anyone doing NaNoWriMo?
I’m gonna try for the first time this year…if you are I need some writing buddies! Hit me up here. I’m very new at all this and have no idea how anything works, so if I’m all clutztastic bear with meh.
YAY!
Writer's block? More like writer's neighborhood.
(via davidfuternick)
toosh. Come visit me someday. I’m in that neighborhood in Writer’s city, WSA.
If writer’s block lasts for 10 years shouldn’t you stop calling it a ‘block’ and start calling it a ‘something you thought you were good at but obviously aren’t’ ?
Phenomenal Woman
by Maya Angelou
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing of my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
The palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
For you, a thousand times over.
– The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (via booksbooksbooks) (via booktumbling)
This was a book I devoured shamelessly. Inextricably epic and intimate. One day I hope to write something maybe 1/10th as moving. Then I can buy some new shoes!
This was a book I devoured shamelessly. Inextricably epic and intimate. One day I hope to write something maybe 1/10th as moving. Then I can buy some new shoes!
Carnelian Filibuster
I realize I’m just tired of the words that roll out of my mouth. I’m tired of the words ‘Higgins’ and ‘Caras’ and ‘Worden’s’. I’m tired of ‘Front’ and ‘Broadway’ and ‘Missoula’ and ‘Montana’ and ‘Five’ and ‘Nine’ and ‘Eight’ and ‘Oh’ and ‘Two’.
Dreariness is the same set of words coming out of my mouth day after day after day.
‘Tumblr’, and ‘Internet’ and ‘email’.
And ‘help’ and ‘why’ and ‘tired’ and ‘hard’ and ‘wait’ and ‘can’t’ and ‘maybe’ and ‘whatever’.
The words I say lead me down a path I in no way mean to construct
I guess I need to speak different words.
All of them ‘don’t know’, and ‘sorry’ and ‘I’, especially ‘I’, and ‘want’ and ‘need’ and ‘scared’ and …oh its just the same 200 odd words, every day, and so every day the story is the same. You can only re-organize the same 200 words into so many different sentences.
So I guess I just need to choose new words, so I can write a new story.
instead of writing the same, and reading the same story every day, even though it makes me sad. I need to use words like ‘stars’ and ‘conjecture’ and ‘roadway’ and ‘rainbow’ and ‘centrifuge’.
‘Persimmon’ and ‘starfruit’ and ‘catalytic converter’ and ‘Istanbul’.
I rely so heavily on words yet it’s never occurred to me that they could be my downfall. The same words, the same shape…the same syllables the same vowel sounds, the same clipping, the same tonality, the same things repeated, over and over and over and over. It never occurred to me that I could possibly be keeping myself confined with language, so it never registered that I could use it to free myself.
Lizzard calibre hagfish exigency.
Oh, If this is the kind of havoc I wreak by passionate recommendations born of nothing but my own witless reverie then I’m completely and thoroughly at peace with it.
:))
Thank you littleorphanammo, now I am on a Toni Morrison bender:)
Toni Morrison (b. Feb. 18,1931), perhaps the best prose writer among the post-modern wave of African-American authors, Nobel Laureate, and not least incisive critic and essayist…
Morrison’s 1993 Nobel was given to her as an author “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”
Morrison began her Nobel Lecture with these words:
“”Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise.” Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.
“Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise.”
In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.
One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, “Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead.”
She does not answer, and the question is repeated. “Is the bird I am holding living or dead?”
Still she doesn’t answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.
The old woman’s silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.
Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. “I don’t know”, she says. “I don’t know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands.”
Her answer can be taken to mean: if it is dead, you have either found it that way or you have killed it. If it is alive, you can still kill it. Whether it is to stay alive, it is your decision. Whatever the case, it is your responsibility.”
I'm reading
Beloved, for the first time. I am a huge fan of Toni Morrison’s work. It’s lyrical and sublime; The cadence of her words set by some distant and longing heartbeat of people and places that the world would rather forget.
Often, as in this case, it can be horrifying. There are moments I have while reading this book when I tear up and just can’t go on. I have to put the damn thing down. I have to walk away because it isn’t a story so much as it is history. It’s awesome and appaling, inspiring and heartbreaking, magical and, frankly, almost incomprehensible to me. Simultaneously.
I highly recommend everyone, everyone read it if you haven’t already.
goddamit
I hate Chuck Palahniuk. I see quotes from his crappy books all over the damn place and I just…it’s so aggravating. His writing is AWFUL. It really honestly is. Fight Club (the book) was fucking AWFUL. Thank god Fincher tweaked it, the movie is so much better. More depth, more cohesion. The only barely passable book he’s ever managed to write is Survivor. It’s (his writing) just so pedantic and self-satisfied and half of the time if you really think about the bs he says, really concentrate on the pseudo-philosophical crap he spews, it’s utterly non-sensical.
How’s that workin out for you Chuck? Bein’ clever?
I’d hand over my hipster pass, but I gave that away when I admitted to hating Ryan Adams.
List five possible openings for your autobiography:
mine are as follows.
1. “If I knew you were going to pick ‘Velouria’ I would have gone with something a little more kicky than LINDA!”
2. Had I known, when I left my apartment last night, I would return to a smoldering hole the next day I really would have picked something nicer to wear. Seriously.
3. “I swear, I swear, I just know it…I just know man, I just know, I’m never ever going to be poor again, it’s always always going to be like this.”
4. She looked down at me, all bald and angry and sexy “Don’t you ever hit anyone in my bar again. YES even a neo-nazi. Those are just the rules.”
5. God, what day is it; I taste dead people.
Missy Tare's Easter Haiku Contest
My bestsest friend and truest soul sister, Missy Tare, is having her annual Easter Haiku contest. I have promised to post the winner here, and all are welcome to contribute. Including YOU! The prize is a big ole hug and bragging rights. This was the last winner, submitted by our friend Michael, a lawyer specializing in corporate litigation.
One man, his life ends
thousands of rabbits arise
that is strange karma.
All judging is, as always, done in a totally biased, haphazard and completely illegitimate way.
anyone doing NaNoWriMo?
Writer's block? More like writer's neighborhood.
Phenomenal Woman
"For you, a thousand times over."
Carnelian Filibuster
I'm reading
goddamit
List five possible openings for your autobiography:
Missy Tare's Easter Haiku Contest
