The Journey Begins: The Short Story and Wine

Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Short Story and Wine

I may have fallen in love with the short story. I never realized the short story was such a wonderful lover. Short, sweet, undemanding, no committment, the short story is like a one night stand. Some are good, and some are really good. Since I am not one that wants to waste my time with the bad, I have been reading The Best American Short Stories of 2010 edited by Russo. This is one high yield book.

I also discovered last night, after two glasses of wine, that a little disinhibition can go a long way. I felt free in my mind, once the wine kicked in. I managed a few pages of free writing that definitely took risk. The risk is where the good stuff of writing lives! I guess the little gnome muse of mine that lives in the bottom of a cave which is accessible only by down climbing a frozen waterfall really likes a little wine. He prefers red.

Project time
Audiobook 1 hour
Freewriting 30 minutes
Short story 30 minutes

Total added: 2hours

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Favorite Books and Authors

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer
Donkey Greedy, Donkey Get Punched - Steve Almond
David Wiley - poet
The Grey Man - Mark Greaney
Alice Walker
Anne of Green Gables
Maya Angelou
Little House on the Prarie - Wilder
Ender's Game
Twilight
Eragon
Alice in Wonderland
Lord of the Rings
All Creatures Great and Small - James Herriot
The Aeneid
The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Larson
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - Larson
Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
The Gunslinger Series - Stephen King
The Dragonriders of Pern - McCaffrey
Little Bee -Chris Cleave
Filament - K.L Cook
Gone With the Wind -Mitchell
The Best American Short Stories, 2010, Russo
Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
Alphabet Mystery Series - Sue Grafton

Damn Good Details

"She was not big, exactly, but pillowy, like if you pressed your hand into her it would keeping sinking and sinking because there was nothing solid to her."
-Danielle Evans, Someone Ought to Tell Her There's Nowhere to Go, A Public Space

"His eyes were a dark brown, like creek water that ran through rich soil."
-Marlin Barton, Into Silence, The Sewanee Review

"Then she smelled the sharp, masculine scent of gasoline or motor oil and knew it must have come from his hands."
-Marlin Barton, Into Silence, The Sewanee Review

"He focused his eyes on her the way he might when he looked through a camer, capturing her, exposing her weakness for her to see."
-Marlin Barton, Into Silence, The Sewanee Review

"A bad-tempered man with a scar above his cheekbone, my grandfather believed that the rich were rewarded with their merits and the poor deserved what they got."
-Charles Baxter, The Cousins, Tin House

"As a teenager, Brantford had told me that he aspired to be a concert pianist, and I was the one who had to remind him that he wasn't a musician and didn't play the piano."
-Charles Baxter, The Cousins, Tin House

"The first time we slept together we had to move the teddy bears and the copies of The New Yorker off her bed."
-Charles Baxter, The Cousins, Tin House

"In her bathtub was a rubber duck, and in the living room a copy of Anna Karenina, which she had read three times."
-Charles Baxter, The Cousins, Tin House

"I handed over the plastic cup to him. He took a swig. Then, his eyes deep in mad concentration, he yanked down his trousers zipper and urinated into the beer. He handed the cup back to me."
-Charles Baxter, The Cousins, Tin House

"She had started to bend over from the osteoporosis that would cripple her, or maybe it was the calcium-reducing effects of her antidepressant and the diet of Kung Pao chicken, vodka, and cigarettes she lived on." -Charles Baxter, The Cousins, Tin House

"A single woman in her forties who wears high-collared shirts to conceal the thready sinews of her neck will structurally despise the twenty-three year old girlfriend of a powerful male who not only employs said middle-aged female but is paying her way on this trip."
-Jennifer Egan, Safari, The New Yorker

"Mindy feels a jolt of attraction roughly akin to having someone seize her intestines and twist."
-Jenniger Egan, Safari, The New Yorker

"Four years from now, at eighteen, she'll join a cult across the Mexican border whose charismatic leader promotes a diet of raw eggs; she'll nearly die from salmonells poisoning before Lou rescues her."
-Jennifer Egan, Safari, The New Yorker

"The house was as he'd remembered it, old, the bright robin's egg blue of the paint cheerful in a painfully false way, like a woman wearing red lipstick and layers of foundation caked over wrinkles."
-Danielle Evans, Someone Ought to Tell Her There's Nowhere to Go, A Public Space

The Journey Begins

THE PROJECT

Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Short Story and Wine

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