“I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten – happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.” Brenda Ueland
Date Archives July 2009
And the winner is…
After much reading and re-reading and writing of lists, I awarded the London Fringe Short Fiction Award to Alex Burger for his story London: Through a Glass Darkly. The theme of the contest was ‘London: Glamour and Grime’, and I thought Alex’s story explored the theme in a very innovative way. The story is narrated by a self-proclaimed “remnant” of an earlier London, a London of brown water, dead rats and cats rotting in the street, a London of rotten meat painted with blood to make it look fresh. The… Read More
Google Me Stupid
Just read a great article by Rita Carter in the Spring edition of The Author. It’s not available online, but it makes reference to, and explores many of the same issues as, this Atlantic article by Nicholas Carr. The basic issue, hinted at in the title: reading on the internet is different from reading a book. In fact, the way we think may be different. Less sustained, more scattered. Faster but more superficial. We skim, click around, get interrupted, start again, follow a tangent. We learn quickly, but in an… Read More
Monday Morning Inspiration
“Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” Barbara Kingsolver
Monday Morning Inspiration #13
“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.” — Malcolm X
Monday Morning Inspiration #12
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey
I read this book before it was exposed as containing significant doses of fiction. I was blown away by the raw power of the story and the spare, hard-hitting writing. It’s hard for me to say how much of that was because I thought it was true. Certainly that added something. When you believe the narrator really did have a root canal without anaesthetic, really was wanted in however many states, etc., it makes the whole thing much more visceral. The sad thing is that a lot of probably was… Read More