Writer's Tip

We have lovely friends who have an organic farm, and every week I love seeing the changes as everything gets plowed and planted and starts to grow. Farming is a hard, labor-intensive job and, like, writing, it's best not to calculate how much you're making an hour, but it yields visible, edible results. In revising a novel (and revising it again), progress means you scroll farther down your document. In order to set goals and to give me a sense of achievement, at the end of each major writing session I calculate what percentage of the way I am through my revision. The length of the novel fluctuates as I write new material and delete sections, which is why I don't use page numbers. And of course, the closer I get to the end, the more I feel myself pushing onward, cheering. Which is why all I have to say right now is

89.4%, baby!

Dramatic Rescue to Cheer Your Heart

Listen to this NPR story about US aid worker Jessica Buchanan's dramatic rescue from Somali pirates by Navy Seals. Followers of this blog, note that the interviewer is asking just the kind of questions a past article from Transom recommended in order to create a good story.

Writer's Tip

Here's a handy tip for freelance writers: try posting your profile on www.thumbtack.com. For all others, it's a handy way to locate services in your area. When you go to the site, it asks "What service are you looking for?" and "Where do you live?" then connects you with options. Started in California, this service is available in all 50 states. Enjoy!

On Re-reading

Do you have any books that you've read and reread over the course of years, so that layered over the story is your experience of reading here, here, and here? I remember opening this book for the first time, in Maine, so that I always think of the ocean when I see this book, even though it's set in the Arizona Territories. In the time since I last read this book, I've become a wife and a mother. I find myself relating to Sarah Prine's marriage and motherhood in a whole new way. Suddenly, those details of the whining toddler, the pile of diapers to wash, rise to the foreground for me. And that's a pleasure. I've also, in the time since reading this, gone through an MFA program, and I'll never read any book quite the same way again. There is no turning off the curious part of me that wants to know how it's written. Suddenly, I'm catching and critiquing odd choices in the diary format (when exactly during the day did she write this?). I'm noticing pacing and action and improbability, and I don't want to see these things. I want to turn that off and jump wholeheartedly into this world, rather than hanging on by one hand to the world of the editor. Sigh. It's still one of my favorite books, though.

New from McSweeney's, 25 year-old poet Zubair Ahmed's debut poetry collection, City of Rivers. Check out my (favorable) review through Late Night Library.

Emily Recommends: These Is My Words

Have you ever read a book that you loved so much you couldn't put down, yet didn't want to finish? You read one more chapter, one more page, all the while telling yourself that at this rate, you'll be done by tomorrow, and then the world you've been immersed in will be over, the characters silent. Bookless. But you just want to keep reading...

That's how I feel about Nancy E. Turner's These Is My Words. The story, written in diary form, follows the life of Turner's great-grandmother as she grows from teen to woman in the harsh Arizona territories. It's vast-sweeping, with a fantastic love story and plenty of western action. This is the third time I've read the book--a rarity for me. It's been years since I last read it, though, and I've forgotten many of the details so that it feels new. I'm also struck by the pieces that have worked their way into my psyche. For example, pious and gentle Savannah tells her sister-in-law, Sarah (the main character) that you know you're in love when we can sit comfortably in silence together. I first read this book in my late teens, and I absorbed that little gem as an ultimate measuring stick for knowing whether you're in love. What a reminder, a I finish revising my YA novel, of the power of fiction.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Making it Big

I was captivated at noon today, hearing my former creative writing professor Patricia Hampl give a stage reading of "The Big Time: F. Scott Fitzgerald" on MPR. Written by Hampl, supportive by live jazz music, and featuring the letters of Fitzgerald, we follow him from his low summer as a "five-time failure" in dreary St. Paul to his success of rock-star proportions, and what he does with it. Happy listening!