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Time is running out for me to finish my 2012 update.  I’ve been strictly informed that January 15th is the cut-off date for wishing people Happy New Year or posting best-of lists or year-in-review lists.  So I guess that’s happening tonight.

In the meantime, here are some things I’ve been reading:

Lena Dunham interviewed by Miranda July for Interview Magazine.  Some of my favourite parts of this interview are where she talks about what it was like growing up with parents who were artists.

Cynthia Newberry Martin's inquiry into good sentences for Brevity i.e. the novelist’s perennial  question as she beats her head against the keyboard: does every sentence need to be great?  (The answer is that they at least need to be very good.) 

Related to the last:  Michael Cunningham’s New Yorker Letter From the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year.  (In case you didn’t hear, in 2012, there was no Pulitzer Prize awarded for fiction.) 

Nova Ren Suma "On Chasing Ambition and Being a Girl and a Woman."    This post resonated with me so much, especially lines like the ones quoted below: 

I have and want one thing, and I’ve been single-minded about it since high school: I write. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, to the detriment of everything else.

I think more needs to be written about women and ambition.  Or maybe it’s already out there…perhaps I ought to say I’d like to read more about women and ambition.  If you know of any good books or articles, send them my way, please.