River Styx celebrates its second annual Schlafly Beer MicroFiction contest with literature, music, and beer!  The festivities will feature readings by local fiction writers such as O. Henry Prize winner Peter Leach and Pushcart Prize winner David Schuman, a NanoFiction contest for all attendees, and music by bluegrass band The Bearded Babies. This one-of-a-kind event takes place at 7 pm on Monday, March 10th, at the Schlafly Tap Room at 2100 Locust Street in downtown St. Louis.  Admission is $5.

River Styx's annual Schlafly MicroFiction MicroBrew contest publishes the very best micro fiction story—a story 500 words or less—and gives the winner $1500 and two cases of his or her choice of Schlafly beer.  Winners and finalists of the MicroFiction contest will read from their work. 

Attendees are encouraged, at the door, to write their own NanoFiction story—a short story of 25 words or less!  The winner of this contest will receive a six-pack of Schlafly Beer.  The second prize will receive a jar of pickled okra.  Both winners, as well as other finalists, will read their NanoFiction works. 

Local bluegrass band The Bearded Babies will provide music.  With tight, four-part harmonies, their sound ranges from bluegrass standards to an occasional obscene original to traditional Irish waltzes.  Peter Leach is the author of Tales of Resistance (Texas Review Press) and his short fiction has widely been anthologized, including the O'Henry Prize anthology.  David Schuman's fiction has appeared in The Missouri Review, Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, and the 2007 Pushcart Prize anthology. He is assistant director of the writing program at Washington University and executive editor of The Land Grant College Review.

When I was a kid my maternal grandparents, whom I loved very much, moved to southern Louisiana. We went to visit them and brought home a big cactus, several feet tall, to St. Louis. My mom planted the cactus in the yard, but it didn't make it. I remember it tall and stately, impossibly spiny in the humid Missouri summer. Then the feeling of knowing it wasn't coming back, disbelief, a fallen monument.

A few years later, my grandma died and within the year, my grandpa. We went to Grandma's funeral and Grandpa hugged me tighter than I understood at the time. He wasn't my mom's dad; Grandma had married him when my mom was an adult. Mom never liked him. But he was the only grandpa I knew. I was the granddaughter. That is how I understand it now.

Their trailers, I remember two different ones, sat on sandy lots with cactus and other dry-land oddities nearby. Every time we left, Grandma tried to send us home with the things she wanted us to inherit, but Dad wouldn't let Mom rent a trailer and we already had four people in the car and there wasn't room for much. Now I have a Depression-glass pitcher with glasses, a blue tin container with a hinged lid decorated with cats, and a white planter in the shape of a cat. I don't remember what else I might have had.

Every cactus I had in college died. When I met my husband, Eric, he declared himself into cactuses and we acquired several. Only one survived. 

We didn't go to Grandpa's funeral. Dad had the flu and it was a long drive and not my decision.

Now we have a couple cactuses, one from cuttings of a cactus of my mom's and another I managed to save from Eric's cactus days. I care for them and they do okay. The thing is, once a cactus begins to go, I don't think there's much you can do to save it. So I do as little as I can and hope they survive. This approach seems to work, but I wonder if I got this idea from my parents, and if I should know better.

Part of me still believes there must be a way to save a cactus, to make the trip, to make something last forever.

Writing

I got over my inability to revise. I don't know how; I just did. So I've been revising up a storm. I have revised the story/thing (if you knew what I was going through, you'd understand, but there's NO WAY you'd want me to explain) I wrote most recently several times; I revised what may be my favorite story from the last four years; I even wrote up a plan to revise that damn collection of short stories that was mfa thesis/project. What was I so afraid of? What could possibly be bad about a process that takes something shitty to something at least a little better? I'll tell you what – it's a lot of work. The lesson I take from all this is simply that I'm not going to get anywhere doing nothing. The tiniest something is better than nothing. If that's all I can manage at one time (the tiniest something), it's better than nothing.

So, what comes after revising? That's right – submitting. There is the insane, momentary desire to share one's work with the rest of the world. I can't explain it, but it happens. To me. Always after revising, never before. Despite the time span after revision and submitting in which my work somehow becomes shitty again. Right after revising, it is as if that won't happen. It will, but somehow I convince myself it won't. I can't explain it.

Anyhow, I sent off two stories tonight, both to contests. They're both older stories. One is the oldest story, written before my graduate school days, and I am kind of baffled by its continued unpublished state (I'm talking about Lifelike, for those of you who know my stories, the one about taxidermy – which is about all I can say, without scaring the rest of you). The other is a story that went over really well at a reading, but seems to piss off people who read it on the page. How could I not send that out???

Cats

So – in other news, the basement cat, the stray we took in recently, is going to the vet Wednesday morning to be neutered and to get his shots, then he's coming back here before he goes to stay with the people who were feeding him to begin with. In the meantime, we have started feeding another stray, a gorgeous black cat with bright green eyes. We keep the bowl on our front porch, along with some water. We're planning to build a cat shelter for the strays, which will also stay on our front porch. We have the materials; we just need to build it. Our cats seem strangely uninterested in either of the other cats, although the basement cat meows all day long and the outside cat tends to sit at the window and stare in.

The overall lesson is, obviously, that if you're nice to cats, your writing will take care of itself.

I am not a cheerleader. I am not depressed. I am not what you'd call a realist or a pessimist. I'm not all that worried about what you're doing or not doing. I am not a good house keeper, I am not fond of dirt but I'm not fond of cleaning, and therein lies the problem. I am not letting any houseplants die at the moment. I am not disinterested in what my future holds, or my role in shaping my future. I am not as bad a cook as I once was. Nor am I reading as many novels as I once did. I am not interested in being the victim. I am not all that invested in my material possessions. I am not going to blame you for anything. I am not going to stop making sarcastic comments. I am not going to write unless I listen to music. I am not a meat-eater. I am not a nail-biter, but I'm married to one. I am not able to sleep through the cries of a dog who wants to go outside, or a cat who wants whatever it is cats want in the middle of the night. I am not able to ignore someone who needs help. I am not good about making or returning phone calls. I am not likely to stay up all night. I am not likely to get up early. I am not like most people, according to personality tests. I am not sure if this is good or bad. I am not a good conversationalist, even if we have a lot in common. I am not going to tell you anything else tonight.

Other places include the parking lot at a bar I used to work at, on the street, a friend's house, our neighbor's back yard and, most recently, our front porch.

The cat I found in the parking lot now lives with my parents. Bill is a Maine coon mix, an indoor-outdoor cat, furry and friendly. The cat we found on the street turned out to have a microchip, so we were able to reunite her with her owners. The cat we found at a friend's house, William, now lives with my friend Tommy in Minnesota.  William has a buddy named Harry, who came from one of my mom's friend's cat's (a stray she cares for) litter. Since we moved into this house, we found the first cat in our neighbor's backyard, meowing and looking lost, and one of my co-workers took him in, eventually passing him on to her aunt, where he's happily living as far as I know.

The latest cat is still in my basement, in the laundry room. He's separated mainly because I don't want to make our cats sick (if he happens to be sick) (and Henry gets sick easily). He's been there a couple days, so if we were going to keep him, I'd take him to the vet and start introducing him around, but we're not. The four cats we have are a lot of cats, and Lulu's the only girl, so if we get another, we're getting her a girlfriend. She hasn't liked the last three boy cats we've brought in, but she has liked girl cats who have visited.

All of our cats came from the Humane Society and rescues.

So the latest cat, whom I call "kitty" and "mister" (because we're not keeping him, and once you name him, it's all over), is not happy about the laundry room, but I don't want to let him go until he's neutered, at least. He is a stray, but one of my neighbors has been feeding him since October. She'd like to see him neutered, too, and yet another neighbor, who has a Chihuahua rescue, is going to get him done for us. It looks like kitty will be in the laundry room for another week, at least, before that can be done.

I asked Eric why it was that these cats find us. And Eric responded that the cats find everyone, but not everyone takes them in. So if he's right, then here I had been thinking I was maybe sort of special in the feline world (the cats found ME), and it turns out I am special, but in a different way (they find everyone, but I take them in). Nevertheless, I will continue to take them in when I find them. Or when they find me. Whatever.

Admit you dream. Admit that you do sometimes remember your dreams, despite your denial of the other night world. Admit that even if you honestly don't think you dream, you sometimes wake with a funny feeling that something happened, something that left you unsettled. Admit there is no rational explanation for waking with such feelings, other than dreaming.

Decide to remember your dreams. Think about remembering them before you go to sleep. This will ensure you do not remember a damn thing for nearly a week. You will sleep like a baby.

The first dream is a nightmare involving snakes. Look up snakes in a dream-dictionary. Think about not remembering your dreams.

Be unable to stop remembering your dreams. The number of remembered dreams will multiply like ghosts at a paranormal psych conference. Your dreams will wake you up in the middle of the night, enabling you to commit more dreams to memory.

Your dreams begin to haunt your waking hours. You compulsively recount your dreams to others, and they turn away. You wish you had never heard of dreams.

Read some theories of dreaming. Publicly denounce Adler, Freud, Jung and Perls. Denounce the entire field of psychology. Consider enrolling in a sleep clinic.

Read a new theory that says dreams are practice for real life. Realize you are well prepared for falls from tall buildings, snake-pit survival and half-naked forays into your place of work. Realize everyone else is prepared for the same things. Consider that maybe this explains some of the problems with the world.

Stop thinking so much about your dreams.

Remember one or two each night; only bother your loved ones with the truly exceptional nighttime escapades. But secretly, continue to wonder if the world isn't going to change in some way that will make your dreams more practical, more special. You never wanted to dream what everyone else was dreaming, after all.

2. Depending on what kind of leaf it is, you could smoke it. I do not personally know of any smokeable leaves you'd be likely to have on hand, but I know I tried to smoke every leaf I came across when I was a kid, and I turned out okay.

3. You can arrange the leaf on the lawn, as if it were lawn art. You could even glue the leaf to cardboard, so it can stand up, and then you could sort of plant it, the way my neighbors plant statues of the Virgin Mary. You could go a step further and take a concrete casting of your leaf and put that in your yard. That'd show 'em.

5. Tie the leaf to your cat's tail. Think about burlesque dancers as your cat tries to thrash the leaf to bits.

6. Stick the leaf to the window of your significant other's car. Watch him/her leave to go to work and toss the leaf onto the road. As soon as he/she is gone, recover the leaf. Do it again. And again. And again. Let me know how it goes.

7. Try to pass the leaf off as currency at the 7-Eleven. Pretend to be as surprised as the cashier at what you've done. Shame, shame, shame.

8. Carry the leaf around with you like it was the baby and you were in one of those classes meant to scare you out of having kids until you are too old to conceive and must have treatments. Get up in the middle of the night to tend to your leaf. Let others know how your leaf is doing. Let them know you are taking good, good care of your leaf.

9. Put up "Missing Leaf" signs all around your neighborhood. Trace the leaf onto the paper, so it looks legit.

10. Carry your leaf up to the top floor of the building. Let your leaf lead the way back down.

(I know you want to hear about the chicken, the meth lab and the flamboyant black man, but this blog is pretty much writing-related. If you are not a writer, it may annoy you. Also, if I have not returned your phone calls or answered your messages and you find out this is how I spend my time (obsessing over writing-life details), you may be annoyed, even if you are a writer. Finally, this blog is not that funny, so don't feel like you should read it even if you aren't a writer and aren't annoyed just for the humor. Not that I think I'm funny or anything; I'm just saying. On the other hand, I kind of need help with something, and help often comes from unexpected sources. So please read anyhow.)

Someone in my writing group would rather revise than write.  I'd rather do anything other than revise, especially write. Even when I believe I have valuable feedback and revision could drastically change my work's chances for success, I am reluctant. I approach revision in the same way I approach housekeeping. If you've ever surprised me at home, you know what this means. And I hate to say it, but I'm better about cleaning than I am about revising.  I do not want to revise.

Yet my resistance is not because I think my first drafts kick ass. I would scoff at anyone who said they believed that about his or her work. We all need to revise. I really, really need to revise. For the typos alone, but that is really the least of it. My best stories are heavily revised. I will probably read this blog five times over before I post it, and that's good enough, for a blog. If I wanted to be scoffed at, I could submit my blog to my writing group. They'd have all kinds of suggestions (probably including "stop blogging"), and no matter how much I agreed with them, I would drag my feet on making changes. You'd never read this. It would sit in a file on my desk with all the others, waiting for me to get my shit together and revise already.

I think this is related to the idea/follow-through problem I have in the rest of my life. I have a million ideas. Right now. Things I could do, we could do, you could do. Things that would make the world better, make our lives easier, or at least more interesting --  if we could do them. But you better not count on me. It's as if stating my idea out-loud makes it so. And then I can move on. No follow-through, I think is what they call that.

Writing a draft is like putting an idea out there: what if the world were like this? What if someone did this, and then this happened? What if, what if, what if??? 

And what if the results need some tweaking? Well, I've got another idea…

So I have a lot of first drafts, and not a lot of revised, polished pieces. I do, however, diligently seek out feedback, so I have a lot of critiques and comments I have yet to incorporate into the original. I have yet to revise. It is exhausting to even think about.

If you know what I can do about this, please let me know. Is there some little piece of information out there that will make me appreciate, preferably not dread, or at least attempt revising? Something I can read? Anything?

(In case you were wondering, then yes, I wrote this blog instead of revising.)