February 2012
19 posts
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"It’s fine for a writer to have a quirky or... →
Read this piece by Lisa Levy on The Rumpus. It touches on so many of the things I agonize about concerning my writing and my day job.
I feel you, T.S. Eliot, I really do!
My job is not strange or quirky either. I wouldn’t put it in my contributor’s bio.
January 2012
47 posts
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The Game
‘My darling child,’ said Heidler with calmness, ‘your whole point of view and your whole attitude to life is impossible and wrong and you’ve got to change it for everybody’s sake.
He went on to explain that one had to keep up appearances. That everybody had to. Everybody had for everybody’s sake to keep up appearances. It was everybody’s duty, it was...
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“The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to...”
– John Updike (via aaknopf)
Nobody can make me feel inferior without my consent!
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Gender bias at NPR — and what it reveals about the... →
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“A poem, you could say, is like a bell: if you stuff a bunch of dirty laundry...”
– Renee Ashley, great poet, great lady, dog lover
Read the entire interview. Renee is the featured poet in the Winter 2012 IthacaLit.
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The Rejectionist interviews Kate Zambreno →
Really looking forward to Zambreno’s new book, Heroines.
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“The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it.”
– Edith Wharton (via millionsmillions)
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“I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even...”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson (via doubledaybooks)
Me too, Ralphie! But it’s my intent to start keeping track this year. I’m putting it off though because the first book I read this year was The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. They were making a big deal about it on The Leonard Lopate Show! I...
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Messing with Memoir →
I’m not sure what I think about this.
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My day job
I have finally (?) begun to write a story partially inspired by my day job. Artisty and writery types often say to me that I must get so many good ideas or stories from my job, but most of them say it with sympathy and pity and like they don’t quite believe it and just need something nice to say. For my part, I’m sure my feelings of inadequacy and embarrassment come through when I...
“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out...”
– Flannery O’Connor (via pavorst)
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A new book about introverts
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain
Seems interesting.
“It’s the extrovert, prancing around, dying for a bit of fun—that’s the person you’ve got to be wary of.”
Jean Rhys Good Morning Midnight
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A writing tic I'm tired of seeing
Paragraph construction that goes like this: Statement about how things are/should be/are generally accepted to be. The words “And yet” with a period after. Evidence of how the opposite of the statement is actually the case.
Please no more “And yet.”
I’m also not fond of: Statement. “But” with a period or exclamation point after. Evidence. I see this...
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The anger of the male novelist →
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be...”
– C.S. Lewis (via doubledaybooks)
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And Jenny's Head Fell Off
That’s the last line in a scary story I remember from childhood. The girl in the story always wears a ribbon around her neck, and no one around her knows why. Some quick research on Google Books tells me that the story is “The Green Ribbon” from the collection In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories edited by Alvin Schwartz.
Damn, I remember so well the elementary school librarian...
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The Rejectionist made me have a vampire dream
Why had I never read The Rejectionist before? I have been missing out. Anyway, as of yesterday, I have read it. She makes the point in many posts that people often bring up vampires when they hear you’re a writer.
So last night I had a dream. I was in a class taught by a person who, in my waking life, had told me that my novel is not very good nor interesting. The class met in my elementary...
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“I used to believe that if someone else is really funny, then I’m obviously less...”
– Elissa Bassist
I am guilty of this. Read the entire piece.
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“A writer must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.”
– William Faulkner
(My lesson today. In light of doubts and panic about my publishing prospects.)
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“The more I’m in this business the more I realize that I am not in control...”
– Writer, Rejected of Literary Rejections on Display
Depressing mystery indeed.
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“I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most.”
– Margaret Atwood (via bookmania)
Love her!
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“Adrien Brody,” Adrien Brody, and Adrien Brody’s... →
I love all the thoughtful pieces being written about “Adrien Brody.”
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Can't Reread
I enjoy rereading. I believe it’s essential, in fact. But there are three works I have not ever reread, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to bring myself to, not because I didn’t like them, but because I remember them as so disturbing. They are: The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, “A Good Man is Hard to Find” by Flannery O’Connor, and...
“It’s too disturbing to read a writer with a good style when you’re in the middle...”
– Normal Mailer (via ryanchavis)
“Fiction writers as a species tend to be oglers. They tend to lurk and to stare....”
– Walking Aimless in Chicago: An excerpt from DFW’s essay “E Unibus Pluram”
Read the rest here.
(via decoeur)
“When a man says he does not want to speak of something he usually means he can...”
– John Steinbeck, East of Eden (via bookmania)
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What My Last Book Taught Me →
Interesting article by Audrey Vernick. I worry all the time about my novel and my stories being too “quiet” as she describes. I haven’t submitted my novel to agents or publishers yet partly because I’m chicken and partly because I feel deep down that it’s not quite ready, that I need an epiphany like the one described by Vernick in this article.
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“… now Hope, the vulture, will have to go and feed on somebody else.”
– Jean Rhys, “A Solid House”
“Hope is the last thing a person does before they are defeated.”
– Henry Rollins (via aquabooks)
There is a distinct lack of writers on Tumblr →
mensahdemary:
jzadavinci:
There’s such a distinct lack of text content on Tumblr that breaks even 100 words in a post, it’s pretty sad. I’m sure there are some fantastic writers out there, some fantastic thinkers too but where is their representation?
The Same Situation
emilybooks:
By Sari Botton
I got a nice email from Emily (Gould) the other day about my conversation with Emily Carter, published as part of a series I write for The Rumpus. She said she wished the piece had been longer, and I immediately regretted two choices I had made.
The first was not pursuing further with Carter the subject of addiction to male approval and attention. We...
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Who says I can't do it all?
I had a productive 2 hours of writing, and my Crock pot dinner smells fantastic.
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