A Better Woman : A Memoir of Motherhood
The book is the story of a woman who chose to have children later in life. She suffered some serious complications from the process and underwent some difficult times with her physical health as a result. That’s sort of what the tale is about.
However, what it’s really about is how this affected her writing. How motherhood affected her writing. How, as a writer, you are the mother to your creations and when you become a mother to a living being it greatly affects your ability to mother your creative works into being.
Author Susan Johnson has some poignant insights into what being a writer means and these are sprinkled all throughout the book. A few examples taken from her text:
“I believe now that I wrote myself into life. Before I learnt how to do it I lived as if blind, forever raging against the dark. Learning how to write illuminated life itself for me, letting me see fully for the first time its shape and dimensions. Before I learnt to write I did not know who I was.”
“I was forced to acknowledge all over again that writing is not life, or even truth, but merely fragments of both, imperfect reflections. There will always be moments and emotions which refuse to be caught, dark undertows which will never break the surface. Life will always exceed the writer’s inadequate grasp, no matter how radiant the genius.”
“All the while I have been writing, my story has been uncurling. Like your own, my story is still being told, and I am living the telling as I write it, breathing, trusting in the dark. I am writing backwards but I am living forwards, blind to my own end.”
I just spent some time back at home in Tucson with my family. While I was there, I went to the local independent bookstore (Antigone’s) with my dad and my sister to check out a book reading that was being done by an author named Richard Polsky. I admit that I had never heard of this author before my dad suggested that we go to this book reading. However, based on the reading alone, I am now a fan of his.
Richard Polsky is an author who has spent the last several decades working as an art dealer. His first book was called I Bought Andy Warhol and is all about the art world. He wanted a good piece of art as an investment but it took him twelve years to pick what he wanted. He tells the tale of looking for this piece of artwork and uses that tale as a framework for describing what the art buying / art dealing world is all about.
The book that he was specifically promoting at this particular book event was his new book, I Sold Andy Warhol (too soon). It’s essentially about the fact that he eventually sold his piece and made a pretty penny but that he would’ve made millions more if he’d held off for another couple of years on that sale. In more depth, this book is about what makes art valuable in the art world today. Interesting topics.
What really interested me, however, was not the books or their topics so much as the approach Polsky took to his book reading / book signing event. If you’ve attended many of these things then you know that they typically involve a brief introduction to the author followed by him (or her) reading a passage from the book and then doing a brief Q&A. Polsky threw that plan of attack out the window. Instead, he decided to give us just the briefest overview of what’s in the books and then to tell us what is not in the books.
He described the things that had been taken out of his books by his editors or his legal time or by himself at the last minute due to external circumstances. This was interesting because it gave us listeners a lot more insight into his writing process. It gave us greater insight into the topic that he chose to write about because we learned what can and can’t be talked about in this art world. It showed off a more personal side of the writer than what you normally learn from a standard book reading. And, undoubtedly, it was a great marketing approach because as Polsky said, “you can just read the book to find out what’s in the book” and his approach surely made more people there want to buy the books themselves.
This whole thing not only got me interested in Polsky but also got me interested in the book signing event in general. I am curious now to learn more about how different authors have taken creative approaches to their book reading events. I am interested in coming up with my own creative ideas for book signings that are out of the norm and therefore more interesting to potential readers. Are you aware of any authors that have taken a creative approach to their book signings? If so I’d love to know more about them!!
I have always loved memoirs. I like personal stories that share insight into the different ways that people live. Memoirs work better for me than biographies or autobiographies because they are more poetic and usually more personal. I don’t care about the facts and stats of someone’s life; I care about their thoughts and passions. Memoirs give me insight into those things. Great memoirs that really resonate with me also give me new insight into myself.
One memoir writer that I just recently discovered is Sue William Silverman. Her first memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You
But what does this have to do with writing? Well, Silverman’s most recent book is all about the art of writing a memoir. The book is called Fearless Confessions and it looks like it’s a great book for people who are interested in learning to write their own memoirs but who aren’t quite sure how to go about it (or who simply need a bit of inspiration for that). I haven’t actually read the book yet but I’m awaiting my copy of it in the mail and will return here with a full review once I’ve read it.
The reason that I wanted to bring it up now, though, is because Silverman is currently in the midst of a blog tour. Fearless Confessions is being reviewed, discussed and given away on different blogs all throughout the month. I love following blog tours and I think that this memoir looks really good so I wanted to share that information with others. The details for that tour are here. If you check it out, do come back and let me know what you think!
I have recently found myself at several parties where the topic of favorite authors came up. Most people at these gatherings named authors from one of two categories - bestselling authors from the last year or two and classic authors of the kind that you’d read in college literature classes. I can’t say that I read a whole lot from either of these categories anymore.
I almost never read new bestsellers because I almost never buy books. One of my contributions to the green reading movement (and to my own personal need to save money where I can) is that I get my books from the library instead of from bookstores. It takes awhile for libraries to get new books so I don’t usually read anything that’s new on the shelves of stores.
And the classics? There’s nothing wrong with the classics, I guess. But most of them weren’t my thing. I’m not much of a fan of the female writers that I was supposed to like - the Bronte Sisters, Virginia Woolf … There are definitely famous authors that I like - Maugham, Nabokov, Rand … but I read most of their stuff years ago and don’t really feel the need to re-read it now.
So what do I read? People that aren’t famous and never were. People who have their books on the shelves of local libraries but who don’t have recognizable names. People who are writing locally now so their books get attention on the local scene. Random things that I find in bargain bins and giveaway piles. And lots of non-fiction.
I’m curious … are most other writers reading the classics or the bestsellers or are there people out there like me who prefer to read the random stuff?
In the past I’ve written a lot on this blog about being a greener writer. I’ve written about determining how green you are as a writer, fixing your bad un-green habits as a web writer and using green social bookmarking. However, I have not written a whole lot about green reading.
A great article on ways to green your reading that I just saw made me realize that I was remiss in not addressing this specific topic since most writers are also readers and that’s definitely another area of our lives and work where we can all stand to be a bit more green.
The article mentions three great ways to green your reading - using Paperback Swap sites, using Kindle and reading eBooks instead of regular books. The main goal with all of these methods of greener reading is to reduce your consumption of new books because this reduces the need for more trees to be cut down to make those books.
When choosing these methods, there are some things that you need to take into consideration. You need to consider the energy usage of your computer and Kindle reading so that you don’t waste energy here and reduce the greenness of the act. You need to think about the materials that you use when shipping books for a swap because if these aren’t green then you aren’t being as green as you could be.
In addition to greening your reading in these ways, there are other things that you can do to be a green reader. Make sure that you read up on green topics. Try to buy books made from sustainable or recycled materials. Make sure that you give away or recycle books and never trash them. Buy used as often as possible. Buy from sellers that are concerned about green issues. Only buy books that you actually might want to keep and keep going back to. Use the local library - and walk there instead of driving! Use a low-energy reading lamp instead of the light in the room when reading in bed.
The important thing is to think about your consumption of books and how green it is (or isn’t). Then come up with creative green ideas for making sure that your life as a reader is greener tomorrow than it was today.
Writers are hot. (That’s why you should date one.) But are we really people that typically smell good? I mean, I don’t think that most writers smell bad. But do you think of writers as having a particular smell. Coffee maybe, which is appealing to some people and not to others.
I can picture writers of yore having a charming alluring smell. A combination of clove cigarettes and some fancy old perfume that harkens back to the days of the novels set during the time periods they were writing in. But in modern times, we work on computers and probably just smell like whatever our homes smell like.
If you were to think romantically of a writer’s scent, what would you think of? Would the smell of libraries come to mind? That scent of old books that brings writers to their knees with a strange combination of bookstore-browsing nostalgia and inspiration?
If so, then perhaps you’d be interested in In The Library, a perfume that is designed to smell just like an old book (in a good way). (It’s described on the site as the smell of an “English Novel taken from a Signed First Edition of one of my very favorite novels, Russian & Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth and a hint of wood polish.” I found out about this from a Facebook mention about it from sex blogger Shanna Katz. A quick look online shows that there are definitely some people out there who think it’s hot.
What do you think? Should writers wear book-scented perfume to be taken more seriously as hot literary creatures?
I used to have an entire living room filled with books. Hundreds of books. And then it came time to move to a smaller place and I realized what many people realize when they move - books are heavy! I also realized that it was completely unnecessary to keep books laying around that I really wasn’t going to read ever again. And that caused me to further realize that it was really unnecessary to purchase most of the books that I bought.
At that time, I sold off most of my books, gave a bunch of the rest away and kept only the few that I really do read again now and then. I started getting all of my books from the local library and returning them when my three weeks were up. But somehow, I slowly gained a new collection of books.
It’s something that happens as a writer. People give me books as gifts (and I’m not complaining about that because I almost always love the books that other people pick out for me). And, over time, I started seeing a book here or there in the store that I’d buy on impulse since I didn’t want to wait to order it from the local library. So I ended up with a new stack of books. And since I’ve been de-cluttering my whole house lately, I decided that it was time to get rid of these books.
For the most part, I listed them on Amazon for sale and got rid of them quickly. I was able to get a little bit of money back and to give discounted books to others who wanted them. But there are some books I have that just aren’t worth selling on Amazon because they don’t have a lot of value - the cost of shipping would be more than its worth to get rid of the book.
Trying to figure out what to do about this, I stumbled across several online sites where people trade books. You list the books that you have available and people can order them from you at no charge. You pay shipping but you can send them media mail so it’s only about $2. You get rid of the book. In exchange, you get credits on the site which means that you can then order new books at no cost.
At first, I didn’t think that this was something that I wanted to do since the entire purpose of getting rid of my books was to clear up the space they were taking up in my home. But then I started thinking about the fact that there are certain books that I do want to refer to again and again. Books filled with writing exercises, creativity lessons and DIY projects are books that it makes more sense to keep than to keep trying to get from the library again and again.
So, I listed a bunch of my books on one of the Paperback Swap sites (which, incidentally, takes more than just paperbacks) and I started getting rid of them. Now I have credits on the site that let me get those books that are actually valuable to me to keep around. It’s a really great program. And since most of the writers I know are readers who have way too many books, I think it’s something that would be valuable for a lot of the people that I know to look into!
Awhile back I was emailed a link to an article listing 100 Search Engines for Bibliophiles. I finally had a chance to take a look at the link and found out that there are some pretty cool things there worth browsing through during your downtime.
The list offers search engines for shopping for books, getting book recommendations, doing book research, reading books online and getting books sent to you via library systems or book swaps. All very cool stuff for the reader inside of us writers.
Anyone who reads this blog regularly - or semi-regularly - probably knows that I am a big fan of what I call “creative reading”. By this, I mean reading those books which are specifically designed to draw the reader’s attention to the act of being creative. In many cases, these books are designed specifically for writers and use writing prompts as a way to encourage creative writing.
However, in other cases, the books are designed just to encourage the reader to be more creative in his or her art (such as with Julia Cameron’s The Complete Artist’s Way: Creativity as a Spiritual Practice
The book that I am reading now - What We Ache For: Creativity and the Unfolding of Your Soul
There are a lot of things that I’m enjoying about this particular creative reading book. For example, the writing prompts at the end of each chapter are really helping me to think about what I’m reading and to integrate it into my work. And there aren’t just writing prompts here. There are some questions that are posed just for contemplation - questions that can be focused on or that can be tucked away into the back of the mind to guide the day’s thinking. These end pages of each chapter serve to reinforce what was described in the chapter itself as well as to allow the reader to go even further with the work.
When it boils down to it, though, the real reason that I love this book is because I agree with its core foundation. It is based on the idea that we can not be completely happy unless we are able to fully realize ourselves as sexual, spiritual and creative people. Those are rigid terms but they imply looser concepts. They say that we need to be able to experience our own senses in the world, to feel that we are interconnected with something bigger than ourselves and to use our perceptions to create something outside of ourselves. When these three aspects of life are in balance, we can be content. I believe in that idea and therefore this is an easy book to like.
Question of the Day: Do you believe that any one of those three aspects - sensuality, spirituality or creativity - is more or less important to your writing than the others?
[Tags] oriah mountain dreamer, writing, reading, books, creativity, sensuality, sexuality, spirituality [/Tags]
I’ve mentioned twice before (here and here) that one of my annual projects for 2008 is to read all of the books written by Armistead Maupin. I started out with reading the Tales of the City series which I love in part because it’s set in San Francisco, the city that I call home. I have now completed the first four books of the series (still several more to go!) and remain in love with the books.
Here are some of the reasons why these books are great:
- They were written over a period of time in the 1970’s and 1980’s. As a result, there are all of these little references to daily things in San Francisco which are reflective of the city during the time period that the books were written. Maupin does a great job of offering little details that make the reader really experience what’s happening in the books so this is a really fun way to get a glimpse back into the cultural past.
- They transcend genres. I initially said that the first book reminded me of chick lit but not quite. That remains true. The books relate to several women’s lives in San Francisco and have a lot of the gossipy, relationship-oriented yet career-driven aspects that you’d expect from chick lit. However there are also many male characters in the book that we get to see from the heart so these aren’t girly books. Plus there’s a lot of mystery in here.
- The mystery. That’s a great point. Each book has some sort of mystery to be resolved. I’m impressed that Maupin can keep things interesting enough from book to book that the style of discovering the mystery never gets old.
- The characters grow. The reason that it’s fun to keep reading these books is because you learn more and more about each character as time goes on. And as time goes on, the characters change and grow accordingly. They feel like real people and that’s what great fiction is all about!
Anyone who likes fiction should give these books a read. And anyone who lives in San Francisco should love them!
Question of the Day: What’s another San Francisco author I should check out?
[Tags] san francisco, writing, reading, armistead, maupin, fiction, books [/Tags]
