jennanddave.com

I have hit the proverbial NaBloPoMo wall. What do I write about? I rack my brain and come up with nothing. An unexpected NaBlo side effect: I'm expending so much energy thinking about what to post that I could care less what other people are writing on their blogs. I wonder if novelists stay as far away from books as possible when they're writing.

Here's a picture of my men that has nothing to do with anything I've written or will write later in this post:

I went to Barnes and Noble today to look for a Tom Wolfe book. I finished I Am Charlotte Simmons and although it was a real page turner, it didn't bowl me over. I thought the characters were two-dimensional and the overall theme one that's been done before. I read a review of his writing somewhere (I can't remember where so I can't give credit) where the reviewer said Wolfe packs a lot of life into every sentence he writes, so I was really looking forward to reading Charlotte, and thus I was vaguely disappointed. When I mentioned all of this to my dad, he pointed me to a collection of two essays Wolfe wrote called Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, one of which is about New York socialites getting together with members of the Black Panthers at a social gathering. This brings us back to today. I headed over to the fiction section of B and N and sifted through the w's. There were only a few books by Tom Wolfe and I thought perhaps I should scout out the non-fiction section when my eyes shifted to the right a bit and came across a collection of short stories by Tobias Wolff (The Night in Question). I read the first page of the first story and decided to get it.

Every once in a while I get the urge to try my hand at short-story writing. Since writing involves self-discipline (*shudder*) I don't really get very far. I've been feeling more and more like I need to do something to prevent my brain from oozing out of my ears and puddling up on the floor next to me. Perhaps Wolff's short stories will inspire me. If not, at least there's a nice picture of a train on the cover.