what i'm reading

"The fact that writing is hard and there are many hobbyists doesn’t mean it isn’t a job either. It is..."

"The fact that writing is hard and there are many hobbyists doesn’t mean it isn’t a job either. It is very hard to be a professional athlete or a head chef, and many people practice sports or cooking as hobbies. But we would not pretend an NBA player or a head chef doesn’t have a job….Even if writing only makes up a tiny fraction of your income, it can still be a job and should be treated as such. Or, at the very least, if your writing is generating money for other people — publishers, magazines, corporate entities — then you should be getting paid too.”

- “Yes, Writing Is A Job (Even If It Doesn’t Pay Well)” - Electric Literature
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"On The Slow Pursuit Of Overnight Success"

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Victoria Schwab, on the heels of her first #1 NYT debut The Savage Song, has a great post on her blog about how failure and success throughout her writing career, and how the big successes don't happen overnight -- even when they seem instant to your readers.

Read more from Victoria here.

Her post reminds me of what my friend Aaron used to say about writing:  basically, that "you have to write a million words of crap in order to start getting good."

So, fellow authors and writers, let's keep plugging away toward those million words!

 

Happy Friday,

CL

Poetry Project #4, Louise Erdrich

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Louise Erdrich (b. 1954) is an Ojibwa writer who writes poetry, novels, children's books, and more. "Jacklight" shares its name with her first critically-acclaimed collection of poetry, published in 1984.

Jacklight

The same Chippewa word is used both for flirting and hunting game, while another Chippewa word connotes both using force in intercourse and also killing a bear with one’s hands.

-R.W. Dunning, Social and Economic Change Among the Northern Ojibwa (1959)

We have come to the edge of the words, out of brown grass where we slept, unseen, out of knotted twigs, out of leaves creaked shut, out of hiding.

At first the light wavered, glancing over us. Then it clenched to a fist of light that pointed, searched out, divided us. Each took the beams like direct blows the heart answers. Each of us moved forward alone.

We have come to the edge of the woods, drawn out of ourselves by this night sun, this battery of polarized acids, that outshines the moon.

We smell them behind it but they are faceless, invisible. We smell the raw steel of their gun barrels, mink oil on leather, their tongues of sour barley. We smell their mothers buried chin-deep in wet dirt. We smell their fathers with scoured knuckles, teeth cracked from hot marrow. We smell their sisters of crushed dogwood, bruised apples, of fractured cups and concussions of burnt hooks.

We smell their breath steaming lightly behind the jacklight. We smell the itch underneath the caked guts on their clothes. We smell their minds like silver hammers cocked back, held in readiness for the first of us to step into the open.

We have come to the edge of the woods, out of brown grass where we slept, unseen, out of leaves creaked shut, out of our hiding. We have come here too long.

It is their turn now, their turn to follow us. Listen, they put down their equipment. It is useless in the tall brush. And now they take the first steps, not knowing how deep the woods are and lightless. How deep the woods are.

Poetry Project #1, Li-Young Lee

Hello, all,

Because I always love having something thoughtful to read, I'm starting a new weekly post series where I post a different short poem every Monday (not mine, just some old favorites.) Whether you want to discuss the poem of the week, meditate on it privately, or file it away for your idea notebook, I hope you get something out of it!

Today's poem is from contemporary poet Li-Young Lee.

Enjoy!

 

One Heart

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every fallen thing.