When we say we want to write Organically, what does that really mean when nature is so patterned and ruled by math? I get that organic = shuffling meter off the mortal coil, but I suspect we may not be saying what we think we are.
A facebook site says, Keep it natural. Ok, what about fractals? (It’s a beefy math-tastic formula in which you plug a number and get an answer, then plug in that answer for another answer. The Mandlebrot set is the Mother of these dudes, and when you plot the points on a graph it looks like this:
The important thing is that when you zoom in, the image keeps repeating itself. Scientists are using the Mandlebrot set to make calculations in nature that weren’t previously calculable. Measuring shorelines and estimating oxygen production in forests. So is writing organically might be writing in a structure that repeats itself on a sliding scale. Then what?
Another site gets wispy and teary about an arboreal metaphor: “Be the soil that your writing grows from…” Ack. I’m just saying that nature is much more patterned, mathematical, and precise than we remember at times. Nature’s got its bits under control—tight control.
31. Our job, then, is two-fold: to focus on our own failings as writers. But also to speak more forcefully as advocates for literature. Books are a powerful antidote for loneliness, for the moral purposelessness of the leisure class. It’s our job to convince the 95 percent of people who don’t read books, who instead medicate themselves in front of screens, that literary art isn’t some esoteric tradition, but a direct path to meaning, to an understanding of the terror that lives beneath our consumptive ennui. It’s hard to make this case, though, if all we do is squabble with each other and lament our obscurity.
I’ve been looking at financial results for Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon from years past. (Here’s some similar information and a pretty thorough breakdown: http://www.fonerbooks.com/booksale.htm)
Amazon’s sales keep going up, while BN and Borders sales are fluctuating a bit but generally trending downward. Most privately held companies (Auntie’s Books, Powell’s, etc.) don’t make their financial results so easily accessible, but it seems they are surviving a little better than the chains. (Note Auntie’s satellite store that just opened in downtown Spokane’s mall.) Interestingly, it’s BN’s and Borders’ smaller stores (the B. Dalton and Waldenbooks stores, respectively) that are really suffering. These are the ones in the mall that aren’t the cornerstone stores; they sit alongside Cinnabon and Lidz, and how they make any money at all is beyond me.
In light of this, I’m going to ask that annoying question again: Does the bookstore matter anymore? Read more »
I’m busy figuring out how in the fuck to use Twitter and trying to get my voice back for fall quarter after reading so much Anthony Powell the last few months (I can be a bit of an imitator, and believe me – brandishing wordy, pseudo-British-Twentieth-Century elevated language in an essay/memoir in which one huffs nail polish remover preceding a three-way at 10:30 in the morning on Labor Day just doesn’t work), so I’ll leave you with Glen David Gold and Alice Sebold talking about fear of success in writing, a topic that seems to have popped up in one capacity or other over the weekend on Bark. I’ll be back in a week, quite possibly on the topic of regaining your voice after reading one so drastically different from your own, though I’ll try to think of something cooler, like this. Rock the Casbah, y’all.
Reunited with Dad After My Sister and I Returned to Seattle from North Dakota
A couple days ago while I was in the library, I noticed I’d missed a call from my dad. I listened to his message as I walked through the reference area. The beginning of the message made me nervous—was he really pissed? By the time I sat down at a computer to look up some titles, my eyes were tear-full. This is what he said:
“Shira, I just want to tell you I’m kind of pissed off because I feel that you’ve taken unfair advantage of our relationship. I think that for you to use your black magic powers against me was unexpected to say the least. But I’ll just let you know how it turned out. I started with my new principal and she said all writing teachers have to become writers. It was the first thing she said, and I thought, Oh shit, Shira did this. So anyhow I’ve got my writer’s notebook, wrote a short story, I mean just a real rough draft for a classroom thing, but it was kind of fun. Anyhow, I’m not happy with you yet. Unless this really turns out to be something good, then I’ll thank you.” Read more »
I’m writing from the motherland this week. In preparation for the long flights required to get here, I loaded my netbook with works in progress to work on during my gadget’s long battery life. I then spent the longest plane ride catching up on movies and TV shows through the video on demand system and slept on the shorter legs because I’d watched too much crap instead of calibrating my bio-clock to minimize jetlag. I told myself there would be plenty of downtime at my parents’ house and I would get lots of writing done there. I’m very good at lying to myself.
There has been loads of time during my first week here that could be used for writing, but the same thing that always happens when I visit happened again. Spending my days speaking Swedish means I can’t put English worth a crap on the page. My sentences are all wrong. I reverse the noun-verb order and can’t find a synonym to save my soul. My sentence structure becomes super simple and my work read like a first graders’ “What I did this Summer” essay. Read more »
I’d never heard of Mockingjay when my Twitter page exploded about its upcoming release last week. I follow mostly writers and publishers, to be sure, but the surge of popularity coupled with my complete ignorance left me feeling like the odd one out—like the only one who didn’t know what a Tamagotchi was while the rest of the school fed and played with their virtual pets. (Tangent: There’s probably a better simile to be had there, but do you remember those?!) For those that don’t know, I will share my new found knowledge: Mockingjay is the final book in The Hunger Games Trilogy, which is another one of those young adult series that has found just as many—if not more—adult readers—than child ones.
Had you mentioned a book called The Hunger Games to me I would have said, “Yeah, I think I’ve heard of it, maybe,” but I couldn’t have told you the first thing about it. But on Thursday, despite my lingering state of unemployment, I bought a copy. Then I came home, turned to page one, and started reading. Three-and-a-half hours (and one nasty migraine) later, after telling myself twenty times I would read just one more chapter, it was one thirty in the morning and I had just finished the book. Read more »
Some might call it a Dominican Series. On a recent set of flights to Tejas, I decided to read Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa. His characterization of Trujillo, Trujillo’s dictatorship, his assassins, and his successor were so complex and interesting that during the flights back, I decided to pick up Junot Díaz’ The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Díaz spared even fewer punches with the dictatorship, calling Trujillo “Truzilla,” and used such an invigorating style to discuss the diaspora, that I was hooked into a full-blown Dominican phase. I just started reading Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, though I’ve had a few moments when I’ve thought about leaving it in the park for someone else to read. The Alvarez book I’d be the least likely to recommend. Read more »
I meant to write my first post a long time ago. A long, long time ago. Like the first week of July. But, there were so many reasons-slash-excuses not to. At first, I’d just finished my thesis, and I was tired. Both my weary brain and my laptop’s overworked cooling system needed to take it easy. Then I went on vacation, and when I got back, I was too busy catching up on work. Then I had some freelance assignments to finish. And so on for the next two months—procrastination at its finest.
Even now, after the things on my official to-do-first list have all been checked off, I am still only writing this post because I forced myself to.
I am not one of those writers who “has” to write. I write because I make myself. Sure, I love it, kinda: writing helps me understand myself and other people, it gives me a voice and an audience, it takes me into pockets of the world I would never have explored otherwise. It makes the gears in my head start turning.
It also sucks. We all know this. As Dorothy Parker said, “I hate writing; I love having written.”
1 Comment 
Some might call it a Dominican Series. On a recent set of flights to Tejas, I decided to read Feast of the Goat by Mario Vargas Llosa. His characterization of Trujillo, Trujillo’s dictatorship, his assassins, and his successor were so complex and interesting that during the flights back, I decided to pick up Junot Díaz’ The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Díaz spared even fewer punches with the dictatorship, calling Trujillo “Truzilla,” and used such an invigorating style to discuss the diaspora, that I was hooked into a full-blown Dominican phase. I just started reading Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, though I’ve had a few moments when I’ve thought about leaving it in the park for someone else to read. The Alvarez book I’d be the least likely to recommend.