by Daney

Okay, everyone, we’re off and limping. We have 10 members but you can only see nine at the moment. I have to figure out how to make Tracy appear. I hope that will be fixed by the time you read this.

I don’t think of any of you as a shy person but I understand this is a foreign languge for many of us. There is not a blooper I haven’t made and this is a safe place to experiment.

Let’s try this: I have asked you questions in the reading and writing threads (see Conversations at the top of this page on the right). To contribute your thoughts just click on the single quote mark to the right of this column and scroll down.

It was easy to think of topics for Reading and Writing but I was at a loss for a Thoughts and Ideas topic. Tracy did it for me!

I’m betting we will get comfortable with this medium soon and will be chatting away. I can’t wait!

by Daney

We all love those days when the words just flow from our finger tips and, when we reread a passage we’re amazed by how good it is. Have you ever thought, “Did I really write that?”

If writing were always like that everyone would want to do it. In my experience the dog days are much more common. You know, those times when every word has to be torn loose, when you’d rather do the ironing than sit at your desk.

What do you do to get yourself out of the doldrums?

by Daney

What are your all-time favorites? My top three are Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, Sheila Bosworth’s Slow Poison and Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. I know because they are the ones I turned to after my daughter died and I had to learn to read all over again.

At the top of the next tier is Tom Robbins’ Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Can you imagine four more different books or writers? Do you get the sense that I have quirky taste??

As you name your favorites I’m sure I’ll remember others. And maybe as we read what others write we will be moved to start new conversation. I’m hoping!

I don’t know how to publish something on here. I don’t know if I’m putting something forward that might show my soul, and I also don’t know if I need to vet my words for typos or stupidness or bad thoughts. I hope like hell this is some place that my typing is being recorded, or is at least copy-and-paste-able, because even as I bumble over the keys I think the words might be true. I do love true. True is why I majored in philosophy and why I think and why I talk and I hope it’s why for all of it. But true, and truth, and think, and I, and some other stuff, they are all ephemeral and fleeting to me and I can’t grab what they mean. I for damn sure can’t make a formula or a diagram of how they work, although I suspect they work in some quadrilaterial three-dimensionally-organizable way that sports an elegance of design.

And dammit it all to hell, I just spent a full 10 minutes thinking I had lost all those words, when I realized I had saved them as a draft.  There was some feeling of grateful, whew, glad that self-selected itself not to enter the metaphysical body of the written word, and also some crapola, what if I said something intelligent?  At any rate, thanks, Draft.  Attempt #2 to share my words with the world.

by Daney

My mother steadfastly refused to have anything to do with computers. She could make her VCR (remember those?) stand on its head, programming it to record several shows at once. That implies, at least to me, that she had a technical mind.

She was amazingly resilient in some ways. After my father died, when she was 49, she lived in five different towns and cities, adapting rapidly to each one. She convinced herself, however, that computers were beyond her ken. As a result, she was bewildered by how the world worked for many years.

I promised myself I would never let myself dwell so far outside the mainstream although I fear I am hopelessly uninformed about pop culture. I was on my way to being out of the loop about social media as well until it became clear that I would have to pay attention to Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc., to do my job competently. To my amazement and delight I discovered not another layer of chores but a source of valuable information and pleasure.

One of my early advisers on the genre said, “Download Tweetdeck and follow 10 sources that interest you personally.” I did a Twitter search for Getting Published and I was off!

I discovered that literary agents have blogs crammed with helpful information. No longer do we have to purchase that big, clunky book every year and read dozens of smug profiles to try to find someone who might possibly agree to read our manuscripts. We can follow their blogs, get to know them as people and tailor our query letters to their personal tastes. (One, for example, hates the Lakers!)

Celebrities—my kind, anyway—have also taken on a new resonance. It’s really fun to read Scott Simon’s Tweets about his state of mind before a big interview (he still gets nervous) and to know that he dotes on his young daughters.

I’m not kidding myself that getting published in the virtual world will be easier. I’m pretty sure it will be different, though. At this point I’ll settle for different.

by Daney

Patricia Cohen had an article in the Times last week about William Faulkner. That’s as good as it gets for me. I’ve been a Faulknerphyle since my undergrad days at Ole Miss and I went on to write my MA thesis about Caddy Compson. His portrait hangs in my office. What can I say?

Patricia Cohen wrote the article on which I based my pitch letter for Every City or House.

The article is about Faulkner’s fascination with a friend’s old plantation ledgers. Scholars unearthed them and found a treasure trove of plots and character names. The son of Faulkner’s friend, speaking by telephone from his home in Atlanta, remembered hearing Faulkner rant as he read Leak’s pro-slavery and pro-Confederacy views: ‘Faulkner became very angry. He would curse the man and take notes and curse the man and take more notes.’”

Just think—if Faulkner had not found those ledgers, some of our greatest literature might never have been written.

I have a friend who once got an idea for a novel while mowing her pasture. One of mine came from the apartment buildings built in midtown Memphis during World War II.

What inspires you?

by Daney

Valentine’s Day is probably my least favorite holiday although it’s clear I am in a distinct minority. For weeks beforehand the world is full of hearts and chocolate. There’s no relief from it even at the Church of the River where we always have a sermon about romantic love. Okay, okay. My son once informed me that if I were a jewel I would be jade. I accept that.

Today was different. The theme was Love & All That Jazz and Burton’s readings—all good—were punctuated by glorious music by Di Anne Price and Her Boyfriends with our own saxophonist Jim Spake and Tom Lonardo. Very unchurchy and thoroughly delightful.

My favorite reading was entitled “Hands Off: We Hatch Alone” by David Anderson. It’s from his book, Breakfast Epiphanies: Finding Wonder in the Everyday. I’ll be ordering it as soon as I post this.

by Daney

Okay, fair’s fair. I began this blog by whining about many of my favorite authors’ penchant for abandoning characters and styles of writing I grew to love in their early fiction. Barbara Kingsolver is one I didn’t mention. In my opinion, she’s never matched the genius of Pigs in Heaven.

Until recently, that is. One Saturday morning I arrived at the Benjamin Hooks Central Library just as the doors opened, which meant there was a chance I would find something on the 7-day shelf that I would want to read.

Indeed I did. There was a copy of The Lacuna and I didn’t even know Ms. K had a new book out. It felt like what my Cajun friends would call lagniappe. When I realized how enchanting the book is, how much I love the plot, characters, everything about it, it felt even more so. The book is back at the library now but I’m quite sure I’ll succumb to the urge to purchase my own copy. It belongs on my “keeper” shelf, right next to Pigs in Heaven.

by Daney

Okay, who’s had this experience–you read a book, fall in love with it and wait eagerly for the author’s next one. For Marilynne Robinson we waited, what, about 20 years? And Gilead could not be more different from Housekeeping. Equally brilliant, no doubt, but the emotional tone was worlds and worlds apart.

Then there’s Ann Patchett. It’s hard to believe that the writer of The Magician’s Assistant followed up with Bel Canto and Run. And don’t even get me started on Anne Tyler and Joyce Carol Oates.

I must reluctantly conclude that the authors I love write the books they are moved to write with no regard for the fact that I’m out here waiting for an encore. As a writer I intend to do the same thing but there’s still this lingering sense of disappointment. Whatever happened to Ruth and Sabine? Just saying…

by Daney

One of my mornings this week began with a visit to the dermatologist. All of my suspicious spots were above the waist so I was issued a “cape” rather than a “gown.” Dressed in a sleeveless, shapeless paper garment when the doctor and his assistant entered the room, I informed them that I wouldn’t give them a nickel for a whole case of the things. The doctor smiled. The assistant replied, “You’re right. They have no architectural integrity at all.”

Instantly she became a character to me. Throughout the time my flesh was being frozen, hacked and cauterized I was in another world, imagining the background of my delightful character, dreaming up other dialogue and conjuring the situations in which she might find herself.

I wonder how non-story tellers transport themselves from unpleasant situations.