Wednesday, August 23, 2006

not-writing

I'm still in a not-writing state, which is strange, but restful. I'm reading a lot, and yesterday I went to East Harbor beach w/o so much as a notebook or a pen and spent a whole afternoon with D--lying on the almost deserted sand, running into the waves, taking photos of my Evian bottle and the back of D's head.

I've found some interesting stuff while internet trawling. Here is Quickmuse, a site with poems written in 15 minutes. Various writers are asked to write a poem about a given topic and their efforts are on the site both as a finished product and as they are being written in real time (or rather recorded real time). I read a nice poem on decapitation by Mary Jo Salter.
And for the terminally cluttered booklover, I found BookMooch, where you can list books you don't want anymore; when someone requests a book and you send it to them, you get points so that you can get someone else's book. I found this on BlogLily, a highly entertaining and literate blog.
Kate's Book Blog has an interesting post on signpost books, books which are not necessarily life-changing, but significant in some way. Of Books and Bicycles has a post on Colette, one of my favorite authors. And Tales from the Reading Room has a post on Virginia Woolf (another favorite), claiming that reading VW is like "taking an extremely safe form of narcotic."
More on influence: here, Jennifer Egan (author of The Keep), discusses 5 books that have influenced her. I'm so with her on The Wizard of Oz. (I found this mentioned on Bookslut.)
And finally, the Wayward Armadillo has a great list of writing exercises.

6 Comments:

Blogger Bruce Owens Grimm said...

That is a great list of excercises! I've already started to work on one.

8/24/2006 10:04 AM  
Blogger Gina Ventre said...

Oooooo....writing exercises. My favorite.

And I love reading about what books influenced different writers. Housekeeping and The Feast of Love are the top ones for me.

8/24/2006 11:07 AM  
Blogger mary grimm said...

I especially like 2, 3, and 10.

8/24/2006 12:40 PM  
Blogger Bruce Owens Grimm said...

I'm working on number 2.

8/24/2006 12:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sounds like you're getting up your strength for the journey ahead, Lucette. (I was just over at your lovely food blog and am happy to know that you will be well provisioned in the culinary department as you head toward your revisions.) Best, BL

8/25/2006 1:46 AM  
Blogger Kristin Ohlson said...

I like Jennifer Egan's list. I'm also so with her on the Wizard of Oz. Although the writing doesn't hold up in those Oz books, there is that sense of something hidden and beautiful and completely "other" that informs much of the way I look at the world now. Then there was the matter of the Deadly Desert that surrounded Oz-- I always tried to figure out where it might be. I think, at one point, I may have thought it was in Ohio-- back when I was living in CA, of course.

8/26/2006 1:24 PM  

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