oneiric
On Thursday I was on a family vacation, driving through the desert, when I got an email asking if I wanted to talk about the Kardashians on NPR's Weekend Edition. Eighteen hours later I was sitting on a couch in a hotel room in my bathing suit, praying the fridge wouldn't start humming again and that my sentences were all making sense, that I was being compelling and coherent. Now you can listen to the results and decide for yourself!!
-
Also as the year recedes and my freelance editors are mostly out of office I've been focusing on editing book #4 (still without a permanent title, sorry little buddy, I am trying very hard to know your name) and thinking that sometimes, for me, at least, writing a book is more like interpreting a dream than anything else. The first draft is a set of symbols dredged up from my subconscious. Then someone else looks at them and says uh, what is all of this doing here? Can you explain to me what it means, and why it belongs together on the page?
With certain elements, as after a dream, I figure out: oh, that's just there because I was at the supermarket today, because I was thinking about her, because in stories like these there is always a party. And then there are others that resist that kind of easy interpretation, that refused to be reduced to simple symbol. They stand there on the page, insisting that they exist, that they mean something-- and that if I sit with them long enough, with enough patience, I will figure out some of what that is.
These things can be-- they have to be-- unpacked, expanded, embroidered upon. They are big mysteries, complicated knots. Writing a book is the work of making the knot, I think, and then the work of its undoing. People keep asking me lately, how do you write a book, and I say, you start at the beginning and go on until you've reached the end. Which is true, for me, at least, but also because in this situation it's never appropriate to say: you bring out all the dark shapes in your mind for anyone to see. You let yourself get fascinated with yourself: you ask, over and over again, what it is that they mean.
-
Happy post-solstice, happy almost new year. I'm disappearing back into the desert soon; when I emerge, it will be the eve of my 33rd birthday, my Jesus year. If you want to help me welcome it, please consider pre-ordering Look and finding out what I've been dreaming about since 2016.
(Is that corny? It is! Also I have to say, re: the subject line, that I tried to use oneiric in one of my college admission essays and my very lovely English teacher had to be like, you know that this phrase makes you sound insanely pretentious, right? I remember it particularly because he tended to be patient with my bullshit, so his callout meant I had gone right on over the line. I think I've been waiting for the right place to deploy it ever since. Not sure I found it, but there it is regardless!)
-
Also as the year recedes and my freelance editors are mostly out of office I've been focusing on editing book #4 (still without a permanent title, sorry little buddy, I am trying very hard to know your name) and thinking that sometimes, for me, at least, writing a book is more like interpreting a dream than anything else. The first draft is a set of symbols dredged up from my subconscious. Then someone else looks at them and says uh, what is all of this doing here? Can you explain to me what it means, and why it belongs together on the page?
With certain elements, as after a dream, I figure out: oh, that's just there because I was at the supermarket today, because I was thinking about her, because in stories like these there is always a party. And then there are others that resist that kind of easy interpretation, that refused to be reduced to simple symbol. They stand there on the page, insisting that they exist, that they mean something-- and that if I sit with them long enough, with enough patience, I will figure out some of what that is.
These things can be-- they have to be-- unpacked, expanded, embroidered upon. They are big mysteries, complicated knots. Writing a book is the work of making the knot, I think, and then the work of its undoing. People keep asking me lately, how do you write a book, and I say, you start at the beginning and go on until you've reached the end. Which is true, for me, at least, but also because in this situation it's never appropriate to say: you bring out all the dark shapes in your mind for anyone to see. You let yourself get fascinated with yourself: you ask, over and over again, what it is that they mean.
-
Happy post-solstice, happy almost new year. I'm disappearing back into the desert soon; when I emerge, it will be the eve of my 33rd birthday, my Jesus year. If you want to help me welcome it, please consider pre-ordering Look and finding out what I've been dreaming about since 2016.
(Is that corny? It is! Also I have to say, re: the subject line, that I tried to use oneiric in one of my college admission essays and my very lovely English teacher had to be like, you know that this phrase makes you sound insanely pretentious, right? I remember it particularly because he tended to be patient with my bullshit, so his callout meant I had gone right on over the line. I think I've been waiting for the right place to deploy it ever since. Not sure I found it, but there it is regardless!)
Don't miss what's next. Subscribe to practice: