Category Archives: Full of literary ambitions!

November 23, 2012 · 6:50 pm

“The Next Big Thing Blog hop” and me–or how I got back from my travels to friends and found more friends awaiting me….!

I got back from my trip to my doctoral graduation on Sunday, November 18, and was so happily exhausted from partying and the train trip and meeting all sorts of interesting new people both in Canada and on the train, and joyously sleep-deprived from the rocking of the train on the rails that I waited until today (November 23, the day after Thanksgiving) to put up this new post.  Thanks to all of you who asked after me, I am very, very, buoyant and full of myself now (or as people in my original part of the world would say, I’m full of buck and beans), but a special thank-you to Emma McCoy, who has nominated me in the last few days for “The Next Big Thing blog hop.”  As I understand it, I answer the ten questions she answered about her work on her site regarding her own WIP (work-in-progress), plus I notify and nominate five more people, contacting them to let them know by writing to their “About” section in each case.  Here are my answers to the questions which I observed that Emma answered on her own site:

1)  What is the working title of your work-in-progress?

The Story of the Cuffs.

2)  Where did the idea come from for the book?

Though I never read very much at all of Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities, I was much intrigued by one of the remarks he made about character development (tongue-in-cheek, it was), when he said his main character was flat and stencil-like.  I thought, how about a whole family full of such characters, with one family-member exception?  What would happen to them?  How would they interact?  Etc.  Hence, the Cuff family.

3)  What genre does your book fall under?

I don’t really write books in a particular genre, though I sometimes spoof a certain genre.  It follows from this that my book would probably just be categorized as “fiction” with the trade-sized paperbacks if it ever got published in a print format.

4)  Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

This is a hard question to answer, as I don’t watch as many movies or as much television as I used to.  And I can’t think of whom I would want to play most of the characters, especially not Papa and Mama Cuff when they were young.  But I would like Wallace Shawn (if still extant) to play Mr. Cuff the Papa and the mother on “The Seventies Show” (I can’t remember her name) to play Mrs. Cuff the Mama as the couple ages.  Wallace Shawn’s voice is perfect for Mr. Cuff.  And if the movie ever had a British re-make, I would want the actor Peter Sallis to play Mr. Cuff.  His voice would be the perfect British equivalent.  Somehow, I’m very responsive to voices (I had a mad crush on Patrick Stewart for a lot of my twenties because of his lovely resonant tones).

5)  What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Just the question:  what’s the difference between flat characters and rounded characters, and how can one become the other?  Or is this a false distinction?

6)  Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

My book, as with all four of my previous novels, will be copyrighted with the Library of Congress and then put on my WordPress.com blogsite (here) for pass-the-hat-around-after-reading sorts of sales.

7)  How long did it take to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Still in progress on the first draft, though I usually rewrite while still writing the first draft, so that when I’m done, I’m mostly finally done except for small changes and proofreading.

8)  What other books would you compare this book to within your genre?

As I noted before, I generally just write in the general category of “fiction,” and one always hopes, of course, that one’s book stands alone (though of course it would be vain and arrogant to say definitely that that’s the way it is.  Pat Bertram on “Bertram’s Blog” has a number of good posts on writing outside of conventional genre expectations, and I would reference her posts as a general reference).

9)  Who or what inspired you to write this book?

This book as an independent work (and it can stand alone) is as I said before inspired by a stray writer’s remark by Robert Musil.  As one part of the eight-part novel series I am working on (the fifth part, to be precise) it represents in a vague way the middle daughter sign “Li” or “fire” or “clarity” of the eight family signs of the I Ching (#30).  When I finish, there will be one book each for the father and mother, three daughters, and three sons.

10)  What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

In this book, there is a New Age witch (or a “witz,” as the three-year-old daughter calls her).

The five other authors whom I am going to nominate are:

Richard Gilbert of “NARRATIVE”

David Fort of “djkeyserv140”

Kathy Bertone of “The Art of the Visit”

Deborah Rose Reeves of “First We Read, Then We Write”  (Deborah has since expressed her preference not to participate, but invites all of you interested in her writing to continue to visit.  She has a lot to offer and writes some very interesting and exciting posts, as well as having a WIP which she may choose to comment on at some future time, when she herself feels she’s ready.)

and the anonymous-by-preference author of “The Living Notebook”

Never having been nominated for a blog hop before, I have no idea of what happens next, and I hope I’ve done everything I’m supposed to and in the right order.  All I know is that I was absolutely delighted to participate, and to have been nominated by Emma McCoy, who writes a mean suspense novel herself and is in process of formalizing publication procedures for her novel Saving Angels (on her site now) while also writing a draft of her new WIP Unethical, participating in NaNoWriMo, juggling a career and family obligations, and blogging!  (She makes lazy people like me and you look bad, doesn’t she folks?)  The best to you all.  I hope everyone who is on our sites from the States is having a Happy Thanksgiving holiday, and that those of you the world over who are participating in other fall festivals that are analogous to Thanksgiving are also having a great time (hey, a party’s a party the world over, right?)  Until next post,  Victoria (shadowoperator)

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November 13, 2012 · 6:07 pm

Just a short update bulletin of a post….

Hello again, readers!  Today, I have been packing for my trip to graduation, weighing my suitcase, and reading some of your posts on your websites, so as not to get too far behind with all my many enthusiasms while I’m away.  I will be away until Sunday, but my first task when I get back and get unpacked will be to get on my laptop (which isn’t going along for this trip) and answer any and every comment you have made.  In case I haven’t made it clear before, I love hearing from you, and I want to thank all of you especially who have responded to my announcement(s) about graduation by wishing me well, either via e-mail or comment.

As for what happens while I’m away, I’m continually surprised (happily, quite happily) by the number of you who visit my Archives and read and keep up with the site as I have written it so far.  Please continue to read if there’s anything there that interests you, and know that your comments on posts are always welcome, regardless of how far back in time the post was made.  If I find any of those items on my site when I come back, obviously I will be delighted to answer those as well.

Also feel free to respond to the comments of others on my site, which you can see if you click on the “Comments” button for each post (which also tells you how many comments there have already been).  My most frequent commenters are a lively and a well-informed group, and they often put me in touch with things I need to know as well.  It’s also always fun to hear from new voices, whose perspectives may be innovative or different.

When you hear from me next, I will be a fully fledged Doctor of Philosophy in English!  Come and visit and compare notes on our favorite writers with me sometime (I promise not to be any more self-satisfied than I usually have been to date!)

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October 22, 2012 · 4:42 am

“Alice, angry, told herself that it must be the fiftieth time she’d seen the man without knowing his name.”–Fall 2012 Writers’ Relay

I had an idea.  It’s not an original idea, but I think the way I plan to do it and the place I plan to do it (here, on my site) may be new.  The idea is this:  I’m going to write two paragraphs, not more than 10-15 lines each, and post them in this space below.  The first person to comment gets to write the next segment, also composed of not more than 2 paragraphs, 10-15 lines long each.  The second person responding gets to write the next set of paragraphs, and so on and so forth (please rewrite your comment before hitting the comment button if it is too long, so that as many people as possible get a turn).  For me, this will have the upside that I get to read and talk to my followers a lot more (but you can respond to this post even if this is your first time on my blogsite).  For me and for you both, it may turn out to be funny, enlightening, enriching, and just a lot of fun.  If the comments slow down, I’ll take another turn, and every time there’s a response I’ll answer with another story fragment, unless someone else gets there first.  If you’re just ready to respond and someone gets in in front of you, you can read their comment, adjust yours slightly to fit the next slot, and then go.  This writing a collaborative “book” has been done numerous times in literary history, the most famous ones known to me being A Book by Twelve Authors in which Henry James and others participated, and in the 20th century Naked Came the Stranger, written by several famous authors under the pen name “Penelope Ashe.”

The rules are simple:  keep to the WordPress.com rules about appropriate language and material, which means a few curse words and profanities are okay, but it’s not about showing off your arcane vocabulary or shock value, and it’s not necessarily for any high literary purpose.  You can parody or play it straight (no previously published texts of yours or anyone else’s, please), but please don’t send any links, videos, or photographs in your response.  All it’s about is fiction for fun.  Even if Arabella Heartthrob Rapture writes first, and fills up her two paragraph limit with sighs and billings and cooings, that’s no reason why Anthony “The-Tantalus-Machine” Velociraptor can’t take the lovers on a swift interplanetary ship to the farthest galaxy in his two following paragraphs.

I don’t know whether you will like this or not, and if you don’t, then we won’t do it anymore.  But I think it might be a good exercise, if nothing else, something you could turn to now and again and limber up on before you begin your serious writing for the day.  And don’t worry if you don’t write fiction–write it for fun, or produce some highly embroidered non-fiction that will protect your privacy, if you like.  If it turns out that I get a lot of responses from this, then I may do it again, once a season at least.  Just remember:  two paragraph limit, not more than 10-15 lines long for each paragraph.  I hope you’re ready!  Here goes:

Alice, angry, told herself that it must be the fiftieth time she’d seen the man without knowing his name.  He always gave her a slight nod, or a friendly smile, or a cheery wave.  But today, when she was standing by the cosmetic counter at Wenkel’s, one of about six cosmetics counters the major chain store boasted, someone had come up to stand beside her, and a moment later had gently placed a warm, dry hand over hers where it rested on the counter, at the same time sliding something beneath it.  She jerked her hand away in reflex, now really annoyed with the saleswoman who was taking so much time to wait on someone else.  As soon as she had moved her hand and looked up, she saw the man looking into thin air in front of him, as if he really had no connection with his own hand.

“Does your husband know you come here?” he asked, still without looking at her.  Husband?  What husband?  Trying to frame an adequately chilling response, Alice glanced up again, but the man was already walking away in the distance.  She looked at his back.  His top coat was a gray rain coat, which had beads of moisture all over the surface; he must’ve just come inside.  She turned back and as she raised her hand to attract the saleswoman’s now unoccupied attention, her hand brushed a card, the business-style card the man had left under her hand.  She squinted at it; the writing was small.  The card said:

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September 24, 2012 · 3:20 pm

Just what kind of bird was it? And what was the cat doing there?

Today, I read a new post by another blogger whose site has provided me with many pleasurable hours spent reading.  The blogger is Emma McCoy, and her blogsite, which I recently reviewed, is at http://emmamccoy.wordpress.com/ .  Today, Emma wrote about the problem of writer’s block, though she doesn’t dwell on that topic.  The main gist of her article is about how one can free up one’s mind with the process of free association (learned from psychology, a field in which Emma seems to be an expert).  Emma starts her own free association and lets it run for a while, letting us see openly just what some of her inner connections are within the topics her mind runs through.

This is significant to me right now because I’m in the process of working on my fifth novel and am stuck in place, having left off at the last point where I had anything to say and having been unable to pick up for about a week now.  So, following Emma’s example in my somewhat quirky way, I decided not to free associate, but to pull out a little poem of my own which stays in the back of my mind as a sort of chant, and which sometimes lures me back into the creation process when I find all else murky and dark.  Here it is:

“It flew over the fence without a word.

The heart of cat is caught by bird.”

This little poem comes up somehow in my mind every time I’m stuck, and I don’t even know why, but sometimes it helps me back into writing what I want to continue with.  Of course the bird “flew over the fence without a word,” it’s a bird, after all!  One has to posit a third actor, perhaps a human watching the bird-cat interaction; the knowledge of the cat’s overweening interest in the bird stirs in the human the idea that it’s not just the cat’s possibility of catching the bird that’s at stake here, but the fact that the sight of the bird twittering and dancing in the grass or on the fenceline, or pulling up a worm or sitting in a bush only seconds later perhaps to startle and fly away over the fence has captured the cat’s attention much more effectively than the cat could have caught the bird.  But this is to make prosaic a line or two of poetry (I know, it’s not great, but it is poetry).

So, the same thing goes for the writer and the reader both.  What catches the reader-as-cat’s attention is of course getting into the whys and wherefores of the story, the drama of the encounter depending upon explanations inasmuch as the explanations are the scaffolding of the dramatic encounter.  What the reader’s main attention is on, of course, is the actual interaction:  Does the cat leap?  Does the bird get away?  What does the cat do next?  Some of the details might be:  Just what kind of bird was it?  And what was the cat doing there?  Was it an outdoor scene entirely, with a real risk implied, or was Tabby an indoor cat watching from behind a picture window?  Fulfilling this sort of question-and-answer contract with the curiosity of one’s readers is akin to giving them a good scratch behind the ears (no condescension intended, it’s my cat-within-cat metaphor getting away from me) and a treat, and helping them to console themselves, perhaps, for not having seen the end of the story, that the bird would in fact fly over the fence and into other perspectives.

First, however, the initial cat/bird metaphor to be fulfilled is not the contract between writer and reader, but the contract between the writer and herself, to find a bird worth watching and a cat who just might leap, given the chance.  Lest you think I’ve wandered away from my basic metaphor again here, let me just say that it’s as you suspect:  before the bird can fly over the fence taking your heart with it, so must it do in analogous form for me.  I have to sit watching the bird through the window, preening my whiskers as I think of being able to knock it down and bite into that feathery mass.  But it has somehow to escape sucessfully from me, too:  it has to surprise me and catch me off guard and carry my own heart over the fence with it until I say, “Ah, yes, now that’s a bird after my own heart!”  For of course, it’s the old tale of “the one who got away” except that the tale itself is the point, and the tale comes not only from a capture, but from imagery and incident and detail and (here’s the tricky part) allowing the spirit to fly away over the fence, which is after all the essential part of what it is to be a cat watching a bird and feeling one’s own heart airborne as well.

This is my possibly pedestrian evaluation of one of my own poems, and how it recurs in my life at some of my trickiest moments of fiction writing.  I would love to hear from you about what gets your creative mind working.  Thanks to Emma for her free association, which you can see and respond to at her site, listed above.

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September 11, 2012 · 5:36 pm

The difference between demand and suggestion–what “paying the piper” actually means….

Hi, folks!  This is another non-literary day, which I have singled out as a writer’s day for making better contact with potential readers than I evidently have heretofore.  When I first set up my website, I based it somewhat on my former site, which wasn’t through WordPress.com, and which had an obligatory “Buy now” PayPal button on it for the long works of fiction and poetry which I had or planned to have on it.  That meant that if people wanted to read something from that site, they had to pay in advance.

On WordPress.com, however, I have a “Donate” PayPal button.  While this at first seemed like a disadvantage for financial reasons, and while I did encourage people to pay for what they read, I think the time has come for a bit of clarification.  In short, despite everything I said about wanting people to feel fine about reading the long works for free if they felt they couldn’t pay, probably only about 30 or so folks have done so since the week I put the works on my site, and that’s a generous estimate.  So here’s a guideline:

In the category section of the PayPal post, I have a category called “Time to pay the piper.”  I must confess, I was thinking of this in a sort of traditional cultural way, following the ages-long historical method of the piper who first plays a tune or tunes and at intervals passes around the hat to collect contributions.  It didn’t at first occur to me that this would seem like a preemptive strike for money:  that’s not what pipers do.  It’s after they play for the audience and please them, one hopes, that the hat is passed around.  My suggestion of a $5 bottom limit is to eliminate the problem resulting from a donation which is too small (less than $2) to count on PayPal’s system.

So, you see, I’m not a money-grubber, just a person who would like to receive some real-life recognition for work which I hope will amuse and inspire you; but the first step of this is absolutely being read, and if all you feel like contributing is a comment about what you’ve read, know that comments too are very welcome, and will let me know what you like about the fiction or find wanting in it.

Another point a person brough up who viewed my site from my computer was that the cover art page of each book and the size of the pages of the fiction are too large; I don’t know how it looks on your site, but on my site, it’s simply a function of the zoom level needing to be adjusted (when I added the .jpeg cover art to the text and .pdfed it, it automatically increased the size).  Just find your zoom level on your computer and adjust it to 100% or 75%, or whatever size is best for your own eyes.  The zoom level usually appears on a computer text in .pdf at the top of the Adobe Reader page, and it’s easy to adjust.

That’s all I really wanted to say today.  I recently finished (in August) putting the poetry I’ve written to date on this site, and a little later my fourth novel in what I hope to finish as a loosely connected series of 8 novels (but they aren’t connected as to plot and aren’t serials, so you can read them in any order you want.  The connection, slight as it is, comes in because I have chosen to try to link them loosely to the 8 family signs of the I Ching, which you will see in the upper right-hand corner of the cover page.  These signs are connected to a mother, a father, three daughters and three sons, and each novel is related in a marginal way to some of the symbolism associated with the signs, that’s really the size of it).

I hope that whether you can or want to pay or not, you will find something which you like in the novel(s) you read or the poetry, and that you will feel free to write in and discuss it with me.  Even negative criticism can be instructive to both parties because it shows human involvement, and may generate a dialogue, though of course one hopes most people will like one’s work.  In any case, I’ve made my argument for you, and I really should sign off on this post.  Until I hear from you, then, happy reading, whether you cover the posts or the longer works–I’m always happy to discuss writing and literature, my own or someone else’s.

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September 1, 2012 · 1:56 am

“Every novel should have a beginning, a muddle, and an end.”–Peter De Vries

If you wonder what odd tack I’m on today and why I’m so concerned with novelistic structure in the governing witticism which supplies the title of my post, it’s because I just today finished proofreading my fourth novel, putting it on the eCO (electronic Copyright Office), writing a novel blurb for it to add to the other ones I’ve already put among my pages on this site (where you’ll find it in order), and finally, putting the novel itself on this blogsite.

The title of the novel, Tales of Lightning and of Thunder, may sound like a collection of short stories; instead, it’s an episodic novel centering around the figure of Jason (the main character from classical mythology in the tales of Jason and the Argonauts, Jason and the Golden Fleece, Jason and Medea).  Naturally, it was impossible to cover all of the different angles of the stories told by different classical authors, largely because there are so many writers who write about Jason and so many slightly different versions of the myths.  So, I picked and chose what I wanted to write about after reading around in all my five or six classical guides and dictionaries and retellings of mythology.

Should you be familiar yourself with any of these tales, you may wonder where I got the notions I’ve written about Jason (as a child) and his family.  These notions were in general pure invention up to the point when his uncle begins trying to influence his decisions, and even then I’ve changed the nature of his uncle’s character from that of the myths:  he’s no longer an underhanded villain as much as he is a foolish and misguided man.  And what happens to his sister Magda is a slight reference to the far greated mishap suffered by Helle, the young sister of Phrixus, the two of whom rode on the back of the great ram before it became only the source of the Golden Fleece.  Of course, I’ve created Jason as a sort of American “prince,” a son of young upper middle class parents at the beginning of the novel, and I go on from there, taking down both the Bildungsroman tradition  to a certain extent (see my “blurbs for novels” for an explanation) and the notion of a hero as larger than life, or tragic, or any of the other standard formulas for writing hero characters.  Again, my story has elements of comedy and satire, but not perhaps as much as my other novels.

I hope when you get the chance to read something longer from my site, you’ll have a look at Tales of Lightning and of Thunder, and will perhaps set aside trying to keep up with the elements of myth in their proper places in order simply to read the story as a story; after all, if you can’t enjoy the revised structure which changes it from a myth into a novel with “a beginning, a muddle, and an end,” then I haven’t succeeded in making the story live again in a new incarnation.  But I hope you will decide that I have, and will “get as much mileage” out of reading it as I did out of writing it.  Until tomorrow!

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August 11, 2012 · 1:42 am

“Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.”–Sylvia Plath

I wish I had managed to track down the exact reference for this quote from Sylvia Plath, so that I would know under exactly what circumstances she said it.  Did she, for example, mean that the writing was lousy and that that’s why it had never been published?  Or did she mean that it would stop stinking once the impulse to publish it had been answered?  I took this latter meaning as my own yesterday and today, in getting my poetry–of which very few poems have seen the light of day–online with the U. S. Copyright Office and then here to you.

Mostly, I wouldn’t say the poems actually were stinky, though they were dusty and dog-eared (even the more recent ones) from being carried around in an equally ratty notebook.  I typed them up yesterday and this morning, and then got online with the U. S. Copyright Office formally to “seal the deal.”  You can file online for $35, provided that all their conditions are met and you are only publishing online (publishing in print form costs more, takes longer, and has more conditions).  So, since I just wanted to publish right now for the sake of my website (maybe some kind editor of print books will come along and discover me eventually, should I prove worthy), I went ahead and went through the process.  It can be done in a very short amount of time, and the instructions are generally quite clear, once you get used to the format.  I had a little trouble at first, because I haven’t been online to copyright since my last novel was completed in 2010, but the system is made for people who simply want to follow instructions without too much who-hah.

The best part is, that although your case may be pending for a day or two (in this case, over the weekend), once you’ve (1) applied (2) paid and (3) uploaded your files successfully (in that order), your work is officially copyrighted and registered.  The copyright office even sends you several e-mails during the process to let you know when each part is complete.  So, you don’t have to cool your heels wondering why, oh why, you didn’t start an hour earlier in the morning, or take less time for lunch, or why you were so muddle-headed about the process when it told  you (fairly clearly) what to do.  They will send you a paper copy of your registration in about 6 months (they say less, but face it, there are lots of people publishing out there).

So, now–my poems are up on this site, and though I would like to get rich off them and off my other writings too, I’m realistic enough to recognize that I should probably just point once more to my PayPal button, silently, and let it go at that.  Like Shakespeare said, “Sell when you can, you are not for all markets.”  I hope you will read my poems at your own pace, and enjoy them, and tell me what you like or were perhaps left cold by (I love getting comments and replies, and haven’t had nearly enough of them so far).  And now you know what I was doing instead of putting up a post a day at the end of this week!  I was suffering (read typing and proofreading) for my art!

A word about the poems themselves:  they go from my days as an undergraduate (when I won an honorable mention in a contest for about 3-4 of them) to the recent poems I wrote for the characters in my first published novel to exchange and read to each other.  Had I been able to remember exactly which poems had placed in the contest, I would have noted it down, but it’s too long ago now, and those are old moments of near-glory.  What’s more important now is how the poems hold up under the burden of time.  Suffice it to say that though I no longer liked all of the poems in this collection, I still felt that all of them had some merit which made them worth retaining.  So, without more stuff and nonsense about it, here they are for your–I hope–reading pleasure.  Someday, I hope to write poetry again, and I hope to get to it long before I have to call the volume Old Age!

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August 3, 2012 · 3:53 pm

“The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood.”–Jean Cocteau

Since a week or so ago, when I last wrote up some short reviews of other blogsites I’ve been following, it’s time to write up another 4 which have come to fill a good portion of my reading time during the day.  Though they all have some connection with writing, again they are individually very different in tonalities and voices, and I’ve been kept very busy watching some of the action on them.  Most if not all of them have been Freshly Pressed, so congratulations are in order, first of all.  Here’s hoping you find this list useful for your own blogging habits, and that you locate some here you’d also like to follow.  Also (vis-à-vis my title to this blog), I hope none of these gifted people feel misunderstood by anything I represent about their sites.

1).  NATASHA–at http://writerreaderbakerbride.wordpress.com/  .  This is obviously a site for varied (if related) creative interests.  Two are related because both writing (and getting published) and also getting married are validations of self that help to make life brighter; these are some of the things this writer has to report.  They are varied because the author seems equally well at home in passing on tips for several DIY wedding projects, dealing with the oral quirks of a new Nexus 7 program, and writing about editing and getting published.  Also (lest I leave the baker out), she has Scrummy Sundays recipes once a week, featuring sinfully rich and gooey treats which make me gain 10 pounds just in reading the directions.  The author (lest in all the flourish of topics we fail to emphasize this very important fact) has been given an ebook contract by HarperCollins and has what she modestly refers to as a “handful of short story publications.”  And, in the generosity which distinguishes her answers to her readers, she offers the first 4 chapters of her memoir-novel on site as a free read.  I’m very much enjoying this site, while hoping that the author’s many projects don’t drag her in too many different directions at once–but then, I’ve always been a greedy reader!

TheYoungPlum– at http://theyoungplum.wordpress.com/  .  This blog features a very talented young writer who’s soon off to a creative writing program to hone his skills, which are considerable already.  An ironic, wry voice with an appealing Cole Porterish ability with words is what is most consistent on his site, as he visits and re-visits such topics as coffeehouse customs, superheroes, product marketing, and racial profiling.  A word of warning to solemn folk:  this writer is both edgy and daring; make sure your sense of humor is functioning adequately before reading.  His badinage with his audience is also extremely winning, and his writing shows a certain effortless freedom which constitutes a new, fresh voice.  He’s been writing for years now while doing other things, and his proficiency shows.  His motto, placed in the header of his site, is “to be young, to be dumb, and as ripe as a plum,” a more than adequate self-advertisement for the written material and occasional cleverly manipulated photos he showcases.

Sheila Pierson–at http://sheilapierson.wordpress.com/ .  In an adaptation of Descartes, Sheila says in her blog “I write…therefore I am,” surely a claim every would-be writer would like to make for self-verification (sadly, one actually has to do the work to make the claim).  Sheila has clearly done the work.  She writes upon such topics as how two arts (for example, music and writing) can work together, as when one listens to and internalizes music while writing, with an effect on the writing itself.  She also has proposed to become a “certified yoga instructor,” and relates some of the difficulties of this ambition, while asking other writers to respond with what “centers” them in their work.  Just these two topics together show that one of her main interests is very likely the interfaces among writing, other forms of creativity, and finding one’s freedom.  Also, Sheila writes not only prose, but also poetry, and though I haven’t had a chance yet to go through all of her archives, she has been archiving since January 2012.  All in all, I would call this a site well worth keeping up with and researching further.

Annie Cardi– at http://anniecardi.com/ .  When I first checked on Annie’s site I thought, “This is not for me–I have no interest in writing YA fiction.”  Yet, as I idly scrolled down the page, I became more and more intrigued with what I saw.  Not only were favorite “reads” from my own childhood featured on her site, but also more adult novels were discussed, ones which she obviously feels (and says) that younger readers can enjoy, too.  The benefit of this “double whammy” of discussion is that one can trace a trajectory imaginatively and nostalgically not only between what one once read and reads now, but also between what one’s future readers (perhaps) are reading now and what they might like of one’s own.  Just today, I saw something new on her site, an article on The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.  Plus, Sheila has included links to more than one very intriguing site on general literary questions.  One of my favorite off-site links was to a list of 10 issues about which some YA fiction leads young readers to have mistaken life expectations (I went through the list laughing ruefully; I had been one such YA fiction reader once upon a time, a topic I had included a few years ago in my third novel).  All in all, this is a very valuable website for writers of YA fiction, dealing with quality works and authors.  Whether you’re looking to write a young adult novel or wondering how you yourself developed as a reader (perhaps even from Burnett’s The Secret Garden to the feminist classic My Secret Garden), this is a site to be profited from.

And those are my reviews of other blog/websites for today.  Look around you (particularly in Freshly Pressed and the links these sites take you to) for other good reads!  More now than ever before the (literary) world is your oyster!

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July 22, 2012 · 9:24 pm

Five blogs I follow regularly now, and what I have found there so far.

I know, I originally said that I was going to do this post tomorrow, but I found myself with a lusciously free Sunday afternoon, before time to have my afternoon coffee or go for my walk (I hate vigorous exercise, but you just gotta do something, right?).  It seemed the right time to honor that old saw, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today,” so here I am, writing about the 5 blogs I’ve started following since my site first went up on July 4, and what qualities I go to those blogs for (and I don’t go to them all for the same thing, by a long shot).  My interests are perhaps a bit narrow, but I like to read and talk about books and ideas from books more than about fashion, or gardening, or sports, for example.  I’m willing, however, to extend myself to other topic areas in which I have no particular expertise, upon occasion.

The first blog I went to was “Truth and Cake,” because I saw it on “Freshly Pressed” and just had to tell people about the picture in the header–it’s so half-retro/half-nouvelle!  The site immediately attracted me with its discussion of “Selective Truth and Social Media,” a thought-provoking and wise article by a woman only a few years more than half my age (I’ve come to computers late in life, and really admire not only her grace and fluidity with her written topics, but her practical skill in getting it on the Internet).  The topics and links of hers that I’ve investigated so far are well-covered, perspicacious, just plain smart articles and evocative pictures in words and images.  Her topics are strongly on target (she seems to have her head on very straight whether she’s writing about personal issues or societal ones).  Last but not least, I really appreciate the amount of careful editing that’s gone into making her blog as well-written as it is.  Some people blog with the apparent impression that getting things down in a hurry is the most important point on the Internet at least, and while there’s a certain amount of truth in this, neatness counts, too.  A basically good strong post or blog that’s riddled with spelling/grammatical errors or errors (worse) of fact is not only hard to follow and distracting, it’s less appealing.  I’m happy to say that hers has none of these faults, but is regularly quite well-edited.  Her most recent post, “Crow, Baby, Crow” is an encouraging and uplifting message to all who are inspired to follow her in their efforts to make good as bloggers, and it has justifiably drawn a lot of hits since I’ve been following it (I’m sorry to say I was out of contact with her post for a day or three, but luckily found it again, just in time to read “Crow, Baby, Crow”).  It’s no wonder that she’s been “Freshly Pressed” now two times (I’m waiting for the third).

My second-selected blog was “Jessica Stanley,” and I follow her also on Twitter at @dailydoseofjess .  She is another very talented younger person (I’m getting to be an old fart, so everyone looks younger to me some days).  I was first attracted to her site when I saw her regular post (with links) on “Freshly Pressed”:  it’s called “Read.Look.Think”.  I saw it first when she covered Hila Shachar and feminism.  There’s usually more than one post or link that I find stimulating, and quite a large number of absolutely marvelous bits of photography from Jessica herself, who has covered her own recent vacation in Italy with beautiful scenic photos and quite talented blog posts that explain some of the things (and people) in the photos.  She too is a careful editor, which gives old windbags like me hope that civilization hasn’t yet thrown in the towel.  Her personal story (of having recently relocated from Melbourne to England) has given her a valuable perspective on things, which I hope she will share more of when she has had a longer span of time in England.  As a person who once lived 6 years in another country myself, I can speak for the fact that even when you’re going to a country where the same language (you think!) is spoken, it’s not always the same language.  So far, however, she seems to have largely escaped any unflattering culture shock.

The last three blogs I need to mention (starting with this one) are all ones I’ve begun to follow in the last day or so; therefore, I can only speak to how they have struck me so far, and cannot predict even at my witchiest what their trajectory will be, though the fact that I’m still intrigued and following a day or two later will vouch for something, certainly a strong interest in how they develop from here on out.  The blog “Becky Hutchinson” is one which I located yesterday or the day before on someone else’s post, and her blog has continued to get mail all day today on the topics she raised: (1) about the differences between movies and the books they are made from, and (2) about the notorious trilogy of  the “Fifty Shades of Grey” books.  Her ability to attract many readers and many enthusiastic post-ers has been the main thing I’ve noticed so far, and I have to say that this is a quality not to be underestimated, since we are all in this together, and an intelligent remark some one person makes may well lead to stimulating discussions on more than one blog.  I think she is inspired and generous towards her readers, and she also has generally respected the good editorial practices that may seem negligible to some, but that make the reading experience so much more enjoyable when they are present.  I look forward to seeing much more of her blog when it gets published.

“ohdizzle” is a blog that rather unusually has stricken me to the core of my guilty fiction-lover’s heart with its recent post on the importance of non-fiction books.  My sneaking know-nothing position has always been that though non-fiction may spill the beans about someone or something in a fashion calculated to arouse interest and speculation, I really preferred my facts about life to be presented via fictional characters because fiction writers tell universal truths whereas non-fiction books just tell about a particular place and time.  This is a debatable issue (and I do recall more than one English or composition or history professor throwing this issue open for debate, but I was smug in my fiction heaven, what can I say?); I will say, however, that now that I’m older (don’t automatically assume wiser, except under persuasion such as “ohdizzle”), I can see a purpose to all those great non-fiction books that everyone reads.  First of all, as “ohdizzle” has comprehensively proved, there is still an amount of fictionalizing that goes on in writing even the most starkly addressed issues of fact.  For one thing, the author has to imagine and conjecture about events a certain amount of the time.  Secondly, how is it going to hurt me to imagine that maybe all object lessons don’t come just as fiction, but may be drawn from life?  Didn’t Henry James, the great author and literary theorist of the late 19th-early 20th century say that all fictional “fruit” that wasn’t plucked from the garden of life was “stale” and “uneatable,” or words to that effect?  So, I’ve learned my lesson (finally) from “ohdizzle” .  I don’t know which non-fiction book I will feel most drawn to yet, but the exploration of some titles I read on “ohdizzle’s” site gives me a wide list to choose from, with entertaining editorial comments.

Finally, and also recently, I’ve started to follow “Forever – More Reviews”.  For this blog, I have a different principle of inclusion for myself.  First of all, I’m up early in the morning, so in order to get the requisite number of hours of sleep that we are all being preached at to get these days, I go to bed surprisingly early (9:30-10:30, with the last hour reserved for reading whatever print book or Internet text I’ve currently got my hands on).  This means that I’m often in bed or doing other things in the evenings when television shows like “Glee,” “Revenge,”and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” (which “Forever – More Reviews” engagingly assesses) are on.  And, I’m a little too old (though not too mature) to be sighing over the characters from “Vampire Diaries” or “The Twilight Saga,” upon both of which the blogger exercises a vital wit.  I do know about these things, however, from hearing younger and/or more involved viewers talk about them.  I like to feel that though I’m asleep and antiquated, I’m not entirely out of the know and can perhaps carry on a five-minute conversation about some aspects of these shows for other people.  And as to books like “Fifty Shades of Grey” and its sequels, from the blogger’s warnings I’m beginning to think that forewarned is forearmed, as the saying goes.  The blogger has advised me (on another site where our discussion of the series first emerged) that the books are a disappointment, and she (I want to say “she” is the blogger) has nevertheless encouraged me to see them for myself, always a good quality in a reviewer.  After all, even when a reviewer solidly pans a book or movie, it’s important to feel that that reviewer isn’t trying to censor or block your access to something you might like (though in the case of “Fifty Shades,” many other voices have also spoken against it already, and for what seem like cogent reasons).  “Bared to You,” which “she” also reviews, is another story.  I may very well enjoy what seems (in the blogger’s take on it) to be an agreeable and informative experience of delving into the screwed-up characters’ psyches to see what makes them tick.  I plan to put it on my reading list anyway, on her recommendation.  If there is any way in which I was made uncomfortable by the blog, it was by the discussion of why other women “hate on whores,” which took up a lot of space and was somewhat repetitive and filled with what seemed like a lot of run-on sentences.  The blogger had a number of good points to make on this subject, among which were those that excessive promiscuity isn’t good for anyone, male or female; nor is it a promising introduction to a serious relationship.  All well and good, so far.  As a serious feminist myself, however, and yet one who tries to retain a sense of humor about sex and sexual mores, I found the discussion a bit off-putting because it seemed to encourage women to accept the double standard, while admitting that it is unfair.  If it’s unfair, then we as women should be the first ones attempting its abolishment.  Still, I know that this blogger has a lot of talent and some serious things to say, and I look forward to continuing to follow the blog.  For one thing, I think she(?) shows a certain ability to deal with the very modern contemporary novel which shouldn’t be slighted, and I can say that I really appreciated what she had to say about  the  series beginning with “Fifty Shades of Grey,” to name only one thing she did well.  I feel sure there are more good reviews to come.

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July 14, 2012 · 1:16 am

“The biggest sin is sitting on your ass.”–Florynce Kennedy

Yes, it’s been a hot day, and I’ve been sitting on my ass, in the air conditioning, all day, with nary a truly literary thought in my head.  All the same, though, I haven’t been totally idle.  I’ve been making it possible for people to read and contact me on Twitter.  Twitter won’t carry the full post, of course, which tends to be rather long while Twitter is something like 140 characters.  Still, I think I understand correctly that you can access the post through Twitter.  So, keep in touch, and remember that if you don’t want to be mistaken for spam, don’t write from your company computer with 150 links on it; how’s about the PC or Mac?  shadowoperator

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