Garrison Keillor on reading and writing. I especially enjoyed this paragraph:

One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don't read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining. Most New Yorkers wouldn't travel to Minnesota if a bright star shone in the west and hosts of angels were handing out plane tickets, but they might read a book about Minnesota and thereby form some interesting and useful impression of us. This is the benefit of literacy. Life is lonely; it is less so if one reads.

Rob Brezny's Free Will Astrology horoscopes pop into my inbox weekly; they are often wonderfully baffling, but sometimes, like this week, they hit the nail on the head:

ARIES (March 21-April 19): As I meditated on your immediate future, I got a vision of you making your way through an obstacle course--scurrying across booby-trapped terrains, shimmying through tunnels, climbing over barriers, leaping across ditches. Curiously, there was not the least bit of stress etched on your face. On the contrary, your eyes were wide and your expression was exultant. You seemed to regard this not as an ordeal, but as a welcome opportunity to expand your resourcefulness.

This reminded me so much of the revision process, which I am in the thick of. It does feel like an obstacle course, full of challenges, but I am enjoying it tremendously. The process is stretching me and making me ask hard questions and helping me whittle the story into its rightful shape. My editor is so brilliant. She is able to see things I never could have caught on my own--overuse of certain words, unintentional rhymes, habitual sentence structures, etc. She has such a clear view of both the microcosm and macrocosm of the book. I am learning so much from her guidance.

Ali Smith's new essay, True Short Story, is a gorgeous meditation on the nature of short stories, the novel, friendship, and illness. Well worth the read.

My lovely friend Cindy has interviewed me at her great site Conversations with Famous Writers. Her introduction to the interview is so sweet, it made me misty-eyed. Cindy will be a famous writer in her own right some day; she is currently shopping around her humorous and insightful novels, and I know an agent is going to be very excited to snatch them up.

Congratulations to my brother-in-law, Tim Ormsby! Two of his poems were just published at The King's English, and they're amazing--funny and strange and deep. Click on "Current Issue"; the poems are named "Cosmonauts" (which contains one of the greatest phrases I've ever read--"kinder than blintzes") and "The Curator's Birthday". They're the first pieces he's ever published, and definitely won't be the last. Both poems have been haunting me all day.

The Guardian asked a whole slew of authors to name their favorite books of the year. The very first book on the list just happens to be my friend Sefi's amazing novel, Everything Good Will Come, recommended by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Yay Sefi!

I had a wild dream last night. I was at some sort of writing competition at an indoor swimming pool. The pool was a narrow one, about two laps wide, and the water was cloudy, milky, warm. A bunch of writers had gathered; I am not clear what the contest was all about, but we had to swim the length of the pool and back with a jar of preserved fruit between our legs (quite a challenge! We had to swim on our backs). All of the writers were clothed, wearing business suits, not swim suits. I was the only woman in the competition; I'm not sure what I was wearing. The actor Rainn Wilson was in the contest (he's not a writer, but he's married to one--Holiday Reinhorn; what a great pair of names betwee the two of them!--so maybe that's why he was there.) His jar of fruit was very strange; he stopped me after the first length of the pool to show it to me. The fruit was shaped like alien organs; little grenades and stars in all sorts of murky, gleaming colors. He had names for all of the fruit, too--I think one was called "conga." He offered to let me taste it, but then I realized I had fallen behind in the contest, so I kept swimming. Very bizarre...

Stanley "Tookie" Williams is scheduled to be executed on December 13th. He co-founded the Crips gang in 1971, but since his incarceration, he has become a true peacemaker (to the extent that he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times for his work in helping to prevent gang violence. He has also been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature for his anti-gang children's books.)

You can find out more about the case (which is riddled with blatant discrimination on the part of the courts) here, and you can sign a petition to ask Arnold to grant clemency for Tookie here.

Happy Buy Nothing Day!

I love what the Pittsburgh contingent of CODEPINK is doing to mark the day:

For the second year in a row, Codepink will gather (dressed in pink of course) in downtown Pittsburgh on the most frantic shopping day of the year, to tell consumers to buy nothing - especially the war. We will take the opportunity to stress anti-consumerism, and anti-militarism. We will be passing out large pink price tags, reminding shoppers of the high human and financial price of war. We had a great crowd last year, and hope for more this year. We will be chanting our favorite "We're Women, We're Marching, We're Not Out Shopping".

If I had more energy today, I'd be tempted to throw on some pink and do this at the local mall, myself.

I love how Keith Knight gives thanks to simple pleasures through his "Life's Little Victories" series:

In the spirit of wanting to be thankful for everything on this earth today (with the exception of Bush and company and associated evil mongerers--although I suppose I'm thankful to them for making me even more committed to justice), I offer up this poem, "Geocentric", by Pattiann Rogers:

Indecent, self-soiled, bilious
reek of turnip and toadstool
decay, dribbling the black oil
of wilted succulents, the brown
fest of rotting orchids,
in plain view, that stain
of stinkhorn down your front,
that leaking roil of bracket
fungi down your back, you
purple-haired, grainy-fuzzed
smolder of refuse, fathering
fumes and boils and powdery
mildews, enduring the constant
interruption of sink-mire
flatulence, contagious
with ear wax, corn smut,
blister rust, backwash
and graveyard debris, rich
with manure bog and dry-rot
harboring not only egg-addled
garbage and wrinkled lip
of ornage-peel mold but also
the clotted breath of overripe
radish and burnt leek, bearing
every dank, maloderous rut
and scarp, all sulphur fissures
and fetid hillside seepages, old,
old, dependable, engendering
forever the stench and stretch
and warm seeth of inevitable
putrefaction, nobody
loves you as I do.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! May you be surrounded by delicious food today, delicious love, the earth blooming and seething all around us...

Et tu, Target?

Say it isn't so!

I may not be a Slave to Target, but I am, or at least have been, a real devotee--I love Target. Tar-jhay. I love the way it brings affordable and cool design to the masses. I love how I always see people I know when I go to the majestic-looking Target on Arlington Ave., with the scrubby hills rising up behind it. I have been boycotting Wal-Mart for years, and always assumed Target was the antithesis of that evil empire. I guess I assumed wrong.

I recently learned that Target has been allowing its pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions, including emergency contraception. Planned Parenthood writes: "Pharmacist refusals are a disturbing trend that can jeopardize women's reproductive health. Denying women timely access to health care is an act of discrimination that could lead to an increased number of unintended pregnancies."

You can sign a petition at Planned Parenthood to turn up the heat at Target. The women of Broadsheet have some great ideas to hit Target where it hurts, as well.

Matt's surgery went really well--a huge relief. He is zonked from the pain meds, but so far hasn't had any crazy hallucinations like he did last year, when carnies were hopping around and men with pompadours lived in the ceiling. And now we have a handful of shiny metal pieces that used to rest under his skin. I'm glad he's not a bionic man any more. I hope he'll be able to enjoy Thanksgiving tomorrow, despite his leg and his fuzzy head. I think he will. When I was in college, I had my wisdom teeth taken out the day before Thanksgiving. I ended up eating the feast slowly, with just my front teeth--and savoring every painful bite.

A day before Thanksgiving last year, my husband shattered his leg skateboarding. A day before Thanksgiving this year, he's having surgery to take the metal out of his beautifully-healed bones. We hope the doctor will let him keep the metal so he can make a sculpture or something fun out of it (or maybe just look at it and marvel that it used to hold him together). Sadly, the hospital wouldn't let him keep his bone chips last year--all spare body parts are supposedly sent to a DNA repository at the FBI (kind of creepy!) We're going into the surgical center early, early Wednesday morning--any good thoughts would be appreciated.

I was so inspired by Cindy Sheehan and Jodie Evans and Dolores Huerta and Daniel Ellsberg (and all of the wonderful presenters) at the Office of the Americas Awards dinner on Saturday. All of the honorees spoke so eloquently about how a single person can make a huge difference in the world, how when the people speak, the leaders will eventually follow. It was a thrill, a real energy boost, to be in the presence of such beautiful power. And I was seated next to a true soul-sister--Jasmina Tesanovic, a feminist author/publisher/filmmaker from Serbia, who is very active in Women in Black (and we even have the same curly crazy hair.) I am so glad I met her, so excited to stay in touch with her.

The rest of the weekend involved a staying-up-until-3am Bucksworth show, and an amazing massage/milk bath/facial--the first of my life--the next morning (my sister in law and I finally used the gift certificates my mother-in-law so generously gave us for our birthdays--mine in April, Heather's in June.) To make the weekend more wonderfully surreal, we left the spa in a relaxed daze, blinking at the sunlight, our limbs all oozy, and stumbled right into the Doo Dah Parade!

A wonderful article by Walter Mosley just appeared in The Washington Post--The Writing Life: On the novelist's obligation to employ politics and poetry. I especially love the final paragraphs:

It comes down to this: Writing novels requires an obsession with our truths. Those truths are not put into novels for witnesses but for co-conspirators. The good novelist knows that Truth is always accompanied by its silent partner: Guilt. She knows that our humanity makes us responsible for events that transpire in this world. She knows, too, that we're not willing to accept the blame. We don't see our culpability even though it's our dollars being spent, our God we prefer above all others, our own image in that silvered mirror that becomes our standard for beauty and innocence. The novelist has the potential to shine light on these blind sides. But she must do it deftly, with a sharp beam. Blindside a reader, and you forfeit everything.

For me there is no such thing as fiction without poetry and politics. If you excise either one, you have taken the heart of us all. You won't get rich following my advice, but you may come up with something close to true.

In my last post, I visited Lara Zeises' blog. Now, I'm delighted to have her visit my blog on her own GCC tour. Lara is the author of three young adult novels--her latest, Anyone But You, was praised for its "pitch-perfect narration" by Kirkus Reviews (and that's high praise coming from the notoriously cranky Kirkus). Her recent book release party not only featured skate board demos, and custom-made Pop-Tart ice cream; it also raised money for some wonderful causes--10% of all book sales went to benefit the libraries destroyed in Hurricane Katrina, and proceeds from the skateboard raffle went towards building skate parks in Delaware. Very cool!

Lara's two other novels for young adults are Bringing Up the Bones (2002), an honor book for the 2001 Delacorte Press Prize Competition, and Contents Under Pressure, which also served as her thesis project at Emerson College, where she earned her MFA in creative writing. She was awarded a 2005 Emerging Artist Fellowship in Literature-Fiction from the Delaware (state) Division of the Arts.

In addition to writing, Lara teaches part-time at the University of Delaware, where she received her BA in English-Journalism. She also facilitates creative writing workshops for both teens and adults.

That last line prompted my questions to Lara:

--Your bio mentions that you teach writing to both adults and teenagers. What have you learned from your teenage students? Do you have a favorite writing exercise? And what words of advice do you have for aspiring writers?

Teenage writers are less likely to be inhibited. When I first started teaching the adult creative writing course, I couldn't get my students to commit to more than a paragraph at a time for homework. When I do one- or two-day workshops with teens, they dive right into the meat of things. They love to partner up and share their group work. They'll less concerned - believe it or not - of making fools of themselves.

My favorite writing exercise to teach is the one where you have to write an entire paragraph in single syllable words. It's so hard, but it highlights how easy it is to use fifty-cent words, when sometimes a two-cent word will do. The one I use the most, though, is writing letters or diary entries in the voice of my characters. It really helps me to get to know them better.

As for aspiring writers: READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN GET YOUR HANDS ON. Even if it's outside of your comfort level. Read books, magazines, newspapers. Watch good movies. Watch bad movies. Soak it all up, because it will all shape how your perceive the world - and how you translate those perceptions onto paper.

Wonderful, Lara! Thanks so much for stopping by!

Today, GCC gives us two authors for the price of one--Lola Douglas is also popping into Fruitful to promote her first novel, True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet. I couldn't resist asking these questions after reading about Lola's favorite word:

--I noticed on your website that your favorite word is "luscious." That's my favorite word, too! I love how it feels in my mouth, how it sounds, what it means. Since I am obsessed with fruit, I have to ask--what do you think is the most luscious fruit and why? Also, what do you think is the most luscious part about being a woman author, and why?

An ice cold plum with crisp skin - because of that poem about the plums in the ice box. Mmmm. Plums. Even the WORD looks luscious.

Women authors are less likely to backstab - at least, in my opinion. The sisterhood is definitely one of the best things about being part of this profession. Plus, despite what some people say about pink covers and the term "chick lit," I find neither demeaning in any way. I love it when people consider me a chick lit author. That's who I'm writing for - cool ass chicks who like to read.

Thanks, Lola! Enjoy the sisterhood of the GCC...

My GCC tour is drawing to a close. My final stop (I believe) is Zeisgeist, the blog of Lara Zeises. You can learn my top 10 desert island cds, my 7 dream Jeopardy categories, and the tv show I would most like to live inside of. Fun (and surprisingly challenging) questions to answer.

Thanks to all the women authors who let me pop into their online homes--I appreciate your generosity tremendously!

Update--I have one last visit: Laurie Stolarz is hosting me at her blog--in the posting, you can read one of Ava's dreams from The Book of Dead Birds. And now we will put the tour to bed. Sweet dreams!

Active Duty Army Specialist, Katherine Jashinkski, has become the first woman Conscientious Objector in this war. You can read her courageous story at the CODEPINK site.

Speaking of CODEPINK--I'm thrilled I was invited to help represent CODEPINK at tomorrow night's Recruiting for Peace event, honoring Cindy Sheehan, Jodie Evans, Dolores Huerta, and Daniel Ellsberg. I can't wait.

And for those of you who will be in LA tomorrow night, my husband's band Bucksworth will be playing at TAIX at 10:30pm. It should be a great show.

I am having so much fun with my Self Storage revisions. It's cool to revisit the story after being away from it awhile--I can see it much more clearly now (and I mean that in two ways--I have more detachment, more objectivity, and that brings so much clarity into the process, but I also am able to actually visually see the characters, the setting more clearly. When I first write a draft, I write in a sort of white heat, and sometimes the people and the landscape blur as I race past them through the story. Now I can slow down enough to see the world in a more dimensional way.)

Part of me wishes I had written the book earlier so I could have taken advantage of this being the 150 year anniversary of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (since the book plays a large role within my book.) But everything else about the timing of this book has been so amazing, I have absolutely nothing to complain about. And I'm fulling enjoying Whitman's sesquecentennial. I was happy to read about this new Leaves of Grass exhibit at the New York Public Library; especially this line in the article: "As ever with Whitman, the goal is an open, perceiving, feeling self..." Thanks to Whitman, that's pretty much the goal of Self Storage, too.

A fun call for submissions. I am definitely a geek, although I'm not exactly the kind of geek they're looking for. I'll have to see if I can come up with something...

CALL FOR PAPERS: She’s Such a Geek, An Anthology by and for Women Obsessed with Computers, Science, Comic Books, Gaming, Spaceships, and Revolution

Slated for Fall 2006

Geeks are taking over the world. They make the most popular movies and games, pioneer new ways to communicate using technology, and create new ideas that will change the future. But the stereotype is that only men can be geeks. So when are we going to hear from the triumphant female nerds whose stories of outer space battles will inspire generations, and whose inventions will change the future? Right now. Female geeks are busting out of the labs and into the spotlight. They have the skills and knowledge that can inspire social progress, scientific breakthroughs, and change the world for the better, and they’re making their voices heard, some for the first time, in Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders’ book She’s Such a Geek.

This anthology will celebrate women who have flourished in the male-dominated realms of technical and cultural arcana. We’re looking for a wide range of personal essays about the meaning of female nerdhood by women who are in love with genomics, obsessed with blogging, learned about sex from Dungeons and Dragons, and aren’t afraid to match wits with men or computers. The essays in She’s Such a Geek will explain what it means to be passionately engaged with technical or obscure topics and how to deal with it when people tell you that your interests are weird, especially for a girl. This book aims to bust stereotypes of what it means to be a geek, as well as what it means to be female.

More than anything, She’s Such a Geek is a celebration and call to arms: it’s a hopeful book which looks forward to a day when women will pilot spaceships, invent molecular motors, design the next ultra-tiny supercomputer, write epics, and run the government. We want introspective essays that explain what being a geek has meant to you. Describe how you’ve fought stereotypes to be accepted among nerds. Explore why you are obsessed with topics and ideas that are supposed to be “for boys only.” Tell us how you felt the day you realized that you would be devoting the rest of your life to discovering algorithms or collecting comic books. We want strong, personal writing that is also smart and critical. We don’t mind if you use the word “fuck,” and we don’t mind if you use the word “telomerase.” Be celebratory, polemical, wistful, angry, and just plain dorky.

Possible topics include:

· what turned you into a geek
· your career in science, technology, or engineering
· growing up geeky
· being a geek in high school today
· battling geek stereotypes (i.e racial stereotypes and geekdom, cultural analysis of geek chic and the truth about nerds, the idea that women have to choose between being sexually desirable and smart, stereotypes about geek professions such as computer programmers)
· sex and dating among geeks
·science fiction fandom
· role-playing game or comic-book subcultures
· the joys of math
· blogging or videogames
· female geek bonding
· geek role models for women
· feminist commentary on geek culture
· women’s involvement in DiY science and technology groups
· Stories from women involved in geek pop and underground cultures. These might include comic book writers, science fiction writers, electronic music musicians, and women interested in the gaming world.
· women’s web networks and web zine grrrl culture
· Issues of sexism in any or all of the above themes

Editors: Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders are geeky women writers. Annaleeis a contributing editor at Wired magazine and writes the syndicated column Techsploitation. Charlie is the author of Choir Boy (Soft Skull Press) and publisher of other magazine.

Publisher: Seal Press, an imprint of Avalon Publishing Group,
publishes groundbreaking books by and for women in a variety of topics.

Deadline: January 15, 2006

Length: 3,000-6,000 words

Format: Essays must be typed, double-spaced, and paginated. Please include your address, phone number, email address, and a short bio on the
last page. Essays will not be returned.

Submitting: Send essay electronically as a Document or Rich Text Format file to Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders at sheissuchageek@gmail.com.

Payment: $100 plus two books

Reply: Please allow until February 15 for a response. If you haven’t received a response by then, please assume your essay has not been selected. It is not possible to reply to every submission personally.

Today is the 7th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance serves several purposes. It raises public awareness of hate crimes against transgendered people, an action that current media doesn’t perform. Day of Remembrance publicly mourns and honors the lives of our brothers and sisters who might otherwise be forgotten. Through the vigil, we express love and respect for our people in the face of national indifference and hatred. Day of Remembrance reminds non-transgendered people that we are their sons, daughters, parents, friends and lovers. Day of Remembrance gives our allies a chance to step forward with us and stand in vigil, memorializing those of us who’ve died by anti-transgender violence.

Some surprising and hilarious search terms have led people to my blog lately--and that's in addition to all the searches from France, Romania, Mexico, Spain, Russia and the Netherlands looking for "girlfriend" within the past couple of days. I imagine my blog was a huge disappointment to them. And to the people searching for:

--There's a Dead Person Flowing My Sister Around

--George Bush shoots brother bb gun

--hot girl

--controversial sea

--how to tell you i love you gayle

(That last one is so sweet. I hope the person figured out how to tell the gayle in question that she is loved...)

China keeps rising up on my radar. A couple of my friends recently went to China, so maybe I'm more aware of Chinese references than I normally would be, but it seems as if China has been appearing in the news more and more lately--stories about bird flu, the Governator's visit, Bush's vist (it makes me crazy to hear him try to promote "freedom" in China when he is eroding it so ferociously at home), etc. Today, I found this article about Chinese poet and journalist, Shi Tao, who has been silenced by the Chinese government for writing an email about potential unrest in Tiananmen Square. He is serving 10 years in a prison on a small island, where he is "forced to do labour processing jewels." The sentence is harsh enough, but I found this the worst part: "He is not allowed to write anything while in prison, except for letters to his family." That seems like the worst punishment you could give a writer. I hope he is able to pour his heart out in those letters, hope he is able to express himself freely within his constraints.

Writers and poets are considered dangerous for good reason--we can tell the truth; we can cut through the veils, the lies, of power with a few sharp words. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that some governments resort to imprisoning, silencing, even murdering (as in the case of Ken Saro-Wiwa, which I mentioned yesterday) those who choose to use their voices to try to bring about change, but it breaks my heart every time I hear about another case. Freedom of Speech is under attack in our own country, of course; I was upset to discover that the Patriot Act is being renewed, that our government still has the authority to snoop at our library files, our bookstore receipts. I am grateful for the brave librarians and booksellers who have refused to hand over information. And I am grateful for all the brave writers around the world who continue to use their voices, even under threat of persecution.

A while back, I mentioned that I discovered a call for proposals for a panel about assuming ethnic identity in autobiographical fiction; The Book of Dead Birds was featured prominently in the abstract. I have since had the pleasure of getting in touch with the woman who proposed the panel, Cathy Waegner, an English professor at the Universitat Siegen in Germany. She used The Book of Dead Birds in her "African American Asian Cross Cultural Encounters" seminar, and recently shared some of her students' essays with me. It was so cool, and often very moving, to see how German students (writing in English) responded to the book. They interpreted the dream sequences of the book in ways that I had not even considered. They made beautiful thematic connections that never would have occurred to me. I have read reviews of the novel before, of course, but never academic analyses, and it was very eye opening. I'll share a few snippets that I found especially delightful:

--"Normally you should not judge a book by its cover. But the cover of "The Book of Dead Birds (and the title itslef--what should be so interesting about dead birds?!) appeared somehow strange at first sight and therefore invited me to think a bit about the book.

Looking at the cover, one can see a picture of a sea or river. The water has a pleasant color; some parts are lightened up by the sun. Nevertheless the photo creates a depressing and somehow cold atmosphere. No people or animals can be seen. The trees in the background do not have leaves; the plants in the water appear dark. The whole landscape seems to be lifeless.

The photo is a a mixture of light and dark with the darkness and tristesse dominating. Having read the first pages of the novel, I think that the photo reflects the lives of Ava and her mother. This light and dark relationship becomes obvious right from the beginning..."

(The student goes on to explore this dark/light dichotomy throughout the novel--I love it.)

--This sentence, from a different paper, tickled me a lot: "It seems quite unusual that a little author presenting a story makes it at the same time somehow interesting and the curiosity of the reader is awakened!"

--I found the conclusion of this paper very touching...(it has a bit of a spoiler, so if you haven't read the book, you might want to avoid it):

"The relationship to Darryl might not solve the non-communicative situation between Ava and her mother, but at least he could be the reason for Ava not feeling Other anymore, but maybe feeling herself, feeling unique and feeling loved in the end."