Pre-Nasalism

But since the completion of Terrorism, I'd produced nothing but the blog. It's true that Norman Harkness, blog reviewer for New York Magazine called it "an account of writer's block which, for candor and anguish, surpasses any we have on record," but it made no dint in my depression.  Like any writer, I'd known my share of gridlock over the years, but my current state was different, all-encompassing. It wasn't just my own work I'd rejected, but language in general. As I wrote in the blog of June 11, 2010, "More than mute when I sit at my desk, I am disgusted with any thought of writing or reading or the least hint of internal description."

Lawrence Shainberg

A Diversified Portfolio of Experience

That's the thing: When you're a novelist, or want to be one, and instead of staying at home to nurture your genius, you're chasing some romantic prospect, or drinking too much with your friends, or writing another book review, it's never entirely clear whether you are wasting your time, or whether, in fact, you are investing in so many treasury bonds to be paid out in the form of mature works. It could be that ostensible distraction is really just a diversified portfolio of experience.

Ben Kunkel

Well, he agitates

     She isn't really listening. 

     "What's he do?" she asks again.

      Maybe she won't let go of it until I discover the right answer, like a game with nouns and synonyms. 

      "He ... well, he agitates," I tell her.

      "Is that some kind of factory work?"

      "Not exactly, no, it's not a nine-to-five job or anything ... "

      She lets the magazine fall, now, cockers her head to one side, and stares at me without blinking her cold yellow eyes. She has the look of a hawk, of a person who can see into the future but won't tell you about it.  She's lost business for staring at customers, but she doesn't care.

       "Are you telling me that he doesn't ... " Here she shakes her head twice, slowly, from one side to the other, without removing me from her stare. "That he doesn't have regular work?"

       "Oh, what's the matter anyway?" I say roughly.

Louise Erdrich

More Resigned, More Civil, More Intellectual

I sometimes think that good readers are poets as singular, and as awesome, as great authors themselves ... Reading, meanwhile, is an activity subsequent to writing -- more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.

 Jorge Luis Borges

Forgive the Comparison

These days, whenever I start to write or think about having to write, I feel as repelled as if I were eating cabbage soup with a cockroach floating in it -- forgive the comparison.

Anton Chekhov