Read the signs more carefully.

Summer and Winter by Rozefire

I’ll be leaving
In the fairest of the seasons.

Sarah Kay’s TEDtalk

When beautiful, amazing things fall out of the sky, be ready to catch them.

Find more about Sarah Kay and Project Voice.
See Sarah Kay on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam .

Alex Stoddard’s 365 Project

I have a current obsession with Alex Stoddard’s photo stream, which features his nearly finished 365 project; his imagination and talent blow me away. He’s only seventeen!

Frances Burney: Making Me Look Like A Wussy Loser Since 1778

One of my final research papers this year is on Frances Burney’s Evelina. Boiled down to its most basic themes, Evelina is a variation of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela without the parts that make you bash your forehead against a hard surface/the book itself (though fainting women who dive onto sofas in despair are present in both works). Sometimes I call it Pamela: Now With Fewer Lovable Rapists. Sorry, Samuel Richardson.

The point of this post isn’t actually to make fun of Samuel Richardson, or make Evelina sound like a Pamela rip-off (it’s not). My reason for bringing all of this up is to present the writing-process of Frances Burney as inspiration for anyone daunted by the process of writing their own novel.

Extensive research (reading the introduction to the novel) revealed that Burney wrote all three volumes of Evelina in a top-secret closet lair. She was a shadowy stealth author. At the time, a woman who was compelled to write for pleasure alone became a source of shame to her family. Unless her writing brought in a steady income, she had no business doing it. The household work being top priority, Burney considered her creative drive to be a dangerous addiction. She often wrote prose under the pretense that she was writing letters to relatives. There were times when she wrote under the cover of night, like a ninja. At some point, she burned all of her early work (including early drafts of Evelina) in a ceremonious bonfire, hoping to escape the demon grip of storytelling. However, Burney eventually gave in to temptation and periodically hid in a closet to write her massive three-volume novel. A half page at a time.

Whatevs.

When volumes one and two were completed, Burney copied her manuscript in a “feigned hand” (her handwriting was known by publishers because of her father’s work, as she was his secretary). When the manuscript was finally complete, she submitted it anonymously by getting her brother to dress up as an older man and deliver it to city publishers she had contacted by mail. She hoped the work would be published one volume at a time, the potential success of the first two volumes thus allowing her to write the third in the light of day. However, when publishers insisted the novel be printed as a whole, she didn’t even punch a mirror or make eighteenth-century swears. She begrudgingly returned to her five-minutes-a-day-in-a-closet routine until the novel was complete. Evelina received high critical acclaim, and Burney went on to write several delightful novels of ridiculous length – in the light of day.

If Frances Burney can write three volumes under Number 4 Privet Drive-esque conditions, surely I can write a single volume of my own this year, no?

Austin Kleon’s How To Steal Like An Artist

I came across this article by way of my friend Jessie Durham, an illustrator and designer of mind-boggling talent. As I later told her, finding this article was like finding a little treasure. I’ll not say anything more than this: no matter where you are creatively, Austin Kleon’s advice will turn a light on. You can find it here, plus more of his notes on writing and drawing here

Yowayowa Camera Woman, levitating all over the place

I love Natsumi, aka Yowayowa Camera Woman, and her levitating self-portraits.

Paris 1962

Tom Palumbo’s flickr photostream.

Abe: Paloma’s Nest Egg

Friday Five

The Sister Project: Celebrating sisters of all kinds, an idea I wish I had conjured up first!

Snuggly winter gear: Cutest coats and warmest boots.

Kinetic art by Casey Curran: Her pieces come alive! It makes me think of the ticking clocks scene in Pinnochio. This was sent to me by Jon, he’s always finding neat art and thoughtfully sending it my way.

Exile in Guyville: It’s been a while since my last Liz Phair phase. I was twelve when my brother loaned me a copy of What’s Up Matador. It was then that Liz Phair’s Stratford-On-Guy became my obsession. I also have this hilarious memory of playing Cat Power’s song Nude as the News in the car with my father and best friend, expecting them to marvel at my musical taste. They begged me to turn it off.

A candid letter to the two pygmy marmoset babies who live on my left index and middle fingers.

Her Morning Elegance

By Oren Lavie (via creature comforts).