my photo published in this week’s issue of electric city, page 53.
-ag
To follow literary fashion, to write for money, to censor your true feelings and thoughts or adopt ideas because they’re popular requires a writer to suppress the very promptings that got him or her writing in the first place. When you started writing, in high school or college, it wasn’t out of a wish to be published, or to be successful, or even to win a lovely award like the one you’re receiving tonight. It was in response to the wondrousness and humiliation of being alive. Remember?
via Jeffrey Eugenidess Advice to Young Writers : The New Yorker.
another etsy.com treasury…
smoky spicy burnt orange zing crackle toast to late autumn… (paprika is my favorite; smoked paprika is the bomb).
Really loving this original polymer clay piece I threw on at the last minute today.
I made the leaves with summer beach scenes in mind but the bleached colors look sweet in winter light as well, methinks.
Seems like the front page of Etsy gets “whiter” every time I look at it.
Inspired by the white modernist sculpture I featured, I decided to literally create a collection of white on white, focusing on texture, with a holiday gift theme.
Whiskers on Kittens:
http://www.etsy.com/treasury/NTYwMjc3M3wyNzIxMDY4Mjc3/whiskers-on-kittens
I’m listening to the audio book of Donald Barthleme’s Sixty Stories collection. As I walked into “the news factory” where I work today I was tickled by the following line and felt compelled to look it up to perhaps tweet it.
“And when the sculptor Aristide Maillol went into the printing business he made the paper by chewing the fibers himself. That’s dedication.”
Searching as many of the words as I could remember in the above quote, I found an entire .pdf of a collection titled “Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts,” that contains this plus a bunch of the other stories I’ve been trying to wrap my head around while walking about town or riding the bus or laying in bed or making cookies and listening to the audiobook.
Some writing can just be listened to casually; other writing needs to be seen with the eyes. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to see what I have heard.
But first… the other kind of work.
-ag
Nathan Englander on writing “what you know”:
“When I was dreaming of being a writer from suburbia, I thought, what am I going to do, write novels about going to the mall? It took me a long time to think it through and I should’ve rethought the advice of write what you know. That doesn’t mean write what you experience. It’s about emotional knowledge. Like have you ever known sadness? Have you ever known longing? Have you ever wanted for something? Have you ever felt loved? You know, I don’t think there are any stories that you can’t write.”
via Committing to memory with author Nathan Englander « AZ Jewish Post.
“Tangentially, its possible that grunge has been temporarily or permanently exiled based on what it begat. Who wants to claim Pearl Jam or Soundgarden as an influence after a parade of Creed and other nu-rock mutants?”
Artistic revolt, innovation, experiment should not be met with hostility. They may disturb an established order or an artificial conventionality, but they may rescue us from death in life, from robot life, from boredom, from loss of the self, from enslavement.
via Anaïs Nin on Embracing the Unfamiliar and Encouraging Minority Writers | Brain Pickings.
Gregarious Expressions 