AURIA CORTES

Happy New Year! Tonight at the stroke of midnight, be sure to eat twelve grapes. Each grape represents a month for the New Year. The first grape represents January, the second grape represents February, and so on. If you eat a sour grape that means that month will be troublesome for you.  To bring good luck for the upcoming year, sprinkle sugar outside. A pinch will do. Also, be sure to throw a bucket of water out of your window to drive out the old and bring in the New Year with a fresh start.

I’m hosting New Year’s. I bought my home a few months ago and don’t have enough seating. In fact, I have zero furniture. So I’m starting another Puerto Rican tradition, a BYOC party. BYOC = Bring your own chair.

Last Monday I didn’t post my word count for The Devil’s Playground. Not because I didn’t reach my word count, I did. But because I took the day off my blogging. In the past two weeks I wrote 12,148 words. I purposely wrote more than my goal to make up for the week I lagged behind. I’m still behind my overall goal by over 2,000 words.  

One thing that I have noticed during the past two weeks is that my MC has taken on a southern twang. She is using words such as “fretting” and “minding.” I’m not sure why she has decided to do this, but I’m not going to fight her on it. I’ll let her be. I’m curious to see how she will evolve.

TheNovelette.com is holding a writing contest - Travel: A Trip I’ll Never Forget. Entries must be no more than 750 words. The deadline is March 15^th, 2008. Here’s what they have to say on their website: 

Submissions will be judged in two categories – by popular online vote and by our editorial panel of professional writers. Winners in each category will receive a $25 gift certificate to Barnes & Noble. That means a $50 certificate will be awarded if one submission wins BOTH! AND . . . a virtual blue ribbon award from thenovelette.com to post on your website and/or include as part of your email signature.

 Good luck with your submission.

I haven’t written a Haiku since Junior High so I thought it would be a fun writing project to try.

The rules of a Haiku are as follows: first line contains 5 syllables, the second line 7, and the third line 5.  

Here’s my Haiku: 

I spend time writing

Deleting word after word

Leaving the page blank 

I came up with this masterpiece in less than two minutes. And most of that time was deciding if the word spend has more than one syllable.  

Using my fingers as a guide, I repeated the word spend in different rhythms.  

Spend. One syllable.

Sp-e-nd. Three syllables

Spen-d. Two syllables. 

I decided on one syllable. More for convenience than anything else.  

Now that I’m writing this, I’m not sure if the word word has one or two syllables. 

Word. One syllable.

Wor-d. Two syllables. 

Oh no, this Haiku stuff isn’t easy. Figuring out syllables isn’t as easy as it used to be.

Give it a try and post your Haiku in the comment section.

Submissions should be sent by e-mail to the appropriate department, as indicated below:
Fiction: fiction@newyorker.com

Poetry: poetry@newyorker.com   

We cannot accept submissions that are sent as attachments, so please send your work as part of the body of an e-mail. No more than one story or six poems should be submitted at one time. We prefer to receive no more than two submissions per writer per year, and generally cannot reply to more.

The New Yorker does not accept submissions by mail or by fax, and we cannot be responsible for the loss or return of unsolicited pieces. We do not consider simultaneous submissions or material that has been previously published. 

We try to respond to all submissions, but, due to volume, we may take up to eight weeks to respond.

Common Ties is introducing a new section on their website and podcast called 20 Questions. They are encouraging people to share their answers in a form of very short stories/snippets or poetry. They pay a nominal fee for accepted answers.

This project sounds like a lot of fun. 

Click here to learn more about the submission guidelines.