Reposted by Colette Love Hilliard
"I’m drawn to structures that create a contrast between tone and mood, so a list felt like a natural choice. It allowed me to explore a sad, messy topic through a neutral lens and gave me some much-needed distance" @colettelh.bsky.social, this week's featured author www.smokelong.com/interviews/s...
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Smoke Signals with Colette Love Hilliard - SmokeLong Quarterly
You use a list-style Q&A format between the narrator and a hairdresser. What drew you to this structure, and how did it shape the piece? When I think about it, I’m drawn to structures that create a co...
![What It Feels Like
So it's 3 a.m. here in CST and my alarm goes off, which means it’s time to crawl out of bed and send this breathless paragraph to HAD, and I fucking hate mornings, but it's the first time I've been excited to wake up before god, and when I say excited, I mean euphoric from an interruption of REM sleep mixed with that twinge of hope us writers get when we know there's a chance someone might add a skull to the pile with our name on it, and what will happen in that time between hitting submit and opening the email reply? how shall I spend this 24-hour manic episode? revisiting that dream where my teeth fall out doesn't sound appealing, so I suppose I'll get up, but not dressed, and take a blanket with me to the backyard and wait for the birds to tell me the world hasn't ended (I have always believed this is how I will know) then, I'll watch the sunrise and think I should do this more often, knowing full well I won't, and once time ticks down to a point at which I must leave the comfort of home, and nature, and pajamas, I'll grab something from my closet that will help keep my spirits up, since I’m bound to have doubts about this little composition throughout the day, and there's nothing like a fitted pair of jeans to restore confidence, so I'll slide those on, walk the dog, kiss my husband, and drive to school, which is actually work, but teachers call work school, and I'll teach teenagers about imagery, “don't tell me love is amazing–describe what it smells like,” and between classes and after work/school, I'll check my email looking for the standard Submittable format RE: [HAD] etc., and here's how it always goes for me–I'll feel the notification on my wrist first, like a buzz of adrenaline, and I'll see just enough to know it's my fate waiting for me on the other side of the screen, and I'll give myself a conciliatory speech that includes affirmations like, it's just good to be writing, and so what if they don't love it, at least you do, but ther…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:kfbvdxfwntlxvjko7zxhlttu/bafkreihh7jb5tubkdwybttmeqk5q7paqat3dun5uro2lquhrhxstgtodju)
