write-brained, right-brained

This list of tips for writers comes from an unlikely place.... the NEA blog on reading, which I was browsing trying to find the origin of that list I just posted.

1. Join a writers group, if only for the deadline. Always, for anything you write, have a deadline. When you meet one deadline, make another. When you blow one, definitely make another, and by all means forget you ever made the first one. Guilt is not your friend.

2. Be funny. Whether you’re writing comedy or not, be funny. If you can’t be funny, be amazing, because writing well without at least occasionally being funny is almost impossible. Try to make a reader laugh, or at least smile, with the way you pace and phrase a line. If you can’t use language to provoke one of the commonest, most pleasurable experiences around — laughter — how in the world are you going to do the harder but not necessarily better thing, and make a reader cry?

3. Enlarge your vocabulary. I’m serious. Your vocabulary is your tacklebox. If you go fishing with only a couple of lures, you’ll catch the same kind of fish over and over. Bring an overstuffed tacklebox, and there’s no lunker you can’t land. Use your vocabulary judiciously, of course, because not everybody has as big a one as you do. But don’t be afraid, every once in a while, to use a word your reader might not know. How else are they going to learn? How else did you?

4. Keep it sensual. By this I don’t mean write dirty, I mean engage all of a reader’s senses, especially but not exclusively the visual. Whether with a description or a metaphor, create pictures in your audience’s head. If you want to write about abstractions, be a philosopher, and reach even fewer readers than you already do.

5. Make stuff up. There’s been a vogue lately for writing that feeds on pre-existing material: novels about a famous love affair, novels about a notorious calamity, novels about great writers, etc. This kind of novel can work, but something original is almost always better than something derivative — more surprising, more fun, more suspenseful. In fiction, as on Wall Street, derivatives are an easy payday, but they don’t create wealth; they only redistribute it. The trouble with making up a new story is, alas, that it’s harder. Does Antioch teach a full-length course in plotting? I wonder, because it’s the least teachable skill a writer needs. If only it were the least important.

A related point here: the difference between telling the truth and making stuff up is getting slippery lately. When in doubt, trust what works. If the true stuff reads better, you’re probably writing nonfiction, so take out most of the made-up stuff. If the made-up stuff reads better, you’re writing fiction, so take out most of the true stuff. If you can’t decide which stuff reads better, write poetry. There at least, the true and the made-up belong together.

6. Keep rewriting the ending till it’s perfect; then wait a week and write it again. Writing an ending is the great lost art in American fiction. With the possible exception of your first graf, your last graf is the most important. If you can’t decide between two endings, they probably both need work.

7. Go for broke. Odds are you’ll be broke anyway, so you may as well go for it.

8 . Write every day. I’ve never tried this myself, but I hear it works.

I'm copying from Atlantis....

Some of these books were amazing experiences for me... mostly from when I was growing up, and they were my entire world.  This reads like a list of old favorites :-)  Atlantis says that the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books The Big Read has printed below.  Here are the instructions for the game.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own weblog / journal so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them.

OK, so I'm not one of them.  And I skipped out on bolding anything, just underlined all of them!  But I am a huge advocate for some of these marvelous books!  (Life of Pi, Mockingbird, Gatsby, Grapes of Wrath, Anna Karenina, Crime and P.)  Also, it's amazing to see how many of these books have been written in the last 10 years.  How inspirational for contemporary writers  :-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Phillip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of William Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Attwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From a Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ranson
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Colour Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishigury
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Read:  62/100

I definitely want to read the Jane Austen's I have never gotten through (Emma, Persuasion), especially because I recently watched the BBC television versions, and was enchanted.  The books themselves start out so much less compellingly than P&P, so I've always dropped off.  I've started and never finished Catch-22 (too much in a madman's mind and too bizarre) and Lolita (too much in a madman's mind and too ordinary). 

And if there is anything else out of these which anyone particularly loved, please do tell me and I will add it to my list.  

I’ve been hinting around it for the past week or so, but I realized, dear Vox neighbors, family and friends, that I have never actually updated you on some recent life changes.  The job with the startup I have been talking with was finalized last week, and I signed on!  Part of the deal is that I have agreed to be in Boston full-time for the next six months, where the company is headquartered and all the developers are located.

This is an extremely wraught and bittersweet moment for me.  Sweet, mostly, but also tinged with sadness at the requirement that I leave my friends and home in NYC.  It is unclear whether this needs to be a permanent move for me, because potentially after the first six months, I can be in NYC and commute a few days a week to Boston.  I need to be in NYC at least a day or two a week to meet with clients.  (In fact, they considered allowing me to start out with this arrangement earlier, but I felt I would make a bigger impact by being in headquarters for longer.)

I have lived in NYC for seven years, minus two months.  What a momentous era it has been!  I think seven years just about officially makes me a New Yorker.  (But I still root for Boston teams.)  I love NYC’s passion, diversity, creativity, and energy, and I’m sure that I always will… from the hot sweaty bustle of Chinatown to the quiet richness of the Met… more places and restaurants and memories than I can possible count.

Even more than these things: after a long slow start making friends, right now, six of my closest friends live in the city.  So in leaving NYC behind, I am also moving away from them.  I am a private person with a small circle of people I am close to… and with a rich shared history together.  I have known these six friends from anywhere from eighteen to (the newest) nine years of laughter, adventure, and dream-sharing.  Even though Boston is where I grew up, I am so sad (and a little scared) of losing my support  and joy system.

However, while I can say that NYC has been where I really grew up, it hasn’t always been lucky.  Starting right at the very beginning.  I moved to NYC a few days before 9/11 – it happened on my second day of work at a brand new job.  What a dark time followed that, for me and every other New Yorker (most much less new than me)!  It was a trial by fire introduction to a city, whose spirit has never dimmed.  But despite my enthusiasms, I stumbled there more than flew, it often seemed.

So, I am trusting that this move is a good thing.  I am so very excited about the job opportunity, the fantastic people I will be working with, and the chance to make a real difference in this company.  And maybe it’s just time to circulate a little bit – and if I come back to NYC again (besides every other weekend to visit my peeps!) it will be on my own terms and with renewed spirit and much more joy in my heart.  Who knows where the road from here will lead?  Not even pretending it's me. :-)

To new beginnings....

Champagne

some pictures on one of my last days in new york...

closeout, chambers street

3 comments

new yorker hotel and empire state bldg

brooklyn bridge detail

brooklyn bridge

brooklyn bridge detail

brooklyn bridge archway

attorney street, lower east side

delancey street, lower east side

waterfalls public art project

brooklyn bridge from bk heights promenade

night view from bk heights promenade

#21 was a psychology book about fear.

Lucky: A Memoir

Alice Sebold

#22 was this book by Alice Sebold.  I loved her novel The Lovely Bones, and don't have anything specific to say about this one.  Instead I'm going to quote some bits from a review that I liked from the Guardian.

"Horror on earth is real and it is everyday." It never leaves you but, as Susie's father realises, "You live in the face of it." She got older, relaxed, let her guard down, told her story, found happiness in simple connections rather than defensiveness and booze. Her memoir Lucky ends, "I live in the world where the two truths co-exist, where both hell and hope live in the palm of my hand." She gets up at 3am to work because she likes writing in the dark, but she lives in the California sunshine. When she signs people's books, Alice Sebold writes "Viva!"

"Mind-reader, levitator, secret weapon, gadfly, butterfly. Artist's model, box jumper, diva, high-wire aerialist. Quick-change artiste, sensation of the ages, and inquirer into the spirit world. Critic, effects-builder, manager, diva, oracle, mistress of escapes, queen of the mysteries, fellow conjurer, class act, and have I said 'diva' already? Friend, sister, secret weapon, paramour. Wife! I love you - let's take over this evil planet and make it a playground."

Good eggs

I am about to go work at a startup, and have no idea yet how crazy my hours will be.  So I want to pay special attention to staying healthy, eating and exercising.  Here is a great list of the 11 best foods you may not be eating, but should be.

1. 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Beets: Think of beets as red spinach, Dr. Bowden said, because they are a rich source of folate as well as natural red pigments that may be cancer fighters.How to eat: Fresh, raw and grated to make a salad. Heating decreases the antioxidant power.
2. Cabbage: Loaded with nutrients like sulforaphane, a chemical said to boost cancer-fighting enzymes.
   How to eat: Asian-style slaw or as a crunchy topping on burgers and sandwiches.
3. Swiss chard: A leafy green vegetable packed with carotenoids that protect aging eyes.
   How to eat it: Chop and saute in olive oil.
4. Cinnamon: May help control blood sugar and cholesterol.
   How to eat it: Sprinkle on coffee or oatmeal.
5. Pomegranate juice: Appears to lower blood pressure and loaded with antioxidants.
   How to eat: Just drink it.
6. Dried plums: Okay, so they are really prunes, but they are packed with antioxidants.
   How to eat: Wrapped in prosciutto and baked.
7. Pumpkin seeds: The most nutritious part of the pumpkin and packed with magnesium; high levels of the mineral are associated with lower risk for early death.
   How to eat: Roasted as a snack, or sprinkled on salad.
8. Sardines: Dr. Bowden calls them “health food in a can.'’ They are high in omega-3’s, contain virtually no mercury and are loaded with calcium. They also contain iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper and manganese as well as a full complement of B vitamins.
   How to eat: Choose sardines packed in olive or sardine oil. Eat plain, mixed with salad, on toast, or mashed with dijon mustard and onions as a spread.
9. Turmeric: The “superstar of spices,'’ it may have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties.
   How to eat: Mix with scrambled eggs or in any vegetable dish.
10. Frozen blueberries: Even though freezing can degrade some of the nutrients in fruits and vegetables, frozen blueberries are available year-round and don’t spoil; associated with better memory in animal studies.
    How to eat: Blended with yogurt or chocolate soy milk and sprinkled with crushed almonds.
11. Canned pumpkin: A low-calorie vegetable that is high in fiber and immune-stimulating vitamin A; fills you up on very few calories.
    How to eat: Mix with a little butter, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Inspired by myself, I decided to post some more ancient faves.  This may date me a little, but this was my first favorite song.

I am babysitting the contractors fixing the bathroom ceiling.

Why is Madonna in the news so much these days?  First befriending Britney as a music video prop.  Then flying across the pond to flirt with A-Rod.  Here's something which isn't much news...

Memoir says Madonna's true love is herself (AP)

  AP - A memoir by Madonna's brother says the singer really does love her husband, director Guy   Ritchie, but, apparently, not as much as she loves her career and herself.

(Ghabby sent that to me.)  Here's to the good old days.  Madge, always with the power to shock, entertain, and delight us.

loathing...

• waiting, waiting, the interminable waiting
• having my bathroom ceiling undergo major repairs
  
• trying to do practical things
• being a nervous wreck
• separations and goodbyes
  

• reconciliations
• goodbye parties (more and more and more!)
• goodbye letters
• highly scripted movies, where I already know the ending
  
• a funny email I got from my ex-boyfriend
  
• asking for help and getting it, in moving, in writing letters, in closing with the past
  
• accepting a new job... woohoo... finally signed the offer letter and sent it back
• this cute ruffled dress G convinced me to buy
  

• finally leaving
• starting my new job next week
• feeling safe again
• my "new" car
  

Before you get worried, listen to the song.