Didn't even have to use my AK.

Sometimes you have such a great day that you wonder if it's even possible that any day could ever get any cooler.

Vegetarian Pattern Baldness

I admit it: I have not been particularly vigilant about my diet of late. Due to ethical obligations, I stopped consuming commercially raised animal products about a year ago, which makes me effectively a vegan at restaurants and a vegetarian most of the rest of the time, although I am technically neither, since I don't have any problem with actually eating meat -- only with treating living beings as production units who are incapable of suffering.

On top of that, since learning how incredibly destructive and resource-heavy feedlots and commercial dairies are, I've been even more reluctant than usual to support factory farming. If you are worried about doing your part to put a dent in BP's profits, don't cut back on your driving, cut back on your steaks and spare ribs. It makes a much, MUCH bigger difference.

I don't have the income at present to buy humanely raised and slaughtered meat, so I've been living off of fruits, veggies, and rice. And chocolate, of course. While I find this delicious and gastronomically satisfactory, it has apparently had some impact on my health. My hair is thinning. Like, whoah. It's a little scary, in fact. I'm thirty and I'm going bald.

Thank goodness for research. I've learned that in women of my age, hair loss is nearly always due to iron deficiency -- and what is the biggest cause of iron deficiency? Not eating meat. Damn. Of course, you can still get lots of iron from a vegetarian or vegan diet, but I haven't been eating with my iron needs in mind, so I undoubtedly have failed miserably to do that over the past year. My hair is punishing me for this. In any case, eating humanely has to be done carefully -- iron-rich non-animal foods are out there, but their iron is less accessible to the body, and there are some tricks to making full use of it, such as eating iron-rich foods with vitamin-C-rich foods (no problem for me -- there's nothing I'd rather drink with any meal than a big fat glass of grapefruit juice). Oh, and both soy and caffeine inhibit the body's absorption of iron. Good-bye, grande soy caramel sauce lattes. :'(

Heme iron -- the kind found in animal sources -- is the simplest for the body to access. No special tricks needed, no calculators, no graphs, no grapefruit juice -- just eat a steak. A delicious, juicy, medium-rare steak with bleu cheese and worcestershire sauce. Mmmmmmm.

Knowing all this doesn't help me keep at bay the monstrous craving I've had lately for meatloaf and barbecued ribs. Dear god, I need my books to sell SOON so I can buy a chest freezer and a quarter of a nice, happily raised, humanely killed cow.

In any case, I've started taking iron supplements (again -- this happened to me once before. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson) and seeking out iron-rich veggies and vitamin C. Hopefully in six months or so I'll have thicker hair and I won't look like a granny, getting all thin and wispy around the crown.

This is not good for my image. There is nothing sexy about balding lady writers. I bet Joyce Carol Oates never went bald. She probably yells at a steak every day and then writes a novel in its steak-juices, though. SIGH.

At least the sun is finally, FINALLY shining today. We've had the most disappointing summer ever. We wait for nine months to get a little sunshine, and so far we've been denied until this late into the season. I knew last night that today would be a good day, because I saw the stars come out for the first time in months. It's making me feel hopeful -- about my hair, about my writing, about everything.

Audiobook time!

Ahh...nothing like downloading a new audiobook to cheer me up. I am currently acquiring This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald) to listen to while I paint. In the bull pen is Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami. Several of my friends have been singing the praises of Murakami and I haven't read any of his works yet, except for one short story which was weird and very good and a little bit sad. Just the kind of writing I like.

I am a voracious consumer of audiobooks -- in fact, it's only recently that I've gone back to reading the traditional way with any regularity. I'm not sure why this is -- maybe it has something to do with my short stint as a bookseller. Audiobooks are my usual schtick, though -- I listen to them while I'm driving, at the gym, jogging, and while doing any kind of artistic activity. When I don't have a book to listen to, it's the podcast of PRI Selected Shorts or other short-fiction podcasts, and when those run dry I turn to This American Life and The Moth. I am a story addict -- what can I say?

I've got a subscription at Audible.com (highly recommended!) and take full advantage of it. My iPod gets a good workout every day.

If you've never done the audiobook thing, you don't know what you're missing!

Some Nabs to ease my aching heart

"Okay," she said co-operatively, and bending toward her warm upturned russet face somber Humbert pressed his mouth to her fluttering eyelid. She laughed, and brushed past me out of the room. My heart seemed everywhere at once. Never in my life -- not even when fondling my child-love in France -- never --

Night. Never have I experienced such agony. I would like to describe her face, her ways -- and I cannot, because my own desire for her blinds me when she is near. I am not used to being with nymphets, damn it. If I close my eyes I see but an immobilized fraction of her, a cinematographic still, a sudden smooth nether loveliness, as with one knee up under a tartan skirt she sits tying her shoe.

(Ahh. I know. I know.)

I'm an outliner.

I am most definitely the type of writer who needs to outline. I can fiddle around for a few weeks with writing random scenes and random moments of character development, but sooner or later, the not knowing exactly what will happen to my characters starts to freak me out. I MUST outline.

I am happy to say that I did finally work up a good outline for Baptism for the Dead today, at last! it's been around six weeks since I started working on this novel. That's the longest I've ever gone without outlining and then making serious, concentrated progress. These have been very frustrating weeks for me. I feel drifty and fuzzy without my outlines.

The nice thing about the process of writing an outline is that I see the story actually happen in little short scenelets, like small clips from a movie. As I look back at the outline and expand each part into a chapter or a scene, I am able to replay and revise and embellish the scenelets into whole cinematic spans, and I simply write down what I see. Easy cheesy.

Best of all, as I work on the outline the final scene forms in my head, and I am a "write to the end" writer. Once I know exactly how the story ends, and can see that moment of catharsis and resolution playing on a loop in my brain, the stuff between the title page and that last scene practically writes itself.

Outlining is the key to my speed and efficiency. I love it.

Are you an outliner, or a by-the-seat-of-your-pantser (more commonly called a pantser)?

These are a few of my favorite things...

A long dry spell, and now two updates in a single day! Just a quick note to note that I have expanded the links lists on the left sidebar...more books I love and recommend to you, broken into user-friendly categories. Please feel free, friends, to recommend me more books! I am especially interested in reading more excellent short-story collections and more poetry collections. But any and all recommendations are welcome!

We can always read more, amirite?

Resolution.

I resolve to update this blog no less than every third day. I am resolute.

I've had a copy of Tender Is the Night sitting around for quite some time and never delved into it. I don't know why, since The Great Gatsby is one of my all-time favorites and I swoon over Fitzgerald's prose.

I finally started reading Tender Is the Night, and I find that the story speaks to me and the position in which I find myself currently in a very direct and startling way, which is exactly what happened when I read Gatsby for the first time as an adult.

(I firmly believe that any teen-age assigned reading of that book doesn't count -- one must have experienced adult love and loss in order to understand what is going on in Gatsby. That's not to belittle the reality of youthful love and loss -- those are just as poignant, but in a totally different way.)

Now, since both The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night deal to a greater or lesser extent with adultery, let me point out that I am not cheating, nor would I ever. I don't respect that kind of behavior in anybody, and would especially not respect it in myself. It's more the unique perspectives the characters in both books have on relationships that affect me so deeply -- that, and Fitzgerald's moving, delicate, incisive prose.

Have you ever had the experience of picking up a book that was just right for your emotional situation? What was it about the book that spoke to you?