This is the first time a book trailer has ever given me (heh) shivers.

I would warn you that this entry is about periods, but that would go against the spirit of the thing, wouldn’t it?

So Kotex seems to be going in a different direction with their advertising. Namely, they want us all to start talking about menstruation and vaginas instead of using veiled, metaphoric language. I’m so there!

It took me years to figure out the Dreaded Tampon. To be fair, this wasn’t my mom’s fault–she offered to show me how to use one, but, at twelve, and stupid, I was mortified by the idea. It was mostly the applicators that confused me, though I didn’t realize this until I had tampon success with an OB when I was eighteen.

I used tampons (and, a few times, Instead Cups, which kind of sucked) through college. In graduate school, I switched to sea sponges, because I was tired of spending money on tampons. A few months ago, I finally invested in some lunapads and a DivaCup. And I love love love them. I am, in fact, wearing my DivaCup right this very minute.

One thing I wish someone had taught me when I was younger is that it’s an awesome idea to only wear black underwear while you’re on your period–in fact, I have about half a dozen pairs just for that purpose. Maybe that should have been self-evident, but it wasn’t!

What do you wish you had known about periods?

Amazing video blog from YA Rebel Victoria Schwab on risk taking:

I have to say, one of the ways I think that an MFA was not helpful for me was that it made me more afraid to take risks in my poetry. I have a very loud, very vocal internal editor already. In my very last workshop, I quite literally made apologies for emotional content in my poetry.

And I love emotional content. In 2007 and before, before I came here, I never even considered sentiment a risk.

This might have something to do with why I hardly write poetry these days. I’ll get an idea (I think of ideas in my head as seedlings–admittedly a hackneyed metaphor but I think creative ideas germinate in exactly the same way) and think “How can I make this a good story?” rather than “How can I distill this into a poem?” Part of this, sure, is that I’ve gotten used to having space to develop my ideas–poetry forces you into a sort of conciseness that fiction, even spare, sparse fiction, doesn’t. But I know that part of this is fear. I can take risks in fiction that I don’t feel comfortable taking in poetry. I’m undoubtedly more skilled, more controlled, but to be an effective artist you need to be able to forgo control every once in awhile to make an emotional impact.

I’m not sure what the cure is for this, except, perhaps, time (and maybe intoxication? That’s helped in the past, but I’m too busy these days to be drunk, which is probably a shame). Right now, I’ve been focusing on fiction–and sitting back passively, waiting for the poems to come. Victoria’s vlog is a nice reminder that sometimes, you have to grab these things, to be proactive, to be rash.

(Oh, and if you’re not following the yarebels, and you like YA fiction, you should be.)

Parisian Love, Part II from Matt Haughey on Vimeo.

I’ve been meaning to upload this forever. Well, today is a good day for love. Tomorrow, it will be seven years since Jordan and I met!

This is a little music video I made to The Lightning Seed’s “Pure” using the crap on my desk. It was created in April 09 for one of my graduate classes on childhood and creativity.