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My brother sent this to me this morning and ohhhhh my it makes me happy.
This is my new addiction. I am starting back in the archives, around 2004, and passing the hours of the work day listening to authors read from their work and take questions. For me, it is fascinating. I truly believe that every author is someone I can learn from about what it takes to be a good editor and to be a good writer. And I feel like I AM learning! At work even!
I’ve made vague mutterings and gestures in the past toward my own writing and this is the sort of thing that makes me think it will happen some day. Sometimes I listen and I feel bummed about not having created anything like that myself, but most of the time I listen and feel challenged and stretched. Even if it’s just an author reading aloud… for me it becomes advice. It also makes me hungry to challenge my own creativity and to be disciplined enough to actually WRITE. It sounds silly, but author after author after author has said that the number one thing to do to become a (better) writer is: write. Write every single day. No matter what and even if its crap or directionless or confusing. Just. Write. And whenever I hear that I leap up and grab my pencils and sit down and….!!! Nothing. I start looking at the page and can feel a character (usually) or a plot scrambling around at the farrrrr corners of my brain. Tiny flecks of information like someone sprinkled glitter all over my brain and then swept it up. But we all know that glitter never ever ever goes away and so these bits are left lying around to catch the light and make me CRAZY trying to get at them.
So that’s what I am trying to do. Get at those glittery bits.
This weekend Madelaine and I went to South Carolina to say BYYYYYE to Heather before she leaves for Costa Rica. I’d like to say more about the trip, but I am TIRED and also procrastinating the paper I have to present on Tuesday. So, for now all I have is cute pictures.
During the drive Madelaine spent most of her time crawled up on the back of my seat and laying/sleeping across my shoulders. So cute.
People who feel any sort of regret where you are concerned will suppose you are angry. And they will see anger in what you do even if you are just quietly going about a life of your own choosing. They make you doubt yourself, which depending on cases can be a severe distraction and a waste of time.”
- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
I stole this blog idea from The Wishful Writer. It’s like a meme or those forwarded emails, but more fun.
After Six… vodka tonics I will still not have a hangover. I have only really tried to get drunk two or three times and I have apparently been gifted in this area.
It doesn’t matter… that Harper Lee will never write another novel. To Kill a Mockingbird was gift enough.
In another… few years these damn cats had better love each other and me too.
My mother always said… “what are you using to wash your face?”
There are times… when I really and truly believe that I will one day write something worthwhile and in the pursuit of “truth, beauty, and goodness.”
At the funeral… I hope there isn’t any organ music.
Consideration brings… better decisions. Think people! Think!
In 1986… I was 3. The only memory I have from this time is finger painting. I was standing in front of the kid-sized easel with a plastic smock tied around my body and a jar of orange finger paint. My parents were in church so I was in the nursery and I was trying to make some kind of actual object with my fingerpaint. I can’t remember what it was, possibly a sun or a landscape. At any rate, I messed it up. And I couldn’t go back because it was PAINT. So I decided that my new goal was to cover the entire “canvas” with orange. A solid corner-to-corner bright orange. I was 2/3 of the way through my masterpiece when church let out and my parents came to pick me up. I never got to finish it.
Don’t laugh, but… I earn my rent money editing standardized tests for the state of N.C. hahahahaha.
Without hesitation… I would run away with aaa7894k*&F.
Ordinarily, I’d never… do anything without hesitation.
I was driving to… the brink of disaster when my friends convinced me that getting help was not as terrifying as it seemed. And for which I am grateful.
In my mind… I cuss a lot more than I should.
Every time I sit down to write everything I had been thinking or planning to say comes to a screeching halt in my head.
So things aren’t great. It’s been noticed by my supervisor who, this time very kindly, pointed out the HUGE mistakes I’ve made in the past few weeks. Geeze. I don’t know how to fix that. The stuff I’ve missed is so glaring I don’t understand how it happened and seem to remember looking for, but not finding, the error. So that is bad. And it makes me feel terrible to think I’m doing a crap job.
Frustrationz. I haz dem.
The title of this post comes from the words the doctor said to me today. For privacy reasons I am not going to get into why it was said to me today/why I was there, but he spent about 30 seconds with me before instructing me in this wisdom. Yes, good sir. You are completely right. I understand. Yes, sir. Just do what you have to do and let me go now please.
On the brighter side. I have a new hero. George Eliot. If I have a baby boy ever I might just name him Eliot. Not only is her writing beautiful and brave and shockingly modern for the time, but she and I seem to be traveling similar paths in life. In more ways than one.
Speaking of, I am supposed to be working on a paper. About George Eliot. Or, about The Mill on the Floss to be specific. So I should maybe go do that.
Hello Internet!
I got another cat! Yes, in more ways than one I am totally becoming That Lady. But you know what? I am ok with that. I think.
Anyway, for the last six weeks or so Madelaine has been exhibiting some negative, aggressive behaviors. Everything I read so that this behaviors were normal in a single act. Without another kitten around to play with and wrestle with and talk to she was using me for those things. Mostly biting. Biting is bad. So I thought a lot and read a lot and decided that I could help another cat have a happy home and I could help Madelaine have a happier life and this just seemed like a win-win situation.
So, may I introduce Langston Rene?
So far Langston is having the worst time than Madelaine. All the books said you should be worried about your CURRENT cat, but Langston is shy and Madelaine is just fascinated with this new toy! I am supposed to keep them separate for at least two days, but that makes Langston cry and Madelaine doesn’t seem to care either way? So I don’t know what to do for sure, but right now I am letting them get to know each other. So far no hissing, spitting and Madelaine is being the passive one. It’s all weird and I don’t really know what I am doing, but as long as they seem happy I think it’s all okay. Cats are good about making their feelings known.
Updated: Langston Rene is a girl. Langston is the name I gave her, after the main character in Haven Kimmel’s The Solace of Leaving Early. Rene is the name she was given at the shelter. 
“…he was finally wrought upon by the consideration of the peculiar responsibility attached to his office, of avoiding the appearance of evil – and that ‘appearance’ is always dependent on the average quality of surrounding minds. Where those minds are low and gross, the area of that ‘appearance’ is proportionately widened.”
“Even on the supposition that required the utmost stretch of belief – namely, that none of the things said about Miss Tulliver were true; still, since they had been said about her, they had cast an odor around her which must cause her to be shrunk from by every woman who had to take care of her own reputation – and of course society. To have taken Maggie by the hand and said, ‘I will not believe unproved evil of you; my lips shall not utter it, my ears shall be closed against it. I, too, am an erring mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest efforts. Let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling’ – to have done this would have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge, generous trust – would have demanded a mind that tasted no piquancy in evil-speaking, that felt no self-exaltation in condemning, that cheated itself with no large words into the belief that life can have any moral end, any high religion, which excludes the striving after perfect truth, justice, and love towards the individual men and women who come across our own path.”
“The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.”
- all from The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)
Most of you who *know* me know that I have a handful of heroes. Madelaine L’Engle. Annie Dillard. And Rosmarie Waldrop.
I was introduced to Rosmarie Waldrop two summers ago in modern American poetry. I started reading her book The Reproduction of Profiles and it was indescribable. Her poetry rocked my world and I began to devour it. I knew, almost immediately, that this was IT for me. It’s a much longer story, but I worked it out to change my concentration in the master’s program in order that I might be allowed to write my thesis on Waldrop.
As I have said before, my greatest joy in life is to find something brilliant and to be able to share that brilliance with someone else who can appreciate it as well. This is why I want to edit books. I want to have a hand in sharing with the world the things that are true and beautiful in this world.
So, when I started this blog I didn’t debate the title for a second. I knew what it would be. “Feverish Propositions” is one of Waldrop’s poem. I HIGHLY recommend that you listen to it (poetry is meant to be listened to), but if you don’t have speakers, it may be read.
That’s all for now. I am taking a break from scrubbing the floors with comet and a scrub brush, on my heads and knees. No, I am not lying. This is my coping mechanism.
First of all, Alexa delivered both of her babies on Friday. Please keep the family in your thoughts. Whatever happens, I know the next few months will not be easy. Both Alexa and Simone have proved themselves over and over to be fighters, but that doesn’t take away from the damned unfairness of their situation.
A few days ago a friend asked me if the drama over the blog had caused me to alter or censure my writing. At the time I thought not, but I’ve had such a hard time with posts since then that I may have been wrong.
The most obvious thought is that the anonymous comments have made me not want to post anything “personal” a la my feelings… (UGH!)… particularly the depression. Everyone knows that a blog is a touch of narcissism at its finest, but it’s still a confusing, muddy line. And of course since depression is the predominant factor in my day-to-day life… I am not always sure what to write about.
I will say though that I never really intended for this blog to become so heavy and political so much of the time. I really DID think I was going to write mostly about books! Instead religion and politics seem to take up most of my attention so far.
ALL of this dullness is a long way of saying two things: 1) Give me some time and I will work on my life and thoughts and get some decent posts together. And 2) Anybody out there have any suggestions??? Anything you want to hear about in the mean time?
So. Soon. Just bear with me and there’ll be something interesting in this spot before too long.
