I wasn’t sure what to blog about today and for the sake of experimentation, I asked Twitter.
Twitter gave me lots of suggestions, so I am going to try to address as many of them as I can, likely over 3 or so posts. This is the first one. (I’ve broken out all the circus/new book stuff to talk about together.) I will get to the rest of them soon(ish).
So, here we go:
Pizza.
So this sad thing happened about three years ago or so. I read an article about gluten allergies and on a whim decided to avoid it for two weeks and in that two weeks I lost over five pounds and felt way better than usual so I decided maybe I should continue avoiding.
But of course that makes all the wonderful delicious gluten-filled foodstuffs difficult. Luckily gluten-free seems to be quite trendy at the moment but proper pizza is still difficult. There was a restaurant in Boston I used to get rather good gluten-free pizza from (Nebo, for the curious, the zucchini one is my favorite), haven’t found one in NYC yet. I did find good frozen gluten-free “pizza crusts” that are questionable if you go classic red sauce on but really good if treated more like flatbread. I do pear/goat cheese/honey things or bbq chicken or fig and prosciutto.
My favorite regular pizza topping is pineapple, though.
Any tips for Camp NaNoWriMo?
I think my Camp NaNo tips are likely the same as my regular November NaNo tips except possibly with more iced beverages. Don’t re-read. If you want to delete something turn the font color to white instead and keep going. Always meet your daily wordcount minimum. Get a head start if you can. Remember you can go back and make things better afterwards. Surprise yourself.
My official NaNoWriMo pep talk is over here.
Won’t this be your first summer living in NYC? I’d like to hear what excites you most about it! (I’m moving here in July)
Hurrah, I hope your move goes smoothly! It is my first NYC summer, indeed. So far it seems more exciting than winter in NYC (which was about hibernating) and spring in NYC (which was rainy). I have already read in Central Park on a blanket in a shady spot on a hot day, which reminds me a bit of being at an oceanless green beach. I am also completely enamored of all the fantastic outdoor dining/drinking spots. Right now my two favorite rooftops are Gallow Green and the rooftop at pod39.
In general, the things that excite me most about NYC are food or drink related. Also parks.
I think the witch in Hansel&Gretel inherited her tasty house and only hates kids b/c they’re always destroying it. Thoughts?
I have always thought those kids were terribly rude for eating someone’s house without so much as asking first. Makes me wonder if they’d just knocked on the door and said “Hello, we are lost and scared and hungry” would they have been given a proper balanced meal and everything would have been happy ever after. This makes me want some sort of re-imagining where Hansel & Gretel are polite and the witch adopts them and they become little fledgling cannibals.
blog about the first piece of creative writing you ever did
This is likely proof that I never set out to be a writer: I can’t really remember. I vaguely recall writing crayon stories when I was very small though they weren’t very long and I doubt they had plots. I do remember writing a short story when I was maybe 12 or 13 for a creative writing class at arts camp that was a re-telling of the Frog Prince where the frog just sang Village People songs and said snarky things and then stayed a frog at the end.
An anecdote about your favorite book growing up. Or a bookstore you remember or a library. &
I second the favourite book growing up suggestion. Or favourite NYC bookstores. Any new discoveries?
I had a lot of favorite books growing up. The ones I really remember vividly are Mail-Order Wings by Beatrice Gormley (the girl in the book orders wings from an ad in the back of a comic book, and the comic itself is a version of The Metamorphosis, so I had my first exposure to Kafka when I was about 8 years old) and The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. That’s the one that probably ensnared my imagination the most. I used to build Egyptian temples in the woods behind my house, with sticks and rocks and feathers and things. This is how I know I am not allergic to poison ivy.
My closest library when I was little was this one:
The Clift Rodgers Library in Marshfield, Massachusetts. (I’m not sure I ever realized when I was young that it was Clift and not Cliff.) It’s a tiny little space in a beautiful old white house that has been a library since, I believe, 1897. Upstairs is a consignment shop, so I still associate libraries with old things and mysterious treasures.
My favorite NYC bookstore so far, despite the fact that it intimidates me, is probably The Strand. So many books! I get book shopping anxiety there but sometimes it’s worth it. My favorite new discovery is Kinokuniya near Bryant Park, it has books in English as well as Japanese and lots of other delightful things. I’ve been very tempted to get the new Murakami even though I can’t read it.
That’s it for part one! Thank you for the topics! Parts two & three forthcoming.