Author Archives: Theryn

Not writing

Not writing is important: it’s restorative. Taking a break from the work is also a part the work. Nobody really talks about that part of being a writer, and I know why they don’t. It’s scary. When I’m writing, I feel plugged in and energized and in sync. But when I’m not writing, I feel out of it. I have the very real fear that I’ll never be able to write anything ever again.  When you look at the stiff, dark branches of trees in the winter, isn’t it hard to imagine those same trees all lush and full of leaves?

But winter happens. Then spring comes.

—Sarah Selecky
in guest post at Pickle Me This

My reading time would just feel like work time

I don’t have an electronic reader, or whatever those are called. I’m still old school and I like holding the pages. Also, I look at a computer screen and a blackberry all f-cking day. I need some separation from that, and I feel like if I were to read off one of those future readers, my reading time would just feel like work time. So I’m a relic.

—Lainey Lui

 

Exhausting

This is going to sound incredibly lazy, like someone who gets in their car to drive a few blocks rather than walk, but the physicality of the book, having to hold it open then lift and turn each page, was a lot more exhausting than I remembered. All of that holding and lifting and turning distracted me from the act of reading, took me out of the story if you will. A few pages into it I gave up, logged in to Amazon, and bought the Kindle book.

—Kim White

LOLOLOL. Sorry, yes. Sure, you can prefer screen-reading to print-reading. But claiming turning pages is exhausting? Please.

A deep-seated fear

It’s painful to write. It’s painful to take a clear look at your finances, at your health, at your relationships. At least it’s painful when you have no confidence that you can actually improve in those areas. I would not speak for anyone else, but most of my distractions … are traceable to a deep-seated fear that I may not ultimately prevail.

—Ta-Nehisi Coates

Only slightly less morally repugnant than serial killers

In movies, writers are only slightly less morally repugnant than serial killers (unless the writer is a serial killer). According to Hollywood, writers are either parasites (Deconstructing Harry, Barton Fink, Capote, Misery); perverts (The Squid and the Whale, Adaptation, Wonder Boys, American Splendor); addicts (Permanent Midnight, Barfly, Leaving Las Vegas, Sideways), or sociopaths (La Piscine, Deathtrap, The Shining). They have monstrous egos and tiny, wizened hearts. Their moral compasses are permanently cracked; their personal relationships are cynically contrived to produce “experience,” which they feed to the insatiable maw of their craft. They are creatively constipated. They practice poor personal hygiene. They are not lovely to look at. It almost goes without saying that they are almost always male.

—Jennie Yabroff

Print is Dead and the Espresso Book Machine

I recently read Jeff Gomez’s Print is Dead, one of the main arguments of which is that even though a lot of people like print books and think ebooks are fixing something that isn’t broken, they should just get with the program, because eventually the only books that are going to be available in print are Dan Brown and his ilk.

But I wonder. Sure, one day bookstores may no longer stock pbooks. Maybe there won’t even be bookstores. But with print-on-demand technology, it would be ridiculously easy for publishers to continue to make it possible for anyone to get a print copy of any book they want—even if they do transition primarily to ebooks. So just from a technological standpoint, the whole “print is dead” thing seems a bit overblown.

One side of the story

[N]o matter how confessional a writer might seem, you are only seeing what they want you to see. You know what they want you to know. There are few things more controlled, to my mind, than a personal blog. It’s easy to believe you know everything about a person when you follow their blog or their writing online but you don’t. … Were holding up a mirror to ourselves but are controlling the angle.
…
You also only get to see one side of the story when you read a personal blog. … You see one side of the story, my side … You see the side of the story I choose to show you[.]

—Roxane Gay