Writer's relationship with words

"All my life I've looked at words as if I were seeing them for the first time."
— Ernest Hemingway

Decadence of losing myself in a novel

There may come a point in my life when reading for pleasure won't induce feelings of guilt. But not yet. Yesterday was the perfect day to get lost in a good book—and that's exactly what I did despite occasional calls of, "Mom," from my family just checking to make sure I was still in the house.

I've been reading Sashenka, by Simon Montefiore. If you're a fan of Russian history, you may know Montefiore's name from his former bestseller, "Young Stalin."

Usually, it's around 100 pages when I'm either committed to a novel or just struggling through. Almost to the page of this 500-plus page novel, I reached that point over the weekend and was compelled to keep plunging forward. Yesterday afternoon, I curled up on the sofa in between loads of laundry and by the light of the Christmas tree and read well into half of the book.

I'll save my thoughts on this novel until I'm finished, but suffice it to say there are whole passages that simply sing. It's a sweeping work with a complex and authentic main character who drives the narrative along with a cast of supporting characters who span the spectrum of 20th century Russian history.

I'll be sorry to finish and leave these characters behind.

Foreign correspondence, Medve-whatever, female blogger contest and more

In college, my plans were to become a foreign correspondent. And then I met my husband and, well, my perspective changed a bit. But I still fantasize about living abroad and writing for publications. So I was saddened, though hardly shocked, to read this piece about the declining future for foreign correspondents by a Dutch journalist.

Today's Dutch foreign correspondents report enjoying their work -- although they have to work harder and provide material for a multitude of media. Also, since most of them are freelancers, heavy competition for exposure in the major media has undermined their negotiating position.

He writes about how low wages, competition and the need to produce multimedia has impacted the profession. I don't think producing multimedia is bad, but the low wages are clearly a problem.

How to survive? I decided to quit the foreign correspondent business and have started a speakers' bureau. In financial terms, that's a bit of a different league. Today, many foreign correspondents survive because their partner has a decent job.

I'm not sure that is a sustainable strategy for quality foreign coverage.

Hardly indeed.

How will history view Vladimir Putin?
Victor Erofeyev believes history will look kindly on Putin In his New York Times column, he wrote that in addition to throwing out proponents of democracy in Russia, Putin also did away with the oligarchs, which the Russians really hated. He is credited with bringing about more prosperity and more peace to Chechnya. Where he failed, according to Russian author Erofeyev, was in his "longing to make Russia the successor to the Soviet Union."

This gave rise to the imperial discourse that so frightened neighboring countries, his defense of the Soviet Union’s aggressive foreign policy and the damage to Russia’s image in the world. What’s worse is that our next president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, whom President Putin chose as his heir as if he were a czar, will have to deal with the Russian weaknesses that were hidden from the population under propaganda slogans. The failure to modernize industry or agriculture, the growing corruption in government, the ubiquitous drunkenness, the record numbers of murders and suicides, the terrible state of Russian health care and the problems that come with a shrinking population will fall on Mr. Medvedev’s young shoulders.

We'll be watching Medve-whatever to see what he does.

Favorite female blogger?
I'm not schlepping for votes, but I think this is a worthwhile venture from the folks at Women's Voices Women Vote in honor of Women's History Month, which is March. You can vote for your favorite female blogger here .

H/T to Jill for sending this along.

Tip of the iceberg
As any good writer knows, much of what gets researched and reported doesn't get included in the final draft. That is by design and a hallmark of good writing. To wit:

"If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water." — Ernest Hemingway

Word of the day
resonance: a quality of richness or variety d: a quality of evoking response

What do you remember?

"Every man's memory is his private literature." — Aldous Huxley

The simple, higher task of co-existence

"We require higher tasks, because we do not recognise the height of those we have. Trying to be kind and honest seems an affair too simple and too inconsequential for gentlemen of our heroic mould; we had rather set ourselves to something bold, arduous, and conclusive; we had rather found a schism or suppress a heresy, cut off a hand or mortify an appetite. But the task before us, which is to co-endure with our existence, is rather one of microscopic fineness, and the heroism required is that of patience. There is no cutting of the Gordian knots of life; each must be smilingly unravelled." — Robert Louis Stevenson, "A Christmas Sermon"

Save the date: PWLGC is on the move

I hope you'll join me and other Northeast Ohio writers for the inaugural holiday bash of The Poets' & Writers' League. "A Work in Progress" is a gala event to be held from 7 to 10 p.m. on Saturday, December 8, 2007, in PWLGC's new home in the Artcraft Building, located at 2570 Superior Avenue (Suite 203). Here's the skinny on the move from Judith Mansour-Thomas, the new executive director.

The League Is Moving!

On December 1, 2007, the Poets' & Writers' League of Greater Cleveland will move from the Fairhill Road townhouse, also known as the Lit Center, to the ArtCraft Building at 2570 Superior Avenue, (Suite 203) near downtown. After seven wonderful years at the Lit, we have made the decision, along with many other small to mid-size arts organizations, to commit to the revitalization of the Midtown Arts District of Cleveland.

In our lovely, new 1,600-square-foot, renovated-warehouse-but-gallery-like space (you can tell I like descriptive writing, no?), we will offer a cadre of fabulous new classes and workshops and host readings by the area's finest writers and poets. We will also host special events—some will be exclusive for PWLGC members and/or Ohio Writer subscribers, some will be open to the general public (well ... word lovers, anyway), some will cater to readers, and all will, I hope, invigorate Northeast Ohio's thriving and diverse literary arts community.

With a new home, centrally located for east-siders, west-siders, and those who do not live in our river-divided city, we hope that you will visit, and visit often. Your continued support of the PWLGC is now more important than ever, if we are to place local literary talent on the national landscape.

Join me, along with the PWLGC Board of Directors, in celebrating this exciting new phase of our growth. On the evening of December 8, we will host "A Work in Progress," the grand opening of our new home, so please save the date. Plan to join us for drinks, food, and merry making. See you soon!

Sincerely,

Judith Mansour-Thomas
Executive Director

Thoughts from across the pond

With many deadlines in the next three weeks, it's likely that my presence here will be minimal. In between editing and writing today, I thought I'd share these two quotes found today on my Google homepage:

This one seems more important today than at any time in history. 'Tis duly noted Sir Arthur.

"I never guess. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts." — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

And in the wonderfully dark and sometimes-violent way in which the Irish can speak, I give you Samuel Beckett:

"Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and to go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss." — Samuel Beckett

Massive new Edith Wharton biography released

Can't remember how long ago I read that Hermione Lee, perhaps best known for her brilliant biography of Virginia Woolf, was at work on an exhaustive look at Edith Wharton.

At 880 pages, Edith Wharton was favorably reviewed in yesterday's New York Times Sunday Book Review. Probably wouldn't matter to me if it were panned. I'm a HUGE fan of R.W.B Lewis' 1975 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of her, but will soak up anything about my favorite author of all time.

I can't concentrate on work until I first dash off to Barnes & Noble.

UPDATE: I purchased the book yesterday. At three pounds, it is definitely NOT a traveling book.

The vividness of memory

"There are people who stick in one's memory much more clearly after a brief acquaintance than others whom one sees day after day over a long period. Aunt Eva was certainly one of those vivid people, someone my memory and imagination have conspired to preserve in living color for twenty years. I have sometimes used Aunt Eva to fill the shoes of characters in books, or figures in history; for example, she stepped in automatically when I encountered Madame Merle, the personable schemer in Henry James' Portrait of a Lady."

— Character of Paul in The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

There are those people we meet and perhaps get to know whose impact on our world is so profound that their visage will play on in continuous mental loop rewarding us with their Technicolor likeness even when cataracts prohibit us from clearly seeing our own image in a mirror.

Add this to my book list

About 10 years ago, I picked up "A Marriage of True Minds: An Intimate Portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf" at a library book sale. It was a fascinated glimpse into one of the literary world's most collaborative and tragic partnerships. The tenderness of Leonard Woolf toward his fragile wife was wrenching. And the sacrfices he made emotionally and physically to that relationship were astounding. Around the same time, I had also picked up Leon Edel's "Bloomsbury: A House of Lions," and so dove headfirst into reading about that era and the prolific work produced by its members.

This review in Sunday's New York Times Book Review jostled that interest about the quiet, sensible member of the Bloomsbury bunch. From the review about Victoria Glendinning's "Leonard Woolf: A Biography":

His life was, in some ways, willfully ordinary: even on the day of Virginia’s disappearance, he “entered in his diary the cumulative mileage of his car, plus the mileage for that day,” and on the afternoon of her cremation, he went to have his hair cut. And yet, as Glendinning notes, the page of his diary on March 28, 1941, “is obscured by a brownish-yellow stain which has been rubbed or wiped. It could be tea or coffee or tears. The smudge is unique in all his years of neat diary-keeping.” In recording these small traces, Victoria Glendinning has given us the measure — noble, engaged and quietly passionate — of the man.