Tag Archives: The New Yorker

Launching a Novel in the Digital Age

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Defying the digital age with a debut novel might seem a challenging task, but I do believe there are far more readers out there than headlines indicate, and I am delighted that so many of them are reaching for mine. Crazy String got her launch party and readers came through with support and encouragement, so big thanks is due, especially to those who are reading my novel while the baby naps, or before they head to work, or after giving feedback on a pile of student essays, or instead of all the distractions found on their many screens.

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Wandering

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Like most, I am enriched by words. Writing them, reading them, listening to and endlessly speaking them. Words arrive as gifts, born out of my imagination or within the printed material piled up throughout our home. In Kerri Andrews’ book, Wanderers, she wrote, “On foot, Woolf walks out into the fields and into her mind.” The two activities, walking and writing, mesh for me as well. Virginia Woolf cements the idea in her May 11, 1920 diary entry, “Directly one gets to work one is like a person walking, who has seen the country stretching out before.” On my daily wandering, I think endlessly about the characters dancing about in my head, as vividly as I sort out real-life dilemmas that need the same attention to pacing. Walking connects us to all that swirls about before pen hits paper or brush slides over canvas or spice gets sprinkled into the dish. Walking journeys us along the path inside and out. Books do too.

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The Slap

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After what seemed like the full-on advent of Spring we here in the Northeast were slapped hard by the return of frosty air and wind filled with snow. It was hard to take for sure when it hit us squarely across bared faces. I know I should have not fallen for the tease of ease, but I did, rather like an amateur in this region might have made. Quite similarly, I was swept up in the fanfare and glitter on Oscar night, the easy banter of those witty hosts, the hope that this year a more diverse and promising bank of recipients might hold their trophies high over head in pride. And they did. All of that. But the sting of that slap, that one violent recrimination captured by the ever present Eye, stings just as bad as the Arctic blast battering us back inside our homes. Back to wonder, how did we become a nation where shame is no longer felt when it is clearly earned?

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