Cortney Bledsoe Shares

I'm something like 40 pages into the best thing I've ever written, and I feel like I could walk away and never write again. That's so not true. I am, of course, an obsessive (am I? Yes. Really? I don't know. But is that fair...? Shut up. Okay.). No ideas. No ambition. I'm just going to sit here for a moment typing out whines and then erasing them. I'll just be a sec. No more than five minutes. Okay. I'm better now.

I write because, in the words of the great Josh Chapman, I'm damaged in such a way that this is how I communicate best. Well, some of those were Josh's words. The better ones. But to what end am I communicating? It would be nice if, after, what, eight, nine years of publishing, and another, who knows, ten before that of writing, a naked, nubile young blonde would show up at my door with a bag of cash and a keylime pie. Is that too much to ask? Okay, she doesn't have to be blonde. Forgive me--I don't mean to be sexist. We all know the most important thing to me in that image is the pie. Sad sad sad. But the cash really wouldn't hurt. It would all go to student loans, but still. A nice thought.

A prof. in a writing class once asked me what my goals were for being a writer. I said I really wanted, some day, to be a mid-list writer--you know, the guy with a couple university press publications who's respected and enjoyed, but hasn't become a slave to New York? Slow and steady for me, baby. As with most of my long range plans, when shared, this was met with a glazed look. Mostly because, as an MFA student, I was supposed to be convincing myself that I was going to be the NBT (next big thing). I was going to go blow Rupert Murdoch and become the next you know, that one guy with the golf book? Or that chick who writes about vampires? And everyone would love me and respect me and realize that I am better than them. Well, that's how it seemed, anyway.

This is all my way of saying it's nice to know, from time to time, that someone is actually reading something I've written. Because that's all I'm really after. It's nice to get a little bit of cash here and there from writing too. It helps. But it's much nicer to read an editor's response when she identifies herself as a fan of mine. Or to see Glenn over at Feel Free To Read http://bibliosity.blogspot.com/ posting some of my stuff (and lots of other great writers) with visual accompaniment. He's found over 100 pieces of mine online. Thanks for that. Now, do you have any pie?

AND EARLIER:
Saturday, July 18, 2009

I came to ramble about my novel in progress, but first I have to say how blown away I am by Glenn Buttkus's photography and artwork selections on his blog Feel Free To Read http://bibliosity.blogspot.com/ It doesn't hurt that he's reposted several of my poems and stories.
Labels: Feel Free To Read

EVEN EARLIER:

Thanks for reposting so much of my work. I'm truly blown away by it. I mean that. I'm frankly surprised anyone is reading my stuff. I do have a lot of stuff online, a lot in print. One problem with online publishing is that these journals have such short lifespans. Many of the poems in Anthem, my new collection, were originally published online, but the journals no longer exist. I don't know what to say about "style" other than make ineffectual jokes. I get a stylistic or thematic idea and I follow it until it runs out of steam. Sometimes I pull certain elements from that "experiment" into later poems (like the fill-in-the-blanks from _____(Want/Need) which I still employ sometimes). I suppose this is what anyone does. I think you could probably identify 2 or 3 distinctive "styles" of mine. I have narrative, occasionally formal, poems about farming/my childhood, relationships, etc. These tend to be older poems, though I still write about these ideas/experiences. My forthcoming book, Riceland, is in this vein. I also have more surreal poems like the ones in "Goodbye to Noise". Many of these are narrative, just about unfamiliar "worlds". Sometimes, the formal experimentation overwhelms the narrative, but it's supposed to, of course. I suppose it is quite a leap to go from fill-in-the-blanks to descriptions of dressing out a cow. When I took my first workshop, everybody else was writing about the last time they went to Paris and how much they love the smell of Patchouli. I've never been to Paris, and I hate Patchouli, but I've dressed a cow.


C.L. Bledsoe

Posted over on Murder Your Darlings