blackout

Good advice is hard to come by. By way of Scott Westerfeld, this gem of Raymond Chandler's (from a letter to Alex Barris in 1949) has inspired me this week:

The important thing is that there should be a space of time, say four hours a day at least, when a professional writer doesn’t do anything else but write. He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t try. He can look out of the window or stand on his head or writhe on the floor. But he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write checks. Write or nothing. It’s the same principle as keeping order in a school. If you make the pupils behave, they will learn something just to keep from being bored. I find it works. Two very simple rules, a. you don’t have to write. B. you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.

I've run my errands, checked on ongoing projects, and made sure both phones are on silent. And I've had my fill of blogs, obvs. I've got my cup of tea, my empty brain, and I'm about to pull the plug on my wireless router. It's three hours of writing or nothing. Here goes.

Don't do anything too exciting while I'm gone.

ten things

things that have been hard lately:

1. Feeling like the world, and the people in it, are passing me by when in fact they're just doing what they've always done - it's me that's slowed down.

2. Remembering that each day does not start in the red simply because yesterday was bad. Each day starts afresh and if I accomplish something I set out to do, then it was a good day. If I did not, it was a bad day, and tomorrow is a new day.

3. My chair. If I don't wear pants, I stick to it. This is uncomfortable, especially with sunburn.

4. The apartment always has something that I could be doing, but I am resisting housecleaning for more than a few minutes each day because it's too tempting to spend all day doing that simply because it's productive.

5. Shutting off my brain and its worries so that I can write.

things that have been good lately:

1. Going to the beach on Monday, even with the resulting sunburn.

2. Realizing that I have the gift of a few months of subsidized writing, months where I don't HAVE to throw myself at a part-time job if I don't want to, months that I may not have again for a long time. Months that are a gift to myself, to write write write.

3. Having friends and family that prop me up even when I am knocking myself down.

4. Knowing that I DO have the resources to make this a success, even if they seem like they're buried under dirty dishes and laziness.

5. Air-conditioning.

In short, this is all much more work than I ever thought it would be, even when I thought I'd be prepared. I must make a mental note that parenting is going to have the same effect - even when you think you're ready, you've got no idea.

rosalind is your love's name?

This might be my favourite picture from this past weekend's performance - Jaques and Orlando squaring off for a little battle of words as Rosalind (dressed as Ganymede, can't you tell she's a guy?!) looks on from behind a tree.

Yes, a tree. That's one of the best things about Barrie - she sees "trees" in the script and she puts ladies holding flowery parasols on stage. Also, she never misses a single knob joke in that old pervert Shakespeare's clever dialogue. And who doesn't love a good knob joke?

Be sure to check out their website for info on this upcoming weekend's shows and say hi to me if you're there - I'll be the one laughing at the knob jokes.

[More pictures from this weekend here.]

review

Jas is the heart of this story... Jas is the specimen Malkani throws into his spotlight, examining everything about him – his desires, his fears, who he was before his little gang picked him up and taught him how to speak like a text message. One of Malkani’s great successes is how he transitions us slowly from Jas’s toughguy front to his true center. There isn’t a moment when we’re not seeing the desi world, these questions of honor and these cultural clashes, from Jas’s eyes – even when he’s obscuring his own cognizance of it behind rudeboy language. It’s a remarkable maintenance of character in a first novel.

See the whole review of Gautam Malkani's Londonstani today over at Gothamist.

flying lessons for penguins

I've been differently-employed for three days now. On Monday, I tasted my newfound workday freedom by getting on a bus bound for Rhode Island, to have a delicious lunch with my parents before borrowing my dad's truck (look I know it's an SUV but truck is less syllables and less painful) to drive back down to New York, so that Stuart and I could have the car for the two weeks around his performance.

On Tuesday I woke up determined to fight off the hounds of laziness, and I spent the morning doing the necessary administrative tasks on my to-do list and the afternoon running errands.

And then yesterday I sort of crashed and burned. I tried to spend the morning working on creative writing, but the dull constant headache that plagued me meant that every 30 minutes spent writing was followed by another 30 minutes sitting quietly on the office couch trying to fight back the headache. I even watched an hour of daytime television and then felt terrible about myself and it and the world because DAMN, it's not like it helped the headache.

Of course, it wasn't until about 5 PM that I told Shana about the headaches (that I'd fought off Tuesday as well) and she, accustomed to my idiocy when it comes to my gentle addiction, reminded me that perhaps I simply hadn't had my caffeine intake and BOY, did I go suck down three cups of PG Tips right then and there or WHAT. I've learned the lesson and today has started with a tall iced coffee and a cup of tea and it isn't even 10 AM yet.

All this is by way of explaining something - the variability of this newfound freedom is doing my head in. Somewhat literally, yesterday. I woke up today and had a shower and some toast and sweet caffeine and here I sit at the computer.

On a superficial level, this is just like my days have been for years. But do not let the computer, the toast, the caffeine, and the morning shower fool you. This is nothing like the life I've grown accustomed to. Working at an office - someone else's - removes a certain element of choice, of freedom, of self-direction. You're there, on the clock (yes, you, reading from work) and while it may be boring, or mind-numbing, it's DEFINED. And by and large, you do the same thing every day because it has been asked of you by someone else, and you chose to be there doing things required of you by someone else. Which sounds pretty good right about now, right? Well, this is nothing like that.

This? I'm like a penguin that got thrown from a plane, told by others that heck, you've got wings, use them! And the penguin (that's me) suddenly has this vast array of CHOICE, this sink-or-swim, this need to assert independence and make the call. I could sit here doing nothing all day, or I could do something for myself and basically no one else.

It's a mindfuck. Yesterday, several times, I almost called Stuart to just ask him to tell me what to DO. But the thing is, I know what to do. I have to make lists of things I want to accomplish, and then accomplish them. It sounds like work, work for other people who pay you to do the work, but it's not.

Perhaps these truths are self-evident to those of you who have gone before me. And I know, as you will doubtless tell me, that I will find my groove, I'll eventually pull my wings away from my terrified body and start flapping them even though yes, I know, if you threw a penguin from a plane it would have about twenty seconds of going ohshitohshitohshit before SPLAT. I know this about penguins.

Where was I? Right, the learning curve. There is a learning curve that I am standing at the bottom of, and the things I need to learn are self-direction, self-motivation, and OTHER THINGS THAT START WITH SELF.

So I'm determined - and armed with caffeine - to make today better than yesterday, to remember how crappy it felt to not know what to do. I'm determined to be one step ahead of where I was yesterday, every day, which isn't something I've ever done when working for someone else, where the best thing to do is really the same thing every day.

I realize this is nothing like being a penguin. But you see what I mean.

review

New review of Paulo Coelho's The Devil and Miss Prym up at gothamist.com:

Coelho (a devout Catholic) has something to say about the Capitalized Concepts in this world. His Chantals, Veronikas, and Pilars turn out to be simply us, asking for answers in a almost haphazardly fictional universe of Coelho's making. But here's where I divorce the simple fable of The Alchemist with these more complex books - here's where I inadvertently justify my teenaged devotion to Santiago's journey.

I'm not sure how well I did in the eyes of Mr. Updike, but it's my first slightly negative review in a while and it served to remind me how agonizing those are to write.

tee minus two hours

Obviously, there's a lot of various anxieties and worries that will be keeping me up at night as I transition my life into one more self-motivated, but I've got to tell you - stuff just keeps falling into place, people.

And there's nothing like stuff falling into place to make you feel like it's a sign that all along, this is the right path. To quote Stephanie Brown's mother when she discovered the internet, "wheeee! The world is my oyster!"

apropos of nothing

When I was very little, I'd always hear my mother say, "with friends like THAT, who needs enemies," and I never understood what she meant because little children are incapable of understanding sarcasm or wit, the dummies.

I think this is what she meant.

a fine line between love and hate

On the eve of my last day as a desk-bound working woman (well, a corporate desk anyway), some thoughts:

I love that my friends are willing to be cheerful and determinedly positive in those few moments when I lose my grip on brave and start wibbling my bottom lip. I also like that they're willing to go drinking heavily with me at a day's notice even though my email requesting such a presence was somewhat pathetic.

I hate that your last paycheck at any given corporation is withheld for about a week just to check whether you owe the company anything. Yes, Corporation For Which I've Never Even Held An Expense Account, DO make my financial life difficult for the next two weeks just in case I DIDN'T have that extra lunch that one time you DIDN'T pay for it.

I love that my parents have been so mind-numbingly, heart-breakingly COOL about this. The hardest moment in this whole decision was asking my father if he thought I was a snob, or lazy, for choosing to take a different path than he did - my father had to work his tuchus off for forty years and he did it for his family, would he think I wasn't capable of the same sacrifices? When he told me he was proud that I had a chance to make a choice not available to him, I totes nearly lost it. And my mom, well, y'all know my mom. Lady is just COOL.

I hate that I might not need to buy a monthly metrocard. I hate it so much it makes me want to cry. I actually refuse to not buy one, even if it means I'm not being economical, simply because I refuse to believe I won't be enough of a part of this city to NEED one.

I love the idea of business lunches, with myself, outside in the park.

I hate sending query emails.

I love finally realizing that if a desk job has stifled my creative writing impulses, then yes, it DOES make sense to get a non-desk job, if only to release those trapped little impulses into my days.

I hate the self-loathing I'll go through when I'm lazy.

I love that I have a good damn reason not to be lazy.

I hate the thought of forgetting to eat meals because that's what I do when I work from home.

I love Stuart. Srsly. I literally would not be doing this if he didn't see the great positive brilliance of it all, every time I don't.

I HATE HATE HATE that my iBook just-over-two-years-old hard drive is in fatal failure and I need to get it serviced and replaced. SCREW YOU AND YOUR TERRIBLE TIMELINESS, COMPUTER.

I love this one thing I'll never forget: when I thought I was really being flat-out fired, at the beginning of all this (before the second, very elucidating conversation with the boss), I called Biscuit and I told him and he said "THAT'S FUCKING FANTASTIC!". I love that I actually know someone who'd have that reaction, who's so in tune to the silver lining that HE IS ACTUALLY THE LINING ITSELF.

I hate this!

I love this!