Long Time, No Write

-
It's hard to get to this blog when I'm writing in that 750 words thing every day (have done 165 days in a row so far). But then I look at the blog and feel so sad that it's neglected. So, maybe what I can do is to use the first part of my writing every morning to come up with something more general to say that I can cross post here.

Right now, I'm reading Carol Shields' novel,  Unless, and really, not all that much happens in it from chapter to chapter, UNLESS you count that each scene shows this 44 year old mother trying to get on with her life after her daughter has taken to sitting on the street corner with a street sign reading, "Goodness" on it. I kind of don't like how the character keeps referring to her age, how she's in the first part of being middle-aged. That reminds me that I'm middle aged, but I don't feel like that.

Also read a piece in the New Yorker that was really just this writer's diary from her time in Madrid when she was waiting for some money to come and just taking notes on the life around her. That reminded me that I really need to take notes more often.

Like, every morning when I'm on the subway, instead of playing computer games or reading a magazine, I should be paying attention to what's going on around me, because it's all possible material. Padhraig also sent me a link to this Twitter feed of a woman eavesdropping on a nearby argument.

And here is Ernesto's face.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Candyman: Race, Class, Sexuality, Gender, and Disability

-
Candyman hits on almost all of the sections we discussed over the last six weeks. Let's start from the most obvious and move from there.   Race: A large part of Candyman confronts the anger and rage of the Black community after years and years and years and years of systemic racism. Candyman is an embodiment of all of the men who have suffered at the hands of whites (white police man, the white community, white systems that have set them up to fail such as the housing projects of Cabrini-Green). The monster of Candyman is a tornado of retribution, a hive of bees swirling angrily and containing the men who have been lynched or tortured by whites, starting with the original death of a Black male painter who dared to fall in love with a white woman whose portrait he painted. This monster, like the original, can be summoned by anyone who dares to say his name out loud in front of a mirror five times. Until the very end, the only people who do this are white--and every one of them is
Read more

Short story by Lauren Groff, "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners"

-
Image
You have to maintain a much more focused attention when reading a good short story versus a novel, because if you skim, you might miss something.  For this reason, I find it a little more difficult on my brain to read short stories.  But if you're going to write in the form, you should read in the form (and others--I have yet to memorize a poem as was suggested in my workshop last week), so I've been trying. Lauren Groff has a story called "At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners" in Best American Short Stories, 2014. You might have read her novel The Monsters of Templeton, or her other short story from a previous Best of collection, "Delicate Edible Birds" (also the name of her book of short stories), I have a vague recollection that that story was about World War II or possibly World War I and a dinner party where the people invited are living it up . I seem to also remember a line about the crunching of tiny bird bones. The Monsters of Templeton
Read more

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

-
Image
It’s all about the recaps. It’s a show made of recaps from previous shows. I purposefully skipped the first 40 minutes. These guys are all a bunch of idiots. They are turning on one another. Wes has not shown up, because he will probably come in at the very end for some kind of surprise. They are all trying to humiliate Jake because he is too perfect and too sweet (however, he just referred to himself in the third person; kind of irritating). I don’t remember any of these guys, to be honest. Who are these women in the audience? Oh, okay time for a short break because the show has been on now for three minutes. You know what, I’m going to go ahead and time the difference between the commercials and the actual airtime of the show. >Show returns at: 8:47 p.m. Don’t forget the 20 minutes of clapping in between the scenes. I can’t tell you how much hair mousse has been used in the making of this show. Dave is the crazy dude who has decided to grow a beard for the recap Juan is being atta
Read more