My Year of Doing Something Off The Wall and Zany Sunday, Sep 20 2009

Went to see “Julie & Julia” with a friend last week. I went for several reasons: I love cooking and the movie is about transformative culination*, I am a writer and the movie has writering** in it, and it’s the kind of flick Husband isn’t into seeing. (Now, if it was “Julie & Julia Conquer Space, Fight Evil Aliens, and Show Their Bosoms,” he might have been more interested.) I did not read the Julie & Julia project blog  but I did read the book. The book was pretty horrible. People, stop trying to make books out of blogs unless you’re just going to print the whole blog out and sell it.

I enjoyed the movie. It was lighthearted and funny and wove the two stories together. The serious bits were glossed over or left out entirely (SEE: Julie’s actually kind of a bitch in the book; SEE ALSO: Julie had an affair and got a divorce).

This post is not about the movie or the book. It’s about people becoming famous for writing books about doing things for a year.

I think this works because a year is the Goldilocks version of a chunk of time – not too long, not too short, but juuuuust right. People can do most anything for one year. A daily blog for a year keeps readers coming back knowing there’s an end in sight, a goal in mind. The plain old memoir is becoming passe in favor of the Year in the Life stories.

I have decided that I won’t be a Famous Writer until I do something Off the Wall and Zany for a year, write a blog while I’m doing it and/or write a book at the end. I submit for your consideration other writers who have already gotten a jump on this genre:

A.J. Jacobs with “The Year of Living Biblically” and “The Know-It-All” wherein the author lives by all the rules of the Bible for one year and reads the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a year, respectively. Thank God he didn’t try them both at once.

Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal Vegetable Miracle” chronicling her pastoral farming family in Virginia

“Eat Pray Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert’s paean to the healing powers of sex, spirituality, and gelato

“No Angel: My Harrowing Undercover Journey to the Inner Circle of the Hells Angels” by Jay Dobyns and Nils Johnson-Shelton, which I haven’t read but, man…wouldn’t that be fun?

I’ve come up with some potential yearlong activities designed to give me a year’s worth of great material, a guaranteed book deal, and superstarwriterdom.

Living With Ferrets: One Year of Fur, Fuzz and Fun

Heart of Gold: Observing Brothels

Check, Please (Wherein I eat at every non-fast-food restaurant in the MetroLouisville area)

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Me?: Lessons from a Year in a Strictly Cloistered Abbey

From the Inside Out: 365 Days Behind Bars at a Womens’ Correctional Institute

What do you think? Would you read those blogs? Buy the book? See the movie?

Now, if only I can find an agent…and a publisher…and a blonde wig…

*It’s a real word, right?

** Ditto above

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Writing Update Tuesday, Sep 8 2009

A quick update from the Writing Spider:

     1. I haven’t made much progress on my novel. I know, I know….my only (terribly weak) excuse is that work has gotten extra-busy lately and the last thing I can bear to do is come home and plop down in front of the PC for hours after 8 hours of doing just that at work. I shall remedy this forthwith.

     2. I did enter an essay contest today. I wasn’t going to, and today is the deadline. I wrote 1,000 words in one day and turned it in two hours before the deadline. I have no chance of winning, but I want to enter as much as I can even if I won’t win. I’m not trying to be pessimistic, I’m just being realistic – you can’t win a contest writing 1,000 words in about four hours. Well, you can’t if you’re me. The point is not to win here.

    3. I just finished reading A.J. Jacobs’ “The Know it All” and it was fantastic. Highly recommended reading.

     4. I also finished a fairly substantial editing project today which is good since that’s kind of the Plan – be a fulltime writer/editor/word person. So…yay.

    5. I submitted an essay to a local mag and was not selected for publication. Le boo. Whatever. Maybe next time.

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Wither hast thou gone, Thugge Lyfe? Thursday, Sep 3 2009

    Dear Thug Life,

    May I be bold? I haven’t seen ghettohide nor greasyhair of you in lo these last few months. ARE YOU OKAY??

    I’m afraid, Thug Life, that you have died, mayhap the result of some illegal-substance-abuse-adventure gone awry. Perhaps you fell down the stairs, and your melon doth spill across chipp’d tile and broken glass? (Nay, for there is nothing in the melon to spill…) Or maybe, your lover, the Lady Miss Thang Donkadonkbooty was discovered in flagrante delicto by your longtime paramour Mme. Bobbyjolisasue of the white Trashlandia badlands, and in a jealous rage stabbed you repeatedly with the broken end of her Colt 45 bottle.

    I know not!

    I only know that during this season of pleasantly cool evenings and warm windy afternoons, sleeping comfortably through the night without the siren scream of…well…police sirens…has been a delight. A delight, I say, to throw open the windows and see only my begonias and not a disheveled bunch-backed imp answering the call of nature in my backyard. A delight, I say, to hear the pepper-shaker rattle of cicadas and not the ghetto-harpy’s mating call.

   Thug Life, how can I continue to write loving yet witty letters to you if you give me nothing, nary a peep, a toot, a squealing tire on which to base my epistles?

     Truly, Thug Life, it is as if you heard my gentle yet bitingly acerbic and sarcastic pleas! It is as if you read my modest blog and said amongst yourself, goodmen that you are, “We shall trifle no more! We shall no longer indulge in our usual skulking, slinking, hollering, lurking, violent, shady, asshattery ways! NAY, goodwyfe Spider, we will give up our life of petty crime and neighborhood menacing. Never again shall we toss our ale jugs into the bin during the wee-est wee hours of the morn, nor shall we wee-wee in the parking lot like rouge mutts!”

   I am overcome, Thug Life, at the thought.

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