Posts Tagged ‘writer’
A Week in Culture: Maud Newton, Writer
June 9, 2010 | by Maud Newton
Maud Newton
DAY ONE
9:47 A.M. Wake early (for a Sunday). I still haven’t replaced the French press that shattered week before last, so I make tea the Muriel Spark way: warming the pot first, measuring out loose leaves, drinking from china. Absurdly precious, I know, but I give myself a pass because, really, if you’re going to start the day without coffee, you’re going to need to distract yourself somehow.
10:15 A.M. Pick up Memento Mori for dialogue inspiration and involuntarily become engrossed again. If I read to the end, that will make four times1 in as many months.
10:45 A.M. Open novel draft2 file on laptop.
10:48 A.M. Embark on the inevitable Sunday morning boondoggle: the outline is not only possible, but imperative. Purchase and download an iPad note-taking application. Pass an hour training myself to write with index finger.
11:55 A.M. Outline the story in this fashion.
12:45 P.M. Email PDF of “handwritten” outline to myself; notice how late it’s getting; castigate myself for wasting weekend writing time.
1:00 P.M. Return, with egg sandwich, to draft. Assemble revisions and notes. Set MacFreedom to shut down Internet access for four hours. Begin writing.
1:45 P.M. Read assorted culture news—new mummies unearthed, Mark Twain’s unexpurgated bio to be published, oil still pumping unchecked into the Gulf of Mexico—on Twitter.
2:00 P.M. Half the day is gone now. Resume work on novel; work diligently for four-and-a-half more hours.
7:00 P.M. Max (husband) suggests leaving the apartment before the sun goes down. We walk to the local market and buy fruit, vegetables, bread, cheese, and chocolate—the five major food groups.
9:30 P.M. Dread resumption of office job in the morning. Regret all choices and circumstances that have led to necessity of having a day job. Recall A.O. Scott’s hilarious (yet sympathetic) indictment of Generation X in last week’s “Week in Review” piece on Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask. Track it down and reread. Reflect on the ultimate pointlessness of trying to escape the slacker mindset.
9:40 P.M. Begin drinking (bourbon).
10:45 P.M. Sit down with Max to watch the first episode of the second season of Damages, which arrived yesterday courtesy of Netflix.
11:55 P.M. Get into bed. (So virtuous! So old.) Start into Kingsley Amis3’ The King’s English, his (out-of-print) guide to modern usage.
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- By now there are passages I could almost quote from memory—especially the post-funeral scenes involving the writer with rheumatoid arthritis slouched over “two sticks,” making his way among the funeral flowers as the other elderly characters goggle at him. The novelty of the Scottishism ("sticks” rather than “canes") tickles me, of course, but it’s the perfect, deadly repetition of the word—all the glimpses of the “clever little man doubled over his sticks"—that makes this section so funny.
- Recently I realized that the project I’ve been working on for several years is actually two different stories, so I’ve hacked it up and am aiming to finish the first book by the end of the summer. Now that the scope of the thing is more tightly defined, I’ve started to wonder if an actual outline—something I haven’t attempted for a couple years—may now be possible.
- Although his Lucky Jim is probably one of my top ten comic novels, I didn’t fall in love with Amis until recently, when I started reading Everyday Drinking, a reissue of his essays on one of my favorite subjects. That collection is as witty, and as straightforwardly, intelligently, and unpretentiously written as the best of Twain’s nonfiction, and now I can’t wait to read about all the “linguistic barbarisms” that set old Kingsley off. Tonight’s highlights: correcting Fowler, usage God, on the difference between “ale” and “beer"; an attack on “the one-word travesty” alright, which is “always and altogether all wrong."
