The Weekly Atticus (05/12/2018)

What Do You Need to Send Out the Door? | The Weekly Atticus

A recap of the week at Atticus Review, along with some extras.

Dear ,

It’s that time of year again. New growth pushing up through thawed soil, the numbing freeze receding into memory. Social and local media challenging you to commit to spring cleaning: out with the old, in with the new. Sort, clean, declutter, rearrange.What do you need to send out the door? If you’re like me, you’re hoarding writing in all genres and stages: dozens of files on your computer, paper drafts stashed in drawers or piled on the edges of your desk or sealed in manuscript boxes you haven’t opened since labeling them, imagining they needed to “sit awhile.” Why do you still have them? Because you might want to use that one good image in a short story…someday…possibly? Compost those useless drafts—good images and all. They’re tying you to the writer you no longer are, cluttering your path to the writer you’re becoming. What about the work that still feels alive to you, that, when you read it again, beats in your mind and heart and fingertips? Remember that the language of decluttering and the language of writing diverge in significant ways. To pitch, to send out. For writers, this is no final goodbye, but an assertion of belief in beginnings and future possibilities. If you’re like me (and God help you if you are), you’ve got a lot of that kind of work lurking in forgotten files too. When an editor recently solicited me for flash fiction, my first instinct was to apologize that I just didn’t have anything. But I didn’t reply right away. I sorted through files on my computer, stunned to discover how much almost-finished work waited there. Distracted by parenting and my wage-earning job and a turn toward creative nonfiction, I’d mentally moved elsewhere, forgetting work that didn’t deserve to be abandoned. I polished one of those pieces and sent it. Later this month it will appear in an online magazine alongside the stories and essays of others, accessible to the public…where finished work belongs. All it took was that one piece, moving on, to break the greater inertia I didn’t fully realize I’d been suffering. I’m now sorting what I have, recognizing what I can keep and work on, what I should pitch and send out, and what I need to consciously abandon.Sort, clean up, declutter, rearrange. Pitch. Send out. Submit to our Flash Fiction Contest.Time to let your writing life blossom and bear fruit again. Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.

Chauna CraigNonfiction Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

THE FIRST ANNUAL ATTICUS REVIEW FLASH CNF CONTEST!Submissions are open again after a short spring hiatus. But wait it gets better...we also have this little Creative Nonfiction contest we're running, judged by Sarah Gerard.I KNOW, RIGHT??

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FERAL TOWN by Adam Gustavson

BOOK REVIEW: COOKING, WRITING, AND OTHER PROCESSESA Review of EATS OF EDEN: A FOODOIR by Tabitha BlankenbillerReview by Rachel Wooley"...current and relevant, smart and self-aware..."READ ON

FICTION: COLD LIGHTby Kim Henderson"I expected her to turn away then, but instead she tilted her head back and squinted and her purple-stained mouth broke into a grin, the sort my mother wore when I told her that someday I was going to leave Texas and move to California to become a marine biologist/model."READ ON

POETRY: TALES AT THE EDGE OF A WHISKEY GLASSby William Harshbarger"I like the tales that often startat the edge of a whiskey glasswhere the eyes stare at some lost thing that seems to dance two miles away..."READ ON

POETRY: ELEGY FOR LIDICE, CZECHOSLOVAKIAby Pamela Anderson"Tonight / I swallow the waning / moon     where it unspools / in my belly like a // white ribbon"READ ON

CNF: INFRAREDby Morgan Coyner"Wrapped in his bedsheet on an autumn night, our bodies both emit and receive infrared waves."READ ON

FILM REVIEW: WOMEN DO NOT NEED TO “GET OVER THEMSELVES”A review of TULLY from director Jason ReitmanReview by Emily Moeck"For those of you still living in the nine-year afterglow of Juno, whose quick-witted Oscar-winning screenplay launched Diablo Cody into rare comedy-writer stardom, it might be time to put that ghost to rest. Tully is far from funny, despite the film’s strained marketing attempts to convince you otherwise."READ ON

SUPPORT ATTICUS!

When you

, at the Developer level and above, you'll get our Atticus Review Print Annual. 

You can also

.

We are funded entirely through voluntary contributions from writers and readers.