Averil Dean's Blog, page 17

Doodles

I am staring into the abyss: the blank page. I can’t bear the look of it so I draw a line of stitches around the border, a tulip at the bottom, the characters’ names and the name of the town, upside-down and sideways, concentric squares of words with a window at the center and a tiny hand pressed to the imaginary glass. All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl. Sparrow’s head, arrowhead. Row of spices down the margin: clove, anise, coriander, annatto, sorrel, chicory, cardamom, turmeric, s...

Breakdown

Last night I watched a Dutch movie called The Broken Circle Breakdown. It’s hard to describe the impact it had on me without becoming hyperbolic and using the word ‘best’ one hundred forty-seven times, so I will simply tell you that I cried buckets, thought about it all night, still am thinking about it this morning and probably will watch it twice or more again today. I don’t always enjoy stories told out of sequence, but this one was knit together so beautifully and the performances were so...

Dissection

From The Secret Miracle, edited by Daniel Alarcon:

Is there a novel you go back to again and again? If so, why? What does it teach you?

Susan Choi: There are certain novels that, for whatever reason, become inextricably bound up with certain projects of mine, and I read them so intensely for that period that I sort of demolish them. This happened to me with The Great Gatsby while I was writing American Woman. The uncoiling spring of that book’s plot, the awful momentum that takes hold of the ch...

work |wərk|

work |wərk|

noun

1 activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result : he was tired after a day’s work in the fields. See note at labor .

• ( works) [in combination ] a place or premises for industrial activity, typically manufacturing : he found a job in the ironworks.

2 such activity as a means of earning income; employment : I’m still looking for work.

• the place where one engages in such activity : I was returning home from work on a packed subway.

• the...

All My Life

This seems appropriately pissy for how I feel tonight. Also, it’s Dave, whose screaming is positively operatic as far as I’m concerned.

Jackets

I’m collecting jackets. Here are a few of my favorites:

What about you? Any favorites? What do you love in a book cover?

I.R.

Do you ever look at your work and think, Who will read this? I don’t mean that in marketing terms, as in who’s your readership, who will buy your book, are you selling to repressed forty-something females or men who’ve never gotten jiggy or little girls who whinge at their mothers in the bookstore. What I mean is, who exactly? And where, and how? Imagine one person, the person most likely to get you. What does (s)he look like? What’s she wearing? Where does she read, and how fast, and why? Th...

In Memoriam

The Dish

Time to fill the candy dish. It’s true that I haven’t quite put Blackbird to bed, but she’s close enough to allow a bit of multitasking, and to be honest, the new book is burning a hole in my heart. It’s almost time to start writing, and for that I need candy. Every thousand words I get a treat. I aim to pull a candy per day from the dish, though sometimes I get two and can stockpile the spares against days when the muse is on a hunger strike. I don’t sweat it. As long as I get some daily sug...

Smarty Pants

What one piece of advice do you wish someone had given you before you began writing your first novel? – From The Secret Miracle, edited by Daniel Alarcon

Rabih Alameddine: Don’t do it.

Susan Minot: Advice is pertinent only when it rings true, which means you somehow know it already. Maybe: “It always takes longer than you think it will and usually goes past the point when you are interested in it, but that doesn’t mean you can stop. Keep going.”

Andrew Sean Greer: Don’t listen to anybody; you ar...