So Jill calls and wants to know why we haven’t updated Booksquare since this morning. She’s been checking and checking…and our lame excuse (“work”) didn’t fly. She expects far too much from us — though she didn’t come right out and say it, we think we’re supposed to, uh, write like three chapters and send them to her very soon. We can read between her silences.
Always curious, we read the article referenced below with great interest. Is the novel dying, we wondered, a bit worried as we have quite a few piled around and if they’re going to keel over from some terrible disease, we want fair warning. Alas, as is often the case with articles, there was no relationship between the headline and the text. If our novels are in decline, we’re going to find out the hard way. We’ll be avoiding large bookshelves in the coming weeks — safety is our motto.
Just as there wasn’t much discussion on the imminent demise of our beloved friends, emotional accuracy didn’t come into play much. But don’t despair, the headline doesn’t mislead on the sense of place thing. Apparently it’s not that important, but it is. It’s a commodity. Or not. It should evoke something or other. It should…well, a lot of burden is set upon the tiny shoulders of place. It’s almost too much for the poor thing to bear. Yes, this is why we prefer our readers just guess at our settings.
- Is the Novel Dying? Don’t write its ending yet, despite gloomy news from the U.S. In Vancouver Saturday, writers argued for ’emotional accuracy’ and a sense of place.
