BoHo Bodega Launch...with Opera

Last night I went to the media launch of the BoHo Bodega, which is basically a neighborhood convenience store...in which all the products are eco-friendly. At the launch, everyone partied with organic vodka drinks, "green" finger food...and an opera showcase. From David Dumas singing Mahler to the staff wearing crazy-awesome hats designed by Hayley McCullough (including a great one that featured an actual dinosaur--not even plastic but an actual dinosaur--no, it was plastic), it was certainly a night for the green and bizarre.

(Image swiped from the Boho News Blog)

The bodega is around for five days only, since the idea is to have a media blitz and share the green feelings. Since they're obviously not going to break even on this venture, they're not trying to. The companies whose products are being sold in the store actually paid to have their merchandise included, and 100% of profits from the sales in the next few days will be contributed to Council on the Environment of NYC (CENYC).

The idea behind the bodega is that normal people might have an interest in going green, but they might not have the dollars or enthusiasm to constantly pay Whole Food prices for their items. By making products available in a "normal" way like a street bodega, green becomes available for the masses. Set aside the plastic cups we used to sip our organic vodka mixers and the paper waste from all the fliers and the environmental impact of moving and setting up shop. I think that the core mission is very cool. Commendable. But what do we do next week when this is all over? ♦DiggIt! ♦Add to del.icio.us ♦Add to Technorati Faves

On Inner Weirdness

"Weird Al" Yankovic via last.fm

Author Matt Mikalatos writes a great guest article on agent Rachelle Gardner's blog. Synopsis: Don't be afraid to be as weird as possible, because that's the only way to break the mold. No one wants to read yet another vampire tale or another prep-school-drama-queen story... but in the end, weird equals creative. Very well said!

Weird Al Yankovic is weird, and look how far he's gotten by wearing it on his sleeve!

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Writer’s Block v. “Percolation”: Call a Spade a Spade?

Image by texasgurl via Flickr

Sometimes I don’t know what to write. Scratch that. Sometimes I don’t know how to write. When it comes to writer’s block, everyone has a different view. Is it mere laziness? Is it a syndrome? Is it a weakness of one’s imagination?

When a writer can’t write, sometimes he’ll call it a rumination stage, letting an idea percolate, etc.

So I ask: Is that just a bad excuse?

In my experience, there’s a core difference between the two, and it comes down to a choice of question word. Is the issue that you don’t know what to write, or is it that you don’t know how to most effectively convey an idea?

I have only truly experienced real writer’s block once, and it was because of fear.


I chose to pursue my undergraduate degree at an institution with a tremendous emphasis on the “classics” of Western civilization. During freshman Literature Humanities, I didn’t take notes on the details of Herodotus’ story about the dolphins or the funny story about the raunchy priest in the Decameron. Instead, I maintained a separate notebook just for myself, in which I tried to figure out why each of these works was considered a classic. I tried to learn from writing techniques of the masters.


By the end of the year, I was convinced that I was going to write the next To The Lighthouse. Every time I scooted over my laptop and began to write, I imbued every word with quadruple symbolism, with images and allusions and grandiose expectations.


As one might guess, this was a little ridiculous. I spent about a year perfecting, rewriting, obsessing over one short story. I look back at it now, and I cringe at my own high-handedness. After that, I didn’t write much of anything for over a year. That was writer’s block.


I was scared. The root of my writer’s block was the obsessive and unrealistic expectations I held for myself. I was worried that if I didn’t produce the next Iliad that my writing would be pointless. I didn’t know what I could say that could possibly be enough. Basically, I forgot the fun.

Since then, I have had bouts of not-being-able-to-write, but I wouldn’t call them writer’s block. In those instances, the question wasn’t what to write but rather how to convey something the best, what happens next in my story, etc. Sometimes I need to allow a story to percolate for weeks. Sometimes I need to pick up another story and keep the first one locked away in the recesses of my mind until I understand how to do it correctly.

That’s not fear. That’s an attempt to understand how a story is meant to be told. It’s not an excuse not to write for ages at a time, but rather a reason to remain in constant motion and thought, even if that means picking up another project in the meantime.

My preferred method of percolation is to walk it out. Sometimes, the rumination process begins to take too long, and I worry that I’m using it as an excuse to hide a deeper reason for not writing. So I put on some shoes and get going. When I was working on my novel while living in Japan, I once spent hours walking around my Kyoto suburb at night in order to figure out chapter 15. Usually it’s toward the end of my walks that I find my mojo, when I am starting to get tired, or when it’s getting too dark out, or when I realize that my host parents are waiting for me with dinner on the table. I know that I have to get going, but I haven’t found any answers yet. I walk a few more minutes as I prepare to give up, and then something clicks.

Maybe, for others, the clicking process involves cooking, or cleaning, or chatting with friends, but when it clicks, it clicks.

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Celebrities are Shiny!

Image via Wikipedia

I interviewed Greg Grunberg of Heroes a few weeks ago for Green & Save--he's the actor who plays the psychic cop Matt Parkman, who was also on Felicity and Alias. I am pretty sure that that makes me cool. I've asked around.

Yes, this is better than the time I sat next to Julia Stiles in class freshman year, even better than when I passed her the attendance sheet. If not for borrowed celebrity, where would I be? Oh, right.

This came about through a conversation I had with his publicist, whom I met at Obliterati, the media networking event. The green connection is that Greg has co-created a new iPhone app called Yowza!!, which is a mobile couponing application. In a nutshell, it's green because it's not paper.

Also, Greg is in a band with Hugh Laurie & Teri Hatcher. He was all like, "Yeah, Teri's hard to get in touch with. And Hugh's difficult to schedule because he's in like every scene of his show." [Disclaimer: That was not a direct quote. Rather, it proves that I'm almost best friends with the fictional character Dr. House.]

Although I don't expect the article to rocket me to literary superstardom, I am excited to add this clip to my portfolio, to further develop some of these networks, and to be at least marginally cooler than I was last week. Doesn't my saying it so many times make it even partially true?

ARTICLE: bit.ly/USdpX

I miss Felicity.

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First Published Fiction

Image by darque9 via Flickr

As much as I have been writing for and editing columns at Green & Save, taking on freelance web content writing projects, and trying to develop my nonfiction portfolio, the passion closest to my heart is fiction. Accordingly, I am proud to announce that I have had my first short story published by a literary magazine! Check it out in the September issue of Underground Voices. I was recently notified that my story, "Polaroids," has also been selected for their annual print anthology. I say annual, but I think that they're publishing poetry this year and have pushed the fiction anthology to next year accordingly. As such, I'll have a pleasant little surprise in my inbox come December 2010.

To infinity and beyond!

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A Year in Review

As I renew the lease on my apartment and reach my one-year anniversary at my present job, I can’t help but look back at how far I’ve come and how much has changed in the past year. I feel so separated from the frantic terror of The Real World, from the frenzied cleaning of the new apartment, from the isolation and self-doubt that accompanies any healthy post-college identity crisis. This has been a long year.

A close friend called that a luxury, the feeling that a year has been a long one. When time flies, he said, that means that nothing much has happened in the interim. He told me that I’m lucky for feeling this way, because he and many others don’t. Upon college graduation, I was scared of falling into undifferentiated Time. I was worried that I’d be overcome with apathy or, worse yet, that the passage of time would cease to have meaning as my life transmogrified into one homogenous glump. Not so.

A great deal of my post-collegiate fretting revolved around writing. For ages I pursued writing, persevered, because I wanted it, because I hoped for it, and because I didn’t have the balls to admit defeat. That’s changed, somehow. Perhaps it’s false confidence, but I feel as though a fulfilling writing life is within my grasp. Maybe it’s that I had my first short story accepted to a literary magazine. Maybe it’s that mere months after determining that I had to start writing nonfiction more seriously, I’m an editor at a website. But mostly it’s that I feel like I have power over my own fate. Writing, I’ve decided, isn’t about getting lucky or hoping a whole lot. It’s only partially about talent. Although it’s an oft-repeated cliché, this whole thing really does seem to be about the hard work.

I’ve also realized that I have terrible work ethic. Correction: I work at maximum capacity when I care about what I’m doing.

Greenandsave.com didn’t ask me to be an editor. At first I felt like I was cheating by suggesting, pitching, the idea of columns to the powers that be. I felt like it couldn’t be legit if I negotiated my way into an editorship, and that if I did it the “real” way, they’d have seen my overflowing talent and begged me to do the job. But you know what? That’s why I feel empowered. No one is going to knock on my door, “discover” me, and beg to publish my book. It’s going to be me negotiating and making my own opportunities. So what that Green & Save didn’t know that it wanted a columns section? So what that I pitched it? I made it happen, and I think I’ve done a good job, too. In the aftermath of the launch, it’s clear that they think I’ve added value to the operation, and I know that I’ve learned a lot about editing and managing others.

Often I ask myself who I am to judge others’ writing. Who am I to make suggestions or change other people’s words? How do I know that I know how to write, that I’m an authority in the first place? Because I’m an editor? I gave myself that authority, grabbed the title, but I’ve also learned in the past year that in the real world, authority is in the eye of the beholder. Considering the amount that I’ve been editing at Green & Save, my day job, my manuscript, and even med school applications of close friends (wink?), I feel like my views on writing have shifted pretty drastically. I used to approach a work wondering, making suggestions, thinking of what could be better. Maybe I have become more of a jerk through this process, but now I start out drawn by what I can cut. Some phrases simply seem right, and some seem wrong. I know that writing isn’t a black and white type of game, but I think that my literary tastes, style, and approach have all crystallized in recent weeks.

Where does this lead? Give me another year and I’ll let you know.

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Lies and Misrepresentations

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My eighth grade English teacher always taught us to lie in our five-paragraph essays. Use plenty of transitions, give lots of examples, and lie, lie, lie. When I taught an SAT Writing class, I told my students the same thing: no one cares what you have to say—they only want to see how you say it.

In the realm of journalism, lying is obviously a non-starter. We can talk about media bias til we’re blue in the face, but most of the inflamed rhetoric seems to take for granted that people know when they’re misrepresenting.

When I wrote a sob story about my terminally ill fake best friend for that eighth grade standardized test, I knew that I was lying. But recently I’ve had to think more closely about the question of misrepresentation—and whether sometimes there are things that we can’t write about truthfully, no matter how hard we try.

The columns for Green & Save have launched. I’m proud of all of our columnists and the work they’ve produced. All the same, one of our prospective columns was canceled because the writer felt that he couldn’t do justice to his topic. A community organizer, he was going to cover environmental concerns as they affect the community he serves. In the end, however, he decided that, rather than shedding light on issues affecting his community, he would be doing an injustice by writing the column. He told me that he recognized his role as an outsider and that he didn’t presume to know more than, or to be able to speak for, his constituency. He thought that it would be unfair, inaccurate, and misleading to write about others without their knowledge, consent, and input. Short of interviewing those people he serves, he didn’t feel as though he was qualified to speak for them.

So I wonder and I ask—what’s our own role in our writing? What’s our responsibility? How do we put ourselves into what we do, and where do we draw the line? I have a deep respect for the decision that this writer made, and I only hope that I have been fair in representing him, in turn.

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