Media Record Day 1
Posted on | July 8, 2009 | 17 Comments
Here is a record, more or less of the media I interacted with today:
The continuation of a hysterical email exchange with my dear girlfriends about married names and given names and choosing names. One of my friends is marrying a man who happens to have the same name as her, minus a syllable. You can see how this might get tricky.
Another email exchange with some amazing friends about their reading habits, re: fiction or memoir? (Weigh in please!)
Visiting and revisiting twitter and still not quite getting how such a multi-directional, utterly dislocated conversation with a thousand different people going all at the same time makes any sense at all. But kind of liking reading about the goings on in the literary agent world (last weeks #queryfail made me laugh, though apparently it made others cry.)
Facebook, twice. A friend posted this: “prioritizing inappropriately” and it couldn’t be more apropos.
SheWrites, once. Since I signed up on Monday, the place has a zillion new members. I’m still not sure how to use the opportunity here. I’m tempted to spend all day networking. But then there’s that pesky thing called ACTUALLY WRITING which I should be doing more of. I have 90 pages of raw material. I need to double that. Then I can talk. Or maybe then I should focus my energies on revising?
Read this rather morbid list, while researching the circumstances of Plath’s death for my book. Oy. I haven’t chosen a profession with a guaranteed pleasant outcome, have I?
Then I read “Suspension” by Rebecca Makkai, and loved it because of it’s form. I googled Makkai after reading her story “The Worst You Ever Feel” in the 2008 Best American, and this story is where I landed.
On paper, in actual three dimensions I read Lorrie Moore’s piece “Childcare” in this weeks New Yorker. A few great lines, like this one: “ I accidentally nodded. I had no idea, conversationally, where we were. I searched, as I too often found myself having to do, to find a language, or even an octave in which to speak” made me smile because I could relate. But the piece was generally meh. Not something that will likely stick with me, though maybe now it will because I am writing about it. (Go read it! Tell me what you think. I loved doing that last time–hearing your ideas about a story. Having a little impromptu book club.)
And I read the intro in Molly’s book a Homemade Life. Every time I hold the book in my hands I am smitten with simultaneous inspiration and envy. It’s not a good combination and thus far has prevented me from reading farther. However it has inspired me to try my hand at homemade pasta. Also chocolate cupcakes.
Finally, I read yesterday’s headlines in the Wall Street Journal, while walking back up the driveway with a sleeping Sprout, but I cannot recall any of them. Only that there was an entire full page add about Presidential Armored Safe’s that you can obtain for FREE if you purchase multiple sets of ‘government coins that never loose their value.’
I am certain I consumed other bits of information, and yet my memory of them is even more frail and blurred. What is the point of all this consumption if I cannot even remember it?
Maybe I should also note that I also did some revising, finished a chapter, started two art projects while bouncing Sprout in the ergo, took a walk (to get him to sleep), did the shred, and baked cookies. Also there was dinner and bedtime stories and so forth. Gasp. Does anyone ever feel like they have enough time?
***
Your turn: what media did you interact with today?
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17 Responses to “Media Record Day 1”
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I am Christina Rosalie
Hello. I'm so happy you've stopped by!
I am a multimedia storyteller, digital strategist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, MFA graduate student, and mama of boys. My first book,
will be published by SKIRT! Books in September, 2012.
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July 8th, 2009 @ 10:12 pm
Twitter – on my phone while the girls were in dance.
Blogged a post (and not a great one)
Internet – at haircut to show my stylist the ‘do I wanted.
And then FB – while I was watching the all important (hah!) SYTYCD. Two hours gone that I will never get back. Sigh.
And now internet – to catch up on what everyone has had to say today and to leave my two cents.
July 8th, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
Oh and as far as books go – read form Writing Down the Bones.
July 8th, 2009 @ 11:09 pm
i tend to think of memoirs as fiction…because the ones i’ve been reading tend to be strange enough to be fiction. which i love. that’s why i pick them up. because a book about growing up as a gerbil farmers daughter is just as good as reading about teenage vampires in love.
July 8th, 2009 @ 11:09 pm
oh…so to weigh in…either or
July 9th, 2009 @ 2:14 am
Truth? When I was fifteen, I vowed I would follow in Plath’s footsteps–make it great, flare out young. I’m now twenty-nine, and I am only facing year two of MFA-dom. I’m enjoying myself and opt out of previous commitment. Reminding myself to love life, to write, to enjoy every moment.
July 9th, 2009 @ 6:31 am
i loved the suspension story…
the ny times one lost me partway through…
i like stories to carry me along,
i don’t want to feel like i am trudging along
behind, picking up words.
read the morbid list with great interest though…
choking on cover to pills while trying to
get at barbitituates…that’s quite a way to go.
July 9th, 2009 @ 6:55 am
There’s no way I can remember everything I read in a day. This internet is a wonderful thing, making so much information so readily available and at my fingertips. But that’s the problem. I read one thing which sparks questions and sends me searching for answers. A few hours later and I’ve moved on from the original question, spurred on by questions that answer brought until my ending search is so far removed from where I started that I can’t remember where that was. I spend so much of my time chasing one rabbit trail after another, drunk on information.
I loved that morbid list and all the other lists on that site. I’ll have to bookmark it, because, you know, I *need* to know these things. This was my favorite item from the list:
Honore De Balzac [1799-1850] French Author – Believed to have choked on too much coffee.
Off to grab a second cup myself. I’ll drink carefully.
July 9th, 2009 @ 7:12 am
Isn’t the list funny? In that horrible morbid terribly sad way?
And also Molly, I’m glad you’ve decided that is a commitment you don’t need to follow through on. In fact. I’m THRILLED you decided this!
July 9th, 2009 @ 7:27 am
i don’t even want to think about it! work from the computer all day (web designer), so fb, blogs, my own blog, contributing, commenting, surfing for fun beading projects… during my so called breaks! signed up for twitter, fortunatly i just don’t get it. FB enough for me to keep track of those in my orbit!
July 9th, 2009 @ 9:32 am
Notes:
Yesterday: online few hours (way too long): email, facebook, google reader, posted blog of garden, set one to post today of flowers, email; then offline, finished (coincidentally!) A Handmade Life, which I enjoyed, and made dinner.
Sidenote: Loved The Bell Jar, but that’s as far as my Plath involvement gets. Should I read more?
July 9th, 2009 @ 9:38 am
Re: fiction vs. memoir. I think more and more people are interested in memoir lately. There’s something about that supposed ring of truth that many people crave. Also, in fiction, it’s difficult to get away with writing some of the stranger coincidences or incredible events that actually do happen in real life. People are much more critical of the serendipitous or supernatural in fiction.
July 9th, 2009 @ 10:26 am
I’m shredding, too! Today is Day 8. I’d be embarrassed to document my media record, as being unemployed has left me scouring the interwebs for a good 1/3 to 1/2 of my day. I also spent 2 hours watching SYTYCD…
July 9th, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
I’m feeling similar to you with my consumption of media. I should track it and see where it takes me…am I really benefiting from all those bit and pieces of ideas going in and out?
if you are researching Plath I’m guessing you’ve already read it but Letter’s Home…edited by her Mother I found insightful.
Haven’t checked out the morbid list yet but I have no doubt it will be on my media list today.
I prefer Memoir but for entirely selfish reasons completely unrelated to quality or content really.
I used to think Plath was brave. Now, as an almost 32 year old stay at home mother of 2 trying to pursue my writing and photography on the side I think she was a coward….it takes balls to look at this dichotomy and choose daily to stay in it.
July 10th, 2009 @ 6:30 am
I’m very into memoirs lately — maybe it’s the impact of reality tv and facebook and all — I relate to interesting or dramatic reality.
Recommend: “Hurry Down Sunshine” by Michael Greenberg (about his daughter’s descent into mental illness) and “An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination” by Elizabeth McCracken (a lyrically, heartbreaking memoir about her stillborn son and subsequent pregnancy).
And since you wish you could dance and I wish I could sing: recommend “A Little Bit Wicked” by Kristin Chenoweth!
July 10th, 2009 @ 9:32 am
I don’t think I could possibly keep up with my media consumption – I am an addict, my friend.
But I did write something for my blog last night – I find it all to easy to read read read and not force myself to string words together.
But! re: memoir & fiction – I go through stages. I try to balance it, one fiction, one memoir/biography or non-fiction (spiritual writings) if that’s what I’m wanting. I read like I eat – what do I feel like I want? I need the balance of imaginary world/real world. I am so thrilled because the Borders just minutes from my house now has a real biography/memoir section – there are dozens I’m DYING to read.
July 10th, 2009 @ 12:05 pm
I read that New Yorker story yesterday. The funny thing was the line you quoted was the last line I read before putting it down on my [very urban] BART ride to Berkeley. Then read the rest on my way home. Like most New Yorker fiction I read, I found beautiful turns of phrase and some nice ideas, but an overall blah feeling when I finished it. There was a line in the New Yorker review of the movie Revolutionary Road last fall that said something like “pain isn’t necessarily art” (the reviewer hated the movie). Nearly every time I read New Yorker fiction I think a similar thought– pain/awkwardness/uncertainty/depression and short unfinished-feeling stories don’t make a good piece of fiction in and of themselves. There’s just not enough of an arc for me, of an actual STORY that I can live into for more than the time it takes me to read it.
No sun in this city today. Dreary old fog. I feel you on the dampness.
July 10th, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
Willow, how I adore you and the way you think. My thoughts exactly, about New Yorker fiction. Why is it like this? The editors? Rose, I am sure, would have insight. Rose?