Visit http://www.miriamparker.com for a new bloggy experiment. I will try to update more frequently…but you know how things are…
Culture Consumed This Weekend June 27, 2011
I love the feature on the Paris Review blog where they ask someone to record all of the culture they consume in a certain period. I had a kind of eclectic weekend, so I thought I would chronicle what I read/listened to/saw.
Books:
I read a series of Young Adult books called If I Stay and Where She Went by Gayle Foreman. I was skeptical at the beginning, but was completely sucked in by the appealing voices of these characters, especially Adam in Where She Went. He’s a conflicted, emotional character whose suffering has been ignored because of the success he attained.
I also read most of Eight Million Ways to Die by Lawrence Block. In honor of his birthday and him joining Twitter. And because it is really good.
I started LIFE by Keith Richards which is really incredible…I can’t believe I hadn’t started it sooner. I love all the stuff about the band, but it is also a cultural history that has made me go back and listen to some music that I haven’t heard in a long time, or that I’d never heard before.
Music
In addition to a lot of Muddy Waters, The Ronettes, Chuck Berry, Otis Redding, I listened to a band with a silly name, tUnEYards, but an awesome album called Whokill. I am also into this album by a band called Pepper Rabbitt and I listened to that album a few times. I also listened to some Neon Indian and Toro y Moi.
I also listened to part of Terry Gross’s interview with Keith Olbermann, but I don’t feel compelled to finish it.
Movies
I watched Scarface on DVD. I’ve watched quite a few classic crime films in the past few months (King of New York, Sexy Beast, Deep Cover, Get Carter, Serpico, Seven to name a few) and I must say that Scarface, while very long, is clearly the best of all of them. It’s the most engaging, original and intense. I know people have all sorts of opinions about this movie, but there’s a reason why it is obsessively watched. And that is because it is good.
I also re-watched LA Story. I remember LOVING this movie when I saw it the first time. This time, it was just OK. A little too quirky for me.
I watched part of a TV pilot for a show that is supposed to air this fall, but found it so unbearable that I stopped in the middle.
Most notably: I went to BAM to see Jamel Shabazz: Street Photographer, which is noteworthy mostly for the photographs that capture the style and attitude of 1980′s New York. I highly recommend checking out his work.
Buy Yourself Flowers June 24, 2011
I come from a family of cheap Jews. Many members of my family read this blog and they will not dispute this fact. Y’all are misers. It’s ok. I still like you.
I, somehow, was denied the cheap gene and since I started getting my first paycheck–and I’ve had a job since I was 11…so don’t you start having illusions about me sitting around eating bonbons–I have had the uncanny ability to spend said paycheck. It started with clothes and moved on to handbags, shoes, entire apartments of furniture.
My family MARVELS at this ability. And I am proud of it. (I do not, for anyone who might be worried about this, have any debt and I do actually have a savings account which has more than $3 in it….I’m not an overspender. Just a spender.)
But, occasionally, the cheapness rears its ugly head. For example, my cheap family thinks that subscriptions are dangerous. When I wanted to join Columbia House Records at around the same time that I got my first paycheck, I was forced to do MATH in which we figured out whether or not it was CHEAPER for me to get the music I wanted from Columbia House rather than buying individual CD’s at a store (taking into account the “free” CD’s they gave you, plus the “retail price” of the CD’s that they required you to order–the bottom line, in case anyone wonders, is that you basically got a deal if you just did the minimum, but if you ever messed up, you were TOTALLY getting screwed). I recently, however, discovered a service called @Rdio. It is a brilliant, brilliant thing where I can basically listen to any music I want, at any time, on my mobile device or on my computer. It costs 9.99 a month. It took me days to talk myself into subscribing to this service, of rationalizing how ONE CD on iTunes costs 9.99 but RENTING all of iTunes also costs 9.99. I finally gave in. And it is the best thing I have ever done. I have listened to so much new music in the past two months—music that has inspired me to run faster, that has lulled me to sleep, that has caused me to attend CONCERTS, that has walked me to work and home and played in the background as I entertained and read books. A few bands that I recommend include The National, The Dodos, Fever Ray, Pepper Rabbit, Toro y Moi, Neon Indian (I actually like this album so much that I own it AND stream it on @Rdio–anathema, I know.) At the end of the day, this service is highly worth it if you want to listen to different music all the time. But, it also falls into the category of things that probably a cheap person wouldn’t enjoy: you don’t GET anything for your money at the end of the day, except for the experience. This is frustrating to the cheap. They want a physical object. They want to have “purchased” something. But this is truly brilliant. I recommend it to all, miser or not.
My main discovery about the trauma of being raised by misers, however, comes down to flowers. Flowers, to a cheap person, are a complete waste of money. They serve no observable purpose other than being beautiful. And they die quickly. I was indoctrinated into this mindset. And I remember having a FURIOUS reaction to the essay in Megan Daum collection My Misspent Youth in which she talks about how she was completely broke and in debt but that she HAD to have flowers for her apartment or else she would die. “You are irresponsible with your money!!! You don’t NEED flowers,” I yelled at the page.
And yet, in the past few months (reiterating the fact that I am no Megan Daum), I have realized the amazing gift you can give yourself of bringing flowers into your home. Beautiful, vibrant flowers. I have had multi-colored tulips, gerber daisies, hyacinths and currently there is a HUGE bouquet of Sweet Williams sitting right in the middle of my table. Most likely nobody else will see them but me, but they are FOR me. And I bought them. For FIVE dollars.
So, I challenge you all, think of the thing that you think is silly, but that might, for a small price, bring you some pure joy. Something that feels frivolous. Something your mother or your husband your best friend might mock you for. And do that thing. And then do it again next week. You will feel great about it.
On Creativity April 17, 2011
I have been thinking a lot about creativity this week. It all started when I saw the documentary Bill Cunningham New York. Bill is the man behind the NY Times Style Section “On The Street” column which is where I knew him from. But really, he is much more: an international photographic celebrity who can spot trends like nobody else. And also he is the hardest working artist I have ever seen. He is completely devoted to his craft, riding his bike around Manhattan in a Parisian Street Cleaner’s smock and he lives entirely for and among his work–his apartment is floor to ceiling filing cabinets containing the negatives of every photo he’s ever snapped. What’s amazing about Bill is that despite the fact that there are those who think he is “the most important person in the world” (this is what’s said about him outside of a Paris fashion show) and he clearly knows that what he does is unique, that his eye is really perfect, he is also unassuming, humble and understated. He’s sacrificed everything for his work and literally cares only about capturing beauty on film.
The obsessiveness. The perfectionism. The sacrifice. And also the lack of judgement (of others, not of himself, of himself he is intensely judgemental) that he exhibits. These are things that I really admire. They are also qualities that I aspire to in myself that I can’t always quite achieve. The ability to say “No, I need to stay in and write today” the ability to keep going until the right thing happens instead of giving up or getting frustrated. I dream of being like that.
These topics have come up in various ways in other things I read this week as well. This interview with the fantastic writer and teacher Sigrid Nunez about her time working with Susan Sontag…where she talks about Susan’s voraciousness for everything…not just writing. She says “In those days Susan’s habit was to clear out big chunks of time and write around the clock, often taking Dexedrine. She didn’t have a daily routine. She wasn’t able to write every day; there were just too many other things she wanted to do besides write…She would have needed more than one life to do all the things she wanted to do, and was capable of doing.” In some ways Susan appears to be the other side of the spectrum from Bill…she wrote in so many mediums, so many genres, she was both novelist and cultural critic.” What is interesting about Sigrid’s commentary on this time, however, is that it was all too noisy for HER to get anything done. She needed silence. And Susan’s life deleted any space for Sigrid’s.
There’s also this piece from Dani Shapiro that Amanda sent me in which she talks about writing as a “courtship” of your demons rather than an “exorcism” of them. I think this is very important…novel writing is not “journaling” (a word that I DETEST). It is a craft. It is structure and thought and planning and building. It is not just feeling. It is not “real life” tricked out on the page.
As an antidote to all of this sunny positive creativity talk, however, is the essay by Jonathan Franzen in the most recent New Yorker, about solitude, Robinson Crusoe, an island called Masafuera, and David Foster Wallace. There is a sadness to this essay–about a desire for solitude that turns frightening, about a fear of mental illness, about a dangerous striving. Franzen writes, “Even though David laughed at my much milder addictions and liked to tell me that I couldn’t even conceive of how moderate I was, I can still extrapolate from these addictions, and from the secretiveness and the solipsism and radical isolation and raw animal craving that accompany them, to the extremity of his.”
What all of this tells me is that there is no recipe for creating your art. Nobody is the same. And really, if we were all sane, we would just buy shoes and makeup and forget about the nonsense that is art. And yet, for whatever reason, we are compelled. Some days I don’t feel compelled. But some days I do. And so, I will continue to toil. Doing what I need to do to create something. Right now it involves writing in a notebook and then transcribing into my computer (which is exhausting). Next week it might be different. Once, my friend Joel could only write in his shower. Sigrid Nunez needs complete silence and found living with Susan Sontag and her husband to be completely antithetical to being able to create her own work. I like people to be watching me so that I don’t have an excuse to mess around. No Facebook while you’re writing!
I don’t really have a neat way to tie up this post, to comment on all the things I’ve been thinking about. I don’t know what I think about my own creativity…sometimes I think it is really important and sometimes I just want to decorate my apartment. But overall, I keep grinding away. I keep writing. There is something there that I am interested in. And I have a tiny hope that I will find it. Sometimes it takes a long time to come upon something that I feel passionate about, but, eventually it arrives. And then it is something I am devoted to.
So, those are my mildly disjointed thoughts. I wanted to share them with you. Feel free to respond.
I’m Glad I Didn’t Get Published (yet) March 28, 2011
I never thought I’d say this: but I’m glad neither of the novels I’ve written have gotten published. I am glad I wrote them. The feeling of knowing in your mind, yes, ma’am you are indeed capable of writing a novel (which is the one dream you had when you were a girl) is amazing. It is, in my opinion, one of the most difficult things that a person can do and I can say I’ve done it twice. And I pat myself on the back about that regularly. It also makes me confident that even in my darkest days of writer’s block, I know I can one day do it again.
I am additionally glad I found an awesome agent who seems okay with the fact that I don’t currently have a project for her to shop. I am, finally, glad that I got an MFA in Creative Writing, even though there are those who think such things are a waste of time. You can read my opinions on this topic elsewhere, but the bottom line is, that if an institution is willing to pay me to go to school and be creative in exchange for teaching some of their undergraduates and participating in student government and working on a literary journal, then I for one am going to take that challenge. And I did it gladly. (And yes, I do think you can teach someone to write. I guess that’s a topic for another post though.)
But when I read this piece on HTML Giant last week called “Taking No for an Answer,” my instinct was to say, YES. Now, you might be thinking that I am part of the establishment, one of those publishing people who thinks I’m smarter than other people. And for a few hours of every day, I do work in a publishing house (now might be the time to say that my views are my own and belong not to my employers). But I have been on every side of this equation: I have been a girl in a continuing education writing class desperate to have someone say “I liked one line of your story, you are not a moron,” I have been a weirdo striking out to a strange Southern city to study writing, I have been a little fish sending out query letters to literary journals and agents and tracking rejections on spreadsheets. I have been a person trying to get distribution for my tiny literary journal (it’s not so tiny anymore…go team.)
And this is what I will say: time is precious. I am a person who loves to read. But I want to read things that are good. Really good. And good art (and when I say art, I am referring in this case to writing and generally speaking, really anything from a novel you’d buy in a grocery store to a National Book Award winner) is difficult to create. It is especially difficult to create art in a vacuum. The way that things get good is through a process of development, through many drafts on the part of the writer, through input from trusted readers, and, eventually through the help of an agent, editor and copy editor.
I had almost all of these ingredients when I wrote my two novels–drafts, brilliant readers, a great agent, even some really helpful comments from editors who turned the book down. And yet, I still couldn’t get the book to be good enough to publish. So, there is part art, part alchemy, part mystery, part hard work to the whole process that remains to me a bit mystifying (and exciting).
Could I self-publish these novels that I have stored in my closet and on my hard drive? Of course. Might they achieve a modicum of success? Possibly. I know a lot of people who like to read, some of whom have even expressed interest in reading things that I wrote. I know that I could price them low and get people who are cheap and enamored of their new devices to buy them. And yet, just because I wrote them doesn’t mean they need to be read.
Really, I think the HTML Giant writer sums it up quite well:
We live in an age of entitlement. We want therefore we must (and should) have. We are encouraged not to take “no” for an answer. Writing, or publishing really, is primarily an endeavor where we must learn to appreciate rejection or at least accept rejection. As writers we will always hear “no” more than we will hear “yes,” because taste is so subjective, because for many publishers, there are a finite number of books they can publish because they have finite resources, even if they are some of the largest publishers in the world. Persistence is an important quality in a writer. Some of my greatest writing successes have come from being persistent in the face of constant rejection. And yet, I wonder if there comes a point when we should take no for an answer, when we should use rejection to reassess why we keep meeting with rejection. At what point does faith become foolish or even delusional?
I think there is value to filters. Think about your local diner: it has pages and pages of its menu. You can order the filet of sole, the lobster bisque, steak tartar (maybe?). But all you ever get is a burger. Or maybe a salad. There’s no way that one restaurant can be good at all of the things on all of those pages. And it is the same with books. I want the condensed menu, not every option. Every option is not good for me.
I should say that HTML Giant has published a kind of rebuttal to the piece that I am agreeing with called “Self Publishing Isn’t My Worst Mistake” which brings up valid points, but I’m sticking with my original thesis. And now I will go back to working on the project that maybe one day will be good enough to publish. But I won’t know until I try.
Best Practices for Bloggers: 9 Tips for Working with Publishers and a Question About Contests February 15, 2011
I had a great time at Book Camp this weekend (thanks to Ami Greko and co for hosting/organizing and providing fancy Smart water!) I got to meet Margaret Atwood AND David Gutowski (it was an honor to meet Ms. Atwood, but the online publicist in me geeked out way more at meeting David). See Bethanne Patrick, Ron Hogan, Susan Danzinger. Fun.
My blogging (and publishing) buddy Ann Kingman and I hosted a discussion called “Building Buzz with Blogs” (I was so glad that Erica Barmash of Harper Perennial was there as she’s one of the masters at this. I kept looking at her to confirm what I was saying.) I came away from the discussion with two thoughts…the first of which is, there are so many blogs that have review guidelines which is great, but there isn’t really anywhere that lists what bloggers should do to have a successful relationship with publishers. Here are a few of the things that came up on Saturday:
1. Be clear with the publisher about what you really LIKE, don’t just say “I’ll take them all.” That makes the publisher think you actually don’t want any.
2. Be in touch! If you request a book, send a link when you post your review.
3. Be honest in your review. Most of the publishing people that I know that work with bloggers welcome honesty because it means that when you DO love a book, you mean it. Of course, I understand only posting positive reviews and I try to only send you things you will like (see tip #1 for this to be effective). But honesty is the best policy.
4. Engage in the community. Build your blog. I’m totally willing to work with a “small” or “new” blog…but I want to see that the blog is evolving over the course of when I work with you. I also want to see regular posts.
5. Check in! (This might not be true for all publishers, but it is true with me.) If I say I am going to send you something and then you haven’t received it in 3-4 weeks, it might have gotten lost in the shuffle. A reminder is very helpful.
6. I hear that there is sometimes jealousy about who has what galley. If you really want a galley, ask the person who has it where they got it and ask the publisher for it. Whining gets you nowhere.
7. We DO judge a site by its cover. Make your blog nice. Clean. Neat. Readable. If it crashes my computer every time I click on a link, I’m going to stop clicking on links.
8. Register a domain name. It’s cheap and it makes you look way more professional.
9. My favorite bloggers also send me gossip. I read blogs, but I don’t have time to read everything. Be my ear on the ground and I will love you forever.
My second thought which I didn’t get to address in the discussion relates to contests. My feeling about contests, unless something really cool like a movie (or an imprint launch…) is happening and there is fun schwag to give away, is that they are a pain for everyone. You have to track down addresses. You have to bug me to send the books to them. Inevitably things go awry. And, to be honest, they kind of feel like a cop out. Like you want to cover the book (maybe as a favor?) but you aren’t really invested in reading it. There’s no need to do favors. I think time is precious and as a blogger you only have so many moments in your day. Why waste them on contests when you could be reading or writing or commenting?
I’m open to being dissuaded (or supported) on the topic of contests. I know they drive traffic and follows etc. But at this point, aren’t the same people entering and winning? I know there are a number of bloggers who read this site, would love to hear your thoughts.
Please note that all opinions expressed in this post are mine and not that of my employer.
Who sums it all up better: comedians or psychologists? January 29, 2011
My favorite thing about my therapist’s office was not the classical music (it kind of stresses me out) or the view of Central Park (which was indeed lovely), it was his subscription to Psychology Today. This is a magazine that does not come very often, it seems (for a few weeks, as I read the same article about jealousy OVER AND OVER, I was sure he had CANCELLED his subscription which kind of made me stop wanting to go back…) but is very well written and also sometimes even provides a good topic for a 50 minute session of whining. I was thrilled, therefore, when I realized (thank you Book Bench) that Psychology Today is ONLINE (for some reason, this possibility NEVER occurred to me…). I just read this article about how girls and boys learn differently. How boys are rewarded just for sitting still, so they feel like they can accomplish difficult tasks by trying, but girls are afraid of tasks that are “difficult” because they are rewarded/praised for being good at things. As a person who only likes to do things I am pre-existingly good at (which limits my activities considerably…) I agree that this is very likely true.
But who needs Psychology Today when you have the amazing comedian Louis CK to sum it all up.
It’s Brilliant…Until It’s Bad… January 27, 2011
OH how I love this response by Stephen Colbert to the possibility floated by Jonathan Karp that he might be the author of O: A PRESIDENTIAL NOVEL.
He especially embraces the novel which our favorite reviewer Ms. Kakutani called “trite, implausible and decidedly unfunny” (is this a good time to mention the fact that she recently wrote a review in the voice of Brian the Dog from Family Guy…very poorly, BTW) and then accuses Karp of pointing to him as a possible author in a ploy for publicity.
Of course, now it’s been revealed that a former McCain staffer wrote the book. Really, it IS a brilliant rollout of marketing and publicity. If only the book was good enough to stand behind it, it would be a huge hit…because at the end of the day, for longevity, the book has to be good. (Unless you’re Snooki…)
Why Gossip is Good For You January 17, 2011
So I haven’t written very much this past year–other than email and Facebook statuses which obviously doesn’t count. I haven’t felt creative or even really like sharing.
But, last week I saw an ad on Twitter for a book on writing. Skeptical, but intrigued, I clicked on it and got the excerpt delivered to my iPhone. It is called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg.
In the intro, she talks about how writing is like running and like meditating. These are two of my favorite things (the former I’ve been doing for a long time, the latter is pretty darn new.) So, I bought the whole thing.
She recommends writing in a notebook, LONGHAND, and just kind of freeing your mind. She recommends filling one every month. I’m not quite at that level yet. But I’ve been carrying the notebook around just in case.
I think that my mind has been pretty rigid this past year so I’ve been worrying more about the “idea” that is going to spark a story rather than the small elements that make up a story, the latter of which is so much more of what writing iS.
AND she confirms that my most beloved pastime: GOSSIPING is good for me! She quotes Grace Paley as saying “It is the responsibility of writers to listen to gossip and pass it on. It is the way all storytellers learn about life.”
This is an exercise that I liked a lot, you write a sentence and then use the words in that sentence in different orders, not worrying about if they make sense. This is one I did during the storm on Tuesday (after I had stood in a line at Whole Foods that literally wrapped around the entires store!!):
The pending snow drives everyone to mania.
Mania of the pending snow drives everyone to.
To everyone snow mania of the drives
The everyone snow mania drives pending to.
Snow mania drives everyone to the pending.
It’s kind of fun! I guess it’s more of a poetry exercise than a fiction exercise, but I think it can loosen up your brain.
