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Fifty thousand half-way decent words - that is what I want done on this novel by the time I arrive at the residency with Kelly Cherry. Most likely, I'm going to make it. I mean I have the words right now, but the last 4,000 are only half half-way decent. There's a week to change this, a week to pack, and then it's on to three weeks of away-from-my-life writing. All the time, I yearn.
One of my favorite novelists just received a MacArthur "genius" grant. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie wrote Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun, and I'm hoping she'll use the grant money in a way that means I'll have a new novel of hers propped open on a pillow soon. (Of course, she should also get a fabulous facial, travel, have fun giving away largess, do some house repairs, and buy a new wheelchair with even more power - oops, that's my list for an unexpected $500,000.)
Chimamanda writes a really fine novel. Read them both.
After Uhura, he was always my favorite.
Flamingo Campground, the Everglades, over a decade ago - I was perched beside the wooden benches overlooking the Florida Bay and waiting for the evening naturalist program to begin. A tall ranger strode up through the crowd, tapped the microphone, and said his talk was going to be on Florida's water. The first slide was a map of mish mashed lines, and I thought "this is going to be boring." But I already had a nice layer of mosquito repellent applied, so I stayed. Well. Even his government-issued, try-not-to-piss-off-too-many-people version was like an espionage novel. It had intrigue at the highest political levels, evil corporations, unrelenting natural forces, violence , and all sorts of Byzantine machinations.
Tonight Florida's Eden hosted an event to "Celebrate our Springs, Floridan Aquifer, and the Water Which Defines Us." They brought together forty artists, a jazz band, good food, and Cynthia Barnett, the author of Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern US. I've only just started on it (sinkholes!) and, like that long-ago ranger lecture, it is the opposite of boring.
P.S. Also, there was a painting of the view looking up from under the spring water to the sky that is exactly a scene I was trying to write earlier today. Is it plagiarism if I take that image and put it in my character's eyes?
DUH City- Affordable,Accessible, Integrated Housing - this is the rallying cry for the tent city that ADAPT has set up outside of HUD offices. (HUD backwards = DUH) They have a website, a daily newspaper that they deliver to lawmakers, a TV station, and a slew of bloggers covering the action. Check out Wheelchair Dancer, Cripchick, Roving Activist, and Gimp Parade (I love her heading quote about bodies!) just to get started.
ADAPT has a long history of disability activism that ranges from sledgehammering curbs without curb cuts to snatching people out of nursing homes. These days, they also work on legislation that will release the nursing home lobby's grip on Medicare and Medicaid funds such as the Community Choice Act and Money Follows the Person Programs.
Sometimes it's searching the web, sometimes it's flicking through microfiche reels, but sometimes this novel's research means returning to its geographic setting - the Silver River.
My kayak friend and I were launched by 7:30 and had the river to ourselves. A batch of baby alligators and their mama curled over downed branches, ibis waited on the top of the tallest dead tree for the first sunlight, and in a sandy cove, naked lesbians squealed as they dropped into the cold spring water.
And I did do research. I consulted with my kayak friend and the overhanging branches on how to describe the smell of cypress. I found out exactly how far you have to go into the trees before the mosquitoes gather. And, finally, I figured out a simile for how the air is on those mornings in the summer when even before dawn the humidity is hardcore.
Afterwards, there was barbeque. Yum.
"Of course, a book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand. The gold beaters, the stone grinders, the scribes, the binders..."
I'm just part way through Geraldine Brook's novel People of the Book, and segments like the one above have been making me tear up.
I love books. When I had a bookstore, I'd slice open the top of a box fresh from the publisher and lean close to breath in the acetate smell. The first time I finished all the many, many steps of hand sewing and hand binding a journal and there was, it seemed suddenly, a book in my palm, I sobbed that I could have made such a thing. It pisses me off when I check out a book from the library and it smells of someone's perfume so strongly that I can't keep reading. But all the while, I'm making up a story about this woman and seeing her long fingernail, painted an orangy-red maybe, slip under the page to turn it.
I imagine my own novel someday published. I hope for deckle edged paper, a peach silk headband, an embossed or perhaps inlayed image on the cover, and in my wildest imagination, the satin ribbon of a bookmark sewn into the binding. Or to go another way, a trade paperback with french flaps and wrap around cover art.
A while back I signed up for One Story. I've blogged before about how they're a lovely fit in your hand, such excellent writing, the way a story should be read - on it's own rather than part of an anthology.
Yesterday I sat in the waiting room while my mother had her back fixed up and read "How to Know Each Other" by Nell Casey. It has a perfect first paragraph. I think I'm going to write it out longhand in order to figure out how it's done. And the subject matter of an adult daughter caring for an addled parent was not lost on me. By the time I finished reading and sat with the story a bit, my mother was tottering out from the procedure room. I closed the chapbook, tucked it in a pocket, and took my mother to lunch. We had a good time.
Anyway, I encourage you to subscribe to this non profit literary magazine.
