One of the more interesting gigs on my five-week book tour was getting to go to MIT and lecture about Booklife at their Comparative Media Studies center. We had a big audience, and Kevin Smokler of Booktour.com was there to talk a little as well and then discuss relevant issues with me. Many thanks to Geoffrey Long for setting up the event.
MIT Booklife lecture podcast link.
(Matt Staggs’ Friday links post will return next week.)
Nathan Ballingrud is a remarkable short fiction writer who has won the Shirley Jackson Award and had his work reprinted in year’s best anthologies. I first met him at the Clarion Writers Workshop in 1992. Pertinent to our discussion of “Chasing Experience,” I remember that the first day he locked himself in his dorm room and
typed furiously for a couple of hours. Suitably intimidated, we all thought Nathan was incredibly committed to his art. But, as he told me many years later, in fact he wasn’t typing anything: he was just nervous about meeting the other writers attending the workshop. Although Nathan talks about experience in the context of “genre” writers, I believe what he says is relevant to all writers.
(This week, by the way, I’m in the Carolinas speaking at Wofford College, Malaprops, and a Barnes & Noble in Burlington. Check out the full schedule for details.)
(Never underestimate the power of a change of scenery to revitalize your creativity, either. Photo by Jeremy Tolbert.)
Sometimes, no matter your best efforts, you’ll find yourself stuck in a rut, bored with your work and yourself. At such times, here are a few techniques that may nudge or jolt you out of that mood.
Your Private Booklife constitutes your core activities: the engine that drives your creative life. It has six essential pillars, or qualities:
• Curiosity
• Receptivity
• Passion
• Imagination
• Discipline
• Endurance
Try to encourage these qualities in yourself and others. Draw them out into the open if necessary, and at times allow yourself to indulge in them. In all ways be generous to yourself so that you can be generous in your work.
Although several of these qualities are useful to your Public Booklife, nowhere are they more necessary than in your Private Booklife. Let’s explore them further…
(What does this photo spark in your imagination? How does it make you curious? Image by the highly recommended Jeremy Tolbert.)
I’m thrilled that Morgan and her crew are taking over Booklifenow.com and giving it a breath of fresh air.I think it’ll be an essential resource now for years to come. —Jeff VanderMeer