Zoe Strauss, Under I-95 2008
Today ended up being packed, and I had to choose between two different art events that sounded really appealing, a puppet show and Zoe Strauss’s 8th show under Philadelphia’s I-95 (at Front and Mifflin Streets). I’m sorry I missed the puppet show, but I’m glad I made it out to Zoe Strauss’s photography show. It was one of the most unique art events that I’ve been to. How many other art shows to you see skateboarders going through?
Seven ideas for keeping track of ideas
If you’re a writer, you’re a writer all the time. In my life, that means that ideas hit me at inopportune times. Times when I don’t mean to be thinking about writing, but, what do you know? I am. I’ve lost a lot of ideas because I got too wrapped up in what I had already been doing and failed to write the ideas down, there and then. I wish I could remember what I regretted, but I know I regret them.
Getting Started (5 of 5): First Novel
A year long fixation started while I read this book, on an airplane, flying home. I read all these single women’s stories, and they got me thinking about how hard it would be for Robin to have a girlfriend. Then, I thought, what if some kid read a bunch of Robin comics and decided to try to be some sort of superhero in a little town like the one I grew up in?
Getting Started (4 of 5): Debate
My Freshman year of high school, my friend E– and I joined the High School Debate Team. We were two weird kids that understood each other, so we had already started spending hours on the phone together every night before high school even started. Shortly after we joined the squad, we got to hang out with the older debaters of our school because we were beating the older debaters of other schools.
Getting Started (3 of 5): Experimental Writer
When a reader makes her way through a book, she likes for page 56 to relate in some semi-predictable way to page 55. It’s not a lot to ask, but it took me a long time to figure that out. See, I think of my high school years as my “experimental writer” phase. It was experimental because I wrote down pretty much everything that crossed my mind, whether it was two sentences long or 15 pages, whatever weird ass form it might take.
Spelunking me
It’s time to go spelunking through my own ideas. The picture above is a photo of my notebooks. I’ve got work notebooks, journals, writing books, notes for my novel — they are all there. Years worth of stuff. That cheap wire shelving rig I’ve got them in got busted up a little while back, and I finally reshuffled the things inside it and fixed it last night. As I did so, I flipped through a few of my old books.
The Motel 6 Fellowship
I read a poem this morning that inspired a blog idea. A group of writers who are all working crappy, hourly jobs without a lot to do but stand around and write things down in their notebooks could start one. They could publish things they had written at work on it. They could call it “The Motel 6 Fellowship.” That would be a great blog name. Tim Peeler’s poem, “Checking Out XVIII” gave me the idea.
Listening to NPR
Non-profit speak
Non-profit speak
] If you like imagery, drawings, art-in-general but just haven’t gotten off your duff to go to the local museum or gallery row, you might check out ANTI Magazine. Don’t look for it on a newstand. It’s a PDF-Magazine. There’s a whole world of people making magazines that they only publish as PDF’s for free download. ANTI has no text, no articles. Once you’ve downloaded it and opened it, you just flip through its pages, looking at imagery.