Thank you to everyone who sent work in for the Repetition call @havehashad.com. That was fun. I'm going to have a beer and some pizza now. Several heartbreak rejections, and almost everything was interesting.
19 spots left.
Yeah, Macbeth. I had the entire monologue that phrase is lifted from memorized for a few years but then it was washed from my brain by baths of beer like the inscription on a tombstone is softened into illegibility by rain.
I had to read it four times in highschool.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Read a draft of this for XRAY and it's a fun one. Excited to drive the polished version.
Color photo. We're looking out over a farm's barren winter landscape. At the horizon, the sun is rising and the low edge of the sky is peach, while most of the sky above it is still blueish. Across the top of the image, some electrical lines cross through. At mid-distance, the only real subject in the image is a home or barn. We're looking at the side facing away from the sunrise, so it is nearly pitch black, with detail hard to make out.
US-421, near Medaryville, IN.
Repetitions Theme: Repetitions March 3rd, 6 a.m. PST, capped at 222 submissions For this call, I'm looking for prose that uses repetition to get at what it's going for. This could be repetition of sounds, phrases, images, a piece of the subject matter—or whatever. Some examples of what I'm trying to get you to go for would be Nam Troag Tran’s “Dolphin Linguistics,” Lydia Davis’ “A Mown Lawn,” Joe Brainard’s “I Remember,” Raymond Queneau’s “Exercises in Style,” Loorie Moore's “Real Estate,” Sharon Kivland's "Nana by Emile Zola digested according to light and lighting effects, including metaphor," or Donald Barthelme's “The Balloon.” Subtler repetition than demonstrated by these is ok (but just ok.) Any kind of prose is fine including prose poems. You may consider the usual word count cutoff for HAD (~750-1000) to be relaxed given the nature of this call. Though you should still be kinda in the spirit of. I'm looking forward to seeing what you send me. — Joshua Hebburn
Next call coming soon, from our fave and yours, Joshua Hebburn!
Theme: Repetitions
March 3rd, 6 a.m. PST, capped at 222 submissions
This could be repetition of sounds, phrases, images, a piece of the subject matter—or whatever. Any kind of prose is fine including prose poems.
59. The Hollow by Greg Jackson.
58. A Wrinkle in the Realm by Ben Okri.
57. Superstition by Sarah Braunstein.
One of the interesting things that happens as a result of reading submissions imho is you see lots of writers over time trying a kind of story and I feel like this was a much earlier version of one I see attempts at today. Not a copy of this, but like, how everything tends to evolve into a crab.
56. Hatagaya Lore by Bryan Washington.
55. The Beach House by Joy Williams.
54. Something Familiar by Mary Gaitskill.
Nancy 2/22/26… 🪱WOIMS🪱
53. The Doctor's Wife by John Updike.
Just finished a "weakest sentences" pass through my new novel, as described in Refuse to Be Done. Cut 16,000 words form the manuscript in the process.
Incidentally, Frederick Barthelme's new collection/Collected contains a wonderfully grotesque and coarse version of this story.
The narrator is less charming to me as an adult man than he was when I first encountered the narrator, at the narrator's age. A reverse Holden Caulfield.
Realized while enjoying eating cucumber in the sun I was essentially engaged in the same activity my lizard ancestors probably enjoyed millions of years ago.
52. Travesty by Lillian Fishman.
51. The Quiet House by Tessa Hadley.
50. A&P by John Updike.
49. This is How it Happens by Molly Aitkin
48. Home by John Updike.
47. I walk between the raindrops by T.C. Boyle.
