Author Archives: Theryn

10 Things that Happened in 2011

  1. Toasted Cheese celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 18.
  2. I took up crocheting.
  3. I revived the Friday FUM. (You’re welcome to join us each Friday; no registration is required.)
  4. I ran a half-marathon in 2:15, a personal best and my forever goal time. (Now I need a new goal!)
  5. I stopped using shampoo (and much to my surprise, my hair thanks me).
  6. All the late ’80s/early ’90s clothing items I had squirreled away transitioned from old to “vintage.” One day I realized I was wearing 3 of these items at once:
    Vintage 1
    And then I saw this photo at The Sartorialist and realized if the jean jacket/long sweater/Doc Martens/(beaver) hat look is in, I’m all set:
    Vintage 2
  7. I successfully completed my comprehensive exams.
  8. I instigated a mini-NaNo challenge at TC in September—and “won.” (Maybe we’ll make it an annual thing?)
  9. I wrote 3 articles (Running a Literary Journal, Part 1: Choices, Mentor March: Writers Who Inspire Us, A Guide to Designing Assignments that Require Students to Submit their Work for Publication) & 2 editorials (Bounce, Outside In) for TC.
  10. My core & arm strength noticeably improved thanks to 3x/week yoga practice. (I might even be able to defeat the dreaded flexed arm hang now :))

Different experiences that nestle comfortably alongside each other

We adults live in a linear world in which we grew up with pen and paper and printed books and now wait impatiently (eagerly or with trepidation), wondering when digital is going to replace all of that. As if the flow is all one way and inevitable. But Josie lives in the world of now. In her world, people use fountain pens to write for recreation. They use phones to talk and text and email. They gather for family dinners and talk about their dreams and desires. Printed books and digital books are different experiences that nestle comfortably alongside each other. Live theater is as thrilling as a 3-D movie. Sometimes you sing and dance and sometimes you listen to your iPod.

Josie teaches me to live in the land of Now. To be grateful for the ways that I can reach out electronically without giving up nestling in front of the fire with a hardcover novel. When I read the debates between Kindle lovers and the devotees of printed books, I think of Josie and think that we are being very foolish.

—T. Scott Plutchak

The simple act of writing regularly

A 48-year-old high-school biology teacher from France, Alexis Jenni, won the country’s top literary prize this year, the Prix Goncourt. … In the Alexis Jenni school of thought, a writer may be someone, anyone, with a compulsion to scrawl or the conviction of having something to say. A writer is not defined by his career, but the simple act of writing regularly. And authors who found success through the muck of making ends meet have taken that approach for some time now, in practice at least.

—Betsy Morais

Make Stuff. Make Stories.

And I came to writing fiction, in the first place, out of being an art student. From the beginning, I wanted to make stuff. I wanted to make paintings and sculptures. And so the idea of artifice and craft and artificiality seemed really like the baseline condition of my gesture to begin with. The idea of verifiability or objectivity-these characteristics that writing inherits not from the arts but from journalism or scholarship-those weren’t native to me in any way. I was a failed student. I had never written a thesis, let alone a dissertation. I’d never done any journalism. I wasn’t even a person who kept a journal. I just wanted to make stories.

—Jonathan Lethem