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All Friday and Saturday I walked around and chatted with writers and editors, running home now and then to write a seminar paper and grabbing a few hours’ sleep each trip. I listened to stories about elephants hanged for homicides and stories of overpaid college presidents and stories about the Civil Rights movement. I gave away half a dozen copies of the book and found out exactly all of the creativity that goes on at UNCG.

Memories flooded back from Greensboro Review’s literary magazine and press festival a couple of years ago, the first one they ever hosted. Back then I was working for Yemassee and predicting that my thesis, which became this novel, would wind up in slush piles in some of New York’s finest literary agencies and publishing houses. (There’s a scene in Franzen’s The Corrections in which a NY literary agent’s daughter decorates the back of a slush pile mss. with crayons.) I’d just suffered a tremendous breakup. After sitting all afternoon at our booth at UNCG, my fellows and I went “tearing it up” in college town Greensboro. I remember almost starting a conversation with a cute girl and muttering to myself, “Oh, just forget it” as I returned to my table with a depressingly soggy slice of pizza.

In three years, both the festival and I have rebounded – doubling in size (the festival, not me). But sadly, I heard the Backward City Review had folded due to creative differences. A few of the journals I’d hoped to see–Sewanee Review and Chattahoochee Review, weren’t present this time around.

Boy. Sunday afternoon has now turned into Monday morning. After a marathon of work, I felt oddly compelled at 3 a.m. to watch all of Barton Fink online. I’d never seen it. Now I know exactly what not to do as a writer. In fact, after finishing the film, I’m so terrified that I’ll swear here and now: I will always listen to the common man. Always! Really! Or, wait, the next man who claims to be common and has “stories to tell,” I’ll run screaming into the hills. Yes, that’s the moral of this movie. John Goodman + mysterious package = run. I think. Z’ounds, I hope he’s got enough sense not to open that box on the beach.