Wednesday, February 11, 2009

News junkie detox, self-assured women and slow blogging

I've been feeling a bit hibernation-al since the election. Political burnout? I don't want to put my head in the sand, but when I listen to the news (mostly NPR), I find my blood pressure rising. Any mention of the words "economy," "stimulus," "partisan bickering" or "Congress" and I feel a need to hug a tree or enter news junkie detox.

Most of my energy these past few weeks has been put into teaching and writing. Lots of preparation for class and grading. Lots of hours working on final revisions of Complementary Colors, my novel that's coming out later this year.

I'm also writing on my new novel--by hand, in wide-ruled notebooks from Target. They don't have to be from Target, but they just happen to be. It makes writing feel as good as it did in middle school when I wrote long notes to friends in such notebooks. There's something that allows me to be more at ease with writing a shitty first draft when it's written in a notebook. It feels like there's more space for my unconscious and associational mind. It's hard to know if the writing's really any good, but I'm trying not to worry about that right now. Instead, I'm just moving along, gathering pages.

The reading at Books Inc. in the Castro with Patricia Harrelson was fun and intimate. (Intimate is code for not very many people in the audience.) It really was fun, though, and afterward the small audience, Patricia and I had a great conversation about being and writing, so to speak. One woman who attended I'd cyber-met on Goodreads. She, Annie and I really connected. How cool, we have a new writerly friend.

My next event is this Sunday, a poetry reading at Ravenswood in Livermore at 2 p.m.

A few new reviews of For the May Queen have been popping up, such as on Joy's Poetry Blog and The Feminist Review. I take a little issue with the notion that by the end of the book Norma has not "ditched her bad habits" nor "transformed into a strong self-assured woman." Sure, it's complicated--but from my view, at least, I see that she is living life more on her own terms.

Am I slow blogging these days? Kinda feels like it. Then again, this comment itself with the link might mean I'm not.

4 comments:

Collin Kelley said...

Good reviews regardless. Hope I can garner as many good ones.

Lisa Nanette Allender said...

Hi Kate, I love your blog. You aren't "slow" blogging, but of course, more updates are always welcome.
I totally relate to the writing-in-a-notebook. I always think the words come straight through your bloodstream, into your fingers, and through the pen. Sort of. Never "feels" the same on computer.
Have you read Robert Olen Butler's "From Where You Dream"? I cannot recall if I mentioned it, when you & I met.
It's very effective in its' "methodolgy"(what "Method Acting" is to actors, it is for writers).
The whole accessing the un/sub-conscious is explored.
Peace, woman.
How 'bout that "Batwoman" from DC Comics?

Lisa Nanette Allender said...

Oh, uh, I see "slow blogging" does not mean exactly what I connoted it to mean. Apparently, the "immediacy" is not important, but the thinking process is respected, which often means forgoing the "immediacy".
Hmmmmmmmm.
I'd say you are both immediate(re: your eloquent outrage at Prop 8, other LGBT issues, your strong activism, etc.)AND a thinking person who is MEASURED. So, perhaps a new term should be invented for those who post frequently, and on "current" subjects, but also post on what they are most concerned with(whether it's an issue or not in the MSM), and post in 'their own time, and way."
Peace, kid.

WS Poetry said...

News junkie detox! I want to go there too.