ON THE SCROLL

Holed up in a Manhattan apartment in 1951, Kerouac fashioned tracing paper into a 120-foot-long scroll and wrote the premier Beat novel on that thin paper in just three weeks.

And it'll be here, in Chicago in October. READ.

Back in a week or so.

I'll be attending to some nuptials.
In the meantime, read:

Storyglossia -- new issue just posted.
Juked -- they were on break, but they should be back this week.
Dark Sky -- updated weekly
This story, which has nothing to do with literature or writing but is interesting, no less. It'd make a killer feature if I were a full-time freelance writer who had time to travel to Arkansas. And time to pitch it somewhere. We could say much about how we feel things after reading this story, but we try to tread lightly with commentary here.

Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep supporting your word-brethren in the world.

Energy. Power cock.

While reading the Brevity blog, I stumbled across a post about being a good literary citizen. What does that mean, you say? It's about dutifully reading your compadres' work, treating your fellow wordsmiths with the respect that you wish for, and reaching out to the literary world...

And any blog that manages to include "Energy. Power cock." is worth a read -- right?

So here's an excerpt from the blog No One Does That, with a contemplation of how we can do more as citizens in the great literary/words/art world.

Here are some ways you can do more, outside of spending $$$.
(1) When you read something you like, in any form, write the author and tell them. You don’t have to gush or take forever. Just tell them you saw it, you read it, you liked it. It’s a supportive feeling. It’s better than not saying anything

(2) Write reviews of books you like. Short review/long review, whatever. It’s not that hard. It takes a little work to think about it clearly, but what goes around comes around. You can’t expect to be recognized for your work if you aren’t recognizing others for their work. Open the doors.

(3) Interview writers. New writers or well known writers. You like somebody’s work a lot? Ask to do an interview with them. It doesn’t take a ton of effort. Write up some questions. Let them talk. Spread the word. Talk. Say. Get. Eat.

I have done this for years and have made friends by doing it, have ‘opened doors’ so to speak: in other words, by helping others, you are also helping yourself. If spreading others’ work isn’t enough in your mind, think of it as ‘connections.’ (I hope you don’t have to think about it in this way to justify it because that is sad, but, well, some people…) Things often can/might happen as a result of these things, on both ends, even if they are just small things, small things add up, small things can be good things, haven’t you read Carver, momentum.

Energy. Power cock.

I made tea.

http://www.telescopictext.com/

Good writing, good reading.

Meet Bill Clinton. Well, sort of.

As they’re climbing their front steps, there’s another shattering blast. The apartment door bangs open, and there stands Dawami’s older boy, Bill Clinton Hadam. In the gathering dark, all over Indian Creek Apartment Homes, panicked faces are appearing in windows and lighted doorways.

Neighbors on their stoops, veterans of such nights, reassure these newcomers in Burmese, Farsi, French, Somali, English: “It’s OK.” Overhead, fireworks rain down blue, gold, green. The war refugees are safe in Georgia now, and it’s the Fourth of July.

From A 9-year-old finds refuge in suburban Atlanta, in The Christian Science Monitor. A story that manages to blend American politics, immigrants and refugees and adjusting to life in America. This publication is underrated and overlooked in newspaper journalism and excellent storytelling. I'd group it with some of the country's best media, especially in terms of international news coverage.

Rewarding bad writing. Dreadful, terrible, no good, very bad writing.

"It's like the Nobel Prize for Literature," explains 2008 recipient Garrison Spik, whose day job is communications director for Mervis Diamond Importers. "But at the other end of the spectrum. And the prize money is $999,750 less."

The Bulwer-Lytton, in fact, rewards the most wretched, the most inept, the most fantastically awful abuses of English writing. The kind of language that should be taken out and shot. Each year applicants submit putrefying one-sentence openings to bogus novels; this year Spik's was chosen from some 8,000 entries.

It reads:
"Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.' "

From "Purple Prose? His Is Truly Bruising," in today's Washington Post. I think I need to get started on my own entry for next year...

"A sense of passion and obsession..."

The BigThink blog has a video of The New Yorker editor David Remnick giving advice to "young journalists." He says what I've heard (and learned) in many other ways: Hope for luck, work like a nut, and obsess about your field.

There's also a mention of having "talent" -- but how do you define that? And if you are a young journalist/writer/artist/wordsmith/whatever you define yourself as, how do you measure and refine your talent?

"Hope that you have some talent almost equal to or equal to your sense of effort," he says. But how do you know if you have talent or are merely a hack who tries really, really hard? Is talent innate or can it be acquired? And what authority can answer this question?

Should we define talent in the same way The New Yorker does?

A word-nerd love story:

I asked him how an avid dictionary reader comes to date a former lexicographer, and he told me he’d been hired to move her furniture. While he was in her apartment, her little dog kept barking until the lexicographer said, “Hush, Pumpernickel!” Shea couldn’t contain himself: “Do you know the etymology of ‘pumpernickel’?” he asked. “As a matter of fact, I do,” she replied. (The German is, roughly: flatulent goblin.)

From The Lexicographer and the Madman, posted on the NY Times Papercuts blog.

A follow-up Vonnegut quote:

"Here is a lesson in creative writing.
First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

Just something to chew on today. We'll be light on postings this week

(due to a move and lack of Internet).