Averil Dean's Blog, page 13

Unlovely

I’ve been thinking about beauty. Physical beauty, that is. The kind that other beholders bestow upon us or that we claim for ourselves, and what it means to be a woman in our culture when physical beauty is altogether absent. The protagonist I’m writing is alone and unlovely, lost in a world of images the way Vivian Maier must have been in her attic bedroom after a day of caring for another woman’s children. I wouldn’t have been able to write about this character twenty or even ten years ago—...

Doorstep

I guess it’s time to start writing this thing. I could probably do some research, add to my playlist, and get more detailed with my outline, but all of that is just procrastination and nerves. I always imagine the first page as the moment when you arrive alone at a party and pause outside the door, smoothing your skirt, twisting the strap of your purse or bra or fidgeting with the back of your shoe because what you really want is to turn around and run back home to where your slippers are wai...

Something Good

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Ventriloquism

Eleven peevish peeves:

People who ask a question so they can answer it themselves.
And interrupt you to do so.
And, hearing that they’ve interrupted, carry on talking louder and louder so that your (admittedly cartoonish) voice gets trampled underfoot.
And don’t provide a lull.
Or apologize.
But instead expect you to follow the conversation in this new direction, even though you had something (which suddenly seems crucially important) to say back at number one.
And this goes on for a while, and your...

Dot

Do you ever wake up in the morning thinking, I wish? And the wish is an unformed thing: a screw in the throat, a wash of static in the head, straightjacketed inertia as though the stillness itself is what’s keeping you still. You badly want to complete the sentence: I wish, I wish… What? What precise little check mark can you add to the list of things that are you? And why would it matter? If time is a flat circle, spherical only when we’re living inside it, then so is the self. That rounded...

Honeymoon

So it begins. The book idea’s got a green light and I’m ready to start writing. Over the weekend I put together an outline and began assembling the all-important playlist, and I came up with a beautiful twist for the end of the book that surprised and delighted me so much I almost don’t want to think about it anymore, in order to preserve the fun times I anticipate having when I get there.

I’m a little suspicious at the ease with which this story is coming together. If the others seemed like e...

Pisser

This is my week for pissing people off. I had a patient call me saying he’d gone to his appointment at our office and was told he didn’t have an appointment there at all. The girl who sits at the middle desk, he said, was unbelievably rude to him. But there is no middle desk at our office, so I suggested he might have gone to the wrong place and asked if I could confirm the address with him. At which time the dude lost his mind and started screaming, Why would you even say that to me? Do you...

Dear Diary

“The most beautiful things are those that madness prompts and reason writes.” – André Gide

I’m not sure whether I should tell you that I have a new story idea. This is number…what? Four? Five, since I finished Blackbird? I do hate the false starts, not only because of the anxiety they create but also because I feel foolish for getting fired up about something that won’t work. Sometimes for comfort I revisit old blog posts in which I have taken hold of and later discarded an idea that seemed re...

Blank

Fill in the blank: A writer is _________.

Dream House

You just inherited a dilapidated, crumbling-down grand mansion in the countryside. Assuming money is no issue, what do you do with it?

Aside from living in it? I’d make it a writers’ retreat house. I’d keep one little corner for my family, and the rest I would furnish with desks and cozy nooks, a big round table for meals and a garden out back where we could grow our own produce. I’d keep it a little shabby so that everyone could feel welcome to put up her feet and stroll around in jammies, bu...