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It’s 2013, the day I sit down, with trepidation, to write this. The Times’s obituary for Yvonne Brill, renowned rocket scientist, winner of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, leads with, “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. ‘The world’s best mom,’ her son Matthew said.”

The past is not gone. Or as Faulkner wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Until it is, we should not be expected to get over it.

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My So-Called ‘Post-Feminist’ Life in Arts and Letters

Maureen Johnson: The Gender Coverup →

disgruntledenglishmajor:

If you are a female author, you are much more likely to get a package that suggests the book is of a lower perceived quality. We’re the high fructose corn syrup of literature, even when our products are the same.

Author Maureen Johnson had her twitter followers create gender-flipped book covers for well-known books to demonstrate how female authors are often taken less seriously than their male counterparts. The awesome slideshow is here. 

(via itsneumann)

Favorite Little Things → Writing

(via jeni-stark)

schnickledooger:

writer-on-fireee:

I am a reader. I am a writer. People assume I do these things to escape. You couldn’t be more right. I’m escaping a world I don’t like. A world I have no control in. In this world, I am nothing. I am a color, a height, a weight, a number. But in the world of books and writing, I am amazing. I am powerful. I am different. People are better. Worlds are endless. Change is possible. Life is manageable.

(Source: writingfromyheart, via theangelhastheimpala)

ELIVEN: February 4th, 2013 →

eliven:

Your reflection looks like a fun house mirror

And you know your true appearance despite the warped glass

But all you can focus on are the too-wrong curves,

The too-odd arms and the too-queer legs.

You see the celebrities and of course they’re not real,

With Photoshop to hide their all-too-human flaws,

But you strive for this “perfection”

Despite its impossibility.

You wonder how you arrived in this dystopia of self-defeat

Until you turn on the television and see these imaginary creatures

Masquerading as humans,

And you know.

(Prompt: Trained to do it)

February 3rd, 2013

eliven:

Why is “love” two people in a room together with everyone else locked out?

The horses’ blinders might keep them focused but they miss the entire world passing by.

When they try to be the center of each other’s universe they repel the rest of the stars away yet pretend they’re still a galaxy.

They cling to each other like their illusion of security and call it commitment.

(Prompt: Something you heard your friend say.)

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If you want to write, and write well then write about what you’re most afraid of. I’m not taking about spiders, or the dark— I’m talking about what you run away from. The things you’re scared that other people might find out about you; the skeletons in your closet.

I’m talking about the things you’re ashamed of, and the things that keep you from being you.

Write about that and I can guarantee you’ll become better, for it.

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the-hardyest-rpc (via writeworld)

(via theglasstorch)

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Andy Field (Discovering Statistics Using SPSS, 3rd edition) is pretty boss. 

http://jeffandkaren.tumblr.com/post/41334846537/charlie-didnt-notice-her-until-his →

jeffandkaren:

Charlie didn’t notice her until his third day of work, and it was her gaze that caught his. She wouldn’t stop staring. Long eyelashes that fashion models could only dream of. Clear, tanned skin. Her hair was pink, but that was normal for a troll doll. Technically she belonged to Duncan, who worked two cubicles over from Charlie’s. Charlie avoided Duncan because he was plagued by a perpetual cold, but he couldn’t avoid her. Day after day she was perched on the computer monitor, her eyes just peeking over the cubicle wall, checking out Charlie. He tried his best to ignore her, focusing on his list of scheduled calls.

The calls were bad. Often the men would mock Charlie. The women would hang up before he’d even finished his pitch. Each hang up triggered an automatic dial, giving Charlie no rest before he was thrown into the next call. Charlie looked forward to those rare times when he’d get an answering machine. He’d sit in silence, waiting for the recorded tape to finish, and he’d look at her. Charlie could never make out her expression; all he could see were those glass eyes and pink hair.

When he quit, just five months later, ear sore from the headphones and heart sore from the dismissals, he took her with him. Duncan was in the corner blowing his nose, and Charlie snatched her, dropping her into his pocket on the way out.

            He’d meant to go straight home, but Bill had wanted to celebrate Charlie’s emancipation with shots at their main dive. She was gone when he awoke. Slipped out of his pocket in the night. He called up the bar, asking if they found a toy, a little doll with pink hair. The girl on the line stifled a laugh. Then she hung up on him.  

January 31st, 2012

eliven:

The two sprawled on the ground at the top of the hill,

Their limbs intertwined as they looked at the stars.

Not one would dare to ask when they must leave,

Because this moment could never be repeated.

So they shared this time the best they could,

Committing one another to fragile memory.

(Prompt: On a hill)

(Source: vega-ofthe-lyre, via theturtlemoves)

the narrator’s lament.

gyzym:

someone should write a book where the main character slowly falls in love
with the reader.

the first time you crack my spine, you will be too young for me. lent and spent, dogeared, i will weather your sticky-fingered touch with the bad grace of library books everywhere, handled without care for years without end and plastic-coated, built to withstand the worst of humanity. you will throw me in your backpack and the next time i see the light of day will be at a double-header baseball game, patchwork men yelling peanuts in the distance and your brothers shouting for home. you will hide me in the folds of your oversized sweatshirt and callously drip mustard from your corn dog onto my twelfth page, and i will feel it smear and stick against my thirteenth and hate you, hate you, hate you. i will twist my language to obscurities that your youthful eyes will find obscene; i will press my letters together until you are forced to squint against the sinking sun; i will slice open the pad of your index finger once, twice, and nevermind the blood.

you will return me, abandon me, forget me. i will have known
you would.

when you find me again, adulthood will not yet be yours, but you will be a far cry from childhood; you will tuck me carefully beneath your arm and walk me through the library doors yourself. when you crack my spine, you will let one bitten nail drag lightly down my pages, and your touch will be soft enough that i will forgive you the child you once were. you will be the first person in half a decade to take the time to unstick my twelfth and thirteenth pages, and when you see the caked, yellowed stain there you will laugh, wondering, as though you know it was you that left it. as though you remember me. i will open for you, this time, as i refused when we first met, showing you all that i can bear to this early—you are young yet, untrusted, and i will not reveal to you nuances scholars have missed. still, it will be enough, and you will keep me hidden under your duvet until well into the night, a flashlight caught between your cheek and shoulder so you can see every inch of me, even in darkness.

lent and spent a thousand times over, and no reader will ever have seen me
as you shall.

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