Space Station Mir

These details I add are in primary colors, one or two washes, not the deep texture like the chair, the centerpiece, the thing that has gravity, presence, deep dimension, that holds the story. The details around it are human delight, charming fluff, transitory nature, like in a memoir the details point to the structure, which is the chair, the driving force, the reason the whole thing is happening. (212) --Natalie Goldberg, The True Secret of Writing , "Blue Chair Creating Texture." Every sentence is worth reading, but this is the moment in the book that most stood out to me. She describes painting a chair, turquoise, red, purple, all the colors beneath the final blue. The details around it are reminiscent of her crowded writing room ("on the floor a cup of hot chocolate and that pink cupcake in the silver paper with a red cherry on top") and the texture of the chair becomes the texture of the writing itself ("over time, you learn to cultivate texture, a ric...

Since I was focusing on NaNoWriMo for most of November, I didn't get a huge amount of reading done and it was all nonfiction, except for books I finished at the very beginning of the month. Therefore, I got in both an sf book for Science Fiction Month ( Ancillary Mercy ) and a few books for Nonfiction November. I'll let you know in December, but I have also probably finished Book Riot's Read Harder challenge and Popsugar's 2015 Reading Challenge . I heard about the latter toward the beginning of the year and decided to see if my reading would complete it without purposefully doing so. I only saw Book Riot's challenge more recently, but I think I will similarly have completed at least most of it without trying. 61. Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg I started reading this awhile back, in slow stages, and finished as I was beginning NaNoWriMo. It's a series of vignettes about writing, life, and Zen Buddhism that are helpful for putting you in the...

"If you want a room to write in, just get a room...If it doesn't leak, has a window, heat in the winter, then put in your desk, bookshelves, a soft chair, and start writing." "We make these exquisite rooms of silence and then long to write in noisy, chaotic cafés...It is natural in our studios to have books lying open, at least one cup half filled with old black tea, papers spread out, piles of unanswered letters, a graham cracker box, shoes kicked under the desk, a watch with a broken second hand lying on the floor." -"The Writing Studio," Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg, p.103 I'm reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg as part of my preparation for NaNoWriMo, and nothing relieved me like reading the words above. I've been trying to perfect "my room" for more than a year now, and it's still messy and full of boxes and papers and piles on the floor (read: books). I've b...