I write like

Kurt Vonnegut

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

“I Write Like” is a fun site where you paste in some of your writing, it does some sort of comparison against a database of famous writers, and tells you who you write like. I can’t tell what it’s looking for … and it doesn’t seem very accurate. (For instance, it told Margaret Atwood she writes like Stephen King.) But it sure is entertaining.

I went a little nutso with it and put in several different types of my writing. What I got back:

My essay writing is like … Chuck Palahniuk

My fiction writing is like … Stephen King

My correspondence is like … Stephen King

My blog post writing is like … Kurt Vonnegut

Conclusion: Stephen King is an awesome writer? Margaret Atwood and I write a lot a like?

Note: I got all meta and put this post in (every part of it before “Note”) and got Vonnegut again. So perhaps while I am inconsistent in my writing tone and style overall, my blogging is distinctly Vonnegutesque. Vonnegutian?

When you think of Ernest Hemingway, what comes to mind? Did you say shoes? If so, then you and his son Patrick have a lot in common. He’s working with an Oregon shoe company on a line of Ernest Hemingway shoes. Because, you know, Hemingway loved shoes.

“Hemingway was very fond of loafers,” Patrick said. … “I love that you can wear these without socks. I hate socks. Hemingway hated socks, too.”

Some sons publish their dead fathers’ unfinished work, while others put their dead father’s name on a line of El Salvadorian leather shoes divided into the angler, literary, and sportsman collections.

I am imagining pretentious college students backpacking through Europe hoping to fish and run with the bulls while wearing expensive literary loafers. As a woman, there is no footwear for me in the Hemingway line.
I’m more excited about the literary puns than the manly shoes. My favorites so far:

For Whom The Gel Soles and Movable Feets (from @DRUNKHULK)

Shoe at First Light and the Snowshoes of Kilimanjaro (not as clever, sadly from me …)

Side note: He calls his father Hemingway? Is that because he’s being quoted?

What do Jackie Collins, William Faulkner, Dave Eggers, Virginia Woolf, and Steven King have in common? According to Rosecrans Baldwin at Slate, they all mention a dog barking in the distance in one of their novels. Apparently, it’s hard to find a novel that doesn’t include a far-off dog.

Perhaps distant dogs are a way for novelists to wink at one another, at their extraordinary luck for being allowed into the publishing club. When an author incorporates a faceless barking dog into his novel, he’s like an amateur at Harlem’s Apollo Theater rubbing the Tree of Hope—he does it because so many others have done it before him, and it might just bring him some luck.

Some authors do this on purpose to great affect; others use it to buy time or cheat a mood. The article is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it reminds us to pay attention to our tics and make sure every word is there because it matters. Now I’m going to pay attention today–do I hear any dogs barking?

Immediately after the NY Times Paper Cuts blog bemoaned the lack of reciprocity between visual artists and novelists, saying that painters don’t incorporate books into their art the way novelists incorporate the visual arts into their stories, I saw this fun project by Jane Mount called Ideal Bookshelf.

Mount takes the favorite books people choose to represent themselves and does a painting of their ideal bookshelf. She says:

We show off our books on shelves like merit badges, because we’re proud of the ideas we’ve ingested to make us who we are, and we hope to connect with others. I think this is endearing and charming. When I paint someone else’s bookshelf and they have the same book I do, I feel inordinately joyful about it, and about them.

Of course, the Times blogger wasn’t talking about literally using books or images of books in art. But seeing an artist portray a shelf of books as a window into an individual’s hearts, minds, and souls is surely a fun way for the two arts to join forces.
Off to work on what my ideal bookshelf would be! What’s yours?

A publisher in Hamburg, Germany has converted some old cigarette vending machines into book dispensers. The books are all new titles from Hamburg authors. Forget about iPads or e-readers; this is the new distribution method I want to sweep the nation. Also: Reading is more healthy than smoking.
I think I want my book sold this way!

via Bookninja

Sylvia Plath would hate how people see her today. Like other iconic figures–Marilyn Monroe comes to mind–people don’t see the person she was but the things she symbolizes for them. Monroe is the poster for a sexually desirable woman, Plath is the poster for the tortured suicidal artist girl. But Plath wasn’t like that at all. Mental health issues aside, Plath was brilliant, hardworking, and very funny. The tragedy of Sylvia Plath is that she cut off her life right when she was starting to reap the fruit of all the labor she had put in during her teens and 20s by writing poem after short story after poem. She did not have a flash of genius, write her last poems, and then, with nothing else to say, kill herself. Instead, at age 30 Plath was finally coming into her own as an artist, and she didn’t stick around long enough for anyone to see what would come of it. We get a taste of her artistic maturity in poems like “Daddy,” but it’s just a taste–imagine what would have come later if she had lived. In the writing sense of things, Plath’s suicide is like cutting down a rose bush that is loaded with buds just about to open.

And that is sad. But I would like us to move away from seeing Sylvia Plath as some sort of emo goth-girl abandoned-wife victim, and instead try to understand what a brilliant, interesting woman she was. And that brings me to my latest toy: Sylvia Plath (Spoken Word), which has just been released by the British Library. It’s not available in the U.S. until July 15th, but no matter, you can order it from Amazon U.K. just fine. They don’t even charge you exorbitant shipping rates.

Recordings of Plath reading her poems have been around for awhile now–here’s Plath reading “Daddy,” for example–but Sylvia Plath (Spoken Word) is way more awesome than that. It includes an interview of Plath and Ted Hughes on their marriage, readings of lots of poems I hadn’t heard before, a review of a poetry anthology by Plath, and best of all, a short gem of a track where Plath talks about England.

She was part of a program called “What Made You Stay?,” where seven Americans were asked why they chose to live in England. Plath’s answer is delightful and sharp. In 7 minutes, she touches on her literary geekdom, how perplexing she found the British beaches, why she wants to raise her children in England, and how much she loves English butcher shops before launching into a funny story about an eccentric British woman. It shows more about her character and personality than most of the literary information about her that you can find.

And how could I set that up and not give you a sampling? So go ahead and listen to Sylvia Plath talk about why she lived in England here. Click to listen or right click on the link to download.

Check out Word Pirates co-founder Joy Lanzendorfer’s short story “Rabble of Butterflies” in the Spring 2010 issue of Superstition Review. It’s a great read. Go, Joy!

Word Pirate Morgan Elliott’s work in the most recent issue of ZYZZYVA. They published a short graphic comic titled “Kallio Kiss.” Well done, Morgan!

You can check out more about the Spring Issue of ZYZZYVA here.

Besides learning and inspiration, another thing I gained at AWP was the worldwide beard game championship title. (At least, I think I was the winner of the beard game.) If you think yelling beard in a public place is strange, you haven’t attended a dance for writers. Now that is strange. When we saw this on the agenda, we didn’t think anyone would show up. But the place was hoppin’, and writers actually had some pretty sweet dance moves. Most of them also had social skills. A few of them did not … to the point of creepiness. Giving socially maladjusted people free alcohol may not be a good idea.

Speaking of ideas, one thing Michael Chabon said in his keynote that I really liked: Why would you try to be a writer if you weren’t full of ideas? The panels sparked so many ideas for me, but one of the reasons is that they weren’t trying to. The panelists all seemed to assume we were full of ideas and wanted to hear more about how to get those ideas out and arrange, share, and perfect them.

(Read on …)

I had never been to an AWP Conference before, but I enjoyed it. It was held in the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, which has a statue of a giant blue bear trying to get inside the building:

Roughly 9,000 people attended AWP this year. Even factoring in that many of those people are academics or wannabes, that’s a lot of writers. While some panels were standing-room-only, I was able to see everything I wanted to see.

There’s something for every type of writer at AWP–panels on fiction, poetry, nonfiction, publishing, teaching creative writing, playwriting, young adult writing, literary readings, etc. In my typical gung-ho style, I went to lots and lots of panels, pretty much non-stop panel hopping every day. The first day, we went to seven panels and the keynote speech, plus we found time to tramp all over downtown Denver. I later learned that many people only go to one or two panels a day. One woman said that she would be exhausted if she went to as many panels as we did. Why is sitting in a room listening to people talk exhausting, exactly?

There were a lot of men with beards at this conference. Marcia and I started playing a game where we said the word “beard” every time we saw one. Whoever said “beard” last was winning. A typical conversation went like this:

“I liked that panel–beard–especially the second speaker–beard. Did you catch his name? Beard.”

I can’t remember who won the game overall. I think it was Marcia?

The panels were run by intelligent folks who knew what they were talking about. It’s not so much that I learned that much–although I did learn some things, like how to put together a poetry book or the benefits of the 10 minute play form–as that the conference generated inspiration for me. I came away with a notebook full of ideas for short stories, articles, poem, Word Pirates prompts, and so on. That alone was worth the trip.

At the end of each panel, there was the Question and Answer period, which are always painful to sit through. Does anyone like Q&As? Here is Marcia’s breakdown of a typical question people tended to ask:

I was relieved that Michael Chabon, who gave the keynote speech, did not hold a Q&A because of the size of the audience. I don’t know how many people were packed into the ballroom at the Hilton, but it looked like hundreds, maybe even a thousand people. To appease those who love asking questions, Michael Chabon wrote the speech in Q&A form, where he asked questions of himself and then answered them. It was pretty funny.

Michael Chabon is so charming.

End of Part I. Over and out.