New year, new blogs
Hey babes!
Happy birthday, Higs! See you in a few hours. 30’s are better than 20’s. Trust me.
So I want to revisit this blog, and my one new year’s resolution this year is to blog. I want to improve my writing. I want to read lots of stuff that others write. And I want to document the stuff that’s important to me. I feel like too much time is going by right now and I’m not really PAYING ATTENTION to stuff that matters to me.
Anna, I was thinking a lot about your visit. It was so awesome to see you. But looking back, I don’t really remember what we talked about. I feel like I’m kind of going through life on cruise right now, and I’ve been using the wedding as an excuse for more than a year (“I’m so busy planning, it’s all I can think about” or “I’m so wiped out from planning that I can’t really think about anything”) which is bullshit.
So you heard it here first. I’m going to contribute to this blog, and hope you guys will do the same. I’m also going to start posting projects to my own blog (currently entitled “…and whatnot”) and I’m going to start a fitblr (worst title ever) documenting my eating and exercising and working toward new fitness goals.
Much love to you both. Looking forward to 2011!
xo
Em
enterpreneur
Do you guys follow the ebook , amazon, publishing saga? Amazon did this thing recently where they made a deal, if your ebook cost between 2.99 and 9.99 you get 70% royalties. Normally a publisher gets like 20% and books are more between 13.99 and 20. So a cheaper price and you get way more money. The other trick is anyone can publish an ebook with kindle software (read on ipads etc too). There is a utube video that leads you through how to do this. Basically that makes publishers ancient history. I dont think paper books will go away. Or magazines. But I do think publishing is about to completely change. If publishing moves to an electronic format (primarily) the problem is how will people sort through all the junk. We read to be entertained or compelled, but also to be a part of culture, to have shared experiences we can talk about. I think there is a huge opportunity for entrepreneurs to reinvent publishing. Writers need help to promote their books and make them into cultural pieces. I have a vision of a company where they represent a book (versus getting it printed on paper) by creating a cultural identity, maybe trailer videos, website, social network presence. I can imagine Emily as editor, Higa as video multimedia representative. MCM, go!
Won a writing contest, but now what
Ok, I need help. As you may or may not realize I was super antsy about career stuff over the past year, feeling very much like I was missing something not having the writing bit more central and more installed in my life. I thought about just writing, fuck science, I will sit at my kitchen table and dream. So I just got a call that I won this cool contest, it is the mentor series, put on by the loft literary center here in MN. I would get two fiction mentors and work with two nonfiction and two poets for the year. I would have writing cohorts. Things happen about two weekends a month. Yeah, fuck, I am moving to State College. I lied and accepted and said I could do it. Do I fly back two weekends a month? I love Minneapolis, but is that crazy, too stressful and not putting in roots elsewhere. Do I just take this as a compliment and turn it down. Do I do it for a couple months, see how it goes, and then if it is lame, be like, shit i just got a job?
This is the contest:
http://www.loft.org/for-writers/contests-and-awards/contests-and-grants
In terms of myself as a writer, I am writing daily, I have a secret blog for fragments, and I am working on a novel and some short stories. I meet with writer friends 2X a month. I have sent things to publications, but they have so far been rejected, though I hear you have to submit things to many many journals. And the journals are mostly lame so I submit to McSweeneys and things that are way over my head for not having some publication history to show off.
interior world
I heard a news story on Harvey Pikhor’s death, he met his wife through fan mail, she was teaching creative writing to prisoners. She wrote him about how she tried to help the inmates develop their interior world. After I had Walter I sometimes felt on the edge of sanity with the world as I knew it out the window and a whole new world I did not know. When my sanity was thinnest, I could think about it very crudely, and I thought that sanity for me was based on writing (art of any type, the interior world) , running (or other exercise, the body…), and socializing. Until I heard this story about Pikhor I hadnt really articulated that devoting time to writing, and not having done much ‘art’ in the past few years, was part of my overall burnout and dissatisfaction with working too much.
It is kind of funny though to think what it means to develop an interior world, like having imaginary friends, or wallpaper designs, or music running through your head. You cant really see anyone else’s to borrow good ideas. You can only show the products of yours so development and living the interior world is largely personal. All the fast entertainment and media can easily fill the void and take up interior world time too.
How do you guys develop, save time for, enjoy, etc, your interior world?
Everyone leaves San Francisco
No, we’re not moving…yet.
But my former roommate Chris and is wife Lara are and it’s really bumming me out. They’re moving to Seattle this weekend. One of Daniel’s best buddies just moved to the East Bay with his family. My entire group of girlfriends from my early 20’s have moved away.
This place just isn’t livable in the long run and it makes me really blue.
All of this is compounded by exciting news…Daniel got hired on as a full time employee at Apple. So he’s official, and we’re officially going to be in the Bay Area for a very long time as a result. It’s like the job he was born to do, and the thought of him leaving of his own volition is pretty far fetched.
So I could very well be making babies on the Peninsula two-three years from now. My fantasies of moving back to PVD are on the back burner for now…
Group activities at the Walker
http://walkerart.org/openfield/activities/
The Walker is doing this community garden/park/space thing and anyone can organize an event. I am going to try a parent and baby event and see what happens!
ps - I just resubmitted the last of my dissertation chapters for publication…hopefully will never have to look at it again.
