I went to school with a writer named Joanna Ruocco whose facility with language made me nervous and envious and happy. Everything she brought into workshop was wondrous and big-hearted and brilliant and funny and flawed in charmingly perfect ways. I’ve been meaning to write something about her book, The Mothering Coven, and I will sometime soon. But now let me just link to a story of hers called Unicorns you can read online at The Fanzine. The following appears within the first hundred words:

When I am not writing, I feel bad. But when I am writing, I am usually not writing. I feel bad. I sit in front of the computer doing small, surreptitious things to my body.

By the way, The Fanzine seems right up my alley: they’re expressly interested in publishing longer-form writing. As I’ve said here before, this is something web journals–lacking, as they do, space restrictions–should be doing more of.