Books I'm reading right now:
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Storytelling by Kate Wilhelm.
To Kill a Mockingbird ... I love it. It brings me back to childhood, and I've fallen in love with Scout. I'll write more when I'm finished.
Storytelling...I read most of it in an hour or two yesterday afternoon. I read my first Kate Wilhelm book about 5 years ago when I knew that I was going to move to Eugene, Oregon, and I just wanted to find out a little more about the town. My tiny local library in Colorado had three or four books set in Eugene - all Kate Wilhelm mysteries. Wilhelm's definitely an accomplished writer, with hundreds of stories under her belt and an enviable number of novels. I've only read her mysteries, although I've heard wonderful things about her science fiction. I wish I could be more of a sci fi / fantasy fan, but I'm just not. I wish I could be more experimental with genre reading. It would help me in so many ways, but genre as a whole usually bores me, and when it's not a genre that I'm at least mildy interested in, well, it's just painful. Reading should never be painful, or what's the point, right? Speaking of points, let me get back to mine... I always feel there's something missing from Wilhelm's books. I can't explain it exactly. Her Barbara Holloway books are my favorite, and she does a fine job of capturing Eugene and I like the Barbara character and her dad and the two monsterous cats. But...there's something I can't put my finger on....
Storytelling is quite well-written. It's about the Clarion Writing Workshop, which Wilhelm taught at with her husband Damon Knight for 27 years. Now I'm inspired by the idea of attending a writing workshop. I hate to admit this, but I've secretly imagined writing classes and workshops and conferences to be full of terrible amateur hacks who will never get published, and so I've always wanted to, you know, sort of rise above that and go the tortured loner route. It's probably because of the one dreadful creative writing class I took in college - back when I thought history was a practical degree to acquire and didn't really think about becoming a writer. I read far too many classmates' non-stories in that class - incomplete, wandering character studies about themselves. I workshopped. I exercised. I liked the teacher - a novelist, mysteries I think, don't remember her name. She featured my story in the xeroxed class magazine and even named the little thing after my story. Flattering? Yes. I recently reread that story that I wrote so many years ago, and it was terrible. Flashbacks in a short story? Ick. Oh well. The class was not aimed at the idea of publishing, which Clarion is, and I'm ready for something like that. It sounds like fun. Not Clarion per se, since I have only a wistful interest in writing sci fi, but a good writer's workshop where they will tear me to shreds only to resurrect me into a bestselling novelist.
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Storytelling by Kate Wilhelm.
To Kill a Mockingbird ... I love it. It brings me back to childhood, and I've fallen in love with Scout. I'll write more when I'm finished.
Storytelling...I read most of it in an hour or two yesterday afternoon. I read my first Kate Wilhelm book about 5 years ago when I knew that I was going to move to Eugene, Oregon, and I just wanted to find out a little more about the town. My tiny local library in Colorado had three or four books set in Eugene - all Kate Wilhelm mysteries. Wilhelm's definitely an accomplished writer, with hundreds of stories under her belt and an enviable number of novels. I've only read her mysteries, although I've heard wonderful things about her science fiction. I wish I could be more of a sci fi / fantasy fan, but I'm just not. I wish I could be more experimental with genre reading. It would help me in so many ways, but genre as a whole usually bores me, and when it's not a genre that I'm at least mildy interested in, well, it's just painful. Reading should never be painful, or what's the point, right? Speaking of points, let me get back to mine... I always feel there's something missing from Wilhelm's books. I can't explain it exactly. Her Barbara Holloway books are my favorite, and she does a fine job of capturing Eugene and I like the Barbara character and her dad and the two monsterous cats. But...there's something I can't put my finger on....
Storytelling is quite well-written. It's about the Clarion Writing Workshop, which Wilhelm taught at with her husband Damon Knight for 27 years. Now I'm inspired by the idea of attending a writing workshop. I hate to admit this, but I've secretly imagined writing classes and workshops and conferences to be full of terrible amateur hacks who will never get published, and so I've always wanted to, you know, sort of rise above that and go the tortured loner route. It's probably because of the one dreadful creative writing class I took in college - back when I thought history was a practical degree to acquire and didn't really think about becoming a writer. I read far too many classmates' non-stories in that class - incomplete, wandering character studies about themselves. I workshopped. I exercised. I liked the teacher - a novelist, mysteries I think, don't remember her name. She featured my story in the xeroxed class magazine and even named the little thing after my story. Flattering? Yes. I recently reread that story that I wrote so many years ago, and it was terrible. Flashbacks in a short story? Ick. Oh well. The class was not aimed at the idea of publishing, which Clarion is, and I'm ready for something like that. It sounds like fun. Not Clarion per se, since I have only a wistful interest in writing sci fi, but a good writer's workshop where they will tear me to shreds only to resurrect me into a bestselling novelist.
posted by apocryphiliac at 10:50 AM
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