Life in California went topsy-turvy on Marth 19th, 2020, when Governor Gavin Newsom issued a stay at home order to protect the health and well-being of all Californians. Quite suddenly, the world shifted on its access. The ominous sense of dread finally had a definition: Pandemic. From the ground, there was confusion. The city shut down. Those of us who had day jobs, found ourselves confined to our houses. For me, editorial meetings and teaching yoga took place on Zoom. As a writer, nothing changed. Before Covid-19, writing meant entering a fantasy world of my own making, and after Covid-19, my inner landscape remained exactly the same. To write is to step into another dimension. But the real world is something altogether different. Life got tricky. As the deaths mounted and the grim reaper laid body bags down at the steps of the capital, the highest levels of government denied reality. Toxic tribal affiliations had gripped the nation. A simmering distrust of science caused a bizarre slide into disinformation and denial of a very real virus. As a devotee of both … [Read more...] about Life during Plague Time.
Write Like You Mean it.
Writing is a calling. People write for different reasons and there is no better time in history to be a writer. Sure, the publishing world has been shaken by technology and the old system is slowly dying. Yes, the midlist is nonexistent. Of course, the gatekeepers continue to do what gatekeepers do, create exclusivity and a system where they maintain control. But the upshot is power and freedom to the writer. First of all, if you write fiction and you keep doing it, you're a special breed. As the columnist, Red Smith once said when asked whether writing a daily column was difficult, “Why no, you simply sit down at your typewriter, open a vein and bleed.” Writing has always been difficult, since the first moment a chisel was placed on a stone. Storytelling is as old as language. Stories are told, retold, and transformed into other stories; Cupid and Psyche became Beauty and the Beast became Twilight. Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John are the same story from different points of view. Socrates warned that writing stories down would lead to memory loss and a lack of wisdom. Little did … [Read more...] about Write Like You Mean it.
Writing in the Age of Insanity
I flipped on the news early Monday morning, and there was a linguist analyzing what had emerged from Trump's mouth at a rally. The newscaster, Joy Reid, was earnest as she read a series of words that made no sense. Like a jazz singer scatting, Trump had tossed up a word salad of epic proportions. "He says he has the best words.... but he seems to be using all the words, regardless of whether they make sense or not," she said. The woman is a writer so she was experiencing the same thing I was—pain. She repeated various sections of his speech, searching for the secret message underlying the words. Was there any? The linguist, John McWhorter, broke it down for her. "When you're processing language, the first thing that comes into your brain is the tone, the music, then the content." Like animals in a forest, the strange noises emerging from Trump's mouth carried an emotional code, though the string of nonsense was utterly lacking in any coherent meaning. For a writer, this can be crazy making. Sure, we deal in the musicality of language, but writers spend an inordinate amount of … [Read more...] about Writing in the Age of Insanity
Raymond Chandler on What Haunts the Reader.
“A long time ago when I was writing for pulps, I put into a story a line like ‘he got out of the car and walked across the sun drenched sidewalk until the shadow of the awning over the entrance fell across his face like the touch of cool water.’ They took it out when they published the story. Their readers didn’t appreciate this sort of thing: it just held up the action. And I set out to prove them wrong. My theory was they just thought they cared nothing about anything but the action; that really, although they didn’t know it, they cared very little about the action. The things they really cared about, and that I cared about, were the creation of emotion through dialogue and description; the things they remembered, that haunted them, were not for example that a man got killed, but that in the moment of his death he was trying to pick a paper clip up off the polished surface of a desk, and it kept slipping away from him, so that there was a look of strain on his face and his mouth was half open in a kind of tormented grin, and the last thing in the world he thought about was death. … [Read more...] about Raymond Chandler on What Haunts the Reader.
Bowie’s top 100 books – the complete list – David Bowie Latest News
Originally posted on www.davidbowie.com “Lend us a book we can read up alone” It’s likely that most people reading this will have already seen either the original story on openbookstoronto.com last week, or a version of it referring back to that original list of “DAVID BOWIE'S TOP 100 BOOKS”. There have also been numerous suggestions of a Bowie Book Club to tackle each of the 100 volumes. However, there was a problem with that particular openbookstoronto.com feature in that only 75% of the books were actually listed! For anybody planning on completing this epic voyage of discovery, we’ve listed every single one of the 100 books here (in no particular order) for your reference. You may have also noticed the two chaps in the middle of our montage. Well, it’s none other than David Bowie sporting a Clockwork Orange T-shirt (the book by Anthony Burgess is in the list) with his old chum, George Underwood. George kindly supplied the previously unpublished photograph, which according to him was taken aboard Amtrak somewhere between New Orleans and Chicago on the first US … [Read more...] about Bowie’s top 100 books – the complete list – David Bowie Latest News
What Writers can Learn from Bruce Lee.
Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one— Bruce Lee What can writers learn from Bruce Lee? He defied the odds. He adapted to his environment. He set high standards for himself. He was a creative force, inventing his own style of fighting, Jeet Kune Do, based on traditional Wing Chun. He was a philosopher and communicator who changed the way the West thinks about Martial Arts. What did Bruce Lee think was important? He once said, "Training is one of the most neglected phases of athletics. Too much time is given to the development of skill and too little to the development of the individual for participation. ... Jeet Kune Do, ultimately is not a matter of petty techniques but of highly developed spirituality and physique." As a teacher, Bruce Lee advised his students to "Be like Water." “You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like … [Read more...] about What Writers can Learn from Bruce Lee.
Cringeworthy One Star Reviews of Classic Books
Kindle Direct Publishing has given writers an amazing gift, a way to reach a worldwide audience. Anyone who meets Amazon's standards can publish a book or story, and anyone can leave a review to haunt you. Every KDP writer will eventually have to endure the Amazon one star review. They are part of the new publishing landscape. Negative reviews range from illiterate, crazy diatribes, revealing more about the reviewer's state of mind than the book itself, to pointed critiques by shrewd and pissed off readers. Why do people leave one star reviews? It's simple, they're experiencing a strong emotional reaction. Maybe the reviewer doesn't like swear words, or they had to read the book for school or book club, or they just saw the movie and the book's not the same, or the book conflicts with their personal philosophy about life, or they don't think this is what a story should be. Whether the one star review is a raw, visceral slap or a deeply cutting dissection that stings, they can be a shock for writers who took a big emotional risk to release their work in the first place. … [Read more...] about Cringeworthy One Star Reviews of Classic Books