10 April, 2008 | 1 Comment

I’ve made a goal to finish my book by September. This will then give me a year to revise it and to write the critical material that needs to accompany it for my PhD. I am anxious to finish this book since it has been a part of my life for so long. But also, writing this book is a struggle and I will be glad to put it behind me. It deals with many difficult themes, some of which are very personal to me and very painful to think about. Other themes in the book, while perhaps not related to me personally, are still dark and depressing. I’ve often suspected that part of my resistance to this project over the years has been due to the fact that the subject matter is not pleasant and I simply don’t want to think about it. Given this, you can imagine what writing full-time and thinking about these themes all day is like for me on an emotional level.

I can only explain it like this: Imagine some painful memories from your past, things that cause you a great deal of pain, things you’d rather not think about because it’s too horrible. Now imagine dwelling on these issues intensely for five to six hours each day. Not only that, but even when you aren’t specifically thinking about them, they are always at the back of your mind. Any psychologist would tell you that this is not a healthy way to live. In fact, it’s probably a sure-fire recipe for going completely batty. Now I understand why so many writers go crazy.

(more…)

4 April, 2008 | 1 Comment

You know I quit my teaching job so I could write full-time. Well, I’m pleased to report that I am actually writing — and for hours each day. No one is more surprised at this turn of events than me. I worried that I would stare at the computer screen all day and have a complete breakdown (and admit it — you probably thought that would happen to me too). But no, so far I am kicking ass.

This writing full-time thingy is interesting. It certainly changes the writing process and my relationship to it. I am a very undisciplined writer and normally I would only write when I was “in the mood.” There are benefits to doing this — when you’re “in the mood” or “feeling inspired,” writing can be great fun, even exhilarating. Writing each day regardless of what mood you’re in is not great fun — it’s hard work. I spent most of yesterday working on two long paragraphs (about one page). It was a frustrating process and it gave me a headache and there were times when I thought I was going to die (perhaps by my own hand), but I kept working at it and by the end of the day I had something that’s pretty good. I used to feel that my best, most inspired work was the result of a visit by the muse, but now I think I can get the same results by just rolling up my sleeves and putting in the hours, even if it’s a painful process. This is a big realization for me. Now I understand why my supervisor suggested that writing full-time would boost my confidence. Perhaps as a full-time writer, I won’t be held hostage to the extreme ups and downs I experienced before. I’ll have more of a routine and this will be more like a job. I think the confidence will come from feeling that I have some control over this process.

(more…)

31 March, 2008 | 1 Comment

After hailing a taxi on Euston Road in the middle of the night, I said to the taxi driver while standing on the curb: “Excuse me! Can you take someone to hospital, please? It’s urgent!”

Taxi driver to me: “Not if there’s any blood I won’t!”

“There’s not any blood. Will you take him or not?”

“Yeah, get in.”

28 March, 2008 | 2 Comments

I am reading contemporary fiction by men these days. As part of my PhD, I have to write a critical commentary on my own novel. I have to start with what inspired me. So what was the inspiration for my decidedly feminist book? Fight Club. Yes, that’s right. In 1999 I was living in Brooklyn and one evening I went to see the movie adaptation of Fight Club. As I came out of the theater, I felt elated. I’d never seen anything like Fight Club before. I walked home through the streets of Park Slope (I can still remember this so vividly) and I knew that Gen-X women needed their own Fight Club — and I was going to write it.

By this I don’t mean that I wanted to write a book about women beating the crap out of each other. Fight Club very explicitly deals with notions of masculinity and what it means to be a man today. It does this in a bold, political way. The message of the movie and the book is convoluted and a bit of a train wreck, but I admired what it was trying to do. It was attempting to say something about the screwed-up world we live in and a man’s place in it. I wanted to write a book about what it means to be female with the same political in-your-face vigor that’s present in Fight Club. I just did not see any books by Gen-X women that were even attempting to do this. Nearly a decade later, I still don’t see any.

(more…)

16 March, 2008 | Comments

this story from the onion.

10 March, 2008 | 3 Comments

“I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing.”

–from Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

4 February, 2008 | 11 Comments

Tonight I feel like an unlovable hideous freak. I am starting to believe that I am actually unlovable, that I have some sort of defect, that I should return myself to the shop and exchange myself for a newer, better version. The universe keeps sending me this message. I think I’ve gotten it by now. Loud and clear. Thanksverymuch.

I don’t know why I bother.

Tonight I read some poetry. This is one of my favorite poems. It takes my breath away, always.

“Accidents of Birth”

–William Meredith

Spared by a car — or airplane-crash or
cured of malignancy, people look
around with new eyes at a newly
praiseworthy world, blinking eyes like these.
For I’ve been brought back again from the
fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie
down for long naps. And I’ve also been
pardoned miraculously for years
by the lava of chance which runs down
the world’s gullies, silting us back.
Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet
happened away.
But it’s not this random
life only, throwing its sensual
astonishments upside down on
the bloody membranes behind my eyeballs,
not just me being here again, old
needer, looking for someone to need,
but you, up from the clay yourself,
as luck would have it, and inching
over the same little segment of earth-
ball, in the same little eon, to
meet in a room, alive in our skins,
and the whole galaxy gaping there
and the centuries whining like gnats —
you, to teach me to see it, to see
it with you, and to offer somebody
uncomprehending, impudent thanks.

25 January, 2008 | 4 Comments

One of the great things about doing a PhD in creative writing is that you can email your supervisor and tell him/her that you haven’t produced anything since Christmas because you have writer’s block. You can then add that you have lost all your confidence, that you feel your writing sucks and that you’re desperately unhappy about it.

If you’re going to law school or doing a PhD in economics or something like that, you’d never send such a note to anyone in your department. If you did, you’d likely never be able to show your face again. But that’s the great thing about being a creative writer — it’s acceptable to admit you’re filled with angst and having a meltdown over your work. Writers aren’t expected to be normal and well-adjusted. Plus, these people are reading my novel, which is filled with weird sh*t; some of it comes from my life and some of it is completely made up, but it still comes from my brain — it’s like my thoughts and feelings and fears and desires laid bare. Being a writer of literary fiction means being exposed in all sorts of uncomfortable ways.  It can be embarrassing.  Since they’ve seen me exposed already, why pretend that everything is okay when it’s not? It’s not like this is a normal professional/academic relationship. Being open about my state of mind is all part of the continuing humiliation I must endure as a writer.

Though I can admit I have writer’s block and joke about it, it’s really quite painful to go through. What I mean by writer’s block is not that I can’t write at all (obviously I’m writing this) but that I can’t access my creative self in any real way and that’s what I need to write at the level required by a novel. Writing a novel isn’t just about putting words on the page — it’s about putting a whole world on the page. It’s creating a world through words, a world that only exists in the writer’s mind. I was doing well before Christmas and I think the holidays were the problem. I got out of my routine and lost the spark I had. Also, it’s January and I never function well during this, the cruelest month. I know I’ll get through this drought, but that doesn’t make it any easier to live with day by day. This morning I was curled up in a ball on my bed. Not being able to write feels like an ache, like a physical pain. I wish it would go away.

6 December, 2007 | 6 Comments

The Washington Post and the New York Times have both released their lists of the top books of 2007 (as if we wait all year with breathless excitement to see what these bunch of hosers will recommend). Neither newspaper chose a single novel by a woman. That’s right. In the year 2007, you had to have a penis to write a great novel.

The nation’s two most prestigious newspapers apparently had no qualms whatsoever about excluding women from their Top 5 “best of” fiction lists. Anyone who knows anything about the literary establishment knows that it is terribly misogynist. This is not news, which is probably why the female-free lists have not made news that I have seen. We just expect it.

Well, as a woman who is writing a novel, I cannot let this pass without comment. At least once a year I have to do a post on the sorry state of affairs in the literary world and since 2007 is almost over, voila.

(more…)

30 November, 2007 | 5 Comments

my desk (with my favorite pig mug)

I’ve had a long week. Last night I got very little sleep because…[content edited by Anglofille 2/01/08]…
It’s almost the end of term. As a teacher, this means essay marking and exam prep. As a student, it means working towards completing all that I can before the Christmas break. The past couple weeks I hit a rough patch with my novel. Like most writers, I vacillate between thinking I’m a genius and thinking I’m a talentless hack who will never amount to anything. That’s the writing life.

(more…)

19 November, 2007 | 5 Comments

For the novel I’m writing, I need to do some research into terrorism. I want to learn about the psychological make-up of a terrorist, tactics terrorists use and how they recruit people. Thus far, I’ve been reluctant to type “terrorist tactics” or “terrorist recruiting” into an internet search engine. I use a university network for my internet service. I wonder if my account will be flagged if I search the internet for such things? I know they monitor our internet use, though to what extent I don’t know. If I search repeatedly for web pages related to terrorism, I wonder what the university would do with this information? Question me? Give it to the police? Does the Home Office keep files on those of us with visas? I don’t know.

What if I buy books on terrorism from Amazon? What if I get books on terrorism from the library? To Big Brother (be it the university, the library, Google, the government), would it seem as if I am plotting a terrorist act myself? Given that I am not a citizen of this country, I feel I have to be even more careful. I do not have the same rights as everyone else.

(more…)

4 November, 2007 | 3 Comments

*****Thank God*****

1 November, 2007 | 2 Comments

Today was a writing day for me. I had the whole day set aside to work on my novel. And what did I produce after a whole day? Four paragraphs, two of which are good and two of which are on their way to potentially being good. That’s it.

Some days it’s a hard slog.

If you’re a writer or you engage in some other type of creative activity, then you know what it’s like when you’re on a roll, when you’re in the zone, when you produce work that’s brilliant, work that flows forth almost effortlessly as if from some otherworldly place. For me, this is usually accompanied by a feeling of complete euphoria. This feeling can last for a day, for a week, for many weeks. It’s what makes being a writer worth the struggle.

(more…)

27 October, 2007 | 6 Comments

I just got back from Oxford, where I’ve been for the past few days attending The Sylvia Plath 75th Year Symposium. Today would have been Sylvia’s 75th birthday. The conference continues tomorrow and Monday, but three days in Oxford was all I could manage.

It was certainly an interesting experience. For those who don’t know, I’m a major Sylvia fan. I haven’t yet processed the past few days, but the conference has changed the way I think about Sylvia Plath and also the celebrity that surrounds her and other writers. I’ll write more on this soon, once I’ve had a chance to think about it. Today I met Sylvia Plath’s college roommate, who remained friends with her until she died. I also met another woman who was friends with Sylvia in the last months of her life and who was with her just hours before she killed herself. These women are both 75 years old, the age Sylvia would be today, yet Sylvia is frozen in time; she’ll be young forever. Meeting her contemporaries and friends, now women in their mid-seventies, suddenly made Sylvia Plath seem much more real to me. I still haven’t gotten over the feeling.

(more…)

27 September, 2007 | 4 Comments

A day of beauty and literary stimulation for me. Right now I’m eating chocolate. Decadent.

With school starting and all, I figured it was time for a new hair color. My roots were showing, which always makes me feel like a slut. My new hair color is actually my real color, but it’s funny how strange it looks to me. Over the past couple years I’ve flirted with red and then a lighter shade of brown with lots of highlights. The colors just kept piling on and it damaged my hair. Last month I had to get a few inches chopped off. Now I’ve gone back to dark brown, the color the gods intend for me to have (after all, it’s what comes out of my head naturally):

I fear I look like quite the goth chick. I want to go out and buy some kohl to ring my eyes with. I just went down to reception and one of my co-workers saw me and did a double-take. I do look much different, but she thinks I look better. Well, that’s something.

On my way home from the salon, the Circle Line was basically shut down. As always. I have two questions: 1) does the Circle Line ever run properly? 2) why isn’t the Circle Line just demolished?

Moving on to the evening…

(more…)

29 August, 2007 | 2 Comments

I am reading The Hours by Michael Cunningham. I’ve read this novel before, but not for many years. It’s a beautiful book; it couldn’t be more beautiful. This morning on the way to work I read the passage below and for a moment my heart just stopped. I’m serious. Taken out of context, it won’t have the same impact, but I just want to share it anyway. It spoke to me in a very deep way.

Here’s to perfect moments…

(more…)

16 August, 2007 | 8 Comments

I didn’t intend to post again today, but then I received some shocking news.

Yesterday, the poet Liam Rector committed suicide. I knew Liam because he was the director of the creative writing program at Bennington College, where I received my master’s degree. All of us associated with the program are stunned at this news. It’s hard to believe that Liam is dead. He was a larger-than-life figure, a big bear of a man with a beard, a loud booming voice and a penchant for drinking and smoking and living hard.

[And who can forget the "Always be closing!" scene from Glengarry Glen Ross that he made all the new students watch?]

Here are news stories from the NY Post and the NY Daily News and the NYT obituary. This is Liam’s bio and some of his poems.

The first time I ever talked to Liam was when he called me — at my little Brooklyn apartment — to tell me that I had been accepted into the graduate program at Bennington. I thought it was so very strange that he would call me himself, but it was a small program and had a real community feel to it. My life sucked at the time and I needed a change. Enrolling in this program would change me forever.

(more…)

25 July, 2007 | 29 Comments

I’ve been getting a lot of flack lately for my anti-Harry Potter stance. The other day on the phone, someone (who may or may not be a blood relative) called me evil. Gee, y’all sure do get defensive over Harry Potter. Millions of people love these books but if a handful of people like me say anything, we’re attacked!

Well, here I go again. This evening I was in a bookshop and I saw the new HP book and picked it up. I read the first page. WOW did it suck. I mean, the writing is bad. Atrocious. I was pretty surprised. I know it’s genre fiction, but I didn’t think the writing was that poor. A big fat cliché in the first sentence? Eeek. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I have been reading Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse, so my literary brain suffered quite a shock. It was like feasting on lobster one moment, then dining on three-day old garbage from the dumpster the next.

I am a book snob, I admit it. I’ll watch trashy movies and TV shows and listen to Duran Duran, but books are sacred to me. And furthermore, what would you say if someone like me was in favor of Harry Potter? That would be no fun. I like to wind people up, true. And not everyone thirsts to suck on the teat of mass-produced crap culture with the rest of society

I think I need to explain why I don’t like Harry Potter, besides just the fact that the writing is dreadful and I have no interest in hobbits or fairies or wizards or leprechauns or trolls. I have good reasons, you know, and what follows is rather lengthy. You have been warned.

(more…)

20 July, 2007 | 8 Comments

Today during lunch, a teacher came into the staffroom and exclaimed: “Don’t go outside! There are freaks everywhere! They’ve got magic wands and pointy hats.”

She was referring to the Harry Potter fans who had taken up residence outside Waterstone’s bookshop nearby in Piccadilly. They’ve been camped out for a few days and are waiting to be among the first to buy the new book tonight at midnight.

[Click below to see more of the photos I took outside the bookshop -- as if I could resist this freakshow.]

The mere mention of Harry Potter was greeted with groans amongst the teachers I work with.

“F–k Harry Potter!” this hilarious Scottish guy said. “I hope the little sh*t dies.”

“Yeah, but I want him to commit suicide,” another guy said.

“How?”

“He gets in the car, right. He runs a hose from the back and then –”

“Asphyxiation. I see what you mean, but that’s not painful enough.”

“Then what?”

“Guillotine.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s the only way we could be sure he’s dead.”

Gee, I’m gonna miss working with those guys.

[BTW -- It was my last day teaching at the language school. It was also the last day for many of my students, who are heading back to Taiwan tomorrow. They gave me presents and a few of the boys gave me cards with messages inside that said, "I'll miss you forever," and "It's a big world, so we are lucky to meet each other." If it weren't so cute...it'd be a tad creepy.]

(more…)

17 June, 2007 | Comments

I’m really quite stunned that Salman Rushdie received a knighthood. It’s a rather provocative move. Iran has condemned it, not surprisingly.

**Update**

From today’s Guardian: There are protests across Pakistan concerning the Rushdie knighthood. Queen Elizabeth has been burned in effigy. A Pakistani government minister said this knighthood justifies suicide attacks.

Who says novels and writers aren’t relevant and important nowadays?