerated and hydrated my brain.

9--It's more fun to sit in the backyard eating Hebrew Nationals and chocolate cake.

10--My dominant hand was hidden in the couch cushions with the afikomen, but nobody found it.

Truth
Heralds

Endings

Bitchin'

Literary

Aeronautical

Critques

Kickbutt

Sink

Wrong

Answers

Never

Stories

I have been in a writer's group for nigh on four years. It is better than a baker's dozen chocolate eclairs AND a teenage boys idea of sex. It keeps me afloat when my thoughts have turned against me and are ready to attack. It is like going on a treasure hunt in a foreign land with exotic travellers every single Tuesday night (except for those long, dry spells when you thirst and ache for that clue and that map, that finally, from heaven, appear.) It is a way to restore faith after hearing on the radio about all those boys being blown to bits across the sea. It's an idea, a story, a prayer, a blessing, a window into the other worlds I didn't own 2 hours before.

vall

Exhibit A: Michael Parker

Exhibit B: Michael Parker wearing my hat!

Yes, VALL is the first 3 of the 33 letters in my name, but no, for once, it's not all about me. VALL happened at the Empire Theatre last Saturday night despite divas, demons and divorce (not really, i just had to come up with a third d). now that i am on the board of the jrw, i know more than a journalist should and despite all training of the last 4 years i shall remain mum as to the behind the scenes goings on as decency requires.

however, i will talk about the first story read, which as it so happens, was also the last story chosen. chosen at the 11th hour, as it were. under duress as it were. "Hidden Meanings, Treatment of Time, Supreme Irony and Life Experiences in the Song 'Ain't Going to Bump No More No Big Fat Woman'" about a song by Joe Tex by the author Michael Parker is a story i had read twice before hearing it performed at VALL and I was just as happy to experience it a third time. particularly as this reading/performance/night drove home for me the fact that I am quite sure I know Michael Parker. If he did in fact attend UVA and is currently a creative writing teacher with dark hair and eyes as his bio suggests, i am led to conclude that he must be the michael parker that taught me FICTION at the UVA Young Writer's Workshop in 1991 when I was 15. It must have been him! It was!

OK. thank god for my scrapbooking days but damn those circle cutters. i found a picture of michael parker wearing my hat!!! See Exhibit B! (That's me with the wild bangs in the hippie shirt, bottom left). this was a helluva rambler, but see, I had a point! I just forgot what it was! Check out his collections of short stories and novels..... "Virginia Lovers," "If You Want Me to Stay" and "Don't Make Me Stop Now." Also do yourself a favor, and read "Ain't Gonna Bump No More..." in ... well i don't what the hell it's in... i swear it was in a best of the south but go find it yourself... you'll thank me later.