January 6th, 2010

12 sentences

Another way people of the blogosphere (do I overuse that word?) are recapping the year is by posting the first sentences from the first post of each month in 2009 together, to see if they form a narrative. Mine don’t, but it was fun for me to cruise through all my old posts and remember all those good times. Also, to realize that I write really really long sentences; gotta work on that!

12 random bits of 2009:

These 365-day units do not necessarily break off at useful points–I’m having trouble encapsulating the past year or imagining the next one because I’m in the *middle* of so many things.

So you live in an apartment for ages, get used to all the tricks of the door locks and the shower faucet, keep your shorts available during the winter because you know the heat is unpredictable, realize there is a tiny bloodstain on a floortile here or there and don’t worry about it because it’s probably yours, tape things to every available surface, install splitters on the phone jack and a power bar on the electrical jack and generally just assume that the place is your domain and you know it cold.

Saturday February 28, 2009, dawned a bit watery, but the dawn did come before 7 am (only the third day of the year that we got light before 7!) and by the time sun was fully in the sky, the flimsy cloud cover had delicately burnt off or blown away, leaving us with a ravishing yellow and blue to breakfast by. In

As you might have been able to glean from the occasion dysphoric comment here at Rose-coloured, or my eye-rolls in person, my current manuscript is not coming together as well as I’d like.

I’m reading reading reading student stories this week, and they are *good*!

This is week is one with way too much fun in it, such that of the events below, I’m only actually able to attend a couple.

Colour vapour labour odour realize analyze vapourize glamour (but glamorous) jewellery ageing cheque judgment lasagna gonnorhea etc.

I started thinking about story (and poem) submissions to literary journals when a friend said she was going to start sending some out.

Joyland Stories will soon be a part of the daily dose of aweomse that is CellStories, a site that sends cell phone and Blackberry (etc.) users a new short story every day (you can also read the stories at the link above).

Mr. Turner is an important author for me (although really also for Canada) for various reasons, not least his was one of the first literary readings I ever saw, and at said reading, the very first pornographic film I ever saw.

Reminder that Amy Jones, Kathleen Winter and I are reading tomorrow at the Drawn & Quarterly store in Montreal, 211 rue Bernard West, at 7pm.

The Advent Books blog is up and running.

RR