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Back Loudermilk
Chapters (60)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Personae
  4. I: Early Days
  5. One. Control
  6. Two. Doubt
  7. Three. Fate
  8. Four. Same
  9. Five. Fine Arts
  10. Six. In Loco Parentis
  11. Seven. Settling
  12. Eight. Neighbors
  13. Nine. Prospects
  14. Ten. The Lucky
  15. Eleven. Instruction
  16. Twelve. Same
  17. Thirteen. This Is a Pipe
  18. Fourteen. This Is Not a Pipe
  19. Fifteen. The Reason
  20. Sixteen. That Person
  21. Seventeen. Predictably
  22. II: Writing Teacher
  23. Eighteen. Early Poems
  24. Nineteen. Motivation
  25. Twenty. Allegory
  26. Twenty-One. Grief
  27. Twenty-Two. A Portrait
  28. Twenty-Three. Veils
  29. Twenty-Four. Soft Power
  30. Twenty-Five. Lists
  31. Twenty-Six. A Break
  32. Twenty-Seven. Elsewhere
  33. Twenty-Eight. Custom
  34. Twenty-Nine. Parity
  35. Thirty. Fortune
  36. III: Volta
  37. Thirty-One. Images
  38. Thirty-Two. A Very Interesting Young Man
  39. Thirty-Three. Letters
  40. Thirty-Four. We Prefer to See Ourselves Living
  41. Thirty-Five. Love
  42. Thirty-Six. The Iceberg
  43. IV: Your Best Reader
  44. Thirty-Seven. A Novelist
  45. Thirty-Eight. In Advance of the Broken Arm
  46. Thirty-Nine. Their Penultimate Encounter
  47. Forty. Détente
  48. Forty-One. Worlds
  49. Forty-Two. Recognition
  50. Forty-Three. Persistence
  51. Forty-Four. And Then
  52. Forty-Five. Mingling
  53. Forty-Six. You
  54. Forty-Seven. Persona
  55. Forty-Eight. Est et Non
  56. Forty-Nine. The Author
  57. Epilogue
  58. Afterword: The Libertine
  59. Acknowledgments
  60. About the Authors

What up H-Bag,

bet you’re thinking I’m pretty slick. I’m writing you from me, as me. Or you as me and me as me and therefore it’s me. Pretty genius, if I do say so myself. the perfect closed system!

Anyways, if you didn’t have a massive coronary you realized by now I skipped town and you’re sitting around pondering me ending my semester a little early. But what you _need_ to know is I got an incredible offer, Harrison me boy, and there’s no place for me but the BIG apple. I feel like I couldn’t even have planned this, like how amazing things worked out but, hey, when you’ve got extreme talent haha ;)

Apologies for the silence. I want you to know that getting an agent has been good but maybe somehow subconsciously I did plan it all? I can’t wait for you to see teh novel when it comes out. Don’t worry broham: I totally changed your name ;) ;) :))

We both got ours!

I’m attaching a scan for you, because your becoming a genuine Seminars person and you need 2 know what’s . This is a just little something something, the secret to the special sause. You being you *might* have missed it. Enjoy your times, man. Get that degree! Hey workshop worked for me so who knows what it would do for you.

Here’s to hoping some day our paths do cross but not too soon.

Your sincerely,

LOUDERMILK

Metadata: 1 file attached, originovdapussy.pdf

The Origin of the World

By Clare Elwil

“You’re telling me I have to choose?” the writing teacher wants to know.

They are in his office and the student has placed a sheet of paper on his desk.

“It’s—it’s,” the student stammers, becoming paler and more shapeless. “I’m just not”—she pauses—“sure.” She touches her prim eyewear.

The writing teacher knows that all personality is, at the end of the day, a performance. The student is waiting. The writing teacher examines the page she has placed before him. On the page are three paragraphs he has not yet read with any sort of concentration. After he has selected one of them, the student has told him, she will know how to begin her story.

The student is saying very respectfully, very softly and crisply, that she needs his help. She needs his help because she does not understand beginnings. She says that she understands everything else, it’s just where things begin that trips her up. This is her expression, “trips [her] up.”