A wonderful description of the writing process:

Writing is a job, like plumbing is a job. There are days when all you do is screw words together like pipes, make the joints as tight as you can, and then flush shit through it to see if it leaks.

I think this quote struck particularly close to home because I have been spending quite a bit of time drafting agreements, and this describes that process to a tee.

Read the rest of Derek’s post entitled How to Write a Book in Three Easy Steps.

A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life
By David Foster Wallace
Ploughshares, Spring 1998

When they were introduced, he made a witticism, hoping to be liked. She laughed very hard, hoping to be liked. Then each drove home alone, staring straight ahead, with the very same twist to their faces.

The man who’d introduced them didn’t much like either of them, though he acted as if he did, anxious as he was to preserve good relations at all times. One never knew, after all, now did one.

This is downright awesome. Quickmuse holds what they refer to as Agons where two poets are given a passage and are given 15 minutes to right a poem. Their keystrokes are captured in real time so you can literally watch them as they write the poem - every thought that hits the page, every edit, every deletion.

Robert Pinsky and Julianna Baggott were asked to write poems in reaction to the following passage:

“He was an intellectual. He used to read novels, poetry, history, stuff like that. And he could hold a conversation with almost anybody on all kinds of things…. He was real sensitive. But he had this destructive streak in him that was something else…. [H]e used to talk a lot about political shit and he loved to put a motherfucker on, play dumb to what was happening and then zap the sucker. He used to especially like to do this to white people.”

–Miles Davis on Charlie Parker

Watch Pinksy craft the poem or see the finished version.

Other Agons include Paul Muldoon vs. Thylias Moss and Jonathan Galassi vs. Marge Piercy. All battles are archived on the site.

I am sure most of you already know, but an agon is the Greek term for “debate” or “contest” and both tragedies and comedies had formal agons in which the central idea of the drama was debated.

Relying on an earlier post, on Thursday Mike O plausibly argued that he should now be considered “bilingual.” Cf. “Speaking a Different Language,” Thursday Dec 2 (2004). I just want to point out that, in some rare instances, judges can write with some style. I like this offering from Kinney Shoe: “This corporation was no more than a shell – a transparent shell. When nothing is invested in the corporation, the corporation provides no protection to its owner; nothing in, nothing out, no protection.”< ?xml:namespace prefix = o /> Not hilarious, of course, but when we’re talking about “respecting the corporate form,” it’s hard to be. Anyway, it brightened up my outline.

Heidi has just posted a wonderful reflection on the joy she gets from reading the perfect phrase. She writes:

but there are some turns of phrase that are so elegant, so well-crafted that reading it is in some way like getting a wasabi hit (or, for that matter, like raising your hand for the first time in class). Before your intellect can catch up with what it means, it hits the primal center.

It is the last sentence that really hit me. When I am looking to buy a new book of poetry, I grab several authors that are unfamiliar to me off the shelf and read one poem from each. I only read the poem once, without analysis, and then choose one. It is the sound, and feel of the words that grab me: Before the intellect can catch up. I believe that a beautifully crafted sentence, can convey much of its meaning, through sound and word choice, and a host of other devices, before the subject matter is even interpreted by the brain. I find it most often in poetry, after reading Heidi’s post, apparently it can found in the law too…

I absolutely love Michael Barrish’s Oblivio. His talent at observation has me green with envy and he takes “self awareness” to an entirely new level. His post, entitled “Song,” begins:

My thoughts divide roughly into memories, observations, and fantasies.

Desires count as fantasies.

Probably there’s a better word than fantasies, one that encompasses both things, but what would it be?

Also, what is a word for what happens in my head when I read? I want to call this mastication, but that seems a different sort of thing from the things above.

Read the delightful end to this post… here

James K. Glassman has an article entitled “Don’t Panic, But Start Selling” in today’s Washington Post. I don’t know much about mutual funds, but the title of this piece caught my eye for its bluntness, something you don’t see very often in newspapers. Glassman goes on to state:

My advice: It’s time to dump Putnam, Strong and Alger funds, unless you have a very good reason to keep them, such as avoiding a big tax bill or wanting to hold on to a fund that has been a superb performer. All three of the firms are making changes, so if you are the forgiving sort, you may want to wait. But, in my view, it is reckless to entrust your money to institutions that have proved rotten at the top, no matter what their intentions for the future.

I like this guy. He’s not pulling any punches.

A writer named Shelley Jackson has written a new story, with a twist. The only publication of the story will be tattooed, one word at a time, on willing participants in the project. According to her website:

The text will be published nowhere else, and the author will not permit it to be summarized, quoted, described, set to music, or adapted for film, theater, television or any other medium. The full text will be known only to participants, who may, but need not choose to establish communication with one another

After the work has been completed:

participants will be known as “words”. They are not understood as carriers or agents of the texts they bear, but as its embodiments. As a result, injuries to the printed texts, such as dermabrasion, laser surgery, tattoo cover work or the loss of body parts, will not be considered to alter the work. Only the death of words effaces them from the text. As words die the story will change; when the last word dies the story will also have died. The author will make every effort to attend the funerals of her words.

Thanks to Xeni for the link

The kettle analogy below by William Gibson is hot. . .

“[I]f I’m still blogging, I’m definitely still on vacation. I’ve always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn’t want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid’s been left off.”

I noticed that I haven’t had the burning desire to post here during the past few days. Then I realized why. I am working on my first real writing assignment for school and its totally got me tuckered out. I hate that. Same thing happens with reading. I have to read so much for school that I find I don’t even want to pick up a newspaper. I used to read the Washington Post, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal when I was working (I refuse to link to the WSJ because they charge for all of their content). I need to figure out how to get my brain to understand that this is good writing, and that newspapers, fiction and poetry are good reading. It’s like breaking up with a woman, your brain automatically tries to protect you by convincing you that all woman are bad, when in fact only some are.