My mind hasn't been with this blog for the last couple of weeks. I think that the Phil and Danny interview was on my mind for so long that when I finished it I automatically switched gears. I could once again focus on things that I had been putting off because I was (or felt that I should have been) working on the interview.
During these past few weeks, however, I forgot one lesson. I haven't been writing because I've been focused on things other than what I normally write about. But I should have been writing all along; just writing about what was on my mind. So from now on I'll be taking my own advice. And for some of the things that I write that aren't compatible with this blog, I've started another. Check it out at www.thesegoodideas.blogspot.com.
Don't worry, I'll still be sticking around here, too. I'll just have to start working on this kind of inspiration.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Monday, October 18, 2010
NW 23rd Ave Interview with Phil Geffner and Danny Cardoso (Part 2)
The second half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local restaurant owners in NW Portland is now posted on the NW 23rd Ave Blog! Phil and Danny share how NW 23rd has changed in the past 25 years along with how their businesses have grown. Find out about their business philosophies and commitments to family and food.
If you missed part one of the interview, click here to read it or check out my earlier blog post on the interview and the process of putting it all together.
Friday, October 15, 2010
On Punctuation
From today's Writer's Almanac, shared with me by a friend:
Visit: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org
Listen:
On Punctuationnot for me the dogma of the period preaching order and a sure conclusion and no not for me the prissy formality or tight-lipped fence of the colon and as for the semi- colon call it what it is a period slumming with the commas a poser at the bar feigning liberation with one hand tightening the leash with the other oh give me the headlong run-on fragment dangling its feet over the edge give me the sly comma with its come-hither wave teasing all the characters on either side give me ellipses not just a gang of periods a trail of possibilities or give me the sweet interrupting dash the running leaping joining dash all the voices gleeing out over one another oh if I must punctuate give me the YIPPEE of the exclamation point give me give me the curling cupping curve mounting the period with voluptuous uncertainty "On Punctuation" by Elizabeth Austen, from The Girl Who Goes Alone. © Floating Bridge Press, 2010. |
Listen:
Monday, October 11, 2010
NW 23rd Ave Interview with Phil Geffner and Danny Cardoso (Part 1)
Usually these interviews are a piece of cake. Send out an email with some questions, throw together a short introduction about the person, edit their answers for spelling, post. That's it. So when Phil insisted that we do his interview in person I knew it would be a little more involved than usual. Then we threw Danny into the mix on top of that. I ended up with a LOT to work with. What was so overwhelming about it was not so much the quantity (although it did take me hours to transcribe the whole thing) but what was in there. There was so much great stuff in this interview that I wanted to make sure I was doing it justice; I didn't want to just throw it together like usual. So instead I did nothing. For weeks I was paralyzed by the thought of working on this thing.
As usual, I learned my lesson. You just have to dive into it. You decide that this has taken way too long to get done, you have to do it. You sit down and start writing, you force yourself to get into it. And before long, great things begin to happen. Then you get excited about what you're doing and you actually want to sit down and do it. It's a great thing.
In the end though, I try not to put too much pressure on myself. Maybe this interview wouldn't have come out the same if I had sat down and done it right away. In fact I'm sure it wouldn't have. Maybe it would have been just as good, maybe it wouldn't have been. Maybe the weeks of procrastination, in which this interview was constantly turning over in the back of my mind, formed the way I thought about the interview and thus the way I wrote about it. I suppose that's why they call it marinading.
Regardless of how I got here I'm here now. Part 2 is still to come, with a lot of insight and inspiration, the real heart of this interview. But for now enjoy the first half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local celebrities of the NW 23rd neighborhood. Get to know a little about their backgrounds, their sense of humor and how they got to where they are now.
Find this and past interviews at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com
Thanks for reading!
Monday, October 4, 2010
Words for Writing and Life
"There must be no gap between expression and meaning, between real and declared aims... It means not saying or thinking, 'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' when there really existed a desire to hurt. It means not saying 'luncheon' or "home" for the purpose of appearing upper-class or well-educated. It means not using the passive mood to contribute to no one in particular opinions that one is unwilling to call one's own."
- Donald Hall
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Inspirational Listening for Writers and Readers
Almost as great as reading what a writer has written about writing is listening to a writer talk about writing. Every few weeks, Oregon Public Broadcast show Think Out Loud brings listeners into the minds of local writers with its series Northwest Passages. Writers share their ideas, inspirations and philosophies on writing with host Emily Harris and even read a sample of their work. They also answer questions emailed or called in by curious listeners who are writers and avid readers themselves.
Northwest Passages is always one of my favorite listening experience if I am lucky enough to catch it live. But fortunately for those of us who are not always tuned into OPB at 9am and for those of you who live outside of Oregon, past broadcasts are available to listen to online. I hope you find them as enjoyable and inspiring as I do. Happy Listening!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
NW 23rd Ave Interview with Scott Seibert
Click here for a direct link to the interview.
Thanks for reading!
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
"What the Hell is Water?"
This past Sunday marked the two year anniversary of the death of David Foster Wallace (who it just so happens that I Write Like). A friend shared this excellent example of his work. It makes me wish he had given my commencement speech. Enjoy:
A speech by the late David Foster Wallace
A speech by the late David Foster Wallace
Friday, September 10, 2010
A Northwest Gem and Some New Finds
Two weekends ago Matthew and I took a ten hour round-trip drive down to Ashland, Oregon on the California border. Oregonians know that Ashland is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and America's first outdoor Elizabethan theatre. This year Ashland is celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Shakespeare Festival, but sadly our brief afternoon in Ashland did not coordinate with the performance times.
Ashland, however, caters in many other ways to the Shakespeare enthusiasts and book lovers who are drawn by the festival. Among a slew of antique and book stores, one of our finds was Antiquarium Books & Antiques. The shop is packed with interesting antiques, but the walls were lined with every kind of book a collector could dream of. In the classics section I found a 1937 edition of Oscar Wilde Selected Works and a (not-so-antique) reprint of the original 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights. Matthew found a 1975 Baseball Encyclopedia. One of the owners checked us out and was very kind to give us a little bit of a discount on our stack of books which amounted to getting Wuthering Heights for free. Can't complain about that.
After perusing Antiquarium the rest of our time in Ashland consisted of window shopping, dinner at the Standing Stone Brewing Company, a walk through surprisingly expansive Lithia Park and dessert from a local homemade ice cream shop. We questioned whether such a short visit would be worth the long drive, but while we do plan to return and see a show at that outdoor theatre we were certainly satisfied on the long drive back to Portland. I would call Ashland a must-see for lovers of Shakespeare, antiques, books, and quiet little towns with plenty of character.
Links:
Thursday, September 9, 2010
A Month Later...
No one ever said that being a writer would be easy. Vacation may not have been best time to try to build a writing habit. Especially on a vacation with family there is always something to do and someone to talk to and never as much free time as you imagine there will be. In just under two weeks we hopped from Portland to Rhode Island, New York City, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina and back to Portland. We saw sisters, best friends, family friends, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and parents. Needless to say there did not turn out to be a lot of reading or writing time. On the beach in North Carolina, however, I did manage to sneak some time for One Hundred Years of Solitude and a little bit of writing.
I am still picking my way through One Hundred Years of Solitude and I am loving it. It is a beautiful story of the rise and fall of the Buendia family over the course of, appropriately, one hundred years. What is surprising me, and pleasantly, is the whimsical quality of the story. The superstitions and beliefs of the isolated culture in which the Buendias live defines truth in the novel. It is fantasy and reality in one package and it is exciting to watch the development of the small culture with changes and discoveries in science and world knowledge.
I am also still slowly enjoying Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and am currently inspired by her thoughts on character description and dialogue. It makes me think that I should have done more writing while I was with my family or that I should begin paying closer attention to the array of characters that I encounter so frequently at Starbucks.
While on the beach my thoughts were more on description, and of course the natural focus was the rolling waves, the shadows that the seagulls cast as the fly and fight their way along the shore, long lines of pelicans parading over rooftops, white crabs with huge eyes that scurry fearfully trying to blend in to the sand and fishermen with their poles stuck in the sand who may or may not have been compensating for something depending on how important it seemed to make them feel. Additionally, a common theme was that writing doesn't just appear out of nowhere... you have to actually do something. I feel like often when I am not writing it is because I'm waiting for some great idea to hit me so hard that it's all I can do not to write it down on the side of a coffee cup or a napkin or my arm if it's the only thing that's handy. I'm starting to get that it doesn't always work like that. Maybe it did in school after weeks studying a topic or days of research and agonizing over a subject, but that's not the same as pulling something out of thin air. You have to do the work and the work means pages of pages of worthless writing before something great starts to flow. I'm still working on that.
Next on the reading and writing agenda is more reading and more writing... But isn't that always the goal. This week I'll get Mockingjay, the third and final book of The Hunger Games trilogy in the mail. Of course I won't have any trouble getting through that ten times faster than I've read anything recently, but just maybe after that I'll get on a role.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
