Friday, January 27, 2012

MN Book Award nominations

Look! One of my besties is in the same category as me for MN Book Award nominations.

Go, Becky, go! And you all--read Chasing Allie Cat. You must. It's brilliant.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

We beg to differ

My pal, Karen Babine, wrote a thoughtful response to the Huffington Post "critic" Anis Shivani, who calls creative writing "therapy" and not literature, among other slights and insults. Read her excellent post here.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

What can you do with 100,000 pushpins?


This image is from the documentary ART AND COPY. It's in an advertising agency office and was created with 100,000 clear pushpins. A good motto, no?

Monday, January 16, 2012

Research, revolutionized

I'm deep into research for my latest Capstone assignment about earthquakes. I continue to be amazed at how technology makes research easier and easier each year.

Today I'm researching information about the March 11, 2011 Japan earthquake/tsunami. I like to use books as my primary sources for these Capstone assignments. I still view edited books as having the most reliable information, though I obviously use vetted government and education Web sites as well.

Up until a year or so ago, it would have been difficult to find books about events that happened only in the previous few months. But I went on Amazon.com today and found a couple of books about the Japan quake that have been published by traditional publishers. However, better than that, now there's a few Kindle books that were published after the quake. The quality of these may not all be fantastic, but I found a couple of first-person accounts that are promising. Before the advent of e-books, these authors could have put their thoughts and writings on the Web. But for me to find that information would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. On Amazon, these Kindle books show up with all the other books about the quake. And in about 10 seconds, I can have the book on my iPhone, whereas I had to submit an interlibrary loan request for the hard-copy books.

What do you like best about e-books?

Friday, January 13, 2012

John Irving interview

I read an interview last night with John Irving. I'm looking forward to his new book in May, IN ONE PERSON, about a bisexual man struggling through life. Irving says some awesome things in this interview, mostly about how he's irritated with this obsession people have with asking or assuming his writing is autobiographical. He says readers have less imagination these days; they are less likely to take that leap with an author into a fictional realm.

Do you agree? I admit I fall into that trap while reading a novel--wondering what is drawn from real life and what is completely fictional. It's almost like a game to me.

I don't agree with Irving when he says that real life and events can be improved upon through fiction, or that memoir lacks the imagination of novels. But I love how writers all have different perspectives on how to tell a story. Some will choose to tell it through nonfiction, others will choose to completely fictionalize it.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

A messy process


The writing process is messy. Therefore, I have decided my office should reflect that process. Here it is, in all its glory. You know what? I don't even really feel like cleaning it up. I'm in the throes of one book revision, and getting the urge to start writing another project that's been on the back-burner. Revision is messy; crafting new material is messy, too.

I know where everything is in this office. Rest assured my entire home doesn't look like this. My office is upstairs, walled off from the rest of the room. Clutter does tend to creep up in other parts of the home, but in the more used areas I do a fairly good job of keeping it under control. Today I cleaned the bathrooms, vacuumed and cleaned the kitchen, so if my office is messy so be it.

What does your writing/creative area look like? Can you work amid clutter, or do you need everything in its place?