Rarely Likable

Bigass Bucket

Interesting dialogue (bloglogue?) about the lows of writing going on between Sandra Scoppettone and Lee Goldberg.

Dzanc Books will publish an annual best of the web anthology.  Sheesh...is there any mountain of awesome that Dan et al aren't willing to tackle?

Tayari on "new" versus "young" writers. I like to think that writing is one of the relatively few professions where age is not a bad thing. At the age of 37 myself, I'm finally at the point where the whole Twenty Five Year Old New Writer thing doesn't bother me on a personal level. Finally.

If you get Entertainment Weekly, you know that Stephen King likes to natter on about Harry Potter on the last page sometimes. Final installment, here.

I was relieved to see I'm not the only person who can't think about writing and parenting without invoking Club Penguin. (My kid got some Webkinz for her birthday last week, though, and I suspect they will make Club Penguin seem downright benign by comparison.) I usually don't write about kids, but there is one in my current project. If he hangs out at Club Penguin, I don't know about it yet.

New MFA Week at Hot Metal Bridge. Almost makes me wish I was doing it all over again. So does this idea, actually.

Why my current project is in longhand.

Why I need to be very embarrassed about my candle fetish.

More on the Ann Patchett/Clemson hooha (this is of course very shallow of me and NO ONE should come here for fashion advice, but I LOVE the top she's wearing in the photo).

I love me some preview.

Howard Junker talks about ghetto fiction, and he doesn't mean what you think he means.

And finally: I am in love with the idea behind this question.

Friday, I'm in linkbucket!

This is it for me until Monday... too many other things going on, and I need writing time on top of that. Badly. VERY BADLY.

Someone is going to put up a nice long exhaustive-bordering-on-compulsive recap post for the Maud Newton/Rupert Thomson event tonight, right? Some of us are twitching, here.

Next week is David Leavitt week at TEV.

Yet again, I am insanely jealous of Tod.

The MFA Blog is going through a minor identity crisis, and therefore another wave of interestingness. There are some not-to-be-missed posts, like this one.

Every year in August, John Baker goes on blog vacation but curates a series of guest posts about writing and craft. This year's question: What phases are involved in the creation of a text?  As usual, the resulting posts are really fascinating in their diversity and similarity. My contribution got there late because writing it was illuminating to me -- I wrote it just before I left for the PGWC, and it really helped me there to have thought about some of those issues. I'll throw a self-pimp up when it's up, but in the meantime check out the rest. Great stuff.

Have a great weekend, all.

One of the things I'm working on right now features a kid's birthday party, so imagine my happiness at finding Birthdays Without Pressure (via). The whole question of kid birthday parties is such a minefield, apparently, that you can't get parents to share their experiences but you can get them to anonymously rank their states.  I think Connecticut is lowballed, actually.

I also like their examples of extreme parties, which invokes one of my guiltiest of guilty pleasures, My Super Sweet 16. There is a DVD box set for that show and I have to say...I lingered at the display in Target. I even picked it up and read the back. But there are some places where even I cannot go.

Totally unrelated, Rebecca Curtis talks about "Sea Oak."  If you've ever heard me idiot-babble about that story, read this for a good translation.

Here's the worst part: I will use them all.

For as long as I've lived in Connecticut I've wanted to visit the Yankee Candle compound in South Deerfield, Massachusetts. So on my way home from this, I saw a sign for it on 91 and thought I might as well take a break from singing at the top of my lungs.

Even though mall-sized Yankee Candle shops typically leave me reeling with their collective smell, this place didn't have the same effect...I think maybe because they also manage to jam in a ton of other crap for sale, too. Imagine that front waiting area of Cracker Barrel exploding into something ten times its usual size, and you've got Super Yankee Candle.

This is one of three rows of votive candles.

As I've said before, I've got a candle problem. So I loaded the hell up.

I can never decide if I prefer candles that are more specific interpretations of what they say on the label (e.g., Vanilla Lime or Sweet Strawberry) or ones that are even more of an homage. For example, I've now got a candle with Wedding Day scent.  It has a sort of starchy linen, churchy smell...which is cheating, really, because Yankee Candle has about six other candles that somehow deal with natural fabrics. Wouldn't it make more sense to whip something up with hairspray and sweat, maybe faint notes of rose and Tums? I'm not sure what the hell Midsummer's Night is supposed to smell like. But firework smoke, swamp water and spilled beer would have been good.

I'm back.

I am really not fit to resume blogging again just yet, but wanted to let the world (and myself) know that I am, in fact, returned and alive.

In the meantime, I am still bummed that I won't be able to squee in the city on Friday.

After this bucket, I'm (temporarily) outta here.

Finished up The Interloper, and I really enjoyed it. As is my habit, I went looking for author  interviews and was amply rewarded.

Rupert Thomson squee alert, this is so not a drill and I so will not be able to venture away from the suburban lair that day. Dammit!

F. Scott figuring out where Gatsby's money comes from.

The next book I intend to track down.

Meghan on the lack of women protags in movies, because this has always driven me crazy, too.

Rhian on rejection and a blog I'm also digging.

And finally...I'm going to step delicately around the MFA stuff in The Atlantic and point you instead toward Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty, and Clemson University, because this boggles my mind in a way that goes beyond Typical Liberal Outrage. Lucy Grealy did a reading at SLC for Autobiography of a Face -- this was before Oprah went bananas over it -- and even just sitting in a smallish room with her for a little while was pretty memorable for me. Between that quick impression and some other factors, Patchett's memoir felt familiar. And here's a large university whose giant orange pawprints I see on SUVs all the time, completely freaking out over it. (And isn't Clemson where Goat takes place? Now THAT is some scary reading.)

STATUS: Hiatus again?

I'm going to the Vermont College Postgraduate Writers' Conference on Wednesday, and I'll be back next Tuesday. While I'm bringing the laptop and the cell, all of the coverage maps up there spell out Hey Kid, Looks Like This Could Be Digital Detox Too. 

So here's the deal: If you'd like a postcard from the Green Mountain State, send your address to gnomeloaf (at) gmail (dot) com by Wednesday morning. If you like, you may also request one of the following formats: poorly drawn cartoon, haiku, flash fiction, or nonfiction.  And don't be shy. Really. There's a reason I look forward to helping my kid with valentines and birthday party invitations, and I don't even get to write mean little haikus on those.

When I return, things will pick up around here a bit. For reals this time.

STATUS: It's August already?

Still trying to work out this project. I talk about it enough that people are actually starting to ask me what it's about, which never happens. The bad thing? I still am not totally sure, much less in a position to talk about it. "Uh...stuff."

This time around, I've very acutely noticed something: When I'm working on something, in a subconscious way it becomes sort of a beacon in real life.  I'll have some stupid little social or personal problem, I'll start the story, and the real life problem that I'm also picking over will begin shifting, changing...and usually, though not always, resolving.

Which leads to this...I wonder what Robert Olen Butler's been working on lately.   

I read A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain not long after it came out and loved it. I also dug The Deuce and Tabloid Dreams. But every time I've read an interview with him, I've thought well, he's  articulating things about the writing process that I personally would just as soon leave alone.

That crossed my mind yet again when I read the widely circulated Why My Wife Is Leaving Me for Ted Turner (Yes, That Ted Turner) email. I can see why anyone would write  it, and it's tempting to think that Butler's been too busy cranking out well-regarded literary fiction to pay heed to what my sister calls the Internet Is Your Front Yard Doctrine.

But I wonder if it has more to do with Butler's apparently usual modus operandi: he tried to pick this problem apart for what it was, and then take that to his usual audience. Only this time, it's real life -- and the answers here can be far more awkward, far less satisfactory.*

(Thanks to Gwenda for reminding me that I wanted to talk about this. Otherwise, you probably would've gotten an entry about Sean Preston's barely thwarted veneers.)

*All of this makes me sound like I don't appreciate the fact that this is serious literary camp. I do! I do!  I'd rather ponder the Ted Turner? Really? any day of the week then read about another DUI in the TMZ.