I’m going to California for a wedding, so here’s the quote of the week a day early: "Stories are for joining the past to the future. Stories are for those late hours in the night when you can’t remember how you got from where you were to where you are. Stories are for eternity, when […]
I write all the time. I mean, I really, really do. I just wrote a single-spaced 50 page report in 4 days. Its the second single-spaced 50 page report I’ve done in that time frame, and let me tell you it is a haul to get it done. But I did it–and some extremely perverse […]
There’s an interesting article in the New York Times about the non-science of bestsellers. Read it here. The answer to the question of what makes a bestseller is that nobody knows.
"The biggest threat for most creators isn’t piracy,it’s obscurity. Putting something on a website won’t make it popular, but keeping it off a website makes it pretty much impossible to make it popular." Cory Doctorow, quoted in Dispatches From Blogistan
Just got back from an overnight trip to Seattle and spent an hour at Elliott Bay Books this afternoon. I love this bookstore. It’s got amber-colored worn wood floors, all these intriguing different levels reached by ramps and wood staircases, and, of course, books. One of the best things about the bookstore is all the […]
A new idea for a novel is forming in my brain. I have to be very, very careful with it. I’ve still got a draft and a half of the current novel to finish, so I can’t do anything with this new idea yet. And, one thing I’ve learned is that I can’t even pay […]
Writing is living; living is writing. I am one of those people who is so identified with my calling that I can’t seperate myself from it. I see analogies to writing and the writing process in everything. Apparently the same is true with Alice Sebold. Catching up on my magazine reading at lunchtime today (magazines […]
The mega-article on global warming ruined me for any other writing (or any other thing, like thinking) during the time I was completing it, but here’s my quote offering, by My Favorite Writer In The World, Ellen Gilchrist : "I am doing the best I can to teach them but there is really very little […]
I’m working on an assignment about global warming. As my sister would say, Geezus. This is scary stuff. I’ve already been reduced to running around the house turning off lights and asking my son to show me how to change the air filter in the car (changing it monthly can save 800 pounds of carbon […]
Just finished reading Between, Georgia by Joshilyn Jackson. I liked it. Don’t throw fried green tomatoes at me, but sometimes the whole quirky southern fiction thing wears a wee bit thin. (Stop it! Stop pelting me! I went to school in the south! I teach down there!) This book had quirkiness galore but the main […]
