Vanessa Veselka's Blog

I was feeling bad, frustrated that I wasn’t getting anything I liked out of writing and wondering why I was having such a had time these past few weeks. Then it occurred to me that adding 60 hours of work into  your schedule every week changes the dynamic. Just a little. The problem is, I still have to figure it out. I thought about writing my next novel through lucid dreaming but I barely dream as it is so that seems unlikely. Recently I have had the insight that I use early characters like shock troops. They scout out the new world and are then sacrificed to it in some bizarre literary ritual where it becomes apparent that it isn’t going to be that kind of story, i.e., on that includes characters like them. These are my late, late night thoughts. I’d be driving my cab but the computer system went down. At this late hour, I m even more anti-paragraph.

lucid dreaming and the novel

1) I operated the MDT (taxicab computer system) and punched in all the codes while my trainer drove through suburbs without streetlights. It was eerily like my girlhood habit of chewing blotter and watching Repo Man. Randomly, he sprayed the air with Country Garden air freshener. We stopped only for car deodorant “trees” and Churros.

off-gassing social harmony

the key to long shifts is a nutritious snack

sometimes it's better to be outside the car while training?

(trapped white space–take that all you graphic designers!)

2) I had my golden earrings melted down for gold, which had sort of an “end of days” charm.

now going for $1128 an ounce!

It wasn’t so bad. There was even a thrill to it, somehow. I felt like I was affecting archeology. And now I can get a Thomas guide and pay my first night’s lease.

As far as the writing goes… the second novel is continuing, the reading for Oregon Literary Review went well, and I have gotten over my reticence and put the word out that I am looking for an agent. Or at least sketchy literary tour guide.

I got a job!

I need a green army jacket.

Today I have three main goals: do well at my job interview for Radiocab, be stoic in the tattoo shop when they recolor my hand, and prepare for my reading tomorrow night for the Oregon Literary Review. Shall I prepare for my reading like this?

make of the body a vessel

give reading

Explore franchise opportunities

And as for the job interview–use psychic powers to envision myself in cab…..

So Portland!

Okay, okay. The real reading info is below. If you live in Portland, please come to the reading tomorrow night. There are some great writers reading.

Oregon Literary Review co-hosts First Wednesdays, a series of readings, performances and wine-tasting at the Blackbird Wine Shop, 4323 NE Fremont, 7-9pm. This show is 21 and over. Contact Julie Mae Madsen at maemadsen@gmail.com for more information.

The readers for January 6 are Vanessa Veselka, Frayn Masters, Kari Luna, Andy Diaz

Kari Luna is writer, musician, yoga teacher and resident whimsicologist. Her copywriting work (a.k.a. Happy Little Atom) has been seen in magazines, televisions, and browsers around the world. And her bands are all famous in Europe, of course. Kari hails from Texas but lives in Portland, Oregon where almost everyone, much to her delight, wears striped knee socks. She’s working on a lifelong degree in whimsicology and THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING is her first novel. You can find her online at kariluna.com.

Vanessa Veselka is a writer and musician living in Portland, Oregon. She has been, at various times, a teenage runaway, a sex-worker, a union organizer, a student of paleontology, an expatriate, an independent record label owner, a train-hopper, a waitress and a mother. Her work has appeared in Bust, Bitch, Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll, Yeti Magazine and Tin House. Zazen, her first novel, has been serialized by Arthur Magazine. 

Andy Diaz is the owner operator of Blackbird Wineshop. His writing appears weekly in the shop newsletter. In an attempt to reinvent himself, he has played jazz trumpet, surfed the oceans, and become a wine merchant that he is today. His latest story, How To Escape NY During a Catastrophe and Where to Eat Along the Way, is a guide to the tragic escapist. You might recognize him as the sidekick to Anthony Bourdain in No Reservations: Puerto Rico. He might deny it.

Frayn Masters writing has appeared online and in tangible journals including Hobart, McSweeney’s, Spork and MonkeyBicycle along with the anthologies Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney’s Book of Lists, Number One Fan, and Northwest Edge III. She currently co-hosts and co-produces the super sweet storytelling series Back Fence PDX, and is the bespectacled half of the funny, smart sketch comedy duo Eastland Academy.

I sat down several times this past week and tried to work on my second novel. Unfortunately, I have completely forgotten what it is I ever liked about it. I know I’ve been over this ground.

wait a mintue! This looks familiar...I think I've been here before.

So I sat down, as usual, to work and hated it all the more, which is strange because I loved it only a month ago and now I can’t tell which instinct is right. The problem, I think, with getting better at writing is that craft can muddy the simple question–should this story even be told? Is it worth the time. Is it worth 2-3 years of your life? I have no answer. So I’m altering the question. If books were pictures, and the ideas below were three directions I have in mind, which would you pick?

seek faith and its cure simultaneously?

Give in to guilty pleasures?

Lash myself to the wheel?

Feel free to bet on your dog.

My attentions have turned to ghostwriting as a potential career. As it has been pointed out to me by Jay Babcock and others that I am a lousy copyeditor, ghostwriting seems to be a better option. My questions is, though, why can’t it really be writing about ghosts?

since I see them anyway

Instead of web copy, I asked myself, why can’t I write science fiction or Gothic Romance? Or better yet, combine the Gothic Romance with the Imperial Gothic that’s in my head and write the Imperial Gothic Romance.

waiting kills

something from everybody--like the harlequin's costume, only sewn together with human sinew

surely, there is a match here just waiting t be made. Something beyond dystopic love stories, badlands romances, etc…

In truth though, I really would like to write a star trek book–or better yet! Red Sonja come back. Why hasn’t that happened? Someone pay me to do it and I’ll make her a neo-primitivist nordic samurai chick. What’s sexier than that? 15,000 and you get a series complete with rune magic and a dianic cult of greek villainesses. (sp?)

THANK YOU READERS. The final chapter of ZAZEN has been posted and the serialization is complete.

I am honored to have such support for a first novel. It is, perhaps, impossible for a novel to fail in places but I hope the overall experience was worth it and want to thank Jay Babcock for his unflagging faith in the project.

I hope someday to find a print publisher for ZAZEN but the contact I have had with readers over the process of this online serialization has been amazing. It’s so rare for a writer to be in touch with readers at different stages of a novel.  I am grateful for all of this.

ZAZEN in final week of series…yes, it’s true. Thanks to everyone who has read any of it ever. THANK YOU THANK YOU. And double thanks to Arthur magazine for having faith in it and giving it so much attention and care. I am truly grateful.  Now if I can only find a way to support myself–anybody know someone who needs a waitress in Portland OR?

Regrading my college career, I am proud to have achieved both archetypes needed for academic enlightenment:

the benefit of career counseling

I think I can be an actor

ZAZEN is in its last week now and I am in my final week of school and my daughter is in her final week of being six-years-old.  I marvel at the propensity the mind has for tying unrelated tings together with grammar. Leaving school does seem like a stepping off a cliff. It’s not like I’m going to intern for one of my Dad’s companies (He’s a communist with a 4-year-old in Pittsburgh) and it’s not as if I can do something useful like fix pipes. The problem, of course, is me. I can imagine being a million things but I can’t imagine doing any of them everyday. Ack! I need a lucrative hobby. Something to do when I’m not writing and playing music. Like taking a bath, only with $1800 a month.

travelling salesman

herbal healer

dentist

Well, now. There is only one week to go on ZAZEN. Regarding this weeks posts on Arthur, I have to admit that the idea of soil stabilzation methods did not originally strike me as very sexy one. I came up with the idea because I was thinking–how do you take out a transmission tower in this strange world I have created? I wasn’t so concerned that it was a good idea, only that it was a possible, if desperate thing for Della to have considered. She herself doubts its soundness (note, writer hedging bets). However, once I came up with it I began to research whether one could destabilize land with explosives on non-coherent soil. Strangely enough, I found a whole power point/ research paper on it, which is where I got the specifics. Guess where it was written? Go on! Do guess!Yes, Della’s alma mater….

a great place if you're really into liquefaction

I took it as a sign. But then, that’s always been my problem. Still….strange, no? The FEMA maps are also real.