Calloo Callay!

Saturno Butto

My marvelous aunt, who has read my work for years and gives me all kinds of fantastically useful feedback, sent me this quote a while back- from an artist named Darlene Allen:  


"Eventually your art  will become someone else's souvenir of your life."  


My aunt's an elegant one, and couldn't resist tweaking it a little: 


"I thought one could easily change it to "your supposed life," she said.


I wrote back: 


"Oh, I love this.  Especially with your addition of 'supposed.'

Souvenir is so perfectly placed.  I know that I have flags-souvenirs- in my heart and my head for all of my artistic heroes- what I imagine their lives to have stood for...

It's true through: ultimately your work is taken all of a piece and is assumed to be you..."



Fantastic weekend, managed to be somehow lazy and productive.  Those quiet, lingering days have a way... been spending stacks of hours at the new cafe down the block (literally half-way down the block: they know me pretty well already...)  and what is it that is so satisfying about meeting friends out, working together, chatting, then working on after they've left?  I could write a book of love letters to cafes, coffee shops.  

Re-vamping the query.... yet again.  I stumbled into QueryAgentConnect, which has turned out to be a very helpful crit forum.  Lots of serious, hard, fast workers with solid input.  Much appreciated.  
 
Both Andrew and I've had some great news today :)  He won some major clients over this morning- and tripled the size of his branch of the company.  And it's only January... looks like its going to be a massive year for my sweet beem.  And I got another scholarship!  This time to Martha's Vineyard: two weeks in April to write, and with a stipend, too. (!!) Awfully nice to have two things to celebrate on the same day :)   

Kind of inures me against the (often very kind) rejections from literary agents that periodically turn up-surprise!- in my inbox, haha.  Every now and again a request for the full manuscript... every now and again polite demurrals, saying that it's just not what they're looking for... 

inure, demurral... I've got to get Proust finished up, or he'll infect Savages, hah.