Monthly Archives: October 2010

marking your spot

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Although I cannot read a book without a pencil or a pen in my hand, I cringe at the thought of folding down a page. So when I read, in addition to something to write with, I must have something to mark my spot with. I prefer an actual bookmark, but also use postcards, envelopes, or a folded review. My collection of bookmarks lives in a pottery vase on my side table, where I can easily pluck one out.

I love this column at Bibliobuffet: ”On Marking Books.” In late September, Lauren Roberts, the editor at Bibliobuffet, wrote about a bookmarks festival and that she was giving away bookmarks! All you had to do was email. So I did and that photo is a sampling of what fell out of my envelope. She might still have some left…Her recent essay is on a cheese-y bookmark. Ha! Take a look at it.

Here are close-ups of some of the bookmarks Lauren sent me:

But wait, there’s more…

If you want to pay, I discovered @calligbyerin on Twitter. She makes bookmarks to order with your favorite lines from books. Here are two I ordered:

I include a photo of one of my bookmarks with each month on the updates page.

Do you have a favorite bookmark or a favorite way to mark your spot?

brief

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Julian Barnes wrote Nothing To Be Frightened Of, a memoir about death, “in order to make the fear familiar.” I’m not sure he succeeds, but he does write with a compelling “matter-of-factness” about the subject:

I suspect that if I get any sort of decent dying time…

Because of the How We Spend Our Days series, I wanted to share this story that he recounts. A biographer friend of Barnes’ wanted to write about his life. The biographer’s husband joked that it would be a short book because all of JB’s days were the same:

Got up. Wrote book. Went out, bought bottle of wine. Came home, cooked dinner. Drank wine.

two days

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Yesterday started off rainy and ended with beautiful fall blue skies. And yesterday I started the day with two packets to turn in for this semester and ended the day with only one remaining.

Today it’s very coppery and auburn outside. No rain but no blue anywhere either. Maybe that’s still to come. And today I’m taking it easy: a little bit of this and a little bit of that.

October’s almost gone–each day zooming by like a page I’ve turned in a book. Underline this. Try to remember.

Yesterday I finished my essay. I printed the next section of the novel. I wrote the letter. I accomplished.

Today I’m listening to Mumford & Sons and The Mountain Goats. Over and over again. I’m putting discarded drafts in the shredder. I’m collecting my sticky notes and making a list. I’m responding to comments (sorry to be so late), checking in on Twitter and Facebook. I’m re-shelving the stack of books I used for my essay on narrative distance in beginnings.

Jim Harrison’s “The Woman Lit by Fireflies” slides off my stack and opens to these words:

A half-dozen fireflies had gathered in the darkness around her green cave, and the tiny beams seemed to trace the convolutions of her thought.

Yesterday was filled with purpose. Today I’m letting one thing lead to another…

the wake of forgiveness

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The Wake of Forgiveness, the debut novel by Bruce Machart–officially out as of yesterday from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt–has a big storyteller narrator who knows how to describe sweeping panoramas and then move seamlessly in for a close-up. We follow an owl for three paragraphs, then zoom down to a man trying to extricate himself from a fence. On the next page, a rider on horseback notices the man by the fence.

The Wake of Forgiveness has a beautiful, symmetrical structure:

  1. A Winter Harvest: February 1895 (Karel being born)
  2. Turning the Earth: March 1910 (horse race)
  3. A Breeding of Nettles; December 1924 (Karel and Sophie and the baby)
  4. A Sacrament of Animals: March 1910 (Karel and Graciela)
  5. Meander Scars: May 1898 (the photo of their mother lost)
  6. The Blind Janus: December 1924 (the baby and the 2 brothers the conflict escalates and the fire)
  7. Testaments to Seed: March 1910 (Karel and Graciela)
  8. A Reaping of Smoke and Water: December 1924 (it all comes together)
  9. A New, Warm Offering: February 1895 (the wet nurse arriving)

But what was most amazing were the sentences–both long:

Alive in Karel’s mind is only a whisper of suspicion, one muted by the astonishing beauty of what he’s seen, and he smiles at the fortune of having borne witness to something so graceful and yet so capable and strong, to a girl turned woman before his eyes, to that woman flashing her white teeth at him, smiling because, for her, as for Karel, there is nothing quite so thrilling as a race run on horseback, nothing filled more with wonder, nothing so able to convince you that you are flesh and blood and alive in the world that offers so few joys other than this running.

and short:

The rain needles his good eye, and the sky is dark enough to suggest that the moon has orphaned the heavens.

I heard Bruce read from The Wake of Forgiveness last March in Italy (he was the Sirenland Fellow). On Saturday, he’ll be reading at Cornerstone Books in Salem, MA. The rest of his author tour is online. If you’re in the area, go out and make Bruce welcome. I highly recommend this first novel.

See also this Sunday’s review in the L.A. Times.

it’s been another year

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It’s been another year and I missed it–completely never even thought about it until Friday night when I was visiting another blog, reading a post about how that week was that blog’s two-year anniversary–still not thinking about it–and then at the end of the post, this question: how long have you been blogging?

and I thought well, how long?

I remembered celebrating one year. And then I thought, surely another year has not gone by already.

has it?

yes, it has. September 4th was two years. Wow. That was fast.

And it was a big year: I started back to school for my MFA in creative writing. I also started what is turning out to be another novel. I saw Jackson Browne, Carole King, and James Taylor in concert. September seemed to be all about Infinite Jest. January about reading like a writer. In the spring I was traveling and then recovering from traveling. May was all about Annie Dillard and The Maytrees. July I went back to camp, and August was the mini-David Jauss festival. Both my novels placed in the 2010 Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition: my first novel, The Painting Story, on the Short List for Finalists, and my second novel, Between Here and Gone, as a Semi-Finalist. We’ve now had a whole year of the How We Spend Our Days series. Also, I updated the look of the blog and added new links and new pages.

So here’s the annual look back at the words, still hoping to see some sort of pattern emerging. I’ve linked to a few of my favorite posts, but if you see another one you’d like to explore, just pop the words into the search rectangle on the sidebar or go to the archives for that month, also on the sidebar. If you have a favorite post, I’d love to know which one it is.

A big thank you to all the readers out there. And a really big thank you to all those who posted the 1560 comments (double the number from the first year). You have made Catching Days better than it could have been on its own. As you read the words below, I wish for you, as always, fond memories and new discoveries…

***

September 2009: A Day in the Life of Dani Shapiro-those were the days-wage peace-the splitting sound-from creede-finished-infinite autumn-the germ of everything-the library, and step on it-yellow letters from a shoebox on a rainy pm-the empty armchair

October 2009: A Day in the Life of Adam Braver-unfamiliar-wildlives-still playing with books-poemcrazy-to be read-12 keys to stronger writing from Annie Dillard via Alexander Chee-eucalyptus-a practice-i give

November 2009: A Day in the Life of Sheri Reynolds-the sweet in-between-waiting for me-snooping-what’s Jackson Browne got to do with it-writing retreat-a brief history of time-winter spring summer fall-abandoned things

December 2009: A Day in the Life of Elizabeth Benedict-books to trees-what have I done with my life-the signal-the ordinary day-it is all just shopping-send in the elves-Christmas magic-a new book bag-VCFA visuals: 1st 3 days

January 2010: A Day in the Life of Abigail Thomas-filled up & emptied out-an equal stillness-frozen-the first residency-reading like a writer: part 1-reading like a writer: part 2:taking it to a new level-reading like a writer: part 3: questions to ask-reading like a writer: part 4: reading a story-reading like a writer: part 5: taking a story apart

February 2010: A Day in the Life of Alexander Chee-over the weekend at sea island-devotion-lines connect in thin ways-from santa fe-from the jersey shore-not firmly based-not that i’m counting-hidden from view

March 2010: A Day in the Life of Miciah Bay Gault-rearrangement-let me in-the days cottages-reasons to live-i’m in italy-another last night in rome-madame this is not your day

April 2010: A Day in the Life of Robin Black-starting with the moment-no longer what I want-the conversation-evidence-iworld-four women and a sheep-the water is wide-what it is like-the birthday of an author-if I loved you

May 2010: A Day in the Life of Daniel Asa Rose-from their flat, yellowed pages-the maytrees-time to adapt again-the person underneath-so this morning-6 things I learned from Annie Dillard-structure echoes content

June 2010: A Day in the Life of Lucia Orth-framing the past-four poems-more of this world-rejoyce-the old swing set-day dreams-core-some saturday morning fun-mrs. somebody somebody-back in vermont again

July 2010: A Day in the Life of Tracy Winn-the second residency-places that call us back-hoping to discover-proof-writing my way there-my name is mary sutter-staying in the room-not searching for structure-i cannot get you close enough-a life in stories-odd disjointed pieces at strange times of the day

August 2010: A Day in the Life of Diane Lefer-because the detail is divine-you are not here-alone with all that could happen-crossing borders-out my window: 8/17/10-out my window: 8/18/10-toes-look again-catching lives-jane’s passions-Eudora Welty’s potato salad

***

During the next twelve months, I hope even more of you will join the conversation. I’m looking forward to it!

 

on its way to full

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So Thursday morning was luxuriously wide open and the plan was to write a blog post and read about 50 pages of the novel I’m working on. I read the first paragraph of the novel about ten times and then put the papers down. Okay, blog post. Nothing. I answered a few emails and then found myself staring at some website–not reading or thinking or even looking out the window. Just zonked.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I’d been working on my essay for this next packet–on narrative distance in beginnings–how to choose whether to begin with “It was a dark and stormy night” or “a woman”or “Ms. Last” or “Angelina Last” or “Angelina” or “she.” Now I had time to work on other things, but it seemed as if there was nothing left up there to work with.

So on Thursday morning when, out of the blue, a friend called to see if I wanted to go to a movie at 1:30, I knew that was exactly what I needed–to get out of this room and away from this screen. To get lost in another world. I couldn’t even remember the last movie I’d seen. The rest of the afternoon, I listened to music and read. It was as if I could see the needle moving past 1/4, past 1/2, and on its way to full.

october

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DSC00210

"October" by Annie Dillard

In The Maytrees, Annie Dillard wrote,

She herself hoped to paint, soberly, when she got old.

In 2009, a week before I headed to Provincetown, I read in The Provincetown Banner that, at the age of 64, Annie Dillard was doing just that. Although she usually painted between books, now she was giving up writing for painting. After arriving in P-town, I visited the gallery where her work was being shown and brought home this small painting. It hangs in my study. With a slight turn of my head to the left, I can see it. Called “October,” it’s the view from Pleasant Point Town Landing.

There’s a line that connects writers and painters. In August I wrote about writer James Baldwin crediting painter Beauford Delaney with teaching him how to see and how to trust what he saw. Henri Matisse wrote often about painting. (Matisse on Art by Jack Flam). With “The Dance” at The Barnes Foundation, Matisse gave the viewer only part of the picture to free him to imagine so much more. As writers, we want to give the reader this same freedom. We want to suggest what lies beyond the page. Robert Boswell writes brilliantly about this half-known world we’re trying to create.

Maureen Doallas also wrote about Annie Dillard’s move to painting at her blog Writing Without Words. On Annie Dillard’s website, you can see more of her work, and you can also purchase limited edition prints with the proceeds going to Partners in Health.