My son got in trouble at school years ago. He painted a blue apple and the teacher told him there was no such thing. She was angered that he had not taken the assignment at face value. He should have painted one that looked like the other children's apples. I smiled and told him his teacher did not see well. Some things were bigger than box dwellers could understand. I hung the blue apple on the wall and sent a note to her explaining that in our family, blue apples are very real.
I had never told him of my blue apples before. He knew them anyway. He painted them for me without needing them explained. That Is a blue apple.
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I am curious about people. I love to lurk among authors and agents blogs. I love to analyse the life changing moments of people, especially those who are unaware of those moments. I am looking at things they may not know, yet i can single them out and say, there it is.
For some authors, that moment is rejection. I may be at odds with this, but I feel sad when I see people fall over something they have randomly assigned themselves as a measure of failure. I see on many blogs a count. It is interesting, but means nothing, unless they allow it to swallow them. Some events are not controllable. Death and illness strike without choice, but other things are gathered by the victim. Rejection letters are one of those things that I don't care about.
I have lurked for some time on a few peoples blog. I am just learning to blog myself, so had little to give them back, until now. One story that I find sweetly disarming is that of a young writer who is now on the bestseller legend list. She was so discouraged from time to time. Yet the moment that her life changed was almost without fanfare. She had a friend who kindly put a copy of her book on the desk of a huge agent. Her comment was.. Whatever. She commented on her dozens of rejections at length, but this was almost a non-event to her mind. That moment would change everything, but she didn't expect it, so she didn't have the trauma of imagined loss. (congrats again on the birth of Gwen if you should ever wander over here)
I find her moment so inspiring. Yes, she ended up noticed because she had a friend. She would have ended up noticed anyway. She gave her very best and over 100 times it was not good enough. She was not insane with self defeat, yet it did bother her. Her moment had already been put in motion, yet she allowed herself the trauma of being told no way....no thanks....no deal. It was not a bad thing that she did that. It made her tougher. It made her better.
Another story is of an agent who has to hand carry (in high heels rubbing blisters) a novel she liked to publishers for her very first sale. She had been told no, but believed. It was the wrong sort of book. It was trash. It was beneath dignity.
It sold. It made lots of money. Her genius was to become legend. I think of the scared person who probably doesn't tell the whole story. As I watch her walk the New York streets that day in my mind, I see the strength it took to stomp on those tears and blisters. I see someone who lasted just long enough to make that successful call. That is the moment, not the yes. The moment of inside glory, that changed it all, is what I like.
################################33
I just had a blue apple!
This is a wonderful day - I just had a blue apple. A boost - a small touch on the shoulder that gives me light.
I can't hold back this small thing. I was blog hopping and found a little button called YOU WRITE LIKE. Hey a fun little gizmo for entertainment.
I plugged a couple pages into the magic analyzer and a name was returned.
David Foster Wallace
I think 'ok cool who the heck is that?'
Novels
#################
And a speech - read the whole thing here.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
##################################
My freak out factor.
Day beforeYesterday I found an end zone - a part of me too personal to share for a simple YA highway road trip question. I am a hard person according to many - I am not romantic - I rarely say much mushy gushy stuff to people. It takes a lot to push me - more to break me and it is a rare thing that I will cry for or about anything. Somehow I got to talking about my best friend. I told everyone things I learned from him and that he had said the most romantic thing anyone ever said to me. Then I couldn't stand it and took it down.
Not putting all the rest back up but I will share what it was.
It is an offbeat thing that the most romantic thing I have ever had a person say to me, came from my best friend.. "you are my water" That was the moment I knew - this kind of love is just as big as all the mushy hoopla.
I gave him one of those "Dude, if you get any more full of crap..." looks. (I do that to people)
He held up a glass of water and said.
"I like to drink many things from orange juice to coffee to soda. Tea is good and I love a root beer sometimes. The thing is, I can live without those things. Water seems so common - not important. But, I can function without any of the other stuff - I don't exist without water. I always have to come back to water. You are my water."
That is still hard for me to put out in the world. But, then I read more about this guy who I seem to be like in my writing style..
We are both the sign of the water bearer.
His unfinished work - The Pale King is soon to be published
He has a fan site called the Howling Fantods. (yeah I know Howlynn is a nick name - but still)
This is the opening sentence of The Pale King
That is perfection.
Ok I have been discussing symbols - and I love to weave and drift them into my writing.
A few of you who were nice enough to comment on the 250 word thing - mentioned the way I had talked about a box on the wall - not the character.
If it were there for no reason - I would have to agree - but the box on the wall is a symbol.
It is in plain sight but nobody really notices it. It is obviously malfunctioning, broken, dangerous - Like the Magical creature Natalie can feel watching her. She can't see him yet - but he is watching her - falling in love with her - and her instincts tell her he is there. The box foreshadows that he is very dangerous - The smoke smell is him - not just the speaker. This moment takes her life away - it will never be the same. It is hidden in the every day things we ignore, excuse and take for granted. In the book I am working on now - The river is a huge symbol. The opening lines of book four.
The tobacco-brown water frightened me, swirling secrets, hidden danger, unknown eddies trapping things away from the light. His blood is in the river, and I want to be held in his arms, nestled in his rusted liquid, sucked down to the blackness that is my heart without him. I am glad I killed the one who put my vampire in the river, but it does not stop me from longing to join him,to need to become one with the water. I imagine the river as a gentle vampire draining my life away in the churning mud. It moves on, as I stand trapped upon the banks, fearing I will give in to the call. My heart is already there, only my face has not yet felt the hellish cold water cover me like a lovers caress.
(By the way I plugged my 1st books 250 plus a few into the gizmo - NOT the passage from book four! I only went to grab that for this post, cause after reading his opening on Pale King - I was breathing funny - knowing it had a strange bingo in the impossible place. It didn't see this opening to simply link up the similar words!)
My book four has nothing to do with his subject - He is literary - I just write monsters.
So ----Not saying that he and I are near the same level - in any way shape or form -----but ya know its kinda like I get what they are saying about my clunky sentences - when I wrote the paragraph above it was two sentences - I made it much more easy to read....lol. And it does stand out that his brain - and mine use some words in kind of a freaky parallel dimensional fashion faux pax! I will go change tobacco -rust and even lovers caress - cause I know his words now - but It is still kinda freaky that we are wearing the same outfit?
He was a philosopher - I am only a teller of tales. I had never heard of him until today, yet our muses are dancing in the same place. It says to me that writing is important. My David is gone and this one fell to the same sorrow. I will never get to sit and talk with either one of them. But the one I never met, spoke to me today across the veil. He made me cry.
The river will flow on without us all one day. What we leave here may be only words, but maybe, just maybe, another we can't imagine, will let those simple streams of words be water for their soul.
That is a blue apple.
Going to buy "THE PALE KING" as soon as it comes out.
Maybe it is just a fluke that this little writing analyser would spit out his name to me. Then again, maybe it's Magic!
Who do YOU write like? Go here to find out.
http://iwl.me/
I can't hold back this small thing. I was blog hopping and found a little button called YOU WRITE LIKE. Hey a fun little gizmo for entertainment.
I plugged a couple pages into the magic analyzer and a name was returned.
David Foster Wallace
I think 'ok cool who the heck is that?'Google returned some stuff.
Novels
- The Broom of the System (1987)
- Infinite Jest (1996)
- The Pale King (2011) (unfinished)
[edit] Short story collections
- Girl with Curious Hair (1989) (published in Europe as Westward the Course of the Empire Takes Its Way)
- Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999)
- Oblivion: Stories (2004)
#################
And a speech - read the whole thing here.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080213082423/http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
##################################
My freak out factor.
Day beforeYesterday I found an end zone - a part of me too personal to share for a simple YA highway road trip question. I am a hard person according to many - I am not romantic - I rarely say much mushy gushy stuff to people. It takes a lot to push me - more to break me and it is a rare thing that I will cry for or about anything. Somehow I got to talking about my best friend. I told everyone things I learned from him and that he had said the most romantic thing anyone ever said to me. Then I couldn't stand it and took it down.
Not putting all the rest back up but I will share what it was.
It is an offbeat thing that the most romantic thing I have ever had a person say to me, came from my best friend.. "you are my water" That was the moment I knew - this kind of love is just as big as all the mushy hoopla.
I gave him one of those "Dude, if you get any more full of crap..." looks. (I do that to people)
He held up a glass of water and said.
"I like to drink many things from orange juice to coffee to soda. Tea is good and I love a root beer sometimes. The thing is, I can live without those things. Water seems so common - not important. But, I can function without any of the other stuff - I don't exist without water. I always have to come back to water. You are my water."
That is still hard for me to put out in the world. But, then I read more about this guy who I seem to be like in my writing style..
We are both the sign of the water bearer.
His unfinished work - The Pale King is soon to be published
He has a fan site called the Howling Fantods. (yeah I know Howlynn is a nick name - but still)
This is the opening sentence of The Pale King
Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the a.m. heat: shattercane, lamb’s‑quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother’s soft hand on your cheek.
That is perfection.
Ok I have been discussing symbols - and I love to weave and drift them into my writing.
A few of you who were nice enough to comment on the 250 word thing - mentioned the way I had talked about a box on the wall - not the character.
If it were there for no reason - I would have to agree - but the box on the wall is a symbol.
It is in plain sight but nobody really notices it. It is obviously malfunctioning, broken, dangerous - Like the Magical creature Natalie can feel watching her. She can't see him yet - but he is watching her - falling in love with her - and her instincts tell her he is there. The box foreshadows that he is very dangerous - The smoke smell is him - not just the speaker. This moment takes her life away - it will never be the same. It is hidden in the every day things we ignore, excuse and take for granted. In the book I am working on now - The river is a huge symbol. The opening lines of book four.
The tobacco-brown water frightened me, swirling secrets, hidden danger, unknown eddies trapping things away from the light. His blood is in the river, and I want to be held in his arms, nestled in his rusted liquid, sucked down to the blackness that is my heart without him. I am glad I killed the one who put my vampire in the river, but it does not stop me from longing to join him,to need to become one with the water. I imagine the river as a gentle vampire draining my life away in the churning mud. It moves on, as I stand trapped upon the banks, fearing I will give in to the call. My heart is already there, only my face has not yet felt the hellish cold water cover me like a lovers caress.
(By the way I plugged my 1st books 250 plus a few into the gizmo - NOT the passage from book four! I only went to grab that for this post, cause after reading his opening on Pale King - I was breathing funny - knowing it had a strange bingo in the impossible place. It didn't see this opening to simply link up the similar words!)
My book four has nothing to do with his subject - He is literary - I just write monsters.
So ----Not saying that he and I are near the same level - in any way shape or form -----but ya know its kinda like I get what they are saying about my clunky sentences - when I wrote the paragraph above it was two sentences - I made it much more easy to read....lol. And it does stand out that his brain - and mine use some words in kind of a freaky parallel dimensional fashion faux pax! I will go change tobacco -rust and even lovers caress - cause I know his words now - but It is still kinda freaky that we are wearing the same outfit?
He was a philosopher - I am only a teller of tales. I had never heard of him until today, yet our muses are dancing in the same place. It says to me that writing is important. My David is gone and this one fell to the same sorrow. I will never get to sit and talk with either one of them. But the one I never met, spoke to me today across the veil. He made me cry.
The river will flow on without us all one day. What we leave here may be only words, but maybe, just maybe, another we can't imagine, will let those simple streams of words be water for their soul.
Going to buy "THE PALE KING" as soon as it comes out.
Maybe it is just a fluke that this little writing analyser would spit out his name to me. Then again, maybe it's Magic!
Who do YOU write like? Go here to find out.
http://iwl.me/
