A State of Fiction

emilybooks:

by Zan McQuade

Barbara Browning came to life before me on a chilly gray Sunday, as I lay under the bedsheets, dressed in wool for warmth. I’d just finished Sheila Heti’s How Should A Be?, a book that left me feeling a little bit empty and angry. I was in the mood to read more, it was a day made for reading, and so I followed it with Tove Jansson’s Fair Play, a book about artists and writers performing their art on the pages, through video and film.

And then I remembered a book sitting idle on the shelves of my iPad waiting to be read: Browning’s book, I’m Trying To Reach You, about an ex-dancer who, following the breadcrumb trail of related videos on YouTube following the deaths of Michael Jackson, Pina Bausch, and Merce Cunningham, finds himself engulfed in a mystery of internet connections, leading him to become an unwitting spy into a secret and seemingly dangerous world of code and semaphore, messages tapped like Morse code with the rubber soles of a dancer’s sneakers. Browning is a dancer in life, and a character in her own book: the mysterious dancing woman discovered by narrator Gray Adams. Browning herself appears in images throughout the book, stills from videos that live on YouTube as well.

Wait, I thought. So she’s real?

Read More

The Cure for Writer's Block

This is one of the best stories I’ve written this month (in my opinion), during my NaNo flash fiction challenge: 

I’ve run out of ideas.

It’s embarrassing to admit that.  More importantly, it’s dangerous.  Once upon a time, or so I’ve heard, our country respected artists. They thought we were special and that creativity was a gift bestowed to only a chosen few.  Back then you could claim to have something called “writer’s block” and people felt sorry for you.

These days, artists are expected to produce.  We have schedules and deadlines and supervisors who stand over our shoulders, reviewing our work and telling us immediately if we need to be more creative, more original, or more thought-provoking.

If you’re lucky, you write well enough to win a semi-private desk in the corner of one of the large grey work rooms. If you’re really lucky, they might let you go outside for 45 minutes once a week.

Click through to read the rest and then let me know what you think, ok? (Please and thank you!)

Fictional Bucket List « Its Only Erica

EVERYONE has a bucket list, but Erica is the only person I’ve run across who has a fictional bucket list!  <3 this especially because it includes escapes like “stopping a train with the Railway Children” and other references to books and movies I love.  

Seeking Submissions: The Writer’s Lair

I’ve always loved having the opportunity to peek behind the scenes and discover where creative people actually DO their creating.  Whether it’s a sewing room or an open art studio, I get a real thrill seeing the detritus of the creator’s craft spread out from use.  

Getting this intimate behind-the-scenes look into a writer’s life is rare.  I suppose everyone assumes the real “creation” occurs mentally… but for me, writing is often a physical affair and when the muse truly calls, you’ll find me in the middle of the floor with laptop and yellow legal pad, balls of paper and random pens strewn about.  

Am I the only one who writes that way?  Navigating between technology and old school, long hand and typed… whatever it takes to woo the words and shape them into the shape I’ve envisioned.

The joy of blogs and the interweb is that they give you an excuse to feed your crazy fetishes (well, that’s what my blogs do!).  So I’m taking full advantage of that here and sending out a request to all my writer type friends and acquaintances:

Send me a photo of your inner sanctum!  Where do you wrestle with the muse?  Doesn’t matter if it’s at the kitchen table at midnight, with pen and pad during your potty breaks, or in the luxury of your own dedicated space… I’d LOVE to see.  With your permission, I’ll post your lair here on Writerly Musings, along with your 100 word (or so) description and a link to your website.

Interested in playing along? Send your photos and info to “snhamlett at gmail dot com” with subject line “My Writer’s Lair”.

(Source: jonathanworth.com)