Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 43

1,000 words a day in July

I’ve got one month left at home before I return to Vancouver for my second (and final) year of graduate school. I’m at what I’d say is about the one-third mark on my thesis, somewhere around 31,000–32,000 words. Last month, my colleague Carsen Taite (who is much more prolific than I) mentioned (on Facebook, I think) that she was going to write 1,000 words a day for the month of June. Several fellow writers took up the challenge, including Ken O’Neill and Jennifer Lavoie—but not me.

I think I should have. This thesis isn’t going to write itself and I have to really get in gear on this if I’m going to have a draft ready by the start of the semester. No, it doesn’t need to be polished, by any means, but hopefully it will be coherent and have those handy things like plot, conflict, and character development. Also, probably it will have dogs, or at least a dog. (Sorry, ’Nathan.)

So, using the wonder that is 750 Words (which I let fall by the wayside last month), I’m going to be writing at least 1,000 words a day for the month of July. I got off to a good start on Monday, when I wrote almost 2,000 words—admittedly, about 800 of them were a blog post, but I figure it’s a good start.

Culling

I love books. That’s a given. (Hello, I’m a writer.) But it’s been a while now that I’ve grown well aware of my problem where books are concerned. I have a lot of them. And I don’t have room for all of them.

Reading this Salon article this morning struck a chord with me, because I’ve been doing something somewhat similar. My sentiments are slightly different. I don’t hate books; I can’t imagine ever saying that! Hate books? That’s like hating your children—of course, I don’t have children so I can only try to imagine what hating your children must be like, and maybe if I were the parent of, say, Rush Limbaugh or something, I might come close, but even then I suspect what I felt would be less hate than crushing disappointment in the sad spectacle of humanity that they’ve grown up to become.

Sorry, tangent. That happens. Where was I? Right, books. No, I don’t hate them. But! I do get anxious when I look at the bookshelves and see books stacked sideways on top of and in front of other books, or piled on the nightstand waiting to be read. That’s the problem, I think. I have a lot of books that I’ve bought and have yet to read. I’m trying to do something about that this summer, of course. (And being a poor graduate student at the moment has done wonders for my book-buying habit. I’ve almost gone cold turkey and haven’t bought a single new book this summer.) I’ve already started putting books in my suitcase to take back to school with me, to keep me from giving in to the temptation to buy anything new until I’ve read what I already have.

As for what I have that I’ve already read, I’ve started culling.

It’s not easy, because there are lots of them. Since they’re not terribly well-organized at the moment either, I’ve also been alphabetizing and reshelving as I’ve been going along. I won’t say that I’ve touched every book I own so far, but I’ve handled a fair number of them. And for more than a few, it was probably the last time I’ll handle them.

So now there are five boxes of books (including one box of literary journals) that are waiting to be taken to the local bookstore that takes used books for resale in exchange for store credit. That sounds kind of like it might be defeating the purpose, right? Turn in books, get credit that you can use to buy even more books! Luckily, the store sells e-books as well, so that’s an option.

But here’s the thing. Unlike the writer of that article in Salon, I do love books. I love the feel of the pages, the look of the covers. I love being able to glance at the shelves in order to see if I’ve read something (because I have a terrible memory and it’s nearly impossible for me to call up the titles of things I’ve read apart from my desert-island list). I love being able to flip through the pages to find a particular passage. I love leaving Post-its and random slips of paper in them. Those artifacts can provide a bit of a snapshot of what I was thinking while I was reading a particular book.

I don’t like dusting them, though, and I don’t like moving them.

There are more than a few books that I can’t imagine ever getting rid of—they’ve been signed by the author, or they’re written by friends of mine (or both). Or they have my own writing in them—a number that I’m glad to see increasing. I have an e-reader but don’t often use it, though I do tend to read more books on, of all places, my iPod (which used to be my phone but no longer has an account attached to it). There’s something satisfying about flipping through screen after screen of type so quickly. People see me with my phone and probably think I’m texting or emailing, when actually I’m reading my friend Greg’s ebook-only mystery series or the book I just checked out of the library.

That’s what I’ve been trying to do more often these days: check books out of the library, both physical and electronic. The nice thing is that I can checked out ebooks even while I’m at school in Vancouver. I don’t buy a lot of ebooks really; I still like the paper variety too much. But, I’m trying to change my ways.

I’ll probably go through the shelves one more time before I head back to school next month to see what else I can live without, or what else I can take with me. I’ve got a couple shelves full of books back in Vancouver, and my hope is that, with a few exceptions, I’ll find homes for all of them before I leave.

City Hall, St. Louis, PrideFest

I hope everyone had a happy PrideFest—and stayed more or less dry!

Help! I’m melting!

I let things go quiet on the blog this week, didn’t I? Not without reason; I’ve been writing. And (even though Michael Thomas Ford hates it when I do this) I’m happy to report that I’ve passed the 30,000-word mark on my thesis. Some of them are good words and even in the right order and may make it into the final draft.

No promises though.

So, I’ve been back in St. Louis for two months now, and have one month to go before I return to Vancouver for the final year of my MFA program. While I’ve been home I’ve been working on the aforementioned thesis, which is a novel (but then, if you read this blog with any regularity, you know that, yeah?), and I’ve been doing background reading and research which has involved a day spent working on a farm and touring the evil St. Louis-based GMO corporate citadel. My feelings on them are perhaps best captured by these tortoises.

This photo is actually a bit of a lie. I took it in 2012 when we were in New Orleans. It does, however, accurately convey the full effect of running in St. Louis this past week. Except now I have a full beard. Lies upon lies upon lies… why do you even believe a word I say?

The other thing I’ve been doing back home in St. Louis? Sweating. A lot. Summer in the Midwest is not for wimps. I, unfortunately, am a wimp. And I will go on and on and on about the heat when I’m in it. Dear gods on high, I hate the heat.

But if I’m going to be miserable, I want to at least be entertaining. Hence, this conversation I had with my friend and colleague (and wicked awesome writer) Sierra this week.

Me: It’s hotter than the hinges of hell in St. Louis and every time I go outside I think I’m going to turn into nothing but a puddle of sweat and a few bones.

Sierra: lol, your misery is funny

you shouldn’t make your misery so funny

Me: Hell, someone’s gotta get a laugh out of it!

Sierra: And it’s ME

Me: See? EVERYBODY’S A WINNER! Well, except for me, who’s wilting. BUT! If I stand outside for ten hours straight, I’ll probably sweat so much that I’ll finally hit my goal weight! I’ll also die, but glass half full!

Sierra: OMG, you are CRACKING ME UP

I’m so sorry it’s so hot. Wait, no I’m not. This is too entertaining

Tell me a story, New Yorker. I’ll listen.

When I’m working out or running, I tend to listen to podcasts. I also made Mike suffer through some of them in the car on the way back from New Orleans last month (well, it’s not like he had to suffer that much; he slept most of the way, I think). I should say at the start I’m not a big podcast person. I know of some people who listen to dozens of them, and I can only assume that they are good at multitasking because I find that if I’m listening to one, I can’t be doing much else that requires critical thought. (I’m the same way when it comes to the radio, conversations, and TV. I need focus or it’s barely registering with me.)

So usually I listen to fairly funny podcasts, be they about playing games or telling lies or just three completely inappropriate and offensively hilarious (or is that hilariously offense?) friends living down on the Gulf coast. I also listen to Freakonomics, which is both funny and informative.

Then there’s The New Yorker Fiction Podcast.

It’s sometimes been a challenge to keep up with podcasts that update every week, especially when I’m at school in Vancouver, since I run and go to the gym with friends and it would be fairly antisocial to put on headphones while in their company. (Not that I would do that. Unless they were being really annoying which they never are.*) The New Yorker Fiction podcast, however, is one that I wish updated more often than once a month.

If you follow my friend and colleague ‘Nathan’s blog (and if you like queer fiction, you should), you’ll know that he’s reviewing a short story every day this year. An ambitious endeavor if you ask me—that’s 365 stories, after all; he’s not taking weekends off—but here’s the thing. A short story takes, what, maybe half an hour or an hour to read. (Most editions of the fiction podcast clock in around thirty to forty minutes, I think.)

People often say they would read if they had more time. That’s why it’s surprising to me that short stories aren’t more popular than they are. You’ve got time for a story. Heaven knows I can’t make time for the rest of The New Yorker magazine, but I’ll make time for the story.

The fiction podcast is even better for that. Someone reads it to you. You can listen while you’re on the bus or driving to work, going for your morning run or making dinner. Or you can listen to it before you go to bed and imagine you’re a kid again and your mom or dad is reading to you. Only this time the role of parent is played by Richard Ford or Margaret Atwood or Edwidge Danticat, and they’re not reading you Little Golden Books .

*I don’t know why I felt it necessary to emphasize that. I rather doubt they’ll ever read this. And judging from my site stats, there aren’t a whole lot of others who do either, so I could write completely ridiculous things, especially down here in a footnote, like Turkey Vulture Tube Tops and no one would be the wiser. Probably.

Stop the presses: COVER ART!

So, yesterday I got the final cover art for my upcoming novel, The Unwanted. And instead of saying how excited I am about it, I’m just going to let the picture do the talking:

March 2014 can’t get here fast enough.

It’s Wednesday, so that must mean blatant self-promotion!

Just a reminder that this month is Pride Month in much of the world and, being a queer writer, I’ve written a lot of things with queer protagonists and themes. Over at Untreed Reads, two of my stories, “New Normal” and “Straightening Up,” are available this month at a 30% discount, which means you can get not one but both of them for less than the price of a cup of coffee in most fine establishments.

I’m worth more than half a cuppa joe, right? Right?

“And thanks for all the fish”

The late and very lamented British writer, satirist, and wildlife explorer Doug Adams, in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, explained that “on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.”

Read more from the always amusing Robert Krulwich on the topic of Why Dolphins Make Us Nervous over at NPR.

The life of an organic farmer, or “Oh, ow, my ass”

Click to view slideshow.

I’m still sore.

Last week I volunteered at an organic farm just across the river in Illinois, and spent my day packing CSA boxes, weeding beets, planting lettuce and watermelons, learning to trellis tomatoes, fertilizing eggplants, harvesting scallions, and digging up turnips. I spent my day leaning over, bending down, kneeling in the dirt, and sitting on my ass when my knees couldn’t take kneeling anymore.

It was agony. I loved it.

Why did I do it? As I may have mentioned, I’m working on my thesis this summer for my MFA in creative writing. It’s a novel set in the not-too-distant future, and my protagonist, Rebecca, is a Midwestern farmer. She’s facing a lot of problems: climate change, lack of rain, an unstable social landscape, and aging parents being just a few of them. There’s also the matter of her brother wanting her to join him: he’s leaving the planet. Rebecca’s pragmatic, but she’s also stubborn, and—

Well, maybe I shouldn’t say too much right now, since it’s all in rough draft mode. Also, to quote River Song (as I’m wont to do), “Spoilers.”

Thing is, there are many things I know absolutely nothing about. Climate change is one of them. So is farming. I’ve been reading up a lot on both these topics, I’ve interviewed a climate scientist, and I’ve toured an organic education farm and an agronomics facility at the local evil corporate agricultural empire. (You know the one.) I’ve also been reading a lot about the Kepler telescope, extrasolar planets, and faster-than-light travel. The phrase Alcubierre warp drive has come up several times. Gathering all this information has been kind of fun—a little depressing as well, especially where climate change is concerned. The more I read, the more I think we’ve really screwed the pooch on this one and that Dr. Hawking is right: if we’re going to avoid wiping ourselves out, we need to leave the planet.

I’m a big proponent of learning by doing. Since I can’t go into space at the present time (though if it becomes a reality during my lifetime, see ya!), I decided to do what experiential learning I could, namely do a little bit of what an organic farmer does on an average day in June in the Midwest.

The owners of the farm were incredibly gracious. I told them that honestly I know so little about farming that I wasn’t even sure of the right questions to ask, so I got them talking about how they came to start their current farm and they asked me questions about my story. That got things rolling; they told me how much of their time they spend doing certain things around the farm, and I suggested ways that these might be automated by the twenty-second century to increase productivity.

The one thing none of us could see a way around though was weeding. If you’re going to be an organic farmer, you’re going to be pulling weeds by hand at some point.

By the end of the day, I was limping. My ass was killing me, my knees were aching, and I was starting to get shin splints in my left leg. My hands also smelled faintly of fish emulsion, the organic fertilizer they use around the farm. It works great, but yowie does it stink.

Of course, by the end of the day for me and the interns, they owners were still going to be working for another three hours, at least. That’s the other thing about organic farming: long, long days while the growing season’s in full swing.

As I was limping out, though, my friend Stacey, who hooked me up with this opportunity, noticed that some of the raspberry bushes were sporting some ripe fruit. After a day of manual labor, picking ripe berries straight from the bush? More than makes up for it.

“Horizons”

The memory cheats, but I think I’m recalling this correctly.

Back when I was in college at Mizzou in Columbia, Missouri (go Tigers), my friend Lynden and I took a drive from Columbia to Bonner Springs, Kansas, to go to a Renaissance Faire. I don’t remember much about the faire itself—costumes, high temperatures, giant turkey legs—but what I do remember is the drive back. It was nighttime, and the odometer on his VW Rabbit turned over 90,000 miles, and Lynden was quite pleased that his little car had gone that far. We pulled over on the side of the highway and Lynden got out and gave a cheer, fists to the sky, “Woo hoo!” and all that.

He was a very high-on-life kind of guy.

It was a clear night and we were in the middle of nowhere, and after he was done with his celebratory dance, I told him to look up.

Horizons from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

Every once in a while, I need a reminder of how lucky I am to live here on this planet. A friend posted a link to this video today, and there was my reminder. (Watch it fullscreen in HD if you can.)