I have a confession to make:
I have not read a book in a really long time. I think it’s been a year. I started and stopped so many books in 2011. I did not finish a one. There’s no good reason why I haven’t been reading. I’ve been busy. I’ve been stressed.
But that’s never stopped me before.
When I was in college, I used to gobble up “for pleasure” books all the time. Mostly during the holidays. But I was a writing major and I was doing a lot of freaking reading all throughout college.
I think that’s why writing here has been really hard. Reading helps me examine my own writing. It inspires me! It gets me in story mode.
The writing I do on Fake Persona is not supposed to be complete. I don’t feel like I’m writing stories here. I’m purely writing as an exercise. Sometimes there is a beginning, middle and end, but other times, there is purely prose. I’m a short story writer for sure. I’ve failed many times in writing longer pieces, so that’s why you don’t see many here.
That’s the hard stuff. The stuff I keep to work on.
Probably no one knows, other than my husband, that I come up with most of my prose the very day that I push publish. It comes out in spurts. Sometimes a few short things all at once and that is a very good thing. Sometimes I only have an idea for the first sentence and it takes me a very long time to work it into something that I think is worth the “publish now” button.
It can be hard to let go.
Sometimes it only takes five or ten minutes, but other times it sits as a draft for days, weeks or months. Never finished. Incomplete. Unpublished.
But each like, reblog and/or comment, inspires me to keep it up!
I’m like everyone else. I think I suck. I get so down on myself that I feel guilty for not writing, but nothing is there. A total blank page in my mind. Every single thing I type out is no good. I just keep hitting backspace. Over thinking. Under thinking. Sometimes it’s easy, but most days it’s very hard. No excuses. It’s just the way writing goes.
So if there’s silence and you want me to write something. Tell me so! Inspire me to keep digging for new ideas or to rethink old ones. Go ahead and nudge the ask box. Give me a prompt! I don’t bite, but my words might.
She never knew when to stop. The days bled one into another and soon her ambition weakened. Words flew about her head and her mind went soft with worry. She couldn’t catch them any longer. Her writing suffered and her fingers shriveled with stress.
If it wasn’t for the sun, she would have never regained consciousness. The moon lit up her pale face, but the sun stepped in, tanned her cheeks with freckles and whispered sweet nothings in her ear.
The silence lifted, she could hear again, the stories came flying back like butterflies. She caught them and gently rubbed the words from their wings. Her mind was full, her fingers strengthened and she went back to work, a smile on her face.
Anonymous asked: Blog Recommendations?
If you’re looking for writing-centric blogs, this is a good list, written by someone I follow that I would also recommend.
http://notwritenow.tumblr.com/post/3091962868/you-have-any-favorite-writing-centric-blogs
Putting Pen to Paper — My fiancé writes a mean movie review and reblogs some cool things.
Eat Sleep Draw — “…100% original content, submitted by contributors across the globe”
Food Digest — One man eats and we get to follow along
Bookshelves and Late Fees — I love seeing large collections of books stored on a stylish shelf. What about you?
TrainWrite — Excellent, excellent, excellent! Go check it out NOW!
All tumblrs, so you can follow along!
I’ll post more recommendations next Tuesday!
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag.She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
