If you were confused by the RSS feed talk today, check out this older post.  I have listed sites that I enjoy, as well as a video about setting up an RSS feed yourself.

I’d add Treehugger and Popmatters to the list.

Remember, comment below, telling me who you are (if it isn’t obvious from your name), which web sites you like to visit and anything else you care to share, like good music!  If you don’t have a site to share, click on a link that has been posted, have a look around, and report back.

Buy journals soon.  I’ll order About a Boy in a few days.

Amazing first day!  Thanks, guys.

I came across Bad Idea magazine in Barnes & Noble the other day while looking for the latest printing of The Believer (music issue with CD!).  These things happen, mags are potato chips, etc….

This feature from Bad Idea‘s website illustrates the editing process undertaken before an article is printed.  Check out the deletions from first and fourth paragraphs: It is a very short piece, but strong because the editor removes the initial pathos-laden information, allowing the reader to ease into the story and the rising action. The details of Marko’s life are only hinted at in the beginning, as the author mentions he "fled to Belgrade," "had run out of money," and now "packs as adroitly as a refugee."  These small details pique the reader’s curiosity but do not deliver enough information to satisfy.

The climax ("’For me, I felt happy about 9/11’") and the surrounding buildup is left mostly intact, with one important exception: the editor’s command of "Show, don’t tell." If there is only one mantra you remember in your studies as a creative writer, make it this one. These asides and clarifications have the effect of pulling the reader from actively imagining and engaging with the scene to passively accepting information. In this case, it’s as if the author is presenting a good movie, but pausing every so often to talk about what is going on.

All writing is about communication; creative writing (even creative nonfiction) is about communicating an experience.  If your reader feels what you feel, sees what you see, then you’ve done your job as a writer.  If your reader senses your presence in the experience, you have "broken the fourth wall" (to borrow a phrase from theatre) and the connection is lost. As soon as you speak to your reader instead of about the story, you have taken away his or her chance to actively reflect (which is the very thing that makes reading fun and engaging).  This is the challenge for all you creative writers: tell your story, let the audience make of it what they will.

a post chock full of links, video, books, and discussion topics.

I shared some cool contemporary artists with you on Thursday, promising links for browsing.  Here you go:

• Greg Simkins’s website, I’m Scared
• Works by Naoto Hattori
• Brian Dettmer’s Book Autopsies via Centripetal Notion

Colin Meloy interlude…

This is one of those careers you never think about.  The Believer interviews Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, set decorator for Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, and… Just check it out.  Another testament to the underlying thought that goes into any good piece of art in order to communicate an idea.

I especially love the statement about Owen Wilson’s character’s rocket sheets:

They sort of made sense in that room somehow, in a way that was authentic and quirky and fundamentally human.

I wrote about "quirkiness" in film yesterday.  If you haven’t read that post, check it out here at The Winsome Scholar.

More to come later.  If you haven’t purchased Pearson’s The Princeton Review, please do so.

Just one today. 

Scott Tobias of The Onion AV Club reviews Harold and Maude—thirty years after it came out.  This statement caught my eye, and inspired me to share the article:

As I said, the film is the birth of modern indie quirk, full of elements and attitudes that have become cliché: Heroes who are more whimsical conceits than real-life, flesh-and-blood creations; an offbeat and slightly twee pop soundtrack (here by Cat Stevens); authority figures painted as stiff, clueless, and completely devoid of humanity; and some vague leftist political references thrown in for good measure…. For me, the litmus test for quirkfests is whether there’s some genuine insight and depth of feeling behind all that willful eccentricity.

An interesting point, which begs the question: Why quirkiness?  I love Wes Anderson’s films very much, listen to Devendra Banhart, Johanna Newsome, Vetiver, read Salinger and Chip Kidd [everything’s connected], but why?  Why not jocularity?  Why not stoicism? 

What do you all think of this “quirkiness”?  Did it arise out of the post-Vietnam era only to become apropos again, thirty years later?  Is it true, as the author alludes, that we cannot find this type of sincerity anymore?

[Note the author says “twee,” then three of the responders follow.  Stickiness, anyone?]

If you read nothing else from this post, read this article from In These Times.  Author Mike Levy discusses Kurt Vonnegut’s works with a small group of students in China.  As a rare insight into how a very different culture views our own, it may be fitting that their lens was crafted by America’s most insightful absurdist.  In These Times article

Because everyone loves Jackie Chan.  NPR story

Fathom this: MSNBC Story