- Read several articles in the new Poets & Writers Magazine last night. Excellent article about Junot Diaz. It took him eleven years to publish a new book after his debut fiction Drown. It was instructive and inspiring to read of how he found his next book topic. I feel I am going through a similar experience. A big topic I love and want to write about (Ohio River), but smaller voice calling to me: "Write me, write me."
- Read Downstream From Trout Fishing in America by Keith Abbott last night. Parts of it very good; missing a lot of heart and soul, though. Maybe I'm just spoiled by Ianthe's beautiful and generous recollection of her father.
I'm a University Lecturer in English and the author of a novel, The Secret of Hurricanes (MacAdam/Cage 2002). My life is summed up by Rumi, who said: "My story gets told in various ways: a romance, a dirty joke, a war, a vacancy." Rumi's quote is the epigraph to Hurricanes. The purpose of this journal is to explore creativity and the writing life.
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Pay attention to small voices.
ReplyDeleteEspecially the "write me" kind. They grow up to be big ones.
Gretchen
Those voices can be tricky, I think! They can be the voice of inspiration or of distraction.
ReplyDeleteI read DOWNSTREAM when it was first published in 1989 and don't remember much about it except that it left me feeling forlorn. I hadn't realized the extent of Richard Brautigan's alcoholism.
ReplyDeleteThe author of DOWNSTREAM did a reading at a local bookstore in 1989. W.P. Kinsella, author of SHOELESS JOE, as well as being a Brautigan fan, came down from Canada for the reading. In the discussion after the reading, numerous people expressed how much Richard Brautigan's writing had meant to them.
Ianthe's insightful YOU CAN'T CATCH DEATH is one of my favorite books. She writes so beautifully on what it means to love an alcoholic and survive and thrive, with emphasis on LOVE.