- a letter of recommendation for a student;
- 750 words on a novel in progress;
- preliminary revisions on a short tale I'm working on;
- two thank-you cards;
- two lesson plans;
- thirteen e-mails of varied length;
- a blog post;
- a brief on a committee I'm serving on.
These tasks add up, and they speak for us in ways both large and small--in the here and now and well into the future. I was looking through a stack of magazines in my bedroom and I found the mother load of cards and notes that we've received from friends and family since the birth of our little girl.
Man, if you could bottle the goodwill and hope in those cards...
Perhaps my favorite short story on these literary byproducts is Stephen King's "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away," a sad tale about a suicidal businessman whose hobby is collecting limericks from highway rest stops throughout his sales territory.
I read it a few weeks ago, and since then I've amused our little girl with this charming triplet: Poopie doopie, you so loopy. She loves it, and who could blame her. The cadence there...it just rolls off the tongue.
Now there's a magazine that captures many of these forgotten pearls. Found Magazine posts a find of the day, and the magazine's editor, Jason Bitner, produces a yearly anthology of the best finds. We're talking cards, love letters, grocery lists--you name it.
Like I said, this stuff kind of fascinates me. If you've got a minute to burn on the Internet (of course you do--that's why you stopped by here, right?), check out Found...
4 comments:
Daniel,
I sent the "found" link to the fruit of my womb..she and her significant other found a note once and liked it SO much that it's used on both of their facebook pages as a random quote.
On a separate issue, I saw that you asked Joe Konrath if you could send him some questions to answer...be careful what you wish for...he came to my place today for a Q&A and I may never be able to hold my head up in polite society again.
He's such fun!!
Karen :)
Morning, Karen,
Yeah, Found is pretty neat. I'm happy to see a landing place for the orphaned misfits of language.
Glad to hear that you enjoyed the discussion with Joe Konrath. He's been a tremendous resource in the writing community for a long time.
Take care, and good luck with the writing.
no Daniel...it was not a discussion, at least not a discussion in any kind of literary way...I'm assuming that you didn't follow Joe around for the AFRAID tour???
He has quite a different aspect of his personality when he is not expounding on the publishing end of writing for a living.(small small understatemen)
You'll see what I mean if you come in and see the post.
It's not for the faint of heart,
but anybody who knows JOE knows that the Q&A today is PURE JOE.
Karen :)
add a "t" to understatement for me will you? I'm still a little shook up.
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