I’ve been reading Nicola Griffith’s enticingly packaged and very enjoyable memoir, And Now We Are Going To Have A Party: Liner Notes on A Writer’s Early Life.
It’s making me think a lot about, among other things, how to optimize your life for writing. Not just in the obvious ways, like, you know, making time to actually write, but in seeking out the sorts of experiences that can be transmuted into compelling prose.
Yes, I know, like Ellen reminded us at Clarion, you don’t need to have murdered someone to play Macbeth. I did not attend the Siegel Institute for Gifted Youth (which doesn’t exist), I do not live in Forest House (which doesn’t exist) nor am I a member of Flytrap Circus (which doesn’t exist). When you read the story I’m writing for Comic Book Tattoo you’ll see that I’m not a part of that world either.
But I do think that especially as we settle into professions and circles of friends and stable relationships, it gets harder to find new things that shake up our brains and engage us with the world differently. And despite my frequent travel (I’m leaving again on Thursday), I’m drawn to the familiar and comfortable. I want to fight those tendencies, or at least be more aware of them, this year.
Hey, everybody. It’s been a while.
Man.
You go away from easy Internet access for a week and somebody hacks your dang MySpace. For any of y’all who got bulletins from “me” alerting you to the latest horizontal hijinks of a young lady who I will not name, who is famous for being famous, please accept my sincere apologies. I’ve totally changed my password and reestablished ownership. I think.
It was a very bookish ambiguous winter holiday. I have just added to my obsessive LibraryThing catalog the following:
Some of them came from the several good used bookstores along US 101 between Lincoln City and Newport, one of which has this excellent poster:
Two of them came from the Visitor Center at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, which I highly recommend. We also purchased a fine rubber octopus, learned a bit about Antarctic whale research, and I took a few pictures. Here’s one:
Some fish you don’t need to work at all to anthropomorphize.
Last but not least! The other thing I did while away from the ever-enticing Internet was to finish writing my story for the Comic Book Tattoo anthology, which a few of you may have heard about already — it’s coming out this summer from Image Comics, and all the stories are inspired by Tori Amos songs. I don’t think I’m allowed to say yet which song is mine, but I’m extremely psyched about the story and the project as a whole.
Happy end of 2007 and beginning of 2008!
I just stumbled on a great way to procrastinate combat writer’s block and kick-start your brain.
Bibliomancy is my favorite form of divination. Think of a question. Close your eyes, open a book at random, put your finger somewhere on the page, and the sentence your finger hits is the answer. But in case you’re tired of lifting up those heavy books and flipping through the pages manually, bibliomancy.org lets you choose from one of several texts (and it looks like they’re planning to add more) and get a reading.
What are some of your favorite ways to unblock yourselves?