(just read the titles…)
We the animals
writing down the bones,
working
alone with all that could happen.
You are not like other mothers:
Storyteller.
Savage girl.
Steering the craft,
burning down the house.
A couple of days ago I came under attack in Terrain.Org, an on-line journal that I have always been, and remain, quite fond of. The gist of the review, if one can call it that, was that my primary concern as a writer was being “cool,” as if I aspired to be a kind of literary Fonzie. How did I go about that? By drinking beer in my pages and “dropping the F-Bomb.” The reviewer, Frank Izaguirre, made almost no mention of my topic, which was the disastrous BP oil spill, but made many references to how irritating he found me. (I’ve pasted the full review below.)
“Don’t reply to it,” my wife said. “It’s beneath you.”
I usually take her advice, and I quelled my initial response, which was admittedly angry and defensive. After all there was no mention of the humor in the book, and no mention of the anger or passion, and no mention of the people who I wrote about or the issues that they faced after the spill. Certainly the reviewer, who is obviously something of a bully, deserved to be stood up to, but I knew my wife was right: I didn’t want to descend to rebutting his points, or to bickering.
What I would like to do instead is perhaps kind of dull for most people. I would like to describe for Mr.Izaguirre what I was trying to do with my book, and what I try to do in my writing, which by necessity includes describing the literary tradition in which I work and what I have tried to do with that tradition. Continue reading →
Soon enough I will be putting on my Cassandra Wig again. Soon it will be time to return to yelling “The world is doomed!” Soon…..
But for now I need a rest. Being an Eco Prophet is tough work, and frustrating work as this week’s convention shows. In writing their Big Story, the Dems got the plot pretty much right, and most of the characters, good and evil, but they forgot all about the setting. Barely a mention of the environment. As if there were no stage for all the dramas they described, as if the world took place without an earth.
Oh well. The earth will have the last laugh soon enough. In the meantime, as the President takes a brief post-convention rest, I will take my own. A break from those tried and true topics: doom and gloom. Instead I find myself focusing on two seasons that I am very much looking forward to. The first is the pro football season, and I go into it dreaming that this will be the year my Pats win that fourth title (ideally by beating the accursed Giants and the oh-so-lucky Eli Manning.). For that season I will prepare by cleaning the pollen off my TV screen and stocking up on beer (Ranger is my current preferred brand) and potato chips (Cape Cod, of course). Continue reading →
Your job as a writer is making sentences.
Most of your time will be spent making sentences in your head.
In your head.
Did no one ever tell you this?
—Verlyn Klinkenborg, from Several Short Sentences About Writing
.
In his intense little essay http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/where-do-sentences-come-from/ August 13 in The New York Times promoting his new book, Several Short Sentences About Writing, Veryln Klinkenborg clears his throat for three paragraphs, takes a swipe at American education, and unveils how beginners might learn to write. He’s a stylist I admire, so I drew near. Continue reading →
I spend a lot of time at this blog ridiculing technology. So I thought it was time to finally sing the praises of technology that I like. In that spirit, I present the jPad. Please note it’s slick, user-friendly design, its accessibility and clean lines. A must for all young writers!
“Do not hurry. Do not rest.” These are Goethe’s words, and I’ve always liked them. Especially the “do not rest” part. But even Goethe would admit, if he had, say, a Bad Advice Wednesday due, that sometimes you gotta hurry. One imagines Goethe in his book-lined study in Weimer, producing his great body of work at a stately pace. Like any writer, he must have often felt words, sentences and whole future books pressing on him, making him excitable and uneasy, but maybe, unlike most writers, he managed to keep calm and take one thing at a time.
Good for him. No one will ever call me stately. Over the last decade, or more realistically over the last two, I’ve shoved words furiously into the world, my pace more charge than stroll. When I was in Colorado this July, Reg Saner, who was once my teacher and now a friend, suggested something that I myself have thought (and written): that my bout with cancer at 30 served as a kind of starting gun for my career. Twenty years later I don’t claim to have reached any sort of finish line, but I do feel I deserve a bit of a rest. Call it, with fingers crossed, a half-way pit stop.
What does this mean for me, and, more importantly, for you (since this is supposed to be advice). It means that sometimes we’ve got to change it up. I means that travelling this summer was a sort of revelation, mainly because three things were impossible on the road: regular e-mail, cell phone conversation, and daily writing. Which should mean that the whole world fell apart, right? How wonderful when it didn’t. How nice to find my body rhythms slowing down, and to continue that slowing down now that I’ve returned home. Continue reading →
Bill Roorbach‘s latest novel, Life Among Giants, comes out in November of this year. In anticipation of the award-winning author’s latest book I wanted to find out more about who he is and what he loves about writing. Continue reading →
King boletes from the morning walk
