Liz – Page 27 – Liz Makes Stuff

Good news!

I learned yesterday that my short story “How to Dye Window Treatments” is going to be published in the online magazine ObsessionMag (check them out here or here). Sweet beans! I’ll be sure to upload a link when one appears.

Story of the Week #2 — “Millie” by Anna Caro

This week’s story was published by The Future Fire online magazine in December 2012. This magazine seeks to publish “new speculative fiction and art with a social conscience, a political sensibility and of the highest quality.” Their mission statement of wanting to focus on fiction with a “social conscience” is interesting and magnetizing, to me.Continue reading “Story of the Week #2 — “Millie” by Anna Caro”

Six Sentences Prompt

I was given the prompt to write a story in six sentences or less. Here is my attempt. The girl grew up on the “west” side of town. The average middle-class white kid either thought he was the reincarnation of Jack Kerouac or a bullet-addled thug; his parents thought themselves the only people who hadContinue reading “Six Sentences Prompt”

Story of the Week #1 — “6.5” by Ian Murphy

I want this blog/website/whatchyacallit to be a place of discourse, of conversations about good writing. The best way I know to start a conversation about good writing is to read good writing, and so I have decided to scour the Internet once a week for well-written, visceral, free (!) short stories that we can all learnContinue reading “Story of the Week #1 — “6.5” by Ian Murphy”

Badlands, by Cynthia Reeves (Warning: Spoilers and a Rant)

I just finished a book that, quite literally, turned me into a sobbing mess for about five long minutes after I had finished it. The tears are still drying on my face and my skin still feels stretched and puffy. I am unsure whether my thoughts can be arranged into anything coherent right now, butContinue reading “Badlands, by Cynthia Reeves (Warning: Spoilers and a Rant)”

Things I have learned in Tuscaloosa, Alabama

I am abroad—well, in the sense that I am in a place I don’t usually call “home.” My friend from school—my Word Count Friend; I’ll call her DR for short—asked me a couple months ago if I wanted to go home with her during Spring Break. I’m always looking for new places to go andContinue reading “Things I have learned in Tuscaloosa, Alabama”

Words are hard, mmmkay? — Thoughts about productivity

Lately I’ve been feeling quite productive as far as writing goes. I hit 34k in my current manuscript, I have been submitting short fiction (which means I’ve been writing short fiction), and I squeezed out a poem or two in the last few weeks. What’s my secret, you ask? No secret, really. A graduate programContinue reading “Words are hard, mmmkay? — Thoughts about productivity”

What does my writing sound like?

Someone asked me once what kind of music I listen to while I write. I was rather at a loss for words. It’s not that I don’t know what kind of music I find in my earbuds on a consistent basis. It’s that I didn’t know how this person would react when I said thatContinue reading “What does my writing sound like?”

Ambiguous title

One day, a bird flew inside my rib cage.It thumped and jumped and whirreduntil I knew it was dead.And the sad, sweet sorrow sang inside my stomachuntil all I could feel was the breezebeneath my heart where my rib cage used to be.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Step out into the world of time and risk and loss again. Move forward, into the empty plane. Find the book you wrote, and read it until the end, but don’t turn the last page yet, keep stalling, see how long you can keep expanding the infinitely expandable moment. Enjoy the elastic present, which canContinue reading “How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe”