the wives of bath

[quotespile]

They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.

Lemony Snicket, Who Could That Be at This Hour? (via quotespile)

[wivesofbath]

The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). I know, however, of a young chronophobiac who experienced something like panic when looking for the first time at homemade movies that had been taken a few weeks before his birth. He saw a world that was practically unchanged-the same house, the same people- and then realized that he did not exist there at all and that nobody mourned his absence. He caught a glimpse of his mother waving from an upstairs window, and that unfamiliar gesture disturbed him, as if it were some mysterious farewell. But what particularly frightened him was the sight of a brand-new baby carriage standing there on the porch, with the smug, encroaching air of a coffin; even that was empty, as if, in the reverse course of events, his very bones had disintegrated.

“Speak, Memory” by Vladimir Nabokov

[onetwoinfinity]

[wivesofbath]

Shakespeare and Company, Paris, July 2016 

[wivesofbath]

Shakespeare and Company, Paris, July 2016

[wivesofbath]

summer 2k16 for a wife of bath

This summer, I was an intern in the Books Marketing Department at Duke University Press. It’s been a blast, but I don’t want to reminisce too hard just yet! Instead, I want to share how I ended up at Duke in the first place and my main takeaway from the experience.

 So, once upon a time, also known as December of 2015, I knew I wanted to write a thesis. With no concrete ideas beyond that, I took to the stacks of Swem Library for hours at a time. I was curious to see what I was curious about.

 This free association was not the most efficient brainstorming strategy, but it worked. After a few spins, I had a list of books and authors that spoke to me. At the top: A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia by Tom Boellstorff and Cities From Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America edited by Brodwyn Fischer, Bryan McCann, and Javier Auyero. It blew my mind that books on totally unfamiliar subjects were so well-researched, so nice to look at, and so fun to read. So I checked out those two books, then as many other Duke titles as I could find.

At this point, I was on the prowl for a paid internship. Based on one phone call with a manuscript editor at a university press and a few blog posts (one of which helpfully suggested, “Love editing? Be an editor!”), I focused on editorial departments at publishing houses, as well as communications departments at think tanks.

 Duke was the first place I emailed. I heard back within two days—a promising sign, to say the least. Books Editorial was all set with student interns for the summer, but had I talked to Laura Sell in Books Marketing? The way it all worked out, I had my phone interview with Laura on my birthday. At the time, I was taking Amtrak to New York City to spend the weekend with my family (and was in a ridiculously good mood, which couldn’t have hurt). Not long after, Laura contacted me to offer me the internship.

 The best part? On my first day at the Press, I walked past a stack of Cities From Scratch, casually perched on a table in the front office.

 All of this is to say, I ended up at Duke because I wanted to work around books that I knew I liked reading. This summer, I had the chance to do just that. I also got to know the people and process behind the titles, which is just as fun. Another unexpected perk: I feel more prepared to write my thesis, though not about Latin America or Indonesia, having worked around serious scholarship all summer.

 In the big picture, though, my favorite part about the internship has been learning what academic publishing really is. Books Marketing covers so much territory: exhibits at conferences and museums, advertising, author events at bookshops, social media, and more. By learning more about Duke’s marketing strategies, I feel like I have learned about the industry as well.

 My favorite, favorite part has been learning how university presses use social media. Twitter is a great way to support individual authors and to connect titles with current events. Instagram may be on the rise for presses who know we all sometimes judge a book by its cover. Even Pinterest factors into some press’s brands. But the humble blog especially is thriving. University press blogs can feature longer, original reads that frame their titles and topics in the context of current events. For example, University of Chicago shared how Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion on a recent case cited one of their titles, MIT posted a Happy Birthday message to Alan Turing, and NYU featured a guest post by an author on the private prison in Orange Is the New Black. And, for University Press Week two years ago, Columbia expanded on its weekly roundup and did a themed celebration of posts, day by day, from around the country. I especially like that university presses can play to their strengths and expertise with these posts, from incorporating guest posts to sharing the timeline of a particularly time-sensitive book from start to finish, like the University of Georgia does here.

 And, as if these posts weren’t enough reason to show academic publishers some love, the Johns Hopkins University Press shared this tweet about the humble weasel. As I responded almost immediately, that is the kind of quality content that I have come to expect from our university presses.

 My time at Duke is coming to an end, but—if my obvious heart-eyes for this entire experience didn’t give it away—I hope that I am just getting started with this complicated, exciting field.  

   �2г2�t>�

[wivesofbath]

if you’re going to try, go all the way. there is no other feeling like that. you will be alone with the gods and the nights will flame with fire. do it, do it, do it. do it. all the way all the way. you will ride life straight to perfect laughter, it's the only good fight there is.

roll the dice, Charles Bukowski 

[wivesofbath]

Word on the Water, London

[wivesofbath]

Doom is the House without the Door- Tis entered from the Sun- And then the Ladder's thrown Away, Because Escape - is done- Tis varied by the Dream Of what they do outside - Where squirrels play - and Berries die - And Hemlocks - bow - to God-

Emily Dickinson, “475″

[wivesofbath]

I see again my schoolroom in Vyra, the blue roses of the wallpaper, the open window. Its reflection fills the oval mirror above the leathern couch where my uncle sits, gloating over a tattered book. A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth, pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.

Vladimir Nabokov, “Speak, Memory”

[bookbaristas]

One of my best gal pals is in NYC for the next couple of weeks and I obvs had to bring her to the coolest spot in town! 😏 @strandbookstore

[wivesofbath]

writing and identity

Riley's post about anxiety and writing is spot-freakin-on, particularly this gem: "I think the degree of anxiety or pressure you feel writing is related to the amount that you feel your writing is a part or a reflection of you as a person."

Growing up in this weirdly competitive suburb, I basically always felt at home with words, probably because they weren’t people. Before I could read, I would wake one of my sisters up before she caught the bus to school and she would read to me (#bless); when I learned to read, I learned to love the ritual of reading, the selection and care of the book itself, as well as the story and words on the page. Writing was the next step. In second grade, as other kids in my class began to form identities (developmental psych is not my forte but second grade sounds about right) as athletic or artistic or funny, I learned to call myself a writer, because why not. That identification was a game-changer. It gave me this sense of confidence and, in a way, got everyone off my back, because I had A Thing. This idea that writing was part of my identity, and writing itself, even helped me make friends in elementary and middle schools. Case in point, I wrote this historical fiction diary series called Dear Davey about the Revolutionary War with one girl in fourth grade and still think it’s the most adorable, ambitious, historically inaccurate little thing.  .

Anyways, in high school, as my social anxiety ramped up, I became more private about everything, especially writing. It makes total sense and no sense at all, like most things about high school: I was terrified that people would judge my writing, then judge me, so I stopped sharing drafts and even ideas altogether. The story may have stopped there, and I’m sure it does for tons and tons of sensitive, creative, self-conscious people.

Luckily, the same sister who would read to me before school told me to just roll with the newfound writing/sharing anxiety and to check out this online platform called National Novel Writing Month. For those of you who haven’t heard of the platform and program, it’s a national campaign to write and log 50,000 words during the month of November, with forum discussions and meet-ups active throughout the year. Granted, NaNoWriMo emphasizes quantity, not quality; the only requirement for a profile is that you update your word count so that other writers can see it. Some people go ALL OUT and write, like, half a million words or something obscene. But the beauty of the website for fourteen-year-old me was that I didn’t have to share a single sentence of my own writing. That good faith was what got me out of my writing rut that year and through graduation, with the odd and liberating realization: your writing doesn’t have to be “good” to matter to you and to touch other people, if you want to let it.

I'm still an anxious person and I still hesitate to share my writing, but I don't feel like I have anxiety about writing anymore, if that makes sense. NaNoWriMo helped break down the barrier of thinking that writing needed to be the reflection of who I am. This blog, my lyrics, poetry that I'll share with strangers next semester in a creative writing seminar, short essays I've been working on, and even academic writing are all component parts of me as a writer now, and all have their time, place, and meaning. More importantly, though, I think that being a writer demands that you have to recognize other parts of who you are, otherwise you put all of your identity eggs in one basket (oof, not my best metaphor). In other words, even self-identified writers have to be more than the sum of what they've written.

[wivesofbath]

writing and anxiety

I saw a really cool HONY post the other night about an author speaking on her intense anxiety about an approaching deadline, even though she'd been writing novels for 25 years. One of the comments on facebook was something like "25 years as a writer and she still has anxiety over a deadline, that's the mark of a true writer."

Even though I'm not writing any novels, I extrapolated her experience to my own. I get extreme anxiety when beginning or finishing important writing projects. But for the writer, you could say that any project is an important project. I think the degree of anxiety or pressure you feel writing is related to the amount that you feel your writing is a part or a reflection of you as a person. It's both a good and a bad thing that I tie myself, my self worth even, to my ability as a writer. Is that the mark of a true writer? I think it's at least a part of it.

It can be crippling, to agonize over the beginning and ending of a piece, because it can prevent you from actually doing anything. Writing anxiety for me is like having someone leaning over my shoulder, questioning every word I type, asking me if it's good enough. It's good to question yourself a little, it's good to have some doubt in your abilities - true confidence can border on arrogance, hubris, etc., but I think doubt can also be the enemy of the writer. In the same way hubris can be the fatal flaw, so can doubt. It can make you incapable of doing anything. I think there has to be a balance between confidence and doubt, a sort of middle ground, where you have enough anxiety to question your abilities but not too much to where you don't think they will ever be good enough.

It's a fine line that I can't say I've found yet. My anxiety has hindered me as a writer, for sure. But it has also helped me realize that I am intrinsically a writer, and always will be. Connecting myself, my soul even, to what I produce, has made me value what I can do when I eventually complete something. I will always feel the twinge of fear, the stomach drops, the sheer panic, when I'm working against a deadline. But let's not forget I always wait until the deadline has almost approached to start anything. That twinge, that fear, that's something I need to feel to be pushed. Writing has pushed me to the brink of everything, because I let it. I let myself get to that edge, that edge of pressure and performance anxiety, and I pull myself away from it.

It's being my own hero, in a way. Writing has saved me from my anxiety, and has maintained it. It seems paradoxical, but writing is helping me find that balance between confidence and doubt, between anxiety and success.

Just a little realization I’ve come to lately from having to produce 3 samples of ORIGINAL POETRY when I am NOT a poet - 

Riley

[wivesofbath]

I shall write it in my diary tonight. What? That a burnt child loves the fire. I am not even singed. My wings are untouched.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray 

[mydaisysoul]

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[fruitjuiceandlaugh-blog]