I roadtripped down to Portland last weekend to attend the Wordstock festival, a gleeful gathering of authors, small presses, and literary folk. I got to also reconnect with some college friends, which was great. It turns out that what we all did with our early twenties involved wandering and writing novels. The conference was a good …
Tag Archive: Litter-A-Chewer
Aug 14
It’s the End of the World as we Know It…
Who loves dystopias? Me, clearly, because I wrote one, but still. A good dystopia story is totally cathartic, the ultimate act of schadenfreude. Holy crap. Too many big words. To review: Dystopia: a “negative utopia,” i.e. a supposedly perfect world gone horribly wrooooong. Schadenfreude: A German word meaning “happiness at the misfortune of others.” …Anyway, …
Aug 04
And Another Thing…
Apparently, it’s Things That Bother Me Week. Well, who am I to say no to the opportunity to complain on the Internet. (Complaint is the purpose of the internet, after all. That and porn.) So. Something that bothers me: Chick Lit. Chick Lit, to me, literature by women for women that probably has some literary …
Jul 29
Why I’m mad at David Foster Wallace
To begin with, David Foster Wallace. I’m not his number one fan. I don’t dislike his work. I have a love-hate relationship with his writing in that I can’t decide if it’s tripe or genius; it flip-flops in my brain like one of those optical illusions where you’re seeing the old woman and the young …
May 29
The first rule about Fight Club….
So, I was just writing a fight scene in “Changeling,”* a real fists-flying-guns-drawn fight scene. It made me think of two things: 1. I don’t write fight scenes very often. In Freedomland, there are no actual FIGHT scenes. There are people dying gruesomely scenes and blowing stuff up scenes, but no hand-to-hand combat, period. 2. …
Apr 05
Blatant Balladry
So, I suppose it’s time I talked about Novel No. 2. It’s tentatively titled Changeling, because I love me some single-word titles. Currently, it consists of a few more than 50,000 words of text (thanks, NaNoWriMo), a couple of outlines, and a bunch of research into the wacky, wacky world of British folklore. Specifically, I’ve …
Mar 07
Kitchen
The kitchen says so much about a household. It is a place of creation, a place of gathering, a place sacred to me in the house, and one of the hardest places in the house to share. You are what you eat, and what you eat and how are always on display in the kitchen, …
Feb 03
Adolescent Passions, or, Things I am not so Sure About Anymore…
I picked up a book at the library the other day: A Season In Hell, by Arthur Rimbaud. I know little if nothing about Rimbaud. To be perfectly honest, I picked it up because of a line from a Gregory Corso poem (Marriage): What a husband I’d make! Yes, I should get married! So much …