I’d heard this story before, but I hadn’t heard that he’d figured out a way to read again. Cool!
Now I have this song in my head. Click if you dare:
[/earworm]
(you’re welcome!)
Category Archives: Writing
Creative Inspiration
I find that whenever I start slacking off the daily exercise (“I have too much WORK to do…”), I inevitably start feeling more and more tired and uninspired. … Some days, though, I get so wrapped up in my work that it’s hard to drag myself away from the computer screen. … I find that getting some exercise outdoors does wonders for getting creative inspiration flowing plus is good for de-stressing.
I did loads of writing in trigonometry
[W]hen I have to write all the time, the last thing I want to do is write. This is true of almost every writer I know. We all love writing, but when someone makes you do it, it kind of sucks. However, I did loads of writing in trigonometry! If I had been a math major, I would have written about twelve books by the time I graduated. In retrospect, I see this is a GENIUS IDEA and encourage you all to think about it!
A surprising e-mail conversation
Two weeks ago, I saw a review on our Weddings page of a book called “Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality” (HarperCollins). Without much thought, I blurted out in a tweet that it sounded pretty stupid to me. But that started a surprising e-mail conversation with one of the authors, Christopher Ryan. It’s interesting not only for what Mr. Ryan says, but as an example of the way patient authors can profitably engage even caustic critics[.]
The true rules that need to be followed are artistic ones
It is the nature of memoir and essay that memory is telling the story and these forms will never be as clean as journalism. In the best literary nonfiction the true rules that need to be followed are artistic ones. Those rules are developed in each individual book by each individual artist, and they should be judged that way, individually, not in a great hue and cry of moralistic oversimplification. Yes, it is wise for writers of memoir to hew as closely as they can to the facts. But my worry is that we will, as usual, overreact and learn too literal of a lesson. That in rushing to rein things in we will choke off what is creative and alive in the form.
The Possibility of Failure
Anyway, do we really want consistency in an artist? What does this pressure to please the market have to do with art? Originality involves risk, and risk implies the possibility of failure. That’s how greatness is born.
Everything into Products
I am not saying that it is a bad or dishonest thing to try to sell your work. It is not. What I am saying is that I am tired of the rush to commodify everything, to turn everything into products, including people. I don’t want a brand, because a brand limits me. A brand says I will churn out the same thing over and over. Which I won’t, because I am weird.
Tune Her Out
[E]very time I spoke to my grandmother, she’d issue the same decree. Her voice now represented all of the voices questioning my right to depict China at all, preempting my every sentence, shrouding me in so much self-doubt that, many days, I censored myself. I couldn’t write a word.
In order to write, I needed to tune her out. I needed to remind myself that it’s the duty of novelists to write past polemics, to show complexity and humanity everywhere we look. That the crucial voices were those of my characters[.]
Characters aren’t your friends
I really irks me when people critique a book or a movie on the basis of “unlikeable characters” or characters who take morally questionable or reprehensible actions, which is like saying you didn’t like The Poseidon Adventure because the ship wasn’t seaworthy. When you read a book you’re not supposed to evaluate the characters as people, like you’re deciding whether or not to hire them or be friends with them. Characters aren’t your friends and they don’t have to be role models.
Fragments
The objects don’t tell the whole story though, just as a view through a window doesn’t, or a bookshelf, or any infinite number of Facebook albums– but why are these things so compelling all the same?
I wonder if– outside of fictional realms– such fragments come closer to a kind of truth than anything else can? And I wonder how much of the pleasure lies in making the connections by ourselves.
The Remainder Table 