Read This

Just a quick post to point you to an always-timely (for me, at least) meta-post by Leslie Pietryzk about facing the occasional dread of writing.

What do you use, the carrot or the stick (or a combination of both)?

And while we're on the subject, what do you think about Leanne's win last night? (She was my pick all along-- I should have found a bookie.)

Guns and Likker

Not only is Matt Bondurant a "person I know" (to borrow a phrase from this guy), he is an excellent writer and a great storyteller. His new book, The Wettest County in the World, is ridiculously good. Matt envisions 1920s rural Virginia-- bootlegging country-- in a bleak, sometimes surreal, manner as he tells the tale of his moonshining grandfather and great-uncles. Precise, delicate description grounds the violent narrative so that even a wuss like me wanted to keep reading until the book's mysteries unfolded. Go buy it now!

In Other News

The new issue of Saranac Review is out in print (though I don't think they've updated the web site yet.) Inside are stories from Myfanwy Collins, Michael Leone, Carol K. Howell, Stuart Friebert, Solon Timothy Woodward, and yours truly.

Cover Operations

Book covers = fascinating.

Penguin gave an open call for cover submissions for Sam Taylor's forthcoming novel The Island at the End of the World. Book covers + crowdsourcing = gorgeous.

My favorites are:

































See all 25 finalists here.

Are we dead yet?

To find out the answer to this question (at least with regard to one possible demise), go here:

hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com.

Love it.

What Would You Do...

...with a Tiny House?

Here are some of my ideas. Let's start with the fairly obvious:

1. a writing cabana (sort of like Susan Shreve's backyard office)
2. a long-term vacation home, for summers off at the coast
3. a pool house
4. the perfect place from which to dole out candy on Halloween-- decorate your Tiny House as a sickly sweet cottage, dress as a witch, set up one of those huge gourd ovens with a roaring fire in it in the background, and tell each kid he has to come in before you'll give him any Snickers
5. another Halloween possibility (or any time, really)-- dress up as Emily Dickinson and give the trick-or-treaters pieces of wrinkly yellowed paper with Dove promises rewritten on them in calligraphy
6. finally-- a headquarters for my own chapter of the Babysitter's Club
7. a sweatshop (making high fashion knock-offs for moi, of course)
8. a home of their own for Kirsten, Molly, Kit, Samantha, etc.
9. a hookah den (password necessary)
10. a psycho S&M love shack (see The General's Daughter)

What else can you all come up with?

Room for One, Not Two

The first time I ever saw a SmartCar (in the year 2000-nd-nd), I was walking home from a pub near Covent Garden with my friend Stacy. She swung out her arm to stop me, pointed to the tiny gray vehicle tucked neatly between two compacts that looked enormous in comparison, and half-screamed, "It's so cute! I just want to hug it!"

Today's article about tiny houses on nytimes.com discusses a burgeoning movement of building little dwellings whose floor plans range from 75 to 750 square feet. A slide show accompanies the text, and the itty bitty houses it depicts gave me, for the first time in eight years, the urge to exclaim, "I want to hug it!"

Jay Shafer, founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, lives in a 96-sq. ft. house, and he gives a virtual tour of the space here. His house is designed more compactly than a boat, with such design elements as a miniature electric fire, built-in bookshelves, and a cabinet containing a mini-fridge and-- the clincher for me-- toaster oven! Like many of the tiny houses I found online, Shafer's resembles a fairy tale cottage. No seven dwarves could fit in here, however, and the sharp slant of the walls in the sleeping loft make me itchy just looking at them.

I thought living in my 400-sq. ft. apartment was tight. Still, I find his and the other tiny houses highly appealing-- they're just so cute.

Above: Jay Shafer's tiny house (courtesy of Telstar Logistics).

Writers and Animals

My name is Sara, and I have a cat.

I talk about him quite a bit more than is considered polite, treating him in conversation and life as if he were a person, although I am quite aware from the fur covering my apartment, car upholstery and nasal passages that he is, indeed, an animal.

Just because I have a cat (or, for the righteous among you, a cat has me) doesn't mean I love all cats. But I do get a kick out of certain websites related to cats, and recently I've noticed that all of my newly discovered cat websites, including this one and this one*, have been recommendations from writers like him and her.

I here present to you my latest deep question of the universe:

Do writers love their pets more than the average person (perhaps because, if they are home writing, they spend more time with them than those of us who die slow deaths in, ahem, offices)? Or do they just have more time to search out pet-related websites (because they are home writing) and publish them on their blogs/personal websites (that they are tending to while procrastinating, perhaps, on "real" writing)?

*Although I visit these sites, I do not recommend them to everyone, or at least not to anyone unwilling to view the pictures posted with either complete irony or a complete lack thereof.

Pseudo-Olympians

These guys-- who are in pretty good shape, it seems to me-- recreated five Olympic events and competed against each other:

Not only is it amazing to see how they compare to actual Olympians, their video provides inspiration to try this stuff myself (except the hurdles-- I tore my ACL jumping over a hurdle in 9th grade). Why is it that exercise seems more fun when I set up challenges, especially competition, for myself? I enjoy the track workouts I've been doing (basic speed intervals) exponentially more than the long runs required for marathon training, which get so boring. I enjoy Pilates classes more than just stretching on a mat. Even the old Presidential Fitness tests in school got me going-- I ran my fastest mile ever during a presidential fitness test run in high school (although I admit I don't often run timed miles on the track at my fastest possible speed). Anyway, this is a concept many espouse but clearly works for me: specific challenges inspire greater results.

Now I just need to find a friend foolhardy enough to be my teammate/competition.

Last of the Mohicans, or Another Derivative Post

In his review of How Fiction Works, Walter Kirn took author James Woods to flight school, giving a sideways proposal that a better title for the book might be Why Readers Nap. Okay, fine. But what interested me when I read this review is why Kirn-- who published a novel on Slate and whose "strange story of an affair with the Dali Lama's ditsy public relations woman" was one of the most interesting, but most out-there, selections at last year's PEN/Faulkner gala (if I remember correctly, it was also one of the funniest)-- was chosen to review Woods' book, especially when the Sunday Book Review seems to attune reviewers and assignments so carefully (i.e. Christopher Dickey's review of Rick Bragg's book about his father).

Well, the NY Times blog Papercuts recently asserted that Kirn's review represents the latest battle in the unending galactic war between the two literary types, Paleface and Redskin, or as a certain professor at George Mason might call them, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. It's amazing to me that this debate continues as fiercely as ever-- doesn't it seem clear that each side will continue to have supporters, that each will experience its heyday (I would argue that currently, the Redskins are ahead) and then fall back for a while, only to surge again in the future?

I guess we'll have to wait for that one mythical writer who will merge both backgrounds, breaking the binary and bringing glory to us all, before the argument ends. (I predict that if male, he'll resemble Daniel Day Lewis, and if female, Madeleine Stowe.) Until then, I suggest we writers continue practicing our tracking skills or our military drills, whichever we may choose, rather than wasting time comparing whose weapon shoots better.

"Tom Wolfe is a goddam joy."

PaperCuts, the New York Times' blog about books, presents a slideshow of great book ads from the 60s and early 70s here. My favorite, both for image and book title, is the ad for Edna O'Brien's August is a Wicked Month. Over thirty years later, the ad is successful in that it makes me want to read the book. (Except I'll probably get it from the library, so perhaps that makes the ad unsuccessful-- true success would lead to a sale?)

These ads lead me to some books I've been meaning to read and haven't yet (interestingly, they are, in a way, paired: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test), as well as to books I might not have thought to read: O'Brien, Crews, Ellison's essays.

But most intriguing are the blurbs-- I'd like to draw a kind of family tree of the authors who have blurbed each book and their interconnections, outward reach, etc. Also, the funny language of the blurbs themselves, as the PaperCuts commentary does a good job of pointing out. Should we be reassured or annoyed that the same reviewer cliches abound today as they did then? The cliches are worth it, though, for the gems-- Is Tom Wolfe really a goddam joy? From The Bonfire of the Vanities, I'd say no. But maybe once I finally read TEKAAT, my answer, in proper 60s fashion, will swing the other way.

Them Kicks Is Like Buttah

There's nothing like a brand new pair of running shoes to motivate me to get off my ass. I started a new pair yesterday and the difference is amazing-- less impact in my knees and hips, more spring in my stride. It helps, too, that the weather has been crisp and sunny.

The National Marathon is this weekend, and while I won't be running in it, with my new shoes getting me out the door every day I won't feel like a total loser watching all the athletes zoom by.

Now if only new trainers didn't cost a hundred bucks...

Buckling Down

I know, I know, hearing about dreams is boring. But last night I actually dreamt that the partial manuscript of my novel was being workshopped! Many people in the class thought it was about religion (which it's not), and they even took a vote on whether I would finish it. (Just over half said yes.)

The stuff of nightmares.

It's time to get cracking.

Attack Cat

Since I don't have a regular table in my studio apartment, I eat all my meals on the couch. Usually if I eat cereal, my cats are all up in my grill, trying to get at the milk. About five feet from the couch is a window that I leave open most of the time, and just outside this window is a small tree (variety unknown though I would guess some sort of stunted maple) where various bird families hang out, mostly mourning doves and another smaller dull-brown bird. When the cats sit on the ledge by the window, the birds on the branches are only another two feet away through the screen.

The cats go nuts.

This morning, the birds were so distracting that the cats stopped paying attention to the cereal I was eating and instead crouched perfectly still, ears at attention, to watch the birds. And then like two possessed undead, their jaws began to twitch and they made soft clicking noises that attracted return calls from the birds.

The cats' mouths were moving super fast-- the first time I ever saw them do this, part of me wondered if it was a seizure symptom. It got to the point where one of the cats had to stop and rub his paw across his cheek, their mouths were clicking of their own accord for that long.

Can you imagine your natural hunting instincts just taking you over like that? Yes, I know, people's bodies react really strangely to fear and lust, etc. But what's happening to the cats is the equivalent of passing somebody hot on the street, stopping in your tracks and making strange grunting noises with the back of your throat, all without your control. In a way, that would be awesome-- not for the recipient, of course, but for you-- your body would express your desires whether you wanted it to or not, and just by expressing them, would likely achieve much more than we humans, with our innumerable fears and doubts, do on our own.

Just think if you could harness that power for job interviews, competitions, everyday decisions: so many people claim not to know what they really want, and even when they do know, they often neglect to go after their desires. If this were automatic and your body's reaction committed you to things, there would be a lot less deception, confusion and holding yourself back.

Then again, there would be a lot more embarrassment, too.

Cook-ie, Cook-ie!

Did you know that chocolate chip cookies weren't invented until circa 1935? Can you imagine living in this world without them? Sometimes when I feel miserable (such as when writing the novel seems slow and horrible, like coaxing a tapeworm out of my leg), I think about how lucky I am to live in the era of c.c.c. (the Triple C!).

Chocolate chip cookies = pure heavenly bliss.

It's the salt and the brown sugar that make them so damn good. I know because in the midst of extreme cravings, I have often made them without certain ingredients. All white sugar chocolate chip cookies just aren't the same.

I feel like there's some kind of cheesy lesson about the benefits of diversity in that. I'll let you parse it for yourself.

Things I'm A Sucker For (#1 out of 168)

I love books with notebook-paper covers. I don't mean that the cover is actually made of notebook paper. I just mean covers that incorporate the thin blue lines into the design.

The two that I have right now are Lorrie Moore's Birds of America and a book of writing excercises called Now Write! I thought I had more than this (at least five), but I think I'm remembering books from elementary school, specifically at least one Babysitter's Club book (perhaps the Babysitter's Club notebook, where you were supposed to record your own babysitting engagements?). I admit that many more books for children twelve and under have notebook-lined covers than do those aimed at adults.

But why?

As much as most people claim to have hated school, I bet that once they've been slaving away at a job full of drudgery for a certain number of years, the nostalgia alone would cause them to pick up the notebook-covered book. And it would work very well for self-help, where pretty much every title requires the reader to keep some sort of journal or list. Just looking at a sheet of blank notebook paper inspires the setting of new goals, the possibilities of a fresh start:


Maybe that's just the writer and list-maker in me.

Coming in at a close second to notebook-cover books are those with simulated handwriting on the cover. A good example is Vivian Gornick's The Situation and the Story. I think Possession might fall into this category as well. There seem to be many more adult books with handwriting on the cover than plain old notebook lines.

Warning: sometimes these can get a little sappy, especially if it's cursive writing meant to imply a love letter. They can also involve ironic, reminiscent bubble or pencil-drawn characters meant to evoke notes passed in high school (think the logo for the movie Juno).

Due to its ability to attract the immediate attention of anyone who went to school in the 80s or 90s (now kids just text), this technique is starting to become ubiquitous and therefore "played out."

Captain Chai

In the sober, well-intentioned 90s, a whole culture developed around coffee and coffee shops. At the same time, environmental consciousness increased throughout the country. A cartoon show called Captain Planet tapped into the latter trend. The five members on the Earth-saving team led by the eponymous captain represented different elements of life, each integral to a healthy, balanced planet: earth, fire, wind, water, and heart. In times of trouble, the teammates would chant their powers and then shout "With our powers combined..." The implication was that together, they could achieve anything.

Chai latte is awesome for the same reason that Captain Planet was awesome: it's a mixture of the three integral elements of life (caffeine, sugar, and milk), all in one hot mug.

It packs a punch, all right. The only other substance with a similar kapow is chocolate, but they serve different circumstances-- chai is helpful for times when you need energy, chocolate for when you're feeling more relaxed.

I only started drinking chai when consuming caffeine became integral to staying awake at my old office job. Chai latte was a beverage I could feel good paying for at a coffee shop since ostensibly it requires some talent on the part of the barista, unlike plain old tea.

This turned out to be a boon socially, as well. While I rarely used to visit coffee shops on my own, I found myself "stopping in really quick" with friends, practically all of whom consume multiple cups daily. Once I discovered chai, I didn't have to stand there empty handed while they sucked down their steaming beverages.

Now I'm addicted to the powerful burst of energy chai gives me. Sometimes I have to keep myself from whispering into my mug, "With our powers combined..."

The Years Do Roll On

Today I decided to put off writing by doing a little house-cleaning. I started with the basics: dishes, sink, toilet, laundry. Since I have to use coin-operated laundry machines, I decided to handwash some handwashables in the freshly cleaned bathroom sink. I pulled out my Woolite, and lo and behold it had turned a dark brown color, like Coke before it's carbonated.

Of course I poured it into the sink and washed my bras anyway, but the whole time I was calculating how long it had been since I last used Woolite. Not in this apartment, and not in the house I shared last year, so it must be from the house before, which puts us at 2006 at the latest. But likely 2005.

Then I considered that it could have been even earlier. I might have bought that bottle of Woolite when I lived in Manhattan (2003-04).

The deeper question underlying the discovery of my brown Woolite is this: Am I really old enough to have carried around a bottle of Woolite for four years, through at least as many moves? I mean "old" in the sense that I've been responsible enough to handwash my "delicates" and obtain the proper cleaning supplies to do so. I also mean "old" in the sense that I have become so immured in my things that when I move, I just take everything along without editing any of the contents. Either way, what does this bode for my future?

Only one thing is certain: when I leave this apartment in June, my boxes will be one bottle of molasses-colored goo lighter.

Daylight breaks.

Isn't it great when you wake up to all the Hollywood intimations of a good day: sun shining, birds chirping, eyes opening of their own accord? Not when you sit down to the computer to work on your soon-to-be Pulitzer-prize-winning novel only to discover a rejection email.

Emailed rejections leave so much less room for hope. I mean, at least with a slip of paper, you get to see whether they wrote a bit of encouragement or signed their initials, or, on the far end of the spectrum, bent the corner of the slip stuffing it into the envelope posthaste so they could get your crappy story out of their life.

An email reveals nothing.

Unless, of course, it is one of those ones where the editor gives you vague feedback that makes you feel almost worse than getting a form rejection. But then you feel almost worse than getting a form rejection.

The normal email rejection is quite coy, refusing to reveal whether it is sent to every poor schmuck that submits accounts of their dreams from the night before or only to the "next tier"-- those whose stories the journal actually took seriously for a second before some unknown factor made them frown, or yawn, or cringe. I've found myself searching through backlogs of emails for the previous rejection to compare the wording. And it's pretty much always the same.

Since it is much easier to click on an automated rejection email than to go in and type a few words directed to the individual, it makes sense to assume that fewer stories warrant an abberration from the form rejection. On paper, however, editors will sometimes scrawl their names, and occasionally even a quick "thanks!" Maybe this allows them to give more hope than is necessary, but I live off that hope like a vampire lives off of blood.

So far, the online submission format is leaving me anemic and thirsty.

Mr. Blue Skies

It's gorgeous here in Northern Virginia, blue skies with puffs of clouds and temperatures in the 60s. There were a ton of people on the trail at 9:30 when I set out on my run, and then I remembered it's a holiday. Usually, runners on the trail ignore each other (including me), but today, maybe because of the weather or the holiday, everyone was smiling and nodding. I haven't been running with my iPod recently, but I figured it would be a treat to listen to music on such a pretty day.

My iPod is the really old kind with the four buttons across the top, so sometimes it acts a little squirrelly. Sure enough, about two-thirds of the way into my run, my playlist skipped about a half hour ahead and all of a sudden ELO's Mr. Blue Skies came on. The song has a really fast tempo (DUN dun dun dun DUN dun dun dun) and I have a little deal with myself that whenever it comes on, I pace my footfalls to each beat, which means I run much faster than usual. It's not quite a sprint, but it's definitely a "pick-up" interval. I purposely put this song near the end because often I can't make it all the way through at that pace-- even when you think the song is over, there's this kind of finale bridge thing (I no speaka da music) that seems to draw on forever and it gets really long, especially with the hills on my route.

But today I kept up all the way through. It felt great! What would once have been a hard run for me was easy and exhilarating. Part of me wishes I had brought my stop watch so I could have timed myself. But I think it was better just to be running fast in such spring-like weather.

I even said "hi" to people as I passed by.

Hey, there, you with the pretty face, welcome to the human race...

Funk Dat

Remember that old song that was like "Why is it they play the same five songs fifteen times a day for three months? Funk dat!" Even if you didn't hear it, you might have caught Beavis and Butthead making fun of it circa 1994.

I went to the bakery this morning, normally a really good bakery, at 10:30-- not even that late-- and ALL the croissants were sold out! Not just the chocolate crossaints were gone (the ones I want and admittedly the first to go), but all of them-- almond, plain, you name it. Poof. They were so sold out that the trays had been removed, leaving an expanse of cold, empty shelving in the display case.

My question is who made half the normal amount of croissants on a Sunday when everybody and their dog wants a freakin' chocolate croissant? I had to get an apple pastry. Funk dat!

In Defense of the "Uncool" Chocolate

o, I admit it-- I'm a snob about many food items, including premium ice cream, the best pizza, and sushi. But there's one area where I can't agree with the supposed connoisseurs: chocolate.

Today's chocolate elite favors pure dark chocolate with a minimum of 70% cocoa (see Bill Buford's "Extreme Chocolate" in the 10/29/07 New Yorker for starters). Even in less sophisticated publications, when the subject of chocolate arises, dark chocolate is favored over milk, nuts and chews over soft centers. It's like some inside agreement on the part of the entire media that dark chocolate is for the worldy and cosmopolitan, while the fans of milk chocolate are tasteless gluttons, i.e. fat losers.

What's wrong with these people?

It's time to make a stand for the gourmand's chocolate, the chocolate of the masses: the milk chocolate soft center truffle, specifically as concocted by See's. My all-time favorite See's candy is the Milk Chocolate Bordeaux, followed closely by the Milk Buttercream. This chocolate is smooth on the tongue and quickly melts into a delicious creamy blur of wonder. It's sugary and rich like hot cocoa made with full-fat milk, a delight in a contemporary food world that favors sharp, acidic flavors that, should you not like them, seem to taunt you for being a pussy.

I grew up on See's Candies, and to this day my grandparents send me a pound of custom mix milk chocolate soft centers approximately four times a year (Valentine's, my birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas). Finding the rectangular box in the mail is like receiving a big fat love letter, except one that is perfectly sweet every time and won't make you blush should you share it with other people. My college roommates grew extra chummy whenever a box arrived (back then, it was two pounds-- after graduation, I had to ask my grandparents to scale it back). Natives of Florida, they were unaware of See's until they met me, and I am proud to have shown them the light. . . chocolate.

No matter what the epicures deem trendy, I plan to stay true to my "impure" love. If preferring old-fashioned creamy goodness to the industry's whip-cracking purebreds makes me some kind of chocolate-redneck, so be it.

I know exactly where to turn for consolation.