Thursday, 21 June 2001

I turned in my story for critique. There were several others, so mine has been scheduled for Monday. (We give priority to people who haven't already been critiqued this week.) I'm a bit ambivalent about this story. Usually I have a pretty good sense about whether one of my stories works or not. But this one I really don't. Maybe it's very powerful and revealing. But maybe it's just "this happens, then this happens, then this icky stuff happens, and then other things happen, the end." So, in that sense, it's a perfect workshop story. We won't workshop it while Jim is here, but he said he'd read it and talk to me about it before he leaves.

We had a short day today, only three stories. We actually broke for lunch before the stories got back from copying. I'm partly killing time by writing this journal entry, because it's raining and I don't want to go running back in the rain multiple times. Once I have the mss, I'm planning read them while I do my laundry.

A photographer from the University came and took some pictures of the group during a break between critique sessions. They're supposed to go up on the MSU Today gallery page, probably Friday or Monday.

It's Thursday, so James Patrick Kelly did a reading at Archives Books. This time I observed that the cat spells his name Mo. After the reading Amy took us all out for ice cream at Melting Moments. (She had a big wad of Melting Moments Monopoly Money.)

I have an idea for my next story. Actually, I've figured out how to put three of my ideas into one story. Nothing wrong with a good idea-dense story.