New writing project, new headphones to transcribe the audio transpirings. These were the conservatively colored ones.
When I was twenty-four, I flew paper airplanes past the apartment of a thirty-two-year-old white boy named Kurt in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Kurt rocked a greasy brown mullet, bragged about ironing his bleached Lee’s, and said the word “yous” a lot.
Television’s Puzzling Fixation on Women Who Are Writers
What does it say about these types of shows that the leading lady needs to be a creative type? Is there something that bans Hannah from being a lawyer or marketing executive, other than her slacker creed? Or is it only a woman of the written word who is up for anything in bed, open to invitations and strange men? And is there something more narcissistic involved—the hope/expectation/motivation that those adventures would wind up immortalized in print?
Read more. [Images: HBO, Netflix]
So I thought I had reblogged this earlier—even wrote some commentary about why I didn’t think it was a well written/argued piece. Apparently, tumblr ate that…
Still want to have this at my fingertips for use in classes, so…trying again.
"Of all the art forms, poetry is the most economical. It is the one which is the most secret, which requires the least physical labor, the least material, and the one which can be done between shifts, in the hospital pantry, on the subway, and on scraps of surplus paper….As we reclaim our literature, poetry has been the major voice of poor, working class, and Colored women. A room of one’s own may be a necessity for writing prose, but so are reams of paper, a typewriter, and plenty of time. The actual requirements to produce the visual arts also help determine, along class lines, whose art is whose. In this day of inflated prices for material, who are our sculptors, our painters, our photographers? When we speak of a broadly based women’s culture, we need to be aware of the effect of class and economic differences on the supplies available for producing art."
— Audre Lorde, Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference (via ethiopienne)
(Source: linguisticmasturbation, via bad-dominicana)
Publicly Private?
The recent conversation about words and ownership (see bad-dominicana) I’ve seen circulating my dash (and in which I’ve participated in a small way) has me thinking about this blogging enterprise and, in particular, about what blogging on a site like tumblr exposes about our attitudes and expectations with regard to our writing and our communications. One thought leads to another and then to a third and so on, so I think this will be the first of a series of thoughts on the topic, thoughts that will be part of an article on the topic eventually.
"Like all culture, literature is a matter of directing the will inward, to create an inner life; this was a necessity for most of human history, when the conditions of outer life could not be changed."
—
Adam Kirsch on writing and the role of inner life in literature – the kind of inner life philosopher Martha Nussbaum wisely advises us not to despise.
More collected wisdom on writing here.
(via explore-blog)
(Source: , via explore-blog)
"
Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.
And yet people who use two spaces are everywhere, their ugly error crossing every social boundary of class, education, and taste.
…”Who says two spaces is wrong?”…
Typographers, that’s who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. That convention was not arrived at casually. James Felici, author of the The Complete Manual of Typography, points out that the early history of type is one of inconsistent spacing. Hundreds of years ago some typesetters would end sentences with a double space, others would use a single space, and a few renegades would use three or four spaces. Inconsistency reigned in all facets of written communication; there were few conventions regarding spelling, punctuation, character design, and ways to add emphasis to type. But as typesetting became more widespread, its practitioners began to adopt best practices. Felici writes that typesetters in Europe began to settle on a single space around the early 20th century. America followed soon after.
Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It’s one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men’s shirt buttons on the right and women’s on the left.
"— Slate’s Farhad Manjoo on why you should never, ever put two spaces after a period. (via explore-blog)
(Source: , via explore-blog)
![theatlantic:
Writers’ Favorite Punctuation Marks
R.L. Stine, renowned kid terrifier and author of the upcoming adult horror novel Red Rain: ”When a moment of true horror arises in a novel, there’s no better punctuation than a —.”
Deadspin, Gawker, and GQ’s Drew Magary, author of the recent novel The Postmortal: ”I’m a big fan of the period, because it means that I can take a little breather. Michael Chabon wrote a novel recently that had a 12-page sentence. Why would you do that to a reader? What kind of asshole doesn’t give the reader a break once in a while? Get me to the period so that I can take a moment to digest and go eat a Pop Tart or something. Withholding that period from me is a real dick move. I also like parentheses because I can do whatever the hell I want inside of them. Commas are the worst because eight billion people have eight billion different ideas about where they’re supposed to go.”
The Hairpin’s Edith Zimmerman says, ”My favorite is this one: t(*-*t),” learned from another emoticon-lover, Grantland’s David Cho. “It’s a little dude making two middle fingers,” she explained.
Read more. [Image: Flickr/Horia Varlan]
Happy National Punctuation Day, everybody. What’s your favorite punctuation mark?](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mav89shDJ21qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
Writers’ Favorite Punctuation Marks
R.L. Stine, renowned kid terrifier and author of the upcoming adult horror novel Red Rain: ”When a moment of true horror arises in a novel, there’s no better punctuation than a —.”
Deadspin, Gawker, and GQ’s Drew Magary, author of the recent novel The Postmortal: ”I’m a big fan of the period, because it means that I can take a little breather. Michael Chabon wrote a novel recently that had a 12-page sentence. Why would you do that to a reader? What kind of asshole doesn’t give the reader a break once in a while? Get me to the period so that I can take a moment to digest and go eat a Pop Tart or something. Withholding that period from me is a real dick move. I also like parentheses because I can do whatever the hell I want inside of them. Commas are the worst because eight billion people have eight billion different ideas about where they’re supposed to go.”
The Hairpin’s Edith Zimmerman says, ”My favorite is this one: t(*-*t),” learned from another emoticon-lover, Grantland’s David Cho. “It’s a little dude making two middle fingers,” she explained.
Read more. [Image: Flickr/Horia Varlan]
Happy National Punctuation Day, everybody. What’s your favorite punctuation mark?
![theatlantic:
The Writing Revolution
For years, nothing seemed capable of turning around New Dorp High School’s dismal performance—not firing bad teachers, not flashy education technology, not after-school programs. So, faced with closure, the school’s principal went all-in on a very specific curriculum reform, placing an overwhelming focus on teaching the basics of analytic writing, every day, in virtually every class. What followed was an extraordinary blossoming of student potential, across nearly every subject—one that has made New Dorp a model for educational reform.
Read more. [Image: Kyoto Hamada]
Let the church say “Amen.”](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mappmv90rd1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
For years, nothing seemed capable of turning around New Dorp High School’s dismal performance—not firing bad teachers, not flashy education technology, not after-school programs. So, faced with closure, the school’s principal went all-in on a very specific curriculum reform, placing an overwhelming focus on teaching the basics of analytic writing, every day, in virtually every class. What followed was an extraordinary blossoming of student potential, across nearly every subject—one that has made New Dorp a model for educational reform.
Read more. [Image: Kyoto Hamada]
Let the church say “Amen.”
