Light Boxes by Shane Jones
The Loser by Thomas Bernhard
A Day, A Night, Another Day, Summer by Christine Schutt (google book)
i didn't have enough money to really buy these books, but i don't care. i wanted new things to read. i'm excited about all of them.
the teacher who teaches next to my classroom, i believe, stands next to my door and listens when he lets class out early.
three pot-bellied men with enormous voices walk down my street far too often to be anything other than 'troublemakers.'
i have decided that i will snap a photograph of the swedish-addidas lad, then when he asks what the hell i think i'm doing, say, Just snapping me a photograph of that beautiful mountain, friend.
i think there has to be a way to write and not care. i don't think you can write and care about getting published. in the same way you can't write and think about what you're doing. you have to be able to write and just let it happen. this, amazingly, takes 'years of practice.' but my feelings about stories is that they have to be effortless, or seem to be effortless. anything that's overly written bothers me right now. i have hard time reading some things because the sentences seem over-crafted, like each word is a stone that had to be sanded and remade. that's a terrible use of figurative language.
4 comments:
be sure to tell us what you think of these as you read them. Like, should i buy any of them? is what i really want to know.
Did JWang send u any of that jim shepard he was touting a few months back? I ended up getting 2 collections and enjoyed both of them.
I realized just now that i never posted my wii fitness age. truth is, now i don't remember it, but i think my best is 19. But maybe that was in a dream. My scores swing wildly (kind of like the way I box)--i'll run it when i get home and tell you the score. I think i avg late 20s early 30s. If it's in the 30s i feel bad.
yes, john persuaded me to buy Like You'd Understand, Anyway. it was really good. his stories are like 'events' or something, so grounded in history in that book anyway. i liked it, though it's not always for me. something about the constant 'bigness' of the events bothered me. still super-impressive though.
i've read two stories from Livability by Jon Raymond (author i wrote about in next post). they weren't as strong as i imagined they'd be. they were good, enjoyable, but i don't know.
19 is really good for wii. i once got 20, but then the screen tilted and made a 'sad sound' and the 20 got replaced with a 26.
hey alan, kinsley here. i ran across your blog just last night while looking for that one the CforW had a year or so ago.
a number of things you said in your last paragraph struck me. i mean, i've been thinking about what it means to write, what is essential to the process, and i believe that inasmuch as a writer cares about things other than writing, he puts himself as risk. i imagine there are profoundly gifted people who can stand to risk more of their intellect than i can. for me, this thing, writing, storytelling, is a task beyond me. in order to catch up with whatever skill or promise i believe i have, i have to serve the process of becoming almost exclusively. i've no need to worry about trying to publish for now. maybe this isn't the best way to go about things, but i don't think that publishing will make me a better writer. for some, publishing boosts the ego, or drive, or belief in one's work, but i don't need that right now. the work is enough.
two cents.
Kinsley Manning, how are you? i'm glad you made a comment.
part of what I was trying to say is something like: it’s important to write and not think ‘will this be good?’ to turn off the analyzing part of the brain, the part we’re required to use in workshop so often. I think I used to write a thing at the center for writers, and I would think, Just write, but I would also think, Follow these rules, have this happen, make sure there is an arc, characterization, etc. i was always ‘trying’ to write. when I finished there, I felt like all these things happened in my brain where I had like ‘internalized' the ‘rules.’ i felt that that was the point of the center for writers. after that, it just didn’t matter anymore, trying hard or whatever. maybe what I am trying to express in that last paragraph is a ‘philosophy’ about writing, which can probably be applied to a lot of things. it’s in the Chaung-tzu and the Lao-tzu and has to do with effortlessness, like a pianist who just does the thing. that’s when I feel like my stuff is best, which i feel like is happening lately.
as for waiting to publish or being in the process of becoming a ‘writer,’ I’ve always felt, How does one know one is done/ready? though I can see your point about that. not to mention trying to publish is a headache, and unless someone’s publishing a lot, I would say it’s hard on the ego. but then, the ego has nothing to do with ‘effortlessness.’ this blog, now that’s ego.
i don't feel like rereading this to see if it makes sense. glad to see you around kinsley.
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