So How Is Your Summer Going, Dylan?

I really hate summer.

There are many reasons for me hating summer. The one that most easily comes to mind is that it is hot and I do not do well with heat. At all. And the problem with this can largely be tied to my feet. They are very sensitive and generally need socks. I tried wearing one of those new rubber clog shoes that my mom picked up and my feet were achy and sweaty. Also, because I hate footie socks with every fiber of my being, I can only wear normal socks and because of the all-powerful laws of fashion I cannot wear shorts and longs socks. It's annoying.

Another thing I hate about summer is that I have nothing to do. This is especially important this summer because I have nothing to keep me occupied except my erratic reading and writing patterns. However, I do feel I have written more then I have written more and some good stuff too. I'm back at Naos and Helen, since I'm now working at them through the medium of the short story. This gives me the chance to explore them in short bursts which my attention span and patience allow. I'm working on two Naos and Helen stories more or less simultaneously now, but one of them is pretty psychological and is getting hard for me to write, since I want the characters to act naturally as compared to the world they live in which is bat shit insane.

On the subject on my ability to write things I am having doubts about my capability in the means of poetry. This I blame on Stephen Fry. I've been trying to read his book The Ode Less Travelled, to get an understanding of how metre works and I don't think I'm that good at metre. I try to write stuff in metre and I'm thrown off. Then I try to write free verse, but I can't get that either and then I feel guilty because I don't read a lot of poetry and when I do I can barely understand it, though recently I did read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock a couple times and I think I got that, although I picked up at some point it was about prostitutes and impotence so that may have helped me. Still, I appreciate T.S. Eliot's poetry and I like his style.

In other news, I sent my short story "Godot is Dead," out to The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction. I'm not sure if they'll take it. I think the story is pretty out there, but I don't know if it is the kind of out there that Bizarro fiction demands. Also, it's a Jack Monsairty story, so it has a "wizard," though I think of Jack more as an occultist, and that might turn them off. I have only sent it out recently and I have yet to here back. I don't know exactly how long I should be waiting, the next issue will be published in October so I imagine before or around I get to University.