Skip to content

Monthly Archives: January 2009

Willing to be lucky

Monday, January 12, 2009

This is another great Seth Godin article that asks a simple question: how willing are you to be lucky? I started thinking about that. It reminds me of some research I did one time on creativity, where the most notable thing was how many of the really creative people talked about putthing themselves into a [...]

Filed in Uncategorized | Tagged | Comments (0)

Something old, something new

Sunday, January 11, 2009

I wrote this in Aimee’s class, and don’t think anybody’s ever seen it, but I’m not positive. If you have seen it, you realize that you don’t technically have to read it, right? You guys are such babies. Anyway, here it is. No title. I’d submit it somewhere but that’s not really my strong suit. [...]

Filed in writing | Tagged | Comments (0)

Some thoughts on style

Friday, January 9, 2009

The lovely and talented Pam shared this article with me about the craftmanship and art of sentence construction. Pam’s comment, offered alongside the article, was “Shane Porn.” Articles like this are indeed practically porn to me, but maybe not for the reasons Pam thinks. I read the first essay by Gary Lutz (the one which [...]

Filed in reading, writing | | Comments (6)

U.S.A.–As Good as it Gets

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Sinclair Lewis writes really well.  And for Minnesotans, he’s One of Us, so that makes him an even better writer.  Here’s how Main Street starts: On a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky.  She saw no Indians now; she [...]

Filed in books, reading | Tagged | Comments (5)

Paragraph #1 #1

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

The names had the sound of the History Channel: Pearl Harbor, Eniwetok Atoll, Guam. His father had been to each during the Second World War and he, the son, had never known about it. Fifty-one years he’d been alive and to find out who his father had been he had to get like this: drunk, [...]

Filed in reading, writing | | Comments (3)

Results ’08

Friday, January 2, 2009

Self-congratulation is in order: I won the Clarion West ‘Late 08′ contest. I am behind in posting the conteset entries, so here is the sixth, out of eight. Here is Kira’s response to it, which you might enjoy if you liked the story, or if you didn’t like the story and wonder who the hell [...]

Filed in cat-blog, writing | Tagged | Comments (6)