Writing Goals
A playlist of the week's best new albums, interviews with Alissa Hattman & Merve Emre, an excerpt from Eliza Clark's novel, new music from Maria BC, and more
The rain has stopped. For what seems like the first time in a month, I spent most of the day outside. Running errands and walking with friends around north Brooklyn.
September’s rain improved my productivity. I wrote more, spent more time lesson planning for teaching, and found more time to read and analyze texts (and critique workshop pieces) for grad school. It was wet outside, so I found enough time to stay slightly ahead of work & school deadines and writing goals.
Ever since I began teaching, I have less time to write. My usual schedule of writing on weekday mornings has been erased by a 5 o’ clock alarm and 5:50 train. In the past I have always been able to make time to write, but never set a goal. With my life a bit more hectic these days, that had to change.
Early last month, I set a writing goal for motivation. 25,000 words by the end of the year on my new project. The tally is kept in my notebook, and seeing the word count creep up daily has been surprisingly inspiring. Will I meet the goal? Possibly. But even if I don’t, the goal reminds me to make time to write, which is more important.
Do you set writing goals?
A Playlist of the Week’s Best New Albums (10 albums, 92 songs, 6 hours and 35 minutes)
This week’s best new music includes albums from Wilco, Slow Pulp, Girl Scout, Cherry Glazerr, Molly Burch, Animal Collective, Oneohtrix Point Never, Blonde Redhead, Modern Nature, and Del Water Gap.
Largehearted Likes:
The Sausage University sweatshirt from Seemore
Cara Nicoletti’s Seemore Meats & Veggies makes the best sausages on the planet, and this simple black sweatshirt will soon become a staple in my wardrobe.See also: Cara’s playist for her book Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books
Speaking of sausage apparel, “You Can’t Spell Sausage without USA” t-shirt
Ayana Mathis’s new novel The Unsettled
One of the most ambitious and moving books I have read all year.
Largehearted Links
Kurt Vonnegut Radio’s interview with writer & critic Merve Emre
I do feel quite frustrated in general reading the motherhood discourse of the past decade or so. I realized how inattentive a great deal of it is to the child. I do think we need to recognize that children are people.Will Butler on Emily Dickinson, Andrei Tarkovsky, Björk, and Other Inspirations Behind His Self-Titled Album With Sister Squares
There’s a lot of editions of Emily Dickinson that are just every poem in chronological order, but what she actually did is she actually wrote them on little booklets and sewed them together and made these little albums. I would take a morning and read an album that she had made – sometimes it’s 10 poems, sometimes it’s 30 poems, they’re all little different collections.NPR Books’ series Picture This
A fascinating series that brings together childrens’ book authors and illustrators.The big idea: could we use music like medicine?
However good your playlist is, music medicine is not a cure for serious mental illness, nor a replacement for professional help. Instead, it can be thought of as a useful alternative to meditation and other reflective practices that help improve our overall resilience to life’s stresses.Pitchfork’s list of albums you may have missed this past spring and summer
Read an excerpt from Paused In Cosmic Reflection, a collaborative biography of the Chemical Brothers
Alissa Hattman on Creating the Post-Apocalyptic World of Her Novel Sift
…I try to remain open to others’ voices. What people don’t see on the page is the inherited narrative that often comes up when I’m writing, a narrative that I’ve learned to recognize and resist. I ask myself: is this really what I want to say, or is it some absorbed voice or structure? What people see on the page are moments when another voice organically interjects in a way that feels active, rather than passive. I think of the inherited narrative as passive receiving.Electric Literature’s interview with Hilary Leichter
What I’m most interested in is the kind of active engagement that allows a book not only to become a book that I’ve read, but an event in my life that I’ve experienced. For me, that’s only possible when the book requires something of me, and that’s risky because a lot of people read so nothing is required of them. But I want something to be required of me, I want to be an active participant in the text.
Last Week’s LHB Feature Posts
Dias Novita Wuri’s playlist for her novella Birth Canal
Francis Levy’s playlist for his story collection The Kafka Studies Department
Freda Love Smith’s playlist for her memoir I Quit Everything
James Frankie Thomas’s playlist for his novel Idlewild
Jimin Han’s playlist for her novel The Apology