I've been a lax poster of late, I know, partly because my head is too full. The semester is nearly over, and I have 24 student portfolios to read, plus three honors theses and two independent studies. If any students happen to read this: no, I have not completed these tasks yet.
Actually, I've been hard at work finishing up my short story collection, Forbidden Cities, which was due c. 1000 years ago to Penguin New Zealand. I've really enjoyed writing and revising stories for this, after a long break in which I wrote very little new short fiction.
Four of the thirteen stories are unpublished. The others have all been published and/or broadcast in various forms in New Zealand and in the US, but I've substantially revised all but two of them for this collection. (Those two were just perfect, of course!) One I re-wrote in the second person, and I think it's much better now. I gave it to my advanced students to read, as we'd been discussing second person, and - as usual - it was like dropping a pebble into the eternal void. Who knows what they thought of it?
Some I restored to their original settings. "The Party" was set at a house party on Georgica Pond (on Long Island) originally; I'd moved it to New Zealand for a NZ magazine, but I never thought it worked as well. Another I moved back to England, where it belonged.
After a fairly last-minute decision to make some characters in one story investment bankers, I must give thanks and praise to my good friend SER, who answered all my annoying questions in brilliantly useful and thorough detail.
I'm still fiddling with three of the short new pieces, but I'll be finished with these soon as well. Deadline aside, I have to be: there are the portfolios mentioned above, and a doctoral thesis from another university; I'm finishing up reading and writing comments on another novelist's MS; I have to conduct and write up an interview with Emily Perkins next week and prepare for the four sessions in which I'm taking part at the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival in mid May.
There are other writing deadlines, of course: a ghostwriting project and my New Orleans YA novel. When I complete this latest ghostwriting project, it'll bring my tally for the past year to six - four novel drafts and two novel re-writes for other people. That's a hell of a lot of words.
You know, I'm thinking of sending my short story MS to my agent here. He's sure to be despondent at my insistence on being uncommercial under my own name.
The good news: I've officially passed my third-year review at Tul.ane, which means I'm off until next January. And after the festival in Auckland, I have to go down to Wellington for a reception hosted by the nice Buddle Findlay people, at which the Prime Minister will be present. The bad news: this means I have to go to Immig.ration on Monday, cap (and passport) in hand, to persuade them to allow me to leave the country. My Gr.een Card has expired, but my citizensh.ip test is still a month away. (The last time I went, I was turned away and told to come back exactly one week before I intended to travel.) Will they let me out of here?
Very much looking forward to your short story collection, Paula. And see you in Auckland! This time I won't be working so I'll just be lolling around, soaking it all up.
Posted by: Rachael King | May 02, 2008 at 01:39 AM
If you rewrote that story in the second person, shouldn't it read "you think it's much better now"? Meaning you and not me.
Maybe this is why I didn't get into the Workshop.
Posted by: Brando | May 06, 2008 at 07:51 PM