on blogs, book reviews, and pie

another autumn, another busy season. here’s a short list of what i’ve been up to:

* i’ve started blogging for afterellen. lesbian pop culture coverage, be still my heart!

* my review of the dark novella cut away is up on lambda literary

* i’ve decided to throw my hat into the ring for just a few mfa programs (for those who are curious: rutgers, city college, iowa nfp, lesley, fairleigh dickinson.) let it be said that it is SO MUCH EASIER to apply to graduate school after the first go ’round. screw you, gres! take that, transcript hell! i could ask for letters of recommendation in my sleep!

* i’m taking the nanowrimo plunge this month. just to keep things interesting. please note that i have a) never written a novel and b) have so many other things to do this month. but thirty days and nights of literary abandon? count me in!

* the deep dish pumpkin pie is back at birdbath/city bakery. BRING. IT. ON.

Rejection

From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: An Objective Look At My Seven Graduate School Rejections As Compared To Other Historic Rejections.

…yeah, that sounds about right.

What I Did On My Internet Vacation

Last week I turned off the internet for a whole week, and filled my time instead with books, bike rides, naps, writing, friends, more naps, my cat, and more television than I usually allow myself (I know, I know). All that said, never have I been happier to see the friendly arch of bars on my Airport, signaling a return to the beloved and exciting interweb. The week began with an article of how we use Twitter to shape identity, and I felt smug with relevance in my experiment. However, would it be rich with epiphany the whole week through? Would I be able to make something of it? Here are my top ten most awesome things and not so awesome things about roughing’ in sans internet.

Ten Most Awesome Things About My Internet Vacation

1. I relax. Like, I really relax. Maybe it has more to do with being on my first week of official vacation from work, but from Day One of No Internet, there’s a tangible sense of relief. The only communicative device I have to tend to is my cell phone. I return phone calls and text messages promptly (not my usual behavior when I’m juggling e-mail, Facebook, Gchat, etc.), and otherwise don’t worry about it. A girl could get used to this.

2. Getting lunch with that friend I’ve been meaning to hang out with forever. Especially in New York, I feel like I’ve always got a laundry list of friends and old friends that I’ve been meaning to e-mail, check up on, hang out with, grab lunch with. So this week I finally called some old friends and make plans to see them. It’s fantastic, the same kind of joy I get when I bump into someone I haven’t seen for a long time on the street, except this is like, planned joy. Note to self: call more friends more often.

3. Finishing a draft of a story straight through. During one particular streak in a coffee shop, I’m able to write a story straight through, beginning to end. The girl beside me has her laptop open and in the twenty or so minutes that I glance at her screen, I see that she’s looked at her Gmail, Gchat, Facebook, Twitter, a BBC article, Chelsea Clinton’s wedding photos, some recipe page, and the schedule for Southpaw. I’m happy not to have the distractions.

4. I heart everyday interactions. Maybe it comes from not filtering through 300+ Facebook and Twitter updates on the daily, but I find myself even more appreciative of everyday conversations. When I buy my coffee at a café in the city, I end up talking for fifteen minutes with the guy at the counter about the coffee’s origin and roaster. At the end of the day, this type of interaction hasn’t faded into the stream of constant information, but remains with me as a high point of my day. Is this what life was like back when?

5. My morning routine. I’m not a morning person, but with time off, I think I can at least try, especially if my morning can start at, oh, noon. My usual morning routine includes coffee and e-mail, where I find myself sucked in to the chaos of my to do lists and must-reply-soon stress minutes after waking up. Instead, this week I introduce some routines I’ve always wanted to do, or have gotten away from. Upon waking, I make time to meditate. (I even light a candle!) I write morning pages a la Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I curl up with a book or my journal while I munch on my bagel. Morning never felt so awesome.

6. A new concert experience. Wednesday night a friend of mine takes me to see Robyn, the Swedish pop star who had that hit Show Me Love in the 90s and has since come out with a dance pop comeback album. For the first time in a long time, I’m at a concert just to see the concert. I’m not Twittering, I haven’t told everyone I know on Facebook how excited I am, I’m not snapping away photos on a camera phone to post as soon as I get home (or, as I watch the boy in front of me do as we exit after the encore, post photos immediately to Facebook from his iPhone). There’s a glow of screens and smart phones in the crowd, and I’m glad to have nowhere to look but the stage. True, I would’ve had some choice tweets to share with the world if allowed (“You guys, she’s eating a banana. In the middle of the song.”) But Robyn is the perfect performer to be totally present for: she’s got an infectious energy and such crazy cute dance moves that I can’t take my eyes off of her. If I feel like I’m sixteen again, is it the lack of technology or the uber-cheesy feeling I get during the group sing alongs? Maybe, joyfully, it’s both.

7. Getting shit done. I moved into my current apartment three months ago, and for two of those three months, there’s been a mess of shelves, brackets, bags, screws, knick-knacks and other junk behind my bed. I regularly look at said junk and lament when I’ll ever have the time or resources to install the shelves. Surely they’d be a lot more useful when not taking up space on my floor. So this week, I finally ask a friend with a drill to come over and help me out. I make him waffles, and he puts up my shelves. Ta-da! Now that wasn’t so hard after all.

8. This American Life. I love Ira Glass, and I love the This American Life pod casts, but damn if I ever actually listen to them. Anytime I start to listen to one, I usually drift off into a matrix of distraction through the internet. So this week, it was bliss, to listen to an episode while rearranging my bookshelves by color (desperate times, folks, desperate times), or cooking up a slew of farmer’s market vegetables. This may be one of the choice habits I save from this detox.

9. Make do with what you have. Without direct access to endless reading and video, I’m forced to look around at what I have, which is, luckily, plenty. Finally, I sink my teeth into the stack of literary magazines I bought back at Housing Works in June. I cross-reference Paris Review interviews I read with the author’s short stories and novels, buried in my shelves. I watch that Netflix DVD that’s been sitting on my desk for weeks. Goodness knows I have a lot of unread and unappreciated stuff. It’s nice to finally spend time with it.

10. I feel more present. It’s going to sound hokey, but it’s true. I feel more present in my every day. Maybe my attention span is just happy to not be flitting from one thing to the next, or maybe I’m just desperate for some metaphysical benefit of denying myself the internet for seven days. But seriously—when I’m on my bike, at a dance party, lying in bed, listening to the band that practices one block over that I hear from my living room, talking to a friend, at the grocery store, or putting away laundry—I just feel a little bit more there.

…I’d be lying my face off if I said my internet detox was all roses and good feelings. Here were some of my lower moments:

Ten Not So Awesome Things About My Internet Vacation

1. How Do I Share This With You? On day one, I read a super compelling Modern Love piece in the New York Times. There, curled on my couch, I have a sudden pang of panic—I want to talk about this with friends, but how? This is the exact kind of article I’d race to post, and would love to count every slight comment or ‘Like’ as conversation with others about it. But here in the real world, how does this happen? Do I, like, call a friend, and ask if they’ve read it? (I don’t). More so, I’m dying to Google the identity of the kite-flying poet the column pays homage to—do I know her? Do I like her poetry? I make do with clipping the article and noting to talk it up later, but still.

2. Suddenly television looks really good to me. Most of my television comes in the form of DVDs, but during this week, I decide it’s okay to turn on the boob tube. A lot. Monday has me watching three hours of The Bachelorette, which is more time than I spent with a book that day. Not exactly how I want my internet detox to look.

3. Being out of the loop. I’m sorry, Prop 8 was overturned in California? Salt N Pepa played in Crown Heights Monday night? So-and-so and so-and-so broke up?

4. Cross streets mean little to me. Okay, I know I talked a good game about how I should be able to navigate this city sans Google map, but it was so much harder than expected. When I decided to swing by a friend’s art show on Saturday, the Long Island City cross streets (44th Ave and 45th Road? 26-23 what??) meant nothing, and I had to call a friend to explain to me a) where it was and b) how I would bike there. So much for roughing’ it.

5. I’m bored. I admit it. It is so easy to get bored without the internet. So. Easy. I look longingly at the Web icon on my phone. I wonder if I have any incredibly exciting and pertinent e-mails to look at. I wish I could stream the new Arcade Fire album. I wish this book I was reading were more exciting. I wish somebody would call me. Like, now.

6. Can’t you Google this? Instant information never looked so good. Here’s a partial list of things I wished I could Google this past week: what did Bram Stoker write besides Dracula, Is Dominica the DR now, Jean Rhys, photography classes for teens, flights from Fort Lauderdale to NYC, whale sharks, Breadloaf Bakeless Prize, Kelis’ discography, how far is Bethany Beach from Rehoboth Beach, tattoos of the Brooklyn Bridge, when did Spirited Away come out, what do the colors of jelly sex bracelets mean, how many shapes of silly bands exist, vintage poster frames, what does Winchester cheese go well with.

7. I’m not the machine of productivity I wanted to be. Number of short stories I wanted to draft out during my internet vacation? Five. Number of short stories actually drafted and written? Two. Not bad, I know, but let’s just say I wasn’t the model of discipline I thought I would be. Apparently you can take away the internet, but you still have loads of procrastination.

8. Napping. See: procrastination, above. If you ever wondered if it was possible to take more than two naps a day, it is.

9. Are my library books overdue? There they are, on my desk. When did I renew them? I can’t remember. Where’s that little slip of paper that tells me…drat, I don’t know. Well, I’ll just look online. Ugh. No, I won’t. Well, they’ll send me an e-mail if…ugh. Nevermind. Is that branch on Mulberry open now? I’ll just check…Eff.

(P.S.—They’re totally, totally overdue).

10. Knowing I’m gonna have to sort through heaps of e-mail and maybe make some sort of plan of moderation for the future. As the end of my detox approaches, I’m both elated and dreadful at the prospect of opening my e-mail. Plus, it occurs to me that any lessons learned will only be retained if I make a plan of moderation for the future. How many hours a day do I want to go on the internet? Should I quit Facebook? Should I cap my Facebook time? What’s the purpose of social networking? Why do I have a Twitter account? Maybe I should turn my e-mail off every evening. Maybe I should only reply to e-mails in the morning. Maybe I should only use Gchat when necessary. Maybe I shouldn’t use my phone to check e-mail. …I’ll think about it.

(Side note: Out of the 384 e-mails awaiting me when I returned, only about 65 of them were e-mails that were important or that I wanted to keep. Nothing could so clearly illustrate the clog of newsletters/advertisements/left over mailing lists from that show you went to six years ago like ignoring your e-mail for seven days. This week will be devoted to Project: Unsubscribe).

As for moderation, I’m crafting a plan to keep me in line. As for the internet, sweet mercy, I’ve never been so happy to see you.

xo, c

Get Off The Internet: My One Week Detox

Starting August 1st, I’m taking a seven day self-imposed internet detox.

This will be a mash-up of what I’ve seen some bloggers do, plus my own experiences when I’ve unplugged myself and reaped the benefits. I’m one of those people who often has ten or more tabs open–Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Google Docs, Google Cal, TeuxDeux, 101Cookbooks, NYTimes.com, Gothamist, Flavorpill–and have more and more found myself forgetting small things and cutting out what’s important to me: reading, writing, and routine.

So for the first week of August, I’m taking a break. I won’t be working, so won’t have to worry about the overlap of ordering finger paint or Googling fabric recycling for my boss with my total detox. I’m planning to put up a vaca message on my e-mail, leave a call-me-if-you-need-me post on Facebook, and turn off my airport. In return, I’m hoping for quality writing time, catch up on the stack of paperbacks and literary magazines on my desk, and a general sense of relief that I’m not juggling fourteen tasks and eighteen thoughts every moment. We’ll see if I can do it without a slip–checking e-mail on my craptastic Nokia in the middle of the night in a bought of insomnia, Twittering via text message, jumping onto Facebook just to see if anyone misses me. God knows I love me some internet. Here are some answers to some hypothetical questions about problems that could arise from being sans internet for seven days:

What about your weather.com addiction?

I get the paper on the weekends, and it gives a broad forecast for the coming week. Otherwise, I’m sure I’ll just carry my umbrella with me everywhere in case of a pop up summer storm I wasn’t told about.

What if someone really, really, really awesome and important sends you an e-mail about something awesome and important?

I’m gonna include my phone number in my e-mail vaca automatic-reply thingie, so I’m hoping if something is dire (or awesome), the person will gimmie a ring.

What if one of the dozen of MFA programs that rejected you or couldn’t offer funding suddenly decides they love your writing and/or has found a bundle of scholarship cash hidden in someone’s desk drawer and desperately wants to know if you want the spot?

Pssshhhtttt.

What if you get invited to some killer party via Facebook and everyone assumes you know about it and that you’re not RSVPing because you’re a jerk who doesn’t wanna go?

I know, I plan a scary proportion of my life via Facebook events and seeing what my friends are doing through their status updates. However, it’s just one week. Friends will text me if there’s some killer thing happening that they think I should come to.

What if you need to Google Map some place you want to go to?

This August makes 9 years of living in New York, so I think I can forgo maps for a bit. I’m mostly hoping I can survive a week without compulsively plotting every bike lane and block that I’m traveling on.

What about all the checking and updating of your bank account that you do through the internet? What about making sure your bills are getting paid and you’re not overdrafting all over the place?

Online banking is totally my crutch, and I use it like normal people use checkbooks, so I’m planning to make sure all my affairs are in order, then take out a bit of cash and work off that instead of my debit card, just to keep things cool.

What if you’re reading a book and it starts talking about someone or something that you just have to know more about and you can’t Wikipedia it or Google image search it right there and then?

Apparently, the word Wikipedia is derived from something called Encyclopedias. Which I can find at something called the Library. Tedious, yes, but I’m hoping that any hands-on sleuthing I’ll have to do during my detox will be totally worth it.

What if Lady Gaga releases a new video and it’s totally hot and queer and you’ll absolutely positively die to see it?

It’s. Just. Seven. Days.

…is there anything I’m missing? I have more than a week to geek out on my daily internet dosage before taking a plunge. I’m trying to get my fill of cat youtube videos and photo tagging before the end of the month.

xo,

c

And The Heart Says What?

Today The Awl summed up in 71 words the eyebrow-arching fluff that was this weekend’s NYTBR piece on Emily Gould and Sloane Crosley. Two young women in the city of New York write books about being young women in the city of New York…so? I usually jump at any whiff of the words “female,” “city,” and “memoir,” but this review was just…odd. I was puzzled the first time around, when Emily Gould, ex-Gawkerite, got a full NYT Magazine article about, well, herself. Something about how she cheated on her boyfriend? It wasn’t memorable, and it wasn’t New York Times worthy, I thought.  Now, in this book review Maria Russo counts in Gould’s favor that “she’s a looker,” (excuse me?) and by the end of the article, all she and Sloane Crosley have in common are, well, the exact points The Awl makes: they have vaginas. They’re young and live in a city. They wrote books about themselves.

My biggest sticking point, though: Russo remarks, “After nearly a decade of New York life Gould is sadder but, she insists, no wiser.” For serious? I’m coming up on nine years in New York and am certainly both happier and wiser than the 18 year old girl who first arrived here. Maybe it’d be different if I came here in my twenties with a B.A. from some Northeast school instead of plowing head first into the city, but even so–she sounds dismal. If the media is truly this interested in first person accounts of what it means to be a young woman in the city of New York, I’ve got a few stories to tell.

zine + lady gaga =

This is Prison for Bitches, a Lady Gaga fanzine that my friend ep turned me on to. Apparently there’s a comic book store in Williamsburg (gah?) where you can get a copy. My plan is to snag one this weekend and cozy up to some awesome pop culture DIY crit.

spring

My first book review for the incredible Lambda Literary is up here.

Also, I haven’t forgotten you. Also, I’m moving. Also, I’m not going to grad school this year. Also, I love you.

xo,

c

the view from March

So here we are, the month of letters and e-mails, phone calls, thin envelopes, apologies, and congratulations. I’ve heard from six of my twelve schools: four rejections, one acceptance, and one waitlist. The acceptance, to the University of Memphis, was the first school I heard from (O happy day). While it’s a terrific up and coming program, they cannot offer funding (their usual eight to ten TAs have been slashed to just one) until perhaps the second semester, or the second year. Out of state tuition runs upward of $19,000. When I set out to apply to MFA programs, I knew one thing was sure: I could not pay for it. I’m still paying off my undergraduate; getting into debt for an MFA is just impractical.

The incredible part? I’m not really bummed. Sure, nobody likes to get a rejection letter; and, yes, if a school accepted me and could give full aid I’d most likely go. But there’s a giddy sense of relief in knowing that I’m not done with Brooklyn and Brooklyn is not done with me. I knew in applying to 12 schools that anything could happen: I could not get in anywhere; I could get in somewhere; I could get in somewhere and decide not to go. And, yeah, I have six more schools to hear from; if, say, Purdue or U of Florida called me tomorrow and said, ‘You’re in! Full funding!’ I’d most likely be scouring for boxes to pack up my room and planning on good bye parties. (Side note: most schools, I think, have sent out acceptances by now, and what I might hear is only a rejection or a waitlist. Even without visiting the MFA Blog (my hiatus suits me well) I’m still pretty sure).But otherwise, my current life–a happy gig, grand apartment, swell friends, bike rides, dreamy urban grit, freelance gigs, the center of the universe–is the best plan b anyone could ask for.

My thinking now has turned to what a writing life in Brooklyn will continue to look like, with more discipline (lord how I need more discipline), more craft, more finished stories. In an offhand Facebook post regarding another rejection, I joked about creating a makeshift MFA for myself here. Now it sounds like not a bad idea. The DIY MFA, as I’d like to call it, is probably not so hard to whip up: a rigorous writing schedule, a workshop group, peer readers and revisers, a reading list, book club, craft discussions (The Paris Review Book of Interviews alone could substitute as an MFA in craft studies), field trips to the dozens of literary events in the city, organized readings, zine publication, lit mag submissions.

It could work, couldn’t it?

I’m also obsessing about Where to get more writing done (it’s avoidance, I know; the desk doesn’t make me a writer, writing makes me a writer). A new Brooklyn endeavor called PowderKeg, a women’s writing space, is inviting (albeit out of my price range). I’ve heard of some good space swaps between creatives: using your friend’s desk and less distracting space while they use yours. And as far as sharing work, there are promising spaces cropping up on the internet, like Fictonaut, a community of high quality fiction and other writing.

I know that just five months ago I was completely embroiled in applications and my MFA fate. It seems far away now, less weighted, just something I did. A marathon (an expensive and risky marathon). And while it’s not completely over (I’m anticipating more thin rejection letters, which I read in the bathroom with my cat Professor when I get home from work, then add to a haphazard pile of papers below my desk), I’m committed to just keep plugging along, writing, opening the mailbox, then writing some more.

get yrself some education

In 10th grade Health class, our midterm was multiple choice. It was for this test, which included the slim Sex Ed unit we had covered, that Ms. DiCecco told us that there were two questions we could cross out: 88 and 89. I don’t recall much of health class, or Sex Ed that year, but I do remember the two questions we were specifically told to ignore.

True or False.

88. Masturbation is natural and acceptable.

89. Homosexuality is natural and acceptable.

There I was, sixteen in a small town, secretly reading any lesbian fiction I could find at the library. And then there’s the particularly snout nosed teddy bear I had getting friendly with since the age of twelve. Here were two important questions to my sexual education. And they were both being skipped.

Now, maybe, you think, some time has passed. Things are probably a little progressive now, yeah? Not so. SO not so. Sex Ed isn’t even mandatory in NYC public schools (something that Planned Parenthood of New York City is currently campaigning to change, thank goodness).

This all came up tonight at an event hosted by Paradigm Shift, New York City’s Feminist Community. Author and journalist Jessica Valenti, of feministing.com and other fame, gave a reading and talk on her most recent book, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women. I’m not one for theory or non fiction, trust me, but Valenti’s smart and engaging assessment of what abstinence culture (think promise rings, purity balls, federally funded conferences) means for young women today is brilliant. She tackles the whole idea of virginity, its origins, its sweeping effect on womanhood and the worth of girls in America. (Her talk included such outrageous and unforgettable asides as the abstinence analogy of a girl (never boys, mind you) being like a lollipop–every time they have sex before marriage, they become a licked and poorly re-wrapped piece of candy, never to be new again; or the fact that “vaginal rejuvenation” (that’s reattaching the hymen, folks) is the fastest growing plastic surgery procedure in America). For the hour and a half talk and Q & A, I was totally engrossed , and had the distinct feeling that I was listening to a feminist and writer whose work would be read and discussed and held up as pivotal in the discussion of sex in America for years to come.

Part of the event’s proceeds were generously donated to the beloved Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, an organization which is hopefully giving girls back some of the self-esteem they’re robbed of in a culture that’s constantly putting them down.

If you’ve ever thought about sex; if you work with youth; if you have a son or daughter; if you had Sex Ed in school; if you didn’t have Sex Ed in school; if you “lost” your virginity (or “took” someone else’s): read this book. You won’t regret it.

xo, c