What is Friday Fare? As a recap, on Fridays I post link love to the various bits of arcane shiz I discover on the Interwebs. I liken it to a glimpse into my mind, but without the 80s song lyrics or mental cobwebs.
“… this, I only now realize, was the lesson she was trying to teach. If you open yourself to the world, there will be stories to tell.” Read this piece from The New Yorker.
The writing world lost an icon last month with the passing of Ursula K. LeGuin. A couple days later, Dallas Mayr – known better to readers as Jack Ketchum – also passed. Cemetery Dance posted a posthumous interview with Mr. Mayr. This passage particularly resonated with me: “Too many kids coming up are reading in their genre only, and they’re reading only the stuff that they think they want to write. Ain’t supposed to do that. You’re supposed to read everything. Read the damn newspaper. Take your ideas from everywhere. Read Maureen Dowd’s column in the Times. She’s a funny writer, and she’s smart. Don’t just read Anne Rice and write the next vampire novel.”
So proud of my friend and former writing group member Bret. His short story “Straw Men” was published by Sweet Tree Review. It’s pretty cool to see the final version of a piece that he workshopped with our writing group.
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Listening: My first concert for 2018 is booked. Lord Huron are touring in support of a new album. My concert BFF and I are going to the Palace Theatre in April to absorb. This is a favorite LH song:
Reading: I finished Cate Holahan’s “Lies She Told.” And it was goooood.
Writing Life: Man … this was a week. It wasn’t a bad week, per se – I was able to cross some stuff off of my to-do lists, but there was a lot of personal time spent catching up on my day job (let me just say a quick word of praise for the concepts of “urgent care” and “antibiotics” [with love and appreciation from a mom with kids prone to ear infections]). We also saw the calendar page turn from January to February. Although I felt like I kicked some arse on making progress on Dragonfly, my word tallies felt somewhat short of the goal. (I wrote around 10,500 words in January, my monthly goal is around 17k.) BUT … I’m further today than I was a month ago, so … measurable progress friends!
My wishes to you all for warm weather and fat word counts! Have a great weekend.
michellekubitz 