Just contacted a small press to see if they’re hiring freelancers, and the answer is yes! Right now I am booked through August, but I hope this press will have something for me. For all of March I’d stupidly taken a break from freelance work in order to try my hand at a March writing [...]
Saturday afternoon, waiting for eye exam. Salesperson runs through contact-lens options for me, while doc, also standing behind counter, stares at me, now and then interjecting silly joke. I ignore him completely. Am not in any mood to be polite with a flirt. Something is wrong with right eye.
There’s confusion regarding my file. I’ve been [...]
Not quite news, but news-ish for me: have written a story, and am going to send it out to journals. Wrote this piece for a reading last weekend, which went surprisingly well considering humidity everybody sweated through. Truth be told, may have been because of everybody’s discomfort that I felt so much at ease that [...]
Am alarmed to be feeling so down. In some ways it makes sense—financial issues are closing in (am meeting with my new accountant on Wednesday), I want to sell my apartment but have to make minor renovations first, my stories are coming along but not being written fast enough, work at the office has piled [...]
Thursday
Had dinner with one of the writers from the Sunday writing group. We stayed till closing time. She is so lovely and positive. I’m a little in love, and I told her so.
*
The accountant asked me: “Do you travel?”
“No.”
“Never?”
I was embarrassed. “I’m visiting my brother in L.A. next month.”
“Let’s say instead that you’re going to a writers’ gathering in May—and while you’re there, hey why not see your brother?”
A writer’s accountant, this. My first.
I showed him one receipt. It was a donation (this my first too) to [...]
A dear friend from college has two children.
Another close friend from college is trying to have a baby.
My best friend from high school just had twins.
Yesterday, the young assistant said to me, “Don’t you want children? You’d make a great mother.” She said this in all sincerity.
But I’m more comfortable with the word aunt.
My biological [...]
An editor was in my office. I gently chastised him for passing on my friend’s manuscript. He felt remorse, and admitted that he couldn’t yet bear to part with the book (it’s sitting in his office at home) even though he and his boss decided in the end that we weren’t the right house for [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
I met two Donnas the other night, both vivacious and impeccably dressed.
*
G ran away from the second Donna. I think G gets nervous around women kookier than she. I’d thought they would get along just fine, but G hopped out of the cab with me, at least ten blocks away from her own stop. Donna, [...]
I got it!
More info later. Gotta give up proof that I live in New York City. Does this blog count?
On Sunday
Lunch in a popular Union Square diner. I take a seat at the bar—that is, my proofreading job and I take a seat at the bar.
The bartender says, “I remember you.”
The last time I saw him, I also sat at the bar, also with a proofreading job, only without makeup and my hair in [...]
A loud solitude occurs at one o'clock in the morning.
E-mail me: loudsolitude (at) gmail (dot) com.
Surprise me: Amazon wish list.
