emily > Recent Status Updates

I’m awestruck by how richly characterized and eventful this has been so far, I’m not even halfway through but I feel like I’ve read enough to fill two novels

This is a book I suspect I can only tolerate in small doses. The initial charm has definitely worn off and I’m starting to dislike the vaguely self-satisfied, knowing tone of this narrator, which is unfortunately because I really really wanted to be charmed and delighted by the narrator’s voice

“In my first year of college it became widely believed that “milk makes more mucus” and hence should be avoided when you have a cold— that was the beginning of my disenchantment.”

Our narrator is too easily swayed by random bullshit because he has no sense of discernment. He makes imaginative associations and has a child’s sense of wonder, but hes yanked around bc he cant separate the meaningful/mundane

“Any sadness I felt was overpowered by an embarrassment that we had associated ourselves with the losers, services that could be grouped with horse-drawn ice and coal trucks.”

This is the second time the narrator has applied his extreme sensitivity to social conventions, the first time being the get-well poster signature placement. I want to be charmed but I feel secondhand embarrassment whenever it happens tbh

“… after she had finished her plain donut, and had frisked the crumbs from her fingertips into the piece of plastic wrap that the donut had come in, and had folded the plastic wrap in around the crumbs until it formed a neat whitish pellet, and had thrown the pellet out…”

this is an absolutely nightmarish sentence im sorry to say. it also wouldn’t fit in the length of three status updates so

“good morning,^{11} ___?”

{11} Though by then it was by Tina’s own desk clock 12:04 P.M. I was always touched when, out of a morning’s worth of repetition, secretaries continued to answer with good mornings for an hour or so into the afternoon, just as people often date things with the previous year well into February; sometimes they caught their mistake and went into a “This is not my day” or blah blah

“It was conceivable, though scary to imagine, that the pull-fray model and the walk-flex model mingled their coefficients so subtly that human agency would never accurately apportion cause.”

Excerpt From
The Mezzanine
Baker, Nicholson
This material may be protected by copyright.

Oh god, my face when I saw the footnote next to “concave metal doorknob” and clicked it and it was four pages long. This book is such an exercise in patience

“When you are capable of skillful imitation, the sweep of choices… is too large; but when your brain loses… the ambition to do things that don’t suit it, then you finally have to settle down to do well the few things that your brain really can do well”

GR char limit cant contain the power of these insane sentences so I must hack away. Strange how this dumb braincell death theory does mirror my experience

“pre-bunching can leave… pieces of grit that have embedded themselves in your sole from the imperfectly swept floor you walked on to get from the shower to your room; while the cruder… method… does detach this grit during the foot’s downward passage, so that you seldom later feel irritating particles rolling around”

WHAT is bro saying. do u not have slippers. just clean ur foot before putting the sock on

“… the almost sonic whoosh of receptionists’ staggering and misguided perfumes, and the covert chokings and showings of tongues and placing of braceleted hands to windpipes that more tastefully scented secretaries exchange in their wake.”

I’m so confused by this line ngl, why are the secretaries choking themselves?

One chapter into the book, while eating a cheesecake at a restaurant, I found myself thinking explicitly about why I’d rather eat cake with a fork than a spoon: it’s easier to get all the cake residue off the fork with each bite so it feels neater. This was something I knew subconsciously but never verbalized to myself until this moment, given the choice of a fork or spoon to eat my cake with… thanks I guess.

35/417 Write to your lowest standard. Victoria Nelson... points out that "there is an almost mathematical ratio between soaring, grandiose ambition... and severe creative block." More writers prostitute themselves "up" than "down"; more are false in the determination to write great literature than to throw off a romance. A rough draft is rough; that's its nature. Let it be rough.
Writing is easy. Not writing is hard.

32/417 There are two advantages to [writing a first draft in one sitting]. The first is that you are more likely to produce a coherent draft when you come to the desk... with a single vision of the whole, than when you write piecemeal, having altered ideas and moods. The second is that fast writing tends to make for fast pace in the story. It is always easier, later, to add and develop than it is to sharpen the pace.

30/417

Choosing a subject: list of story idea suggestions based on freewriting and experience. The dilemma/catch-22, the incongruity, the connection, the memory, the transplant, and the revenge.

25/417

Clustering: choose a word that represents your central subject, write it in the center of the page, and circle it. Then for two or three minutes free-associate by jotting down around it any word—image, action, abstraction, or part of speech—that comes to mind. Every now and again, circle the words you have written and draw lines or arrows between words that seem to connect.

42/75. My second time reading this and it’s still the most stressful experience ever 💀

Ep. 2/75: "Regardless of whether I throw a fit and deny it, the score the world gave me will not change... It's different here. They acknowledged me. This worthless body. They recognized that I'm a product worth investing in. So at the moment, I'm merely grateful that they gave me a consolation round, a chance to try again... because they recognize my value."

can't believe im reading ANOTHER stockholm syndrome story

Chapter 9/95. Bro is making some of the dumbest choices ever conceived by man

McGrady and Ball are a cute detective duo lowkey. Last time I thought this about a detective duo I got burned by a miserable ending though, so I’m keeping my expectations underground (thanks for the emotional scars Tana French broken harbor)

Everyone knows that poetry and music are for pure enjoyment and for uplifting and ennobling the human spirit (hence their virtual elimination from the public school curriculum) but no, math is important.

ok I giggled