I'm not dead even though I might wish it so!

So I don't really wish I were dead. I'm not that gloomy. I'm sure you thought I was, though, unless you know of my other super secret blog (with over 60,000 hits). Maybe not such a secret, eh?

I received my reviewer copy of my very first academic publication a few weeks ago. My review of Bill Willingham's Fables series appears in the Fall 2007 issue of MELUS (The Society for the Study of theMulti-Ethnic Literature of the United States). My review focuses on the ways in which the Fables series tackles issues of ethnicity often in an understated, sort of unobtrusive way. But it's definitely all there flittering beneath the fairy tale retelling facade.

The issue (picture forthcoming) is pretty spectacular. The cover was specially designed by Gilbert Hernandez of Love & Rockets fame. The issue features some great essays and reviews of graphic novels, comics series, and some critical works in comics theory.

Another nice surprised arrived in my mailbox recently--the bound version of my Master's thesis, "'More Than Interesting Dead Things': The Reanimation of the Oral Tradition Through Narrative Subversion and Visual Narrative Performance."

How's that for a tongue-twisting title?? In academia you earn extra girth for lengthy, complicated titles with colons in them.

On the fiction front, I got turned down by the Very Swanky Journal to which I submitted my first piece. It's not a big surprise, I just really needed to get over that first rejection. It's nothing to be scared of, just a big fat "NO." So I've submitted another piece to a slightly less swanky journal (still fantabulous, though), and I'm expecting that rejection letter any time now.

I shall try my best to keep you (four readers) updated on more of a regular basis, so I don't have to go through the whole apology spiel and then dump all of my life happenings on you at once.

Be diligent! Be diligent! Write! Write!

Funny Man

For those eight people who aren't familiar (or I might be the last person on earth to read this book), Me Talk Pretty One Day is about Sedaris's childhood in Raleigh, NC (right down the road a piece) and his later years living in France and struggling to learn the language.

Elise has been telling me to read the damn book forever now, and I finally did, and I can only apologize to Elise for taking so long to read the best book ever. Just to illustrate the book's hilarious awesomeness, I took it to class with me one night to read while my students were testing. Now, before you tell me I'm a horrible teacher, I have a tendency to perch on a desk in the back of my class while they're testing--all 7 students, that is--and watch them when I know they can't see me. It gets rather boring, so I will look at a book while I perch and periodically wander. This particular evening, I was reading an essay called "Big Boy." The big boy referred to in the title is a very large turd. One that Sedaris discovers when he goes to the restroom at a party to wash his hands before a meal. Not wanting the other guests, who know he's adjourned to the restroom, to think he left such a gargantuan artifact, he struggles to flush. But it doesn't budge and it doesn't budge. And I won't tell you how this saga plays out, but I assure you it's very funny, and I was biting every last square inch of my tongue to keep from giggling maniacally while my students were testing.

Not all of Me Talk Pretty One Day is so gross and boy-humored. In fact, Sedaris is perhaps the least boy-humored man I've read ever.

Self-deprecating, check!
Thoughtful, check!
Oddball intellectual, check!

Sedaris certainly has a unique take on every facet of everyday life, and he's lived through some pretty grotesque and unusual experience (the hair nest built by an "artist" in "Twelve Moments in the Life of the Artist," comes to mind). Likewise, his family is just as odd and wonderful as he is, and one of my nighttime writing classes enjoyed listening to "Jesus Shaves" as an example of how to foster one's writerly voice.

I could rant and rave and praise and gush on and on and on about this book, but, instead, I'll just give you a sample to end this sorta review.

As a rule, I'm not great fan of eating out in New York restaurants. It's hard to love a place that's outlawed smoking but finds it perfectly acceptable to serve raw fish in a bath of chocolate. There are no normal restaurants left, at least in our neighborhood. The diners have all been taken over by precious little bistros boasting a menu of indigenous American cuisine. They call these meals "traditional," yet they're rarely the American dishes I remember. The patty melt has been pushed aside in favor of the herb-encrusted medallions of baby artichoke hearts, which never leave me thinking, Oh, right, those! I wonder if they're as good as the ones my mom used to make.

Part of the problem is that we live in the wrong part of town. SoHo is not a macaroni salad kind of place. This is where the world's brightest young talents come to braise carmelized racks of corn-fed songbirds or offer up their famous knuckle of flash-seared crappie served with a collar of chided ginger and cornered by a tribe of kiln-roasted Chilean toadstools, teased with a warm spray of clarified musk oil. Even when they promise something simple, they've got to tart it up--the meatloaf has been poached in seawater, or there are figs in the tuna salad. If cooking is an art, I think we're in our Dada phase.

If you haven't heard Sedaris read, click HERE and watch a video from one of his Letterman appearances.

Five Strengths Meme

Sojourness tagged me for this meme. I have to name five of my strengths as a writer/artist. I'm horrible. Absolutely detestably vile at picking out the GOOD things about my writing. I'm a cynic of the highest order. But, it makes me try hard!

I have a good ear. I can generally tell if something "sounds right." This has served me very well in my academic writing to date, and I hope it carries over into my fiction.

I'm a great notetaker. That is to say, I don't lose a lot of ideas because I'm always prepared to catch them before they flitter away. And I'm getting MUCH better at actually writing and fleshing out the ideas. It's taken me 26 years, but at least I'm on the up and up.

I write in a spare prose style. I've always admired those who could write something affecting and thoughtful in few words or without overly ornate stylings. Apparently it's rubbed off because that's how my writing keeps coming out.

I like to play with form. This is probably a byproduct of my literary studies. I totally love Modernism and Postmodernism, and those sensibilities have rubbed off in the way that I play with narrative form and look for innovative ways to structure a story.

I'm versatile. I like to think that while a spare prose style comes easily, I can shift to something more "ornate" if it suits the story I'm telling. I'm working on a collection of short stories right now, and I hope that they are all distinctive when I'm finished.

I tag: whoever wants to play!

Holy crap.

Well, I just did it. I submitted a piece of my fiction for consideration in a Very. Respectable. Journal (no, it's not The New Yorker or anything, just a quarterly lit journal). Now it's time for the heart attack. This particular story has been written and stewing for several *years* now, so I figured it was probably time to shit or get off the pot, as it were. I gave it a once over several weeks ago, and I gave it another once over tonight, and now it's on its merry way, via the glorious Internet to a Very. Swanky. Editor. So, we'll see. I do have every expectation of being mercilessly shot down, but I figure if I'm ever to succeed I've gotta start stacking up the bodies rejection letters in hopes of getting an acceptance letter.

Peeking in windows to see what I see...

So maybe not peeking in windows in the literal sense, but I am recently and quite disgustingly taken with podcasts. As a result, I've become quite disturbingly preoccupied with Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac radio bits. Really, though, what's not to love? I think I might even have an old-man crush on Garrison Keillor. The buttery voice makes me tingle a little. Not to mention the fact that he brings me daily, juicy niblets on some of my favorite writers.

For instance, in today's Writer's Almanac, I learned more about Sherwood Anderson, author of Winesburg, Ohio. I freely admit to you that I'm copying and pasting this next bit explicitly without the permission of Garrison Keillor (rawwr!) or The Writer's Almanac, but I'm hoping they'll take pity on my poor, country bumpkin soul since I'm giving them credit and simultaneously lusting after Garrison Keillor (play the flattery card!). And, technically, I probably could've found this information elsewhere on the web. Like, from those plagiarist ingrates over at Wikipedia.

But I digress...

It's the birthday of Sherwood Anderson, born in Camden, Ohio (1876). He was a manager at a mail-order paint company in Elyria, Ohio. But one day, out of the blue, he stood up from his desk and walked out of the office, ignoring everyone who asked where he was going. He was missing for several days, during which his wife received a bizarre letter from him that said, "There is a bridge over a river with cross-ties before it. When I come to that I'll be all right. I'll write all day in the sun and the wind will blow through my hair."

He was found four days later, wandering around in nearby Cleveland. He was diagnosed as having had a nervous breakdown, but he later claimed that he'd only pretended to be crazy so that the paint company wouldn't take him back. And he never did go back. He left his job and he and his wife moved to Chicago to join what became known as the Chicago Renaissance.

Anderson began writing every day, and one rainy night he got out of bed without any clothes on and began to write, as if in a trance, what became the first story for his collection Winesburg, Ohio (1919). He never wrote another book as successful as Winesburg, Ohio, but his simple prose style had a great influence on other writers, including Ernest Hemingway. In fact, a few years after Winesburg, Ohio came out, Anderson met the young Hemingway and wrote him letters of introduction so that he could go to Paris and meet writers like Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. He also encouraged the young William Faulkner, whom he met in New Orleans. He inspired Faulkner to write his first novel and helped him get published.

Sherwood Anderson said, "I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them."

Incidentally, when I listened to the radio version of this piece today, they left out that last part about cows making love. I suppose ye olde souls in public radio thought that was a little too steamy. I know I'm getting worked up.

The point is, I love reading about how inventive or innovative or just plain cracked some of my favorite authors were. In the case of Sherwood Anderson, I can't claim he's a favorite since I skipped reading Winesburg, Ohio in graduate school because I was at a conference that week. But, the real wonder of this Writer's Almanac thing is that I'm much more likely to actually pick the book up and read it this time because I know a nugget of unforgettable dirt on Sherwood Anderson.

Thank you, Writer's Almanac, and my beloved Gary Keillor (sometimes I just call him "Gare") for the enlightenment, the laughs, and on those hormonal days...the tears.

Ha!

This is so true!

A cheap Nick Hornby rip-off!

This weekend I attended a writer's group meeting in Wilmington. This particular group meeting was held at one of my very favoritest independent bookstores, Pomegranate Books. While I was there, even though I've taken a vow to not buy books, I couldn't help myself. You see, I'm always eager to support a good cause by buying books, and I consider Pomegranate--an independent, progressive, community-oriented shop--a very good investment.

With this vigor to help the community in mind, I indulged a new obsession. The Essay (preferably of the personal variety). Elise has been a huge fan of the essay for years, even did her thesis on New Media and the essay, and it appears she's finally rubbed off on me in a big way. And, truthfully, I often wonder if I'd be better cut out to write essays, sundry columns and social critique than fiction. I have a big mouth, a sharp tongue (and fingers?), and I'm pretty snarky when caught in the right mood, so why not? Anyway, I indulged my new addiction with two purchases:

-The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby, a collection of 14 installments of his column from The Believer magazine.

-Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories, by Chuck Palahniuk. For those of you who aren't familiar, he wrote Fight Club, and all of his fiction that I've read is equally, if not more, twisted than that. I can only venture a guess at how crazy his essays will be. In truth, I read through the first one, "Testy Festy," a short chronicle of his experience at a Montana testicle festival, that made me sort of want to die. But I'll press on.

The entire point of this post, is my admiration for Hornby's book. His column is a monthly chronicle of the books he's brought into his home and those that he actually reads. To any tried and true bibliophile the amassing of books is a sacred ritual. I, my self, only me, own approximately 400 unread books. I think. I haven't counted in a while and I shudder to think.

In the spirit of Hornby's monthly ritual, I'm going to do something similar here. Not only will you get a taste of my precious book hoarding, you'll also get a monthly recap of the books I've ingested. I have a shameful tendency to forget to review the books I read (even though I add them to the sidebar), so these will be bite-sized reviews for you to take and do with what you will. And, as we're seeing another perfectly good month to an end, what better time to start?

Andi's August Reads (2007, just in case you'd forgotten)

The Dying Animal, by Philip Roth - 8.5/10 - A fantastic, if
sometimes frustrating, book about a professor/intellectual celebrity
and his dalliances. However, as he ages, he finds that he begins to
fall for one woman in a way he hadn't been able to before. All is
not pleasant as he finds himself in the midst of an obsession. More
than anything, The Dying Animal is about aging, the death of
sexuality, and the death of vigor.

Unmasqued, by Colette Gale - 7/10 - An erotic (not to be confused
with romantic) retelling of The Phantom of the Opera. Gale takes lots
of new directions with the story, but this was a decadent good time.
Look for a review in this month's Estella's Revenge.

Eclipse, by Stephenie Meyer - 9.5 of 10 - Pure enjoyment! I love
this series, and I got my hands on this book as quickly as I could.
I was not disappointed, as so many were, because I saw this story's
twist coming from a mile away! (I won't say more than that to avoid
spoiling.) While I do have issues with facets of Meyer's writing, I
just can't resist the characters.

Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami - 10 of 10 - This one will likely
be one of my top 10 of the year. Murakami's story of a Japanese
college student coming of age is often compared to the penultimate
coming of age novel, The Catcher in the Rye. However, that
comparison is pretty vague because the books are dramatically
different. Toru, Norwegian Wood's protagonist, is almost like a
blank slate compared to his friends and acquaintances. Instead of
judging those around him as so many written teens and young adults
do, Toru absorbs the life and habits of those around him, holding
the story together with his endearing honesty and openness. I also
understand that this is one of Murakami's most "normal" novels. I'm
really excited to read others and see what he has up his sleeve.

So, yes, four books read in August. While it's sad in comparison to the nine or so books I knocked off in July, I've had to work. I've gotta make a livin', people!

The sadder state of affairs is the sheer number of books that have wormed their way into the house this month (and I'm sure B. would throw up in his mouth a little if he read this). While, admittedly, it's not as bad as last month, they're still stacking up at an alarming rate:

-Reading Comics and What They Mean, by Douglas Wolk (review book)
-Hauntings and Other Tales of Danger, Love, and Sometimes Loss, by Betsy Hearne (review book)
-Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause (BookMooch)
-Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami (from a Shelfari recommendation)
-Freaks: Alive on the Inside, by Annette Curtis Klause (Carl V.'s enabling and BookMooch)
-O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather (gift card!)
-Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, by Jules Verne (gift card!)
-A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson (a gift, thanks, Les!)
-Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, by Gabrielle Zevin (a gift, thanks, Heather F.!)
...and the two books of essays I mentioned before, of course.

Now, the up side to all of this is that I spent very little money. I'm tickled to have publishers that want to send me stuff for Estella's Revenge and really good friends who throw books at me. Not to mention BookMooch, which I affectionately call "the crack house."

In other (abbreviated) news, school is going fine. Week two is drawing to a close and I'm still standing. Except that I'm lying in the floor typing this. But that's neither here nor there. Work life is good, home life is good, creative life is good. I really can't complain.

With that, I'm off to teach a night class. Behave!

Move over Hugh Laurie, there's a literary crush in town!

No spoilers! I wouldn't do that to you!

That's right, folks, one of the most delightful things has happened. Stephenie Meyer's new young adult novel, Eclipse, arrived on my doorstep (quite literally) from Amazon last week. I spent a few days finishing a review book for Estella's Revenge, and finally cracked the spine (figuratively) on Eclipse Friday afternoon. As of last night around 6:00 pm Eastern time, I turned the last page in tears and sighed a sigh of the truly satisfied and slightly heartbroken.

What's all the fuss about? A new literary crush, of course!

As you might have imagined, I've had something of a literary girl-crush on Estella of Great Expectations for a number of years now. I'll give you a minute to absorb the shock. I know, I know, you wouldn't have guessed if I hadn't told you.

Before I delve into the details of my obsession, let's talk a bit about the literary crush in general. For most of the bookish women I know, the most prevalent crush is on Mr. Darcy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice fame. For there's something so perfectly, distractingly, fascinatingly wonderful about Mr. Darcy that the bookworm girls of the world have a hard time leaving him to his respective pages. For he is a man so wonderfully written that he jumps right off the page and into our collective hearts and panties. He's suave, he's smart, he's just a bit of a jackass, and he loves Lizzie. Awww. It makes us swoon. Swoon I tell you.

And my new literary crush, while certainly not a classic, is good enough for me. He is one of Stephenie Meyer's characters from her Twilight series, and he's played the biggest role thus far in Eclipse. His name, Jacob Black, his ancestry, werewolf.

As he's described in the book, Jacob is a member of the Quileute tribe--6'7" tall with russett skin and shaggy black hair. That's one tall drink of water, kids. And beyond the yummy physical description, we get the angst. As a Quileute and a werewolf, he's forever the mortal enemy of any vampire, even the (relatively) innocent Cullen family. Which means he's the sworn enemy of Edward Cullen, Bella Swann's, our protagonist's, true lurv.

Twisted? Oh yes. High school? Yep.

Does it matter? Hell no!

There's something so wonderfully tragic and sweet about Jacob that I just can't help but want to manhandle hug him. He's the best underdog (pardon the pun) that I've read in a very long time, and I can't help but wish he'd jump off the page and play space heater for me on a cold cold night.

Did I just type that out loud?

Anyway, if you've had any inclination to read Meyer's Twilight series, get your butt off the couch and run down to the nearest bookstore (or Wal-Mart) to pick it up. While Meyer's writing leaves a little something to be desired at times (some overused expressions, etc.) it doesn't matter. The story is involving and wonderful and if you're a hopeless romantic like myself, you will totally dig it. You'll be giggling like a 16-year-old girl before it's all said and done. Even you guy readers. Don't be scared. Embrace it.

The Question of Planning

I wrote a novel when I was fourteen years old. If you really want to call it that. I was recovering from a childhood full of paranormal thrillers and romances by the likes of Christopher Pike, R.L. Stine and L.J. Smith. While I refuse, at the ripe ole age of 26, to look back on those authors with any ill will or embarrassment (I still re-read the L.J. Smith titles occasionally), I was definitely familiar with and fond--at the time--of formulaic plots. As a result, I got the itch to write a novel. It was a thrilling, if somewhat poorly executed, paranormal/Christian thriller type mess.

I remember sitting down at a very old word processor (not a wordprocessing program, kids, a word processor with a screen *thisbig*). I toiled away for several months sitting in front of my teeny-tiny monitor cranking out pages of single-spaced text about the heroine, Tori, and her boyfriend who looked oddly like a character from a Saturday morning teen comedy. Think Saved by the Bell, but worse. Finally, at the end of the four-month endeavor I had 86 pages of that single-spaced novel and a heart full of hope that one day, ONE DAY I might be as good as L.J. Smith.

Now, admittedly, my perspective has changed a bit. While I still enjoy the occasional fluffy romance, I'm much more interested in "literary" fiction, whatever that is by the likes of Philip Roth, Ali Smith, Siri Hustvedt and Paul Auster. I read with a feeling of wonder at how exactly they grab me by the nosehairs and keep me rapt.

Now, as I sit down to write my novel, I do so with a sense of fear that I didn't feel as a teen. I wrote that first novel with a sense of wild abandon, of committing myself to the page wholeheartedly. I didn't think too much about plot, I just let it unfold as it would. I cried when I read the emotionally heavy passages. I did all those things, as a teen, that I think I'm supposed to do now. That "real" authors say that they do.

Now I find myself planning. Planning planning planning. Scribbling, thinking, pondering, connecting the dots in my head. I can't help but wonder if I should stop thinking so much and just write.

Somehow I think that maybe I'm missing the mark on both counts; that there's some fine line between completely unprepared writing and overly planned writing.

If I find the line, you all will be the first to know...

Trucking right along...

Thank God for that notebook. Really. I've been jotting down character traits, character history, fine details and more vignette ideas almost constantly. A long car ride tends to yield the most fruitful thought because what else is there to do in a rural area while driving alone? Not much, let me tell ya.

It's been extremely hard to get on top of my freelance articles this week because the book is pulling at my attention constantly.

I hope to commit more actual novel to paper this weekend or early next week. As of now, I still only have a rough ending.

Oh, and apparently people are actually linking to this blog which is more than a little surprising to me given the lack of serious posting thus far. So, in the grand tradition of narcissism, I shall post here more often so those of you linking lovelies will have something of my drivel to read!

The English Patient

I finished my first book for the Armchair Traveling reading challenge, and it was spectacular!

My friend Elise recommended The English Patient several times, and I've had it on my near-toppling stack of "to read" books for years (literally, years). I'm really glad I finally picked it up because it was much more than I ever expected. In fact, it was one of those very rare books that made me desperately want to immediately re-read in an effort to soak it up entirely and catch all the little nuances I might've missed the first time around. It's definitely a book that deserves re-reading.

To summarize, it's the story of Hana, a WWII nurse in Italy who stays behind in a bombed out villa to take care of a severely burned Englishman known only as the "English patient" until late in the story. Hana and the English patient are joined by Caravaggio, a long-time friend of Hana's and a thief mutilated during the course of his job as a spy. And, finally, an Indian sapper (expert at dismantling bombs) named Kip.

I think what I loved most about this story was the intricate interweaving of the four characters' stories, experiences and points of view. Ondaatje crafts a vivid identity for each character, but it's slow in coming. The reader is given small snatches of each's background throughout the novel, but the slowest to unfold is the English patient himself. Through a mixture of straightforward recollections, bits of writing and morphine-clouded ramblings, the reader understands the English patient's harrowing past, tragic love story and how he came to exist among the villa's odd family.

The draw for any book lover is certainly the abundance of literary references and the dependence and importance that books and words play in several of the characters' experiences.
A few quotes for you:

"She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water" (238).

"Now, months later in the Villa San Girolamo, in the hill town north of Florence, in the arbour room that is his bedroom, he reposes like the sculpture of the dead knight in Ravenna. He speaks in fragments about oasis towns, the later Medicis, the prose style of Kipling, the woman who bit into his flesh. And in his commonplace book, his 1890 edition of Herotodus' Histories, are other fragments--maps, diary entries, writings in many languages, paragraphs cut out of other books. All that is missing is his own name. There is still no clue to who he actually is, nameless, without rank or battalion or squadron. The references in his book are all pre-war, the deserts of Egypt and Libya in the 1930s, interspersed with references to cave art or gallery art or journal notes in his own small handwriting" (96).

"Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot. I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise" (94).

This book was a fantastic way to start off the challenge, and it's made picking my next book extremely difficult. However, finally, I think I've settled on The Last Communist Virgin, by Wang Ping. It's a book of short stories and just different enough in tone and writing style to help me avoid the slump that could come from reading a great book like The English Patient.

Life Stuff Rides Again

It's been a long time (too long) since I've posted here!

I am happy to say that I've been busy writing, which is one of the reasons I've been so absent. My current freelance position, writing search engine optimized (SEO) articles for a reputable academic publisher has taken up a good bit of my time. I write at least 40 articles a month, and I'm trying to up those numbers a bit before the school year starts.

Which leads me to the next item keeping me away from this blog and my creative writing. I've been blessed (BLESSSSED) with a job teaching Developmental Reading and Freshman Composition at a local community college. I'm particularly excited about this position because the school is so much larger and well-endowed in the technology department than the last community college where I taught. Right now I'll be teaching on a part-time basis, but the head of the English department seems quite interested in getting me on full-time when a position becomes available. I'm just thrilled to be teaching. After four years of it, I'm absolutely hooked, and there's little else (besides being a professional reader and full-time writer) that I'd rather do.

As for my creative writing, well, it's fallen to the wayside for the moment. However, I do have a goal for myself: finish my novel within the next six months. I guess I need to get on the ball if I'm going to have any chance of reaching that goal. I have a young adult novel swimming around at the forefront of my head, so I think I'll start there.

A Room (or Desk) of One's Own

One of the first questions I always ask when I interview an author is, "Do you have any writing rituals or unbreakable habits? Staring into the fridge or wandering aimlessly, maybe?"

I ask this question because it's one of those things that confounds me as a writer. Whether I'm working on a term paper for my graduate coursework (no more, by the way, I'm almost done), writing a freelance article or drafting a review for Estella's Revenge, I have habits. Unbreakable habits. Annoying, horrible habits.

First and foremost, I'm a wanderer. That is, I'll sit down to write, I'll think, I'll put a few words to paper, and I'll get up and wander away. I'll walk aimlessly, stare into the fridge, look out the door, and come back to my computer. From there I'll commit another paragraph or so to paper, get up, and wander some more. It's exhausting, really. A little like interval training. Walk for a bit, sprint like a madwoman, slow back down to a trudge and then run like hell until all tired out again.

I got quite the reputation when I was working on my Master's thesis proposal as I would draft a page or so, wander into the Communication Skills Center to visit the tutors, and eventually sigh heavily, make a snide remark, and return to my computer. They--and I--all thought it was nutty, but I suppose it worked.

Beyond the unbreakable habits, I'm also interested in the locations where people write. I'm quite the finicky number when it comes to writing location. I can't write just anywhere. I can't deal with writing more than a sentence or two longhand, and I can't have too many distractions. While in my younger days (think teens), I could read or write in the middle of a hurricane. Give me radio! Give me T.V.! Give me cows flying by the window and ants in my pants! I could write through it all.

Now, give me quiet! Give me peace! Give me all noise-making appliances in the "off" position!

Call it age, call it adult onset ADD, call it what you like. I don't do noise and distraction. The wandering is the distraction. I can control that.

These days I call the kitchen table my office, and it works really well. I'm positioned in a large open space. I can see the living room, I can peek down the hall. I have two sunny windows to my left and a refrigerator mere feet away to stare into. It's heaven. What happens when the office is ready? Nicely filled with a desk, bookshelves and eight miles of books? Hell if I know. I just hope it works as well as this old kitchen table. If not, I'm probably screwed.

We're finicky things, we writers. Or maybe it's just me. I hear there are many much-more-talented-than-I scribblers who can write with dogs chewing on their feet, children clutching their pant legs and herds of antelope galloping through their space. Not me. Oh no. I'm much more high maintenance than that. Give me a quiet kitchen and a GE ice box, and I'm your girl.

*Please note, the charming photograph at the top is most definitely not my writing space. I could never writing sitting in a comfy leather chair. Too pleasant. I need a hard wooden chair that puts my butt to sleep. Keeps me alert and on my toes. But it is a nice picture, yes?

It's like....a job.

I recently landed a freelance job writing SEO articles for a very large company and a very sizeable website. I couldn't be more thrilled to have obtained this particular position. I love the flexibility, I love the topics I write about, I love the work all the way around.

Now I just have to self-motivate.

While I'm generally a very self-motivated person in general, I also tend toward procrastination. However, at this point, this job is too big to procrastinate and the sheer amount of material drives me to stay on task. Quite a learning experience so far.

I can't say that I don't procrastinate at all, though. Whenever my behind falls asleep, I clean the house. Yesterday I folded clothes, swept, mopped and did dishes. All because my behind was asleep.

Who knew?

Daily Writing Tips

See my latest work at Daily Writing Tips. The site includes advice on grammar, punctuation, misused words, spelling, writing basics and fiction writing.

My first post is Audience is Everything.

Click HERE to visit.

Horizon? Yes, and it looks decent today.

Got a gig! Will share when a piece actually goes up.

It seems this last leg of the month is always crammed full of writing. With the last minute lunge to get Estella's Revenge online, I feel most "writerly" right now. Formatting author interviews, editing essays, scraping together my own work for the new issue. It's exhilarating and exhausting, and that's how I've always pictured the "writing life."

One thing I've learned in these last few months of freelancing, is that it's also wicked hard. But, surprisingly enough, I'm not as downtrodden and hopeless as I was afraid I might be after a handful (ok, dozens) of rejections. Maybe because I haven't actually received any rejections...just gigs that sort of meandered off into the sunset, backs turned, and pretended I'm not here waving my arms and screaming for some confirmation.

But I digress...

It's a mad lifestyle and it's a mad business and one just has to wade through, up to one's respective waist in shit until the ground begins to dry up and you can catch your footing again.

Press on, kids, press on.

For a real pick-me-up, read this story from New York magazine. Click HERE. While it might make you want to swan dive off of a 36-story building, there's also some odd comfort in the community aspect of writing. I've been lucky to find some of that not only among my graduate school peers, but my Lovely Ladies of Writing group, too.

(I just came up with that name, what do you girls think?)

Short Stories Knocking on My Brain

It's a fortuitous turn of fate that since I posted my rant about my troubles with short stories, I now have one feverishly knocking on my brain. I found a site today that publishes chick lit short story offerings, and I immediately had an idea. Never have I thought of writing a chick lit short story (novel, yes; story, no). But *poof* there it was, begging for attention, bugging the heck out of me.

So, I'm writing a chick lit short story. It stars a duck. Who knew!

Stay tuned.

If there's one thing I've learned...

If there's one thing I've learned about this freelance game so far it's:

Never count a query out.

More than a month ago I applied for a freelance position with a respected academic publisher and after a few weeks I lost hope that I would hear from this particular position. It seems that I (incorrectly) assumed that a job of this sort would go quickly. Apparently (thankfully) I was wrong. I heard from the company today and they requested more info (references, writing sample), so it appears I might still have a chance!

As the proud owner of the "Most Impatient Woman on Earth" title, I have to remember, sometimes progress takes a while. Much longer than I would like.

Cross your fingers! It would be wonderful to be able to pay rent and buy food once I move across the country in a few weeks.

On Writing: Journaling and Short Stories

I've always attempted journaling but I can't say that I've had very good luck. There are journals piled around here everywhere, some of them full, some half-full, some sporadically drawn and written in. Doodles, phrases...sentences if they're lucky. Periods of manic scribbling and years of silence.

My computer has become more of a journal than any bound volume could've ever hoped. I can type much faster than I write. In light of this simultanous compulsion to write and total lack of consistency, my computer has lots of little bits of me floating around in it. I write snatches...thoughts that seem particularly poetic or promising. Blips of frustration. Collections of mild insanity. Since I can't sleep, I was reading through some of my niblets and found a diatribe on writing short stories.....

I don’t particularly like short stories. They’re premature novels…brain puffs that never got loved into life. They’re the angsty teenagers of the literary world standing bold and defiant amidst authorities but really longing for love and maturity. Maybe I’m just bitter because I’m no Flannery O’Connor or Annie Proulx. I’m not even a second-rate John Grisham or Dan Brown. Maybe I’m just mad because I don’t think I have a good short story in me. A friend says we all have one novel in us. I happen to know I have four novels in me, but short stories…I don’t feel those knocking on the inside of my head antsy to be loosed upon the world. The novels are insistent. Bratty even. They claw and scratch and scramble. Short stories don’t whip themselves up in my head. They don’t jump around like magic beans..

I feel like I should write short stories. Shouldn’t I crawl before I walk? And that’s a cliché I wouldn’t put into a short story unless it was a particularly naughty one that I felt needed punishing. If I wrote a short story I’d want it to be gritty. Completely unlike me in every visible way. I would step half out of myself. I would put the academian aside and embrace my past. The one I don’t think about too often. I would embrace my upbringing. The one that most “refined” people would hope I’d find embarrassing. The Texas’ness in me. The street dances and the rodeos. The smell of cow shit globbed on the foot rail at the stockyards. Grease and rocks and fried fish. Baby rabbits in shoe boxes—a surprise from my grandpa. Crawfishing with bacon on a string, my grandmother chasing my cousin around with a cigarette in one hand and a flyswatter in the other. “Y’all” and “yesterdy night” and horses and trail rides and thunderstorms. The dirtiest, most precious station wagon on the planet. Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, Sr., and Big Red soda. My ancestors would kick my country girl ass for calling it soda.

And then I went back to work on a short story that I've left languishing, loveless for a year or more.

Finally!

Finally, I've (sort of) finished putting together something that looks vaguely like a website to list my portfolio, bio, news, etc. Somewhere to point people when I submit my work. And, along with it, this blog where I'll celebrate the victories (hopefully) and despair over the failures (but just for a minute).

Many thanks to Heather F. for her fantastic header image. And a big hello to all of those listed over on the sidebar. Included are many dear friends, fantastic writers, and wonderful publications.

I'll be back soon with a discussion of breaking into the freelance world and what I have in the works.

Review: Getting Stoned with Savages

Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu
by J. Maarten Troost
Broadway

Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu is the second offering from travel writer, J. Maarten Troost. I read and adored his first book, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific, a few years ago and fell instantly in love with Troost's humor and candor. So, as you might imagine, when I heard about Getting Stoned with Savages, I quickly and single-mindedly stalked it on BookMooch.com until I had a pristine copy in my talons.

Maarten and his wife, Sylvia, after returning from a harrowing few years on the South Pacific atoll of Tarawa, resume a somewhat normal life in Washington, D.C. Maarten, with an eye on earning a living, takes a job as a consultant for the World Bank but soon finds that he is inching dangerously closer to what seems a full-blown career. With that horrifying fact in mind, he promptly gets fired and the Troosts set off for a life in Vanuatu, a small, rugged cluster of islands. Sylvia works for an international aid organization and earns a Western living that comes in handy on Vanuatu, and the arrangement leaves Maarten the time and opportunity to write. When Sylvia becomes pregnant the family relocates to the slightly more "civilized" Fiji where they round out their latest round of island adventures.

While both of Troost's travel memoirs have undoubtedly catchy titles, this second offering has much more to do with its respective title than Troost's first book. On the islands of Fiji and Vanuatu a most popular social activity is the consumption of a hallucinogenic drink called kava. Traditionally produced by the chewing of a root by male adolescents and then mixing with water, the kava is then served in bars (shacks more like) called nakamals. Shortly after arriving in Vanuatu, Maarten and Sylvia have the pleasure of consuming a few "shells" of kava. Troost writes:

"Clearly this was different than drinking wine. With kava, one didn't admire its lush hue, or revel in its aromatic bouquet, or note the complex interplay of oak and black currant. This was more like heroin. Its consumption was something that was to be endured. The effect was everything. What concerned me, however, was not the taste but the possibility that this bowl of swirling brown liquid may have had as one of its essential ingredients the spit of unseen boys, which, frankly, I found a little off-putting."

Much to Maarten's relief, a friend informs him that while the chewing of the kava is generally the preferred method because it produces a supremely potent product, the kava they ingest is simply ground and strained through a sock. Better? Perhaps.

The kava story is just one of many instances that are enlivened by Troost's humor. But beyond the blatant out-loud laughing that I did while reading the book, there's also a real humanity and wonder in Troost's writing. The overall theme of the work is aptly expressed when he writes, "Paradise was a place that could be seen only from a distance, but it pleased me knowing that we lived so close to it."

Quite literally there is a dark side to island life. The islands harbor a history of cannibalism, there is overwhelming poverty, rampant prostitution, and political instability. On the side of the positive, however, the majority of the people are friendly and welcoming and willing to help the foreigners along in their new surroundings. In a more philosophical way, Maarten begins to see that while chasing paradise has been a good experience for his family, and they quite often find it in even the most outrageous of circumstances, at some point it becomes important to pursue a type of paradise near family and friends, even if it means rejoining the Western world with all of its bustle and baggage.

I think what I admire most about Troost's writing is his supreme respect for the cultures in which he lives. While he is quick to make jokes about his feelings and reactions to new cultural experiences, he is also more than willing to devote time to evaluation of the culture's economy, hardships, priorities, and the well-being of native peoples. What sets the Troost family apart from the tourists they often encounter on the islands is a seemingly honest willingness to engage with the culture, observe it, and try to avoid infringing too much on the world in which they live, even if some parts of their character and situation will always make them outsiders. It is this attitude of curiosity and respect which really makes me a fan of J. Maarten Troost and his adventures.

Originally published at Estella's Revenge, April 2007.

Review: The Call of the Weird

The Call of the Weird: Travels in American Subcultures
Written by Louis Theroux
Da Capo Press

The Call of the Weird is the first book offering from Louis Theroux, son of American travel writer and novelist, Paul Theroux. Formerly a writer for the satirical magazine, Spy and host of such celebrated U.K. television programs as Weird Weekends and When Louis Met, Louis Theroux offers a weirdly appealing jaunt through a number of subcultures that most Americans would choose to overlook completely. He shows little fear (or far less than most of us would, I venture) in engaging the likes of prostitutes, porn stars, alien killers, gangsta rappers, cult members, white supremacist folk singers, and even Ike Turner.

Theroux sets off on his journey with a mind to revisit ten of his most memorable “ex interviewees” to see how their beliefs and subcultures might’ve shifted in light of changes in the world at large, or as he writes, “Clinton’s American versus Bush’s America; the nineties and the noughties.” What he finds is nothing short of…well…weird.

In each chapter Theroux begins by setting the scene, recapping his first engagement with the subject at hand, and he always takes some time to analyze the changes (or lack thereof) in the people he’s dealing with. Perhaps the most intriguing and engaging part of the book is Theroux’s willingness to engage with some of the most intimidating or downright odd subcultures one might think of with a terrific amount of humility and humanity. While he might find himself stricken close to speechlessness by some of the tirades or actions his subjects engage in, he also does a damn fine job keeping judgments to a minimum and effectively communicating not only the “weird,” but the seemingly normal in all of us: the fervent anti-Semite’s flying toaster screensaver, the porn star’s happy marriage, Ike Turner’s nostalgia.

In one particularly telling instance Theroux writes:

Jerry’s casual anti-Semitism was routine. Most of the time I ignored it, but I was aware of the unseemliness of having a virulent neo-Nazi as the contact person for my lost computer. I wondered if I could trust him—didn’t the monstrousness of his beliefs suggest a fundamental dishonesty? But I was fairly sure I could rely on Jerry, and found it all the more odd that, for all his hatefulness, Jerry could also be thoughtful and decent.

Theroux’s honest struggle with his personal beliefs in relation to the paradox of hatred and kindness so often present in his interviewees is what makes this book so very difficult to put down. I admired his candor and his bravery very much, and his willingness to present an even-handed account of his subjects in what are often such wildly disagreeable circumstances to the average person, no matter what part of the world he or she hales from.

As he poignantly summarizes:

Though occasionally I’d been rebuffed by my old subjects, or shocked by their beliefs, and though I’d sometimes questioned my own motivations, in general I was more amazed by their willingness to put up with me a second time, and surprised by my affection for them. I’d been moved at times, and irritated, and upset, but the emotions had been real.

I suppose it is this impenetrable sense of reality that is at once unsettling and overwhelmingly attractive about The Call of the Weird, for it is certainly a very fine peek into the taboo and tantalizing in an often wholly unrepresented America.

Originally published at Estella's Revenge, April 2007.