June 2011
31 posts
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“My brother and I used to play a game. I’d point to a chair. “THIS IS...”
– Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)
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Hey, my piece was on public radio yesterday. →
Here’s the copy from the site:
NO WORDS
Producer Shining Li doesn’t have much in common with her younger brother. He’s eight - she’s a junior at Duke. But she realized one thing they share - a desire to make sense of death.
You can stream it at the bottom of the page. :)
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“That night, when I was feeling particularly troubled and I had Carly in my...”
– Ellie M. (“Killer”)
Finished now. I’m convinced this girl’s going to sell big one of these days.
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“My wedding was crashed by a drunk man who had sworn he would kill me. The man...”
– Ellie M. (“Killer”)
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“When I heard the news, I dropped everything and flew to Memphis, literally. I...”
– Ellie M. (“Killer”)
More to come. Can’t resist.
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“Luckily, John was a little well off, so he paid for most of our rent and our...”
– Ellie M. (“Killer”)
So many gems from these writing kids. Ellie’s something like twelve years old. Spent five minutes laughing and wondering about what she could have meant.
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How to Land Your Kid in Therapy →
(from the Atlantic)
“The message we send kids with all the choices we give them is that they are entitled to a perfect life—that, as Dan Kindlon, the psychologist from Harvard, puts it, ‘if they ever feel a twinge of non-euphoria, there should be another option.’ Mogel puts it even more bluntly: what parents are creating with all this choice are anxious and entitled kids...
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Some silly faces.
Something that just occurred to me. I’m sure someone knows. I’m just not savvy enough. What’s the difference between these discouraging/discouraged emoticons?
x___x
T___T
O__O
.___.
=___=
Anyone?
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“George knew he had no way to send his letter. But since he believed so much in...”
– Mara (“The Spell from Ms. McGee”)
Mara is an eight-year-old who attends workshop at the creative writing non-profit at which I’m currently interning. In her story, George is a kid whose parents live far away in a submarine.
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“It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise) (via fwriction)
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“I lack the lyrical. I manage love too well. Even when I burn I don’t sing,...”
– J.M. Coetzee (Disgrace)
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“During this time Hemingway composed ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ a novel...”
– Marty Beckerman (The Heming Way: How to Unleash the Booze-Inhaling, Animal-Slaughtering, War-Glorifying, Hairy-Chested, Retro-Sexual Legend Within… Just Like Papa!) (as quoted on Salon.com)
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“All she could remember now was how much they had hated each other, Jessica and...”
– Francine Pascal (Sweet Valley Confidential)
(I loved Sweet Valley as an impressionable middle-schooler, but this new follow-up is the worst of the worst. Plot and character inconsistencies, typos, bad writing, uninspired conflict. Most hilariously of all, Pascal butchers every obviously inserted...
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“Oh please. What would a brain do if not these sorts of exercises? I have no...”
– Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius)
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Calvin, Hobbes And Comic Book Biology →
(from NPR)
“Something isn’t right here. There are creatures among us — a puppy named Snoopy, a boy named Charlie Brown, a wild dagger-haired tempest called Calvin — who don’t ever, ever, ever grow up. They’re not allowed.”
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“But still, my feeling is that if you’re not self-obsessed, you’re...”
– Dave Eggers (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius) 