ML Hart's journal of observations, obsessions and inspirations
How’m I supposed to explain it to my friends? I mean, that was me, the one who swore I’d never put myself through the anti-social agony, the jigsaw-puzzle-from-hell nightmare, the mano a mano word-wrangling that is writing another book. People tell me the life of an author is “glamorous,” which I’m gonna say can only …
I’ve been working like crazy on the book, have been for a couple months. It’s a little manic. Mostly it’s wrangling the research and trying to bring a bit of order to chaos, find a form I can access and pull it all into whatever is going to become The Book. In particular, the interviews …
Has it really been a whole year? Ay ay ay. Been working on the site, new design, mental commitment… hasn’t quite translated into sustained activity. I tell myself I’m getting there (does that count?) and console myself with awareness that this is connected to my real work, my writing. And try not to make myself …
I’m happy with my book. Maybe that obsessively perfectionist streak of mine pays off. Or maybe it’s just the research geek in me. Yesterday one of my FAB friends reminded me that there is no problem/topic/issue that cannot be squashed flat by piling enough research on top of it. Made me laugh, because I can …
I’ll never be any traditional publisher’s dream client. I don’t fit in. I mean, I’m pretty happy to have gotten my elevator speech on the current book down to four and a half minutes, but that doesn’t make for easy marketing. So it’s a good thing I have a day job. Figuring I’d sell fewer …
What, am I nuts? I work full time at a high-stress job. I go to school at night. I’m the sole caretaker for my 84-year old mother. And I think I’m going to write another book? Me? I don’t have time to write. That was a year and a couple months ago. This week I’m …
Since the fourth grade, I’d been pushed and prodded and scolded to a particular style of writing. Something formal. Suitable for school. In dozens of English, history, literature courses, I learned how to write ‘appropriately’ for class papers. Later on, I’d learn how to write appropriately, but very differently, in an office, whether I was …
Things are not what they seem. Who am I now? Depending on the day, my world can range from slightly off balance to pretty much skewed to completely upside down. All the talk about a life in balance and taking care of oneself, that’s all well and good – in theory. But taking care of …
Out with the old notion of the unsociable aesthete, pale and too-thin in a lonely room, huddled next to a stack of books. In with the idea of the reader actively engaged, all senses on high alert, merging body, mind, and spirit, ready to transform to read to an action verb. Reading is now a …
Novelists have the luxury of leading us down the neural pathways of a character’s mind, allowing us to wander the by-ways, stopping at every scenic overlook on our way to Casterbridge, Casablanca, Mordor, Starkfield, the Land of Oz, the epoch of belief, the heart of darkness. We laugh, we cry; we suffer, sympathize and triumph …
Can we manipulate art, words and form into literature? How, exactly, do words become art? When does a story turn into literature? Why don’t we have a checklist of the qualifications and simply figure it out? This is literature, this is not, that might be. I’m not sure how I would begin to define, let alone …
Write what you know, they say. We always answer back: But what about this one, or that one who didn’t exactly know, if you know what I mean—I mean, what about In Cold Blood by Truman Capote? How about Philip K. Dick, whose classic novel was made into a film called Blade Runner? Peter Robb wrote …
In our hurry-up, gotta-have-it, don’t-waste-a-minute world where productivity is the holy grail and idleness is the biggest loser, procrastination and missing a deadline loom larger than original sin. All the excuses in the world cannot expiate the offender. It doesn’t matter how clever, intriguing, original, bizarre or even, in the end, true the excuse may …
