Uncategorized
-
The Violent Bear It Away
I make my students freewrite. I should have to freewrite. Pay the toll. I didn’t work on the novel today. I took a day off, spent about two hours drawing instead. Also grading and cleaning and dog maintenance, I didn’t ONLY draw all day, but I thought if I’m not going to get to writing…
-
River Purgatoire
The last week of my first semester, teaching for the first time since 2014. One of my students tried to guess my age. He said between 19 and 30. I said no. No no no, no. No. The semester has been good. Solid. I taught one full-semester course and two half-semester, which meant that essentially…
-
Dislocation
The boy was probably about fourteen, but he threw the ball so hard it curved. You had to read the curve. Hitting someone in the head was not allowed. He hit me in the head twice. I got to stay in, but my understanding of the rule was that he should be out. In the…
-
I Have No Enemies
Instead of watching the State of the Union address tonight, which feels irrelevant when you live in a world where “No transsexuals in the military” is something that happens at random, on the internet, I watched the new documentary on the Avett Brothers on HBO. Quick review: it’s a whole lot of watching them play…
-
Popping Bottles
After finishing the last chapter, I was able to go back to my chapter list and restructure. When the reorganization was complete, suddenly it didn’t feel like I was writing a 600-page novel anymore. It looked a lot more like 350-400. Having a finished draft by the end of the summer suddenly feels a lot…
-
Anybody Else Suddenly In the Mood For Botox?
Via Wikimedia Commons So let’s talk about this guy. On his face, I’ve never trusted him. By which I mean, I saw his face and decided he could not be trusted. Snap judgment, I know, but most of life’s judgments are snap, because we’re busy people. I’m not actively religious, I’m not in the market…
-
Mobile
Thank god for black women. I mean I know it wasn’t y’alls job to bail us out but you sure as fuck came through. This is kind of how I’ve always imagined Alabama, is a bunch of overprivileged white guys abusing their power and a bunch of black women holding everything together behind the scenes.…
-
Hear Me Out Now
Every time I write I’m writing for my life. This is a novel update. I’m on chapter 16 and the further into this next section I get, the further I get away from any definitive structure I may have imagined would exist when I planned out this section over a year ago. The plan for…
-
For Andrew
Can we talk about the guns yet? We’re 800 dead people away from the 59 dead people now. Is that enough? Can we talk now? Let’s talk about the 2nd Amendment. I need you to know the rage I feel. I’ve written on this topic for days, wanting to share all my rage with you,…
-
Stay Beautiful
I’ve been working on a few ideas for blog entries for a while. Primarily guns. Also Joel Osteen. These entries will come. For now I just need permission to post something. Anything. This is already enough, just knowing I’m going to post this, but I’ll write some more while I’m at it, I guess. I’d…
Aaron M. Fortkamp 