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rambles and half-essays

Tag: author

  • following up and nonfiction

    KM Brunner

    I learned a lesson last week and that was to follow up with publications if they haven’t responded to your submission in months. I had a piece accepted (“Sellout,” link on my works page) by a small digital magazine and they just…hadn’t posted it.

    That’s on them, of course, but it was nice to get an acceptance in my inbox, even if I had to remind them of the piece.

    If I’m being honest, it was a throwaway; I wrote it off a long time ago, and I’m flattered they decided to give it some attention.

    I’ve returned to nonfiction (and a bad romance novel, which has been fun) since I completed it. It’s not a reflection of my current work, but it feels like a time capsule, in a way. And so I enjoy it.

    It’s also flash, which helps. Not much to be insecure about when the piece is around 500 words.

    I feel weird about my return to nonfiction. Part of me feels bad, like I’m invalidating my years of writing fiction (during which I got nowhere), and another part of me is excited. It feels like a homecoming. I likely needed to write fiction for a while so I could see nonfiction for what it is: storytelling in community.

    If you tell a real story, it usually involves people. People-ing usually involves friends, family, coworkers, etc., and so in the act of telling a true story, you must write about an ecosystem of people rather than just your “subject.”

    My years of studying communication, philosophy, and circulation theory haunt me.

    Writing in community is thrilling. It’s frightening if your subject is still alive, but I find it easier to write about systems and stories and big questions when the narrative is tethered to reality. Does that make me a fraud? Because I’m definitely not a journalist, nor am I a memoirist.

    What I am is up for debate, but a friend recently outed me as a historian to myself. If you spend hours – weeks – researching a subject because you’re consumed by it, create spreadsheets and reach out to archives, really immerse yourself…you’re doing historian stuff.

    You’d think I would clock that but I often surprise myself.

    My immediate reaction to the news was embarrassment. I used to think of historians as people who studied war, a subject that I find upsetting. But they’re not just that; of course they aren’t. They’re doing what I like to do: tell stories about systems.

    Again, I’ve nothing to leave you with but a reminder to check in with any mags who haven’t responded to your submissions, and a little recommendations list.

    Podcast: Behind the Bastards, hosted by Robert Evans

    Things:

    • Been into drawing more lately and I like soft pencils. This is my favorite.
    • Got a new air conditioner and it’s been a revelation.
    • I’m into plants now and really want a moonshine snake plant. Here’s an example. There might be one at Home Depot and I’m planning to go liberate it on the 3rd.

  • leaning in, shame, power exchange

    KM Brunner

    I’m happy that I started this blog. I began it after re-reading one I maintained during college. The old site was less a blog and more a record of my failures. Good failures – the death of creative projects, explorations of different musical genres (and my subsequent abandonment), and a subconscious attempt to confront my chronic illness, among other things.

    I did confront it consciously, finally, about six years ago. I’m still working on it.

    I also wrote a lot about college, growing up, and moving to Boston. The writing was bad, but even worse than that, it didn’t sound like me. I guess it’s tough for writers to own to our voices before we’re ready, so I forgive myself for the posturing. But that truly is what it was: posturing.

    To be oneself is such a task.

    It requires consciously leaning into what you – and only you – want, know, need. Of course, borrowing traits and ideas is normal. Necessary, even, but once you come to know what you truly like, when you pinpoint what comes from only you…

    It is hard to abandon the shame of some things, you know? It took me years to write science fiction, but I like it. I finally got tattoos in my late twenties. I only just admitted to myself what I’d like my future to look like, and…I stood up to my father at dinner only last week.

    He was being particularly mean, and I cannot stand anyone forgoing kindness for a power trip. A little bit of exploiting ones authority can feel good in the moment, but that doesn’t indicate power, really. Any resulting compliance is a fear response.

    Want power? Play a long game. Usurp a throne (any kind will work) or better yet, become the throne’s right hand. Become the office confidant or the quietest – and most influential – member of the C-suite. Or maybe play chess and remind yourself that the king’s the weakest piece on the board.

    If all else fails and you need straightforward “power,” demand it from someone who’d like to give theirs to you. They’re out there (and gagging for it, honestly).

    Do not externalize your own shame and frustration. It’s embarrassing and frankly, crass.

    I’m done now. With the entry, not the blog. I haven’t decided on its purpose, so there’s no end in sight, yet.

    Some recommendations:

    Music:

    I like Paloma Faith. She’s great. This is her most popular song.

    I just really like John Oliver and this is a good, well-written piece.

    Been reading the best of Shakespeare’s plays. I had an idea for a character – kind of a sundowning scholar – and he’s a Shakespeare guy. Had to find some good speeches, didn’t I? I’ve been reading the Arden Performance Editions.

  • long time no see

    KM Brunner

    I’m not sure why but I’m trying to work and write this post at the same time. I’ve been doing a lot of writing and also a lot of working. That’s not necessarily important for this post but I figured I’d say it so I’d feel compelled to write tonight. I have a schedule and I’m sticking to it as well as I can. Sometimes it’s difficult but I’m trying to push through that.

    I said in my last post that I find it hard to relate to people sometimes. I just cut off a romance I’d been in – she’s amazing, which sucks for me – because I couldn’t fully relate to her. She’s very cool but I’m a little intense. I know that about myself.

    Fortunately, she’s not as intense as me. Romantically, I need someone as specific as I am, but I’m happy for her, because she’s probably less stressed out. I’d rather her enjoy herself and never see me again than try to get through to me and watch me drown in self-pity (I’m working on it, ok).

    This post is more personal than I intended it to be.

    Anyway, work is difficult enough that I want to lay facedown on the floor and cry about it. I vacillate wildly from productive to miserable and am finding it difficult to steady myself. Honestly…I think I’m just so, so tired. I’ve been thinking of applying to different jobs but even that feels like too much.

    Then again, I may just be hungry. Or sad that I had to let that woman go. Or maybe I miss my friends.

    Could be because I’m all angsty about things. We’ll never know.

    Time for some recommendations.

    Music: “Never Surrender” – Combichrist

    This is a dark industrial song. Like if NIN had a baby with a male Poppy. I really enjoy it but it’s not for everyone.

    I’m currently reading:

    • Interview With the Vampire (I get why it’s so popular, but good Lord the book is wild).
    • The annotated version of The Phantom Tollbooth. I love this book. It’s my favorite book, actually. I think it’s the best children’s lit I’ve ever read.
    • Hum by…some woman whose name I can’t remember. I’m writing this at the office and my copy is at home. It was part of Book of the Month, which I canceled a long time ago. It’s a speedy read.

    I’m having a tough time thinking of things to share, so I’ll be going now.

  • i had an awful month

    KM Brunner

    I am not going to give a rundown of my month; you don’t deserve the frustration and I’m not interested in baring my personal life for folks to read. I’m no one’s friend here, and it wasn’t particularly interesting anyway. It was just…hard.

    Because I’m chronically ill, I forget what it’s like to experience violence from something outside my body. My day-to-day life is a minefield of managing a disorder that, when triggered, provides me with heaps of trauma that I then have to wade through. I spend months – sometimes years – working through my fear while still living in the body that is responsible for that trauma (and threatening to inflict more).

    It is not a fun place, my body – my brain, specifically. But there’s nothing for it except for suicide and I’d like to at least enjoy my thirties. Forties, too, if I get those years.

    Vigilance and violence are part of my life. They are part of my mornings, afternoons, evenings. They are part of my writing practice. I think about them when I cry, because the action is not entirely controllable. I think about them when I laugh.

    But this month was difficult because of an external force and it felt like a privilege to experience that. It was a perverse feeling and made me feel bad, like I was invalidating other people’s terrifying experiences with abuse, and yet I found it comforting in some ways. It gave me something to fear that didn’t come from me.

    I could lock the door. Separate myself from her. God, what a luxury that was.

    The month is over and the danger is gone. My apartment feels like my own again. I’m back with just me and my brain. I am glad for it because weathering that danger was exhausting, but there was something to knowing she couldn’t hurt me when I was staying with a friend, across town, that was soothing.

    Chronic illness is such a strange thing. The filter through which I see the world makes it difficult to relate to other people, and my relationship with fear and pain is very warped. I am a great listener and like to help folks with their problems, but I often find myself holding back when talking to friends, because their problems are so, so bearable to me. I’d love to have their problems, and only those problems.

    I’m going to stop with this self-pity and move on to my little recommendations section.

    Music: Delirium Division, Little Pink Houses. It’s a rock song. I just really love it. It’s been on repeat for me.

    Stuff:

    1. Comic: Vinyl by Image Comics. It’s about a serial killer with Alzheimer’s who is emotionally attached to his FBI agent. He saves him from a murderous cult. It’s very, very cool.
    2. Been wearing my half-rimless glasses. I like them but they make me look like a librarian. I’ve decided I don’t care.
    3. I’m going up to Marblehead on Saturday to drive around. It’s where part of my novel is set.

  • change, distraction, and worry

    KM Brunner

    I have a problem. It’s not a big problem, but it is one that’s taking up a lot of space in my brain:

    I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be writing.

    I worry, probably several times a day, that there’s something missing from the novel I’m working on. I think, unhelpfully, that I should be pursuing one of my other projects. I think maybe, just maybe, I should be writing nonfiction. I used to write nonfiction. I was rather good at it.

    It wasn’t nearly as fulfilling as fiction, but it was something I felt comfortable with.

    Then I step back and think: that was the problem with nonfiction in the first place. I wasn’t challenging myself.

    And so I go back to the book and the short stories but then, there, I have the same problem:

    I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be writing.

    It’s a fun thing, to have lots of ideas. It’s an enviable position, but I need to focus – and if I’m going to use the ideas, I need to whittle. I am trying to concentrate on the novel, but I want to submit a story once a month, so I always have a short piece I’m working on alongside the book. Sometimes that piece is fun. Sometimes I think it might be better than the novel.

    How can I know that, though? I can’t! I absolutely can’t. I’m a few chapters into a first draft and those are notoriously bad! Regardless, I’m hitting a pretty significant rough patch. Things are working, mostly, but I’m concerned about a few characters, I worry I’ve made the story too big, that the plot is too niche to be relatable – and worst of all, sometimes I think it might be boring.

    Is this what impostor syndrome is? I’m not worried about being a writer – I feel paralyzed because I am one.

    It’s enough to make me want to scream but I can’t give up writing. I know I’ll work through it. I’ll show up, every day, at my stupid little keyboard. Writing is an awful, sometimes parasitic, thing. It compels. It’s worse than music, and that’s saying something.

    Anyway.

    Here are some things I’ve liked over last month:

    • Song: Good Luck, Babe! – Chappell Roan. She’s blowing up, and she deserves it. Vocal chops like nobody’s business and actual musical, catchy, pop. They use real instruments and the mixing isn’t all flat like most pop these days. It’s just…good music.
    • I don’t drink, but when I’m craving a beer, I reach for an Athletic. I’m into the Hazy IPA lately.
    • I got a noir piece published. It’s called Apartment 11A.
    • I found my writing workshop group on Meetup. I’d recommend it!
    • St. John’s Seminary, the seminary attached to Boston College, is full of nice people and very, very interesting classes. I’m going to take Moral Theology next semester. I never thought I’d be taking a course with Catholic undertones but here I am. I’m just interested.