Jessica Ralston's Blog

“As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be okay. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And fortunately, when there aren’t any, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or a subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort. Not to mention hospital gurneys, and nose plugs, and uneaten Danish, and soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocrasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days are, in fact, here for a much larger and nobler cause: They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange. But I also know that it just so happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick’s life.”

Karen Eiffel, Stranger Than Fiction (2006)

When I need inspiration or a pick-me-up, I tend to turn to my favorite movies and music. Lately, my favorite movie about writers and writing, Stranger Than Fiction, has been on my mind (gee, I wonder why?). Every time I watch it I marvel at the quotable lines, and how many of those lines may apply to us as writers. Some of them are just plain ol’ good quotes.

The humanity in the movie always moves me, too. Not to the point of crying, but to point of being in complete awe of Eiffel giving up the perfect ending and the perfect book (her masterpiece, as Hilbert calls it) . Not to mention the way Harold and Ana seem to fit together, like a broken cookie, even though they’re complete opposites. I won’t spoil it anymore in case you haven’t seen it.

I definitely recommend watching Stranger Than Fiction if you haven’t already. It’s noveling fuel! And it’s pretty good.

Like a lot of writers, I can’t really stand my own writing, in the same way that I don’t really like my own cooking. And, just as when I go out to eat, I tend not to order my signature dish–an overcooked and overspiced meat-stewy thing containing something inappropriate, like tinned peaches, and a side order of undercooked and flavorless vegetable–I really don’t want to read anything that I could have come up with on my own computer. What I produce on my computer invariably turns out to be an equivalent of the undercooked overcooked stewy thing, no matter how hard I try to follow the recipe, and you really don’t want to eat too much of that.

The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby

“There were about seventy-five squillion people in the world, and if you were very lucky, you would end up being loved by fifteen or twenty of them.”

About A Boy, Nick Hornby

there’s just a very strong possibility that this could be the best thing to ever happen to you and i don’t want you to miss out because you’re a chickenshit.

She is totally right. I have to get over this.

It’s supposed to snow quite a bit in the next few hours, maybe not here near Buffalo, but definitely near Syracuse. I talked to my sister and she has no school, the university has canceled classes and my mother’s job closed for the day.

I find myself wishing for a snow day, where it snows so bad they close down Routes 5 and 20 and 60. Then I can cuddle up with crocheted afghans, tea and some movies. Or my laptop

I made either the mistake of reading The Guardian’s Ten Rules for Writing Fiction, or made the really good decision to read The Guardian’s Ten Rules for Writing Fiction. I feel like reading the rules admits to some greater being that I’m a bad writer, but wish to be a good one. I pushed it out of my mind as I read the rules though, because they’re full of good advice. I put links to both parts at the end of this post.

They were inspiring rules. I printed them out and plan on hanging them on my refrigerator, but before that, I went through with a blue marker and put stars next to my favorite ones. A lot of them cite always writing, every day, no matter what, even if it’s a few words. I think I’ll stick to that one.

Sarah Waters’ Rule No. 3 Treat writing as a job. Be disciplined. Lots of writers get a bit OCD-ish about this. Graham Greene famously wrote 500 words a day. Jean Plaidy managed 5,000 before lunch, then spent the afternoon answering fan mail. My minimum is 1,000 words a day – which is sometimes easy to achieve, and is sometimes, frankly, like shitting a brick, but I will make myself stay at my desk until I’ve got there, because I know that by doing that I am inching the book forward. Those 1,000 words might well be rubbish – they often are. But then, it is always easier to return to rubbish words at a later date and make them better.

It makes me wish that National Novel Writing Month was a year round thing, because during the month of November, I abandon everything for writing those precious 2,000 words a day. Dishes stay until Saturday afternoon, vacuuming doesn’t get done until Sunday afternoon, laundry done rarely, coffee’s consumed like it’s water, I don’t go out with friends, my mother worries about me and sleeping is precious but rare.

The talk about 10 Rules got me thinking about what my 10 rules are, and I don’t have any except to write, every day; read, every day; drink more coffee than is humanly possible, and just write. All the time.

Part One | Part Two

“…it’s the writing that’s hard, not the invention.”