O, pristine new mansion! Bloated, redundant. Birds shit your roof too. Termites plot invasion. Beneath, patient worms squirm. @SusanRukeyser
— escarp (@escarp) February 22, 2014
This morning, someone Favorited this piece of mine, published in Feb. by @escarp. It reminded me, in my sleepy suburban outpost, of how grateful I am for the internet and how it makes much of my work available for viewing 24/7/forever. For those of us who did time submitting via snail-mail, publishing in tiny journals no bookstore carried, this is endlessly wonderful.
Sure, not many people have responded to this piece (yet), but it’s one of my faves and, like any writer, I’m encouraged whenever I receive even a small gesture of appreciation. It means you reached someone with your work. And that’s the point, right?
I’m proud of this little piece because it encapsulates what I try to do in all my writing: it tackles issues I have feelings about (the ubiquitous McMansion, ostentation) and distills it into a few precisely chosen words that engage the music in language. I try to do that always, even in my forthcoming novel.
So yes, Twitter can be a distraction. It can be silly Vines and semi-wise quotes and noisy hawking of self-pub’d material. It can be armchair slacktivism and cute pictures of baby sloths. (Not going to lie, I love baby sloths forever and always.) But it can also be wonderful exercise for writers, a way to keep the the writing muscles flexed. In addition to @escarp, I’ve published Twitter prose with @CuentoMag and @7×20, and some of my #cnftweets have won @cnfonline‘s daily Tiny Truths contest.
Where do you submit your briefest work? Let’s make more of it. Let’s flood Twitter with morsels of dense, delicious lit.