January 2012
21 posts
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Status Quo
We’re stuck in a tape loop of square-format photos, blurbs, and tracks. Feeling self-conscious and sorry. I’m funneling my creativity in another direction—a new story—and that inevitably means my fuel tank is spoken for long before I get to this space. It’s just a phase, moon tide stuff.
I mean to get my digital camera out soon and start taking more pictures, but I’ve...
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Mailbag
enigmaindisguise asked: I am a writer myself, only not in the same caliber as you. What I’m asking is this, when you write, your ideas, do they just bounce around in your head relentlessly until you get them down on paper (or on a keyboard)? Or do you plot things out first. I must say, I’m a bouncing idea person myself, but I was wondering if any real writers were the same way.
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Matthew Allard
writeplacewritetime:
This is my writing/creative space. It’s a small lofted area above my living room. If this were MTV’s Cribs I would usher you up and grandly state, “This is where the magic happens!”
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A fun blog called Write Place, Write Time asks writers to share where they do their work. If you’ve followed me for awhile, it’s likely you’ve already seen way...
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Shut In/Out
Martin ran a hot bath in the old tub. The pipes groaned. As the basin filled, he stood in the gathering water. For the first time in a long time he thought of calling Penny. Penny with her wild blonde hair. Penny with the booming stadium laugh. Penny who held doors for men and stayed up late fiddling with a collection of plastic toy cameras, pointing them at Orion and the moon, hoping for a...
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I hope you see that this is not an essay about holding on to your dreams or the importance of dusting yourself off every time you get knocked down. You’ll do that anyway. We all do. We’re not so easily defeated or felled. We have extraordinary pain thresholds, remarkable degrees of fortitude and endurance. What I am conveying is this: if you don’t remember to take full responsibility for...
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In honor of the new year, I’m cleaning out a few lingering ASK questions. Then we’ll start fresh. I try my best to get around to all questions at some point—in private or public—so please feel free to send a message.
Anonymous asked: Your Instagram pictures are always of the most beautiful places in Cali. How do you end up in these houses/areas?! I live in Michigan, and although it...
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2011+
I don’t have any reflections. No mirror to hold up on the past. Not that I want to share. Not yet. Everything is film in the tub, in the solution, wet and just coming into focus. I hang it all on a line to dry, to become what it may. That’s all.
Dear Future-Me,
Be happy. Help others to find happiness, too. Try to let go and enjoy the moment.
Love, Present-You
December 2011
24 posts
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My status in the chat module was set to invisible, and I thought how nice that might actually be, in reality, just for a little while—to be not here, not seen, something of which nothing was asked.
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Other Planets
“We could be catastrophic,” Leonard once wrote on the tiny magnetic chalkboard that hung from the refrigerator door. It was a song lyric. The stick of white chalk crumbled in his fist as he wrote it. “That’s how much I love you.”
The night before, he had gotten home late. Too late. He’d played video games with Martin and Clifford after work. He’d lost track of time. The three men, each rapidly...
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Rejection #1
Dear Matthew Allard, Thank you for sending us “Nothing To Do With It.” This story isn’t going to work for [Redacted] but we appreciate your thinking of us and wish you the best of luck in placing it elsewhere. Sincerely, The Editors [Redacted]
That’s life.
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Misc Q&A Session
Anonymous asked: What is your job right now? And what did you do when you were fresh out of college?
My first job out of college was as a writer’s assistant for a screenwriter living in Santa Monica, CA. I responded to a blind Craigslist ad. I didn’t know it when I applied, but I had met the out-going assistant at a bar a couple of months earlier. He’d asked for my telephone...
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I decided to do a quick stream of consciousness thing. I think somewhere in here there is something usable for something later on. Or, there isn’t. It doesn’t matter. The point was to just start writing and continue writing non-stop for a period of time. I should have continued on longer, but my options get sorta slim. Ah, well.
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The fire started in a small attic apartment. It...
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November 2011
26 posts
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Writing Prompt: The Choire Sicha Method
kfan:
I recently had a new idea for writing prompts that I’ve been enjoying. I’ve been using this to warm up on mornings when I’m not quite awake but need to get actual work done.
1. Collect your shit, gather your materials, put your headphones on, whatever.
2. Take the first sentence of one of Choire’s pieces on the Awl and cut & paste it into your text file/Word doc/whatever.
3. Start...
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Anonymous asked: Where were you at in your career when you were 21? I feel lost. College sucks big time.
I wasn’t really anywhere in my career when I was 21. I would have been finishing college then, kinda broke, hoping to move across the country and find work. I won’t say that college sucked for me, but I do remember being so IMPATIENT for it to be over. Over in the sense that I...