Drama at work

Drama at work. Drama at work. What to do about all the drama at work?
I’m caught somehow.
Didn’t mean to be. Made it clear to those involved to keep me out of it.
But now somebody is crying in her office because of some Facebook note (she had to explain Facebook to me first).
Getting out my wallet [...]

Catch-up time

V, a friend from college who just won an NEA grant, will be here at 6:30, so I’ve vowed to quit the Net-surfing and revise my story from now till his arrival, and then we’re off to dinner at Rai Rai Ken and gossip.
Tomorrow, in the hours before I meet one of my lil’ writing [...]

Yellow orchids

Editorial assistant is steaming mad. Three of us, women, are in the hallway listening to her. Two men pass by at different points and say, “I smell a revolution brewing.” The first man looks like he wants to lead us; the second looks scared.
*
Editorial assistant starts crying through her rant. Her boss is impossible. Her [...]

A story’s progress

Early Sunday morning, I sat in an east-side Cosí café trying to get a handle on a fragment of a story I was preparing for my writing group. Something clicked around 2:00 p.m., when the foundation at the beginning started to gel. Then I reread the rest of the fragment to see what there was [...]

Barfly

Last night:
JF: w, please have a sip of my wine.
me: Girl, I’m Asian. It’s like, two sips and I’m done!
*
“You look like you frequent bars,” says the editor.
“Not above Twenty-third Street,” I say.
“Don’t you ever venture above Twenty-third?”
“No.”
“Me either.”
“Why do you need to go to a bar above Twenty-third Street?”
“The author insists. It’s like he [...]

Dreams in a half-hour period

A kind Richard Gere morphed into a gentle Val Kilmer. Richard/Val kissed me. What a kisser. We both had dry lips. We were both shy. I started to say to Val, “You’re like Batman,” but then let the statement trail off. Then my sister burst into the room. She had some bad news: The trees [...]

Slow, slow process

Story needs to be finished for writing group by Sunday, but it’s coming along too slowly. There are many stories within this story. How to make these narratives fit into a single story, and not have them spin out of control into their own separate stories? To focus, I’ve returned to the section that had [...]

Unintelligible chimes

I never know where to set my stories—I’m always debating between New York and Taipei—but one thing I’ve decided on lately is to be confident in writing Chinese and Chinese American characters. I don’t know how to explain it on paper, however, because for me it’s more a feeling than any cultural signifier.
I’m Chinese.
Sometimes that [...]