Andrew X. Pham's Blog, page 3
April 8, 2012
Self Published on Amazon!
A Theory of Flight will be published on Amazon on Monday, 9th April 2012.
For a limited time, it’s available for $0.99 (yes, that’s 99 cents).
Normal retail price is $2.99!
Yeah! I did it!
Andrew
March 15, 2012
HAVEN
Culinary Odyssey and our backers are now also backers of HAVEN Restaurant, a Dragonfly project providing training for Cambodian orphans and youths. They do excellent work in Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), Cambodia. Please check out their site http://www.havencambodia.com/en/welcome/ and visit for a meal if you happen to pass through this World Heritage site.
January 10, 2012
Personas
The three personas of the memoirist:
The author is the person giving the lectures, doing the interviews, and presenting his work to the public.
The narrator is the person in the book, telling the story. He lives forever between the covers. He is the person most loved and known–by the readers.
The writer is the private person, rarely known even to his friends and family. He agonizes over sentences, makes ridiculous sacrifices for his craft, and is often his own worse critic.
January 6, 2012
Advice Request
Got a request for advice from an aspiring writer. Looking back to my humble beginnings, I can’t recall ever thinking that someday, someone would ask me for advice about writing.
Here are some points I’ve pondered about for a long time.
1. Write for yourself, edit for your audience.
2. Write as though it’s your last page and today is your last day. The mind becomes very clear at this edge where one’s fears and inhibitions fall away.
3. Enjoy the “aspiring” part of being a writer. Once you published, it feels like work.
4. It’s all about the journey. The most bittersweet moment for every voyager is when the end is sight.
January 4, 2012
Regarding Courage…
Sometimes, we don’t know if “courage” is even the issue as it’s often mixed up with honor, shame, a skewered sense of right & wrong, and/or a misplaced sense of loyalty.
It took me a decade to write these few sentences which I very recently added to A Theory of Flight:
“Then life interceded: Stephanie and I broke up—the girl I thought was my soulmate, the girl I wanted to marry. She had slept with a whole slew of guys, two of them our mutual friends. I tried forgiveness, I tried forgetfulness. I tried to be the better man, but my heart had turned black. Nothing seemed important anymore.”
I had written around our dissolution, gave her aliases, protected the memories of the good parts, turned away from my shame. We had both long moved on with our lives. My misplaced sense of loyalty remained even when the last of my feelings about her and that period had faded to nothingness. I wanted to bury it. I wanted it obliterated by time. She was a manic-depressive with a history of abuse. There were many components to her behaviors.
But the words, these words that matter to no one else–not even her–matter to me.
We are who we are and what we have done. Just lay it on the table, plain and simple, without malice. There is no need for accounting. No need for explanation. No need to carry the weight of unspoken words. This is life.
I guess A Theory of Flight is close to being done at last.
