Category Archives: The Interwebs
Some things I read this month
- Ann Bauer, “When I sold out to advertising” (Salon)
- David Bezmozgis, “The Novel in Real Time” (The New Yorker)
- Edan Lepucki, “Life is Too Short to Read a Bad Book: A Conversation with My Editor” (The Millions)
- Ben Montgomery, “Writing the book: Ben Montgomery on Grandma Gatewood’s Walk” (Nieman Storyboard)
- Nick Ripatrazone, “No Right Path: Arriving at Writing from Outside the Humanities” (The Millions)
- Hanna Rosin, “The Overprotected Kid” (The Atlantic)
- Eva Saulitis, “Wild Darkness” (Orion Magazine)
- Gerda Saunders, “My Dementia: Telling Who I Am Before I Forget” (Slate)
- Sadie Stein, “Small Wonder” (Paris Review)
- Ivor Tossell, “The Story behind the Rob Ford Story” (The Walrus)
Some things I read this month
- Christie Aschwanden, “Why Blog?” (The Last Word on Nothing)
- Kerry Clare, “Solid” (Pickle Me This)
- Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Champion Barack Obama” (The Atlantic)
- Jill Kronstadt, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Lady James” (Bloom / The Millions)
- Steven Kurutz, “Lee and Morty Kaufman: Cleaning Up in Their 90s” (The New York Times)
- Edan Lepucki, “Style Sheet: A Conversation with My Copyeditor” (The Millions)
- Megan McArdle, “Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators” (The Atlantic)
- Seth Mnookin, “Why Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Death Is So Scary” (Slate)
- Maureen Orth, “Mia’s Story” (Vanity Fair, from 1992)
- Jennifer Pastiloff, “Survival of the Fittest: On Losing My Hearing” (The Nervous Breakdown)
- Janet Potter, “28 Books You Should Read If You Want To” (The Millions)
- Arianne Wack, “Is She Writing About Me?: A Profile of Lorrie Moore” (The Millions)
Ira Glass on Storytelling
I ran across this earlier this week and it reminded me of of the “why are you telling me this?” quote I posted a while back.
The I-don’t-have-5-minutes-to watch version:
- A story has two key building blocks 1) an anecdote and 2) a moment of reflection.
- An anecdote is a sequence of actions.
- Start with the action! Raise a question from the beginning. Keep raising questions. If you raise a question, it implies you’re going to answer it at some point. This is what keeps people watching/listening/reading.*
- The moment of reflection is the point of the story. It’s the “why are you telling me this?” part.
- You need both!
- In a good story, you flip back and forth between the two.
*I agree this is what gives a story momentum, but at the same time I don’t think all questions need to be explicitly answered in stories. In fact, I prefer if they aren’t. You’ve got to leave something for your audience to figure out on their own / argue about for decades 😉
Some things I read this month
- Christie Aschwanden, “How an internet quiz put me in my place” (The Last Word on Nothing)
- Anna Fitzpatrick, “Young Adult, Not So Virginal” (Hazlitt)
- Rebecca Mead, “Written Off” (The New Yorker)
- Michelle Nijhuis, “My Dirty Stream” (The Last Word on Nothing)
- Drew Philp, “Why I Bought a House in Detroit for $500” (Buzzfeed)
- Emily Rapp, “Proof of Loss” (The Rumpus)
- Scott Saalman, “Do Not Endure Verbal, Emotional, or Physical Abuse” (The Morning News)
xkcd: Simple Answers
Should’ve just done my dissertation in comic form…
xkcd: pastime
Those Not Present
Was thinking it would be a fun exercise to try this. Might need a chair with casters 😉
Fun with quotes
Make your own here.
17: I’m Bored
I’m Bored by Michael Ian Black
illustrated by Debbie Ridpath Ohi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Purchased at Chapters on Robson. I didn’t see it on the shelf at first, but I checked the computer and it said there was one (one? eep!) left. I headed back to the shelf and a-ha! The reason I’d missed it was because the spine is yellow. I’d been looking for blue. I grabbed it and vamoosed before anyone else could lay claim 😉
Ok, so I didn’t buy this for me. I got it for my younger niece for her birthday. I read it before I wrapped it up. And now you know my picture book secret.
Anyhow, she’s turning six and she learned to read this year, so I’m glad this came out this year as I couldn’t get away with a picture book next year (which makes me sad! no more picture books 😦 maybe I’ll have to buy them for myself ;)). She’ll breeze through the text, but I got it for the illustrations.
Full disclosure: I’ve been following Debbie’s various blogs since forever and she’s good friends with Erin.
The truth is, I buy most picture books based on the illustrations. I love picture book art. And it’s the illustrations that make I’m Bored special. There’s one image in the mid-story montage of a sofa-ship that totally reminded me of the couch forts my brother and I used to make. The bored little girl is perfect for the story and the potato is so expressive. How did she do that? It’s a blob and a couple lines!
That said, the story seems simple, but it’s got some great elements. I love the flamingo twist (how could I not?) and I think the book really gets that “I’m so bored” tone/mood just right.
I wonder how many people remember that feeling. It’s hard to be truly bored as an adult. (Nearly impossible if you’re a writer because everything’s material. Maybe if you were stuck in a cave or something. It’s still material, but after a while, enough already.) Sure people will say they’re bored, but as an adult, you’re in control, you can always do something.
As a kid, you’re limited in your options. If you’ve run out of books to read, you can’t just head out to buy/borrow more books—you have to get permission, wait for your parents to have time in their schedules, etc. So you have to work within your constraints. You could re-read something or you could use your imagination and make up your own story…!
I waffled a bit over whether to give this four or five stars (I reserve five stars for books that changed my life). I think if I’d just picked it up off the shelf, I would’ve given it four. But because I can’t detach it from the backstory and all I’ve learned watching I’m Bored go from story to finished product, not to mention all the extras associated with it, I couldn’t not give it five. Debbie has gone above and beyond in creating bonus material. I mean, seriously, just go and look. Plus, she’ll write back to kids who write to her. She is awesome.
The Remainder Table 