Stephanie has given us her list of Top Ten Hotties in Literature over at Natural / Artifical. Check out the blue hair, too. It is an interesting list of cute boys. Despite not being familiar with all of the beaus on the list, I took a guess at who # 1 would be, before scrolling all the way down, and I was right! Can you guess who the number one hottie in literature is? Can you?
Keegan Said, version 32567
“Mom? Where do we go live when we die?”
“When will it be yesterday?” “Is today yesterday?” “Then, when will it be yesterday?!”
“How many laters are there?”
“What does inside and outside mean?”
“What is an end to something?”
“Gross, I am never going to grow hair under my arms.”
Friday Procrastination
I’m sifting through old photos, thinking I should order some large prints, put together another book. Or, I could grade papers, dye my hair, vacuum…OH, or write. That would be good.
The Writer’s Studio
There’s a nice article up about what a great community we have at Georgia State University: The Writer’s Studio.
Ghost World
I finally read Daniel Clowes‘ graphic novel Ghost World. Holy crap. I could have read it in one sitting. I think I read it in three. Ghost Worldis an honest portrayal of adolescence.
Clowes doesn’t miss any of the detritus. All the tiny, strange, lonely, teenage, summer-before-college plot strings are there in the book, flapping around. And the two main characters, Enid and Rebecca, are grasping at these strings, fumbling to hold onto the narratives of their past, alternatively struggling to tie together a narrative for their future. I’d recommend this book to any reader, maybe 8th grade and up. You know that dorky kid from high school that carried around either a beat up copy of Catcher in the Rye, Cat’s Cradle, or 1984 in his back pocket? I wouldn’t be surprised if Ghost World had joined those ranks. I just got the movie in the mail and can’t wait to watch it.
Progress, Rise, Crash
Having the life of a professional, full-time writer is my dream long-term goal destined vocation. I’m one of many with said inclination, I know. But, what is “full-time” and how much time is optimal for producing good work? I know there are some writers who claim to write for truly six to eight hours a day, but I think anyone that can maintain such a schedule, for more than a couple of weeks, harbors a specific type of mania. I had one of those six hour days yesterday.
It’s euphoric, and depressing, to come to the end of a large project. Yesterday I finished a novel, a novel I’ve been working on, in sometimes misguided directions, for years. Since 2003. So, that makes five years. Of course, this isn’t the first time I finished it. I finished it, as a collection of fifteen short stories, back in, oh I don’t even know. I reworked that material and tried to pass it off as a novel for a workshop in 2006. Then I decided, at the end of 2006, that the entire thing needed a different chronological structure and a new point of view. Profluence. So.
Over the last week or so I was nearing the end of this year-long rewrite; yesterday I rewrote two, glaringly wrong, chapters and did a huge chunk of superficial editing. I can’t believe some of the stuff I wrote in the past. Things like “The girls collapsed to the floor.” Duh. For the most part, editing consisted of crossing out phrases. Dumb phrases.
Working though a novel-length manuscript led me to to feel alternatively masterful and idiotic. There is a type of mania that sets in when really nearing the end of something, whether it be a large work or even a short story. (Maybe it’s just the caffeine.) But then, when it’s over, I’m completely drained. It’s a crash, intellectually and physically.
Having years of work wrapped up into one tiny ball of art is also a tenuous reality to carry around. Now what? I don’t know. I felt productive in one sense yesterday, but my accomplishment wasn’t concrete enough. That same day I polished four short stories and sent them off. Submitting stories was a concrete action to take. What of the novel? It’s a computer file. Who knows if it’s any good. Sometimes I know. But you can’t know always about those things, or else what fuels the bursts of mania to make everything more and again and again?
I stand corrected
I will be corrected for years to come.
I took Keegan to The Schoolbox this week. It’s a neat school supply store with all sorts of things. We weren’t looking for anything in particular, but ended up picking out three maps: the United States, the World, the constellations. They laminate in-store, while you wait, so that was nice. In the store, he pointed at Antarctica on the world map and said, “This place is ice.” He’s three. He got very upset that Texas, on the US map, was blue. It is red on his map at school. He really wanted it to be red, which would be ironic if he had any idea of politics; the blue was wrong. This discrepancy in state colors continued. He knew where Georgia was. It wasn’t the right color.
In the car, I tried to explain constellations. I talked about stars, how they looked like dots, how people imagined making pictures by connecting the dots. I said people imagined pictures of animals and people doing things. He yelled, “And cups. There’s the cups.” He had to be talking about the Big Dipper and Little Dipper, right? Yes, I had forgotten those. Yes, cups, the cups. Kind of like ladles, or cups with handles. We also picked up Tangrams, which I used to be a complete whiz at in elementary school. Now, I feel like an idiot.
Interview with Elizabeth Crane
I am in the process of rereading Elizabeth Crane’s All this Heavenly Glory, which I love.
Bookslut has an interview up with her, which focuses on her newest book, You Must Be This Happy to Enter. From Bookslut:
The title’s perfectly apt: YOU MUST BE THIS HAPPY TO ENTER, with a ferociously happy Precious Moments creature staring at you from the cover, arms spread wide like a kid who can grasp the concepts of measurement to some basic degree. While these are stories for happy people, they’re not saccharine. While these aren’t saccharine, they’re far from depressing. In one story a woman becomes a zombie and makes the best of it by going on one of those midday Lifetime reality shows where a houseful of women trump their problems by earning gold stars and making paper crafts. All the while, you notice that there is no cynicism. None. Not even when a small town loses its color (more literally than figuratively, mind you).
I thought I had a few years
During a goodbye:
Me: “Keegan, remember, if you want to say hi or talk over the weekend, you can call me on the phone.”
Keegan: [looking indignant, hands out for emphasis] “I just gave you a hug and a kiss. Like everyday! I do not need to call you on the phone!” [now walking away]
Me: “Ok then, bye!”
Keegan: “Bye!”
Keegan Said
“Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“What are those lines on your forehead?”
“Wrinkles. Wrinkles, honey.”
“Oh. Why?”
“Because I’m getting old.”
“Oh. Mommy?”
“Yes?”
“Your hair is a little bit dried out. A little bit dry.” [patting my hair]
“Yes, yes it is.”
Amber Nicole Brooks 