Get Naked

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Steve, i.e., him

(The third in a series of writing tips you don’t need and didn’t ask for, but are going to get, such is my otherworldly generosity.)

Writing Tip #3

Get [to the] Naked [Truth}

The old workshop saw is that you should write what you know. I don’t much care whether you agree with that. But at least in one sense it’s true: only you know what you’re passionate about, and only you will be able to figure out how to turn that passion into good writing.

Not long ago, a young writer whose dad is a scientist I much admire, came to me for advice, as most of us do when we’re utterly clueless how to get started (oversimplified advice: Start.) and what kind of writer we want to be. Continue reading →

Do the Work

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Steve, i.e., him

(The second in a series of writing tips you don’t need and didn’t ask for, but are going to get, such is my otherworldly generosity.)

Writing Tip #2
Do the Work

Novels, stories, poems, memoirs—whatever your pleasure—sometimes may seem to write themselves. But they don’t. You have to get your butt into the chair and in front of the keyboard or however it is you write, and do it. I have known writers, or people who wanted to be writers, who liked talking about writing better than they liked to write. Not a good plan.

If you’re a morning person, a night owl, or an overstressed mother of four young children, you have to be ruthless and steal time to, as Nike has it, just do it. What works for me won’t necessarily work for you, but just as I did, you have to find what works for you. How do you do that? Continue reading →

The Child Must Die

Posted on July 16, 2012 by Steve, i.e., him

(The first in a series of writing tips you don’t need and didn’t ask for, but are going to get.)

Writing Tip #1
Be Ruthless

In a piece in the New York Times, Colm Toibin writes gorgeously about ruthlessness. He doesn’t quite frame it that way, but that’s what he’s talking about:

I have been writing about writers and their families so it is strange that the idea of rights versus responsibilities does not preoccupy me. I feel that I have only rights, and that my sole responsibility is to the reader, and is to make things work for someone I will never meet. I feel just fine about ignoring or bypassing the rights of people I have known and loved to be rendered faithfully, or to be left in peace, and out of novels. It is odd that the right these people have to be left alone, not transformed, seems so ludicrous.

He goes on to talk about various writers and their depredations on those they knew and loved, which transgressions may have had the possibility to seriously damage relationships. These writers—as should any writer—ignored that possibility for the greater possibility that stealing that moment or idea, or twisting that fact might make for better fiction.

Continue reading →

Pickles, Firecrackers, and Blue Garlic [U]

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Steve, i.e., him

This is the first time I’ve made pickles this early in the year—usually it’s August, when I’ve given up on my cucumber plants producing enough (last year they did, but I was out of town and when I got back they were either rotten or the size of watermelons) and caved and bought a load at the farmer’s market.

This year, the only thing that went into the pickles that didn’t grow in my yard—that is, vegetable things—was the garlic. Some of the garlic came from the farmer’s market and some came from the Giant around the corner. The only reason I’m making a big deal out of the garlic is because some of it turned blue. Not just blue, but a sort of neon aqua. Continue reading →

The Coming Blueberry Revolution

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Steve, i.e., him

The birds in my yard are pissed, and it’s about the blueberries.

Actually, the only thing I know for sure about the birds is that if they could, they’d eat all the blueberries off my plants and I’d never get more than one or two. I know this to be true because they did it last year. This year, I got a couple of rolls of plastic “chicken wire” and pretty much imprisoned them—the bushes, that is, not the birds. And I may have gotten as much as two quarts from my five or six bushes.

The weirdness comes in when I get the creepy feeling that the birds are watching, and taking notes. This happens when I unwire the pieces of chicken wire to pick whatever is left of the ripe blueberries.

What they are saying about me is chillingly Orwellian, frankly. They want to know why I get all the berries. Why I don’t share. Why I am cruelly letting them starve. Letting their little chicks go hungry. Continue reading →

Eat Your Yard

Posted on July 3, 2012 by Steve, i.e., him

I started making pickles (garlicky dill) three or four years ago, and jam (blackberry and raspberry, then last year, strawberry), and not too long ago, after she took a jar back to New York, my daughter said her friends thought it was so cool that I actually made stuff like that. I’ve been homebrewing beer since the late eighties, and so this didn’t seem to me all that much different. I don’t know why I was surprised that these college students would think that making pickles was so unusual. I’m guessing most of them don’t come from Portland. (If you’ve seen Portlandia, you know what I’m talking about.)

This thing is now about as big as my forearm, and is going to have to be quartered to fit in a pickle jar.

A couple of days ago, I was picking snowpeas in my garden and my next door neighbor was in her yard, watering their flowers. I said, I just love being able to walk out into my yard and eat stuff that’s growing there. She just smiled. She thinks I’m a good neighbor (and I try to be), but she may think I’m nuts, too. Which I might be. Continue reading →

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literature you can live without because you do

Monthly Archives: July 2012