Back, busy, etc. A couple of links for now…
Roger Sutton is funny when he’s cranky:
I just picked up Katherine Applegate’s Beach Blondes: A Summer Novel (Simon Pulse) and boy are my arms tired. This sucker is 721 paperback pages long, and first in a series to boot. I’m guessing it’s so fat for some strategic marketing reason, or perhaps I just haven’t yet gotten to the chapter "This Is Summer Speaking," in which the heroine stops the motor of the world in order to expound for fifty-seven pages on the virtues of Vera Bradley bags.
Seriously, what is it with the Vera Bradley thing? I don’t get it.
And Ben Rosenbaum* waxes smart on schedulizing:
One thing related to that: there are many sub-agencies in my consciousness. Some want to lie on the couch. Some want to write fiction for the fun of it, others in order to be praised. Some want to go hang out with friends. Others want to be left the fsck alone. My task, I have found, is not to impose the will of the more "good, productive, noble" ones on the slacker ones, but rather to broker a compromise so that they are not constantly sabotaging each other. I find this actually increases even traditionally-measured productivity. If I try to only ever write, I find myself cheating on writing time in order to read and play. If I make it my goal to have time to write, to read, and to play, the agencies tend to respect each other much more.
Well said.
*Whose forthcoming collection is hotly anticipated–is this the year of the awesome short story collection or what**?
**Plus, Maureen’s awesome-tastic collection Mothers and Other Monsters is now available for download!