Saturday, July 26, 2008
EAST COAST SUMMER/WEST COAST SUMMER


Ahhh summer! here I am teaching someone, or just practicing, (I don't remember) the "pop up". That's a surfing term for the moment when you jump to your feet, just before the moment you fall on your face!!!

This picture is actually from North Carolina I was looking at it as I am slightly missing the East Coast summer even thought the West Coast summer is really uncriticizable in terms of perfect weather and cool nights and less bugs and less people, and tall trees (to frame the moon), and better stargazing and harvest moons here at the farm (all the dust from cutting the crops makes the moon turn orangish red).

I have been working mostly this month, but sitting outside while I do so, in a plastic Adirondack Chair and watching chipmunks run underfoot and chasing the deer away from my brothers garden and then heading off once a week to surf and then once a week playing tennis in this league I joined which is a total blast, etc. etc.

So a good balance of stuff. And also if you have endured the portland winter, (rain and cold from early November to the 4th of July), you kind of have to go running out into the sunshine . . .

Still, I miss sitting around sweating in humid brooklyn, and going to movies to escape the heat and drinking ice tea on the stooop and all that scene. Or going up to bake lobsters in Maine with my buddy Mike Guy, or going to friends lake houses or the other smaller scale "more quaint" type East Coasty things one does.



Cold Water Surfing


Have got to go surfing a couple times here on the Oregon coast this summer. Pretty rad. Really fun. Cold water, but beautiful coast line, as anyone who's ever been here knows.

I would talk more about it but I know that Surfers sound so evangelical when they get going, especially to non-surfers so there's no point. But it's fun and it fills up your life in this cool way.



SUMMER FUN


Having a nice slow summer here at the farm, except I have to finish my new book DESTROY ALL CARS, which is complicated and takes more concentration then I have on some days here during summer.

"DAC" as we call it is one of those books that is told in the form of journals, rants, manifestos, school assignments, personal essays and (thinly veiled) autobiographical short stories.

You see a lot of books come along that try to do the multi-medium thing but almost none of them really hold together or can keep a good narrative push going, so I am excited for this book because I think it actually works. We'll see I guess!!!

This picture is of one of our many odd pieces of equipment here at the farm. A horse-trailer I think this was at one time. Now it is a place to study just how amazingly adaptable nature is, as every flat surface on it seems to be growing something. there are trees growing out of the top of it. (photo: jami attenberg)


Friday, July 11, 2008
DESTROY ALL CARS! (the edit)


Thought some of you non publishing people might find it interesting to see how editors and writers work together in the MICROSOFT WORD era. This is a bit of my new manuscript (or "ms.", that's old school) entitled DESTROY ALL CARS!

What happens is I email in my ms. That's the black print. Then my editor (the reknowned David Levithan) goes through and adds or subtracts stuff, that's the pink lettering. Then he sends it back on a READ ONLY document, which means I can't change anything that's black or pink, I can just add my own thoughts in blue. So I do that, occasionally having to cross out the pink, if I don't agree with the change, or sometimes writing in an explanation of what i'm thinking about something.

David has already inserted his comments (that thing with the number and the xxs is a comment) you can't see it here, but when you drag your curser over the xx number a little window pops up and tells you the comment the editor has.

Anyway, it takes some getting used to, but it works pretty well and after a while you can actually read through it and it makes sense and you can follow it, even though it looks confusing at first.