1. 19:22 27th Feb 2013

    Tags: runningwritingJoyce Carol OatesRebecca Starford

    To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet - New York Times

    Joyce Carol Oates  on how running supports her writing. Something To Read, via the Killings blog, where you will find Rebecca Starford’s return to running documented. 

    Maybe it is time I returned to the swimming pool.

     

  2. 16:44 6th Feb 2013

    Notes: 476

    Reblogged from explore-blog

    Tags: Amelia E. Barrwriting

    Everything good needs time. Don’t do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way.
    — 

    Amelia E. Barr, 1901 (via explore-blog)

    Barr has nine remarks about literary success excerpted there. 

     

  3. 21:41 2nd Feb 2013

    Notes: 90

    Reblogged from thetinhouse

    Tags: Carl Saganwritingbooks

    Yep, it sure is.

    Yep, it sure is.

    (Source: hammermybones)

     

  4. 17:48 15th Oct 2012

    Notes: 660

    Reblogged from explore-blog

    Tags: writingPeter Ornernot writingexplore-blog

    Our failures are our stories; I say tell them good, tell them sparingly, but tell them.
    — Peter Orner on the beauty of not writing, a contrarian addition to our running archive of advice on writing. (via explore-blog)
     

  5. 13:01 24th Jul 2012

    Notes: 2

    Tags: bookswriting

    image: Download

     Card game from around 1890 showing women authors. Rare Book School at the University of Virginia - NYTimes.com Link via Michael Orthofer (@MAOrthofer) of the Literary Saloon, on Twitter.

     Card game from around 1890 showing women authors.

    Rare Book School at the University of Virginia - NYTimes.com

    Link via Michael Orthofer (@MAOrthofer) of the Literary Saloon, on Twitter.

     

  6. 19:39 10th Jul 2012

    Notes: 132

    Reblogged from maudnewton

    Tags: writing

    image: Download

    maudnewton: austinkleon: A rebus-letter sent by Mark Twain to his wife Twain (1835–1910, née Samuel Clemens) wrote essays on art and doodled in his journals, letters, and manuscripts, sometimes to entertain his children and sometimes for his own amusement. In addition, he used his artwork to secure patents for three inventions, including an “Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments” (to replace suspenders); a history trivia game; and a self-pasting scrapbook coated with a dried adhesive that only needed to be moistened before use. Read more: The Visual Art and Design of Famous Writers Oooooh. Somehow, despite my Twain obsession, I don’t remember seeing this before. It’s a lot more fun than the board game he invented, though maybe not quite as excellent as his singing cats. 

    maudnewton:

    austinkleon:

    A rebus-letter sent by Mark Twain to his wife

    Twain (1835–1910, née Samuel Clemens) wrote essays on art and doodled in his journals, letters, and manuscripts, sometimes to entertain his children and sometimes for his own amusement. In addition, he used his artwork to secure patents for three inventions, including an “Improvement in Adjustable and Detachable Straps for Garments” (to replace suspenders); a history trivia game; and a self-pasting scrapbook coated with a dried adhesive that only needed to be moistened before use.

    Read more: The Visual Art and Design of Famous Writers

    Oooooh. Somehow, despite my Twain obsession, I don’t remember seeing this before. It’s a lot more fun than the board game he invented, though maybe not quite as excellent as his singing cats. 

     

  7. 19:04 22nd Jun 2012

    Tags: writing

    …the atmosphere of the story is alive in the city to this day. For many years, for example, I went to the party which a friend and her daughter gave on the south side of Dublin on the Sunday before Christmas. Each year it was attended by the same people, with the same bustle in the hallway about coats and scarves. Each year there was speculation in advance about how drunk one of the guests in particular would be on arrival, and how the party would manage if he were very drunk indeed. Each year there was food served at the same time and then the same people recited the same poems and sang the same songs, and there was always a group at the very end who waited for a few final songs, which had a special emotion attached to them, before setting out into the December night.
    — 

    Colm Tóibín on Joyce’s Dublin: city of dreamers and chancers

    Some very fine comments on ‘The Dead’ in this essay by Colm Tóibín focussing on Joyce’s short story collection, Dubliners.

     

  8. 19:04 16th May 2012

    Tags: writing

    St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing | Melville House Books

    As noted, blogging may not be well paid, but at least our keyboards aren’t hairy.

     

  9. 17:39 24th Apr 2012

    Tags: writing

    I am often writing, but my walk made me really feel like writing in a way I haven’t in some weeks.

    It’s not that the sparrow or the Chevy will get into a poem. They probably won’t. I never manage to will anything into a poem. I’m not sure I can spend enough time, or enough consistent time, with a poem, to get anything done for another month or so. I just realized all over again how little brainspace I’ve given myself this year so far.

    Again it’s not the writing part of writing. There’s always writing. But the writing part of writing is just blah blah blah unless you get something worked out about the living part of living. Some people think you have to have an exciting life to write excitingly. Maybe. Really, what you have to have is a life in which you stop thinking intentionally, and just think, unmaking the bed of your mind the while.

    — 

    So Why Am I Blogging? In which I don’t answer that question. :Daisy Fried

    From Harriet the Blog at the Poetry Foundation

     

  10. 17:32 23rd Apr 2012

    Tags: writingpublishing

    Giramondo launch, Anguli Ma: A Gothic Tale by Chi Vu

    Anguli Ma is the central figure in a traditional Buddhist folktale, a deranged killer who wears his victims’ fingers in a garland around his neck. Chi Vu presents him as a menacing abattoir worker who carries bloody chunks of meat home to his lodgings in plastic bags, in this suburban Gothic tale set in 1980s Melbourne, when the flight of Vietnamese refugees to Australia was at its height.

    The gathering fear, the prevailing darkness, the strange contours of the house which has been divided and sub-divided to accommodate its female occupants, the macabre humour and surreal effects, mark Chi Vu’s novella out as a unique contribution to contemporary Australian storytelling, and our understanding of its communities.

    Giramondo Publishing

    warmly invites you
    to the launch of the new title
    in its series of Giramondo Shorts
    the novella by
     
    Chi Vu
    Anguli Ma: A Gothic Tale
    to be launched by Peter Mares

    Fellow, Cities Program, Grattan Institute


    on Tuesday 24 April
    5.30 for 6.00 pm
    Yasuko Hiraoka Myer Room
    Sidney Myer Asia Centre
    University of Melbourne
    Swanston Street, Parkville