today's found treasure

Found a copy of Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing at the Hospice Thrift Store today for $1.30, which made me excited to find such a treasure at such a price and sad to see any work by such a talent as Atwood for sale for such a pittance, even at a thrift store. I can't wait to read it.

Quote from random page turn:

"In all such magician or wizard or illusionist figures, the question of imposture, of trickery, of manipulation for power of one kind or another, is never very far away. It seems that when the artist tries for a sphere of power beyond that of his art, he's on shifty ground; but if he doesn't engage himself with the social world at all, he risks being simply irrelevant -- a doodler, a fabricator of scrimshaw, a fiddler with bric â brac, a recluse who spends his time figuring out how many angels can prance of the head of a pen."

Thought for the Day

Today's thought comes from composer Edgar Varese as spoken to a reported by modern dance legend Martha Graham.

"Everyone is born with genius but most perople only keep it a few minutes."

The Genius of Martha Graham

Amy Tan on creativity

Ran across a funny and delightful video of Amy Tan speaking on creativity at the 2008 TED conference. Tan speaks of how nothing can come out of something and how we create. I particularly connected to her thoughts about finding focus and seeing elements in the universe that may have been missed by us before but were always there and can lead us to create the work are mind/spirit wants us to create.

Fine Advice from Uncle Ray

I'm busy plotting the novel this weekend. I've stumbled upon an efficient means of laying out the plot, and I do mean "laying out." More will be revealed later.

I don't have much in the way of family. Both my parents were somewhat estranged from their siblings and we moved away from my relatives, mostly in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas, when I was twelve. I find family where I can. Sometimes, where I create it or imagine it to be. To this point, I'm a big Ray Bradbury fan. If I had an uncle I actually talked to, I'd want him to be like Ray Bradbury -- with lots of stories about strange carnivals, freaky characters, and life on Mars. So, I think of Bradbury as my Uncle Ray: a silver-haired gentleman wearing thick, black eyeglasses, a bit eccentric, and always with a story to tell.

This passage comes from one of my favorite books by Uncle Ray, on "releasing the creative genius within you," Zen in the Art of Writing.

"Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jump, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next -- life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was -- a whisper.

What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping."

Thanks for the fine advice, Uncle Ray.

Fear and Fiction

Fiction writing is not a place for the safe, for the easy, for the sweet and the shiny.

Tell the story you fear to tell.

Currently, I'm outlining chapters of my manuscript rewrite for Gems in the Rough (formerly Ruby Rising). I avoid stories about fathers. Mine was difficult, distant, demanding. I've spent quite some time and money trying not to think about fathers. So, I was struck when it was pointed out to me that my story partly was a story of father-child relationships. I spent a time denying it, looking to reframe the story. I wanted it to be about feminine power. Not that men in the story were secondary or weak, but, dang it, I was not going to write about fathers. After awhile I came to realize, central to the story is the nature of the father-child relationship. I won't be able to do this story justice by skirting around it.

It feels like I'm bracing myself to rip off a band-aid. I hope the skin's healed underneath.

Words on writing and the psyche:

"You have to sink way down to a level of hopelessness and desperation to find the book that you can write." - Susan Sontag

"Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation." - Graham Greene

"It's a nervous work. The state that you need to write in is the state that others are paying large sums to get rid of." - Shirley Hazzard.

Thought for the Day

Writing is a process, NOT a product.

A bit from postmodernist writer Donald Barthelme on his process:

I write a lot - every day, seven days a week - and I throw a lot away. Sometimes I think I write to throw away; it's a process of distillation.

Geektastic!

from Comics Briefly 5/25/10 Publisher's Weekly online

Super Size Me Creator Does Comic-Con Documentary

Morgan Spurlock, creator of the Oscar-nominated documentary Super Size Me will be directing a new documentary about San Diego Comic Con entitled Comic-Con Episode Four: A Fan's Hope. Produced by the geek-culture dream team of Stan Lee, Joss Whedon and Harry Knowles, the documentary will follow seven fans on their journeys to and through the 2010 San Diego Comic-Con.

I love documentaries, Morgan Spurlock, Joss Whedon, and comic conventions. I'm so geeked out it's silly.