I'm back! Finally!

Nearing the end of the second week of classes. Of course, it isn't a full week for me because of the King holiday and I had jury duty on Tuesday. That was interesting...sort of. It took half a day to decide to choose someone else. Oh well, that's the system. I wish I had had more time to actually watch the trial. Stuff like that is interesting to me. And I often find good examples to use in class.

Arts Expo meeting today. Things seem to be moving along. Looking forward to the events, though it will be hectic. Look forward to meeting Walt McDonald in particular. Have been reading one of his book, available online. Hope that come payday I can buy a couple of his most recent.

Trying to get back into a more regular mode of submitting work for publication. Realized today that I have missed the deadlines for most of the book and chapbook contests I wanted to enter. Must be more diligent.

Last weekend, I did manage to finish revising "Except The Weather," the story the pretty much ruined my summer writing. I had revised and edited it before, but the disc that had the most recent version had been damaged. Now, I have to see if I can find a magazine for a story that is some 8,300 words long. Also did some editing on four other short stories. This feels pretty good. I figure that if I have five to ten decent stories that I can keep busy submitting, then I am in good shape. I'd like to get at least that many essays as well.

My thought is that I should have these twenty pieces and a few dozen poems that I can regularly submit. That way I will feel less pressure on that end, I presume, and perhaps spend more of my writing time on a novel. I hope that works. Everytime I think I've carved out time for writing, I get distracted (and sometimes distract myself).

Anyway, I feel pretty good that I have got these going. Now comes the work of finding places for them.

That's all for now.

Have a set of papers to do and syllabi to write. Yee hah!

Thinking of Raymond Carver and listening to ProjecKt Two...a little Space Groove. The two are not necessarily connected. Thinking about how he said somewhere that he wrote short stories because domestic life did not allow him the time to write long pieces.

Gray day here. Looks like winter.

Read something interesting the other day: "While a satisfied justice is an unavoidable event, a satisfied revenge is an eternal impossibility" (George MacDonald). Something to think about, world.


Been reading Paterson. So far, okay. Wish I could spend more time each day reading.

Well, stuff to do.

Last week of Wintermester starts tomorrow. Reporting week at the same time. Getting ready to lose sleep.

Trying to decide whether I should try an e-book route with a couple of things.

Got furniture installed in my office right before Christmas. Now I have to organize the dang office.

Hoping I can get an hour each day to write and maybe a few minutes on the weekends to blog.

Gonna get back to the game now.

Making changes to the website (again!). Have pretty much decided that I just don't have the time to continue updating it with new work, particularly when I am not sure when I will have material worth reading. Also, I have noted that a number of publications consider posting to a personal website as a previous publication. That would certainly hurt my chances for other publication.

Today is Alexandria's birthday. Happy day, sweet potato!

Students in Wintermester class taking Midterm today. I am enjoying the class, but very much look forward to some time off. Hope to take a few walks.

The Michael Neal Morris Webpage
Just working on this...ignore...sure do need to change this site and to blog. Blah Blah...
Have deleted reading blog...will bring it back when I get a chance.

Man, it's been too long. And here I am with changes to make to the website...again. But I'm too tired and have too much to do. Argh!

My short story "I've Been Killed Before" has finally been officially published in The GW Review. My contributor's copy arrived today. That is a bit exciting, mostly because I have not published as much prose as I would like. Of course, to keep me humble I suppose, a rejection slip also came in the mail this afternoon. Life, perhaps, isn't so bad.

Classes are going pretty well so far. I really like my students Some minor administrative problems (bookstore not having enough books, clamg SRC="BagpipeLessons.com.GIF" BORDER=0 HEIGHT=72 WIDTH=400 ALT=BagpipeLessons.com>




Back to BagpipeLessons.com

Back at school and having a grand old time! Lots of little things making things difficult, but it is nice to be back with students again after the long summer. (Of course the heat has stayed!)

Good news! Three poems have been accepted for publication. I think all three are for online zines, which is exciting because that's a bit new for me.

Haven't written too much lately. Have made changes to the site. I have decided it would be best to keep samples of published work and only a handful of new pieces. I have set myself a goal to write at least five new poems, one new story, and one new essay to post on the site. How that will work with the novel, I don't know. Perhaps I've set my sights too high. For the moment, I don't care.

In other news, I'm trying to my ailing car fixed. God's grace has kept it going. Recently received some unexpected funds that will help this along (Praise Jesus and thank you Granddad!)

Well, better go. Enjoy the day!

Well, I finished the story finally. It is, for now, called "Except the Weather" and is just over 22 pages long. Yikes. I have not posted it to the website because it is really really rough and because I may hate it. Perhaps I'm just a bit prejudiced because it took so much of my time. Also, it dredged up some memories (not in the story itself) that have made me pause to think.

So then I didn't really feel like writing for a couple of days and whined about it in my journal. Then last night, I started making some notes for the e-book I wanted to write about writing (this for my students). I realized that I had been putting that off and that I'll be back in school in less than a month. I'm am looking to put together a short (hopefully) book that is part how-to, part encouragement, part my philosophy about the art and importance of writing. Many of the "chapters" will be made up of handouts and presentation materials I've already done for my class. Anyway, I had hoped to have something put together for my students when classes began, so I could put it on the class webpages and refer to it through out the semester. Today I wrote about five pages on it. I worked on an introduction, a chapter about the general practice of reading and writing and part of a chapter about active reading. It is all draft stuff, really rough, but it felt good to get it out.

The good news is that I also wrote over 700 words on the novel, finishing the eighth chapter. I was beginning to feel that I might not get back to it. I even jotted a couple notes about the next couple chapters. Now, if I can only get back to a regular schedule!

But alas! Tomorrow we go to Six Flags for the twins' birthday. But I'm not going to be discouraged, at least not today.

I have been a having a bit of frustration writing lately. I probably have written more this summer than last, but I just am not where I want to be. I was writing each morning on the new novel, but got sidetracked. Sadly, much of the writing was by hand and I still need to type it in. But somewhere in the middle, perhaps because I was getting stuck on the novel, I started working on a short story. This dang thing should have been drafted in a day or two, but I'm still on the tenth page and haven't finished the draft. So I'm a bit crazy trying to get it done.

Have been writing a lot by hand and typing it in later. This is good, as I said before, for revision, but is lousy for time.

Speaking of time, I need to get back to it.

Well, it has been over a month since my last blog. We finally have a computer at home and so I am hoping I can be more productive. Have written most days, but much has been my hand. The means I have to type in what I write. That has been great for revision, but tough on the carpel tunnel.

Have been working mostly on a new novel. I'm in chapter eight of the draft, but have run into some snags. Things were steady but very slow for a couple of days and I ran into the some conflicts with my writing schedule. So I haven't really been back to the thing for several days. In the interim -- and I suspect this is a problem -- I decided to write a short story based on what my family calls "The alligator story." Thought I could whip out a draft in an afternoon, but the problems with the hands made it very difficult. Now I have typed what I had done by hand and I'm up about the ninth page, but have still not gotten to the alligator itself. I suspect I will have to take a great deal of time to revise this story.

I did revise a story and it should be posted to the site pretty soon. (Tried to update the site today, but only managed to upload the darn thing.) It is called "The Box" for now. I really think it should have another title, but so far nothing. My wife likes the title. The story is one of several I want to write about my Wilson Bell character during the time before my novel about him is set.

Have been trying to be very aggressive about submitting work for publication. Last week I probably sent, either via email or regular post, a couple dozen poems and several stories and essays. Got news today three haiku of mine are now on the web at Emoments. That's pretty exciting in that it really is a first to me (though a haiku sequence of mine --not all that good-- was published several years ago) and I like the stuff I've read on this site.

Well, better go for now. Peace. "He who will not work shall not eat" (Saint Paul to the Thessalonians).

Last week, I finished up Maymester and now I'm home (mostly), trying to write each morning. So far this week, I have been able to reach my goal of at least 1,000 words per day. I've started drafting a novel, a mystery.

Just posted three new poems to the website: "Shock," "Abandon," and "Cottonwood Beetles."

Trying to do some reading (see A Circle of Readers weblog). Hopefully will crank out a publishable essay or two before too long.

This morning, I left the apartment without my bag and so the reports I needed to return to my students are still in the living room, as is the disk I saved my school work on and the ones with my most recent writing. Great socks!

Yesterday, I submitted five poems to one place and a short story to another. Did this online. Wonder when this will be standard. Realized while doing this, that I haven't done the work of submitting work in quite some times. A couple years ago, I made it my new year's resolution to submit something at least once a week. But I've obviously fallen off. Maybe I should amend that to once a day.

Got a nice email the other day from GW Review saying they have accepted my story "I've Been Killed Before" pending a few "close edits." They had about eight cuts they wanted to make. All but one, I felt, made the story much better, and the other didn't hurt the story, so I was quite thrilled. I wrote back immediately to say YES YES YES and THANKS SO MUCH. Still waiting for the reply.

This morning toyed with the idea of collecting poems (and maybe stories) that I wrote before graduate school and putting them in a chapbook to be submitted. I looked through some dusty contributor's copies and found seven pieces that didn't suck so much that I would be ashamed to see them in print again. Certainly (if I can find the notebooks and disks that I saved them on/in), I would be able to find maybe ten or so more that might make a nice small collection. Probably should do the same with pieces written during grad school, but I'm still trying to find a home for them and may end up using some in a longer book. Either way, I'll likely make a pdf file of what I have and post it on the site for the world to ignore.

Crapburger! The blog I just wrote disappeared when I posted it. Now I have to do it all over again. Oh well, practice makes less than imperfect.

Okay, I changed my mind. I went ahead and posted the poems. They need, perhaps a bit of work, and I would like to add some photos to some of them, but here they are:
"On Violence"
"To an unseen bird"
Chill
Enjoy!

Finally! I am (almost) caught up with grading. Has been a bit hectic, especially with the carpel tunel and having to write many of the responses by hand before typing them. Well, hectic isn't the word. Slow is. But going okay.

Have written three poems lately. Struggled with the sonnet, so I wrote a fifteen line poem with twelve syllable lines last Wednesday mostly during Alex's soccer practice. The tentative title is "Chill." Thursday or so I wrote a much freer piece, so far entitled "To an unseen bird." Some time (can't remember when) I finished a draft of the sonnet, right now called "On Violence." I probably should post these, but I think I would like to work on them a bit more. If nothing happens in a week or so, I may post them to the website.

Am looking forward to writing more this summer. I'm almost too anxious about it, worried that I won't be able to after all the planning.

Realized that two works, "Missing" and "Singing Each to Each," that were published in last year's The Alternative have been published on the Internet. I need to update this link on my publications page. For now, readers can link here.

Not a very productive weekend. Had to miss my doctor's appointment Friday, and then just couldn't get much going. I suppose I'm tired from the long week.

I did work on a sonnet. Wrote nine lines, eight I am happy with. Think I may want to write mostly sonnets for awhile.

Listening to King Crimson's new disc. Not sure what I think yet.

My writing is too fragmented these days. Need to be more disciplined about it. Do it at particular time or times of the day. Have noticed that just when I try to impose a sense of order on life (particularly writing, reading, prayer, exercise), something or someone gets in the way and I have to change the plans. This should not upset me, but it usually does. One of the keys to success in life is that one be flexible. But order is also important.

Have been thinking of a series of essays and prose poems that might take advantage of this fragmentation. Just getting down the time to write...sigh. Why complain? I often waste the time I have to do just that.

"Guess we'll repeat the chorus" (King Crimson).

...ok. I have written a couple of haiku and a poem called "Love/Work/War". Yesterday jotted a few lines the could be the lyric for a song. Something about guilt and cutting off hands and all. Who knows what will come of that?

Now, I have to wear splints at night for the carpal (sp?) tunnel. That's with the C-PAP machine. I probably look like some kind of creature all hooked up. Have to get home. More in the morning I hope.

Well, I haven't done too much writing lately. Maybe I've been too busy catching up with grading papers and tests and whatnot (It's always the whatnot that gets in the way.). I suppose I've jotted down a thing or two. Have to check....