Writer’s Desk: Writing Through the Hard Times

On January 22, 2023January 18, 2023 By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

Among the writers Charlie Jane Anders spoke with for Never Say You Can’t Survive was Rebecca Solnit, who has written many books (Hope in the Dark) about that very topic. This is Solnit’s advice for how to keep putting words on the page even when everything seems to be falling apart:

Your writing doesn’t ignore what you think, your writing doesn’t think your body is weird, your writing is not going to nag you about that thing you did when you were eleven, your writing thinks you are the boss, and so it’s the best thing to do in the worst of times, as well as in the best, or so I have found. Writing a sentence is drawing a line and some of those lines are roads out of hell…

Quote of the Day: Reading as Resistance

On January 23, 2020 By chrisbarsantiIn BooksLeave a comment

At the American Booksellers Association’s 15th annual Winter Institute gathering, held this year in Baltimore, author Rebecca Solnit spoke about how reading and publishing can be acts of quiet resistance in an age of distractedness and “glib false certainties.” Per Shelf Awareness:

“At its best it’s a liberation project,” said Solnit of writing and bookselling.

Weekend Reading: June 9, 2017

On June 9, 2017June 8, 2017 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium GatherumLeave a comment

Getting Somali girls in Minnesota to take part in sports.
Uranium mining, toxic runoff, the Grand Canyon … what could go wrong?
Hello single-payer: Looks like Nevada is about to let about 3 million people buy into Medicaid.
Ladies and gentlemen, the panicker in chief.
The entire coal industry employs fewer people than Arby’s.
Spend 15 minutes a day reading the right books and you’d have a good solid education—so was born the famous Five Foot Shelf.
Cool things: New York’s new Subway Library.
Print and read: Rebecca Solnit on the most mocked man in the world.
Bonus print and read: Wonder who runs the world? They meet at the Bellagio to talk money and most of the men look like Jared Kushner.

Weekend Reading: March 24, 2017

On March 24, 2017March 23, 2017 By chrisbarsantiIn Omnium Gatherum1 Comment

Rebecca Solnit on not giving up: protesting and the long game.
Making maps less imperialistic – shrink Europe to its real size.
Presidenting is very hard, no fun at all.
Rick Perry reveals his true inner Aggie.
Forget work, more men are spending their lives inside the gaming world.
Print and read: No sympathy for Trump hillbillies; or, why there’s no reason for liberals to escape their bubbles if Trump voters never will.
Bonus print and read: Why do doctors keep putting stents in otherwise healthy people when chances are they don’t work?

Writer’s Desk: It’s Going to Take Some Time

On September 25, 2016September 20, 2016 By chrisbarsantiIn Books, WritingLeave a comment

Rebecca Solnit, author of Men Explains Things to Me, has a few tips at LitHub for the aspiring, or just plain struggling, writer. Her advice is less aspirational and more hard-working than most. In short, don’t pretend it’s going to be easy:

It takes time. This means that you need to find that time. Don’t be too social. Live below your means and keep the means modest (people with trust funds and other cushions: I’m not talking to you, though money makes many, many things easy, and often, vocation and passion harder). You probably have to do something else for a living at the outset or all along, but don’t develop expensive habits or consuming hobbies. I knew a waitress once who thought fate was keeping her from her painting but taste was: if she’d given up always being the person who turned going out for a burrito into ordering the expensive wine at the bistro she would’ve had one more free day a week for art.

Remember the rule that Malcolm Gladwell popularized about needing 10,000 hours to master something? That’s what you’ll need to do for writing, at the very least.

Chris Barsanti

Tag: Rebecca Solnit