Relief/Diner Online Submissions System

I've been absent on the RWN blog sphere, I figure Relief has some great regular bloggers now, and I've been writing less and managing more... so less writing quirks to blog about.

That said - check out www.silhouettewords.com. We got some great stuff up there: fiction, CNF, poetry.

Also - support the Relief fund... they are a publication incarnation, trying to merge the divine with the human.

It's been awhile since I've posted... summer has been crazy and I haven't been writing [or philosophizing about writing] as much as I would have liked.

Recently [past few months] I got my first non-internet piece of work published in Relevant magazine. Two friends and my wife wrote about their experiences living in China... I assembled the piece, adding some reflective content of my own and some info about the then upcoming Olympics. It turned out well with only a few edits that I wish would have been [not] changed. And we got paid for it... maybe something normal for you veterans, but uber-exciting for rookies.

A month or two back I got an article published online at a little literary journal. I googled the editor's name who oversees the publication and found that she also heads up an erotica journal. The erotic journal's next release (pun intended) was asking for pieces that intertwined spirituality with the gitchy-gitchy-ya-ya-da-da. That got me thinking.

Justin drove to his father's house to cook dinner.

He drove North on 72 around 4:45pm at approximately 54mph.

He noticed, to the West, in a farmers field, a water pump, pushing out a familiar brown substance.

Justin snickered.

Justin continued to enjoy the warm, late afternoon breeze of that day.

He thought the wind, heading East, was stronger than usual this time of year.

He suddenly, in a slow motion moment, notice a mist of liquid on his windsheild.

He quickly realized what it was that, with just enough gusto, was coming his way.

He, started yelling "NO, NO, NO!"

Justin doesn't like being caught up in a slow motion moment when he is attempting to roll his windows up to protect from a sprinkle of liquid poo is about to hit him.

Obviously, it was too late.

Houston, we have a problem.

Justin screamed over and over again.

Anyone really knowing Justin would find high irony in this.

Justin continued to scream for 5 minutes straight, calling his friend James who, after realizing Justin wasn't dying, couldn't stop laughing.

Justin and the inside of his car, received a light dusting from a poo shower that day.

It was a sad day.

... and it's going to deal with how I discipline my wife using dog techniques.

Please indulge my rant for a brief moment.

Next week Naomi and I are heading out to Michigan for Calvin's Festival of Faith and Writing. We'll be renting a compact car and road tripping from Pennsylvania (about 10 hours). Some friends live in Lansing, about an hour away from Grand Rapids, and we'll be staying with them. It will be good to get away for a week... family issues have been weighing on me and, while I don't want to run away from then, I need some time elsewhere. I am also attempting to do a laptop fast, if you will. No email. No blogging. No networking. No Internet. Even my school work research will be printed from my Libronix System and I will take a few dozen sheets of paper with and do it old school until I get back.

I share my name with the fourth ranked Nazi in the States. I lived in the same state as him for three years. Luckily, there has never been a case of mistaken identity.

Sharing a name can be frustrating because to a very real extent, your name defines you. Some might feel more popular in having a common name, but I would guess most feel less unique... and somewhat curious of who the other "me" is.

I have recieved two emails over the past few years or people trying to find another Justin Boyer. These aren't the automated emails that want you to meet some boiling hot russian nympho in a chat room to exchange pictures. Through my limited validation skills, these are real people writing, or trying to write, to another guy with the same namesake.

Saturday, the midnight of eternity
the ground hasn't recovered
from the earthquake
the sky hasn't healed
from the eclipse
my heart has yet to accept
what I've done

www.silhouettewords.com

Silhouette Words is a creative workspace to develop writing, communication, art and the what-really-matters thought process of life. Everyone is creative to some extent, but many of us would not go through the process of creating and refining a tangible piece of work without there being some type of public outlet where we knew others would see our material. Silhouette is an outlet where we learn by doing; a place to develop our communication skills in various ways, whether by written word or visual expression.

I received Relief's The Best of Volume 1 about a week ago in the mail and have been working my way through it in a leisurely, not to mention random, manner. Some initial thoughts:

Scars by Fisher is great. I love the intertwining of time periods as well as the commonalty of it. It also contained the most poetic interpretation of divorce I've yet to read: "Putting away," the prophet Malachi calls it, which in many divorces is an excellent description, calling to mind the way you might carelessly reshelf a book after you've laid bare all its secrets, studied all its naked pages, gotten out of it all you wanted.