January 2012
5 posts
Dreams
I keep on having dreams about failed marriages. Somebody make them stop.
“Anything, it’s a muscle. Creativity is a muscle and the more you exercise...”
– Andy Bothwell. I got my writing box. I got my brand new candle (smelling of moonflower and neroli). I got my Hotel Monteleone pen and books on NOLA. I got this.
“I don’t want to die
without any scars.”
– Chuck Palahniuk (via hearstothemute)
“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who...”
– Chuck Palahniuk (via samantha-maria)
December 2011
10 posts
“A book, too, can be a star, ‘explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh...”
– Madeleine L’Engle (via -daydream-believer-)
Top 26 Posts
Beginning at the beginning and preceding in a forward fashion…
1. Writing the Right Words
2. A Timeline of Hair
3. Allergies
4. Question.
5. The Days of Birth
6. Talent
7. Breathless
8. Day 2-Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered Am I
9. Day 5-The Obituary
10. Spoiler Alert
11. Paging Hope
12. Writing
13. Something Beautiful
14. Feeling It In My Toes
15. Soul Home
16. All...
“The banjo is to music what bacon is to food. Everything goes better with it.”
– from VH1’s Top 40 of 2011 (via uberbethy)
Listen
A Kiss Like Guilt
When she looked back to face him, she wasn’t as surprised as she should have been that his lips were descending towards her’s. The kiss felt like a hot air balloon: a rootless, rising feeling somewhere near her stomach that almost made her panic. The kiss wasn’t sweet like chocolate and it definitely wasn’t innocent. It was tangy with guilt but with smoky, intoxicating...
“First, try to be something, anything, else. A movie star/astronaut. A movie...”
– Lorrie Moore, read more http://www.ninetymeetingsinninetydays.com/lorriemooore.html
You know you're a lit nerd when as a child you...
Yeah, but that didn’t stop me from playing in mine. I had all of my favorite books stacked next to my shoes and plenty of pillows to stay comfortable. I snuck in Capri Suns and animal crackers in case I got hungry and made more permanent plans for a mini-fridge. I insisted that my closet was sufficient for all of my living needs but my mom told me I couldn’t sleep in my closet; in...
November 2011
3 posts
NaNoWriMo
So it’s not so much writing as it is massive editing with some writing sprinkled in. But seriously: I forgot to take an original page count but the word count went from 91,000 to 62,000. That’s a lot of words to find unnecessary. Wrapping it up this weekend, queries next week. Round #563.
October 2011
11 posts
“We were bringing harmonicas to yoga class
saying, “If I’m gonna breathe this...”
– Andrea Gibson (via loverofstories)
An Anthropological Study of The Girl Who Didn't...
The following sees to be a classic among mystery novels, crime shows, and situations of investigation:
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, but whoever was here, they left in a hurry.”
If I got out of this tub (because I was in the middle of a bubble bath, naturally) and walked out my door, what would they say when they came looking for me and found my things left...
From Last Night
The bass from the speakers thrummed across my collarbones and landed in the hollow at the base of my neck, settling there until I couldn’t tell where the music began and where my heartbeat ended.
Language
He spoke the language of shoulders. He understood the nuances of shrugs better than words. He communicated best by lifts and shifts and shimmies of joints and muscle and bone. Strangers standing next to him in line at restaurants or sitting on the bus would feel compelled to lay their heads on his shoulders, if only for a minute. Mothers would sheepishly pass off their squalling babies to him and...
Mixed Metaphors
I’m terrible at mixing metaphors. I do believe that I get it (like most other things) from my mother. Why use one when you can use two that, for the most part, mean the same thing? The joke is on you + the egg is on your face? The joke is on your face. Flying by the seat of your pants + flying off the handle? Flying by the handle of your seat.
Sometimes, when I write, I get my ideas less from...
Measurements
He had to consider that the directions were by someone whose sense of direction was terribly skewed. If she said that she was 10 feet from the door, it was possible that she was on the opposite side of the room, though it could also be true that she was right inside the threshold. If she said turn left in 30 yards, you would most likely pass the turn and have to pull at least two U-turns.
...
4 tags
September 2011
10 posts
Spain
It was our last night in Valencia and we went to the beach and sat in the sand on the Mediterranean and there was a full moon and we prayed the rosary. As we said the words over and over, ‘Hail Mary, full of grace,’ I felt the grace. I felt full of it. We took taxis home and our cabbie spoke maybe two words of English. And we rolled our windows down because the weather was so nice. And...
The Long Road Home: Lightning
“Well, for lots of reasons, I suppose,” Mom would shrug. “Sometimes, it’s a wakeup call. It reminds people of the fragility of life, that they shouldn’t be wasting their days on things that don’t matter. Or sometimes—my favorite—it happens when people fall in love.”
And then, because she was a mom, she used it as a teaching moment. “There will be times in your life, girls,” she warned us, “that...
Southern
My blouse has a cotton-boll print pattern. I smell like magnolias and my mouth tastes like peaches. I attend a nationally-ranked university steeped in tradition, where seniors wear boots, kisses are stolen at touchdowns, and you never ever walk under the 100 year old live oak on Academic Plaza by yourself. My eyes are as brown as the Mississippi and my hair has been baked blonde by the hot...
2 tags
“You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with...”
– Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (via bookoasis)
The Long Road Home: Consequences
We were sitting in the den one Sunday afternoon, watching the races on the Speed channel. Before I knew what possessed me, I blurted out, “What would you say if I ran away?”
Very slowly his hand moved for the remote and it seemed to take him a lifetime for his finger to find the mute button. “I think,” he said slowly with his eyes on the TV. “I think I would say that sometimes when you...
August 2011
13 posts
The Long Road Home: Alice
I hadn’t always wanted to be a runaway. It wasn’t something I had dreamt about, some milestone I wanted to make before I went off to college, like backpacking across Europe. When the urge had seized me to leave home I had spent many sleepless hours agonizing over the issue, wondering what had shaped me to this point of restlessness.
It had come in short bursts, a speculative...
Words.
Inundated.
Gratuitous.
Felicitations.
Elegance.
Fortunate.
Lackluster.
Fickle.
Compendium.
Dizzy.
Flourish.
Murmured.
4 tags
5 tags
“A big book is like a serious relationship; it requires a commitment. Not only...”
– Mike Foley (via cinderellainrubbershoes)
We just completely remodeled our bathroom
and I kind of just want to hang out in there. Just a me thing?
Victoria, Texas
There’s something about going home that is different from going any other place, in Texas or otherwise. Things move at a different pace and the focus is different; in College Station it’s a very young town with everything centering around the university, whether you’re a student or not. Coming home makes me feel like a better writer and reminds me of all of the things I want for...
Spain
I can’t stop making lists. Lots and lots of lists. I’m waking up in the middle of the night to add more things to the lists. These are usually nonsensical things like ‘prayer’, ‘chicken’, and ‘cups’: all good things but not things I actually need for traveling abroad.
Sometimes the lists are super intense, a step-by-step of what do and in what...
