Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Flashing and Blushing

My story Piercing Heat was accepted by Night Train! It was rejected by one of the Canadian print literary magazines, and after that it took me a while to submit it again. So even if it has been almost three years since I wrote it, it hasn't travelled much. I remember writing this flash, the moments of its creation. I remember thinking that it was an odd one. We just arrived to Iqaluit, the computers weren't even unpacked yet. I sat at the dining room table, in the furnished, but otherwise empty house, writing on my husband's legal pad. The truck with the hundreds of our boxes would be delayed for weeks, and the house felt bright, spacious, and not fully "ours" yet. I rarely hand write my stories. One story that comes to mind is Yevdokiya's New Name, published by the now defunct BuzzWords. The energy of the handwritten stories is different, I think. They end up being my favourite. Yet not every story is suitable for the medium. I love the fast typing and deleting and the conveniences of the computer.

I have a bad habit of submitting previously polished stories without rereading them. I reread this story just now, and wowza, it has the words "vagina" and "penis" right in the first paragraph. Though as I just told my friend Stacy, the story is not, I repeat, NOT, about sex. It is much more subtle than that. Despite its rather graphic beginning, It is about mysterious and gentle connections.

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