“Ideas are like coffee. If you let them percolate, then drip down, you’ll get a nice hot cup of caffeinated material. Drink up.” – me
(I know it’s hard to believe that I came up with this gem, but I did! Yeah, my thesis is gonna rock hard with this type of wisdom. Go me!)
Tags: hilarity, I'm a natural resource producer, Uncategorized, writing
>Before I went to my peer advisory writing group this evening, I attended a going away party for a friend at work. There were many inappropriate discussions about snatch, viewing porn on a BlackBerry, and women ogling other women. (Oh, how I adore my colleagues!)
The latest draft of my thesis, which is about how I inherited my Jewish identity and outlook on life through what was both spoken and unsaid by my grandparents’ and father’s Holocaust legacies, includes this line about a nighttime asthma attack I had when I was seven:
“I could almost taste the blackness as though an octopus has replaced the night air with its inky discharge.”
We discussed the strangeness of the metaphor/image and why it worked even though it shouldn’t. Then my friend asked what the plural of octopus is.
“It’s octopussies,” I said. Then I turned bright red and we laughed until it hurt.
Tags: hilarity, Jewishness, leering perverts, octopus, ooh-la-la, ooops, props to my peeps, writing
>Urban Dictionary’s Word of the Day is Time Vampire. This is something that sucks away your time like a vampire does blood. I love, love, love this concept.
My thesis is a time vampire. Or at least it will be once I start working on it for real. My goal is to write 3-4 pages a day for the next two months, not including weekends for the most part.
Probably it is bad that I describe the writing of what I hope will be my next book as a time vampire, huh?
Four years ago, someone took a chance on me. I’d only been blogging for a few months when I heard that BlogHer was looking for volunteer contributing editors for a new site they were launching. I rushed to their current homepage, noticed that people already claimed the topic I most wanted (feminism and gender), and saw that travel and recreation was still open. Well, I love traveling and do it a lot. I had just blogged a trip to France. I left a message with links to three posts (this was before I had any idea what HTML was, not that I’m an expert at it now), and hoped for the best.
Not long after, I heard from Lisa Stone, one of BlogHer’s founders. She said that she “loved” my blog and offered me the gig. I was thrilled! (Re-reading her email today, which I just looked at again, brings tears to my eyes. Yeah, I still have an email from January 2006 in my inbox.) My first post – Introduction to Travel and Recreation appeared on January 22, 2006. I hoped for many things, but was not sure what to expect.
Four years later, I still write for BlogHer, although on feminism, not travel. It offered me a platform when I was just exploring writing. It offered me a platform when I sent out proposals for a travelogue I was writing about unusual things to see and do New York City. It offered me a platform when my book, Off the Beaten (Subway) Track, was published 2.5 years later. It offered me a platform to meet and be inspired by other women.
Sure, it hasn’t been all champagne and roses. When I realized that my four year anniversary was coming up, I compared it to my marriage: sometimes I wanted to scream and stomp around with selfish, delusional indignity, but overall my life is richer, happier, and better in every way because I have it. (Husband was slightly offended by this analogy, but I stand by it.) I’m so lucky.
Tags: fun trips, props to my peeps, shameless self-promotion, thanks, the book, writing
>In the last two days, I read four things* that lead me to a deadly sin. Oh, envy! How it rears its big ugly head up and makes me covet the talents of others. As I said to two of the writers, “It’s like penis envy, only real.**” Yes, I want their tools. Maybe this is also a violation of a commandment, too – do not covet thy neighbor’s literary skills.
*Two stories at school; The Scenic Route by Binnie Kirschenbaum; and a blog post by AV Flox about jizz as an anti-depressant whose conclusion I disagree with, but loved the writing anyway. Unlike the prior sentence, which is a good example of very bad writing.
**Sorry Freud, but I’m not buying your sexist crap. He’d probably like the study about how precious pearls of cum prevent women from being depressed that Flox wrote so well about…
Tags: cheesy puns, hilarity, writing
>The problem with feminism is that it makes women crazy. We seem to believe that our words and our stories matter, and that we are not only capable of telling stories, but that we can excel at it. Our voices and our story telling techniques may differ from what has traditionally been viewed as great literature, but we think that doesn’t mean that they are not equally good.
Of course, these beliefs are silly, and Publishers Weekly took great pains to remind people that women’s work is just not up to par with that of (white) men. Their list of the ten best books of 2009 includes ten dudes, nine of whom are white. Some people bristled at this. Kamy Wicoff at She Write – an online community of women writers that is free and you should join – wrote:
Try to imagine if they had come out with a list of the Best Books of 2009 and it had included ZERO MEN. Try to imagine if Amazon had released its Best Books of 2009 and it had included only TWO men. I know it’s hard. But just try.
Wicoff asked the She Writes community to take action. To protest this ridiculous list, we should all buy a book published by a woman in 2009, take a photo of ourselves with it, and explain why we bought it.
Here I am with the 2009 paperback edition of American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. When the hardcover came out in 2008, it received glowing reviews. My friend Alex Elliot read it for her bookclub, and said that I would really like it. Sittenfeld and I are the same age, and I wish that I had an ounce of her talent.
I don’t have pictures of myself with another two books that came out in 2009, but last night I attended a reading of A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein. I thought it was great. Deborah Copaken Cogan also read From Here to April, which came out in hardcover in 2008 and paperback this month. It was also excellent. Both works were funny and thought-provoking, as were their creators.
If you are also pissed about the Publishers Weekly list, join the She Writes community’s protest. Once you post a picture of yourself on your blog holding a book you bought by a female writer that came out in 2009 (the deadline is Friday), send Kamy the link at kamy@shewrites.com. She Writes will send these links to the entire community (5000+) on Saturday. While the emphasis is on women writers protesting, I think anyone who cares about sexism should feel free to participate.
Tags: Asshole idiots, democracy in action, mortification, other rants, random, What is wrong with people?, writing
>The day started out well. I woke up a bit before my alarm sounded, feeling refreshed. After feeding Tycho the rabbit and myself, I ran three miles at the gym. Then I scurried home to purchase U2 concert tickets for Husband. For a concert on Sept. 16, 2010.
Ticket purchasing is not as easy as it sounds. First, he had to subscribe to the band’s fan site. This runs something like $50. Then he received an email with a secret code that could be used to purchase up to four tickets before they went on sale to the general public. Since Husband was at a Very Important Meeting when his special group of bribe givers was allowed to give U2 more of their money, he asked me to click on the magic link, enter the code, and secure the best tickets available, at whatever cost.
Fine. How hard can that be? Except that he already used the code he provided me for tickets for a concert this past September. And I had no access to his U2 account to find his new entree to U2 happiness. The man asked me to do a simple task, and it distressed me to no end. He works hard. All he wants are some fucking concert tickets, and I could not provide. Two frustrating hours later, I finally bought the tickets. Yay.
However, I was late for everything else I had to do today. Among other things that did not get done in a timely fashion, I missed a call from an organization offering me a job. Yay for the job offer, boo for missing the call. I left the woman an overly enthusiastic message on her voice mail at 5:30.
Blah, blah, blah. Fortunately, I arrived at school on time to hear my favorite author from when I was in 4th grade. Blossom Culp, the main character in Ghosts I Have Been, was a hero to me back then. I wanted to be her. So all semester, I’d been waiting to hear Richard Peck. During his talk about writing, he said, “I write for lonely people looking for friends in books.”
Thank you, Mr. Peck.
Tags: fuck, great news, nerds, oh happy day, random, school, writing
>Earlier this year, I handed in a story in my lit class. I thought it was really good, so I was surprised when my instructor gave it back the next week with no comments. When I asked her why she didn’t like it, she explained that she always looked forward to my work, so she was disappointed to read a story I had submitted before.
I was confused, as I was certain that I had been thinking about the story for weeks, so I didn’t see how I could have handed it in already. But when I looked through my files, I discovered that I had written a story, turned it in, forgot, and then wrote almost word for word the exact same story and handed it in. It was scary.
Nine months later, I decided to write a story about my work with Haven Coalition. I knew I wrote a short piece about it first semester, so I re-read it, and used what worked. I thought I wrote a scene in which I was at my desk at work, the phone rang, and my first hosting night was arranged. But when I looked through my files (eerie music), I found a story I wrote almost exactly a year ago that, almost word for word, had the same opening.
Maurice, the hamster who runs the wheel that powers my brain, is scaring me. On one hand, if I wrote almost the exact same thing a year apart, I think it means that I had an important idea, and I’m glad that I did not forget. The fact that I have no memory of doing this is disturbing.
Tags: Damn, fuck, mortification, writing
>After I posted the last chapter of Always, I went to school. My story about my grandfather’s life was set to be workshopped. I was nervous, but figured that it was still better than something I wrote 20 years ago, even if it had no similes.
The workshop was extremely helpful, but also brutal. People were very generous with their praise for what worked, and constructive with why the parts that didn’t work failed. I may have improved my writing since “Always,” but damn, I have a long way to go.
Class left me both drained and with lots to ponder, but I joined a few friends for food and drink anyway. Indulging myself, I ordered chocolate pudding at the French restaurant we went to. It came with this luscious almond studded chocolate cookie thing (it was sort of like a chocolate waffle cone) and sugary whipped cream. I felt nauseated after I ate the cookie and a few bites of pudding, but ignored it.
When I finally got home, I still felt sick. My undiagnosed mysterious digestive ailment does this to me every once in a while, so I went to bed, figuring I’d feel better in the morning. Dear Reader, false hope. Oh, false hope.
Since I woke up, I have done nothing but puke and crap. It was so bad at one point that I even shit myself, ruining a pair of underwear that I really like. At other times, I lay on the bathroom floor, writhing with cramps. I worried about dehydration, but my second round of vomiting was the Gatorade I sipped to prevent that. I also have a low fever.
Sam Tanenhaus is scheduled to speak at school tonight about his book, The Death of Conservatism. I’m not sure I buy his theory about the two different types of conservatives – good ones who see that government can be positive and bad ones who, in the words of Grover Nordquist, want to shrink it to the size where it can be drowned in the bathtub – but I’ve been looking forward to the event all semester. It is pretty rare that my political interests and my literary interests collide. Now I can’t go. Puke. (Well, I could go and puke on the conservatives, but that is pretty rude, and I don’t want to stoop to their behavior. Plus there aren’t likely to be many conservatives in a New School audience.)
Tags: (undeserved) self-pity, I am grosss, school, writing
>Two new chapters are up at Always. I must have been drunk with words as I typed them up, as I could not stop hiccuping. The force of the hiccups jerked my head and hands each time, so there are probably more typos than usual or intended. (I’m copying exactly what’s in the notebook, so the punctuation is not great.)
Chapter 13 is all about a party that the main characters attend. It features, of course, the game “Truth or Dare.” This is the second time that “Truth or Dare” appears in the story, but of course, nothing really interesting happens because I was/am a total nerd. It cracks me up. I was obsessed with this game through even the early years of high school. (And when the Madonna documentary came out, my dorky friends and I were rendered giddy by the title. Oooooh! “Truth or Dare!” How exciting!)
When I was in eighth grade, I once played a more risque version of Truth or Dare called Two Minutes in the Closet. Since were there three girls and only one boy, this was not such a balanced game. I was excited to kiss someone. That’s about as far as I was willing to go. These days, it blows my mind how naive that was, although I am sure that there are plenty of geeks who also feel the way I did, just as I am sure that there were many kids who were doing all sorts of things that I barely even knew existed. OK, so I have no point except that I was a nerd whose heights of ecstasy didn’t progress beyond slow dancing close to some guy. Whatever.
Tags: Always, hilarity, leering perverts, nerds, ooh-la-la, those were the days, writing
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Name: Suzanne Reisman
Location: New York, NY
I'm a misanthropic humanist. While I'm a do-gooder by training and profession, I sort of also loathe people. Now I write, too.
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