Sitemap - 2014 - Woman of Letters
Saw Interstellar, wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be
Wrapping up my eleventh year of writing fiction
Very Recent History, by Choire Sicha
Books I read this year which I really did not enjoy as much as I would have wanted to
Wrap-Up Season: I've finally found the place where I want to spend my life.
Getting back into revision mode
Prospect Park West, by Amy Sohn
Blog's readership has not measurably grown this year
Some books that you may not have heard of or perhaps didn't know were good book
Don't want to be one of those people who's constantly like: "Everything in my life is aaaaaamazing"
Got paid and also got my edit letter from Disney
Ten books I read this year which are exactly as good as you think they are
Reading statistics for the first eleven months of 2014
Recently culled my list of blogs
I know what it's like to be unable to talk to people
Major life decisions mostly happen in a really random, happenstance way
Read Marc Benioff's BEHIND THE CLOUD
Read some fantastic books lately; too many to post about
Hatching Twitter, by Nick Bilton
Amazed at how hard people were willing to work for Amazon.com
Got my thirteen hundredth short story rejection
If you try to passively listen to a conversation, then the participants will slowly force you out
Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy, by Irvin Yalom
My advice on socializing is not meant for loud, boring people
If someone's standing at the edge of your conversation, you should try to include them
Why I arrive at parties right when they start and sometimes leave absurdly early
In many tv shows and films, the voiceovers lend zero added value
Haven't been feeling much like reading lately
Been watching hella GOSSIP GIRL
As I Crossed A Bridge Of Dreams, by Sarashina
You’re Not Using Enough Clickbait In Your links (And Other Social Media Mistakes Authors Make)
Started reading THE SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN, by Yasunari Kawabata
Woo, I'm twenty-nine years old
There's something to be said for charm
Reading Naomi Wolf's THE BEAUTY MYTH
As far as I'm concerned, this election was mostly about whether or not to tax soda
Been rewatching Season 6 and Season 7 of THE WEST WING
Why was Stoicism so attractive to wealthy and powerful Romans?
Psychiatric Tales by Daryl Cunningham
I am terrible about reading my friends' work
Depression Quest: a surprisingly fantastic interactive fiction experience
Talking on the phone to desperate people
Really excited to be moving into a new place on Saturday
Have done a shockingly small amount of reading this month
Ugh, writing novels is so hard
Berkeley and Oakland's public libraries look like they belong to different countries
Thoughts occasioned by watching the first season of Scandal
Reading Suetonius' LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS
My new mantra is "Yep, that could happen."
Making progress on a new book, but we'll see...
Today I visited the Googleplex
One of many secret weight-less fantasies
Life continues to be a thing that I am living
Wow, it's really possible for a random tweet by a random person to go viral
Been reevaluating my whole approach to writing novels
Reading Tacitus again; not quite into it, but maybe that's what I need right now
Finally saw GONE GIRL. It was alright.
I might've discovered a heretofore unremarked-upon youth subculture
Still not quite sure what to think about Dostoyevsky's THE IDIOT
Reading strongly resembles meditation
Reading the scariest memoir I've ever read
Read a memoir about weight loss surgery
My Friend Dahmer, by Derf Backderf
Two different things that I hear from my friends re: my choice of where to live
This is a test masquerading as a substantive post
There is something blank and incomprehensible at the center of our economy
In praise of the weighty nonfiction tome
Had a good time in Utah. Today was a recovery day
Still in Salt Lake City; have a hectic week coming up
Ummm, I had a good idea for a blog post, but then I forgot it
About halfway through Jonathan Franzen's FREEDOM
Jennifer Egan's A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD
Everyone becomes a self-parody in the end
Ummmmmmmmmmmmm, been reading books
Started reading Laura Lippmann's AND WHEN SHE WAS GOOD
Finally realized why I have this lingering sense that I'm waiting for something...
Reading Lionel Trilling's THE LIBERAL IMAGINATION
There was hippy shit in the 1930s, and in the 1840s, and in Ancient Greece too?
New writing project is starting to come together
Just thought of a super adorable novel idea
Twitter is a really good way to meet other YA authors
I actually learned nothing from assembling my list of all of the novels that I really love
I get stressed about the self-promotion thing
Spent all day listening to this Rihanna song and trying to think of a story idea...
I don't know why I feel like I should've heard of all of the YA books
Oh my god, is there no cure for afternoon drowsiness?
Suffering blogger brain freeze
It's hard to describe the appeal of THE THREE MUSKETEERS
Is anyone still writing alternate histories?
Does anyone still write alternate histories?
Plot is what separates human beings from animals
Saw a huge Tumblr thread about introverts and party-going behavior that made me so sad
The fallacy behind 'depressive realism'
Really happy to have sold* another story to a literary magazine
I watched several animated movies today
Wish I knew more people who listened to the radio
If there's something in your life that you enjoy doing, then you should probably just do that.
TOM JONES is laugh out loud funny
For the first time in two years, I'm writing a short story that's not, in some way, for school
Not sure that genre fiction spends enough time wrestling with the anxiety of influence
Second a second book to your agent is one of the (many) anxiety-provoking parts of a writer's life
Been having a good run of books lately
Oh my god, how did all of this happen?
Why does fresh air make such a difference?
Wondering what to do next in life
When you guys go over to someone else's house, do you wash your dishes and cups?
Been doing lots of reading lately. Just finished Emile Zola's THE BELLY OF PARIS
If a cop tells you to do something, it's kind of dangerous to refuse to do it
Can't recommend THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO highly enough
An annoying problem that is faced by all young adult writers
It does feel really good to be back
All I did today was read THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO
Haven't felt very much like a writer lately
Why are some long novels so much harder to read than others?
Am relieved that I finally feel like reading again
Not sure how brick and mortar stores are ever gonna beat Amazon
I have a better understanding of how to write books than how to revise them
Spending my first night in my new room
Picked that Thomas Piketty book up again; I'm somewhat surprised that it's such a best-seller
Is it possible to buy the good life?
Today I re-watched several episodes of the television show ENTOURAGE
Yeah, if you're writing literary short stories, you really do need to put up with submission fees
Weird to get good news when I am just so completely discombobulated
How I've made peace with my own bragging
The De-Flanderization of Community
Spent the weekend watching two sitcoms that I straight-up loved
Searching for housing the Bay Area is absurd
Still slowly making my way through CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Finished HOW TO READ LIKE A WRITER
Leaving New Orleans and moving back to Oakland
Staying in the cheapest hotel in Nashville
I've been retyping MRS. DALLOWAY
So, the reason it took me so long to get any traction on that novel...
Very odd to have nothing really hanging over my head
Alright, finally finished the kid's book. Its working title is EVERYONE HATES YOU
Fiction isn't a very good tool for shedding light on how things work
Reading Herodotus' THE HISTORY
My take on David Graeber's DEBT: THE FIRST 5000 YEARS
Ay mi, no substantive blog post today
Still not quite sure what to make of DEBT: THE FIRST 5000 YEARS
Almost done with THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB
I really really really like ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK
Johns Hopkins is a great MFA program
The nature of beauty is still a complete mystery to me
In answer to your query, New Orleans is great, but...
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of those writers that I really like...but don't love
Completely captivated by Richard Rhodes' THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB
The Veronica Mars movie is really not very good.
Yes, I read Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, and I'm not ashamed of it...
Do Americans really _want_ more leisure time?
Reading Nate Silver's book, SIGNAL TO NOISE, and wondering about the value of expert knowledge...
The problem with Michael Lewis is that, to me, his worldview rings false...
How beds, coffee, steaks, and whiskey are governed by the Kanakia Theory of Manly Preferences
The key to staying productive even when you have alot of free time
Reading Ernst Becker's Denial of Death
Masscult and Midcult, by Dwight McDonald
Do writers of color avoid discussing existential problems?
Staying with a friend in Raleigh NC
The real reason that we go to restaurants...
The Spirit Catches You And Then You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman
Has anyone noticed that staring fixedly at nothing is a great aide to thought?
Just finished one of the best writer-memoirs I've ever read
The writing process gets a lot more exciting after you do it for a decade
My life is mud, but at least I read a good book
Up to my 49th draft of chapter one of this children's book
The allure of fascism and Raymond Kennedy's RIDE A COCKHORSE
A person can't hold to one value system when they're successful and a different one when they fail.
The Fighter, by Craig Davidson
It's always interesting to read an author's earlier works
What a recently-released crime novel taught me about writing from within the body
Oh fine, I guess that physical books are allowed to continue to exist
Oh my god, I finally understand Twitter
If you ever need an author photo on extremely short notice, I know your man...
Sold my debut novel, ENTER TITLE HERE, to Disney-Hyperion in a two-book deal
The most-viewed post on my blog
It's inadvisable to begin a novel with both an unusual event and a weird setting
Finally started to read the last volume of Plutarch's lives
Sort of about my writing process but mostly about three online journals that I really enjoy
This April has been my least productive month since November of 2012
Tired of narratives that use pop-culture references as a form of characterization
Reading books as a replacement for doing the things you want to do in life
Thinking about how to integrate myself into the young adult fiction community
Every spring, I get really anxious about things
Finished reading that Ward Anderson book; it was actually not a waste of time
Tired of only liking the books that I'm supposed to like
Like every other person in the kid-lit world, I'm in love with R. J. Palacio's _Wonder_
Drawing upon hidden reserves of willpower
You know, there's a non-zero probability that I would've actually enjoyed being an economist
There's something a little bit endearing about right-wing extremism
Oh god, it is so late, why am I still up? Such poor life decisions
You know where I had a really excellent time? The Clarion Writer's Workshop
How I select the next book I'm going to read
Even when I can't get excited about much else, I can get excited about reading
Coming up on my last workshop at Johns Hopkins (and perhaps my last one for a long time)
Living in the open air is a very different experience
These Marvel films tend to be pretty uninteresting on a visual level
Played more computer games this week than I have in maybe four years
Can't actually get excited about Game of Thrones, but always glad to watch it
I've learned to distinguish between the goals that can be relaxed and those that can't be
Gotta stop writing these blog posts at 12:15 AM
All I want to do now is play Master of Orion
Finally found one thing from my childhood that actually held up: Master of Orion
Times I've changed my mind about social-networking-related stuff
The writing in some of my childhood favorites really was unbelievably bad
Most of us are probably going to achieve an average amount of success
Been reading about the daily rituals of artists
As an artist, you're usually rewarded for putting fresh wrapping paper onto the same old thing
Used to think it was a boast when people said that they weren't capable of sleeping late
No one really knows the right way to do it
Finally finished reading _Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy_
Twitter is the only social network which punishes you for following a person you're interested in
The national origins of the authors of all the books I've read in the past five years
Some of the best advice I've ever gotten from a random article on the internet...
You know what there aren't a lot of? Children's book authors who aren't white.
Going to shift my week so that it starts on Friday morning
Is it hard to share so much on the internet? Not really...
Genre breakdown of all the books I've read since the beginning of 2009
Writing a novel is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle composed of pieces you carved yourself
I actually do like the characters in GIRLS (except for Adam...god, I hate him)
Started reading Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
Sometimes what you want to write is different from what you know how to write
Let's not pretend that our anxiety over the future of literature is anything more than self-interest
In the grip of a terrible ennui...
Done working on ENTER TITLE HERE
Going through Enter Title Here for approximately the millionth time
Do you think that authors really dislike their villainous protagonists as much as they claim to?
THE CORRECTIONS is an extremely polarizing book
Books I have read / am reading while on vacation
Got my twelve hundredth rejection in record time
Finally breaking my half-year long streak of fifteen-hour writing weeks
At AWP, along with a lot of other people
Why you have to care about what other people think of you.
Not in love with straight women making fun of Grindr
Oh no, I forgot to write a blog post today, so I will link to this TED talk...
Let go of things you wrote while you were in undergrad
Structuring routines so that you can break them when you need to
I don't find it particularly odious to be a member of SFWA
How to live when you know that nothing great is going to happen today.
Well, I worked really really hard and did absolutely everything I was supposed to do today...
Been running around all day and still have so much stuff to do
Sometimes it feels like real life is something that only happens behind a keyboard
I am in the mood to start reading a book that I will be proud to have read
I do not like getting thrown off my routine
A missive from Orlando airport
The Looney Tunes really are quite unlike most other American mass media.
What blogs should I subscribe to?
Reading a pretty fantastic short novel: The Setting Sun, by Osamu Dazai
Finished reading The Makioka Sisters
The difference between hipster name-checking and geek name-checking
Submitting to literary journals (OR I got 41 rejections in the month of January)
How to increase your blog traffic
Does it matter whether or not a fictional book is actually based on the author's real experiences?
Got tired of the science fiction, so I started reading _All Quiet On The Western Front_
I am a bit tired of science-fictional allegories for racism
Why you should hate the creative writing establishment (...as if you needed any more reasons)
"Writing is something you do alone in a room"
People care more about feeling important than they do about being happy
Novel is kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilling me
Not sure I can make it through Reamde
How writing a novel is like being that one (semi-useless) superhero who can see the future
Had a terrifying vision of my own mortality the other day
I've become unsure of whether or not writing is an intellectual process.
Novels are insanely complicated
Started reading Justin Cronin's _The Passage_
I have become obsessed with Representative Darrell Issa
Caitlin Kiernan's _The Drowning Girl_
Reading Karen Lord's _Redemption In Indigo_ and intermittently really really loving it
I actually enjoy looking at the work of this visual artist
When to listen to your fear and when to ignore it
Several pictures of the mouse that I just killed
What science fiction and fantasy novels should I read?