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Guest Blog by Isaac Bashevis Singer

July 14, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, books, writing, writers, motivational, inspiration, polyvore, Isaac Bashevis Singer, author 2 Comments →

The Almostgotits are still communing with Nature, so we thought we’d invite a much more articulate person to guest blog today. Allow me to introduce you to Isaac Bashevis Singer, a very dear man and very prolific writer in both English and Yiddish. It’s his birthday today, and these are his words:

A story to me means a plot where there is some surprise. Because that is how life is - full of surprises.

Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.

For those who are willing to make an effort, great miracles and wonderful treasures are in store.

If Moses had been paid newspaper rates for the Ten Commandments, he might have written the Two Thousand Commandments.

Sometimes love is stronger than a man’s convictions.

The analysis of character is the highest human entertainment.

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - when it begins to ignore the passions, the emotions - it becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

The waste basket is the writer’s best friend.

We write not only for children but also for their parents. They, too, are serious children.

What nature delivers to us is never stale. Because what nature creates has eternity in it.

When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.

I love a good manifesto

June 23, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, reviews, writing, humor, parenting, career change No Comments →

door with manifestos 

man·i·fes·to [man-uh-fes-toh] –noun, plural -toes. a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization

My daughter is a master of the form.  Her bedroom door has, for years, been a constantly- changing canvas of proclamations, notices, lists, edicts and declarations:

Ten Utterly Useless Things to Do (including) Making Pyjamas Out of Duct Tape.

Why I Should Not Have To Change the Cat Litter.

Lost: Deadly Bull Spider including How to Catch Him.

Warning: Contents Under Pressure.

I Should be Able To Go to Dollywood I Am Not A Slave.

She makes me immensely proud.

A couple of months ago, I found a website that contains nothing but manifestos: ChangeThis.com, an online newsletter whose aim is “to disrupt the media pattern with powerful, rational arguments from leading thinkers.” ChangeThis uploads several new manifestos a month, written by very well-known authors and business gurus as well as more obscure ones. Recent top-pick-topics appearing on ChangeThis include:

Writing in the midst of the Iowa floods

June 15, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, writing, Iowa summer festival of writing, Iowa flood 2 Comments →

Iowa City/Coralville flood photo
We got a little distracted this past week in Eastern Iowa. This photo from the University of Iowa’s online paper, for instance, is of the street I took into Iowa City just last Monday. More tomorrow.

Iowa at last

June 09, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, writing, vocation, Iowa summer festival of writing 2 Comments →

Keith Laumer Puzzle

Image by Bob Janes, used with permission

I’m in Iowa. Finally.

I’m not sure I will ever fly on a plane again, and certainly want to avoid Chicago O’Hare at all costs. I got there yesterday morning just fine, but only got out again mid-morning today — after having been bumped off three planes and thoroughly frisked by the security people besides.

The Iowa workshop, however, is absolutely fabulous.

This week I’m taking a “Humor Writing” course, and was able to catch up with what I missed from yesterday. We read and listened and laughed our heads off. Our teacher is also a playwright and she wants us to work on reading aloud — “performing” our work, too. I really wanted to go out to dinner and TALK with everyone after and then do some of my delicious homework, but I’m so tired I can’t manage another thing, and really feel like I’ll melt if I don’t try to get some sleep first.

Not Quite What I Was Planning: The Book (and TAG!)

March 31, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, blogging, books, reviews, writing, humor, networking 8 Comments →

Not Quite What I Was Planning (book cover)I’ve been tagged by Career Encourager.  Assignment: write a six word memoir.  Other rules: post your own memoir. Tag at least five more blogs. Link to them and leave comments. Acknowledge the blog that tagged YOU. Link to that blog as well. (Rules rewritten to fit my theme. You can also use original rules. Peggy’s better at rules than I!)

A terrific book inspired it all.  Not Quite What I Was Planning… Compilation from submissions to a contest.  My dad sent me a copy.  I have not thanked him yet.  You can buy one from here.   Good review in the New Yorker.   Entirely written in six word sentences.  Cleverly, they didn’t point this out. I’m not so clever, just slow.  

I liked their idea, so borrowed. 

The book is clever, funny, poignant.   Here’s a few of my favorites:

I’m my mother, and I’m fine.  
I was born. Some assembly required.
It was embarrassing, so don’t ask.
I think, therefore I am bald.

My, this is a daunting task. Tried to sum things up: failed.  Advisors say don’t think too much.  I wrote a few, can’t choose.

  • How did all of this happen?
  • More I live, less I know.
  • Clearly I am not an earthling.
  • Figured a few things out, eventually.

I choose to tag these blogs:

Come on now - YOU try one!

Thursday Things

March 27, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, books, writing, feminism, plagiarism, Nicole Johnson 5 Comments →

* The “Invisible Woman* essay was, indeed, written by Nicole Johnson, is fully subject to copyright, and her publicist tells me they were “deeply sad” when it “went global” without Nicole’s name on it.

* The Mommy Monk is one of several blogs which posted Nicole’s “Invisible Woman” piece without her name on it. That blog’s tagline is “MommyMonk: A woman attempting to find inner solitude in the daily self-denial of motherhood.” However, the blog’s author also claims to be a speaker/writer/teacher in addition to being a wife/mother. Not really the MOST solitary or anonymous person, then..

* Julie, who was very kind to comment here a couple of days ago, also posted Nicole’s piece without attribution. She claims this is not plagiarism as she doesn’t claim to have written it herself. Nevertheless, she also cites it as the central premise of her “Building Cathedrals” series of telecourses , for which she charges $20 per hour ($80 for the series). Which she markets under her own name. Nor does Julie seem quite so sanguine about folks resyndicating her own material: at the bottom of each page of her website it says © 2008 Julie L. Ford, All rights reserved

* It took me about 20 minutes to find the author of “Invisible Woman,” and 24 hours to contact and hear back from the author’s publicist. And I was just writing a post, not setting up a business. I’m just saying.

* My history-professor-husband tells me that we do, in fact, know many of the names of the artists, architects and builders who worked on medieval cathedrals. I am not done with this topic yet!

But I can talk about other things, too…

* I went out to lunch today. Why do waiters ask if you want “lettuce and tomato” but never if you want “tomato and lettuce?”

* It’s very funny to accidentally fall in step behind a man heading towards an adult bookstore. I did that today on my way home, and he kept turning around to look at me, nervously, almost as if *he* were the woman and *I* was a large, threatening man. When I realized where he was going, though, it all made sense. I should have followed him right into the store to see what he would do. Some day I’m going to do that, have been wanting to ever since that place opened a few blocks from my house. I think I’ll get all dressed up like a nice church lady, with a cardigan and hand bag, wander in as if by mistake, and start poking around, asking all sorts of questions, like “what is THIS is for?”

At least *Huckabee* got the joke

February 25, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: writing, humor, jokes 4 Comments →

Humor and intelligence: one of our newspaper’s AP syndicaters seems to lack both. (I’m referring to the the source of those brief celebrity bits that our local paper always has on page two.. once they had Tony Blair married to Queen Elizabeth, attending an event with their son Prince Phillip. I’ve clipped & saved that “totally dumb Americans” column for all eternity….)

Anyway, they had one today about Mike Huckabee’s Saturday Night Live appearance over the weekend. The paper was crowing about how ironically clueless he is… he was on the “Weekend Update” segment (the skit where they all play news achors) and Huckabee announced he was staying in the prez race but wouldn’t overstay his welcome if the time came to leave. And then the skit moved on but Huckabee wouldn’t get off the stage, despite “repeated cues” from other cast members.

Um… hello? That’s called COMEDY, people???

Boat and Breakfast: Salmon Quiche

February 18, 2008 By: almostgotit Category: blogging, writing, humor, food, recipes, Emily Anderson No Comments →

I’m guest blogging this week over at the Rocky Road of Love, where foodies Sam and Harry have finally married each other and are off on their honeymoon. I’ve been trying to guess where they are and what they might be eating. Today I’ve got them staying at a floating resort in Canada, accessible only by sea plane, feeding them a wonderful salmon quiche (recipe provided!) Come by for a visit!

Madeleine L’Engle, RIP

September 08, 2007 By: almostgotit Category: Uncategorized, writing, writers, Madeleine L'Engel 2 Comments →

Madeleine L'Engel in 2004

Photo by MSNBC

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

I do not think that I will ever reach a stage when I will say, “This is what I believe. Finished.” What I believe is alive … and open to growth.

Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth.

Author Madeleine L’Engle died yesterday, at the age of 88 — still far too soon. God’s Peace, Madeleine.

More amazing spam poetry

August 31, 2007 By: almostgotit Category: writing, humor, poetry No Comments →

Naturally I only discover an idea after several others have already picked it up and run far, far away with it.

Kristin writes poetry using only the subject lines from the hundreds of pieces of spam she receives. Here’s her most recent endeavor:

I didn’t want to hurt your feelings

cheryl didn’t want you to know
your breath needs help
your weight is a problem
you aren’t what employers are looking for
nobody wants to hurt your feelings
you should ask yourself
why does anyone care about you?
Speaking of gouging my eyes out….
a personal letter from santa
writ large
let me tell your wife
you hate to be wrong.

Then there’s Morton, who’s created a whole Anthology of Spam Poetry blog, and pairs his poetry with vignettes of the folks who — probably ;) — wrote it.

Now What?

My friend, you are in trouble
I don’t think you know about this
We have bad news for you
Your credit card was removed
Your account has been limited
You have feelings of guilt and embarrassment
Your VISA is fraudulent and it will be suspended
Your order status: passion wasted
- Grover Ramos

When Mr. Ramos was five, his family packed everything they could carry and walked, rode buses and crawled their way from Columbia to cross over into the United States. They constantly crisscrossed the country seeking work on various farms and small factories, which has left Mr. Ramos to believe that he has seen and learned more about the United States than many natural born US citizens. His poem “Now What?” is characteristic of his work which tends to reflect on the cross modern dilemmas of the hyphenated American.