Linda Sands » secret

When Googled became a verb

Linda — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 15:31:16 +0000

Today, I Googled the phrase, “Places to Write.”

I had been speaking with my writer friend, Gwen Morrison, a brilliant author, editor and publisher, and my partner in the newest venture: Write by the Water: a writers retreat about the best place to write in our homes… something most people ask of authors at those Q&A’s after the reading, on the big book tour.

As suburban moms, we have both adapted a room in our house to act as office/writing space. A place where children and dogs come and go as they please, usually leaving us more interrupted than inspired.

I hit up my good friend, Mr. Google to see what he had to say what I typed in PLACES TO WRITE.

The writers at Wicked Writers had a list of 10 places to write.

I got a kick out of this one.

5 – From a Jail Cell: Well, not in reality. Whenever I can’t seem to find peace and quiet anywhere, the loner in me dreams of writing from a jail cell in solitary confinement. No Internet, no planning dinner, no vacuuming, and no teenagers not doing their homework. Ahhhhh

Novelist and Coach Jacqui Lofthouse suggests “going on holiday” is the best way to get any writing done. In other words, get out of your natural element.

She speaks of getaways in Tuscany and the South of France, dropping uber-attractive nouns; villa, country-home… I like her thinking.

This article reminds me that:

Virginia Woolf famously insisted that in order to write professionally a woman must have “a room of her own.”

Oh, yes. I like that. All you women writers now have a perfectly good reason to overtake the den.

And, yep. Even JK Rowling has something to say on the subject.

THIS IS where I’m going to be writing this fall.

In one of the spacious rooms, on a balcony, under a tree, on the beach, in a kayak…

You can join me….. it’s easy. CLICK HERE for all the details. I’ll save you a spot on the sand.

The e-book and Poetry, NOT. Beware name dropping.

Linda — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 12:19:19 +0000

I was lucky enough to slip in unnoticed two summers ago to an elite and rather expensive Summer Workshop in Southampton. Okay, so I wasn’t unnoticed. I came with vodka.

And this was the thing, I have never been one of those crazed band groupies, or even someone who thinks about celebrities more than, wow, they work hard for that money, look at all the privacy they give up. Passing a well known actress on the street, I may spend more time admiring her shoes than her wrinkle-free face, and if I ever see them dining, I want to be the one person who doesn’t interrupt their meal, or stare as they belch into their napkin, and I would certainly never follow them to the restroom to hear them pee.

But those are singers and actors. The literati? That’s a whole different story.

I stalk those. For this purpose, I’ll keep it to poets…

At Stony Brook, I ate lunch next to Derek Walcott, admired his wooly ‘stash and white velcro sneakers. I drank in the local bar before, during and after Billy Collins held court. I laughed as Billy teased Frank McCourt ( the last summer any teasing would happen for the wonderful Mr. McCourt. God rest his soul.) And I even took photographs of and have signed books from Philip Schultz and Carol Muske-Dukes.

See, I warned you. Name dropping. As for the stalking bit?

I happened to notice Billy Collins was going to be speaking in my area of Atlanta a few months after Stony Brok, so I appeared, wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with an inside joke.. and sat in VIP seating. I’m pretty sure he recognized me. Later, at his signing, I moved to the front of the line and his eyes brightened. “Weren’t you at Southampton?” he asked, motioning to the security guards with a tip of his amazingly talented head.

The REAL Story

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer

NEW YORK –

Billy Collins, one of the country’s most popular poets, had never seen his work in e-book form until he recently downloaded his latest collection on his Kindle.

He was unpleasantly surprised.“I found that even in a very small font that if the original line is beyond a certain length, they will take the extra word and have it flush left on the screen, so that instead of a three-line stanza you actually have a four-line stanza. And that screws everything up,” says Collins, a former U.S. poet laureate whose “Ballistics” came out in February.

When he adjusted the size to large print, his work was changed beyond recognition, a single line turning into three, “which is quite distressing,” he adds.

Poetry, the most precise and precious of literary forms, is also so far the least adaptable to the growing e-book market. A three-line stanza might be expanded to four if a line is too long or a four-line stanza compressed into three if the second and fourth lines have sharp indentations, as with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Hymn to the Night.”

Royalty disputes, philosophical objections and suspicions of technology are keeping countless books from appearing in electronic form, from “The Catcher in the Rye” to “Gravity’s Rainbow.” But for poetry, the gap is especially large because publishers and e-book makers have not figured out how the integrity of a poem can be guaranteed. And a displaced word, even a comma, can alter a poem’s meaning as surely as skipping a note changes a song.

“The critical difference between prose and poetry is that prose is kind of like water and will become the shape of any vessel you pour it into to. Poetry is like a piece of sculpture and can easily break,” Collins says.

Major poets not yet in e-form include Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Sylvia Plath, W.H. Auden and Robert Lowell, Langston Hughes and C.K. Williams. No e-editions of poetry are available from this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner, Rae Armantrout; from Pulitzer winner and incoming U.S. poet laureate W.S. Merwin; or from such recent laureates as Charles Simic, Robert Pinsky and Louise Glueck.

“I have mixed feelings about poetry and e-books,” says award-winning poet Edward Hirsch, whose “The Living Fire” came out in March in hardcover, but not as an electronic text. “I don’t think it’s the best way to read poetry myself and I wouldn’t want to read it on the e-book, but it also seems important to have poetry available wherever possible.”

Poetry is highly accessible on the Internet, sometimes unauthorized, such as on the Web sitehttp://www.poemhunter.com, where you can find works by Plath, Hughes and other poets whose books have not been officially released in electronic form. Authorized verse can be found on Slate.com, which in a weekly podcast features a poem read aloud by the poet.

“On the whole, poetry is well suited for electronic media,” says Pinsky, a frequent Slate contributor. He is confident the technical problems can be fixed, but that adds that besides the problems with portable e-readers, “most word processors treat verse as though each line were a paragraph.

“So, for example, typing a Wallace Stevens poem with capital letters at the beginning of the lines can be mildly annoying,” Pinsky says.

Publishing houses differ over whether to wait for the technology to improve or to make the books available now. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which publishes Nobel laureate Derek Walcot t and Pulitzer winner Paul Muldoon among others, is not planning any e-poetry releases. Another leading poetry publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, intends some releases, but with an advisory note about changing font sizes.

Amazon.com spokeswoman Sarah Gelman, asked whether future editions of the Kindle would correct the problem, said the online retailer was “constantly working to innovate on behalf of our customers, and this applies to the experience of reading poetry on Kindle.”

A leading developer of e-reading technology, eBook Technologies, is working on improving the formatting for poetry, although no major breakthroughs are expected before 2011. Company president Garth Conboy said that for now the most realistic options are either to keep a long line intact by scrolling horizontally across the screen — “A really bad experience,” he says — or to find a way to “better communicate” to readers that a line broken in two was meant to be a single line.

“Neither are perfect solutions,” he said. “I’m not sure what the perfect solution is.”

Taking Reading in Bed to a Whole New Level.

Linda — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:56:05 +0000

I found and joined the Facebook group, Naked Girls Reading, without really knowing what it was, only that I was one of them. I admit. I read in bed. I’ll also admit, I don’t always wear pajamas.

But wait, read on.

This is a live reading series, where totally buck naked- not even a pasty- they claim. beautiful Burlesque dancing women read from banned books.

“Pinchbottom Burlesque debuted Naked Girls Reading Banned Books at Madame X on Friday, October 16. It was hosted by Nasty Canasta, with Gal Friday, GiGi La Femme, Jo Boobs, Legs Malone, Sapphire Jones and Naked Girls Reading creator, Michelle L’Amour. ”

I know. Great, isn’t it?

Now, I’d love to see some audience reaction photos.

Here, “Nasty Canasta reads And Tango Makes Three, the true story of Silo and Roy, a male penguin couple in the Central Park Zoo. The American Library Association deemed it the most banned book of 2009 and most challenged book of 2006 – 2008.”

Burlesque gets smart-assed.

God, I love New York.

One of a few things I'm trying to not dwell on.

Linda — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:23:00 +0000

Here’s the backstory if you’re new here-
or if you’re like my husband who only hears the words that come after steak, beer, bed, free or panties.
I wrote a (steak) novel- actually three, but here- to minimize dwelling potential- we’re only talking about the one my agent read, liked, edited and last week pitched to a bunch of (beer) hot NYC editors.
It’s summer, so of course I have plenty to do to keep me busy (panties) during the waiting period- which I have been told can be three days, four weeks, five months, six years or somewhere short of forever. So I wait. And I check my horoscope and the tarot and throw chicken bones like rune stones. It’s just that, I am so freaking good at dwelling… that I’ve about given myself a (free) crazypersonbreakdown- which is good for prepping a body for bathing suit weather, (steak) and pretty good for sleeping long periods of time or drinking large bottles of wine.

I blame the crazypersonthing on (panties) travel, planning, packing, (beer) kids and all their messes and friends and problems and arguments, money difficulties, (steak) the IRS, running another literary business, (beer), replacing household appliances, hiring workers and (bed) prepping our house for sale, while trying to figure where to move, how much to spend and when. Add in (free) difficult work and personal relationships and a growing dislike for (panties) your location in the world, and you pretty much have a recipe for disaster. Or at least the perfect combination of events that lead someone like me to buy a first class ticket on the train to crazypersonville, Xanax included.
I’m not complaining. really, I’m not. I’m just stating the facts. I’m just sharing in the way one might share one’s thoughts, feelings, ideas and current status with her loving caring extended family over a Sunday Dinner. (though in my family? We ignore all the bad shit, only talk about the done deal stuff that won’t hurt anyone’s feelings and definitely never mention hopes or wishes or desires because that’s all just dreaming and God knows where dreaming gets you… nowhere little girl with her head in the clouds, and guess what? No one ever wins the lottery or beats cancer either.)
( beer, panties, bed, free, steak)
Mostly it’s my fault for taking too much on. For feeling superior over normalcy, for desiring more and more- not the material stuff, just the wrapping up of the regular stuff. If I had a real job in a real office I would be the one with the uber-neat cubicle, the one who was never late, who stayed overtime and always always cleared her desk before she left for the day. You, as my co-worker would hate me for making you seem incompetent, and I would spend all my free time trying to get you to like me. Going places with you I never wanted or needed to go, planning events that would please you and offering, always offering to pay, to drive, to negotiate, to make things simpler. In my head, you’d be my friend, and I’d think it was all normal, sane.
But it isn’t. Which brings me back to dwelling- which makes me think I have way too much brain time on my hands because I now have twenty pages of new novel experiences and insight to the characters in the work in progress, all from my crazypersonville experiences of the past few months, and honestly? This may be some of the best work I have ever done- and that’s not fucking crazy to dwell on.
Is it?

Only in a restroom in Cusseta, Alabama.

Linda — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:07:00 +0000

Writers see the world… differently.
It looks kind of like this:
EVERYTHING IS, HAS, WAS, WILL OR CAN BE A STORY.

Just as everyone you meet is a potential character and every conversation you hear may be stored away for later use. Having a writer as a friend can be dangerous, partying with fellow writers fills my well. (Hello Southampton friends!)
It is so nice when people “get you,” when explanations are unnecessary and when you can experience truly witty parlay.

So, it will come as no surprise to my writing friends that I found a story in a restroom in Cusseta, Alabama last week.

Stopping for gas and potty break with 2 gal pals, I waited in the dimly lit white washed pine sol scented back hall for my friend to finish up in the “one seater.” It seemed like an ordinary gas station/convenience mart, gas pumps, checkout counter in the round, coffee, energy drinks and steamed franks for the road.

And trust me there was nothing special about the ladies restroom. Single unlidded toilet, one sink, electric hand dryer mounted to wall, small waste basket…
All details I took in mid squat, until my eye was drawn to the small yellow bag littering the floor. First thought? Why didn’t my friend who was just in here pick this up?
Then I noticed the receipt under my foot.
I finished my business then picked up both. The bag was from Dollar General. The receipt went with the bag.
First thought. Some lady was in a hurry for feminine hygiene products.
But no.

Receipt was for the Dollar General on Hwy 29. Store #10320.
Purchase: one Early Pregnancy Test Kit
cost:
$1.00
tax .07
paid in cash

The plot thickens.

I’m seeing in my mind’s eye the harried girl who ran in here, the first stop before she had to go home, before she had to return to school. The worried woman who filled up her car, then made her way to the restroom before she had to go home to the husband she’s cheating on? The hopeful and excited single woman who hopes a one dollar test is just as good as the real thing because this might be the answer, this might change everything…

and then, you KNOW what I want to do.

I washed my hands, took my time with the dryer positioned over the full waste basket, watched as it blew the loose paper towels, saw it uncover the purple and white box, and something else beneath… and then I thought about what I would say to my friends- and I hesitated. I thought about what people would think about me if I …
and I left.

Because as much as I wanted to reach in that trash can and find out if the pee stick said yes or no… I would rather never know, because now I’m able to write two different endings for two different women, a multitude of stories. (and seeing as I have this horrible problem with manipulating truths- I don’t do it well- I don’t have that ultimate statement standing in my way.)

Odder still, was that the 3rd girl in our group who was waiting in the hall for her turn in the ladies room was regaled by a story of confusion, sadness,and despair told by a woman who’d found this gas station by mistake. She’d left a divorce counseling session and was crying so much and was so upset that she had been driving in the wrong direction for miles.
It was a good thing she needed gas and a bathroom, she said, or she might have ended up in Florida.

Lordy. I love Alabama.

This is why I speed.

Linda — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:41:00 +0000

Tom says it’s a testicular pleasure. And while, as a woman, I can’t quite get on board with that reason, I cannot deny the sexual reference, nor my need for speed. Maybe it’s the pleasure it brings me, when the driving fast is combined with the illegality of it. It’s like sex- but not like this kind of sex. It’s like all the best parts of sex: the power, the control, the excitement, the pleasure, the adrenaline rush, the possibility of getting caught, the newness every time, the rise in blood pressure, the release, the chance to do it all over again.
Just please don’t tell the 15 yr old who is vying for his learner’s permit this week.

On my FACEBOOK page, I linked an small speeding article written by the talented and amazing Tom Chiarella from Esquire in a section about minor violations… why we do them and what’s the cost? Read it, read the whole magazine, for good ness sake and sure, if you want? Friend me.

Frankly, I know I speed more than is necessary. I’m usually not doing it because I’m late, except for that time my pedicure ran over and I almost missed my plane to London, and then I compounded the speeding indiscretion with driving solo in the HOV lane. What the hell.. in for a dime, in for a dozen, I say. I wasn’t stopped for either. And they held the plane for me.

I used to drive according to whatever was on the radio. Even now, I find myself cruising along minding all regulations when the Spa channel is on, but when I twist the dial to garage rock or alternative and hair band satellite stations.. all bets are off.

I have my favorite speed spots. I know where the potholes are and where the Sheriff tucks his long white car in the bushes. I know a nice long stretch of smooth blacktop from Atlanta to Myrtle Beach where 110 feels like 40 and a curving road on the way south where I can pass car after car after car even if the lines look like doubled yellow.
I have learned to turn the music down and appreciate instead the growl of the engine, the whine and shudder of downshifting gears, the blast of air in my face and the whipping of hair against bare shoulders as I’m slammed back in my seat.

What's the secret password? And "unfriending."

Linda — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:08:00 +0000

So, because I friend EVERYONE on Facebook, I was faced with the new problem of “unfriending” someone, actually a few someones… but I wanted to be sure they didn’t know. Repercussions and all that. So, in googling for an answer to my, “Will someone know if I unfriend them on FACEBOOK question,” I found a whole page of people asking for help in stealing passwords.
Yes. Stealing.
Passwords for email accounts, for Facebook and Myspace, for instant messenger accounts. I don’t know why I was surprised, I’m sure people hack into accounts all the time, but it seemed so creepy. And the funny thing was people were replying to other’s requests and giving relationship advice, like, ” Have you tried therapy, asshole?” to “Just trust him, man.” And, “You should be asking her about this, not trying to read her mail.”

I couldn’t help thinking movie plots… girl meets boy, girl and boy connect, girl and boy marry, boy meets up with old frineds on facebook, neglects to check the married box and starts up internet love affair, girl suspects and wants to hack account to prove herself right, girl falls for hacker who exposes cheating boy…

Or something like that.
But it’s probably already been done.

And also, you CAN buy software that does effectively hack passwords and keystrokes, and site visits… I won’t tell you where. I’m just sayin’.

At any rate, I unfriended and ungrouped and uncluttered my FB, but I was still thinking about the password thing, how I use lots of different ones for all my accounts, how I have to write them down, because I am afraid if I use the password keeper on the computer, I will forget the password to open IT, and then, I will be screwed.
When I forget a password and if I can’t find where I wrote it, I have to set it all up again, which in this day requires a security question. Most of them are stupid and I lie.

“What street did you grow up on?”
I say MAIN STREET, because even if I get Alzheimer’s, I will know MAIN STREET.

As I was thinking about all of this a friend told me how she had forgotten a password she thought she’d never have to re-use and was mortified when she had to call in to retrieve it, and the security question the guy was required to ask her was, “To whom did you lose your virginity?”
We laughed, but I think she was a little offended when I asked her if she knew the answer.

A non-traditional Christmas tale, which still might have a moral.

Linda — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:42:00 +0000

She had been dating him since college let out for the summer. She was calling him the summer boyfriend, the guy who was friends with her girlfriend’s boyfriend, a guy her own sister used to have the hots for. Convenience and revenge made for an interesting coupling.
He repaired speedboats, played basketball and could dance- well. For those things she could forgive his moodiness, his mumbling, his desire to spend more time with the guys than her. Summer turned to Fall, and they were still an item. She went to his family functions, hung out at his house, teased his dad about liking the WWF.
It seemed only natural that she would buy him a gift at Christmas. She’d listened to the dropped hints, checked his clothing sizes and splurged when a sale came up at a popular men’s store.
Two weeks before Christmas he broke up with her over the phone.
She unwrapped the clothes, tore up the boxes and returned everything to the store, telling the clerk her boyfriend has decided to ask for skis instead, what a crazy guy, huh?
Then she took the money, bought booze and drugs and went to an old high school girl’s holiday party, sharing a ride with her sister’s fiancee- a guy who had always been nice to her and now was even nicer that she had booze and drugs and was willing to share.
The ex-boyfriend turned up at the party with a bunch of loud mouthed guys and she left with her sister’s fiancee, a guy who touched her thigh in the back of the car and tried to kiss her- promising he’d never tell.
She slapped him and warned her sister, but six months later they were married. At the reception, the band played Bad Moon Rising and she made out with one of the groom’s brothers in the limo- a man who told her he was divorced.
By Christmas, the sister’s marriage was over, he’d left her a week after returning from the long honeymoon, leaving a goodbye note on the counter next to the garage door opener. He and his brother- the not really divorced at all one were going into business together, and his girlfriend wanted him to move in.
Merry Christmas.

Sometimes people get it and sometimes…

Linda — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:16:00 +0000

you just don’t want to go into it any more.

For the rest of you. Here’s a story.When I was a kid, we used to have a telephone on a long long cord. We would pull it across the hallway from the kitchen to the basement door, where we would sit on the third step down and have private conversations with our boyfriends. Or for my sisters- their friends. My dad tripped over that cord a few times and made it even longer , so that there was enough slack to twist around your finger or get knotted up in your long blonde hair as you talked in whispers to boys from the wrong side of town. Once I picked up the extension when my sister was talking about her plan to sneak over to the local drinking spot in the woods for a party after the big game- even though she was grounded. I used that to my advantage.
Thing was, when I was down there, perched on the steps, I would doodle on the wall– names, designs, phone numbers- when they were only 5 digits long–I had written some boys names over others, scratched out the eyes and added devil horns to the heads of poorly sketched cheerleaders. My sisters joined in and soon that wall was estrogen induced art. It told stories of our youth and was more permanent than the journal I’d lose when packing up the third apartment.
A few years ago my father called us all to tell us he had painted over the wall- not that he was going to, but that he had done it. Without even a photograph. I miss that wall. I miss the snarls in my hair from that cord. I miss having a place where I can close the door and write my secrets on a wall in plain view.

Anastasia wants to come to America and kill somebody.

Linda — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:12:00 +0000

Probably her new husband.
We all get those odd spam emails from foreign countries. They want to give us money, they want us to give them money They want to be pen pals. they want to help us save money on penis enhancing pills that we don’t even take. They want us to support wars, heal the sick and generally behave as if we are much more godly than you and I know to be true.
But this morning I had to laugh- an email from foxracer yielded this information:

Hello man my new friend!
I understand, that you do not know me and I do not know you, but probably in the future all can change. All good always occurs in the future and I ask a few patience from you to read my letter up to the end… . My name is Anastasia and to me it will be very pleasant, if you will name me so. Was born 34 years ago and all this time I live in Russia, in city of Kirov. … life goes in regular intervals and every day is similar on previous. … For all my life I could not meet the man to which I could trust completely and with which I would like to connect my
life, but very much I want.
Several days ago I laid at home on a sofa and thought. Why I am lonely? Why I cannot find my special the man?… Also I have thought. Why to not try to get acquainted with the man from other country if I could not find my special man here in Russia? Now we live in 21 century and I
know, that many people use the Internet … I do not want to be lonely during my life or simply to sit and wait, when my love will come to me.

…and she goes on, though my mind drifts to yesterday’s local headline about immigrants being responsible for increase in crime, which led some idiot to conclude the immigrants need some sort of tutoring when they move to the US so that they will understand the rules…wtf? like a USA handbook at every border?

…but the kicker is this picture of lovely ANASTASIA:It looks like she is hiding a blade or an icepick, that any minute- after the ceremony, after the joint bank account has been opened- after the fake pregnancy has been announced- she’s going to rip off her wig and stab Mr. American Man Her New Friend.