Without hope and without despair
I'm starting a new project (or, rather, re-starting a project I’ve started before, but I won't go into that...) so naturally I spent a solid hour yesterday scouring “on writing” essays.
You’d think I’d know how to write by now.
My excuse is that I was looking for a rule for writing I remember reading a while back, intending to quote it in this letter. Something to the effect of, “For four hours a day, I don’t have to write but I’m not allowed to do anything else.” I thought it was Raymond Carver, but I can’t seem to find it. Still, I’m trying to abide by this rule.
Here’s a related bit of advice, from a piece Carver penned for the NY Times in 1981: “Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair.”
Without hope and without despair. I’m aiming for that, too.
A few small causes for despair this week. A contest not won. A new draft of a stale project completed and set aside. And I’m gonna be forty... Someday.—I want to write, to be delivered in a Meg Ryan voice. But of course I’m already past 40.
Speaking of, I just watched a terrific movie on Netflix, Elisabeth Subrin’s A Woman, A Part. I was so touched to be offered a 44-year-old protagonist. Maggie Siff plays a frustrated, not-so-likable, utterly compelling TV actress who journeys home to NYC after many years in LA, camping out in her old (Greenpoint?) apartment and attempting to repair relationships with her old theater friends.
It’s Subrin’s first feature, after many years spent making art films, and I was inspired by the economy of the writing, how simply and beautifully shot and beautifully acted the film is. It seems not to have made much of a splash, screened at Rotterdam, where two of her shorts played previously, and at BAM, but maybe wasn’t even released in theaters. I wonder, did that cause Subrin despair?
It’s a perfect film. I ought to write and tell her that.
*****
This month in movies: (see above)
This month in tacos: We finally made it to the Tire Shop Tacqueria. I have to admit, I felt like an a*hole gringa as I stood, mouth agape, and tried to figure out how to order... There is no menu posted, no prices, and there are so many people working back there, chopping and grilling meat, kneading and pressing out the fresh tortillas (!), I was like a deer in the headlights. I recommend just marching up and ordering yourself two asada tacos and a quesadilla. Perhaps a vampiro. I regret not trying the vampiros. But once we managed to order and get our food over to a table, we were thrilled. “This might be the best taco I’ve ever had,” said an out of town friend we brought with us. There you have it.
This month in print: Sticking with our theme, I loved Jami Attenberg’s All Grown Up, which features another not-quite-likable (and I mean that as the highest compliment), utterly compelling, 40ish protagonist. It’s a novel, but it’s expressionistic, not quite linear, each chapter reads almost like a short story. I devoured it in the space of a weekend.
This month in fashion: I wrote a piece for The Billfold about my obsessive shopping habits, and I’ve managed not to buy a thing since.
*****
xoxo,
Laramie
p.s. Pls forward to a woman over 40, or one who's gonna be 40 someday.
You’d think I’d know how to write by now.
My excuse is that I was looking for a rule for writing I remember reading a while back, intending to quote it in this letter. Something to the effect of, “For four hours a day, I don’t have to write but I’m not allowed to do anything else.” I thought it was Raymond Carver, but I can’t seem to find it. Still, I’m trying to abide by this rule.
Here’s a related bit of advice, from a piece Carver penned for the NY Times in 1981: “Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair.”
Without hope and without despair. I’m aiming for that, too.
A few small causes for despair this week. A contest not won. A new draft of a stale project completed and set aside. And I’m gonna be forty... Someday.—I want to write, to be delivered in a Meg Ryan voice. But of course I’m already past 40.
Speaking of, I just watched a terrific movie on Netflix, Elisabeth Subrin’s A Woman, A Part. I was so touched to be offered a 44-year-old protagonist. Maggie Siff plays a frustrated, not-so-likable, utterly compelling TV actress who journeys home to NYC after many years in LA, camping out in her old (Greenpoint?) apartment and attempting to repair relationships with her old theater friends.
It’s Subrin’s first feature, after many years spent making art films, and I was inspired by the economy of the writing, how simply and beautifully shot and beautifully acted the film is. It seems not to have made much of a splash, screened at Rotterdam, where two of her shorts played previously, and at BAM, but maybe wasn’t even released in theaters. I wonder, did that cause Subrin despair?
It’s a perfect film. I ought to write and tell her that.
*****
This month in movies: (see above)
This month in tacos: We finally made it to the Tire Shop Tacqueria. I have to admit, I felt like an a*hole gringa as I stood, mouth agape, and tried to figure out how to order... There is no menu posted, no prices, and there are so many people working back there, chopping and grilling meat, kneading and pressing out the fresh tortillas (!), I was like a deer in the headlights. I recommend just marching up and ordering yourself two asada tacos and a quesadilla. Perhaps a vampiro. I regret not trying the vampiros. But once we managed to order and get our food over to a table, we were thrilled. “This might be the best taco I’ve ever had,” said an out of town friend we brought with us. There you have it.
This month in print: Sticking with our theme, I loved Jami Attenberg’s All Grown Up, which features another not-quite-likable (and I mean that as the highest compliment), utterly compelling, 40ish protagonist. It’s a novel, but it’s expressionistic, not quite linear, each chapter reads almost like a short story. I devoured it in the space of a weekend.
This month in fashion: I wrote a piece for The Billfold about my obsessive shopping habits, and I’ve managed not to buy a thing since.
*****
xoxo,
Laramie
p.s. Pls forward to a woman over 40, or one who's gonna be 40 someday.
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