Glen Hirshberg's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-life"
Working
Surreal, the writing life. So solitary, except when it isn't. I've had a couple stories I'm really proud of come out in the last couple weeks. Maybe someone is reading them, or will. I got up and got to hammering away, as always, on a book I will finish this month that people will get to read, if they want to, a year from now, when I'm immersed in something else. I have teaching to do, movies to see, students to help, that Hookworms disc I've been grooving to all week to groove to some more. And tonight, at the University of Ottawa, professor/poet/polymath Sean Moreland will be teaching Motherless Child to his horror lit students I will never meet, can barely even imagine. In my office in the not-yet-90-degree heat, getting ready to grade, I'm imagining them in snow.
Jury Duty
And then life said, "Okay, Mr. Self-Proclaimed Write Anywhere, Anytime, No Matter What Guy. Let's see you do it in a Jury Room. For the whole summer..."
Jury Duty Still
And THEN life said, “Wait…that guy’s still managed to write EVERY SINGLE DAY since his summerlong jury duty exile began? Okay, okay, give me a minute… AH. I know. Let’s send him … Friendly Filipino Fellow Juror, who speaks very little English, is a lovely and gentle person, and wants nothing more in this world than to spend every lunch break, indeed every available moment outside the courtroom telling Glen about his more than 500 (he’s counted) personal and terrifying encounters with the supernatural.” (Actual sample from yesterday, with the English cleaned up, but with this guy’s sweet, impossible-to-squelch smile missing: “Once, I worked in a building that had been an abandoned hospital. And once, I turned around, and a shadow…MOVED…”)
Jury Duty and a WHOLE BUCKET OF STARS
And yet. And STILL.
This week, while the fluorescents spat in the criminal court hallways, and talkative Filipino fellow jurors twitched at their own shadows and told me about that, and despair over lost time swelled and ebbed and swelled in the Hirshberg heart, I took up the notes and scribbles and doubts and notions I'd been squirreling away all year while finishing the story collection. And under cover of darkness--dawnness, actually, since that's mostly when I have--I hoisted my sail, caught a surprising, word-heavy wind, and slipped from port. And now, here I am, all the way out into the last book of the Motherless Children series.
ETA? God, I don't know, depends a little on just how much flourescent purgatory, how many haunted, talkative Filipino fellow jurors the world throws at me. How long I can hold this wind. But no matter how many, or how long, I'm turning this thing in before the end of 2016.
Working title? I'm thinking A WHOLE BUCKET OF STARS...
Book Two in the Motherless Child series, Good Girls, will be out in February:
This week, while the fluorescents spat in the criminal court hallways, and talkative Filipino fellow jurors twitched at their own shadows and told me about that, and despair over lost time swelled and ebbed and swelled in the Hirshberg heart, I took up the notes and scribbles and doubts and notions I'd been squirreling away all year while finishing the story collection. And under cover of darkness--dawnness, actually, since that's mostly when I have--I hoisted my sail, caught a surprising, word-heavy wind, and slipped from port. And now, here I am, all the way out into the last book of the Motherless Children series.
ETA? God, I don't know, depends a little on just how much flourescent purgatory, how many haunted, talkative Filipino fellow jurors the world throws at me. How long I can hold this wind. But no matter how many, or how long, I'm turning this thing in before the end of 2016.
Working title? I'm thinking A WHOLE BUCKET OF STARS...
Book Two in the Motherless Child series, Good Girls, will be out in February:
Further Installments of 12 Angry Glen the Jury Duty
This week…ONLY on this summer’s hottest new summerlong drama…Glen’s daughter secretly devours all the plums and most of the trail mix, dooming him to the courthouse cafeteria…
Juror #6 (Glen’s haunted Filipino friend) HEARS A NOISE, and investigates…Glen realizes that that foam-coated, Fisher-Price-looking device the Court Reporter is allegedly recording on is actually an Enigma machine…or else a Fisher-Price pretend-typewriter…
The counsel for the defense takes a brave step closer to mastering the document projector…A climate-change scientist enlists Glen as a trial subject to determine whether long-term exposure to fluorescent lighting really does cause jaundice,eye-twitching, and/or skin flakes…And, in the stuff Glen can’t talk about, more tragic, desperate people get more tragic and more desperate…Don’t miss one thrilling Facebook update, during which, in less than three minutes, Glen encapsulates events that somehow took NINE HOURS to unfold…All this and more. Only on "12 ANGRY GLEN." The drama where Glen turns twelve…
Juror #6 (Glen’s haunted Filipino friend) HEARS A NOISE, and investigates…Glen realizes that that foam-coated, Fisher-Price-looking device the Court Reporter is allegedly recording on is actually an Enigma machine…or else a Fisher-Price pretend-typewriter…
The counsel for the defense takes a brave step closer to mastering the document projector…A climate-change scientist enlists Glen as a trial subject to determine whether long-term exposure to fluorescent lighting really does cause jaundice,eye-twitching, and/or skin flakes…And, in the stuff Glen can’t talk about, more tragic, desperate people get more tragic and more desperate…Don’t miss one thrilling Facebook update, during which, in less than three minutes, Glen encapsulates events that somehow took NINE HOURS to unfold…All this and more. Only on "12 ANGRY GLEN." The drama where Glen turns twelve…
Colored in Feininger
Yet another advantage of having made a Kate: being dragged and cajoled, fussing and mumbling, from a jury duty-induced malaise, a lingering sense of things-that-should-be-done, out of the house to the art, Spent the afternoon slipping down Feininger alleys into Van Gogh gardens, vanishing through an Agnes Martin grid with some Klee-people. Came home colored back in...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
The Library in Jiaojiehe
Oh, alright, Li Xaodong. I'm willing to accept a proposal from you to build my writing room. But I need it soon, yeah?
The New York Times article about this architect.
The New York Times article about this architect.
12 Angry Glen: The Jury Duty that Never Ends
This week...only on this summer's longest running smash dramagedy, "Welcome Back My Glens, to the Jury Duty That Never Ends"...
Glen finds a parking space...
A faulty security screening forces a full search of all of Glen's belongings. The culprit turns out to be the metals in the local water, now prevalent enough to trigger the scanner...
The counsel for the defense suffers a setback in his efforts to master the projection device, when the crafty prosecution team secretly unplugs an extension cord...
The prosecution calls a devastating expert witness to show that, based on the people present and the fact that they were speaking and moving on the night of the incident, air was indeed breathed by several of the parties. The defense objects on relevance, is overruled, asks to submit new evidence, is allowed, but then denied because he can't get the new photo to display on the projection device...
Glen finally notices, to his astonishment, that he really is the third-tallest person on the jury, a circumstance so unlikely that it finally awakens him to the conspiracy that will lead to this season's most shocking revelation...
And the kind ladies at the coffee shop, noting the creeping despair on Glen's face, slip him a free banana muffin with his daily lunchtime coffee. Which he can't eat, because of his weirdo adult-onset cinnamon allergy...
Glen finds a parking space...
A faulty security screening forces a full search of all of Glen's belongings. The culprit turns out to be the metals in the local water, now prevalent enough to trigger the scanner...
The counsel for the defense suffers a setback in his efforts to master the projection device, when the crafty prosecution team secretly unplugs an extension cord...
The prosecution calls a devastating expert witness to show that, based on the people present and the fact that they were speaking and moving on the night of the incident, air was indeed breathed by several of the parties. The defense objects on relevance, is overruled, asks to submit new evidence, is allowed, but then denied because he can't get the new photo to display on the projection device...
Glen finally notices, to his astonishment, that he really is the third-tallest person on the jury, a circumstance so unlikely that it finally awakens him to the conspiracy that will lead to this season's most shocking revelation...
And the kind ladies at the coffee shop, noting the creeping despair on Glen's face, slip him a free banana muffin with his daily lunchtime coffee. Which he can't eat, because of his weirdo adult-onset cinnamon allergy...
Jury Duty v. Comic-Con
Up early this morning, reading about all you summer people doing summer things. Going to Readercon. Comic-Con. Walking the Spanish Steps. Swimming, somewhere. Being with your loved ones.
And then...the moment that changed everything.
(What? No, not the trial ending. Trials don't end. Don't be ridiculous)
But the moment of revelation, the paradigm shift, when I finally understood. The lack of parking and cars blaring at each other over spaces; the 30 to 40-minute wait in the security line to get in; the uniformed officials happy to answer any question you might have (except or until you actually ask one); the perpetually fouled bathrooms; the godawful or simply nonexistent food; the standing, standing, standing; all those cool, sketchy people (you'll see what I did there in a sec) strolling the halls, all dressed up, more than a few sporting weapons so sleek and dark and heavy, you'd swear they were real.
That's when I realized it. That's when I knew.
Being on jury duty? It's not keeping me from Comic-Con. It IS Comic-Con...
And then...the moment that changed everything.
(What? No, not the trial ending. Trials don't end. Don't be ridiculous)
But the moment of revelation, the paradigm shift, when I finally understood. The lack of parking and cars blaring at each other over spaces; the 30 to 40-minute wait in the security line to get in; the uniformed officials happy to answer any question you might have (except or until you actually ask one); the perpetually fouled bathrooms; the godawful or simply nonexistent food; the standing, standing, standing; all those cool, sketchy people (you'll see what I did there in a sec) strolling the halls, all dressed up, more than a few sporting weapons so sleek and dark and heavy, you'd swear they were real.
That's when I realized it. That's when I knew.
Being on jury duty? It's not keeping me from Comic-Con. It IS Comic-Con...
Twelve Angry Glen: Glen Fought the Law, and the Law Won
SPOILERS....SPOILERS...SPOILERS...
(note: all comments in quotations below are the opinion of TV COMMENTARY, and are posted here simply for discussion purposes)
Excerpts from today's scathing TV COMMENTARY review of the "admittedly riveting" penultimate episodes of this summer's most provocative and controversial "communal torturefest," "Glen Fought the Law, and the Law Won" :
"Look, people. Even at the kill-John-Snow, Red-Wedding, Let's-Make-Even-the-Innocent-Citizens-of-Broadchurch-Pedophiles school of new television nihilism, they teach you to leave glimmers of hope. If only so that the showrunners can dash them that much harder, later. But this...this "show," this communal torturefest passing as entertainment...
"I will admit--I'll give them this--I didn't see those twists coming. I mean, the Filipino fellow juror actually finishes telling Glen all 522 of his personal encounters with the supernatural to date, smiles with satisfaction, and before Glen can so much as smile, weakly; back, pat him comfortingly on the arm, launches into the story of every day--every single momentous moment--EVERY SINGLE ONE--of his adventures teaching his son to drive ('Well, we started out on Woodley, and took a left. We went two blocks, but only two, because I wanted him to turn right. Then we turned right...)'
"And then there's that ending, which you're damn right I'm going to spoil for you, because if the writers of this 'show' are going to be that nasty to us, I'm going to be nasty back. Because people, the world isn't cruel. It isn't out to get us. It's just the world. And this kind of reveling in the shit...the very idea that people would go through all these weeks, and then get led down a corridor, shown into a room with even harsher fluorescents, no windows, and--as if anyone would ever dream such a thing, let alone manufacture them--even LESS comfortable chairs, smile sadly...and lock the door..."
(note: all comments in quotations below are the opinion of TV COMMENTARY, and are posted here simply for discussion purposes)
Excerpts from today's scathing TV COMMENTARY review of the "admittedly riveting" penultimate episodes of this summer's most provocative and controversial "communal torturefest," "Glen Fought the Law, and the Law Won" :
"Look, people. Even at the kill-John-Snow, Red-Wedding, Let's-Make-Even-the-Innocent-Citizens-of-Broadchurch-Pedophiles school of new television nihilism, they teach you to leave glimmers of hope. If only so that the showrunners can dash them that much harder, later. But this...this "show," this communal torturefest passing as entertainment...
"I will admit--I'll give them this--I didn't see those twists coming. I mean, the Filipino fellow juror actually finishes telling Glen all 522 of his personal encounters with the supernatural to date, smiles with satisfaction, and before Glen can so much as smile, weakly; back, pat him comfortingly on the arm, launches into the story of every day--every single momentous moment--EVERY SINGLE ONE--of his adventures teaching his son to drive ('Well, we started out on Woodley, and took a left. We went two blocks, but only two, because I wanted him to turn right. Then we turned right...)'
"And then there's that ending, which you're damn right I'm going to spoil for you, because if the writers of this 'show' are going to be that nasty to us, I'm going to be nasty back. Because people, the world isn't cruel. It isn't out to get us. It's just the world. And this kind of reveling in the shit...the very idea that people would go through all these weeks, and then get led down a corridor, shown into a room with even harsher fluorescents, no windows, and--as if anyone would ever dream such a thing, let alone manufacture them--even LESS comfortable chairs, smile sadly...and lock the door..."
