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LIFE WRITING RULES

December 6, 2024 by David Gillaspie Leave a Comment

Rules for life writing: Get a life. Pay attention. Find a favorable form. Then what?

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: Baby Boomer blogger, best writers, blog writers, blogger, BOOMER, boomer blogger, education, history, identity, life, life writing rules, millennials, novel, personal history, poem, PORTLAND BABY BOOMERS, Portland Oregon, rules, short story, sports, story, story structure, twitter, writer, writers, writing, writing class

BACKING UP AND ADDING ON

August 26, 2024 by David Gillaspie

Backing up into a parking space is normal? It’s getting that way, but there’re still holdouts. – People who always back into to parking spaces think they better than us. – I back into my parking space in the garage and the garage is inclined up…I also do it with a manual transmission car, […]

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: action, admiration, adversity, advice, back up, backing up, car, Costco, direct action, documentary, driving, honor, mfa, new yorker, normal, novel, parking space, plan, planning, real talk, shit talk, that's not right, trust, WWII, WWII documentary

YOU WANT ME TO WANT TO?

July 17, 2024 by David Gillaspie

In Patrick DeWitt’s novel French Exit, the mom asks her thirty-two year old son to get something for her. “Please bring me my cup.” “I will if you want me to.” “I want you to want to.” And he obeys. So I ask . . .

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: baby boomer, being happy, best writers, blog post, bloggers, BOOMER, capabilities, complain, guilt, happy, Ken Kesey, novel, oregon arts watch, Oregon book awards, Patrick DeWitt, potential, quitters, want to, will, willing, writers

SISTERS BROTHERS BOOK, MOVIE, AND MORE

June 25, 2024 by David Gillaspie

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt spooked me from the moment it showed up. What kind of tricky title was that. Would it be about brothers and sisters, sisters who wanted to be brothers? I had to find out, and so I did. I picked it up and read it. Then what?

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: aboutions, book, book review, book reviews, library, Mark Twain, movie, movie review, new author, novel, Patrick DeWitt, picaresque, picaresque novels, Portland, sisters brothers, story, t c boyle, the librarianist, twitter, unlettered, writer, writers, writing class, writing dream, writing reality

YOUR STORY: WHERE TO START

June 1, 2024 by David Gillaspie

Your story is like every story: waiting to be told. You: But, Blogger Dave I sound dumb when I write it down. Me: What’s dumb sound like. You: It makes me sound like a blogger. Me:

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: belgium, blogger, book, changed up, cleaned up, comfortably numb, dumb blogger, facebook, favorite adage, good enough, harsh judgment, judgement, librarian, london, novel, numb, poem, rare object, short story, sound dumb, start, story, twitter, where to start, writer, writing, your story

LOST HIGHWAY? GET A MAP, BOOMER

September 19, 2023 by David Gillaspie

The Lost Highway by Hank Williams is every road ever traveled. Some longer, some shorter, but it’s the same road. You can say you’re not lost. Go ahead. But we’re all old enough to know better.

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: BOOMER, boomers, GUITAR, Hank Williams, lost highway, memoir, music, novel, poem, ponytail, road music, screenplay, song, weed

BLUE SKIES IN THE BOOK REVIEW MIRROR

August 31, 2023 by David Gillaspie

Blue Skies came to me via Twitter. T.C. Boyle mentioned a new novel and he delivered. What he delivered felt a little too close to home for me, which kept me reading. How close?

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: Annie bloom, author, Baby Boomers, blogger, blue skies, book review, BOOMER, boomerpdx, boomers, novel, Oregon, reading, TC Boyle, twitter, writer, writers

KEEP GRINDING, WRITERS

August 14, 2023 by David Gillaspie

“Keep grinding’ is the message all writers tell themselves, but not out loud. Instead, what they say is their word count for the day. Maybe it’s a thousand, maybe more. The message they send is keep grinding.

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: accolades, blog, blogger, Blogging, fiction, grinding, keep grinding, literary journals, MFA programs, nonfiction, novel, poetry, real writers, reassurance, short story, submission, the grind, work ethic, write, writing

ESSENTIAL READING TO IGNORE . . . AT YOUR OWN RISK

January 18, 2020 by David Gillaspie

One blogger’s essential reading is another’s fire-starter; that’s just how it is. Except the book in Ken Kesey’s hand won’t start any fires today, not the way it started fires in his younger days.

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: blogger, book blogger, books, contract, essential reading, Hollywood, Ken Kesey, novel, Ryan gosling, stegner fellowship, writer

WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT JAY GATSBY?

August 28, 2019 by David Gillaspie

The Great Gatsby patrols the modern world with Jay Gatsby walking point. (Just finished Hemingway’s Movable Feast. Scott Fitzgerald came in at the end. He and Papa were buddies in Paris before Zelda slipped a gear. In 2011 Paula McLaine wrote a novel called The Paris Wife about the same time. Read both books for […]

Filed Under: What's Up Tagged With: adele, alcoholic haze, bernie madoff, f. scott fitzgerald, great gatsby, history, jay gatsby, novel, roaring twenties, the jungle, upton sinclair