Common Titles

When my first book, Bookworms Anonymous, hit the shelves (the Amazonian shelves, anyway) I immediately established a Google Alert so every time the phrase Bookworms Anonymous hits the internet, I am notified.

It's amazing how many people use the same phrase. Usually the Alerts point me to a book club's website or chat room, where I peruse entries from various bibliophiles such as myself waxing digitally about the latest, greatest book they've read. Today I was lucky enough to stumble upon a blog  (http://adprincess-hn.blogspot.com/ ) written with style and panache, with today's entry titled Bookworms Anonymous. The author lives in London, a city on my short list of vacation destinations, so the blog is all the more intriguing. And she has a job at Christie's! So cool.

So set up your Google Alerts--enjoy the notifications about everything interesting, or everything containing your name and watch the world expand and shrink at the same time.

Janet Burroway

I recently attended a writer's conference in Madison, Wisconsin where I was lucky enough to hear Janet Burroway speak. I'd never heard of her before, but loved the way she talked about writing and the struggle to actually sit down and start writing. She gave all of us permission to write to our lowest standard, which is better than writing nothing at all.

Of course I bought two of her books on break. Of course I had her sign them. And she doesn't merely scrawl her name across the page or write a stock phrase wishing the reader well. She opens the book to a random page, selects a phrase wherever her finger lands, and inscribes that particular phrase to the reader. She said it's like a horoscope. Nifty!  One nice thing about this method, besides giving the purchaser a personalized inscription, is the time it takes. It's nice to spend three or four minutes chatting with the author rather than being rushed off, pushed aside for the next reader in line.

So far I've read one,  Bridge of Sand, and loved it. It's going around Bookworms Anonymous right now, and I'm confident everyone will enjoy it. Ms. Burroway is most well known for her text book, Writing Fiction, which is the preeminent text used in Universities across the United States, but this latest novel is a well-crafted story. As a reader I enjoyed it, as a writer I learned a thing or two.

Mobile Home

I once lived in a car. I was only 17, so there were no worries about personal safety or suspicious shadows because I was still immortal. Sleeping while sitting up in the driver's bucket seat of a 1977 Ford Pinto caused no physical repercussions as I leapt out the door every morning, fresh faced and full of energy, performing an abbreviated personal cleansing ritual before working all day as a waitress in a busy medium-priced restaurant. My tips amounted to $100/day, but I was reluctant to spend any of it on lodging. Who  needed a bed when I had a perfectly fine and comfortable Pinto, and generous friends whose showers I could use? Life was simple then.

When I mention living in the car to my children (this happens only rarely and after I've had a couple beers) in an attempt to illustrate how rough I had it, the kids are always skeptical. "I doubt it, Mother. You can't even sleep in a tent, let alone a car." It's true. I can no longer sleep in a tent or on a blow-up mattress. If I sit for too long on any kind of chair, hard or soft, reclining or straight-backed, my back and legs stiffen up and require an embarrassing sequence of Yoga moves to loosen sufficiently to walk like someone my age (40) rather than an octogenarian.

Maybe living in the car caused my muscles to begin petrifying prematurely. Sometimes I blame the car-living for my restlessness--I have never, before or since, been able to literally wake up and drive. One time I was reading by the dome light and fell asleep and had to push start the car the next morning, popping the clutch just before the on ramp (did I mention I lived in the car at a rest stop along the freeway?). It was quite invigorating to jump out of the car and immediately perform intense calisthenics and strength training. Again, I was 17. I remember all of these events clearly but can't imagine feeling energetic after sleeping in a car.

Everyone's question, upon hearing of my car-capades, is: How long did you do that?

This is where the story disappoints. I should have stuck it out, stayed in the car longer. Think of the adventure--the stories I would tell! I could have slept the whole summer in that Pinto, relying on my little battery-powered alarm clock (this was in pre-cell phone 1987) to stir my brain every morning. And the creepy shadows? I barely  noticed them.

So how long was it? "One week," is my standard answer, unless someone probes or expresses doubt, at which time I confess "five days". Five measely days I now look upon sometimes as high adventure, sometimes as teenage folly from which I was lucky to escape unscathed.

The Slump is Over

I broke out of my reading slump! It turns out when I lose interest in reading, all I have to do is read a non-fiction book. Somehow this jump starts my brain again and I'm ready for a new novel.

I'm reading Still Alice by Lisa Genova, an intimate portrait of a woman with Alzheimer's. Genova spent time on meticulous research and takes the reader into the mind of a cognitive psychology professor who's experiencing early-onset Alzheimer's. I just started reading it, so I can't ruin the ending for you.  It's one of the current selections of Bookworms Anonymous and I have a feeling it'll earn the Stamp of Approval.

Stay tuned to find out, or read it for yourself!

On My Bookshelf

The writing slump is also a reading slump, and the books are piling up. There are 20 books on my to-be-read shelf, and I ordered two more from Amazon.com this morning. I know I had no business ordering those two new books with twenty waiting obediently on the shelf, but the addiction is in control here.

At least my habit is legal, moral (assuming I don't read anything too trashy), non-fattening, enlightening and harmless. It also helps the economy because I definitely buy more than I borrow, and it goes well with coffee or wine. There's nothing better than curling up in the morning with a cup of coffee and a good book, unless it's curling up in the evening with a glass of wine and a good book. Aaahh.

It Doesn't Look Like I'm Writing...

I started writing my third book. It's roughly outlined and I have extensive disjointed notes designed to capture my bright ideas in cryptically phrased snippets. I already know the contents of the table of contents and the appendix. I even have a list of glossary words! But I'm at a standstill.

I haven't written more than a paragraph in the past week.

Of course, writing involves mental effort and angst and mind stretching brainstorming sessions. The physical act of writing or typing is the only visible proof that such activity has occurred, but it's difficult to measure the hours spent agonizing over each word in the first sentence before it is recorded for the first time (I'll revise it several times before exposing it to another reader).

I'm hoping this slump is actually a subconsciously energetic session of word jockeying and theme building, and tomorrow I'll start writing chapters at a time, so compelling I'll be unable to close the laptop and focus on the view outside the window. I'll probably wake up in the middle of the night to record some ephemeral notion, earmarked for inclusion in a specific passage. It's time to focus. Again, hoping the subconscious has been fine tuning all along.

A speaker at the seminar I recently attended in Madison, Wisconsin said (I'm paraphrasing): Every writer experiences an uncontrollable urge, a compulsion, a desire within their soul, to write. Every writer absolutely can not survive without writing and must do so every single day, except right now.

She went on to assure us our subconscious minds are working on our craft even when our fingers aren't, and we should relax and allow our powerful, magical minds to operate and eventually produce pitch perfect prose.

Short Nights

The other night I met a couple high school classmates for a drink at the bar. We've been out of school for 22 years now and as I gazed around the table at my dear old friends' faces I felt every one of those years. We're all sporting fine lines around our eyes and maybe a few gray hairs; a couple of us have gained a few pounds. As a group, we still look good and our recent or upcoming 40th birthdays provided enough conversation fodder to see us through the evening. Our memories of grade school and high school featured vastly disparate recollections--after hearing a couple stories circa 1986 I wondered if we had in fact attended the same school. We agreed we all blocked out certain memories, sometimes to make room for new ones and sometimes to alleviate humiliation.

There was a time when we said we were going out for a beer, we meant ten or eleven beers. Now when we meet for a beer we each have three or four, then leave the bar early to prevent hangovers. What will happen in twenty more years? Will we sip our Milk of Magnesia together? Maybe we will race our walkers to the bathroom.