I kind of wish I had you around to critique everything I write. All I normally get is people telling me I’m great. Which is good, you know, because I like thinking myself great. But it’s nice to see comments that go beyond that. Though I do not think I will ever REALLY stop whining — because it gets me website hits — I have made a conscious decision to switch things up a bit with these weekly-column deals.

Your commitment to academia is something I do not understand, but I am still very proud of you. I feel like it’s a strategy that might actually pay off for you, as opposed to my own “just write a bunch of stuff and hope something happens” technique. But I guess we’ll see what the future holds.

For some reason your brief mention of a girlfriend makes me happy. One day we will have drinks and talk about that.

Thanks again for the comments.

I am impressed with how much you’ve developed as a writer since I last checked in, even in these little blurb things. I am not so wild about the first one even though it is nice and neat because it reminds me of the stuff that you used to write. This is patently unfair but Jesus stop crying you pansy. Also, I have a real problem with the punctuation right here:

“I’ve been working for so long. Since you left. And I have five things.”

The period between ‘long’ and ‘left’ is my mortal enemy. You’re too good for that shit, dammit, write dialogue that’s so good that it doesn’t rely on stupid punctuation tricks.

I am not a hater, this is all with love.

I really like the turtle thing and would publish it if I could and if you wrote a whole turtle novel - even if it used ridiculous happenings - that was emotionally real, you would have the biggest balls on the earth and I would erect a statue in tribute to your balls.

The Bears thing would be pretty funny for a couple minutes on SNL if they really sold it but kinda weak here.

I like the advice column thing and it’s pretty funny and I can’t decide if it would be better with Graphic_Violence done with similiar detachment or if that’s just too cliched.

Library complaint is nice and I have thought of thoroughly non-traditional mediums too and support this endeavor. I wrote a bunch of fake comment cards once as supporting material for a couple stories about a dining hall.

This novel-in-november thing is not a bad idea. I graduated from Vassar in May but haven’t written too much of significance since I finished my thesis of short stories in March. I’m working on getting that engine going again because I decided that I wasn’t really happy without having some writing in the hopper and I need to start building up a portfolio for grad school. Fortunately, there’s a fellowship that I can apply for in January that will be a good goal to work towards. I doubt that I’ll get it, but 30K from my school to pursue my art for a while would be awesome because I would just move somewhere and write until the money ran out. But before that’s a possibility, I have to really start writing again, hardcore. I recently did a bunch of mini-stories about a guy that I saw in San Francisco when I was visiting an old girlfriend (in an effort to re-woo the old girlfriend), a couple fun little things for the sports-den fantasy league, and now I’m trying to move on to something bigger. I’m not sure if I really want to force a novel out right now (because I need the stuff that I write to be good so I can use it), but it’s not a bad idea because I do kinda want to write some more in a particular world. The last real story that I wrote was the last one in my thesis - it’s called “The Seeds,” it was about starting out, and it’s in the linked journal above. If you had any time, I’d be thrilled to hear if you thought that it had the guts to be something like the first chapter of a novel, but keep in mind that it was written as a self-contained story.

I know that it’s been a ridiculously long time and that I was kind of an obnoxious friend even when I was around but I do want you to know that I remember you very fondly and am thrilled to see glimpses of your personal and authorial development. You good people, Matt “Davidson” Elliott.

Love,
Jono

And oh my goodness, picturing you delivering a roundhouse kick and delivering zingers is rather funny, albeit the story isn’t directly about you.

That is the alarm.

Also while I wrote these in an ATTEMPT to shake the cobwebs off, I’ve now decided all of them are awesome and thus should be written about more extensively. Especially that pissed off turtle; that guy’s great.

For the record, I only wrote ONE story about you — the both of them are the exact same story! Besides, the whole point of the exercise was to give plot-driven story-telling a try, and NOT to tell people how “great” you are. Let me be clear about that:

Folks, HE dumped ME.

There, how’s THAT for praise-singing? Jerk.

That’s possibly the best line ever. What does that say about me?

And I’m itching to fill in one of those yellow Killam comment cards now in the same manner as the final story.