Comments?

[whaywardj]

Okay, guys:

A few of the literary journals I'm sending my work to are asking for bios. [URL=http://24.73.176.86/niteflights/bio.htm]Here's[/URL] what they're getting.

Comments?

[RSK]

Okay, guys:

A few of the literary journals I'm sending my work to are asking for bios. [URL=http://24.73.176.86/niteflights/bio.htm]Here's[/URL] what they're getting.

Comments?

I love it. I'll be straight with you - I'm not into writing that much, and I couldn't proof read a paper, even if my life depended on it!

But when I read your bio, it is filled with so much Passion. Of course, you highlight the 'ass that you claim to be', but behind this person, is someone with direction, someone who is passionate, someone who has emerged from the other side of a tunnel...

...I think it's BRILLIANT!



There's something else that I want to say, but I just can't find the words to put it together right now, let me think about it more, and I'll post again...

...I love it!

[RSK]

I hope you don't mind whaywardj, but I'm posting my favourite parts from ch 1 and 2...


Now I know what my HS teacher was talking about, when she said the opening should be an 'attention getter'.
He moved like he was real comfortable in his skin. Casual and fluid. Like a dancer. A little careless and a shade effeminate. Reptilian, feline and bird-like, all at once. He was lean and looked hard, sharp featured and dark. Something about him transmitted sex. Something else projected a long and colorful history. His gestures dragged fragments of elegance around with them like fireflies blowing in night wind.



This is CLASSIC!
When our eyes met again, he mocked a frown and shrugged, as if to say, "Hey, you never know, ya know?" I smiled down at the table, genuinely amused, then decided to let him see my amusement and looked back up at him. I tried to convey, "Not bad, not bad," with my eyes. He laughed out loud, blew me a kiss and walked away. Then was gone. Really, this time.

Some self-assured son-of-a-b i t c h, I thought as I put his card in my purse. Maybe I would call him.



Read the story for explanation...
It's been clear to me for a while now that I'm looking for a man who's a cross between James Bond and Daffy Duck. "Looking for" might need some explaining.



This is a good way to look at it!
Financial stability's important, too. Not that I've got anything against supporting a guy now and then. It's just that, sometimes, I want to be surprised.




ROFL!
Had one smarmy guy, thinking he'd gotten the gist of our talking, lean into one of our conversations not long ago and say, "Well ladies, we can fix that. You just call me anytime." Actually handed out his card.

After an initial He-Can't-Be-That-Stupid moment when we looked at each other in stunned silence, we all wanted to bust out laughing. But we knew that would just encourage the slime, so we all just gave out our best Drop-Dead smiles and shined him on. He fish-eyed us over his drink until we left, not even glancing at him on our way out though we all knew he was waiting for an acknowledgment.

A s s h o l e.




Another Funny Moment!
Getting up, I feel my panties cloy at my moist crotch. Yeah. Bath's in order.




WOW
The jealousy's kind of appealing in small doses. Makes me know he cares for me and that I can manage him a little. Alright, manipulate him. But he takes it to the point where I have to explain too many things too often.




This is a NICE swing around!
...And that was it. Now it was just me and my bath.

And that card in my purse.





I like how you take us into her mind, like this
I got the card out, trying to read something about the man from it. The fountain pen was a touch. Said to me the guy was eclectic. Nobody uses fountain pens anymore. The handwriting was script and none too neat. Impatient. The little line at the bottom was the endearment. Told me the guy didn't take himself all that seriously. That's the thought that made me dial the number.




Another, WOW
The next day, my new acquaintance called. His message was between two more from David. I'll never forget it.

"I'm so delighted you called. Most don't. Same place. Seven o'clock. Thursday." Click.

And that was it. No “hello.” No “goodbye.” No “see ya.” No chit-chat. Just the facts and nothing but the facts, Ma’am. And a presumption I’d given him my number to make a date, which I didn’t know whether I liked or not.

I did like the "most don't" part, though. Made it pretty clear this guy was fond of women and, probably, dropped his outrageous cards out all over the city, which was fine with me, because all I was looking for was a little male companionship.





NICE!! I'm looking foward to read C3! Maybe tonight after some studying!
I thought about calling Olga and having her come with me. Then I thought, no. That's what a seventeen year-old would do, and nixed the idea.

It was only then, in the middle of that debate with myself, that I realized I'd already decided to meet him.

Guess his presumption was correct, after all.

Well, then. That being the case, what to wear?

[alice]

i liked the humorous style of your bio very much. but i really got no idea, how the mind of an editor of a literary journal works, so my opinion won't be of much use, i'm afraid. (doesn't stop me from telling you anyhow, hehe)

[clynn]

I absolutely love it!'

And good for you!

[Mish]

Okay, guys:

A few of the literary journals I'm sending my work to are asking for bios. [URL=http://24.73.176.86/niteflights/bio.htm]Here's[/URL] what they're getting.

Comments?

Hi Hayward

If you want my honest opinion, I don't think it's such a good idea to give out so much personal information in a bio (Especially information that might paint you in a wrong light). I understand how this information is relevant to character building and shaping and moulding of your self into an accomplished writer, but perhaps something like [URL=http://www.pshares.org/Authors/authorDetails.cfm?prmAuthorID=1963]this[/URL] would make a better bio to go with your resume? (P.S. Does not neccessarily have to be about published work, but maybe more description about a dedicated and talented worker, climbing up the chain in print production coordination, with goals and dreams of one day having published work of own and less about the struggling artist.)

Just a thought

[Lloyd95]

I agree with "you're an @ss" part.

[whaywardj]

Thank you, Lloyd. I knew I could count on your support on that point.

Mishanya, good counsel all, thank you, and a fine bio at Ploughshares...IF I were a member of some club anyone recognized, or cared to dress-up my history in terms I thought keepers of the status quo might find more palatable to their delicate sensibilities. And if I were ASKING to be published.

I'm not asking. I'm TELLING.

If the honesty of the bio and the humor between its lines isn't enough to over-ride tired, old, insipid, romanticized and WRONG expectations about 'struggling artists' and pierce the numbness of a conventional mind to get through to the passion covered up there behind it, then I'm either in the wrong office, or the editor's in the wrong job. I'm betting on the latter.

It's kind of a take it or leave it proposition. Trying to make myself 'fit' is a mistake I've committed far too many times for far too long. I don't have to have 'em published. I just have to write 'em.

[bluesummer]

I think it's great. There's enough boring bios out there telling us how the author went to this college, and has written these pieces of work (highly acclaimed, of course), and has been happily married for twenty five years with two wonderful children and a cocker spaniel.

You actually sound like you have some life experience to write about. Give it to 'em raw, Hayward.

[Only-virgins]

I like it, but I am sure you know that the reaction will matter on who is reading that.

[whaywardj]

That's the rub, Bluesummer. First, to have a passion, any passion, at all. Then, to go ahead and let yourself feel it. Then to grasp it. Then to capture it. Then to understand it. Then to pack it in the box of a sentence without chopping it to shreds. Then to convey it, only hoping its prowess doesn't get lost in translation or transit.

Takes quite bit of effort and time to strip off all the sugar-coated aversions most of us are taught to have to things real and get to the raw truth of anything sufficient to make it get up and walk it across a blank page in a particular direction with, sometimes, a particular gait.

Hm. Think I'll stick what I just wrote in my journal. Might find occasion to use it somewhere. You're inspiring. Wanna be my Valentine?

[whaywardj]

One other thought about conforming one's self to meet other's expectations, Mishanya: I have a certain faith that if a person remains true to themselves even if doing so means they lean against the wind, the wind eventually bends to them.

There's a LOT of voices out there clamoring for you to be just like them. And they don't appreciate it when you chose not to.

Imagine that.