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 One is the oldest story, written before my graduate school days, and I am kind of baffled by its continued unpublished state (I'm talking about Lifelike, for those of you who know my stories, the one about taxidermy – which is about all I can say, without scaring the rest of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.