Wrapped up two short stories for a writer's workshop I'm trying to get into for the summer. They weren't very long stories -- only 3,000+ words each -- but they took forever to slog through. It's not even great work. It's passeable and hopefully enough to get me in, but I know they're not what I wanted them to be. The requested word limit was 2,500 to 6,000 but my rationale was why write double the minimum for something that I may not even get in?
This is probably not the way I should think. A responsible writer would use this opportunity to work out an idea in full and submit the best story he could. Instead I wrote enough to calculate what I think will get me in and then slapped on quick endings to just be done with'em. And after submitting my application I ran around joyously like I'd just accomplished something. The small victories my friends, the invisible victories.
The workshop is six weeks long and you room and board at the location -- conveniently in San Diego this year. The program is also pretty expensive, so I'd be paying to live fifteen miles from home. Still, I'd be excited to attend what's essentially a writers camp. Our adolescent summers were jam packed with summer camps so this would be throwback territory. What kind of adult can go to something that sucks up a month and a half? The non-working that's who. I'm excited to meet my people.
NBA players must be on the phone constantly. I mean, Jeremy Lin said he talks to Yao Ming every day. And in another recent interview, Gilbert Arenas listed off who he chats with on a regular basis. It was like ten players. Add in the phone calls they have with their regular friends, old coaches, wives, girlfriends, side honeys, agents, managers, etc. and professional athletes must be on the super unlimited plan.
Where do they find the time? I guess there's a lot of time for athletes to just chill out and take a few phone calls because they are traveling so much. What I'm curious about is if they're talking about personal stuff or it's all just basketball. "Great game today man. How're you feeling about, you know, life?" Are they emotionally supporting each other in everything or do they lean on each other because only those with similar first-hand experiences can relate to their struggles? Do these guys then have a late night phone call before going to bed? "Good night Dwight, talk to you tomorrow." This is what I'd like to know about, the telephone habits of my favorite players. Someone should connect the dots and infographic out their communication network for the rest of us.
Also I learned what a "honey dip" was. Well not really. There seems to be conflicting definitions. The honey dip is either your main squeeze who is "your main chick, your ryda chick, who is with you through thick and thin." Or it's "your main chick on the side, she'll always be there but knows she ain't wifey." Someone clear this up for me. For now I'm just going with "side honey" to define the latter situation.
From an interview with John Jeremiah Sullivan in LA Review of Books: "[Slavoj Zizek] has this thing about love, the evil of love, and he says, I really don't like love, because what love says is: I pick you out from everything, and I'm going to give you special attention, meaning that everything else is denigrated, and he says there's something a little evil in that, and in the same way I think that there something a little philistine about lists."
All I care about is lists. And picking things out from everything else. What level of hell is for exclusionists?
My top five soups from Grantland's Souper Bowl bracket: ramen, tortilla soup, pho, corn chowder, minestrone. If beef noodle soup were on this list, it would replace minestrone in a heartbeat.
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