Playing Literary Catch-Up: Or, Year 2011 Reading Resolution

Most of my life feels like "catching up." I don't know that I'm trying to catch up to anybody else. The feeling I have is of trying to catch up to where I should be had I known what I know now. Ie., had I had siblings my age, had I gone to a public school, had I started college as an English major, had I not been afraid to talk to boys in high school, had I been comfortable in my own skin at an earlier age.

I wouldn't wish away the path my life has taken, the particular timing of everything. But when I do discover something about myself or about the world, or about the fiction we make of the world, I feel this urgency to make up for lost time.

In regards to books, I feel I am racing to make up for approximately 16 years of ignorance. I feel like one of the least well-read students in my creative writing program. Not that I hadn't read a lot of books since the age of four, when I purportedly taught myself to read. But I grew up amidst a culture of poor taste in books, music, and movies. To be fair, I'm sure I was free to read wider, read better, but I just didn't know. I didn't have anybody around me to show me the way, to say "You should read Alice Munro" or J.D. Salinger, or Raymond Carver, or Sylvia Plath, or Grace Paley. Additionally, if they had, I probably would have discounted half of the suggestions after running them through my particularly Puritanical filter. Swearing? Any suggestion of sex? Dark and unwholesome themes? Forget it. Again, I don't remember anybody telling me these were the standards I should have, I just conglomerated these ideas through bits and pieces of overheard conversations and articles in Focus on the Family magazines.

Disclaimer and apology if I offend some of my friends here, but I'm gonna be honest. My idea of great fiction used to come from authors like Janette Oak, Francine Rivers, Lori Wick, Robin Jones Gunn, Lauraine Snelling. Feel-good Christian romances. Frank Peretti for the occasional suspense/thriller. Thank God I never could get into the Left Behind series. One author I don't regret spending time reading is C.S. Lewis: Till We Have Faces, Out of the Silent Planet, and a nostalgic favorite series of mine, The Chronicles of Narnia. He's kind of in a category with T.S. Eliot, J.R.R. Tolkien, etc.

Halfway through college, I realized that I was reading fluff for the most part. I started reading more world literature, more classic fiction. When I switched majors from biology to English, I dove headfirst into a world of great, mysteriously rich, heretofore unknown modern fiction. Raymond Carver, Sylvia Plath, Andrea Barrett, Louise Erdrich, Lorrie Moore. After college, I kept trying to play catch-up. But my pace slowed considerably. Till I started grad school--then the fun really began!

I read at least 29 books in 2010. Probably more. This list also includes poetry, non-fiction, and books on writing, but still, I don't think I've read as much since high school. Here's the list. Not all of these were required for school, either. I put an asterisk by the books that met me at a time when I particularly needed to read them. For whatever reason, they changed the way I thought about fiction and writing, about personal history, about the world.

*Adrienne Kennedy The People Who Led to My Plays
Norma Jean and Carole Darden Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine
Grace Paley The Collected Stories
William Zinsser On Writing Well
Mary Oliver Poetry Handbook
A.J. Verdelle The Good Negress
Laura Esquivel Like Water for Chocolate
Bonni Goldberg Room to Write
Dorothea Brande Becoming a Writer
*Lydia Davis The Collected Stories
*Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible
Amy Hepel The Collected Stories
Brenda Ueland If You Want to Write
Joyce Carol Oates Black Water
*Alice Munro Open Secrets
*Lorrie Moore Birds of America
J.D. Salinger Nine Stories
*Andrea Barrett Servants of the Map
Charles Baxter A Relative Stranger
Mary Gaitskill Don't Cry
Lorraine Lopez Homicide Survivor's Picnic
*Ernest Hemingway The Nick Adams Stories
*Willa Cather My Antonia
Eugene O'Neill The Iceman Cometh and *Long Day's Journey Into Night
Sam Shepard *Buried Child, True West, and Curse of the Starving Class
Natasha Trethewey Native Guard...

...Not to mention other books and stories I've read that I don't have a record of...

I plan to read even more in 2011. I've already started through the Collected Stories of Carson McCullers, which so far deserves an asterisk as well!

Now if I could just catch up on all the music I missed out on through the 90s and early 2000s when I was busy listening to oldies and christian rock. Any suggestions?

Random, Weird Things I Do Instead of Write

It's high time I finally posted a note here.

I was busy wrestling with a couple projects for school. A friend from my MFA program wrote a great post about the process of writing. How writing is what we want to do, but we are tempted to find anything and everything else to do but write. Don't be ashamed, Lindsey. I feel the same weakness, the same self-doubt. "Why am I doing this if I am so easily tempted to avoid it?" I don't have the answer, but I am comforted that I am not alone. I've heard many good writers admit to this.

I still have one author interview to complete before officially "finishing" the second semester of my MFA. But last Thursday, after fighting procrastination/distraction demons for weeks leading up to the deadline, I felt a lightness of spirit when I handed the manila envelope containing my story and annotations across the post office counter to a nice lady named Heather. I had proudly defeated many (but not all) potential distractions over the last few weeks (including the blog god reminding me condescendingly that I still had not posted after several weeks MIA). So on Friday morning, I let myself indulge in a few choice distractions in celebration of being "done."

Here are three random and possibly gross things I did that morning instead of writing my interview questions:

1. Dumped the contents of my purse and discovered a week-old rotting apple core partially wrapped in a napkin. I ate the apple at work and wanted to compost it, OK?
2. Watched and cried at a weather channel video about a girl rescuing a starving horse from the side of the road (near my hometown, no less!). 
3. Cleaned out my belly button.

Yes, it's true. These are the kinds of things I find to do instead of write.

And now the blog god can stop looming for a few days while I get my questions written.

Poetry in Web Video

The other day I wrote about the innovative power of web video, especially the potential for writers and other creative voices.

"There's something electric about hearing the author's voice in the words they wrote. There's something intimate about publicly sharing words that were written in private."

You can't listen to a well-wrought story without being engaged.


I proposed that more emerging writers should record themselves reading their work and share the videos on the web, reconnecting the written word to the stream of our oral story-telling past.


My good friend Georgia has already done just that. This is just one way to share words, but I love the way the rhythm and pacing and tone of Georgia Pearle's poem, "Lil' Allen," falls in step with original music by Marcella O'Connor. Visit Project Words and Music for more videos like this. But first, sit back, listen, and enjoy.

Web Video Revolution

Web video is nothing new. People have known how to post their home videos to YouTube, Vimeo, VideoEgg, etc. for years now. But what if we look at how web video can fuel innovation? I love TEDTalks videos. You could say I'm a junkie. The curator of the TED Conference himself, Chris Anderson, shares what he believes is the force for positive change behind video sharing. (FYI: It's nineteen minutes long, but worth every second.)



Some highlights:

• Cisco estimates that in four years, 90% of the world's web data will be video. 
• Video is more powerful than text or pictures because of our innate connection with face-to-face communication.
• Potential innovators in developing countries can feed their ideas from the web and share their ideas through the web. 
• "The dark side of the web is allergic to the light."

As a writer I asked myself how I can use video. Traditionally speaking, a writer's medium is print. There's beauty to that--the one-on-one exchange when the reader sits down with your book. But there's also the public side of a writer's life, when they travel and read selections from their work to an audience.

I've been to several readings, and I've even read once. There's something electric about hearing the author's voice in the words they wrote. There's something intimate about publicly sharing words that were written in private. Now, there are such things as poorly done readings, but in general, I can't leave a reading not engaged with the author's story, even if I wouldn't have engaged had I read it.

What if more emerging writers recorded themselves reading their work? And shared it with the world? There's less risk of someone on the web copying and pasting the work as their own (unless they went through the effort of transcribing every word). And there's more chance that the stories and poems would reach the souls they were meant to touch. Plus you've added that spark of face-to-face communication, the relic of our oral story-telling past.

You might see me try it--though I need practice with video making and editing before I'd post anything. Why don't you try taping yourself sharing something you are passionate about, something you want to put out in the light? Just make sure it's coming from a true place inside yourself, and you'll do it excellently, and the world just might be changed.

(Related Post: see Taste Life: Poetry in Web Video)

A Few of My [New] Favorite Things

(Or, a venture into veggiedom.)

I have been eating mostly vegetarian ever since the end of June, when, at my creative writing residency, I decided to see how long I could go just choosing and eating foods sans meat. My older brother is a vegetarian and I have more than a few good friends who are dedicated vegetarians, so I know a little bit about the importance of getting complete nutrition from a meatless diet. I have had one fish dish while we were in Boston, and I think I probably had some other kind of meat when we were visiting someone. But probably 99% of my meals since the end of June have been meatless. My hubby and I didn't eat meat all that often before, because quite honestly, I am a little squeamish when it comes to fixing the stuff myself. But before this, if someone else fixed the meat I'd eat it.

Now, however, I am decidedly choosing veggies over meat for philosophical reasons. I have always loved animals and believe a lot of them are smarter and more soulful than we give them credit for. I could never bring myself to eat veal, or duck, and while I love me a gyro, I had to push out of my mind the image of the lamb that had to be butchered to make my Mediterranean delight. And did you know pigs may be about as smart as dolphins? So aside from the doe-eyed bleeding heart type objections to eating animals, there is an even stronger reason. Most animals we eat are industrially raised and slaughtered to satisfy the American myth that if there's no meat on the plate, it's just the appetizer. The conditions they are farmed in are usually unsanitary and unhealthy both for the animals and for the people living in the surrounding areas. I don't think I need to explain this; there are movies and books readily available that go into more detail. Food, Inc., The Omnivore's Dilemma, etc.

Just down the road from me, however, is Country Gardens Farm and Nursery. They sell eggs from cage-free hens, pastured poultry, grass-fed beef, and even raw milk. If I'm gonna eat a hamburger, I would buy the meat here. Same with chicken. I want to know where my meat comes from and that it's harvested in sustainable, healthy ways. That said, the "good" kinds of meat are more expensive, which makes them more of a luxury item in my book. So I still will eat probably 99% vegetarian.

So, what do I eat when I eat at home?

One of my new favorite dishes to make is tofu stir fry. Our grocery store sells bags of fresh stir fry vegetables, so it's super easy to throw them in a skillet after I've browned the tofu. Then I toss them all together with some Teriyaki sauce.

Also: Bean Burritos! Despite what my brother says about beans being the musical fruit, black beans are really good for you. They have lots of iron and protein and, of course, fiber, so they're a good red meat substitute plus. I like to make my burritos on a whole wheat tortilla and spread vegetarian refried beans in the middle, then top with black beans, cheese, cilantro, avocado, pico de gallo, whatever! Always tasty.

Then, for a snack, I love (and have always loved) hummus. One of my recent favorites is wedges of whole wheat pita bread dipped in hummus. I have all the ingredients to make my own hummus but I'm just too lazy so far, so I use a hummus I buy in my grocery deli. It's so creamy and fresh.

Recently, my hubby's parents were in town and wanted to go out to eat for Sunday lunch. They chose Chilis. I figured it might be hard to find a veggie option at a place like Chilis, so I began looking at the salads, soups, and appetizers. Even then, most of those had some kind of meat in them. Then I looked at the burger page of the menu and lo and behold! A black bean burger can be swapped for beef--for free! I ordered a mushroom and swiss burger on a whole wheat bun, plus slices of avocado (+$0.75), and it was delicious. I was half expecting the kind of dry, bland veggie burger I've had at some other places. But this was moist and flavorful. I could even see whole black beans and herbs and spices in the burger. I was almost giddy. It looked kind of like this, without the corn salsa (which would have also been mighty tasty):

So there you have my life as a veg so far. It takes a little effort, but most things that are good for you take a little effort. My hubby's been very supportive, making me veg meals and everything. And as a self-proclaimed "meat and potatoes" guy when we first met, even he's eating 90% vegetarian. I feel better physically, and my Jiminy Cricket doesn't chirp in my ear about the poor farming practices that probably went into getting the slab of muscle tissue onto my plate.

At the subway

She picks up her electric guitar, begins strumming the offbeats. Stops. Waits. Starts again, just before people getting off walk by.
"Don't worry
'Bout a thing
Cause everything
Is gonna be alright"
When the stream subsides, she stops, looks around, puts the guitar in its stand, and reclaims her lonely seat on the bench--not even noticing I'm inside the train. And I'm still listening.

The doors close, and I'm lurched away. But her voice stays in my head.

She Likes Rainy Days the Best

Sometimes I know a story is right when the whole world seems to spin it into my lap. Today, I got one of those stories. It started as a journal entry a few days ago, just after a heavy rain. I wrote about the glow of freshly washed leaves, the darkness of the tree trunks, the lambent light in the air. Yesterday I decided to turn it into a story somehow. Over night the rains came. Gentle thunderstorms early in the morning, then off and on showers all day long. The world was telling me to write. Slowly, as I reworked my journal entry, a character emerged. A woman whose desire to be reborn is mirrored in the nascent quality of the world after a rain. The journal entry transformed into a plot, as the steady beat of raindrops on my window set the pace. How perfect that a story inspired by a rainy day got to be finished on a rainy day. The first line of the story is true for me, too: "She likes rainy days the best."

Scorpion Eating Contest

How does someone train to be the world record holder for most live scorpions eaten in one minute? Sure it's only 60 seconds. We do a whole lot more unpleasant things that take more than sixty seconds.

Like when the dental hygienist flosses your teeth, for example. So, do you start small and work up? Eat as many fortune cookies as you can in a minute. Then work your way up to grubs. Then beetles. Then spiders, then finally scorpions. What's the technique for avoiding a sting? Bite off the tail first? Or hold em by the tail and throw them down head first, like shrimp? How do all those scorpions and spiders and beetles and grubs and fortune cookies feel about being sacrificed for sport? For you to prove how tough you are? Or are they having a contest of their own? "See who can avoid getting caught by the stupid human."

To post in April

Nobody said the next post had to be in April of 2009. Obviously I got bored with my blog. Then I got busy. I was accepted to Lesley University's low-residency masters in fine arts program and attended my first residency in Cambridge (MA) in January. I'm thrilled with the program, with the faculty, and with my fellow students. It is just right for me.

So I feel sort of directionless with this blog. Do I go with food? With environmental news, concerns, joys? With writing? Do I even care? Meh...

Signing out for now (cause I'm supposed to be meeting a deadline tonight!)

-Me