to get my hands on some old leather and take a crack at leatherbound books. This little video from Etsy is responsible. Margaux of theblackspotbooks is doing some amazing work. I'm just not sure where to find any old chairs. Though there is a purse or two in my closet I won't be using anymore...where are my scissors?
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Screaming with my mouth shut
I can't write. Nothing. My inner editors are crowding out my poems. They stand around poking fun and casting stones at every single word that I put down. It's loud. And it's driving me crazy. I don't know how to shut them off. I've considered an exorcism. I cast them out into the bodies of goldfish, swimming aimlessly, sucking in water, no noise except for the trickling of a filter in the background.
But they come back. They always come back.
But they come back. They always come back.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Cutie or Cruelty?
I can't decide. But she's certainly a precious little girl. And at least she looks more or less like the three-year-old she is.
Believe it or not, at least half the song is in English.
Believe it or not, at least half the song is in English.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
What it is and how to write it
I've been geeking out lately and reading several books on the craft and practice of writing. (And buying an embarrassing number of books in general...I wants them).
Last night I worked my way through Lynda Barry's What It Is. It's a beautiful graphic-novel type book chock full o' colorful illustrations and collages (I particularly love her magic cephalopod). It is part autobiographical recounting of her journey into art, part sharing of her process, and part guide to nurturing your own creativity (complete with activity book!). And it's definitely worth a look. She poses some interesting questions. Here are few of them:
Is a dream autobiography or fiction?
After we read a book is it inside of us?
Do memories have mass?
Those are the kinds of questions worth pondering.
Another book I'm currently in the middle of is Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider. I'm not sure what I expected when I picked it up, but it's one of the best purchases I've made lately. It's a hefty tome, some 380 pages including the suggested reading list. I'm early on in it still, but it's one of the most comprehensive books on writing I've ever seen, and I appreciate how Schneider is able to make well-informed suggestions on how to tackle writing while simultaneously recognizing that not one thing works for everyone. She repeatedly encourages her reader to adapt exercises and suggestions to their own style. Here are a few little bits from this book:
"Everyone is a writer. You are a writer. All over the world, in every culture, human beings have carved into stone, written on parchment, birch bark, or scraps of paper, and sealed into letters--their words. Those who do not write stories and poems on solid surfaces tell them, sing them, and, in so doing, write them on the air. Creating words is our continuing passion. We dream stories; we make up stories, poems, songs, and tell them to ourselves. All alone, we write."
"Craft is essential; I will work all my life at craft. But craft is not the same thing as art. Craft is the knowledge of how to mix blue with yellow on my palette, but art is the courage to dip the brush into the paint and lay it on the canvas in my own way."
And with that, I'm off to bed to sleep away this headache and dream of becoming a selkie. Yes. I watched The Secret of Roan Inish tonight for the first time since I was a little girl. It was delightful.
Last night I worked my way through Lynda Barry's What It Is. It's a beautiful graphic-novel type book chock full o' colorful illustrations and collages (I particularly love her magic cephalopod). It is part autobiographical recounting of her journey into art, part sharing of her process, and part guide to nurturing your own creativity (complete with activity book!). And it's definitely worth a look. She poses some interesting questions. Here are few of them:
Is a dream autobiography or fiction?
After we read a book is it inside of us?
Do memories have mass?
Those are the kinds of questions worth pondering.
Another book I'm currently in the middle of is Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider. I'm not sure what I expected when I picked it up, but it's one of the best purchases I've made lately. It's a hefty tome, some 380 pages including the suggested reading list. I'm early on in it still, but it's one of the most comprehensive books on writing I've ever seen, and I appreciate how Schneider is able to make well-informed suggestions on how to tackle writing while simultaneously recognizing that not one thing works for everyone. She repeatedly encourages her reader to adapt exercises and suggestions to their own style. Here are a few little bits from this book:
"Everyone is a writer. You are a writer. All over the world, in every culture, human beings have carved into stone, written on parchment, birch bark, or scraps of paper, and sealed into letters--their words. Those who do not write stories and poems on solid surfaces tell them, sing them, and, in so doing, write them on the air. Creating words is our continuing passion. We dream stories; we make up stories, poems, songs, and tell them to ourselves. All alone, we write."
"Craft is essential; I will work all my life at craft. But craft is not the same thing as art. Craft is the knowledge of how to mix blue with yellow on my palette, but art is the courage to dip the brush into the paint and lay it on the canvas in my own way."
And with that, I'm off to bed to sleep away this headache and dream of becoming a selkie. Yes. I watched The Secret of Roan Inish tonight for the first time since I was a little girl. It was delightful.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
This Craft of Verse*
I've been reading Borges' This Craft of Verse this week, slowly working my way through chapters on the odd lunch break here and there. Thought I'd share a few of the best bits:
On poetry in general:
"Poetry is not alien--poetry is, as we shall see, lurking around the corner. It may spring on us at any moment."
"Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that I have written a beautiful line; let us take this as a working hypothesis. Once I have written it, that line does me no good, because, as I've already said, that line came to me from the Holy Ghost, from the subliminal self, or perhaps from some other writer. I often find I am merely quoting something I read some time ago, and then that becomes a rediscovering. Perhaps it is better that a poet should be nameless."
"...we know what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it in other words, even as we cannot define the taste of coffee, the color red or yellow, or the meaning of anger, of love, of hatred, of the sunrise, of the sunset, or of our love for our country. These things are so deep in us that they can be expressed only by those common symbols that we share. So why should we need other words?"
On metaphor:
"What is really important is the fact not that there are a few patterns, but that those patterns are capable of almost endless variations."
On the telling of a tale:
"...the ancients, when they spoke of a poet--a "maker"--thought of him not only as the utterer of those high lyric notes, but also as the teller of a tale. A tale wherein all the voices of mankind might be found--not only the lyric, the wistful,the melancholy, but also the voices of courage and hope."
"But perhaps (I may have said this before; I am sure I have), perhaps the intentions of the poet are not that important." (This really gets at one of the points I was trying to make in my earlier blog on workshopping)
And my personal favorite:
"Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books."
*title taken from a book of Borges' collected lectures.
On poetry in general:
"Poetry is not alien--poetry is, as we shall see, lurking around the corner. It may spring on us at any moment."
"Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that I have written a beautiful line; let us take this as a working hypothesis. Once I have written it, that line does me no good, because, as I've already said, that line came to me from the Holy Ghost, from the subliminal self, or perhaps from some other writer. I often find I am merely quoting something I read some time ago, and then that becomes a rediscovering. Perhaps it is better that a poet should be nameless."
"...we know what poetry is. We know it so well that we cannot define it in other words, even as we cannot define the taste of coffee, the color red or yellow, or the meaning of anger, of love, of hatred, of the sunrise, of the sunset, or of our love for our country. These things are so deep in us that they can be expressed only by those common symbols that we share. So why should we need other words?"
On metaphor:
"What is really important is the fact not that there are a few patterns, but that those patterns are capable of almost endless variations."
On the telling of a tale:
"...the ancients, when they spoke of a poet--a "maker"--thought of him not only as the utterer of those high lyric notes, but also as the teller of a tale. A tale wherein all the voices of mankind might be found--not only the lyric, the wistful,the melancholy, but also the voices of courage and hope."
"But perhaps (I may have said this before; I am sure I have), perhaps the intentions of the poet are not that important." (This really gets at one of the points I was trying to make in my earlier blog on workshopping)
And my personal favorite:
"Sometimes, looking at the many books I have at home, I feel I shall die before I come to the end of them, yet I cannot resist the temptation of buying new books."
*title taken from a book of Borges' collected lectures.
Saturday, May 9, 2009
One to go
So last night was the MFA graduates reading. I took my friend Emily, and I helped work the sales table. All the students who will complete the program this spring read and presented their final books for sale. As they were last year, they were all wonderful.
So wonderful, in fact, that it launched me into a bit of a panic attack when I realized that in a year I'll be doing the same thing. I'll have a finished manuscript. I'll need to make a bunch of books. I'll be graduating. My train of thought when something like this: oh my god these are so beautiful i'll never be able to make anything as nice holy crap i'll never have enough writing to fill a book oh jeez what's my book going to look like what paper will i use panic panic panic i don't want to leave school meltdown what will i do without school!
Anyway, after I got over the panic I was able to enjoy the reading, and I've got pictures of the books up over at my flickr page, but here are a few more shots.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
On Workshopping: a response
A friend of mine recently expressed some chagrin with the process of workshopping, and I wanted to add in my two cents.
I understand the frustration many people feel with workshops, and I think that people often give advice that isn't worth following or that doesn't take your work where you wanted it to go. I've been in a lot of workshops in a lot of different places (from an undergraduate classroom to a writing collective to the graduate program at UB), and every time I start a new workshop, I ask myself if it's worth the frustration. And again and again, I find that it is.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a writer (one who is published, and quite successful) is to find a group of writers/friends you trust to read your work and give you feedback. This writer then turned around and said "but don't listen to them." He gave an example of a story he wrote that everyone told him was garbage. He put it away for 20 years. Then by chance he took it back out and realized it was actually pretty good, and he got it published.
The problem with a workshop class is that you don't necessarily "trust" the writers in the room. Maybe they have less experience writing than you, or maybe you come from such different writing styles or backgrounds that it's hard to cross that gap.
But what's good about any workshop is that you've got a room full of readers telling you how they reacted to your work. And it's important to think of them as readers. The fact that they write helps them more easily articulate their feelings, but it's their role as readers that matters. It's like a focus group to find out how your words are perceived, if what you meant is getting across. What they say is worth listening to, even if you don't take their advice. It will help you look at your poem in a different way and get some of the distance you need to revise. And I honestly mean that. I'm always really enamored of my poems when I start, but then during workshop I get a chance to look at it with a critical (not judgmental; there's a big difference) eye and, with my readers, reconsider if I've said what I want to say, if my work is effective, etc.
The best example I can give is a poem about lightning I recently had workshopped. When I brought it in, I was feeling really good about it. I felt like I had gotten my somewhat bittersweet, somewhat sinister point across. I knew people were going to pick up on the feeling of stasis, on the fear of getting involved with the world instead of just watching from a window. But they didn't. A lot of people thought the poem was childlike. They wanted me to tighten here and expand there. They liked this image or phrase, but they didn't get (or even hated) that image or phrase. Some got a vague sense of foreboding because lightning+umbrellas=bad. Some just didn't get it at all.
I didn't agree with everything everyone said, and I'm still in the process of revision. I'm not going to change everything everyone pointed out. As a matter of fact, unless I agree with someone's change, I won't make it. I may tweak the entire poem. I may cut and add and copy and paste and take something out only to put it back in, but I'll make my own changes.
But just hearing everyone talk about it showed me that I still had work to do. And I'd much rather have them say, "well, I think this stanza needs some stronger images" or "i think your pacing is off here" or "the way you've phrased this is confusing, and i'm not sure what you mean," than "i like it" or "it's okay" or "maybe you could make it funnier?". Because vagaries mean nothing. They don't show me where the reader got really pulled in or totally lost. I'll have no idea which image really spoke to the reader or which word I misused. And even if I don't agree when you tell me that you would really like to see me change "scrumptrulescent" to "fabulous," you may cause a small spark in my brain that leads me to "ambrosial." Or you may point out something I never even saw (like that my use of "heave" has a potential double meaning that's worth exploring).
And so I'll go back and work on my poem some more until it's moved from first draft to something worth sharing with an audience, something that will move them or make them think. Because what's the point of putting my work out there if what I want to say doesn't get across?
The point of a workshop is not self-validation. It's not about getting everyone to love your work. That's just never going to happen. It's about beta-testing your work. Unless you don't ever plan to read your work aloud or have it published or generally put it out in the world in some form or fashion, it's probably good to see what your audience will think
I think that sometimes people get discouraged in workshops, or think that the only way to get positive comments on their work is to tailor their writing for the class, so they turn their writing into a parody of the group's aesthetic preferences. That's the wrong way to go about it. Every week I will write for me, what I want to write. I have to trust myself and my artistic vision or I'll be paralyzed into never writing anything, into needing the approval of someone else just to put pen to paper. And I'm not always going to have people around to give me honest feedback. But I'll take it when I can get it, because I want to improve my writing. Because in the end, I'm not just writing for myself. I'd really like to have an audience, and I don't want to lose them after just one stanza.
I understand the frustration many people feel with workshops, and I think that people often give advice that isn't worth following or that doesn't take your work where you wanted it to go. I've been in a lot of workshops in a lot of different places (from an undergraduate classroom to a writing collective to the graduate program at UB), and every time I start a new workshop, I ask myself if it's worth the frustration. And again and again, I find that it is.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a writer (one who is published, and quite successful) is to find a group of writers/friends you trust to read your work and give you feedback. This writer then turned around and said "but don't listen to them." He gave an example of a story he wrote that everyone told him was garbage. He put it away for 20 years. Then by chance he took it back out and realized it was actually pretty good, and he got it published.
The problem with a workshop class is that you don't necessarily "trust" the writers in the room. Maybe they have less experience writing than you, or maybe you come from such different writing styles or backgrounds that it's hard to cross that gap.
But what's good about any workshop is that you've got a room full of readers telling you how they reacted to your work. And it's important to think of them as readers. The fact that they write helps them more easily articulate their feelings, but it's their role as readers that matters. It's like a focus group to find out how your words are perceived, if what you meant is getting across. What they say is worth listening to, even if you don't take their advice. It will help you look at your poem in a different way and get some of the distance you need to revise. And I honestly mean that. I'm always really enamored of my poems when I start, but then during workshop I get a chance to look at it with a critical (not judgmental; there's a big difference) eye and, with my readers, reconsider if I've said what I want to say, if my work is effective, etc.
The best example I can give is a poem about lightning I recently had workshopped. When I brought it in, I was feeling really good about it. I felt like I had gotten my somewhat bittersweet, somewhat sinister point across. I knew people were going to pick up on the feeling of stasis, on the fear of getting involved with the world instead of just watching from a window. But they didn't. A lot of people thought the poem was childlike. They wanted me to tighten here and expand there. They liked this image or phrase, but they didn't get (or even hated) that image or phrase. Some got a vague sense of foreboding because lightning+umbrellas=bad. Some just didn't get it at all.
I didn't agree with everything everyone said, and I'm still in the process of revision. I'm not going to change everything everyone pointed out. As a matter of fact, unless I agree with someone's change, I won't make it. I may tweak the entire poem. I may cut and add and copy and paste and take something out only to put it back in, but I'll make my own changes.
But just hearing everyone talk about it showed me that I still had work to do. And I'd much rather have them say, "well, I think this stanza needs some stronger images" or "i think your pacing is off here" or "the way you've phrased this is confusing, and i'm not sure what you mean," than "i like it" or "it's okay" or "maybe you could make it funnier?". Because vagaries mean nothing. They don't show me where the reader got really pulled in or totally lost. I'll have no idea which image really spoke to the reader or which word I misused. And even if I don't agree when you tell me that you would really like to see me change "scrumptrulescent" to "fabulous," you may cause a small spark in my brain that leads me to "ambrosial." Or you may point out something I never even saw (like that my use of "heave" has a potential double meaning that's worth exploring).
And so I'll go back and work on my poem some more until it's moved from first draft to something worth sharing with an audience, something that will move them or make them think. Because what's the point of putting my work out there if what I want to say doesn't get across?
The point of a workshop is not self-validation. It's not about getting everyone to love your work. That's just never going to happen. It's about beta-testing your work. Unless you don't ever plan to read your work aloud or have it published or generally put it out in the world in some form or fashion, it's probably good to see what your audience will think
I think that sometimes people get discouraged in workshops, or think that the only way to get positive comments on their work is to tailor their writing for the class, so they turn their writing into a parody of the group's aesthetic preferences. That's the wrong way to go about it. Every week I will write for me, what I want to write. I have to trust myself and my artistic vision or I'll be paralyzed into never writing anything, into needing the approval of someone else just to put pen to paper. And I'm not always going to have people around to give me honest feedback. But I'll take it when I can get it, because I want to improve my writing. Because in the end, I'm not just writing for myself. I'd really like to have an audience, and I don't want to lose them after just one stanza.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
I'm indulging myself here, so deal.
Okay, I try, really I try, not to be ridiculous on my blog. But, I'm going to be ridiculous today (perhaps it's all the How I Met Your Mother I've watched in the last few days...maybe Barney's getting to me). I went to see if my Youtube video had gotten any views, and it had. Eight views, to be exact. Nothing to spectacular, but I was happy enough with that. Then I looked down at the related videos that were popping up. The top three? Randy, my classmate (you should check out his work); Neil Gaiman's Blueberry Girl; and the Dresden Dolls. I have no idea how those related videos are generated (a search of Youtube's help reveals it's based on "certain factors"), but I'm in pretty good company. I may never be famous, but my video is related to something by Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman. I'm feeling pretty legend- ... wait for it... -ary. Ok, yep, officially reached too much HIMYM and not enough sleep. I'm off to bed.
Here's the screen shot for proof:
Here's the screen shot for proof:
Sunday, May 3, 2009
A Night in the Ring
Uploaded my final project to YouTube today. I think it looks pretty good, given my relative lack of knowledge of any sort of video making/editing. Feel free to take a look and let me know what you think. I'm thinking I may also post a Quicktime version over at Flickr.
Now to put the finishing touches on my project analysis essay. I can't believe school is almost over!
Now to put the finishing touches on my project analysis essay. I can't believe school is almost over!
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Boo!
Why it's important to scare children (there are actual reasons...)
We're off to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival today. I am definitely looking forward to it. Sheeps. Sheep dogs. Possibly Alpacas? One hopes. Must away and get dressed.
We're off to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival today. I am definitely looking forward to it. Sheeps. Sheep dogs. Possibly Alpacas? One hopes. Must away and get dressed.
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