Writing on Writing, Blindness, Pop Culture, Science, Meaning, and Story
I stole this from Tara.
The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they’ve printed below.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Star the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.
Another imported post, this one from June 2008. Quick fun fact: Diana Abu-Jaber actually teaches at my university but I’ve never taken a class from her.
When I first went to Diana Abu-Jaber’s website, I noticed something on there about a school in Texas banning her book Crescent and a link to the offending paragraphs. At the time, I was on a bit of a linking spree and I didn’t stop to read more. Crescent was a great book, but it’s been years since I read it and I read it on loan from a friend and I couldn’t think what would be offensive about it. It’s a story featuring Iraqi-Americans and so I thought maybe it had something to do with that. Mostly though, Crescent is a love story, rich with myth and story and family, faraway homelands, poetry and cooking. Reading that book will make your mouth water for certain.
Years ago, Diana Abu-Jaber came to Orcas for a signing/reading at our local bookstore, and I didn’t find out about it until afterward. Neither did my friend who’d loaned me Crescent. We were disappointed we’d missed her. Last week, I was pointing out Crescent to my good friend Leo and looked at some of her other books and ended up picking up her first novel, Arabian Jazz and just started reading it the other day.
Here’s another old post from my old blog. Still importing, and lots more posts from the vault still to come.
I take it as a distinctly good sign that the rejections I receive as a writer are getting more and more flattering. It’s just got to be good.
A few months ago I entered three things into the Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA) contest. I didn’t place in any of the three categories, but did receive two critiques on each piece, which offered some suggestions and things to think about, as well as some positive feedback.
Continue reading “Floored by Rejections (in a Good Writerly Way)”
It’s been awhile, but I’m still importing posts from my old blog like this one from June 2008.
This week, my friend Leo came to visit. She left this morning. I am sad that she’s gone, and at the same time, just so glad we had this time together. It was the best. Leo and I have had some wild times over the last eight years of knowing each other – shared concert experiences, drunken debauchery at her house with friends, trips to Seattle, trips to the Gorge, a “porn hotel room” (it had a hot tub, and the doors or windows or whatever between the hot tub and the rest of the room wouldn’t stay shut), rituals of feminine spirituality, trips to Philly with her kids to the science museum, discussions about books and politics and the meaning of life, commiseration over unrequited love. I saw my first Tool concert with her.
I used to call her in the mornings, when Adrian still lived with me and things were horrible and I was careening in desperation, and whisper all my troubles to her. She once took the craziest trip ever (including buses, trains and an insane ride with a friend’s younger brother) to come see me at my parents house in NJ when I was visiting. We’ve turned each other on to music, to authors, to concepts, to spiritual principles, to philosophies, to movies, and on and on and on. This really only scratches the surface of what we’ve shared.
Today I was perusing Sue Monk Kidd’s website (and discovered that The Secret Life of Bees is being made into a movie and will be out in October), and came across this little tidbit she posted in a list of advice she’d give to writers. Here was number seven:
“Err on the side of audacity.
One day it occurred to me that most writers, myself included, erred on the side of being too careful in their writing. I made a pact with myself that I would quit playing it safe when what the story really wanted… what my heart really wanted, was to take a big chance. The best writing requires some daring– a little literary skydiving. Look at your idea and ask yourself: how can I make this larger? The novelist E. M. Forster once said that a novel should deliver a series of small astonishments. After I finish each chapter, I read it with an eye toward figuring out where I’ve played it safe, where I backed off, where the small astonishment was lost.”
I
t’s strange because I have felt kind of out of touch lately. I haven’t wanted to read tarot for people because I feel sort of detached, disconnected from whatever it is – universal energy, the collective unconscious, cosmic forces, whatever deeper, nonverbal thing I usually tap into while reading cards. I feel almost out of touch w/myself. I know I’m coming out of it, but it’s still there, residually.
So I feel off, inaccurate, scattered and out of touch when it comes to things like tarot, but give me movies and TV and I am ON IT, figuring out all the plot twists way ahead of time. The other weekend, a friend and I went to see 21, which is based on a true story about some MIT kids who counted cards. I liked the movie a lot, it was a great story, and I happen to really love numbers, and also anything about geniuses. I mean, that’s a huge part of why I love House. So I was really fascinated by the whole concept of counting cards, kinda wanted to learn how to do it just to see if I could, if I have the mental capacity to be able to do it. So we’re watching the movie and I kept leaning over and telling my friend what was going to happen. It wasn’t a wholly unpredictable movie, so it’s not like super impressive, but still. I can’t really explain it, I just feel kind of on top of my game, really noticing subtle clues.
I’ve been sick for the last week or so. It’s been no fun at all. On the good side though, it’s given me a lot of time to think. It’s funny how when an illusion shifts, there’s really no going back. Once you see something, it’s hard to pretend you never did.
So, while sick in bed, watching old episodes of The Office and (of course) House and coughing up a lung, it kinda became clear to me that my current life isn’t really working for me the way I wish it was. I’m not really happy with where I’m at. It’s a sobering realization.
I’ll just preface this by saying that there are two sections of my book. The first is called Eclipses, with four chapters about childhood and adolescence before I left for college. These are not named after songs. The next section, Waxing Crescent, is the main body of the book, and I still think of the first chapter in this section as chapter 1. This section (the bulk of the book) is where lyric-as-title comes into play.
In this post I decided to go through my chapters that are named after song lyrics and say why I picked the lyric with the chapter, because I picked them all for such varied reasons.
Chapter One is titled “She’s A Girl Rising From A Shell” from the song “Ribbons Undone” by Tori Amos.
Some songs I picked because that’s what I was listening to at the time I’m writing about. This was not the case this time. I titled this chapter about leaving for college with a line from a song that I didn’t hear until six years after the fact.
Continue reading “"Ribbons Undone" – Tori Amos (Chapter One Title Explained)”
So, all my chapters (except for the first four that cover childhood), are named after song lyrics. In fact, I’ll just put the list of songs on here, to give an idea, and then I want to talk about the general motivations. Some songs come up more than once, (“Moonchild” by Chris Cornell, for example), different lyrics are used in each chapter. That song is the repeating refrain of the story, for sure. Anyway, for now, I’ll just give song title and artist.
Here’s the current table of contents:
Continue reading “My Table of Contents Looks More Like the Song List on a Soundtrack…or Something”
Before I get into the subject at hand, I just want to say that I know my posts here have been pretty sporadic. Sadly, that’s probably going to continue for awhile, possibly through October. This is the busy season at work, and I’m working full-time, and working on my book (reading it through again), polishing the manuscript and the proposal in preparation to send to agents, taking a yoga class, going to a writers group, and oh yeah, having fun.
Chrys Buckley 