We have snacks (low cal), beer (not low cal, and in Georgia you have to remember to buy it before Sunday), I have laptop mindless work to do, and we have a big screen in our TV room ready for...
Puppy Bowl. With Kitten half-time show. (Okay, I'll switch over to Springsteen, too.)
About Me
- jessica handler
- Atlanta, Georgia, United States
- My first book, "Invisible Sisters: A Memoir" has been named one of "Twenty Five Books All Georgians Should Read!" I would love to visit your bookclub, either in person (in the South) or through the magic of electronics. My writing has received a "Special Mention" for a 2008 Pushcart Prize. I have been honored with a residency at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Bethany, CT., a Fellowship at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts in Rabun Gap, Georgia, and the 2009 Peter Taylor Nonfiction Fellowship at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Locally, I teach workshops in creative writing, memoir, and feature journalism, and am a member of the faculty of an art college, where I teach screenwriting. I hold an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte (N.C.) and a B.S. in Communication from Emerson College, in Boston. I used to work in television. I did not push the broom behind the elephant. Usually, I served as mahout - I drove the (allegorical) elephant. If he was SAG or AFTRA. Rock stars do not scare me.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
How to Describe, or writing is a physical act.
How to describe the sound of a ripping sheet of paper? I didn't know. I couldn't get there. So, I sat in my studio and tore up sheets of paper.
Now I know better how to describe it (let's not get so specific that we quibble about pound weights and tensile strength.) So I wrote, and disappeared into the writing. And then I stopped, and looked around, and noticed that I have torn fragments of legal pad strewn on the floor.
Writing is a physical act.
Now I know better how to describe it (let's not get so specific that we quibble about pound weights and tensile strength.) So I wrote, and disappeared into the writing. And then I stopped, and looked around, and noticed that I have torn fragments of legal pad strewn on the floor.
Writing is a physical act.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Silly
I've got to tell you, wearing a Betsey Johnson wrap trimmed with feathers can make a person feel pretty fun. Sunday silliness after Saturday night, during which such sweater was worn.
I never used to dress this way. Currently, I like this better.
I never used to dress this way. Currently, I like this better.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Into the World
Book jacket? Gorgeous. Amazing. Phenomenal.
Blurbers? I am acting like a grown-up and not jumping up and down, but I am, inside, dizzy from jumping.
Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews - Wow. Again, you've got to love the wonderful publicist who gets ARCs to the people who don't know yet that they want them, but they do.
This from Kirkus today, courtesy of Invisible Sisters' terrific editor, MVV, who forwards emails with fun stuff in them that I want to know about.
"With a sure grasp of revelatory detail, the author recalls homely verities from a vanished life. Her memory piece is an elegy for her dead sisters, who are not quite lost as long as they live in her thoughts."
Publisher's Weekly called Invisible Sisters "affecting," and I think they used the phrase "clear-eyed," too.
Which I wasn't when I was through reading these.
Now, as the Zen saying goes, "after ecstasy, the laundry." I'm on deadline and brain dead and my laptop's batteries are getting low.
Blurbers? I am acting like a grown-up and not jumping up and down, but I am, inside, dizzy from jumping.
Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews - Wow. Again, you've got to love the wonderful publicist who gets ARCs to the people who don't know yet that they want them, but they do.
This from Kirkus today, courtesy of Invisible Sisters' terrific editor, MVV, who forwards emails with fun stuff in them that I want to know about.
"With a sure grasp of revelatory detail, the author recalls homely verities from a vanished life. Her memory piece is an elegy for her dead sisters, who are not quite lost as long as they live in her thoughts."
Publisher's Weekly called Invisible Sisters "affecting," and I think they used the phrase "clear-eyed," too.
Which I wasn't when I was through reading these.
Now, as the Zen saying goes, "after ecstasy, the laundry." I'm on deadline and brain dead and my laptop's batteries are getting low.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The "three thousand word sprinter"
I had a professor in grad school who broke the news to me, as gently as she could, that I had trained myself to become, in her words, "a three-thousand word sprinter." In other words, to write articles, with snappy, summary getaway quotes, supporting descriptors, and a hot lede, and get it done quickly, neatly, and well. (That, to me, equals byline and paycheck.)
I had to train myself to nurture my book-writing, to let it grow differently than the good old three-thousand word sprint.
I'm pleased today to find that I haven't entirely lost that sprint; I was afraid that in learning to develop the longer-form,more literary process, I would have to let the sprinter muscles atrophy.
Nope. Two hours at a coffee shop after yoga, and the draft of a "for hire" piece is done. Scaffolding built, supporting quotes hanging from said scaffolding, appropriate tone brought out of hiding and standing by for duty. More work to be done, clearly, but the building's standing.
Time to go and do something entirely else for a while.
I had to train myself to nurture my book-writing, to let it grow differently than the good old three-thousand word sprint.
I'm pleased today to find that I haven't entirely lost that sprint; I was afraid that in learning to develop the longer-form,more literary process, I would have to let the sprinter muscles atrophy.
Nope. Two hours at a coffee shop after yoga, and the draft of a "for hire" piece is done. Scaffolding built, supporting quotes hanging from said scaffolding, appropriate tone brought out of hiding and standing by for duty. More work to be done, clearly, but the building's standing.
Time to go and do something entirely else for a while.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Sounds of writing
I am today writing to the sounds of Pablo Casals playing Bach suites. I would say "on the cello," but that's over-explanatory, a sin of mine, apparently.
When I come back in the next life I will be a cello. Unless I come back as a pedal steel.
(image from cello.org)
But, she had very old hands
Andrew Wyeth died. Here's the obit in the New York Times.
I disagree with one thing in this piece; you could, kind of, tell how old Christina was. Or at least that she was mysteriously, longingly, old. She had old hands. That's the part of that painting that captivated me the most. That and the few gray strands in her hair.
I disagree with one thing in this piece; you could, kind of, tell how old Christina was. Or at least that she was mysteriously, longingly, old. She had old hands. That's the part of that painting that captivated me the most. That and the few gray strands in her hair.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Recommended reading
Since M. and I spent the past few days on a mini-vacation in warm and sunny Tampa/St. Pete delighting in a dear friend's wedding, then we flew home so he could go back to work and I could update syllabi, make recommended reading lists, and appear almost daily in the classroom and oh, yes, be interviewed by a very nice writer for a fancy magazine about Invisible Sisters, coming in April and available for preorder on Amazon, I figure I'd buy a little time here with some recommended outside reading.
Have some Nextbook, one of my favorite Webzines.
Have some Nextbook, one of my favorite Webzines.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Los Disaffected Teens, the late '70s, and Donna Summer
Over the weekend, I heard the Donna Summer song "On the Radio." (I heard it on the radio, too, or on one of those satellite deals. I was getting my hair cut, and they're on an 80's kick at the salon.)
Anyway, that song chokes me up. Always has. It was a theme in the 1980 movie "Foxes," which, while admittedly trash, is a sentimental fave with me, and according to Wikipedia, is now a cult favorite.
Good. I feel vindicated. Disaffected teens in the late 70s, sex, love, music, a party that destroys a house, confused parents, Jodie Foster and Scott Baio (not as parents!)... I love this movie.
My book is a little bit about disaffected 1970s teens. But it doesn't have Donna Summer music.
Anyway, that song chokes me up. Always has. It was a theme in the 1980 movie "Foxes," which, while admittedly trash, is a sentimental fave with me, and according to Wikipedia, is now a cult favorite.
Good. I feel vindicated. Disaffected teens in the late 70s, sex, love, music, a party that destroys a house, confused parents, Jodie Foster and Scott Baio (not as parents!)... I love this movie.
My book is a little bit about disaffected 1970s teens. But it doesn't have Donna Summer music.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Publicists
Publicists are amazing. Stealth weapons, with media lists and good ideas and a mailroom from which they can send books (I bestow upon them the "Golden Jiffy Bag" award) and can catch blathery answers in pre-interviews and lob them back with a counter-question that makes you think about what you're trying to say.
Publicists rock.
Publicists rock.
Research books
I read somewhere that Annie Proulx buys arcane old research books in used book stores, and, as I recall it, at yard sales.
A wonderful idea, something I should do more of. Right now I want books on electricity, the Civil War (material culture, like how to clean weapons) and Reconstruction-era America home life.
Of course I can use the InterWebs, but books are so much more fun. And tactile.
I have some on photography, with strange old photos and diagrams I in no way comprehend, and I have a book on "Restorative Art," which is not what to do with a Vermeer, but what to do with a body in a funeral home.
More to come. My hunter-gatherer mode this year, because I sure have enough shoes!
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