I like to write journal entries in the voices of my characters. I sometimes even do it for people who have hurt me deeply in real life. The challenge is that you have to discover something new about the person or character. If your exercise reveals only what you came to the page with in the first place, then you have not tapped into the empathy you are going to need to write the story you want to write. You really to have to want to understand that person, which means you may have to let go of that anger.
Category Archives: Quotes
Wish
Can we pretend that airplanes
In the night sky
Are like shooting stars
I could really use a wish right now
Wish right now, wish right now
—“Airplanes” B.o.B ft. Hayley Williams
Do not care
My parents will not consider me a real writer in a way they can truly understand until they can go to Barnes & Noble and find something I’ve written, not in an anthology, but with my name alone on the spine. My writing career is the least relevant thing about me when it comes to my family and friends. It’s not that they don’t care but honestly, they do not care.
To know that secret
He liked to watch me on my laptop, how my face changed depending on what I was doing, how sometimes I laughed like I was reading about the best secret, how he wanted to know that secret. Sometimes, he would take my laptop from me and stand on the coffee table and hold it over his head and I would pretend to be angry and then he would run to another room and hide the laptop and when he came back I would give him my undivided attention. He liked that too.
Go, read the whole thing.
Merit Badges
We show off our books on shelves like merit badges, because we’re proud of the ideas we’ve ingested to make us who we are, and we hope to connect with others based on that. I think this is endearing and charming. When I paint someone else’s favorites and they have the same book I have in mine, I feel closer to them, like we must understand each other in some meaningful way.
The last time
As it was with our first loves, we fall hard for our first books. When we were with them the rest of the world fell away. And as with our first loves, we will never let go of ourselves like that again. I’ve asked myself when it was I read for the last time as a child, but the question is as pointless as asking when me and my first love lost what it was we once had. The answer is probably nothing more than, “One day the magic was there and the next day it wasn’t.” At some point I just took the dog for a walk without a novel, looked around, and either the things around me had changed or I had.
How you go from a blog to a book
BlogHer is about talking about how you go from a blog to a book, and how us writers, us people who live inside our heads, how we tap in to our own experiences to use for our writing and if maybe those experiences are too close, too hard to tell, too hard to share, we then turn our own experiences in to fiction, so that even though others might read it and not know those were our own childish eyes watching these events, we will know, and we will remember, and in the telling we will heal.
I’ll gladly answer to “slacker”
In truth, like many people my age, I hated high school and my 20s sucked as much as they rocked. So while we may take the baby barrettes out of our graying hair and no longer fit the description of grrrl, my generation has been pretty busy spending the last few decades living its life, starting its zines, cranking out some great music and generally not giving much of a crap about its hotness to begin with. I’ll gladly answer to “slacker,” but even if it’s with a wink and a self-deprecating laugh over pleather miniskirts gone by, don’t call me “formerly” anything. Because I’m not ready to assume my best years are behind me. And I don’t ever want to define myself by what I’ve been.
A big heart but … also a pragmatist
Joan may be the only character on “Mad Men” who has a big heart but who is also a pragmatist. For Joan to be practical (ditching the married guy and marrying a doctor) and loyal to a fault (staying with Greg even though he raped her) and for that to be her downfall? It’s pretty heart-wrenching.
Value in print
I know that lots of interesting stuff is happening online, with short fiction in particular, but I don’t read it. Something about the internet makes my attention span shut off. And as a writer, there is such value in print. Online publication seems lesser to me. Though I’d like to be proven wrong about this, if only for the sake of the trees.
I guess I’ll just go shoot myself now. j/k.
The Remainder Table 