50, I was a PC, slow torture, etc.

Wow. So um... today I decided for the heck of it, I'd check and see how my little piece is faring in the Flash Fiction 40 contest, since it closes tomorrow and such.

I'm in the top 50. Well, okay... #50 to be exact. Which isn't exactly winning, but my little fic placing 50 out of 280 is kind of a sobering, humbling thought.

So I am kind of excited. If you haven't dropped by to check it out yet, there's still a day left to nudge me one way or the other. :) Check out my last post for more on that.

(UPDATE! Just checked again *coughnotobsessedcough*... and I've moved up to #36? What?! *freakout*)

***

I would post a screenshot to prove it, but I haven't learned how to do that on a Mac yet. Yep! This is my first blog post as an ex-PC. I finally decided to indulge my quarter-life crisis and buy that MacBook I've been pining for about a year. She's quite lovely... just need to put the little Apple sticker on the car and make it official. <3

Of course, this joy came after the initial heart attack of pushing the confirm order and watching my bank account dip. Happy Birthday to me.

***

On reading: I feel like I should blurb a bit about what I'm reading now and then... because writers read and like to talk about what they read and such. So what am I reading?

Um... New Moon. Yes, that one. I finally caved to the phenom.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the whole Twilight series. Like, I kind of enjoyed the first book. Perhaps being stuck in bed for a week with some evil virus and under the influence of cold medication affected it, but for all the sappy teen angst, I kind of liked it. Just skim over the flowery love speeches. Oh, and ignore the fact that Edward even one-ups Mary Poppins for being "practically perfect in every way." (I just about threw it across the room when he started playing piano. "Noooo! You cannot be smart, athletic, devastatingly handsome, chivalrous, and Mozart!")

But this? Let's just say Bella's "zomg raw edges hole in my heart oh Edward emoemo wahhh!" monologues are getting really old. Really. I have never wanted to punch a fictional character in the face so bad.

And I don't know why I'm blogging about this, other than (1) to sort out my bizarre love/hate relationship with this series in cyberspace,  and (2) because my sister is sick of hearing me rant about it. :D

Next on the list: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby. Because... I have no idea. It's about an English dude that owns a record store.

Yay libraries, for expanding my literary world for free!

This is a shameless plug.

So... I entered a writing contest.

*stress*

Thanks to the wonderful network of writerly folk I've been immersing myself in on Twitter, I found the Editor Unleashed blog by Maria Schneider. And what d'ya know, they're hosting a flash fiction contest!

I could give all the details and stuff, but really, you can find that here. The short version is this: Flash Fiction 40 is a flash fiction (1000 words or less) contest, I wrote a little drabble for it, and I'm kind of hoping that maybe you'd go read it over and give me a rating. :) 40 selected winners will be published in The Editor Unleashed/Smashwords Flash Fiction 40 Anthology... and that's kind of a big deal.

Then again, the chance to get my work out there and read by a bunch of people (eek!) is kind of a bigger deal. But being published would be pretty sweet too.

The catch is you have to be a member of the Editor Unleashed forum to vote. Registration if free, so if you're down with that, here's how it works:

1) Register with Editor Unleashed forums
2) Go here (my thread) and read the story
3) Click the rating arrow, choose 1 - 5 stars (honestly. Hey, I know it's not a 5 star piece. And votes are anonymous, so no worries if you think the story sucks and I know where you live. ;))
4) Consider yourself Jen-hugged-and-high-fived for helping. Yay! <3

The popular vote/member rating period ends on June 26th. After the contest is done, I'll toss it up here on the blog for posterity, since it's floating around on the Interwebs anyway.

Thanks in advance to anybody that helps me out by voting!

Hello again.

They say you shouldn't apologize for the lack of blogging, but just suck it up and start posting again, and try to force yourself to get on a schedule. They say to pick a coherent theme that you (and other people) are passionate about, because you're going to have to write a lot about whatever it is if you want your stuff read. They say...

Oh, who the heck are "they" anyway? I suppose I should just pretend I did not take the past two-ish months off and go back to doing what I do. Whatever that is.

Um yeah. Hi. :)

At any rate, little breaks are nice, but I'm feeling the writing deprivation, especially since the creative writing class is done and life has become unexpectedly hurried and exhausting. Twitter's nice, but sometimes 140-characters-or-less Random Dispatches from Jen's Head just don't cut it.

I don't know what I'm rambling about at this point, so here's something I am passionate about... books! On a friend of a friend's earnest recommendation, I picked up Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry at the library. Beautiful book... the kind that has taken almost six weeks to read, not because it's boring, but because it's the kind of book you really have to dwell in and savor. (Well, that and I don't just sit down and read nearly enough. Oh, and late fees have not been incurred, though I kind of need to finish it by Saturday.)

I wish it wasn't a library book, because I would have marked it to death by now with passages I wish I'd written. Case in point:

Troy also became a fierce partisan of the army and the government's war policy. The war protesters had started making a stir, and the talk in my shop ran pretty much against them...

One Saturday evening, while Troy was waiting his turn in the chair, the subject was started and Troy said -- it was about the third thing said -- "They ought to round up every one of them sons of bitches and put them right in front of the damned communists, and then whoever killed who, it would be all to the good."...

It was hard to do, but I quit cutting hair and looked at Troy. I said, "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you."

Troy jerked his head up and widened his eyes at me. "Where did you get that crap?"

I said, "Jesus Christ."

And Troy said, "Oh."

It would have been a great moment in the history of Christianity, except that I did not love Troy.

The whole scene struck me... just the simple wisdom and honesty and humility of it all. And the last three lines? Wow.

I am a believer in the awesomeness of Mr. Berry and his words now.