A "virtual happy hour" on Toby Bloomberg's Diva Marketing "tagged" me to answer this set of questions that's making the rounds: What 5 Things You Don't Know About Me.
So here I go:
1. I love celebrity gossip, watch E!, subscribe to People magazine and Vanity Fair, etc. Annual highlight: the Oscars.
2. I was a pretty decent fifth-grade tap dancer.
3. While I'm reading on my sofa, I eat vast quantities of Raisin Bran dry out of the box.
4. I long to get an artist to paint blue morning glories all over my '92 Camry.
5. Sorting things into piles--putting all the apples together, all the oranges together, etc-- is soothing to me.
Okay, now here's who I'm tagging to take up the challenge: Billie Hinton, Sarah Blackmon, JA Konrath,and Budd Parr.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Dancing in the Streets
Ever gone herd dancing? That's when a group of people dances (fast-dances) together, without regard to gender or couples. It's a great thing. Not that the two-by-two thing isn't good too. But a gyrating group is exhilarating.
That's the subject of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Dancing in the Streets--or, why we don't indulge more often in what she calls "collective joy."
According to a review in the January Elle magazine, "she accumulates a compelling case for the benefits of serious partying." She finds that our forebears were much more likely to take part in group dancing and chanting, and that in more recent centuries, elites have attempted to discourage that kind of behavior, in an apparent effort to KEEP THE MASSES UNDER CONTROL and hold onto their own dignity.
Well, I've never responded well to being told by someone on a stage to hug the person next to me, or some such.
But I do like voodoo drumming (and old rock and roll) and group dancing that goes on and on. Don't do enough of it either. Perhaps I'll arrange a change.
Today's bit of boldness: My wear-under-sweaters white turtleneck was too long for the sweater I put on this morning. So I cut about six inches off the bottom. There's nothing sacrosanct about the way it came from the store.
Thought for the future: Next time boldly measure first.
That's the subject of Barbara Ehrenreich's new book, Dancing in the Streets--or, why we don't indulge more often in what she calls "collective joy."
According to a review in the January Elle magazine, "she accumulates a compelling case for the benefits of serious partying." She finds that our forebears were much more likely to take part in group dancing and chanting, and that in more recent centuries, elites have attempted to discourage that kind of behavior, in an apparent effort to KEEP THE MASSES UNDER CONTROL and hold onto their own dignity.
Well, I've never responded well to being told by someone on a stage to hug the person next to me, or some such.
But I do like voodoo drumming (and old rock and roll) and group dancing that goes on and on. Don't do enough of it either. Perhaps I'll arrange a change.
Today's bit of boldness: My wear-under-sweaters white turtleneck was too long for the sweater I put on this morning. So I cut about six inches off the bottom. There's nothing sacrosanct about the way it came from the store.
Thought for the future: Next time boldly measure first.
Friday, December 15, 2006
Topnotch Reading List
The Raleigh paper's book editor Peder Zane has a new book coming out from Norton next month that is essentially a recommendation of a lot of very good novels, plays, and poetry: "The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books,"
In the meantime go to the Top Ten website and have a look at the list. Some titles are predictable, some are surprises.
Then POST YOUR OWN LIST there. I found it an interesting exercise. I was startled to find that in addition to my beloved Henry James, V.S. Naipaul, and Anita Brookner, I also listed Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon, the retelling of the Arthurian legends from the women's point-of-view. Sentence by sentence, the language in that book isn't up to that of my other favorites. But so what? It's mesmerizing, and it is one of my favorites. So -- my little bold act of the day.
Feel free to post your list here as well.
In the meantime go to the Top Ten website and have a look at the list. Some titles are predictable, some are surprises.
Then POST YOUR OWN LIST there. I found it an interesting exercise. I was startled to find that in addition to my beloved Henry James, V.S. Naipaul, and Anita Brookner, I also listed Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon, the retelling of the Arthurian legends from the women's point-of-view. Sentence by sentence, the language in that book isn't up to that of my other favorites. But so what? It's mesmerizing, and it is one of my favorites. So -- my little bold act of the day.
Feel free to post your list here as well.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
How to Become Great
"To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
This Hegel quote was part of the signature of an e-mail I received from a staff person at Penguin Putnam dealing with some bit of business about my novel Sister India.
It's tough to hang onto this philosophy when one has been for long involved in the publishing business. We've been having a lot of conversation lately on this blog about market requirements, and what to do about them.
To meet Hegel's standard of indifference to public opinion and to get published would require one of several STRATEGIES, it seems to me:
1. Make the work of such transcendent quality that it might eventually be recognized for its value, though not necessarily in the writer's lifetime. And trust to either luck or young proteges to see that that reevaluation happens.
2. Self-publish, like James Joyce, among others.
3. Do such amazing and relentless self-promotion that a new standard, a new market is created.
4. Rely on accidentally meeting the requirements of publishers while doing one's own thing.
5. Meet enough market requirements to get in the door, while ignoring others. Make only the tolerable compromises, without damaging what feels vital. Promote like crazy.
Number 5 is my current choice.
How about you? OTHER OPTIONS?
(Every time I think I'm going to write for only a line or two, turns out that I'm wrong, I go on...)
This Hegel quote was part of the signature of an e-mail I received from a staff person at Penguin Putnam dealing with some bit of business about my novel Sister India.
It's tough to hang onto this philosophy when one has been for long involved in the publishing business. We've been having a lot of conversation lately on this blog about market requirements, and what to do about them.
To meet Hegel's standard of indifference to public opinion and to get published would require one of several STRATEGIES, it seems to me:
1. Make the work of such transcendent quality that it might eventually be recognized for its value, though not necessarily in the writer's lifetime. And trust to either luck or young proteges to see that that reevaluation happens.
2. Self-publish, like James Joyce, among others.
3. Do such amazing and relentless self-promotion that a new standard, a new market is created.
4. Rely on accidentally meeting the requirements of publishers while doing one's own thing.
5. Meet enough market requirements to get in the door, while ignoring others. Make only the tolerable compromises, without damaging what feels vital. Promote like crazy.
Number 5 is my current choice.
How about you? OTHER OPTIONS?
(Every time I think I'm going to write for only a line or two, turns out that I'm wrong, I go on...)
Friday, December 08, 2006
Holiday Innovation
We're all aflutter at my office building today because this house, built in 1910, is on Raleigh's 35th annual Historic Oakwood Candlelight Tour.
The queen and owner of the building, Carrie Knowles, shares my views about creativity and self-expression. Her studio and writing office are called Free Range Gallery. Here's what she just had painted so that you see it as soon as you come in the front door.
And here's the Christmas/holiday/winter solstice tree: it's made of cans of food that will be given to a soup kitchen when the tree comes down. This construction, a piece of art in itself, was made by Carrie's 16 year old son Cole Leiter and his friend Wilson Sayre.
Happy holiday preparation!--whatever you celebrate. I hope you'll take pleasure in doing it your way.
The tree of cans is a good demonstration that self-expression isn't necessarily selfish at all, can be quite altruistic in fact. For more on this, see The Healing Power of Doing Good.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
The Luminous Egg: Visual Suggestion
Remember that floating orb I wrote about? It's the piece of art I bought by/from my artist-buddy Carrie Knowles. I had to have it because it looks like the image of a floating ball of light that inspired both the biography I'm working on, and the new novel (tentatively "Pascal's Fire") that I have also (barely) begun.
Here you see the ball of light, in the center of the mantel in my office. I'm delighted to have it there. And it's not just to make the place look more interesting.
I find if I put a visual image of a goal before me, I'm more likely to reach that goal. CONSTANT SUBLIMINAL SUGGESTION works wonders on my typing fingers. I've found it almost magical.
Anybody else had any experience with this sort of thing?
Monday, December 04, 2006
Please Note
Good conversation going on in the comment section of the post titled: "An Extremely Bold Question."
The subject has evolved to WRITING FOR THE MARKET: is it damaging to art? and if not, how do we psyche out the current market requirements.
Do join in with your own view--here, or in the comment section to the earlier post.
Do you tailor your writing to what you perceive market requirements to be?
The subject has evolved to WRITING FOR THE MARKET: is it damaging to art? and if not, how do we psyche out the current market requirements.
Do join in with your own view--here, or in the comment section to the earlier post.
Do you tailor your writing to what you perceive market requirements to be?
Friday, December 01, 2006
Authentic Speech
Check out a feisty blog, Inventing the Rest of My Life, on the More magazine website.
More is an excellent magazine aimed at women over forty. I think the More articles would be of interest to a much larger group, but then I also read a number of men's magazines, and, more shocking, some aimed at 20-something fashionistas: "Drew, Ashlee, Kelis... share their secret shopping lists...," etc.
"Inventing the Rest of My Life" is written by 65 year-old Suzanne Braun Levine. "Recently," she writes, "an invitation to speak to a large national women's organization was withdrawn when the planners visited my Web site and saw the phrase 'the fuck-you fifties.'" That's the lead-in to her discussion of "appropriate" language and behavior.
I love her conclusion: "What I hope to see is not that the coarse language becomes commonplace, but that we get to the point that we Second Adulthood women don't have to call attention to ourselves in order to be noticed. Then each of us can find the words to speak out in her own voice and on her own terms." That's my wish for everybody.
More is an excellent magazine aimed at women over forty. I think the More articles would be of interest to a much larger group, but then I also read a number of men's magazines, and, more shocking, some aimed at 20-something fashionistas: "Drew, Ashlee, Kelis... share their secret shopping lists...," etc.
"Inventing the Rest of My Life" is written by 65 year-old Suzanne Braun Levine. "Recently," she writes, "an invitation to speak to a large national women's organization was withdrawn when the planners visited my Web site and saw the phrase 'the fuck-you fifties.'" That's the lead-in to her discussion of "appropriate" language and behavior.
I love her conclusion: "What I hope to see is not that the coarse language becomes commonplace, but that we get to the point that we Second Adulthood women don't have to call attention to ourselves in order to be noticed. Then each of us can find the words to speak out in her own voice and on her own terms." That's my wish for everybody.
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