Claire McNeill
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Lately: 9

8/20/2013

 
Picture
Lucy Eldridge
Skipped a version for a few reasons: The blur of pain meds post-wisdom teeth removal, plus moving to Chapel Hill and setting up my new room. New semester starts today. My last first day of class.

Here are some things I’ve been reading and thinking about.

You will see Elmore Leonard’s 10 rules of writing 10,000 times today but it will never be enough because they are perfect.

If you’re in the Chapel Hill area, go listen to Marisha Pessl speak at Flyleaf Bookson Saturday! I’m so excited to get a signed copy of Night Film. I loved Special Topics in Calamity Physics and can’t wait to read the new one.

Noteworthy: Vela Magazine’s list of excellent creative nonfiction writing by women. Necessary until all “women’s writing” is just “writing.”

“If the cover accurately expressed the feel and content of the novel, and the cover embarrassed me, what did that say about my relationship to my work?”

Annie Dillard tells how to write.

“It’s just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don’t have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we’re just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventually be completely gone… The key is to distract yourself.”

The saddest urge of human nature.

“They’re terrified of the idea of teenage girls expressing intense desires that are beyond male control, so they have to belittle them and turn them back into objects of derision.”

Always go to the funeral.

Beautiful 360-degree time lapse from the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral. This and the last link via Alex Vitlin, who posts good things.

I love this new book club initiative. “Ultimately, I want these girls to let the world know that they’re brilliant, they have their own opinions, and they have the final say on what images and ideas they want to claim for themselves.”

A very cordial robbery.

“What’s happening right now, with this kind of renaissance of storytelling that’s going on around the country, is that people are tiring of the sort of leaden, deadening weight of CGI factories. They’re searching for something that means something to them, that can relate to them on a deeper level.”

My second-to-last story for the Tampa Bay Times ran last week and had the lovely quote, “I think baseball and growing up just go hand-in-hand.”

Memoirs: an illustration.

A short poem.


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    Lately:

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