Happy February!
I'm sick of writing about myself, I think I've worn that out over the past few entries, but since it's what I know the most about it's kinda hard to avoid. Anyway here I am, writing anyway, tapping away just for the sake of writing and taking pleasure in it, just setting my brain free. You may assume that's how I always go about my blogging but it's not. I like to have a central idea or theme, at the very least. Today I'm letting go and seeing what happens. Not everything needs to be useful, but I do find this to be a useful experiment from time to time. No matter how it turns out, hey, I've written something. Hesitation leads to inaction and only compounds that stuck feeling, and I've had enough of that for the moment. It feels kinda rebellious, in a retro way, making me think of old stream-of-consciousness exercises we used to do in beginner writing classes in undergrad. Ah, I miss school every so often. I just read a book set in a graduate MFA program and even though the novel painted the program in a self-deluded and slightly sinister light (and I already have a Master's to boot), I was like, yeah, sign me up for two years of workshops and solitary torture. What a sicko.
In any case, it feels good to make time to stretch out my mind and rattle its contents around. The outline for Book 2 in the series I'm working on has begun. It's slow going, I don't actually know how to do an outline, but I'm winging it and I have to say it's quite fun to make a list of what you want to happen to who and when. Knowing myself, it'll all completely change and someone will probably die when I get around to filling it in, but right now it's like, hell yeah, I can't wait to write THAT scene.
On that note, ish, here are five books I read recently that I thought were particularly recommendation worthy:
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
Plenty by Hannah Howard
Bunny by Mona Awad
Any Way the Wind Blows by Rainbow Rowell.
All quite different, all quite brilliant. I'll close just by saying, by demanding, by imploring: always, always read. Read anything, plus read the books they're trying to ban, and pay attention to what makes the list these days - sure there's a handful of clutch-the-pearls sex content or whatever that parents are up in arms about, but the meat of every list is made up of Black authors and authors of color. It's deliberate and it's fucked up. Be an intellectual freedom fighter and fight for these voices they're trying to silence and READ. That's all for now.
Comments