It would be easy to assume, based on the scant activity on my blog, that I haven't been doing much with my year so far. Au contraire, mon frère. I neglected to post my resolutions early this year mainly because I didn't want to be held to account for the ones I discarded, but I will say that I've kept the two most important ones: 1) Getting back into the running habit, and 2) getting my ms in order for submission by the end of March.
The running is going well; in fact, I've been having so much fun making running playlists for my iPod that I've decided to start sharing my favorites. I think I'll call it my Pathos-Laden Running Playlist. As with my 12 Miserable Days of Christmas, I'll include the song with the option to download it for yourself on the right-hand corner of the player.
And the book! I'm feeling better every day about how it's coming together. After spending much of last year deconstructing, reconstructing, and languishing in the beautiful ruins of my disembodied sentences, I sank into a bit of a depression (writing-wise, at least) that carried into last summer. Then I got some great advice from poet/essayist Cynthia Huntington: Have a couple of people you know and trust read all the manuscript as it is right now, tell me what they see as the connections, revise accordingly, and set myself a deadline to get it done. Then move on to the next project. I got three kind and generous souls to read and comment on it in December (whom I won't name now but will be sure to include at the top of the acknowledgements if and when the manuscript sees publication), and set the deadline for myself. Hence the resolution.
Anyway, I've rewritten my About page to reflect all this; you can read it here.
Oh, and I have a review-essay of Steven Church's Ultrasonic going up on Essay Daily this Thursday - I'll post the link to that when it goes up. And I'm excited to announce that an long essay I wrote during the Kansas City Royals' postseason run will be going up on The Weeklings on Opening Day!