Number Eight: If you need more freedom around the story, draft to draft, change the character names. Characters aren't real, and they aren't you. By arbitrarily changing their names, you get the distance you need to really torture a character. Or worse, delete a character, if that's what the story really needs.

That one is all of those things. Especially helpful. Go read the whole thing now.

Three Islands, Micah Ling’s first full-length collection, brings together the three colossal figures of Amelia Earhart, Robert Stroud (the Birdman of Alcatraz), and Fletcher Christian to examine the solitude and madness that comprises their slight degrees of separation. Existing in the channel between fact and fiction, these poems deftly swim among the slight nuances that divide captivity, isolation, and escape.

If you had the opportunity to pick up Micah's chapbook out earlier this year from Finishing Line Press, Thoughts on Myself, a series of poems in the voice of Amelia Earhart, you already have a good idea of the wonderful things she can do with the voices of others. And one has to assume Three Islands is going to be three times the awesome. And that's a lot of awesome. Let's get on this one, folks.

In the beginning, I published as many famous writers as I could. I wanted to bask in their glory; I needed to establish my street cred.

After a few years, I realized I could serve the community better by concentrating on new voices. All told, I've introduced 241 first-timers; this issue celebrates our 25th year by reprising 25 debut stories.

Among the debuts nestled beside the first Haruki Murakami story translated into English—"probably shouldn't count, but I'm including it here for the sake of bragging. (The translator was still in graduate school.)"—is the first published story from Lintel, Sash, and Sill Adventure Society member Seamus Boshell. You can read an excerpt from his story "Bolloc" on the site or, better yet, find a print copy at your local independent bookstore (you still have an independent bookstore nearby, right?) and give everything in there a read. You get to support a fine journal and you get some good, entertaining reading. Seems pretty win-win, no?

We aim to highlight the important work of female poets, who are often underrepresented in the writing community and popular media. Rather than personal politics, our criteria are excellence and vibrance. Rather than segregating the poetry of ‘women’s issues’ from ‘regular’ creative work, our goal is to provide an additional arena in which female poets can make their work more visible to readers, building their reputations as artists.

Right? Right. Now here's the call for submissions:

Bone Bouquet seeks to publish the best new writing by female poets, from artists both established and emerging. We are especially interested in work that is unpredictable, poems that have both sass and authority.

Please send up to 5 pages of poetry to bonebouquet at gmail dot com. Your work should appear as an .rtf attachment OR paste your work into the body of the email. Also include a short (50 word) biographical note.

Simultaneous submissions are fine, as long as we are notified when work is accepted elsewhere. Bone Bouquet only accepts previously unpublished work; we request first electronic rights, and would like to archive your work on the site.  Please note that your work first appeared in Bone Bouquet if it is reprinted elsewhere on the web or in print.

The reading period will remain open through October 15, 2009.

Alright, all of you established and emerging female poets: get on it!

Then next week we repeat it all over again. We don't really have what you'd call standard issues, so to speak. More like one long, ongoing, daily-updated issue. But that's not really an issue at all. You see the dilemma. Though, really, we don't see it as a problem. We like reading new work every day. And we're already parked in front of the computer most of our time, so why wait between issues?

Folks, Suss is a go. Let's make this happen.

Jews at the beach. Jews at the beach. Jews, technically not all of them Jews, the mother having agreed to light candles on Fridays, the father promising to spend Christmases with those damned in-laws, at the beach. Jews looking for a clean patch of grass at the beach, which, although technically a beach, has no sand and no ocean—this is the Midwest after all—and is dotted with goose droppings...

At the bottom of that page you'll find an embedded recording of Danit reading the piece. We have it from good sources that she recorded that during the same session she recorded her piece for From the Doorway. So now you'll know what's coming for you. It's all awesome, obviously.

Though they haven't been making new episodes for a couple years, today marks the last day that Reading Rainbow will be airing at all on PBS. In homage to all the good work Mr. LeVar Burton (forever Geordi LaForge, thank you very much) did over the years, here's a spot with him sporting a fine mid-80s fade and getting some support from the mighty Run-DMC.

The word “leaf” can mean a number of things:  

• The leaf of a table.
• The green fluttery end of a tree branch that turns and falls off in autumn.
• The two pages of an open book that make up the left and right hand side of the book (verso and recto).

The last of these comes closest to what I mean by “Write One Leaf,” but I’d like to leave it open for interpretation. When you set out to write something, you might have a direction, but the purpose of this here weblog is to get you moving.

It's a great, simple resource if you're looking for a jumping off place. So, you know, get on it!

If you'd like to explore how and why we're using CC licences, visit LS&S Press.

(via the Creative Commons site)