C.A. Hall's Blog, page 2
August 6, 2015
Writing & Rising & Blood
The lizard part of my brain didn’t want to get up today; it didn’t want to stand; it didn’t want to walk the 15 blocks to the coffee shop where I choose to work most days. The lizard in my brain saw the grey & white sky and rolled back into the folds of my blanket.
I’ve been sleeping on the floor the past few nights in an attempt to deal with back and neck pain which seems to come from the softness of my bed. Even on the floor, I wake up five or six times, startled awake, gasping for life as i...
July 3, 2015
Interview with ���Mighty��� Mike McGee
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Professionally, I am a stand-up poet—a poet with a healthy dash of humor added for flavor. I am a late-blooming vagabond. A hobo-humorist. Iget paid to talk and say things my way. Personally, I love making people laugh and cry in close proximity. I am an ambivert—half extroverted, half introverted. As much as I love being center of attention I also eagerly desire solitude. One state helps me create, the other helps me promote. I love...
June 8, 2015
Interview with Hannah Webb
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Tumblr Your description of yourself:
My name is Hannah Webb, although online I tend to go by The Obanoth.I’m a mid-20s weirdo living in Los Angeles. I paint, draw, design, doodle, screen print, eat, sleep, and pet my darling bunny rabbit, Atticus.
What turns you on creatively?I gather inspiration everywhere I go. I follow tons of artists online, read articles, attend art shows, and admire the magnitude of urban art around my neighborhood in Los Angeles. Plus, I wo...
May 22, 2015
The Hitchhiker���s Guide to the Galaxy
By Douglas Adams
I’ve had this book on the shelf for probably 20 years, when my uncle loaned it to me. Well, I finally got around to it.
I had only a passing understanding that it was part of series, and if I didn’t know that, I’d probably have found the end really anticlimactic. I just wonder when I will get around to reading the rest of the books. I’m really good at reading the first book in a series and moving on to something else. I read for variety so living in one world in a long stretch...
Lean into the Writer���s Block
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything in this blogabout writing. Today, I’m compelled to tacklewriter’s block. It’s something that I’ve been struggling with lately and I think that I’ve found a way for you to use it to your advantage (at least a way that works for me.)
There are two kinds of writer’s block. The first there is theproblem of logic; something in your story that you have to reason out. The human brain is,at it a basic level, alogic machine. It likes things resolved, so the...
The Commonplace Book
I’ve always been the type of person who underlines things in books or collects quotes in abused spiral notebooks. As an early teen I used to read books of quotations and circle the ones that struck a chord with me. I always assumed I was just weird or that over a decade of Catholic school had made me incapable of reading without intellectualizing everything. What Ididn’t know was that Iincidentally & very nearly was participating in a rich tradition known as the commonplace book. Wikipedia de...
May 11, 2015
Interview with Persis Karim
Your description of yourself:I wear several hats. I'm a writer, poet, editor, and my day job, although at the moment I'm on a sabbatical, is as a professor of English & Comparative Literature at San Jose State University. I've been teaching literature and creative writing there for the past fifteen years. But my real passion is writing--mostly poetry, but at the moment I'm venturing into a family memoir. I've also been very involved in helping to shape the literatur...
Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
I fell in love with this book, thoughI’m not sure that non-writers would appreciate it as much as I did. It’s just fascinating to see the minutiae of writing from a writer as great as Steinbeck. It’s inspiring to see how similar our process, struggles & doubts are. It humanizes a god in the best possible way, not by toppling him from pedestals but rather by introducing intimacy and vulnerability.
Being that I live in San Jose, CA & that I am big Chaplin fan,I found particular i...
April 30, 2015
Interview with author Cathleen Miller
Cathleen Miller is a nonfiction writer &a professor in the MFA program at San JoséState University, where she teaches courses in creative nonfiction.Her latest work Champion of Choice, abiography of UN leader Nafis Sadik, was named one of the top biographies of 2013 by Booklist &the American Library Assoc.
CATHLEEN'SWEBSITE / CATHLEEN'S FACEBOOK PAGE
As someone who teaches writing, do you ever find yourself getting caught up in the mechanics of your own writing? If so, how do you cut through t...
Pain Killers
by Jerry Stahl
“...all of us, at some point in life, choose our cliché.”
Some of the best parts of this book are the crazy things he says. For me, it's very reminiscent of Chuck Palahniuk or even a touch of Hunter S. Thompson at times:
"You’re not listening. You won’t be in prison. You’ll be at prison.”
“Right. So when I’m gang-raped in my cell, all that D-block dick will be at my ass, it won’t be in it.
"...
