Wednesday, February 20, 2008
swordfish
Apologies for the long delay on these posts! But due to technical difficulties and password troubles, I haven’t been able to blog in quite a while. Here’s what’s been happening in the meantime! -jl
Note: For as long as I can remember, “swordfish” has been my family’s catch-all password. I think it’s from an old Marx Brothers movie, though I can’t remember which… So if you ever ask a Langefeld What’s the password?, the answer will most likely come back: swordfish.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
not another red carnation
For every life situation there is a fitting quote from the hand of Shakespeare. --J.V. Hart
So speaking as I think, alas, I die. [She dies.] --the character Emilia, Othello, Shakespeare
My most memorable Valentine’s Day is not the one when I sent the three best valentines I could find to the three meanest boys in the third grade. (An attempt to turn them into nicer people, which failed miserably.) That’s a runner up, perhaps.
But my favorite Valentine’s Day weekend--for several reasons--was spent in England, during my sophomore year. It was the weekend that I learned to die: stabbed by an umbrella and croaking my last words in a southern accent. Is there a more out-of-the-box Valentine’s Day than that?
Friday, February 08, 2008
this end up (or: writing makes a fragile state of mind)
Let us have the luxury of silence. --Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
If you prick us, do we not bleed? --William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
THE SCENE: a bedroom/study, at a large black (altogether lovely) desk, computer humming, cursor blinking. A page of text, also blinking, at--
THE CAST: the writer. Who is four hours into her work day. Her jaw aches because she has a habit of clenching it as she writes. This explains her headaches. As does the glaring screen.
The screen also arches an eyebrow (is this common among computers?), because the writer has begun to doodle on scraps of paper. Curlicues turn into storm clouds, into a mountain range, into a chateau, into an abstract drawing of a person scowling.
At which point, she tosses the paper and begins to snip off the ends of her hair.
Monday, January 28, 2008
scratch that: thoughts on revision
We can all begin freely… --Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice
He waxes desperate with imagination. --Shakespeare, Hamlet
How ill I have written. I begin to hate myself. --Jane Austen, in a letter
So here I am peering at the week and at revision with a quaking heart. I’ve been asked a lot recently about how the writing is going, and I say something bright about the first draft being done, and being in revision…
And then it dawns on me yet again how daunting I find this revision phase. It actually makes me nostalgic for drafting, if you can believe that. In retrospect, it looks so linear, so lighthearted, so free.
Ha.
Friday, January 11, 2008
still driving at night
I only want to write. And there’s no college for that except life. --Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. --E.L. Doctorow
So here I am, facing a new semester of my tailor-made “graduate school,” where the next class is: Rewriting Your First Novel.
It is exciting to sit with the bulky, edge-tattered manuscript on my lap, and say to my sister: Pick a spot, and I’ll start reading! It’s a familiar bulk, too. While I was editing manuscripts for Winepress and Zondervan, I always had at least one huge stack of pages, rubber-banded together, which makes this current stack a bit less daunting. (When I took my editing work to Barnes and Noble, I would sometimes take the manuscript out of my bag and walk it up and down the aisles, just to show it that it would, one day, be a real book, too.)
It’s a little trickier to believe that for my own manuscript. (Though maybe I should walk it through Borders one of these days? Couldn’t hurt...)
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
to every calendar (turn, turn, turn)
O, there has been much throwing about of brains.—Shakespeare
So I’m looking at the end of another year--another year! Hard to believe, since there were some days late in the year when I still wrote 2006 instead of 2007, and I’m sure to mess up 2008 for the first month or so.
December was a crammed-full month: three road trips to Nebraska to see my younger sister, and then a fourth trip to a wedding in Ohio. Lots of writing on the road this month! Sandwiched around rest stops and road food. And then the holidays came and went, and we had a very brown Christmas here, making me wish for a Grand Rapids snowfall.
Thursday, December 06, 2007
it’s a book!
Announcing the birth of a beautiful baby manuscript at 6:12 this evening.
The manuscript is one and a half inches tall, 138,514 words long, weighs 301 pages, and is--for the moment--sleeping peacefully.
(The printer is somewhat exhausted after the labor, and is thin on ink.) -jl
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
and thousands to go before I sleep
November was a busy month… So I didn’t do much blogging. Apologies!
It was a huge month for writing, though. As my draft meanders toward its end, it has been easier and easier to get to my writing desk. The action is speeding toward the climax, and my characters have been more vocal, demanding all my attention and even whispering to me at inopportune times. (I feel so furtive, scribbling notes during church. Yikes!) I hope to finish the draft by Saturday!
Thursday, November 22, 2007
thanks
I know that it’s been ages since I’ve posted anything--we’ve been swamped here, preparing for the holidays, reading and writing (I have a stack of twenty young adult books that I’m cruising through; and my own novel is at 81,369 words. Whew.), and hosting five authors for an Author Showcase (which I’ll be telling you all about, later).
But today, my family and I are just hanging out, making food and drinking coffee in our pajamas, slowly decorating the house--boxes of ornaments are behind me, but the stockings have been hung…
(I can smell the pumpkin pies we just stuck in the oven… yum.)
Outside it’s a perfect Novembery day, drawn in shades of grey and brown, red leaves scattered on our lawn.
Nearly anything I can think of to say about Thanksgiving will be cliché, as you’ve all heard it before. So I won’t say it. I’ll let you fill in the blanks.
(But I do feel very, very blessed.)
I hope you all have wonderful days, wherever you are, enjoying the food, the football, the family--doing whatever you do to celebrate. Happy Thanksgiving!! --jl
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
writing my arpeggios: how one discipline informs another
… This freed me up to write short stories instead. “Do it every day for a while,” my father kept saying. “Do it as you would do scales on the piano.”—Anne Lamott
There is no place for rubbish and slop in the highly modern world of today’s fiction. Every sentence must pay, must somehow thrill. Every one.—Frederick Barthelme
One of my best writing teachers was my piano instructor at Calvin. As I played a piece for her one morning, she stopped me midway through, pointing with her pen and saying, “You played this note as if you didn’t care about it.”
Monday, October 22, 2007
bookherding
When people ask me, “Do you collect books?” I always say, “No, books collect me.”—Nicholas Barker
[No one can be] an orthodox collector or a true bibliophile who had not at one time committed a great and foolish extravagance.—Daniel M. Tredwell
Wear the old coat and buy the new book.—Austin Phelps
Growing up, I didn’t think that there was any other way to live, than to be surrounded by books. Doesn’t everyone have books overflowing from shelves in every room of the house? Didn’t everyone grow up running their fingers along the countless spines of books in the basement? Books on psychology and math and history, novels and poems and essays?
Monday, October 15, 2007
rhapsody
The much-anticipated rain is here, and though I wish it were stronger and I wish I could hear thunder, I’ll take it.
The clouds ripple in an indecisive grey, but the treebark blackens with moisture, and everything glows with a rainy sheen.
And I would write more, but I have hot apple cider and a murder mystery, and I’d be a fool to waste them while the weather is so obliging… --jl
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
gloomy weather, hear my cry
“Go, eat and drink, for there is the sound of a heavy rain.” --Elijah, in First Kings
I know a lot of people whose moods are affected by the weather: a bleak day makes for a bleak mood. I’m one of those people… only in reverse. Rain makes me comfortable, while too many sunny days (read: our weather right now) makes me mutter irritably.
After too many sunny days--say, four--the weather’s cheerfulness feels forced. You know how you’ll be smiling for a bunch of photos at some event, and then your smile freezes, your face grows numb, and you wonder if you’re smiling or grimacing...? Well, the sun is leaving me numb these days.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
earning my MFL
I feel the terror of idleness, like a red thirst.—Mary Oliver, from “The Deer”
It’s a bit tricky for the workaholic in me to let up. (As faithful readers of this blog probably realize...) I list, goal, and plan myself to death. I think it’s out of fear, though. Especially last year--I was afraid that I might see this writing stint as one gloriously long summer vacation. And then slip into idleness… sleeping in, slouching around, forgetting to put words on paper.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
something rewritten this way comes
No language stands still. --Chicago Manual of Style
By the end of last week, my draft stood at 26,631 words--roughly a fourth of the book. ...And then on Monday, I lopped off a few thousand words--over two chapters!--and am rewriting yet again. I feel like this goes against all the writing advice I’ve received: aren’t you supposed to press on, get to the end, and then turn around and rework it?
About Me
My life at Calvin College
Name:
Jenn Langefeld
Class of 2006
Hometown:
O'Fallon, IL
Major:
English
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Most recent entries
- yeah… about that.
- crossing the last t, dotting the final i
- gasping for air (or hope)
- five days to go?
- a few thoughts from under the rock
- trial by story
- let’s drink a toast to monday mornings.
- the whirlwind that was july
- the exquisite joys of peoplewatching
- bring out the mittens
- inspiration
- untitled
- the wedding album, part two
- the wedding album, part one
- aftermath