January 2012
9 posts
Guys. OK. I’m no oracle here, but I’m fairly certain I’ve unlocked the secret to ultimate writerly productivity: yoga pants, a Goliath-sized wool sweater, the ugliest socks ever manufactured, day-old makeup and M83.
No additions nor substitutions.
“If writers had to wait until their precious psyches were completely serene there...”
– William Styron (via theparisreview)
I just took a risk that I wouldn’t have taken if I didn’t have confidence in my writing. I’m not the kind of person who asks for much, but, if you have some knuckle-mobility to spare, keep your fingers crossed for me, please.
Will You Remember
A bizarre feeling for which one never prepares herself, because she doesn’t exactly anticipate it coming: elimination of all traces of a character trait you’d built in from before the silly conglomeration of words you haphazardly threw on a page one night even became the skeleton of a novel. It’s more of a misfit detail than a character trait, I suppose, but it isn’t...
“At a certain point, while you’re failing miserably, you do find a kind of engine...”
– Jeffrey Eugenides at Le Conversazioni, 2006 via the New York Times Magazine’s 6th Floor blog
Infinite Jest, pages 692-698, Back Bay Books 10th anniversary paperback edition. OR The most flawless pages of fiction I’ve ever read.
Convincing Ourselves In Sleep
One a.m., wide awake. I’m slipping back into an old pattern of not sleeping again, my body not physically able to feel tired at night, though in the mornings I can barely get through a paragraph in my book without my lids going heavy. When the sleep does come, it’s staccato and sweat-drenched.
I spend the hours horizontal but awake writing stories in my head, future plot lines for my...
“‘Some boy I hardly knew in the room below mine heard me staggering around...”
– Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
“Writers are often ashamed at who they are and what they do. Other people are out...”
– Chuck Wendig, “25 Things Writers Should Stop Doing (Right Fucking Now)”