Bad Advice Wednesday: Tommy Takes Over!
categories: Cocktail Hour
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I first knew Tommy Conlon as an Ultimate Frisbee player (see the guy holding the suitcase in the pic in my Ultimate Glory essay), and you may know him as Bill and Dave’s most frequent commenter (not to say stalker.) Today he doles out some bad advice….
I’m not a writer, but I write. Mostly emails and postcards, a lost art.* An occasional poem. My work, what I do for a modest living, involves problem-solving. Sometimes I get tired of solving other people’s problems and think I should just go home and solve some of my own. For free.
I work in the home repair industry, and if you knew how unindustriously I work, you’d find that statement either ironic, or laugh out loud funny, depending on your level of intimacy. All my work comes by word of mouth, which means I don’t look for problems, they come to me. Sometimes prospective clients will ask if I’m licensed, the same as someone might ask you if you’re published, and I’m fond of saying, “I’m not a real electrician, but I play one on T.V.” Some people find this oddly comforting and I know we’ll get along fine. On the phone, this line never works.
One day this week, I had a particularly unproductive, I mean un-industrious day. Around 5:30, a client I was waiting to meet at a home repair warehouse, cancelled. Because I have an intimate relationship with this client, I allowed my frustration to show. It wasn’t directed at her, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I was still making bad [work] choices, it was 5:30 and I still hadn’t shown up anywhere for work, aside from a one hour icemaker line repair – but the relationship suffered.
“Another useless day’s energy spent.”**
Getting Outside Saturday: The Tuesday Edition (Snowmageddon)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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Run for your lives! Snow predicted!
My Wife’s Secret Identity…..
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Alas, I used to be the prolific one in my family. But the other night my wife, Nina de Gramont, came up to bed and woke me up and whispered, “I’m catching you!” She meant in books of course.
What can I say? It’s not easy being married to a superhero. In fact Nina, the author of three books already, has four more about to enter the world. Two young adult novels, one normal novel (we don’t call them “adult novels” around here because, well, you know), and this, just today:
Yes, Nina (disguised as mild mannered creative writing professor Christine Woodward) has entered the Marvel Universe. And when she tosses her glasses and professor clothes aside, and dons her X-Men costume, I marvel too.
Of course it is not lost on me that she has chosen to write a book about a young woman who can kill her lover with one touch, but I choose not to dwell on it.
Bad Advice Wednesday: No Small Gift–An Exchange with Poet John Casteen
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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John Casteen [photo Anna Williams]
Dear Bill,
Haystack: The Writer as Craftsperson
categories: Cocktail Hour
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On the rocks at Haystack
I’ll be back at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Deer Isle, Maine, this summer as the visiting writer during session 3. I won’t be teaching a workshop, but every afternoon I’ll lead a discussion or a walk or give a talk of some kind, suggest an activity, and one evening, certainly, I’ll give a reading. Otherwise I’ll be thinking and writing and reading and maybe drawing (there’s a nature drawing class while I’m there) or even blowing glass (there’s a beginning glassblowing workshop, too!). And staring at the ocean, also swimming, though the water is cold. There are seven sessions in all, six of two weeks, one of one week, and a tantalizing array of classes in all sorts of crafts are offered. And the thing that I love is that writing is one of those crafts. I’ve written about my experience at Haystack here. But just wanted to let you know what a great, peaceful, inspiring, experience it is. Plus, they’ve got application deadlines coming up March 1. Have a look: www.haystack-mtn.org. Catalog listing by session: www.haystack-mtn.org/summer_workshops.php. Continue reading →
Guest contributor: Monica Wood
Bad Advice: Super Bowl Sunday Edition (Wah!)
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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Monica at the Bill and Dave’s REALLY Super Bowl
There he was, late in the fourth quarter, sacked again at third-and-long, the game out of reach. The game, that is: the AFC Championship game, the one that would have led him directly to a record-breaking sixth Superbowl. I averted my eyes in sympathy, reluctant to witness his marrow-deep humiliation, the future first-ballot Hall-of-Famer sitting on the 30-yard line, legs straight out, shoulders curved in despair. Tomorrow’s front-page photo: the great Tom Brady posed like a kid in a sandbox, wondering, like the rest of us, what the hell went wrong. Continue reading →
Night at the Movies: Silver Linings Playbook
categories: Cocktail Hour / Movies
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About to not kiss, whoa.
I wasn’t in the mood yesterday and needed to get new glasses over in Waterville anyway, so to Railroad Square for a couple of movies, Silver Linings Playbook and Life of Pi. I live in a cave so I hadn’t heard of Silver Linings Playbook nor read a single word about it, always the best way to enter a theater. What’s more, I didn’t know who that actress was till after, when I stared at the poster outside in the rain: Jennifer Lawrence, whom I’ve written about here, for her performance in The Hunger Games. And that’s the mark of a great performance–I simply didn’t recognize her, not for one second, wondered who this unknown person might be. The kid’s got range. She pops out of nowhere to intercept a fellow jogger, several times. Her character is anti-suburban, which you know is my highest praise. People Magazine has named Bradley Cooper the sexiest man alive. But I think Jennifer Lawrence is much sexier. I didn’t recognize him, either, but that’s just creeping senility. Robert DeNiro I recognized, and was slowly won over–that is, I slowly forgot the actor and saw a character. Football, dance, mental health–wait a minute! Continue reading →
Bad Advice Wednesday: My Gulliver Complex
categories: Cocktail Hour
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If you are like me (god I hope not) then you sometimes think everyone is conspiring to get in the way of your writing (because they are, Precious, they are.) You want one thing: to write your great book! But a thousand things–normal life!—intrude. You rage, you shake your fist, you eventually give in.
I call it my Gulliver Complex, an appropriately megalomaniacal phrase, imagining myself a giant tied down and spear-poked by a hundred tiny people. These people want me to fill in forms, go to meetings, prepare classes for god’s sake. And what do I want? Well, I said it already: that one thing.
I had a cartoon to go with this piece, a really funny one I think, but I’ll never publish it. Why? Because on the way to the scanner at school I ran into one of my favorite students. I showed the cartoon to her, thinking she would laugh, but she didn’t. I asked her if I should publish it and she said I shouldn’t.
There was a moment of clarity for me. One of the little tiny spear-holding people in the cartoon was asking for a recommendation. Another was asking me to read his trilogy. To me, in my brain, I am still about my student’s age—early-mid twenties—a young excited writer who has somehow found himself disguised as a staid teacher and living inside a relatively normal adult life. But to her I was a fifty year old professor who had written a lot of books and who she might need to ask for a recommendation and who was now showing her a crazy drawing that said, in no uncertain terms, that he just wanted to be left alone. If I was her, I wouldn’t have been too happy with me.
Giants on the Road: Westward! (A Photo Ghazal)
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Please turn off all electronic devices.
Guest contributor: Kristen Keckler
Getting Outside Saturday: India Edition (A photo haiku by someone besides Bill)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside
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