Today, I'm tackling Roddy Doyle's story 'Teaching' which can be found here: George Saunders- 'A Lack of Order in the Floating Object Room'

I've piddled with a few short shorts over the last week to get my fingers accustomed to moving in time with the creative bursts of thought that I hope will get me from word to word and I have to admit that I'm getting excited thanks to the short stories from these authors: It's a struggle, my job zaps it out of me at times but it only takes a paragraph, or a George Saunders sentence like 'an empty rocking chair rocks faster than any mortal granny could' and I remember how to do it, or at least how to think about doing it. Okay, so, maybe not but I plan on writing something, something substantial, and until then, I will have spent October trying to get myself into the right frame of mind, to get my brain working in sentences that DO NOT contain arguments. I WILL WRITE THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL NEXT MONTH. This is a survival you talk about, one you record in the dusty pages of your memory, alongside your recollections of the recent farmer's market and how it felt to pass it by without stopping and how it felt to realize you didn't care.you talk about a month like this past April so that later, when your free hours are even fewer than now, you will think fondly on the time as 'not so bad' as if being 'not so bad' is an objective state of being.but it's not. during which I ran my first race in nearly a year (along with my three young daughters, a troop of boy scouts, and an enormous pack of recently mange free rescue dogs) during which I released my first novel into the world for others to read.or not.published online under a pen name to keep my former ME distinct and apart from the current ME, at least when it comes to my writing style, subject matter, and audience (totally unnerving and exciting and vulnerability exposing)

during which I wrote probably the best piece of short fiction of my life and was nearly published FINALLY for a different short story I'd submitted in January and in which bayonets and a stampede over clearance priced alarm clocks are both prominently featured during which I read three novels (The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope by Rhonda Riley, and Dancer by Colum McCann) during which I crammed in two jury trials in federal court where I fought the big bad State of Florida for discriminating against the little people I won't because surviving a month like this one:

Wake in the Night by Laura Krughoff