the digital age woke me up

I keep reading articles that use the mysterious phrase “the digital age,” as in, “we live in the digital age.”

As in, for example today’s NY Times magazine, in an article about the growing popularity of buying handmade items and crafting:
–”‘Buying handmade helps us reconnect.’ The idea is a digital-age version of artisanal culture — that the future of shopping is all about the past.”
– “… (crafting) provides relief from the digital world and, yes, is a form of “political statement” against the dehumanizing global supply chain.”

As in today’s Los Angeles Times, in an opinion piece about the 60-year anniversary of the invention of the transistor:
– “Along with its descendant, the semiconductor chip, it ushered in the Digital Age.”

I don’t know who or what ushered the digital age into my house this morning, but I sort of wish we’d had a bouncer around. This morning, at 5:30 a.m., a high-pitched electronic alarm beep-beep-beep’ed into the quiet of our upstairs, waking everyone, including the dog.

I have absolutely no idea what the heck that alarm belonged to. An iPod? A phone? A camera? It stopped beeping before we could locate the source of the sound. It’s kind of absurd, if you think about it, that our lives are so full of electronics we wouldn’t know which of said items woke us up. Everything has a beep or a ring or some sound. Batteries run out, and our “smart” appliances remind us it’s time to recharge. Except that we’re not smart enough to know what was talking to us or why.

Maybe crafting would help, who knows?

How do you define manly, anyway?

Some Thursday things:

-The best novel ever for a man. (on the Guardian‘s books blog). Must be some man-holiday that I wasn’t aware of, because I also ran across the Top 10 Most Manly Writers Ever, defined, apparently, this way: “in their fiction, the liquor is always strong, the women willing, and wildlife had best take cover”(enotes book blog, via Bookfox).*

-It’s the old what-should-we call-it? discussion of (creative) nonfiction. I’m not ready to lump myself in as a Realtor just yet.   And also, didn’t anyone tell Barbara Tuchman that there are trademark issues involved there? The proofreader/copyeditor in me wonders if the Chronicle of Higher Ed was wise to leave that label lower-cased. (via Practicing Writing)

-Who knows if there are any left, but Moleskine notebooks are currently on sale for $1.99 here. It’s a $20 value! Not available in stores!
Ahem. Clearly, I’ve been watching too much TV too close to the holidays. (via Moleskinerie)

-This video is a nice tie-in to my recent post on writers on the big screen.  (ReadingWritingLiving)

-And now, for silliness. This cracks me up.

*Seriously, have you ever seen a list like this for women? The Most Womanly Writers Ever? Or, the Best Novel Ever for a Woman?

There’s a reason you’ve never seen it, believe me.

Writers on the big-screen

I hadn’t considered until very recently how many movies there are out there about writers. I’m not talking about books made into films. I’m talking about actors who play writers. I suppose since there’s a writer or two or four behind every film it makes sense; writers write what they know.

But the other evening, in the theater to watch “Margot at the Wedding,” (in which Nicole Kidman plays a writer), I began to think about the great number of films about writers and writing. Before the film, we watched a trailer for “Starting out in the Evening” which is about a has-been novelist. A few weeks ago, I saw “Dan in Real Life,” and Steve Carrell played a newspaper columnist.

But there’s a difference between a character who happens to be a writer and a character whose writing becomes part of the plot; the fact of their writing is central to the story. I’m thinking of films like “The Wonder Boys” or “Adaptation,” or “Capote .”

During the two hours I was in the theater absorbing “Margot at the Wedding” and the trailer for “Starting Out in the Evening,” it dawned on me how on-screen writers usually are presented as people with few positive traits. In general the characters that filled “Margot at the Wedding” were awful people all around, but a scene during that film, in which Nicole Kidman’s character was interviewed in front of an audience by another writer, actually made me think, “My god, writers are the worst people!”

I can’t think of a film in which a writer was portrayed in a positive light, secure in his or her own abilities. Even in the whimsical “Stranger than Fiction,” Emma Thompson plays a solitary chain-smoking novelist who has it in for her character. Michael Douglas’ character in “The Wonder Boys” is a disaster. Paul Giamatti’s writer-character in “Sideways”: lost and lacking in hope and self-confidence. Above all, writers in films are seen as selfish, aren’t they? Look at the two egotistical writer-parents in “the Squid and the Whale.”

I know it sounds as though I am surprised by the portrayal of writers this way, but I’m not.  The portrayal — the selfish writer, bad at relationships, absorbed in his/her own work — well, there’s an element of truth in every stereotype, isn’t there? I guess I’m only surprised by how many films I can think of in which this is the case. Can anyone think of any films in which a character whose writing is central to the story comes off as inspiring/positive/selfless (or at least less selfish)? I’d love to see one.

Lizard people are running the world ’n stuff

Ooh! It’s fall fiction week at Slate. Yum. And including the greatest works of fiction that contemporary novelists have never read.

Also, on the random and entertaining side: Need some fodder? How ’bout: lizard people are running the world?

Emerging from fog

Or something like that. I have been in a serious funk! But I feel better now, for no real reason that I can put my finger on. I try not to write here when I am cranky (you know, if you don’t have anything nice to say…) which is probably best for all of us.

Instead of writing, I’ve been kind of turned toward the visual. I’ve spent a lot of time browsing photos and art online recently. I get inspiration from that sort of thing, and I suppose that even if I can’t put said inspiration to use right away, it’s good all the same. It helps. Some places I like to look for visual inspiration (maybe you will too):

-My Flickr favorites.
-San Francisco artist Lisa Congdon’s work.
-Journals by this woman, and this one.
-These amazingly cute bento box lunches. Hey, food can be inspiring.
-This illustrator’s bus sketches. It’s not just me who likes to observe on the way to work.
-My college friend Bob’s photographs.
-The Seven Roads Gallery of Book Trade Labels.
-This traveler’s fabulous journals.

morning-mares.

I had a great night’s sleep last night (a rarity recently) … Except for the creepy weird dreams that showed up this morning between snooze alarm blurts. I’m talking seriously creepy: dead bodies, maggots, scary stalker man, isolated cabins in the woods. Kind of like my brain decided to shoot its own Blair Witch Project. If I had awakened to night, instead of sunny Friday morning, I would have been completely freaked out.

Where do these kind of dreams come from? Is it because I got a roaring sunburn on my face at the Giants game yesterday? (I was working, really! It was a company picnic.) Or because I ate too much last night, out to dinner with friends? Does meatloaf give you bad dreams? Does key lime pie? Was it reading David Foster Wallace before I went to sleep?

The things we carry

I was browsing Flickr last night, and I came across this group, in which people lay out the items they carry on a day to day basis and photograph them.

There’s something strangely intriguing about these pictures. I kept hitting next, next, next to see more. At first, I thought, we’re all the same, we carry the same things: notebooks, iPods, phones, pens, keys, wallets. The photos are oddly similar in that way.

You can learn a lot about people by looking at what they carry. The photos are less similar than they seem. You can tell the artist types by their choices of pens and pencils, you can tell the organized from the unorganized, and the no-nonsense from the high-maintenance. You can tell who drives, who bikes or walks, and who takes public transportation.

After looking at these photos for a while, I thought, my god, we carry so much around with us! A lot of posters seemed shocked at their own inventories. And we carry so much technology around with us! I am guilty of this too — my phone and my completely outdated iPod are always in my bag. Sometimes I even have the chargers with me. It’s amazing how things that are supposed to make our lives easier, simpler, and more convenient fill up our bags and make them heavier. And there are people who have posted photos who carry many more devices than I do, multiple cameras, PDAs, multiple iPods(!) etc.

There are a surprising number of people who do not carry pens/pencils, or any kind of paper. A lot fewer people carry books than you might expect, or hope for.

See what I carry here.

Like gulping down “Best American Short Stories” in 120 min.

…All the stories were good, but it was a lot to take in in a short period of time. I’m talking about Paris Je T’aime, which I saw last night.

The film is a montage of 18 shorts made by 22 different directors — from Joel and Ethan Coen to Gus Van Sant to Wes Craven. Eighteen! Each short contains completely different actors — quite a list, actually.

Imagine 18 of your favorite short stories, each by a different author, each with its own sensibilities and impact and mood, and then imagine if you could read them at hyperspeed, one after the next, no pause in between to catch your breath or your emotions, and that’s what it feels like to watch Paris Je T’aime.

It’s a great movie for short story writers … but possibly a better movie to rent than to see in the theater. I wanted to pause after each one to think it over, like I might after reading a good short story. At the end of the film my friend asked which one of the segments Willem Dafoe was in, and I couldn’t remember back through all of the stories to even consider answering her.

In any case, it’s hard to watch that film and not want to live in — or at least visit — Paris. Which was the whole point.

Here we are, again.

I can’t sleep. I can’t sleep because there are things bouncing around in my brain (bits of work ephemera mostly); because my legs are twitchy because I haven’t been to the gym in two days and apparently walking a couple of miles after work with the dog and elsewhere isn’t enough to keep my pesky calf muscles entertained; because I know that my weekend might not be my own — chores and other things will pull me in various directions — and therefore I might not get to write as much as I would like. Or maybe even at all.

The calves, well, I could stretch some and they would probably stop being twitchy. And the work bits, they will go away if I read a good book. It’s that last one, really, that’s keeping me awake.

I have thought recently of just giving up on writing. I mean giving up on the writing that I have to cram into the slivers of time before or after work or on the weekends. That would be the writing I see as my writing, as opposed to work-related writing. Seriously, I’ve thought of giving up on it because I’m tired. It is truly enticing… My life would be calmer, more relaxing, simpler, less insomnia-provoking… if I just didn’t keep pushing myself to write write write when I could be lying on the couch reading a book, or sleeping in, or, well, any number of things. It’s just difficult, and something that provokes anxiety: will I get to write, or not? There is a part of me that’s tired of my own expectations. At this point the expectations are not high: Just write something, anything. There’s another part of me that’s tired, too, of feeling guilty when I’m not writing, even though I know for my own sanity and for the good of household relationships, I need to not shut myself in my office with a laptop all the time.

Tonight Billy and I were discussing this. Or, well, I was thinking out loud about how I could possibly make this work, and I was telling him about all the other people I know, or know of, who cram writing into the time outside of the 9 to 5, because they have to. Writing comes in addition to work and anything else they have to or want to do. We discussed the options: whether it was feasible for me to get up early a couple of times a week to write, or if I should take one night a week as my Writing Night. Neither of these feels right, but these are the options, it seems.

Billy said something about how after work, he just wants to relax and not worry about rushing around to try and accomplish something else. And I said, “That’s because your work is your passion, and for many people, their passion is outside of their work.” (This is true, about him. He has other passions, but he likes his job and it seems to drive him.)

In any case it doesn’t matter what you call it, passion, work, hobby, whatever. If you are driven to do something, you’re driven to do it, whether it’s work or writing (or whatever kind of art) or taking care of your kids or maintaining a pet dog who — ahem — insists upon eating your catalogs.

The point is, I suspect it’s not optional, making room for those things you’re driven to do, or passionate about. If it were, I wouldn’t be up at 1 am trying to write myself to sleep. Giving up, while it may seem alluring for a moment, is impossible.

Oversubscribed.

I hear people saying that all the time these days. As in, “I’m so oversubscribed right now, I couldn’t possibly find time to read/cook actual food/spend time with my kids/etc.”

Whenever I hear that, I think, “As in, you get too many magazines?” Because frankly, that’s my definition of oversubscribed. I don’t know what my point is, exactly, except that I hate when people use words like “oversubscribed” when they really mean “busy.”

Anyway, I went to the bookstore today, which is not something I needed to do, because I am actually oversubscribed, in the true sense, as in, I have a lot of magazines to catch up on. And I’m not even done with Anthony Doerr yet. (Though I made some excellent progress last night as the result of inexplicably waking up at 2:30 am and not being able to go back to sleep until 5:30, which is not necessarily the trade-off I was looking for in terms of getting some reading done.) The bookstore beckoned, and I did not resist. It is foggy today, the perfect kind of weather for being in a bookstore….Who am I to argue with that?

In fact my reason for going into the bookstore was to buy a new notebook. I have a certain type of notebook that I like to write in, and until I did an Internet search about five minutes ago, I didn’t know where to buy them, except at this one bookstore in my neighborhood. I used to write in these notebooks in 2000 or 2001, and then they disappeared. And then, this year I found them again. I love these notebooks. They have a tight spiral on the side that doesn’t catch on things or get in the way of my hand as I write. And their covers are sturdy, so it’s easy to write on trains or where ever.

I only saw four left on the shelf, so I bought two. Now that I’m home, I see that you can buy them online, and they don’t seem to be nearing any kind of demise just yet. I even found other people who worried over losing them and not being able to buy them anymore, who were also heartened by their sudden return.

Anyway, I also came out of the store with a fat paperback.

I’m sure I’ll get to that eventually.

Not deep and meaningful, or even writerly.

The husband is asleep in an armchair, and the dog is asleep on his couch, with his nose buried behind the pillow. Me, the sicky, I’m awake, hacking and sniffing and wishing for the miraculous appearance of popsicles. (Of course, the fact that we have no popsicles is my fault, seeing as how I ate a boxful over the last week. Sigh.)

I read an issue of the New Yorker, and then I got sidetracked by the Internet and have somehow spent more than an hour (ok, more than two) looking at things that really can only be looked at on the Internet. And which have no literary or intellectual value whatsoever. For example, the daily travels of Mr. Lee. Or, witness how much more I might have liked math, if math were always like this. Also, I admit to making up ridiculous band and album names for, um, my dog.

Good times.

i feel old, sort of.

I awoke this morning with a painful knot in my lower back that has me walking and sitting very carefully so as not to strain anything or make it worse. And the muscles in the back of my right leg and shoulders are sore, I guess from whatever I did at the gym yesterday. And, as is usual these days, my knees are stiff and creaky. These things make me feel prematurely old.

In weird contrast to this, I have a persistent bout of acne on my forehead (see also: late 1980s, teen years, high school).

Good times.