::Publication in Hawai'i Review::

Yesterday I received two copies of Hawai'i Review Issue 74 in mail. Yes, my contributors' copies. I held them in my hand, sniffed through them, and then looked through the TOC. There it was--my name in print and my poem. My work has not been published in many print journals, so this was an incredible feeling. There is something so tangible and ephemeral at the same time in holding a book, feeling its material presence, and then realizing that I, too, played a part--however small it might be--in bringing it into being.

I read my published poem after getting out of work. Some imageries sounded cool! As if someone else had written them. But there were also things I would like to change. For example, some line-breaks. There are places in the poem where I need to strive for more clarity. So, what I realized was that, even if a journal publishes a poem, it doesn't mean that it is "final." What it means is that, at a certain point in my life, I thought this poem was completed. I had sent it out in the world. It found a home, but that does not mean that the poem itself has to remain unchanged. And once it changes, it will also have to look for a new home. The book, or something a little bit lengthier than 8 pages in a journal. I grow as a human being and a writer every day. My poems and stories also grow with me.

By the way, the name of the poem is "bildungsroman." Read it!

Revising the Phelna Story

I started revising a short story after a while. I have had it sitting there for a while, then I turned it in for the Spring workshop, and then felt like revising it based on the feedback I got from the class. Besides, it will also help break my fiction lull. I have very modest aims--to put in 4-6 pages every week of this workshop. That is, roughly a page a day. Right now, other than the teaching philosophy, that's all I can deal with. I am definitely leading a very wordy life.

Revision/Writing

I am afraid of revisions. And being a slow person, who takes ages to process things, it's always hard for me to digest any feedback quickly and then jump right on to the revisions. That's why, this week will be interesting. I am trying to revise the first chapter of a novella for a writing workshop I am in right now. The whole thing developed out of a 2,500 word short story I wrote last year. So, when I enrolled for the workshop, I was thinking more in terms of revising this short-story, and making it into a more complete piece. I realized during the revision process, that this is the first prose/fiction piece I have written which is not realist. I guess, if I have to categorize it, it will fall somewhere between speculative, revisionist-mythical and fantastic. But then, once I turned in the short story, I realized, especially after receiving the initial round of feedback, that the material I have put out there within that 4,111 word long narrative, would need a slightly longer treatment. More fleshing out, more research, more exploration. So, now I am hooked into this process of writing a novella (yes yes along with a dissertation), and right now, revising the first chapter of it. As I said, I take a huge amount of time to revise, to make sense of things in a more organic, personalized way and to churn out materials which are halfway coherent. So, I don't know what am I going to do within a week! But I am finding this process exciting, as I am sitting in a window seat inside a cafe at Austin and reading a draft of the chapter, sipping on this weird beast called chai. I plan to write a little bit before I leave, maybe 500 words or so. So, let's see how that goes.