Confession
I often used to confuse Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace, and Jonathan Safran Foer.
Because of the three name thing and the Jonathan thing and the white male genius thing.
“As far as I’m concerned, I believe the subject chooses the writer.” —Mario Vargas Llosa http://t.co/NEYvXrhk — The Paris Review (@parisreview)
A wonderful interview on Lit Reactor about writers and depression.
"Everyone wants to give a writer the perfect notebook. Over the years I’ve acquired stacks: One is leather, a rope of Rapunzel’s hair braids its spine. Another, tree-friendly, its pages reincarnated from diaries of poets who now sit in cubicles. One is small and black like a funeral dress, its pages lined like the hands of a widow. There’s even a furry blue one that looks like a shag rug or a monster that would hide under it— and I wonder why? For every blown out candle, every Mazel Tov, every turn of the tassel, you gift-wrap what a writer dreads most: blank pages. It’s never a notebook we need. If we have a story to tell, an idea carbonating past the brim of us, we will write it on our arms, thighs, any bare meadow of skin. In the absence of pens, we will repeat our lines deliriously like the telephone number of a parting stranger until we become the craziest one on the subway. If you really love a writer, fuck her on a coffee table. Find a gravestone of someone who shares her name and take her to it. When her door is plastered with an eviction notice, do not offer your home. Say I Love You, then call her the wrong name. If you really love a writer, bury her in all your awful and watch as she scrawls her way out."
— Megan Falley, “If You Really Love a Writer” (via pigmenting)
I have a million fancy notebooks, all blank.
(via kdecember)
I am Mr. Fickle and The Envy Queen.
Venturing back into the community
(If it’s possible to “venture” back…)
Yesterday, I attended the first literary event I have attended in quite awhile - a reading given by the NYU Veterans Writing Workshop. I really enjoyed it, especially since several of the readers had really good “reading voices.” Rick Moody was there as a guest reader too. I’m not so good with the wine and cheese portions of those things, but at this point, probably immersion therapy is a good tack to take.
Of course I got lost several times on my way there. Not only because I’m a Jerseyite who hasn’t been to the city in four years. In the last month, I’ve also gotten lost in my office building and in my own neighborhood. I think it’s possible I’m not meant for civilization. I can walk around in unfamiliar woods and not get lost, but I’m not good with roads, hallways, and subways.
I will, I hope and pray, be traveling out of state for a writing conference in July. So I will have to (re)learn how to pump my own gas.
The writing community is important, so I’ll try again to get it right.
Roxane Gay on social media for writers.
"I used to believe that if someone else is really funny, then I’m obviously less funny. If someone else is the best in the scene, then I’m—if not the worst—not the best, because the best is taken. If another woman in the class is getting better, then I’m getting worse. If she’s succeeding, I’m not. Not true in improv (and life)!"
—
Elissa Bassist
I am guilty of this. Read the entire piece.
