First author looking at a novel by a third author, turns to the second author and asks: “Did you read this latest novel? She says it’s a period piece.”
Second author grimaces. “Yes. It. Is. And. I. Read. Every. Period. In. The. Piece.”
Monthly Archives: January 2014
Writer makes it big … elsewhere
BIG IN JAPAN
by David Gordon
You might not know me, but I’m famous. Don’t feel bad. Until recently, I didn’t know I was famous either, and most days, even now, it’s hard to tell.
In 2010 I published a novel, “The Serialist.” It did fine for a debut, which is to say well enough to warrant a second, but my daily life didn’t change much: I wrote, I ran, I hung out with my friends. Then a Japanese translation came out, and things got strange. My book won a major Japanese literary contest, which was nice. Then it won another. Then another. Apparently this was extraordinary: No one had ever won all three before. I received copies of articles, which were totally incomprehensible to me except for the picture of my face and a big No. 1. I tried Google Translate, which rendered it all into tantalizing gibberish. My book was not even called “The Serialist” in Japan: The character is a pulp writer, so they used the title “Niryuu Shousetsuka,” which translates back into English as “Second-Rate Novelist.” That was me!
The odd, or oddest, part, was that I had always been a fan of Japanese culture, its films, books and art, though I had never studied it, and it played no role in my books. It was like having a distant teenage crush on someone who suddenly wrote and said, “I like you, too.”
The culmination of this peculiar adventure, which I had observed only from afar, occurred when Toei Studio made “Niryuu Shousetsuka: Serialist,” a film based on my book. That is to say, a Japanese movie set in Tokyo, with Japanese actors speaking Japanese, rather than my version, which features non-Japanese people and takes place mostly in Queens.
They made the movie very fast, in about six months, and invited me to the premiere in June 2013. My Japanese publishers had contrived to release my new book, “Mystery Girl,” at the same time. The novel wouldn’t even be published in English until July. Maybe it had something to do with the international date line, the way emails from East Asia seem to come from tomorrow, but my Japanese life was clearly way ahead of my American life. So I went.
Rest of the article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/magazine/big-in-japan.html?ref=lives&_r=1
[Editor’s note: thanks to Ashlie for sending this my way.]
The Devil’s Dictionary: “Academe, Academy, University”
A young Ambrose Bierce
For example, here are definitions for Academe and Academy. The Old definitions are Bierce’s. The New definitions are mine or somebody else contemporary. The new definitions can also be simply examples of The Devil’s Dictionary definitions. From time to time, just as it was originally published, we will come back to The Devil’s Dictionary, for a look at it then and how it applies today. Click on Devil’s Dictionary in the tags below to bring up the other entries.
OLD DEFINITIONS:
ACADEME, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.
ACADEMY, n. (from academe). A modern school where football is taught.
NEW DEFINITIONS:
ACADEME, n. An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught. (No such place exists in America today.)
ACADEMY, n. (from academe). A modern school where football is taught.
UNIVERSITY, n. A very modern school where only football is taught. It is also often the moral and philosophical code of many of the students, alumni, and politicians of such institutions. Such universities belong to aggregations that go by acronyms such as SEC, Big Ten, ACC, etc. Such Universities also serve the One True Higher Authority: the ABS — the Almighty Buck Speaks. Like any true higher authority, often times what is enunciated by the ABS and what is heard by the Students, Alumni, and Politicians (SAPs) are a Babel of pontifications.
[Editor’s note: Bierce did not have a definition for University, such has football grown since his time. Also note, there are some Universities where basketball is substituted for football. ]
Filed under Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary
Haiku to you Thursday: “Water snake”
Water snakes through grass /
seeps in messages of green /
tempts Winter’s long kiss.
Filed under Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
The 16 Habits of Exuberant Human Beings, by Kate Bratskeir
The 16 Habits of Exuberant Human Beings, by Kate Bratskeir.
Sample of article:
Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, theorizes that while 60 percent of happiness is determined by our genetics and environment, the remaining 40 percent is up to us.
In his 2004 Ted Talk, Seligman describes three different kinds of happy lives: The pleasant life, in which you fill your life with as many pleasures as you can, the life of engagement, where you find a life in your work, parenting, love and leisure and the meaningful life, which “consists of knowing what your highest strengths are, and using them to belong to and in the service of something larger than you are.”
After exploring what accounts for ultimate satisfaction, Seligman says he was surprised. The pursuit of pleasure, research determined, has hardly any contribution to a lasting fulfillment. Instead, pleasure is “the whipped cream and the cherry” that adds a certain sweetness to satisfactory lives founded by the simultaneous pursuit of meaning and engagement.
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While not directly a writing tip, a more positive frame of mind might just help with writing, especially when few others seem interested in what you are doing.
Filed under Writing Tip Wednesday
Trivia Question: “Literature”
Filed under Trivia question
Monday morning writing joke: “habit”
Three women walk in and sit down at the bar. Two are in street clothes, modest attire. The third is in nun’s clothing.
Bartender asks them what they are having.
The two in street clothes say, “Boilermakers.”
The nun says, “Water.”
After the third round of drinks, when the other two women start getting loud and sloppy, the bartender asks the nun why she is hanging out with these two lushes.
“They are nuns, too,” she says calmly, “They have just gotten out of the habit.”
Filed under Monday morning writing joke
Trivia question: history
Filed under Poll, Trivia question
New words to live by: “fogget”
It is the first weekend of the month and time again for a new word to live. This is a word or phrase not currently in use in the U.S. English lexicon, but should be considered. Other words, such as obsurd, crumpify, subsus, flib, congressed, and others, can be found by clicking on the tags below. The new word for January is fogget. This is a combination of fog and forget.
fog, n. has several meanings, from a meteorological condition to a metaphorical one. For example:
1. a cloud-like mass or layer of minute water droplets or ice crystals near the surface of the earth, appreciably reducing visibility.
2. a darkened state of the atmosphere, or the diffused substance that causes it.
3. a state of mental confusion or unawareness.
forgetful, n. means apt to forget, and forget, v. means to fail or cease to remember.
Fogget, v. means to apt to have a vague sense of where somebody or something is. You don’t cease to remember, but you don’t completely remember either.
For example, with three children under the age of five, Alice was always foggetting where she put the kids’ extra diapers, pacifiers, and sundry other accoutrements of babyhood and toddlerdum. She knew she had them; she just wasn’t sure exactly where she or one of her kids had left the object inducing the crisis of the moment. She could only hope that at some point the foggetting, like the baby’s need for strained peas, would pass.
Filed under new word, New words to live by
‘Losing Yourself’ In A Fictional Character Can Affect Your Real Life – Ohio State Research and Innovation Communications
Below, a sample of the article. Click on the link above for the complete article.
“LOSING YOURSELF” IN A FICTIONAL CHARACTER CAN AFFECT YOUR REAL LIFE
COLUMBUS, Ohio – When you “lose yourself” inside the world of a fictional character while reading a story, you may actually end up changing your own behavior and thoughts to match that of the character, a new study suggests.
Researchers at Ohio State University examined what happened to people who, while reading a fictional story, found themselves feeling the emotions, thoughts, beliefs and internal responses of one of the characters as if they were their own – a phenomenon the researchers call “experience-taking.”
They found that, in the right situations, experience-taking may lead to real changes, if only temporary, in the lives of readers.
Filed under fictional character, losing yourself, reading
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