This week, I have been working on writing a new essay. I've been exploring essay writing since I took creative non-fiction at Kennesaw State. The interesting thing is that the creative non-fiction course should have been named memoir writing. We did nothing else in there except memoir. Now, don't get me wrong, I learned a lot in the class, but I still say it was terribly miss-advertised because miss-named. Anyway, we didn't study essays in that class, so I've taken on the study and practice of essay writing on my own. It's definitely a genre that I enjoy and admire a lot.

Have you ever noticed that when you learn a new word that it all of a sudden starts popping up everywhere? Well, since I've decided to start working on essays, I realize that I have all this information to refer to, but that I haven't paid attention to it until recently. For instance, I have a two-year old issue of Poets and Writers in my tub-side magazine rack with a lovely article by Sven Birkerts about memoir and essay writing. I suppose it's been waiting for two years for me to get around to needing it.

Today, I attended a good workshop/Q&A session given by the Georgia Writers Association. Marc Fitten, editor of the Chattahoochee Review, a 30 year old literary magazine, spoke on literary mags and what they are looking for...especially, of course, his. It was very informative. And he happened to mention that not as many people are submitting essays as are submitting fiction, so it's actually a little bit easier to get published with essays than with short stories. But of course, he also said that he gets about 6,000 submissions each year for a lit mag published four times a year. So the odds are long, for either essay or fiction. He noted poetry is easier to get published. Why? Because books, magazines, etc. are published with pages in multiples of 8. It has to do with printers, the size of the paper used, how it's folded and bound. (I'm temporarily blanking on what those booklets are called....some funky name...register, maybe?) So, if a story runs six pages, they fill in the other two pages with poetry.... Interesting, eh?

Here's a shout out to my friend Debra Ann Shirley who has a poem published in issue #36 of the Cortland Review. Here's a link to it: http://www.cortlandreview.com/ The poem really speaks to me, and is a great reflection of Debbie (as I new her when...) who grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of North Georgia.

Another shout out to my friend Chad Darnell, who has recently had several successes with his scripts. Check into his blog http://chaddarnell.typepad.com/runchadrun2/ to find out all about it. I read some of his scripts when he was in college. I can say that I recognized his talent way back when! Plus, he's a fabulous actor, although he doesn't seem to do any acting anymore.

Happy birthday to all my Leo friends: Karen, Sarah Jane, Kailey, Angela, Shannon... Lots and lots of my friends are born in late July and August! Must be something really there when they say that Aries and Leos are compatible.