Category: Writing

  • The Feeling I’m Not Having (Unedited)

    I have been trying all day to come up with a blog, but nothing came to my mind.

    So, looks like I’m doing one of those “Can’t Come Up with Anything,” blogs. I don’t like these, and I seem to do them a couple times of the course of a year.

    It’s a cop out, I know, but here we are.

    I could blame the Alt Side Parking that I had to do this morning.

    Or all the grocery shopping.

    Or the hour I spent playing Axis & Allies on the iPad.

    Maybe the time I spent reading the news.

    Or the I hour I spent with my wife eating lunch and watching the “Mexican Week” episode of GBBS.

    I even found myself reading the Wiki page on Lady Jane Gray… And I’m not sure how I found my way there.

    But most importantly; I’m just not feeling it. Not feeling inspired to read anything, let alone write anything. I tried listening to al the Grammy nominated Best New Artists to see if something would catch me, you know, get something going. It was all good music, but nothing caught.

    So, here I am on the couch at 6:02pm writing about nothing, if only to check the box and say that I accomplished writing a posting a blog today.

    Even if it is a cop out.

  • My Least Favorite Part

    One of the goals that I set for myself this year was to submit my work to more magazines. I sent out a bunch in 2023, and sort of fell off the wagon in 2024, and that is why I am hitting the ground running in 2025. Well, at least relative to my situation. My goal was to send out to ten different magazines this month, and today, I accomplished it. Not an enormous step, but a step none the less.

    And as I was reading issues and guidelines from new magazines and journals, I started to feel like I did when I was acting, and going out on auditions – which was nervous, a little anxious, and also a touch of faked confidence. I mean I got work, but like all actors, I struck out more often than not. I accepted that it was part of the business, but I never learned to enjoy it. I have friends who love to audition – get in the room, try stuff out, see what works. They like the challenge of it all.

    For me, auditioning was the necessary evil that I had to go through to get what I wanted, and that was rehearsal. I loved every part of rehearsal. The table read, getting there early, making new friends in the cast and crew, learning how each other works, the discovery of the process, the bad days, and the good days, and that feeling of at any moment it could all go off the rails but somehow always magically came together. Not always, but most of the time. Performance was extra, the icing on the cake. Rehearsal was the fun of work. And I really do miss that.

  • No Short Story Review This Week… Sort of

    See, I read a piece that I really liked, and I wrote a quick review on it. But then I saw that Split Lip Mag publishes micro reviews (250 to 500 words) which is normally my word count for a review, and on a whim, I decided what the hell, and sent it off to them. Clearly I have not heard back, but if they do reject the piece, then I will publish it here, and ya’ll can go crazy on it. If they do publish it, I will put up a link, and let ya’ll go crazy, but on someone else’s platform.

    Anyways, here’s hoping…

  • There Goes the Social Neighborhood

    So, Zuck just bent the knee and kissed the ring.

    You know, I got off Twitter because of Elon, moving over to Threads… I guess I need to get my BlueSky account going. Sadly, I will have to keep Facebook, because that’s the only way I can communicate with anyone I know over the age of 60. I like my Instagram account, yet it will have to be a causality in the social media wars.

    All of this makes me wonder if my Myspace and Tumblr accounts are still active?

    I hated hearing people use the phrase, “post-truth world” as it seemed like such a melodramatic phrase. Now…

    And this isn’t about free speech and expression. One side will be given carte blanche while the other will be pushed out of the algorithm rotation. Just look at what Elon did to Twitter. On that platform there is only one side of the debate, and it’s his.

    As old media slowly dies off, through market forces or by investment firms’ system of strangulation, social media will play a larger role in the flow of information, and what will be considered the truth.

  • Best of 2024: Most Viewed Non-Review Post of 2024 – That’s a Good Name

    (A bit surprised that this was the most viewed post, which wasn’t a short story review. Not that I’m complaining, just surprised, as it was a one-note joke blog. Anyway, I’ll take it.)

    This isn’t a new idea of mine, you see, as I have been thinking about it since high school, but what if I started a lit journal? Nowadays, it would be an online lit journal, but in the back of my mind I can hear M.M. Carrigan over at Taco Bell Quarterly yelling that I should just do it.

    And I might…

    But that’s not why I am here. (Though I could always use the unsolicited encouragement.) The reason I bring all of this up is that, besides figuring out what the mission of the lit mag would be (It needs to be original, like, the only place to get whatever it is that I will showcase,) but most importantly is to come up with a name that stick in people’s minds, and encapsulate whatever it is that I am selling. Now, logically, I need to come up with the mission or purpose statement first as that will make it so much easier to find a name… Yeah, but that’s not a whole lot of fun.

    What I am reminded of is when I was in a terrible, just awful punk/blues/jam band, and all the hours in rehearsal we’d spend rockin’ out, and then yelling possible band names at each other;

    No Refund, Lost Weekend, Areola, Bacon on the Side, Webbed Toes… You get the idea.

    Now, I don’t want to sound too much like a grandpa 90’s punk, but it should still have a literary name, but with an edge… like…

    Poochie

    Inked Well

    The Blurb

    Atmost

    Humph

    Dead Spot

    Dead Cart

    Mark Two

    And then the title might need a good one liner to follow up, like…

    “Nothing But Illustrious Writers”

    Or

    “It’s Norse for Quality”

    Or

    “Putting Your MFA to Use”

    So, you can see, this has been a fun mind walk of an… Oh!

    Mind Walk (That’s a good one…)

    Anyway, you can see this has been a fun exercise in…

    Ellipses (Ah… maybe not…)

    Point here people is that making an online lit journal might not be the easiest thing, but picking out a name is a good way to kill an hour of writing time.

    (And all these journal names are copyrighted by me, Matthew Groff, 2024. Can’t use it unless you get permission or pay me.)

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