As committed to web by a plebeian intern. Fellow first-years and aspiring undergrads take heed: the modern writer’s market is certainly crowded, yes, but also not without hope.

1. There are many MFAs in this world, and with good reason. It’s true. Nearly every author I see submitting has made the study of craft a personal pursuit. I know Ann Patchett  says that an MFA is irrelevant to being a good fiction writer, but I take some exception to this. Based on the successful writers I’ve known, it seems that if you want to write well, it pays to commit to a few years of serious study, learning your skills and going up against opinions you don’t always share. Sure, you can learn to play guitar in your garage, but that doesn’t make a classical background in music theory worthless. The same goes with writing. Read more »

Photo by Pedro Ribeiro Simões

I spent the middle part of August volunteering as a camp counselor at a creative writing summer camp for teenage girls. The camp, called Girl’s Ink, was based at a secluded retreat in the woods on Whidbey Island and co-sponsored by women writers’ org Hedgebrook. My fellow staff members were a hodgepodge of Northwest artists and performers at varying stages of their careers including a Pulitzer Prize nominee, a Stranger Genius Award recipient, and a rock star. Basically, for eight days, I hung out in a beautiful location with a bunch of super artsy girls and like-minded grown-ups and talked about writing.

Sounds pretty cool, right? And in a lot of ways it was. But it was also an experience that reminded me how ethically complex the teaching of writing, particularly to young writers, can be.

The organization that ran Girl’s Ink is called Power of Hope, a Seattle-based non-profit that puts on a variety of camps each summer as well as after school programs during the year. Power of Hope camps are open to anyone who wants to attend (well, only females in this particular case), but their target demographic are kids who come from less-than-privileged backgrounds. Their overarching mission is to empower these kids through the arts. This means using art – be it music, drawing, dance, writing, whatever – to help participants see the ways in which they have a voice and can make meaningful change in both their personal lives and in their communities.

This is a mission I agree with 100 percent. All young people should feel empowered, heard, and capable. And I’m totally onboard with the notion that the arts are a great vehicle to impart that knowledge and tool set.

But here’s where things got difficult for me at Girl’s Ink. Can writing still be a liberating experience when you are put in a space where the only acceptable kind of writing is the kind that speaks to your own liberation?

Read more »

Occasionally, at parties, people I half-know will throw handfuls of cashews into their mouths and go, “so, Tim, what do you write poems about?”

And while they’re chewing, I’ll stare pensively into my drink, slosh it around a little, eventually saying something like, “quit bogarting those nuts.”

It’s not so much that I don’t like discussing what I write –  really, what else do I have? –  it’s just that I have no idea what the poems are about.

Many things appear in my poems: ones I love, or have loved, favorite foods, seasons, animals, articles of clothing, colors, smells, fears, memories. But no single something ever dominates a single poem. And I’m okay with that, except for when Cashew Hands is interrogating me by the punch bowl. Read more »

Bloggers Can Be Extras in the Movie of Books, Photo: Cindy La Ferle

As of Thursday, there are sixty new engineer-and-other-applied-scientists in my life. As one of them left our classroom after our first class, he told me he is interested in writing opinion pieces for the school newspaper.

“I enjoy writing because it helps me figure out what I think about things,” he said.

“Me too!” I said, expressing joy in the excited version of my shrill voice, but I couldn’t possibly have let on the extent of my joy.

This 18-year-old aspiring computer scientist expressed what I find most riveting and redeeming about writing. It helps us think more deeply and concretely, helps us make sense of the world and our mental roles in it. It helps us figure out what we think about things.

Because this is my aim in writing, I don’t think blogging is a waste of time. Instead, it is a wonderful opportunity to focus my thoughts once each week. I’m not a very gifted gabber, am not good on the spot, don’t do my best thinking through the act of speaking. Blogging is a gift for an inarticulate speaker, a chance to have a conversation in which I have time to gather my thoughts, figure them out, and share them with a smart group of people every week. A key component of the conversation is finding out what you think about whatever is currently spewing. Read more »

As the elder of two sisters, I lost a fair few possessions when I went away to college nine years ago. My desk, my bike, and my bedroom were all given to my sister. I’m sure I said, at some point, that I wouldn’t need these things while I was gone, maybe even that I didn’t want them. Maybe I thought these kind-of-mine possessions would be treated the same way my VHS tapes were: they were family possessions that I didn’t have full ownership over, and never mind that some had been presents over the years.

The VHS tapes, obviously, quickly became obsolete. My bike I really didn’t miss during my college or graduate school years, though there were times, but it would be fairly old now, and I’d probably be looking to replace it anyway. My room doesn’t even belong to my family anymore, since we’ve moved. But my desk. I miss my desk.

I’ve been using a folding table for the past six or so years with some cheap plastic drawers for storage. Even the desk lamp I’ve been using doesn’t work quite right, what with its buzzing and flickering.

I’ve finally decided it’s time, and so I’ve started making a list of what characteristics and features my desk must have and what features is it that I just want. Some examples: it has to have ample under-desk space for my chair and legs, it has to have a good balance of storage (I need enough space to spread papers out, but I need at least some places to put stuff). My wants are a sleek design, an easy place to put a printer, and something that’s not too difficult to move.

What do you look for in a writing/computer desk? And does anyone have any recommendations?

Brief Preface:
I apologize for the 3 references to poo I make in this post. I guess something was in me that needed to get out (wordplay!)

For the love of all that is spotted - where on earth did her freckles go??

While window-shopping through some NYT articles on famous kissing photographs(what I’d originally planned to bark about) I got distracted by an advertisement.
A photograph of an attractive young woman appeared – before & after versions. In the after, her freckles had been erased.
Upon exploring the advertisement’s website – the majority of the “after” photos have their freckles erased. And noses changed, eye colors changed, wrinkles erased, even face shapes were altered. Seriously, when you move the mouse over this guys face – it completely changes! With every shift of your wrist you can hear advertisers whispering you’re not good enough…

The product is called Portrait Professional. The software claims to be “trained in human beauty, so you can add as much photo enhancement as required..”
Oh yeah? Well you know what I’m trained in? Smelling dog shit. And this website reeks of it. Read more »

Ah, the age-old question: Which came first, the egg, or the lovely white box the egg is placed in?

Over the past couple of years, in the process of earning my MFA, I’ve heard a couple of books mentioned over and over:  one is Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, and the other Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett.  A friend advised me, when I spoke of my interest in reading both, to read Grealy’s book first.  I took her advice and loved that book so much I immediately added it to my thesis list and studied it.  I was struck by the way Grealy used the writer-at-the-desk (that’s WAD.  It’s going to catch on.)  Her narrator was remarkably consistent at every stage and age, which is a remarkably difficult thing for a writer.  That was a couple of months ago, and this week I finished reading Truth & Beauty.  When I finished, and even throughout, I knew what I thought, but as always I wanted to hear what other people thought about it.  So I went in search of reviews of the book.  And I found plenty, but not the kind I was looking for.  I hoped for a discussion of the craft of memoir and how Patchett went about it, since she writes mostly fiction, and I hear it’s good fiction (I plan to read State of Wondersoon, which I think is her latest novel).  I wanted to know how Patchett approached writing a memoir differently than writing fiction, or if she found it much the same. I wanted to know what other people thought about the memoir and the writing.  Because it got plenty of attention, but again, not for the reasons I would have thought. 

Read more »

No groundbreaking news here.  But the truth of this blog post’s title has been re-affirmed by my stint at the Vermont Studio Center.  Now, I don’t want you thinking what is about to come is particularly grandiose or dramatic.  I’m building it up too much.

When applying for my residency, I spent much time trying to find the four weeks I could escape from real life with the least disruption.  Man plans, God laughs.  I don’t believe in God, though I do like Yiddish sayings, and there is a lot to laugh about when it comes to the plans of man, and women (doesn’t rhyme, but I strive to be PC, always!)

I knew coming here I’d miss the last week of  tennis camp, the entire US Open, and an amazing weekend at the Lake with good friends.  All sad things, but no way I’d give up my time here for those.  You can’t be at every party.  I learned that freshman year of college, and it’s true for life.  All you can do, is make the most of the parties–and movie nights, and walks through Central Park, and Mondays at the job–as you can.

But days after arriving, big events started taking place in now far-away places.  The adorable, old-lady-skinny-as-a-bag-of-bones, but still feisty cat Maggie, owned by my landlady and housemate passed away quietly in her sleep.  Maggie liked me more than any other cat, though I’m told she was one those cats, owned by women, with a thing for men.  Then, I found an email from an ex-girlfriend, an ex whom I’d stayed in touch because you never know, well, now I know that she is engaged.  And finally, I got an email from my mom that my granddad, her dad, just took a turn for the worse, and she is flying out to see him in Chicago. Read more »

i was reading a pretty interesting essay by malcolm gladwell on grantland earlier this week.  it was all about how nba teams aren’t really businesses—they just masquerade as them.  the idea being that no one really buys a professional basketball team because it’s a sound financial decision and they believe they’re going to make a shit ton of money on it.  people (usually white men) buy basketball teams because owning a basketball team is fucking awesome.  the evidence is in how much money these owners spend when they purchase the teams:

Forbes valued the Detroit Pistons at $360 million. They just sold for $420 million. Forbes valued the Wizards at $322 million. They just sold for $551 million. Forbes said that the Warriors were worth $363 million. They just sold for $450 million.

these dudes are spending way more money than the market says they should because, gladwell asserts (correctly, i think), that they get personal enjoyment out of owning the team that is worth literally tens of millions of dollars to them.  anyway, it’s an intriguing essay (with lots of factoid asides) and you should read it.  but the point of this post is that, on a much smaller scale, i think i get a psychic benefit from owning books i’ll never read.  and, in true gladwell style, i’m gonna go ahead and use that anecdote to extrapolate something about other people (i.e., that lots of other readers feel this way, too).

Read more »

…I swear that one of my old roommates has been written into this novel.

Evidence that I’m not crazy:

My old roommate kind of knows Kevin Brockmeier. Back when my roommate and I brewed tea and read lit mags all night, she  came across one of his stories that so captivated her, she decided to write him some fan mail. At the time, I thought she was crazy: Back then, someone published in a lit mag seemed famous. The writer had to have their shit together, their structure bulletproof, their characters perfectly flawed to get into a literary magazine. Name in print. Hundreds, maybe a thousand copies of their story floating around. Strangers reading their work in the middle of the night. She might as well have been writing a movie star.

You guessed it: he wrote back. What can I say? Writers like to write. They developed a semi-regular correspondance.  A few weeks ago, my friend was driving across the country and decided to have coffee with the author, finally meet in person. He gave her a copy of his new novel, The Illumination. When she stopped at my house, I read the jacket blurb, and it sounded good, so I picked up a copy of the novel. As I was reading, I came across a character description that sounded exactly like my friend.

Evidence that I am crazy: Read more »