Category: Creative Writing

Walden Pond, Massachusetts

by Christopher Zurcher

It is cloudy, warm and getting late, sky growing darker
As we return from somewhere north of Connecticut.
A walk around the idyllic Walden Pond
My only regret – leaving my camera in the car.
Frisbee players and swimmers, gleeful children
walden-pondGracing the public beach.
A bullfrog croaks in the marsh
As we meander, letting walkers and runners
Pass us on the narrow trail.
Resting occasionally on the rocks, exchanging kisses.
The cool, smooth, dark water calls us
To join others treading water, swimming the length of the pond.
We turn a corner in the path.
A cairn of round stones stacked and delicately balanced
In the mud at the side of the pond.
Seems to mark the half-way point, the far end of the pond where we are.
For me it is an apex of sheer delight in the beauty of this walk we have shared.
The sun comes out from behind the clouds
Slivers of sunshine cut their way through the trees
Lighting the rest of our way.
As beyond complete as this walk was,
I still feel the need to return another warm day to swim.

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Winsted: Northwestern prepares for Mad River Literary Festival April 8-9

Northwestern Connecticut Community College’s 18th annual Mad River Literary Festival will be held in Founders Hall Auditorium on its campus in Winsted on Tuesday, April 8 and Wednesday, April 9.

 

The Mad River Writers (NCCC students & community writers) will open the festivities with a reading on Tuesday, April 8 at 6:30 p.m. They will be followed by Poet Jason Koo who will read at 7:45 p.m.

 

On Wednesday, April 9 at 6:30 p.m., poets John Stanizzi, Dennis Barone, and Lisken Van Pelt Dus will read. Their reading will be followed by a question and answer panel with the three poets. The question and answer panel will be followed by a book signing and reception.

via Winsted: Northwestern prepares for Mad River Literary Festival April 8-9.

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Rise and shine: the daily routines of history’s most creative minds

Ayn Rand took Benzedrine. Photograph: New York Times Co/Getty Images

The one true lesson of the book, says its author, Mason Currey, is that “there’s no one way to get things done”. For every Joyce Carol Oates, industriously plugging away from 8am to 1pm and again from 4pm to 7pm, or Anthony Trollope, timing himself typing 250 words per quarter-hour, there’s a Sylvia Plath, unable to stick to a schedule. Or a Friedrich Schiller, who could only write in the presence of the smell of rotting apples. Still, some patterns do emerge. Here, then, are six lessons from history’s most creative minds.

via Rise and shine: the daily routines of history’s most creative minds | Science | The Guardian.

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Hemingway revealed as failed KGB spy | guardian.co.uk

Up till now, this has been a notably cheerful year for admirers of Ernest Hemingway – a surprisingly diverse set of people who range from Michael Palin to Elmore Leonard. Almost every month has brought good news: a planned Hemingway biopic; a new, improved version of his memoir, A Moveable Feast; the opening of a digital archive of papers found in his Cuban home; progress on a movie of Islands in the Stream.

Last week, however, saw the publication of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America Yale University Press, which reveals the Nobel prize-winning novelist was for a while on the KGB’s list of its agents in America. Co-written by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, the book is based on notes that Vassiliev, a former KGB officer, made when he was given access in the 90s to Stalin-era intelligence archives in Moscow.

For more on this story, visit: Hemingway revealed as failed KGB spy | Books | guardian.co.uk.

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Daily Rituals – Book Review – Truthdig

… I agree with this reviewer that if a successful writer thinks I can be satisfied with two hours of concentrated writing a day, then I shall give that a try!

… Having a day job helps some artists keep a sense of perspective. For much of her career, Toni Morrison worked as an editor at Random House, taught university classes and raised two sons alone. The luxury of a Franzenesque life devoted solely to the craft—if luxury’s the right word—wasn’t in the cards for Morrison. But the limits on her free time had a liberating effect. “When I sit down to write I never brood,” she said. “I have so many other things to do, with my children and teaching, that I can’t afford it. I brood, thinking of ideas, in the automobile when I’m driving to work or in the subway or when I’m mowing the lawn. By the time I get to the paper something’s there—I can produce.”

Of all the artists, I took the most comfort in the remarks of Martin Amis. “Everyone assumes I’m a systematic and nose-to-the-grindstone kind of person,” he told The Paris Review. In truth, he admitted, he typically writes only from 11 in the morning to 1 in the afternoon. “Two hours,” he said. “I think most writers would be very happy with two hours of concentrated work.”

Amen. That’s my new goal.

For more on this story, visit: Daily Rituals – Book Review – Truthdig.

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William Zinsser, Author of ‘On Writing Well,’ at His Work

The written word looms over William Zinsser. The many hundreds of books in his Upper East Side apartment stand at attention, as if awaiting instruction from this slight man in a baseball cap and sunglasses who, for a half-century, has coached others on how to write.

In newsrooms, publishing houses and wherever the labor centers on honing sentences and paragraphs, you are almost certain to find among the reference works a classic guide to nonfiction writing called “On Writing Well,” by Mr. Zinsser. Sometimes all you have to say is: Hand me the Zinsser.

For more on this story, visit: William Zinsser, Author of ‘On Writing Well,’ at His Work – NYTimes.com.

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Harper Lee sues agent over To Kill a Mockingbird copyright

Author of best-selling book alleges Samuel Pinkus took advantage of her failing hearing and eyesight to transfer rights

Harper Lee, the author of To Kill A Mockingbird, has sued her literary agent for allegedly duping her into assigning him the copyright on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

In the lawsuit filed in federal court in Manhattan, Lee says Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of Lee’s long-time agent, Eugene Winick, took advantage of her failing hearing and eyesight to transfer the rights on the book, which has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and became an Oscar-winning film.

For more on this story, visit: Harper Lee sues agent over To Kill a Mockingbird copyright | Books | guardian.co.uk.

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Rachel Kushner Reading from her new novel The Flamethrowers 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 30, at the Beinecke Library


I would totally go to this if I didn’t have to work at my job!

Jonathan Franzen called the National Book Award finalist “a thrilling and prodigious novelist.”

Free and open to the public.

More information about Rachel Kushner: http://rachelkushner.com/

More information about the event:

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/about/blogs/yale-collection-american-literature/2013/04/03/rachel-kushner-reading

Find Telex from Cuba and The Flamethrowers at the Yale Bookstore

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We Found Our Son in the Subway – NYTimes.com

The story of how Danny and I were married last July in a Manhattan courtroom, with our son, Kevin, beside us, began 12 years earlier, in a dark, damp subway station.

Danny called me that day, frantic. “I found a baby!” he shouted. “I called 911, but I don’t think they believed me. No one’s coming. I don’t want to leave the baby alone. Get down here and flag down a police car or something.” By nature Danny is a remarkably calm person, so when I felt his heart pounding through the phone line, I knew I had to run.

When I got to the A/C/E subway exit on Eighth Avenue, Danny was still there, waiting for help to arrive. The baby, who had been left on the ground in a corner behind the turnstiles, was light-brown skinned and quiet, probably about a day old, wrapped in an oversize black sweatshirt.

Peter Mercurio is a playwright and screenwriter whose latest screenplay is “Found (a True Story).”

For more on this story, visit: We Found Our Son in the Subway – NYTimes.com.

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Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlistment Mugshot, 1943

In October of 1942, after completing a voyage to and from an Army command base in Greenland (which he would later write about in Vanity of Duluoz), Kerouac left the merchant marine and returned to Columbia. That was lucky, because most of the Dorchester‘s crew–more than 600 men–died three months later when the ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat.

Naval doctors at Newport found Kerouac to be “restless, apathetic, seclusive” and determined that he was mentally unfit for service, writing that “neuropsychiatric examination disclosed auditory hallucinations, ideas of reference and suicide, and a rambling, grandiose, philosophical manner.” He was sent to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda Maryland and eventually discharged.

For more on this story, visit: Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlistment Mugshot, 1943 | Open Culture.

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Secret Ingredient for Success | NYTimes.com

… No one’s idea of a good time is to take a brutal assessment of their animating assumptions and to acknowledge that those may have contributed to their failure. It’s easy to find pat ways to explain why the world has not adequately rewarded our efforts. But what we learned from conversation with high achievers is that challenging our assumptions, objectives, at times even our goals, may sometimes push us further than we thought possible.

For more on this story, visit: Secret Ingredient for Success – NYTimes.com.

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Marc Johns: be kind

Kindness is underrated. We could always use more of it. We tend to worship visionaries and creative people (like Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso) and elevate them to the status of gods, even though they were often assholes (like Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso). Stop praising the jerks. It reinforces bad behaviour (all the parents in the house know this).

For more on this story, visit: Marc Johns: be kind.

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Reading as resistance — a year-end book list that challenges the mainstream | Waging Nonviolence

Below is someone’s best-of list — with all its attendant biases — of books written by black women in 2012. You will find some literary giants, like Toni Morrison and Zadie Smith, who both released new work this year, as well as new writers like Laina Dawes, who wrote a fascinating exploration of black women in punk and heavy metal. As 2013 begins, let’s begin a year of resistance by listening to — and amplifying — the voices that too often went unheard and unappreciated last year.

For more on this story, visit: Reading as resistance — a year-end book list that challenges the mainstream / Waging Nonviolence – People-Powered News and Analysis.

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Imagine All My Words — The John Lennon Letters

By Tim Riley

“The John Lennon Letters”
A book edited by Hunter Davies

Like rain into a paper cup, words fairly giggled out of John Lennon’s pen nearly every day of his too-short 40 years. Now Hunter Davies, the Beatles’ early “authorized” 1968 biographer, has collected 285 Lennon letters, postcards, telegrams and to-do lists from early childhood to Dec. 8, 1980, hours before he was killed. They are bound in a handsome layout with reproductions of every entry, many of which are typed—hilariously—beside Davies’ transcriptions. Almost all reward close inspection both for Lennon’s intriguingly loose hand and whimsical cartoons. If he hadn’t become a songwriter/performer, Lennon could easily have gained notoriety as a scathing countercultural satirist on a par with B. Kliban or George Crumb.

For more on this story, visit: Imagine All My Words – Book Review – Truthdig.

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Louise Erdrich’s Novel ‘The Round House’ Wins National Book Award

Beating out an unusually competitive field, Louise Erdrich won the National Book Award for fiction on Wednesday night for “The Round House,” a novel about a teenage boy’s effort to investigate an attack on his mother on a North Dakota reservation, and his struggle to come to terms with the violence in their culture.

Louise Erdrich’s Novel ‘The Round House’ Wins National Book Award - NYTimes.com

Ms. Erdrich accepted the award in part in her Native American language. She said she wanted to acknowledge “the grace and endurance of native women.”

For more on this story, visit: Louise Erdrich’s Novel ‘The Round House’ Wins National Book Award – NYTimes.com.

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10 (More) Amazing Videos About the Creative Process | 99u

Just like the rest of us, creatives like Milton Glaser, Louis C.K. and Ray Bradbury struggle when going through their process. No really, we have proof.

In a sequel of sorts, we’ve assembled videos from musicians, stand-up comedians, writers, and others to help give us a look inside the inner-workings of some of the world’s most talented creatives.

Jazz Pianist Bill Evans strips away the glamor of creative work and emphasizes the need to have a love for the nitty-gritty. This clip is from the 1966 film The Universal Mind of Bill Evans.
 
In Story of a Writer Ray Bradbury delves into the author’s storytelling process, his clustered workspace and his struggle for gainful employment in his youth.

And lots more here: 10 (More) Amazing Videos About the Creative Process :: Articles :: 99U.

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