"yes, I'll be a writer, of course"

We've been doing a lot of organizing and decluttering, as well as finally combining (and maybe even thinning?) our book collections -- which is a post unto itself, really. But one of the things I came upon was an old diary I'd forgotten about.

I was obsessed with Lucy Maud Montgomery as well as very into the notion of a lockable diary, so it should have been the perfect gift except that it looks like this:

Augugh! It's so ugly! But it seems I took one stab at writing in it...although apparently only to write about other, better notebooks. This is also seemingly where I experimented with the notion of stream-of-consciousness writing as simply containing a lot of commas:

There is lots of stuff in here that makes me smile. My main thought, though, was what on earth is a Jimmy-book?? But in the middle of the night I remembered that that's what Emily Starr in Emily of New Moon calls the notebooks her Uncle Jimmy buys her. I can't remember exactly how they're described, but I pictured them as large square-ish hardcover notebooks with creamy blank paper. The red memo I mention is a little spiral notebook -- inspired by the girl detective Abby Jones in Patricia Reilly Giff's Loretta P. Sweeny, Where Are You? -- where I used to record various facts about any mysteries I managed to uncover.

admiring the easy read

I just came back from the gym, where I went to buy food and read a book.  This is not the most intelligent behaviour for somebody who is doing a photo shoot for this good cause in the very near future.  Oh well. 

I’m happy I took some time to read.  I’m reading The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, and I had one of those fleeting moments when I’m enjoying a book and I think ALL books should be just like the one I’m holding.  It’s funny and sad and smart and it just flies by.  I think, I want to write a book that just flies by. 

But so far, I don’t think this has been my style in anything I’ve published.  And I might be wrong or misremembering things…it’s almost certain, anyhow, that the way I feel when reading through one of my own manuscripts is not the same way anybody else would feel.  I’ll read something and get tripped up on whatever else I know went into a particular sentence (what I was thinking about when I wrote it, or that tricky clause I took out of it, or the word I wanted to use but couldn’t manage), while someone else finds it all wonderfully lucid.  Or at other times (and this is by far the more common pitfall in writing), I know exactly what I’m trying to say and I breeze through it all without a problem, congratulating myself on my clarity while readers are stuck trying to follow my analogies from point A to point B.  

It would be nice to write something as straightforward as talking or thinking, so there is nothing for a reader to bump up against and get shaken out of the spell.  That’s something I’d like to do. 

But I still appreciate other styles of writing!  I enjoy and admire difficult books as well as straightforward ones, and I guess I’m saying I’d like to write lots of books and lots of different kinds of books, if that turns out to be possible.  

Whew.

If you haven’t yet, and you’re behind on your internet reading, you should check out the wonderful LitBits gathered over at Bella’s Bookshelves. 

On a less literary note, check out this hilarious Get the Look over at The Hairpin.

deep freeze Friday

The warm spell is over.  It’s a deep freeze now.  The cold doesn’t bother me too much – it’s all about knowing how to dress: long johns, thermal shirt, wool sweater, fleece-lined mitts and a dense scarf.  Plus a down coat, shearling boots, and a fur hat.  Winter in Canada isn’t for amateurs (nor for vegans, apparently).   

This week I’ve been trying take to heart all that good advice about living in the moment.   Singing, seeing friends, catching up on emails, reminding myself about what’s important (that same old moving target).  Typing that out, I'm reminded of Jo Knowles' blog, where she recently shared some powerful words about Maurice Sendak and the importance of living one’s life.     

And while I'm sharing links, here's another great blog post by Caroline Wissing I stumbled upon via Twitter about acknowledging your talent.

And at the Guardian, Philip Roth picks his best novels.  (I’ve only read Portnoy’s Complaint, many years ago, and more recently The Human Stain, which I loved.  I think American Pastoral will be next on the list…although probably not next in the reading lineup, not when I have the new Alice Munro and Zadie Smith at home.)  I love the idea of being prolific enough to actually have an oeuvre to consider – to have a body of work from which you can pick and choose your favourites.  (There.  That should be enough of an ambition spur to get me up early tomorrow to work on my new story.)

There’s also this hilariously accurate article on Slate about the dark side of the book tour.  I’m planning my book launch for Bone and Bread right now and am plagued with similar visions of nobody showing up.  Say you’ll come? 

writing links open in my browser

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.