The Writing Life: Finding a Balance Between Creativity and ‘Mere Absorption’

 “I easily sink into mere absorption of what other minds have done, and should like a whole life for that alone.”-George Eliot

George Eliot

George Eliot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sing it, sister! I could-and I do mean this to be taken at face value-spend all of my time reading. Yep, from classic and classically obscure literature to history and biography, I’m more than willing to sit on my a** 16 hours a day just taking it all in and enjoying the lovely, lovely words. Continue reading

A Year in Books/Day 100: Living Authors

  • Title: Living Authors
  • Editor: Dilly Tante
  • Year Published: Original Edition-1931/This Edition-2001 (The H.W. Wilson Company/Bookspan)
  • Year Purchased: 2004
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: Since I spend so much time writing about dead writers, this is one of the most-used volumes in my personal reference library. Although I don’t remember where I bought it, I know that it only cost about $5; practically speaking, it is the best investment I have ever made in a book! ‘Living Authors’ features biographies of pretty much every still-breathing writer (400 of them!) of any importance at the time of initial publication (1931), which means that it covers the years that I most frequently focus on in my own writing. Each entry also has a detailed bibliography. For those of you wondering why I don’t just head over to Wikipedia/other informative web-site, I’ll stop you right there. It’s not the same! Dilly Tante filled his book with strange data and odd minutia, often provided by the authors themselves. It’s simply more interesting and fulfilling.
  • Motivation: I’m always excited to find reference materials contemporaneous to the subjects I write about.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover-1/As reference-countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page vi: “In themselves these facts are trivial and meaningless. If they concerned the man in the brown hat next door or the discreet lady across the way, they might be dismissed as idle gossip, both inexcusable and dull. But in the world of art, where talent is primarily a consolidation of personality, we have a right to be curious. Our desire to know the artist is matched by his desire to reveal himself, for the art of the modern world is fundamentally autobiographical, and Goethe, described by Spengler as “the man who forgot nothing, the man whose works, as he avowed himself, are only fragments of a single great confession,” may well stand as the type of the Western artist.”
  • Happiness Scale: Off the charts!
My copy of 'Living Authors' Edited by Dilly Tante

My copy of 'Living Authors' Edited by Dilly Tante: I'll award 2 bragging points for every writer you can name!

 

A Year in Books/Day 98: The Writer’s Home Companion

  • Title: The Writer’s Home Companion An Anthology of the World’s Best Writing Advice, from Keats to Kunitz
  • Edited and with an Introduction by: Joan Bolker, E D. D.
  • Year Published: 1997 (An Owl Book, Henry Holt and Company)
  • Year Purchased: 2001/2002
  • Source: Unknown
  • About: I revere books, both for what they contain and for what they symbolize. As a result, I can count on the fingers of one hand how many books I have ever highlighted passages in or written notes in the margin of, including textbooks. ‘The Writer’s Home Companion’ is one of the exceptions. Why? It contains so much stellar, spot-on advice for writers by writers. The kind of advice that you will actually heed and apply. The kind of advice that you probably already know, deep-down, but keep pushing away because that is the easy thing to do. The kind of advice that is at once remedial and advanced, that simultaneously disciplines and frees. The kind of advice that we all need to remember as we go about the task and joy that is writing.
  • Motivation: Who could resist practical advice by the likes of John Keats, Bernard Shaw, Ursula Le Guin and Natalie Goldberg all in the same volume? Not this girl.
  • Times Read: Countless
  • Random Excerpt/Page xi: “Writing is a solitary sport, but none of us can do it without good company at crucial moments. Most of the writers I’ve known are pulled and tugged between their wish for the quiet aloneness necessary for their work, and their longings for human connections. We write both to express ourselves and to be heard by others, but first we have to learn how to tolerate ourselves as we work at our writing. The authors of the pieces collected here share honestly, and often humorously, their thoughts and feelings about writing and the writer’s life, and can provide you with the good company you need to get on with your own work.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10

Shopping for the Bookworm: Mystic Moose Book Bags

Since I usually schlep around half a dozen books on my petite person, not to mention all manner of writing paraphernalia, I cannot have too many tote bags (or, that’s what I tell  myself whenever I whip out my debit card to add another to my collection). I buy them like some people buy socks or lip balm, which is to say frequently.  Continue reading

Women Writing for a Change ‘Spring Fling’ Podcast!

A few weeks ago, I participated in a podcast for Women Writing for a Change here in The Queen City. Although I was puffy and a bit out-of-sorts due to major sinus issues, the entire experience was several sorts of fun. My kilt-clad honey was there for moral support; the organizers even invited him into “the circle” (quite the important thing), where he unleashed his singular brand of brash, intellectual charm on all of my co-writer-readers. There followed nearly two hours of creative rituals, snacks, networking, laughter and, of course, podcast recording.

As host Carol Stewart said in her intro to the ‘Spring Fling’-themed podcast, we are “sending forth words that are bold and necessary”. Twelve writers offering twelve entirely different perspectives, a dozen voices ultimately uniting in a rising and triumphant exultation to the new season; there is stunning individuality but a cohesive flow is maintained. Written in ten minutes on a Sunday afternoon, with the only goal being to stave off boredom whilst maintaining a comfortable laziness, my contribution is brief and humble. It initially appeared here as Intermezzo: The Sky is Flaunting Itself. It’s quick but descriptive; after reading it twenty times I’m still content with it and am glad that I did not embellish it for this recording.

I am the third reader in the first segment. Be sure to check out my friend Angela Muchmore in the second segment, where she reads a lovely original poem. The podcast is available as a free download on iTunes. It can also be found on the WWFC web-site.

A Year in Books/Day 82: The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction

  • Title: The Glimmer Train Guide to Writing Fiction Inspiration and Discipline
  • Editors: Susan Burmeister-Brown and Linda B. Swanson-Davies
  • Year Published: 2007 (Glimmer Train Press)
  • Year Purchased: 2007/2008
  • Source: Writer’s Digest Book Club
  • About: This thick little volume offers some of the best writing advice I’ve ever read. Presented in the form of interviews, it captures disparate writers’ unique yet universal passion for the craft; mixed with sound, structured and common-sense, been-there-done-that advice, it completely lives up to its cover promise. It is one of the few inspirational resources that I have ever repeatedly consulted. Worth every penny, and then some.
  • Motivation: I think that I was sent this when I was too distracted  to mail in the monthly card and too lazy to return the book. I’m glad I didn’t, as I probably would never have chosen it otherwise. The writing gods fortuitously intervened.
  • Times Read: Cover-to-cover/1; as reference: countless.
  • Random Excerpt/Page 43: “When I was in college, I began to read Faulkner and Hemingway, two writers that changed my life. I hadn’t read anything so shockingly wonderful as those two writers, and what they could do on the page stunned me. I’ve never gotten over that shock, and don’t want to.”-Kent Haruf
  • Happiness Scale: 10+++

Creativity and the Macabre: Forever is Composed of Nows

Ideas often come alive for me at strange or inconvenient moments. After the ever-trusty shower, I usually feel the most open to creativity when I am…….

walking amongst graves. My husband and I are lucky to live a few minutes from the second largest cemetery in the United States. Established in 1845, it is equally an arboretum, with 15 lakes, trees, flowers and wildlife set within what, at times, looks like traditional parkland. Continue reading

[From My Archives]* On Shaw, or How a Dead Playwright Transformed My Adolescence and Altered My Life

When I set out to do this essay, I realized that writing about George Bernard Shaw would be rather like writing about my first (real) love: a little daunting, a little dangerous and, ultimately, mostly about me, for we tend to see ourselves reflected in others as steadfastly as we implant ourselves firmly in what we read. Continue reading