Red Room Where the Writers Are

Without Christmas -- If God did not...

I've been musing over a prompt on Redroom for a blog / essay topic. The prompt—without Chirstmas—has given my head a definite spin. I haven't quite caught it yet, or slowed it down. I keep wanting to talk about the evolution of ritual and how our modern Christmas season has factored into human or societal rites for a very long time, probably adapted from solar cults that marked the winter ...

Growth Mindset and Writing: A Celebration of...

Writing is hard. If you are honest with yourself and you really are a writer, you will admit that you like it that way. I was listening to a quirky little interview with Ethan Canin yesterday, and he as much as confessed that he writes novels because they are harder for him than poetry or short stories. When I arrived at graduate school lo these many years ago, I was surrounded by people who had ...

The Top Ten Comedic News of 2008

Okay. Just so you know: the Top Ten Comedic News Stories of the Year are as different from the Top Ten Legitimate News Stories of the Year as a tarantula infested banana tree is from a small paper bag of locking quarter- inch steel washers painted blue. Other stuff might have had a bigger impact on America and the World, such as an African American guy whose middle name is Hussein winning the ...

Tearsheets

I was rummaging through the boxes under my bed the other day, looking at tearsheets from past publications. Perhaps I should scan them all and save them as images of the originals. I'm determined to transfer them all to CD, but hence the dilemma:  Should I keep the original hardcopies or consign them to the woodstove?Then I began to wonder about the whole idea of an electronic society and its ...

Grammar in the News

  A reader of the Oklahoman newspaper recently wrote:"I have always believed that proper grammar has been set in stone, so to speak, and that it does not change in any society, nor in any decade."I always want to sit these people down and say, "Okay. Sure. But can you tell me something? Who set these rules in stone and, while we're at it, can you show me the stone (so to speak) of ...

Value of an MFA?

Periodically I briefly experience the desire to get an MFA. I don't go through it because I think it will make me a better writer--though I'm sure it would--but because I want to teach. There is this bizarre contradition that exists within the writing world that really bothers me because I think it is only serving to undermine the quality of writing and publishing within the US. There are ...

blues singer Delaney Bramlett dead at 69

Singer-songwriter-guitarist Delaney Bramlett has died at 69.

New Story Published

A story of mine was just published in the latest edition (volume six, issue one) of the excellent lit journal Redivider.

On Facebook?

 Bored with the usual friending back and forth? Click here: TOTAL RAW EXCITEMENT Sean Beaudoin, Author loves you.

twittering from a plane crash

Mike Wilson, on a continental 737 flight, twittered his plane crash almost as it happened. See his feed starting here.

How To Spend Christmas Alone

Hey, if you're in SF check out my article in this week's Onion. (dec. 25th-volume 44, issue 52). It's in the AV CLUB section and is called "Lonely Drummer Boy." Unfortunately, it was edited for nice-ness in parts, but you get the idea.

The Hemingses of Monticello

I’ve just finished reading The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, winner of the National Book Award, a fascinating look into the lives of the enslaved family so intimately connected with Thomas Jefferson. Annette Gordon-Reed does an excellent job resurrecting the history of an extensive family whose story has been buried for centuries under a version of history that champions ...

Zen

I saw “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” the other day.  In the story, the main character is born old and grows younger.  By growing younger, it focuses on what growing old means to us.  So far, this is the best movie I’ve seen this year.  All the scenes are clear, detailed and very well developed.   I really enjoyed it.During the movie, a Zen scroll popped in my head.  I ...

Advanced Procrastination, for Beginners

Just a quick note on ways to abuse precious minutes of your life in which you could be writing, but aren't. Facebook has a number of exciting literary groups open to the public: Summer Literary Seminars, Mid-American Review, The Granta Magazine Appreciation Club, Subtropics, American Short Fiction, and Tin House magazine. They also have pages for The Paris Review, A Public Space, The New Yorker, ...

Sometimes The Internets Make Me Feel Bad

I live in a bubble of my own creation. It is for the most part a peaceful, quiet, happy place filled with wonderful and inspiring people. It is impervious to golf. And to drama. And to folks who voted Republican in any of the last three presidential elections. It's a good bubble. I stay inside of it because it allows me to be optimistic in the face of everything that is going on in the world. ...

At the peak of a new year

I'm the first one to admit I'm not very into new year resolutions. I am far more interested in listing what I'm glad happened in the year that's soon to be passed. Now I've slightly changed. I made a new year resolution when 2007 turned 08, and now, I have a day to complete it. People usually make resolutions that are easy to break, and January is the most disappointing month a year. My ...

KAFKA FOR THE NEW YEAR

'Amerika: The Missing Person' by Franz KafkaA new translation of his first novel -- about an immigrant in a phantasmagorical America -- may be less a metaphor than a reading of the author's self-perception.By David L. Ulin December 28, 2008 Amerika:The Missing PersonA New Translation,Based on the Restored TextFranz KafkaTranslated and with a Prefaceby Mark HarmanSchocken: 300 pp., $25It's always ...

Bleak House: Dickens' England 1840s and U.S....

The novel that spoke to the year 2007 and 2008 is Dickens's Bleak House. I agree with Edmund Wilson that Bleak House is a masterpiece; the novel is the greatest written by a Englishperson.Dickens in his novel was describing England in the 1840s as a Bleak House, a nation dominated by corruption as symbolized in his fictional world by the Court of Chancery, supposed to fairly settle wills and ...

Hallsfoot, haibuns, shops and books

It took me a while to get back in the saddle today (doesn't it always?) but I have now managed to add another 1000 words toHallsfoot's Battle, which brings me to just over 71,000 words in total. The mind-executioner's telling of the Third Gathandrian Legend has just ended and now Simon is going to be faced with a real challenge. Which I'll leave hanging nicely in the air (aha! cue evil authorial ...

Open Mic

 http://www.freewebs.com/laura7/apps/blog/

Ashes to ashes:Harold Pinter...

What is real and what is unreal?

In a state of delirium, pumped up with medication, laid up in bed, swathed in white from a lightbulb that hurts the eyes, I can see clearly. I can see the reality of the unreal, the unreality of the real. A cliché would refer to it as truth being stranger than fiction.

You said in art there was no difference between the true and the false. Both could ...

Changes Happen in Moments...

I saw this phrase on an informercial of all things this morning. I have heard this phrase a few times since I quit drinking 21 years ago. If any of you remember Dr. David Viscott, he had a call in radio show years ago. I heard he was going to be giving a talk in Santa Monica and I drove down to see him (about 20 years ago, he has since died). I even got the nerve to get up and ask him a ...

Ten Strangest Things About Our Universe -...

Artist's rendition of a hypervelocity star leaving a galaxy. Image Credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for AstrophysicsTen Strangest Things About Our Universe - 2008At the end of any year, one is confronted with many bottom up lists describing the important events, people, discoveries, and etc. over the course of the past year just lived.This exercise always allows one to pause and reflect on what ...

BEST BOOKS READ IN 2008

Of the 286 books I've read thus far in 2008, the following are the best of the bunch, by category; within categories, they are chronological as read and some have been published in previous years. By the way, if your title/book does not appear on this list, it probably simply means that while I've bought your book, I have not had time to read it yet but I'm sure it's superlative. I promise that ...

The Babies Are Coming!

We get the babies today, along with their older sister, MissN.  Their mother wants to get her Christmas paraphernalia put away and for some reason thinks it would be easier without a three-year-old and two seven-month-olds around (I can't imagine where she got that idea).  KidThree and I are delighted, as we've been pining for them.  Next week the twins will be back full-time, as their mother ...

Slipping into Toothlessness

It's midwinter, you're at the desolate Jersey shore and you're quietly slipping into toothlessness.It all starts with a missed shower or two. Its just too cold to take off all those layers of clothes. Besides, you're not going to see anyone anyway.Then shaving your legs strikes you as just silly. I mean, you do it every once in a while since its another excuse to touch yourself but really, what ...

Rethinking Goals!

As much as I hate revising my writing goals downwards, I'm not able to make them with everything else that's going on. Just can't. I worked all day on edits on another book all day yesterday so was only able to write 300 words on Plight of the Wolf. Which means I'm 3 weeks behind again. I have 1/2 of what I needed for the week 2 weeks ago. But at this rate, unless I had a whole week off from ...

Cookie Day 2008

My friend Marianne invited me to her home for Cookie Day 2008. Sure, sure, I’ll go. Christmas cheer, whether I like it or not. Marianne was one of my sweetest classmates in high school. Always friendly, always trying, always smart, always pretty. But I was always partying, always cool, always disconnected and didn’t foster our friendship. Over the years, I realized my coolness is vastly ...

Family Matters

I stood there, in full fighting stance, watching my brother intently. If he took one more step toward me, I’d hit him. After years of martial arts training, I had no intention of letting my 58-year old brother, who is my size, lay one bloody hand on me. Funny, the thoughts that run through your head during such enormously stressful times. I kept thinking, “Why don’t they teach you how to ...

Remember the Best We Can

Last night I had a dream that I was at a renewal of vows ceremony of a friend.  The ceremony was being conducted on the lawn in front of the college I attended.  My dear friend and her husband were going for wedding number two, despite her cancer diagnosis earlier this year.  I was in the wedding party, a bridesmaid, even at this no-way-am-I-a-maid stage.  But there I was in my shiny, ugly ...