Worth Reading #3: List!

Posted on December 17, 2012 by KathyH

Good books I’ve read recently:

Committed: a skeptic makes peace with marriage, Elizabeth Gilbert. The follow-up to Eat, Pray, Love, but more of an intimate, thoughtful reflection on the meanings of marriage. Why do we get married? Gilbert asks. Why should I?

The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg, Deborah Eisenberg. I’m treating myself to a story per day. Just fascinating, quirky, lovely pieces.

Dear Life, Alice Munro. I want to write like Munro when I grow up.

Some journals that I love:

The Sun. Provocative and personal—and “Readers Write” has some of the most engaging, intimate pieces.

TheRumpus.net. Came for “Dear Sugar” and stayed for the excellent essays and interviews. I subscribe through Google Reader and spend about an hour each day reading it. Anything by Roxane Gay is worth reading.

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Resources for Writers

Posted on December 7, 2012 by KathyH

One of the best craft of writing books I’ve read is Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life, edited by Charles Baxter and Peter Turchi. Here are some more excellent writing resources from Turchi. His discussion on annotations has inspired me to reread one of my favorite novels (This Heavy Silence by Nicole Mazzarella) and consider the question: How does one write a quiet, beautiful novel? Pacing, dialogue, suspense–how does one do those well within the context of a quieter, character-driven story?

I will write a longer post on the value of a formal study of writing soon, but one of the most valuable aspects of my MA program has been the exposure to teaching writers like Turchi, who present the study of creative writing in a thoughtful, wise, and surprising manner. This is not your glib “show, don’t tell” approach to crafting fiction. The depth that writers like Turchi bring to the study of fiction has enriched my writing life, and I hope, allowed me to make choices and changes to my fiction that strengthened each piece. I have a long way to go, but I feel like I’m going in the right direction (to continue the writing journey metaphor).

Other helpful books I have read:

On Writing Short Stories, edited by Tom Bailey

The Art of the Personal Essay, selected by Phillip Lopate

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Paleo Progress

Posted on December 4, 2012 by KathyH

I once briefly kept a blog with that same title. Unfortunately, it bored me writing about what I ate daily and how I felt. I love reading other Paleo/Primal and food related blogs, however, just not keeping my own.

With the upcoming holidays and a recent Paleo podcast-listening marathon, I have eating habits on the brain. I have downloaded and listened to multiple episodes of “The Paleo View,” and I have the latest “BTR: Balanced Bites” on my playlist. Perhaps it has been due to overindulging in desserts, wine, and various gluten-laden treats, but I’ve been feeling slow and puffy. I’m trying to resume eating a cleaner, Paleo-style diet: meat, good fats like avocado and nuts, and fruits and veggies for my carbs.

The first time I heard of Paleo eating was when I belonged to a boot camp gym. While I left the gym following several injuries, I stuck to the eating style popular with its trainers and members. When I avoid sugar, gluten, and grains, I feel better. I have more energy, and my jeans fit better. (Which is not to say that I perfectly adhere to the plan, but I aim for the 80/20 rule and end up around 75/25.)

My classes end this week, and in my Nurturing the Creative Spirit course, I have been writing a lot about self-care, how writing isn’t only a matter of opening my laptop every morning, but also living a life that benefits the physical body. Healthy mind, healthy body, etc. I’m tired of being in a sugar fog, so by resuming the Paleo diet, I hope to regain some energy, both physical and mental.

Some of my favorite Paleo sites:

Everyday Paleo (I have this cookbook, and it’s awesome!)

Balanced Bites (Practical Paleo is on my Christmas list.)

The Paleo Mom and Paleo Parents (Co-hosts of “The Paleo View”)

And even though it’s not a true “Paleo” blog (rather, it focuses on gluten-free), Cannelle et Vanille is gorgeous!

Happy eating!

 

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NaNoWriMo…Again

Posted on October 31, 2012 by KathyH

It’s that time of year again. My girls are out trick-or-treating (one as Effie Trinket and the other as a Monster High doll), and I’m distributing candy and eating way too many small chocolate bars. What’s disappointing is they don’t even taste as good as I remembered. I’m getting old. Or, I have developed a taste for higher-quality chocolate.

It’s also NaNoWriMo Eve. That magical month in which thousands (millions?) of writers attempt to write a 50K word novel. I’ve participated most years since 2006, but only finished the first year I entered. This year, I updated my profile and committed to writing.

In a great blog post, Rochelle Melander shares some excellent tips on how to make NaNo work for you, on how you can adapt the activity to fit your writing needs. For me, this means working on some short stories that exist only as images or titles in my mind. I have no characters, no plots. With classwork and revisions, I don’t know if I can write 50K words this month, but I would be happy to complete a couple first drafts and upload them to the NaNo site for the “official” word count. Anything to generate new writing!

Happy Halloween! Boo.

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More Florida Foliage

Posted on October 31, 2012 by KathyH

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I took this picture on my neighborhood walk this morning. Home Depot sells this plant–who knew? I’m going to add some to our yard. Purple grass is simply cheerful.

 

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Florida Foliage

Posted on October 31, 2012 by KathyH

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After a brief brush with Hurricane Sandy, calm weather has returned to this part of Florida. It’s cool and dry–finally! A Florida autumn isn’t as showy or dramatic as a northern one, but there are subtle hints that the seasons have changed. Witness the Florida Purple Muhly grass. It is blooming this time of year. Slowly the purple fades to a shade closer to auburn and finally to a November brown.

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Worth Reading #2: The Longest Way Home

Posted on October 17, 2012 by KathyH

Through travel, I began to grow up.

In this memoir and travelogue, Andrew McCarthy explores what travel means to him, how he has traveled to assuage the loneliness within, to mature as an adult, and to find meaning and connection in his life. Opening with a brief account of his rise to fame as a teenager, McCarthy then takes the reader on a journey through the months leading up to his marriage with D in Dublin. He seeks to balance his need for solitude with the responsibilities that family life and fatherhood bring. He travels to Patagonia, the Amazon, and Baltimore on travel writing assignments, and struggles with leaving his family (D and their son and daughter) behind while embracing the solitary life travel provides. He recalls the trip to Vienna with D’s family and how this trip changed their relationship and moved them towards matrimonial commitment. Atop Mt. Kilimanjaro, the final trip before his wedding in Dublin, McCarthy experiences and recognizes a lifelong longing, and later writes: “In acknowledging that emptiness, I’m released further into my own life.”

I read this book after reading an interview with McCarthy on TheRumpus.net. I remembered him as an actor from The Brat Pack years; I had no idea that he had become a successful travel writer. McCarthy started keeping travel notes and a journal after reading Paul Theroux; upon reading that, I was excited to read McCarthy’s memoir. Theroux is an elegant, evocative travel writer—anyone inspired by his books is worth checking out. McCarthy’s descriptions of Patagonia and Kilimanjaro are haunting, and he deftly and humorously describes traveling down the Amazon riverboat with quirky and sometimes nosy and annoying fellow passengers. Woven through these travel narratives are McCarthy’s personal challenges of settling down and of connecting with those whom he loves most.

It is well-written and elegantly crafted. I’ve added The Longest Way Home to my list of excellent travel writing.

Some of my other favorites:

Paul Theroux’s The Pillars of Hercules (a tour around the Mediterranean, circa 1995) and Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

James Michener’s Iberia (Spain, pre-1968)

Robert Hughes’s Barcelona (more of a history, with a unique focus on the city’s architecture)

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Sky

Posted on October 3, 2012 by KathyH

(I did some prompt writing the other night with my writing group, and this is what bubbled up for “the most beautiful thing I’ve seen….”)

It was June 1996. I was in a car with my Spanish host family, driving home from an afternoon spent at their beach house. We barbequed, drank wine, and enjoyed ice cream and cake for their grandson’s birthday. I settled in the backseat–warm, content, and a little buzzed.

We drove through the countryside, and I gazed out the window. It was the most beautiful sky I had ever seen. Soft. Golden. The haze softened the distant western mountains. The almond and olive trees appeared silver in the gold light.

I sat in the backseat of my host family’s Opel; we would be back in the city within a half hour. I was meeting my boyfriend and our friends for a night out. I gazed at that sky, enveloped by awe and wonder. I was 21 years old, and life would never be any better. I sat in a tiny car, driving through this golden sky, wanting to hold on to that moment–that sky and its promise–forever.

In a few weeks, I would be leaving the island that I had called home for nearly a year. We drove closer to the city, closer to the tall mountains. The sky shifted from gold to gray twilight. That beautiful moment, like my year in Spain, started to fade.

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Sunday Morning Odds and Ends

Posted on September 23, 2012 by KathyH

Two weeks ago, I fought my way through 6 pages of revision. I hated my writing, and I’m pretty sure my writing hated me back. Last week, before I began revisions of the next chapter, I sat with my pages and waited. It sounds a little odd, yes, but it’s a practice in one of the books I’m reading from my Writer’s Spirit course. I tried to empty my mind and ‘be’ in the presence of the pages. It worked—I wrote two new pages and cleaned up the existing ones. Later, I contemplated the revision process, how it is involves three elements: the existing work, the writer as creator, and the writer as editor. It’s a complex process involving contemplation and choice-making.

In Making A Literary Life, Carolyn See writes that the literary life is like a long-term marriage. If writing a new piece produces the same thrill as the initial courtship, the revision process can best be compared to the point in the relationship where you stress about the mortgage or bicker about housekeeping. The commitment to writing is like any long-term relationship, filled with thrills, boredom, angst, and joy.

I’m still thinking about slowing down and am now adding simplifying to the list of practices I’m trying to cultivate. I’m good at multi-tasking; as a parent, I have to be, in many cases. It can be a detrimental quality, however. This occurred to me this morning while I was reading a lovely description of a Zen tea ceremony in John Daido Loori’s The Zen of Creativity. As I was reading these pages, I was also thinking of a soccer email I had to send out and a friend’s text I needed to answer. I wasn’t fully engaged with the words on the page. “If our mind is cluttered with thoughts or worries…[w]e’re not being simply present,” writes Daido Loori. As I finished reading the chapter, I remained mindful of my drifting thoughts and refocused when needed. The text could wait, as could the email.

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Books and Writers Worth Reading #1: Cheryl Strayed

Posted on September 17, 2012 by KathyH

I love advice columns. I read “Dear Abby” daily and Carolyn Hax’s “Tell Me About It” on Fridays. The June 2011 issue of The Sun reprinted several selections from the “Dear Sugar” column on TheRumpus.net. I don’t remember the specific Sugar columns I read the day I received my copy, but I was immediately hooked. The then-anonymous Sugar addressed the usual problems–money, love, sex–but responded deeply and sincerely, drawing from her own life experiences. Each reply was a miniature personal essay, thoughtfully constructed and elegantly composed.

After finishing the reprints, I went online to read each column, about 70 total at the time. To a monogamous woman struggling with temptation, Sugar writes in column #70: “They love X but want to fuck Z…Z is so gleaming, so crystalline, so unlikely to bitch at you for neglecting to take out the recycling…Z is like a motorcycle with no one on it. Beautiful. Going nowhere.” To a stymied young writer, Sugar exhorts in #48, “Write like a motherfucker.” In the same column featuring the empty motorcycle, Sugar addresses a letter writer mourning the end of a relationship: “But you will be okay, dear one. I can see your future okayness so clearly it’s like an apple sitting in my palm.” And so forth. Letter after letter answered wisely and sincerely, with gentle humor thrown in, if appropriate.

At the same time I was devouring these columns, I was experiencing a difficult personal situation. When I felt sad or lost, I clung to Sugar’s beautiful words and understood that I, too, would be okay. I began to see that the answers to my problems were within me—the same advice Sugar ultimately gave her readers and herself.

Flash forward nearly a year. In Studies of Craft, we read Cheryl Strayed’s “The Love of My Life” essay. I recognized the story! I recognized the sincerity and openness of the tone, the elegance of the writing style. Several days later, Strayed revealed that she wrote “Dear Sugar,” and she released her memoir Wild. I read Wild this summer and was absorbed by the exciting, sad, amazing story of a broken young woman hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in hopes of rebuilding her life following personal loss. The descriptions of the heat, blizzards, and wildlife on the PCT mesmerized me. Her story encompassed her emotional and physical growth, and like the “Dear Sugar” columns, Wild lingered in my imagination long after I finished it.

Strayed crafts beautiful, intimate, personal stories. She is a brave storyteller and one of my new favorite writers.

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