joliehale

So, "Three Rivers." Not a very good series. Too bad I'm a sad person and will watch anything and everything with Kate Moennig. It's a sickness.

Anybody planning to watch ABC's "V" when it starts next month? We've got Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliet Burke from "Lost") AND Morena Baccarin (Inara from "Firefly"), so that answers that for me.

Now, Michael Chabon: Definitely in the "very good" category. Obviously you all knew that, but have you ever seen the man do a reading? I have! At the Brooklyn Public Library last Thursday. He read from his new book, Manhood for Amateurs. There is nothing like hearing a talented writer, who is also a great speaker, read his own autobiographical essays. Yes, Chabon is every bit as handsome as his photos indicate (more so, in fact; he has a beard now and it suits him), and every bit as funny and charming as you'd expect. And he does this endearing gesture with his hands, especially the left, where he spreads all his fingers but keeps the pinkie tucked in and then waves his hand around.

And then afterward, while he was signing my book, I asked him if the lovely woman in the front row was his wife. Oh, yes. Like a schoolgirl with a crush.

"No," he said, with a very confused look on his face. "My wife's not here at all."

Well, she DID walk in with him before the reading, and she spent the whole event looking at him adoringly--except when he read the essay about his wife's bipolar disorder, then she looked very grave and sad--I mean, her face was glowing with love, what was I supposed to think??

... shuddup.

Reminder: the Gravity's Rainbow discussion group will have its second NYC meeting this coming Monday, September 28, at 6 pm. We'll be meeting at Think Coffee on Mercer Street, and the goal is for everyone to have read the first 140 pages. The first meeting was a lot of fun, so if you didn't make it to the first meeting but want to join in, don't be shy!

So then. Did anybody watch the pilot of "FlashForward"? I just finished it, and I can't decide whether I like it or not. It's painfully obvious that the show is intended to appease impatient fans of "Lost" (which will start its last season in early 2010), and possibly to keep those fans in ABC's clutches after "Lost" is no more.

Stylistically "FlashFoward" a bit overblown, a little too much drama, but the premise is certainly compelling. Joseph Fiennes is the lead, with LOST's Sonya Walger (the one who plays Penelope Widmore) as his wife, and I think Walger gives a much more convincing performance than the famous Fiennes. In fact, out of all the main characters, I'd say Fiennes's interests me least.

Eh. I'll probably get hooked on the plot and keep watching despite the show's lack of finesse, because that's the kind of sad person I am.

Here's an unexpected effect of transplanting myself to New York City: increased awareness of my mortality.

Suburban-raised girls like me grow up believing that the Big City is an unspeakably dangerous place to live, especially for women, and especially for young single women. Which, you know, I am. Or at least, I don't have a man here to be my bodyguard, unless you count my male roommate, and I have no desire to designate him Jolie's Keeper. Besides, there's only so much any man can do.

Walking around alone after dark is unavoidable for someone in my situation (i.e. lone young woman with limited money living in affordable but slightly sketchy urban neighborhood). I stomp along the sidewalks, performing my best tomboy/bulldyke/crazy bitch impression (depending on how I'm dressed), while in my head dance visions of being harrassed, followed home, mugged, abducted, raped, held at gun- or knifepoint, being in exactly the wrong spot during a driveby shooting, and on and on. And I know my family and my girlfriend are hundreds of miles away having exactly the same visions.

Sometimes--more and more often these days--I resent my brain for holding unpleasant beliefs about what it means to be a woman. I resent my family and my culture for putting these beliefs in my head. I resent the world for giving me just enough evidence to feed my fears. Most of all, I resent myself for being so ignorant about the myths and realities of urban life--how am I to know whether I'm being paranoid?

But there's nothing I can do about any of it except be prepared. For example, I want to learn to shoot a gun. I want to take a self-defense class. I want to be stronger in every way. And I really, really should go through my computer and get rid of all those embarrassing photos. (And let the record show that if I do die, I would like my friends to crack open my laptop and steal the hard drive before my parents get to it. And please don't let my cats end up at the pound.)

But there's a positive side: I also have the uncontrollable urge to write. My novel is trotting merrily along, growing every day; I have to resist the impetus to write down the outline just in case I die tonight and need someone to finish the story for me. Outlining kills my energy, you see. I want to pull out old bits and bobs of prose and throw them away, or make them presentable enough not to be embarrassing, in case people go through my files after my unfortunate demise.

At the very least, I hope I have enough time to leave some kind of artistic legacy. It would probably help if I stopped navel-gazing and went to the laundromat before it gets dark.

For my first trick as an urban introvert, I will be facilitating the first meeting of the Gravity's Rainbow Read-Along book group!

Wait, what?

If you don't know what I'm talking about, a bunch of blogging/Twittering folks have decided to support each other as we read the notoriously long and challenging novel Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. We'll read at a reasonable pace, and have weekly discussions to talk about the novel and keep everyone motivated. I can't take credit for this idea; I don't know who originated it, but Moonrat has been helping to spread the word, and I am delighted to help take the group from the cyberverse to the real world by hosting the New York meetups.

The first meeting will be on Monday, September 21, at 6 pm. Location: Think Coffee at 248 Mercer Street.

And Moonrat will be hosting the online discussions each Monday on her blog.

If anyone is interested in participating in the read-along, either online or in person or both, hie thee to your favorite library/bookstore/online retailer (support an indie if you can!) and grab a copy! The proposed pace is 70 pages per week.

The updated schedule is as follows:

Monday, September 21: through page 70

Monday, September 28: through page 140

Monday, October 5: through page 210

Monday, October 12: through page 280

Monday, October 19: through page 350

Monday, October 26: through page 420

Monday, November 2: through page 490

Monday, November 9: through page 560

Monday, November 16: through page 630

Monday, November 23: through page 700

Monday, November 30: through the end, with a party to celebrate! (That is, as long as there are enough people around after the Thanksgiving weekend. C'mon, you know you'll want to have wine with your bookish friends after the stress of the holidays!)

The blog is being prodded out of hibernation, and it has a new name.

See, here's how I arrived at this moment: I was a suburban girl in my home state of South Carolina--a brand new college grad living independently with a full-time office job that was supposed to last me at least a couple of years, and a relationship that was supposed to last indefinitely.

Guess how well all of that worked out.

It didn't take long for me to shift my vague plans for a creative writing MFA from "maybe in a couple of years" to "right freaking now, for I must flee this place!" So in October, when the application season was nearing its end, I plowed through the application process in half the time any sane person would take. Ten months later I bundled all my belongings and two spastic cats into a Penske truck, said tearful goodbyes to those I love, and fled to the most non-suburban-South-Carolina place I could think of. That would be New York City.

Now here I am, studying my art at an up-and-coming MFA program, working at a respected literary agency, living in the freaking literary center of America, with my tuition and rent paid by a college fund courtesy of my sage and thrifty parents ... and emotionally isolated from every creature in my environs, apart from my two spastic cats.

I'm living the young writer's dream, MY longtime dream, and I can't stop thinking about what I've left behind.

But I feel less regretful when I compare my fun new internship and invigorating academic pursuits to the passionless eight-to-four-thirty gig I was stuck with in South Carolina's dismal job market, or when I'm walking through a city a hundred times more interesting than any place I've seen in my home state.

It's just that starting a new life in the big city is not nearly as romantic as suburban girls like me always imagine. You know what it really is? Lonely. Overwhelming. Scary. Did I mention lonely?

So that's the new direction of this blog (not that it had any real direction before), in addition to ongoing commentary about literature and publishing. I have an opportunity that most aspiring writers don't: to share my truth about being a young writer (and Southern suburban expatriate) in New York City.

I'll try for all your sakes not to screw it up.

The fact that I haven't updated my blog in a month is an indication to me that I don't need a blog right now. I'm just an aspiring writer with a boring day job, trying to pass the time until I start my MFA with reading, writing, and a healthy social life. I don't have much to say.

Thus, I'm putting joliehale on hiatus for a couple of months. After I move to New York in mid-August, I'll have more to say. As you may recall, I will be joining the MFA Creative Writing program at Queens College, and I am probably also going to start an internship at a literary agency (details to be provided if/when I'm officially hired [and yes, I'll get paid! It's an old-school agency that only accepts snail-mail queries]). Both of these endeavors will be much more interesting to me than anything I'm doing now, and I hope they'll be interesting to you, too. And let's not forget that I will also be a baby New Yorker--I will have LOTS to say about that state of existence, I'm sure.

In the interim I will still be active on Twitter, sharing links and brief thoughts, which are all I have to offer until my real life becomes more varied.

See y'all in August! (aside: What will the native New Yorkers do to me if I say "y'all" in front of them?)

Housekeeping note:

I am finding Twitter much better suited than this blog to my daily social networking needs. I won't retire the blog, but don't expect me to pick up the pace with posting. Twitter is easier and more fun for me to use--and you don't need a Twitter account to read my Twitter feed. You can even add it to an RSS reader if you use one (I personally love Google Reader). Just go to my profile and click the link on the right sidebar to subscribe to a multi-platform RSS feed.

Gem of the Day

from my blog/Twitter reading is this post from Editorial Anonymous. The topic is whether book authors should join in online discussions of their work, since their presence might cause commentators to censor themselves. The answer, basically, is: do what you will on the interwebs, but privately reconcile yourself to the fact that readers will have their own interpretations of your work, and try to think of this as a good thing.

It's important to remember that this is one of the magics of creating art, and one of the heaving frustrations. Ideally, your work will mean something personal to your readers, and that necessarily means it will be something different from what it meant to you.

So try to let go. Be philosophical about it, and remember the author's prayer:

God, grant me the courage to offer myself to others, the wisdom to let my work be what others most need it to be, and the serenity to hope that it irritates the jackasses of the world at least as much as they irritate me.

Hugh Ryan, my newest Twitter acquaintance, recently wrote a lovely, funny essay on his experience working at a GLBT high school and how the students there (especially the transgender ones) taught him a new way to use "the C-bomb."

One day, I found Diamond and a few of the other transgirls gathered around a computer looking at a hardcore-porn site. [...] "Oh," said Natasha, one of the younger girls, as I approached to shut down the computer. "They're so beautiful." She reached out a tentative hand to stroke the image of a clinically-bright close-up on a woman's stretched vag. Natasha was crying. It was the kind of picture that would have been disgusting under most circumstances, but the reverence in her voice made it seem a work of art.

(Aside: I love that about transwomen--that covetous reverence, and I can tell you from personal observation it's unlike anything I've seen in straight men, who have no interest in becoming vagina owners.)

I paused, waiting for some sort of outburst, a look of shock on Diamond's face, the wailing sirens of the second-wave feminism police; something. But nothing happened. I dropped the C-bomb and the world didn't end. [...] I hadn't realized that my students didn't use it for shock value. Well, okay, maybe they did a little. But mostly, to them, it just meant something good. Cunt was the highest compliment they had to bestow, not in a righteous act of reclamation, but through a simple equation: cunts were good, therefore good things were cunty.

Oh, the innocent power of slang without a sociopolitical agenda.

And oh, the power of the cunt!

Maya Reynolds has a helpful list of pros and cons (for everybody other than Google) of the Google Book Settlement. Due to confusion about what the hell is going on, I have not been closely following the news on the settlement and probably won't read up on it until it has all been, well, settled--but Maya's list is so concise and easy to understand, I'm using it as a starting point for figuring this thing out.

And if you're not following the very funny and very British agent Daisy Frost ... you should. She's recently been blogging about the London Book Fair ...

subject: A GRAVE END TO THE BOOKFAIR

Well, thank James Patterson (ie God) THAT week is over and I can finally get back to some real work – The Apprentice on i-player / Britain’s Got Talent on YouTube /Jamie Byng on Twitter/ all of this week’s HEAT magazine. I am ignoring my clients with gay abandon, living life by the full hour instead of having my life flash before my eyes every 30 minutes and not using spasticated phrases like ‘a distinctive new voice’, ‘we have just accepted a pre-empt from Germany’ and ‘this is like Dan Brown for the Twilight generation’. According to the Bookseller, the fair had ‘Fewer People But More Focus’, which sounds like an election promise from the Labour Party, although I did wonder whether maybe we could take that theme and roll it out to other areas of our lives – ‘Fewer Kisses But More Passion’ (too Max Moseley?) ‘Fewer Words But Better Prose’ (too Geri Halliwell? In our dreams) and am already preparing to justify a few duvet days with the phrase, ‘Fewer Days In The Office But More Thinking’. Well, quite.

But before I could entirely shake off the Narnia-esque surrealism of the Earls Court-based jollity that we call the LIBF, there was but one final date on my dance card to tick off before the electronic tag was, figuratively speaking, removed from my ankle and I was released back into the wild. ‘But how glamorous, where was it?’ I hear you ask.

Hint 1: the post's subject line. Hint 2: Miss Daisy enjoys puns.

Oh, and the thing I'm too busy to organize my thoughts about? This: I'm Glad I'm a Boy! I'm Glad I'm a Girl! As I said on Moonrat's post about this little piece of horror, "'we've come so far,' my muscular buttocks."

A couple of bloggers have shared some smart ideas lately:

1. Eileen Wiedbrauk blogged about an "editing party" she attended. One of her writer friends hosted a casual party where everyone helped her proofread her manuscript, thus:

She's gotten some interest in [her novel] from the publishing world but was asked to make edits -- which she has been furiously working on for the past month -- and this is where the editing party comes in.

She invited as many of us over as could fit in her apartment, gave us food and two chapters each to proofread. We sat with our diet Coke and our red pens and hunted out the last of the typos hiding out in the pages, flagged confusing phrases, and debated the usage of commas.

[...] We got to socialize, Corey got proofreaders, and we felt like we were helping. I believe Ms. Corey has been very smart about this. Particularly that she's asked lots of people to read very small amounts rather than begging us to read the whole thing from beginning to end. However, there's quite a bit of interest in reading the whole thing beginning to end now that we've gotten a taste of it!

2. Jessica Faust answered a reader question about grammar and style in published books, and in the process came up with a clever idea: create your own style sheet.

One suggestion for those who have specific grammar/style opinions, for example those who write a series or paranormal, don’t be afraid to send along a style sheet of your own. For example, do you have a new species with a specific spelling? A style sheet will help editors know what you intend so they can help keep it consistent throughout, and it will probably save you a lot of stetting later on.

If you haven't heard of a style sheet, it's a common document that publishers develop in order to make sure their books all have a consistent style. It might include things like whether certain words should be capitalized/italicized/etc., special punctuation rules, and anything else that isn't included in the Chicago Manual or other standard guide, or anything from the manual that the publisher disagrees with.

So if you create new words to use in your book, and you want to make sure that they're used/spelled/capitalized/etc. the way you designed them, you can write up a style sheet to help your book's copyeditor keep everything standard.

iPhone vs. laptop reading experience from @bookoven, who argues that supposedly uber-connected smartphones can actually offer a more solitary, focused, "quiet" reading experience than a laptop can:

I think it means that there is much more room for payed content on the iphone, where there isn’t on the web. Attention on the web, don’t forget, is driven by links. If you don’t have links, you don’t get love. And if you’re behind a paywall, you don’t get links.

That all changes on the iphone, where attention is defined by the apps. And content feels like it has real value again.

Breakdown of cost of producing physical books (in an attempt to explain ebook prices), and ways to optimize production in the future:

There are a lot more stages and costs than anyone would imagine. This convoluted process can be optimized in innumerable ways - Mr. Bezos would be hard pressed to find a more ’improvable/kaizenable’ business model.

[...]

Looking at optimization opportunities, a few jumped out immediately -
* Moving away from physical objects - The number of times a physical book is shipped, handled, stored, warehoused, inventoried is ridiculously high.
* Book Successes having to pay for Failures - The Internet allows for crowd intelligence, faster feedback, and a lot of other means to reduce the number and cost of failures.
* Book Returns - Every 4 copies of a book that are sold have to pay for the 1 copy that has to be returned (not to mention the returned book’s shipping, warehousing costs).
* Amount of Manual Labor - There are a TON of people involved in the book creation, distribution, and sales process.
* The fact that a book takes 16-18 months after being acquired to get to stores.

I now refer you to Maya Reynolds, for (among other topics) intelligent discussion of the new ways of thinking about book production that will be required for publishers to move forward with ebook technology.

Why we don't need to reinvent the book for the digital age:

Good books [...] are meant to be finite intellectual products; good books are not supposed to be never-ending and self-updating streams of consciousness. Nor are they supposed to be interrupted by a constant flow of references to other books; if you cannot move to the next page without having to consult a reference work cited in a footnote, the author has probably failed at synthesizing [...] this is is exactly the point of a talented author: to synthesize by compressing millions of links, facts, and opinions into a readable guide to the subject.

I never did understand why people think ebooks should be interactive with hyperlinks and videos and whatnot. That would make for a wearisome reading experience.

Attempting to compose worthwhile blog post for later today. In the meantime, here (thanks to Dennis Cass) are the NYT's monthly lists of summer movie releases: May, June, July, August.

I've jotted down about thirty-five of those that I want to see. #decisionfail

At the prompting of Moonrat, I am going to read George Eliot's Middlemarch along with the fine folks at the Fill In the Gaps project. I'm not doing the project overall, as my sizable TBR list is already enough reading pressure for me. But Middlemarch is on that list, so why not read it as part of a group?

Anybody else going to do this?

I have another review up on The Book Book: MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU by Darin Strauss.

I actually finished this book last summer within the span of a week, but it's taken me so long to review it because I allowed forced a friend to borrow it and was waiting to get it back so I could refer to the text while writing my review. I still haven't gotten the book back from my rather disorganized friend (sorry, Rachel, it's true!), but I figured it was about time. See, Strauss sent me a free copy after following a backlink from his smart Powell's post to my humble blog and seeing that I wanted to read MORE THAN IT HURTS YOU. In return, I promised him I would post a review online when I was done. Thanks again, Darin! I loved the novel.

Okay, what is up with the Better GReader Firefox Add-On? An updated version was released last week, and I installed it when I pulled up Firefox at work this morning. Now I can't use the preview feature on any new blog posts. This feature still works on posts that were downloaded to Google Reader before I installed the Better GReader update, but not on ones downloaded after the update.

Not cool.

Anyone know how to fix this? I'm not a techie by any means, but I learn quickly and can follow directions.

Last night I finished THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins. IT WAS AWESOME. Fastest book I've read in ages. My review is up at The Book Book.

Next up: SERENA by Ron Rash.

Last night I got enough sleep on a weeknight for the first time in ages, and now I'm actually more tired than usual. Clearly I am completing my metamorphosis into a Real Grown-Up.

Although that doesn't explain why I am suddenly craving sugary breakfast cereal ... or does it?

I think I'll go do something useful now, like migrate my Amazon wishlist into Goodreads and LivingSocial.com as part of my continuing effort to become less dependent on the 500-pound gorilla.

Edit: Obviously I need to pare down my To Read list to just the stuff I really really actually do want to read, because I will die before I get through the list as it stands.

You know what else I'm sick of people whingeing about? Communication technology. (Cell phones. The internet. You may have heard of them.)

First you've got your basic whingeing about how prevalent this technology is in our daily lives. I'm sure you've all heard these arguments: it infringes on our quiet time, it makes us ignore the people in our physical vicinity, yadda yadda yadda. Everybody forgets that these complaints can be traced not to the technology itself, but to how we use it--to our own nature and behavior. Technology doesn't make us do a damned thing; we make it do stuff. And if we want a break from it, that's what the off switch is for. By now we should all recognize that communication technology it itself a GOOD THING. It makes our lives easier and safer. When I first got my driver's license and started driving alone, my parents REQUIRED me to have a cell phone because they wanted me to be able to call them and/or 911 if I had an accident. And then they asked me to turn it off during family supper.

But now we've got another incarnation of this anti-progress whingeing: communication technology is TOO useful, and it's fucking with our fiction.

Conspiring with a distant lover? Try texting. Lost in the woods/wilderness/Ionic Sea? Use GPS. Case of mistaken identity? Facebook!

Technology is rendering obsolete some classic narrative plot devices: missed connections, miscommunications, the inability to reach someone. Such gimmicks don’t pass the smell test when even the most remote destinations have wireless coverage. (It’s Odysseus, can someone look up the way to Ithaca? Use the "no Sirens" route.)

[...]

Then I started talking to fellow writers and discovered a brewing antagonism toward today’s communication gadgets.

"We want a world where there’s distance between people; that’s where great storytelling comes from," [emphasis mine] said Kamran Pasha, a writer and producer on "Kings," the NBC drama based on the story of David.

The source of great storytelling is "distance between people"? Really? Because I thought the best source was human nature. Human life. Communication technology is part of our lives now, and I don't see that it's taken away humanity's capacity for drama, or diminished life's capacity to throw us for a loop, no matter how much gadgetry we're toting around. In fact, there are plenty of times when communication technology makes our lives and interactions MORE complicated and dramatic. The word "kerfluffle" comes directly from the internet, people!

And don't forget one of the most important aspects of technology, at least in terms of how we can use it in fiction: occasionally, technology plays merry hell with us and/or punks out on us--sometimes at the moment we need it most. We break it, lose it, use up all its power. It craps out right after the warranty ends. It's vulnerable to viruses and "glitches" (my muscular buttocks) and spilled diet soda and the Patriot Act. Some of us don't know how to use it properly. Some of us are too poor to afford it and get left out of the loop while everyone around us is connected to each other. One day, it might acquire artificial intelligence.

Communication technology is an incredible gift AND a huge liability. Don't pout about it. Don't even write around it. Make it work within your stories. Honestly, has no one heard of sci-fi?

On second thought, perhaps I should start linking to books at their Goodreads pages. Compare the Powell's page for Edinburgh (where I posted a review yesterday) with the Goodreads page for the same book.

For the time being, Goodreads is clearly more useful than Powell's if you want lots of reader feedback that will give you an idea of whether you'd like a book. And unlike the other big book-themed social network LibraryThing, it's not owned in whole or part by Amazon (and Shelfari can kiss my ass, Amazon-owned or not).

I'd still like to see indie bookseller websites gain momentum in this respect, so everybody please join me in posting book reviews on indie sites. I'm tired of hearing people whine about the impending doom of indie booksellers and then not doing anything to stop it. I'm especially sick of people clinging sentimentally to physical bookstores while ignoring the fact that online bookselling is the unstoppable wave of the future. Stores are great, and of course we want to hold on to the good ones, but they are no longer the bread and butter of the industry. If indies are to survive, they have to hop on the wave. And if you want to save indies, help them gain a foothold on the interwebs!

[/soapbox]

I am weaning myself from the five hundred pound gorilla's teat.

In the past I have linked to Amazon book webpages when I blog about books because Amazon's pages pack so much goddamn info. There's almost always at least one pro review (Kirkus, PW, newspapers, etc.) and at least one customer review; I like this because I usually decide whether to buy a book based on reviews. That doesn't mean I require positive reviews to buy something, but reviews can be a good place to find out the book's content/hook, and that often matters more to me than some stranger's opinion. And then Amazon sometimes has author blogs, yadda yadda, fun stuff.

But other sites like Powells.com could become more info-packed if readers make them that way. User-generated content, people! This is why I have created an account at Powells.com and posted a review for Alexander Chee's Edinburgh.

Does anyone know if indiebound.com allows site members to post book reviews? Can you guys recommend any other good indie sites that do or have the potential to rival Amazon's content-richness? I am particularly interested in professional and reader reviews (in case you didn't get that memo already).