Moving Targets

Someone recently asked me what my "style" of writing was. I have never been able to give the type of answer I feel most people are looking for when I respond.

My usual answer is "It depends on what I'm working on at the moment." My other answer is "It depends on what I'm reading or what's influencing me."

Sitting on my hard drive at home are four manuscripts in various states of completion. The styles of the manuscripts are quite varied. Sometimes, I write in one particular mode to take a break from writing in another particular mode. I've got a bunch of these rhetorical poems that are in couplets which I feel are a direct response to longer, narrative, biographical pieces. The longer biographical pieces are probably a response to the historical sequence I had been working on in the mid 2000's. And then, of course, there's this latest epistolary sequence which started as a series of postcards but has become something larger and beyond the postcards.

I don't know what to tell these people who want to know about my "style" of writing. I guess I'm a firm believer in being a moving target. I've always felt an artist should evolve or change . . . so I try to evolve/change from project to project.

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Heading over to Eastern Washington for the Get Lit! Festival. I've got a host of responsibilities/readings. That event should be the last of the academic year for me.

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Current Flashback:

R.E.M.

I saw them in Boise, Idaho promoting their GREEN album. That was a LONG time ago. Michael Stipe still had long hair and he was wearing black eyeliner. The BSU Pavilion was relatively empty.