Averil Dean's Blog, page 9

Camo

Saturday night, my husband and I went out for dinner and ended up afterward at a dive bar about half a mile from home. It was karaoke night (actually, every night is karaoke night according to the misspelled sign out front), and there was no shortage of performers. One chick got up and muttered the lyrics to some Taylor Swift revenge song; a balding hipster tried on Wonderwall. The woman operating the computer filled the gaps with standard drinking songs (Linda Ronstadt, Jimmy Buffett), and s...

Cowboy

Last month I took a new job managing a start-up physical therapy clinic. I’ll admit the word “manage” is a little bit tongue-in-cheek at this point, since I’m the only employee for the only provider and a busy day would have us seeing about five patients. I’m sure it won’t take us long to build a full schedule, but for now I often have the place to myself and spend a good bit of time writing, when I’m not gazing out the window at the playground across the parking lot, sucking on dum-dums from...

Kittens

Derring-do. Photo by Vivian Maier.

Well, hello. I’m very glad you’re here. It’s been nineteen months since I’ve posted (shades of AA), and it saddens me to report that I’ve accomplished fuck-all in the interim. I’ve completed nothing new, have made no breakthroughs, performed no feats of derring-do. No tightropes walked, no kittens rescued from the elms. I’m boring as hell, as you may or may not remember.

Yes, I hear you saying. I remember.

I’ve been trying to think of an appropriate explanat...

junk & cherry

Hello, stranger. It’s so nice to see you. I hope you’re doing well, writing lots of lovely words and whatnot. I’ve been doing the same, and am continuing to push forward on my WIP with the hope that I’ll have another book finished within the next few months.

I’m only popping in now to say that I’ve started a new blog called junk & cherry. It’s a busy, non-linear sort of space where I can collect inspiration for my writing and tell stories about the people I meet—working-class people, most of...

The End

Here we are again. Only a few squares left on the calendar, a couple of pots of coffee, two more rounds of ‘good morning’ at the office and this year will belong to the past. I was thinking of where we were last year. Knocking back shots of tequila, if memory serves, to celebrate the release of my first (well, first bookstore) novel. We were playing Truth or Dare, remember? Me asking inappropriate questions, you trying to get out of answering them. Good times. The year before, I spent New Yea...

Wolf

How is that each book is harder to write than the one before? How many pages are wasted, pushed to a corner of the desk with edges lifted by the breeze of my passing? How much vodka will it take. How many packets of headband kush, ribbons and clouds and tarry-sweet fogs, and words that dissolve in the vapor? How many tantrums. Long walks. Floods and droughts and lightless Sundays. Trickles from the wrist, gouts from the jugular. How many small rebellions, diversions, mutinies, revolts? Teeth...

Gingerbread

Can I just say how much fun I’m having at our new address? I am like a little girl playing houses. I’ve alphabetized my library, rearranged the furniture, brought in houseplants and candles and squashy pillows for the couch. In contrast to our last rental, where everything seemed to be in the wrong place, this house is laid out exactly right. I have an armchair in the bedroom. A light in the hallway. And closets, dear god, closets for days. The kitchen is Formica-clad and fitted with old appl...

Butterflies

Still here, still stuck. I’ve turned this story every which way and I can see, I think, how to write it. The question now becomes, Do I want to?

The problem with writing is that it takes so long. By the time you’ve worked out all the details of voice and story and structure, you may find yourself bled dry of all your creative energy and the inquisitive spirit that makes a story come alive. You get bogged down, sluggish; having paved your road, you are now too exhausted to walk it. You look at...

Rock

This Chris Rock interview is too good to keep to myself.

Life Drawing

My book and I are at an impasse. I have it in mind to write this fucker from a first person POV, as a retrospective account of a childhood tragedy and the effect it has on the character’s life. The fucker insists that certain events and perspectives be included, some of which couldn’t have been witnessed by the narrator. Not an impossible thing—I could use the sort of structure Gillian Flynn used in Dark Places, in which the first and third person accounts are given in alternating chapters, b...