Molly Cook...her thoughts, opinions, writing tips, and whatever else crosses her quirky mind...
"There are two kinds of people in the world: the ones who listen to 'Body & Soul' and
the ones who can talk right through it."
--Jewel Hailey, Listen
For the last year or so, I've published a monthly newsletter for my mailing list. It's rather like this website - an eclectic collection of thoughts about writing, books, and life. I get a lot of nice comments about it. Here are excerpts from recent issues:
(From September)
WHAT WE ONCE WERE, WE MAY CONTINUE TO BE
I noticed a reference to “ex-hippies” the other day and this stopped me. I felt rather like the Marine who briskly told me, in response to something I said, that there is no such thing as an “ex-Marine.” Once a Marine, always a Marine. I’m not sure that can be said for all hippies, ex or otherwise, but I do know that I don’t feel like an “ex-hippie” so much as an “older hippie.” (Nobody can stay 30 forever…) Not all of us who fell under the “hippie” rubric were into drugs or communal living or so many of the other things the media applied to characterize hippies. We were opposed to war, in favor of social justice and unwilling to let The Man – politicians and corporadoes – tell us how to live. We had jobs, but we opted for simpler lives, and conspicuous consumption was not part of it. These were not passing fashions for us, but values. The beads and the fringe are gone, but the values live on. There’s no "ex” about it... (From October) Here’s one from recent days: I wish somebody would permanently ban the term “pageturner” from the literary lexicon. I write and read literary fiction. Frank Sinatra got no kick from champagne, mere alcohol didn’t thrill him at all, and I feel the same way about pageturners. When I read, I’m in it for the writing as well as the story, and I like writing that lets me know the author took as much time in the writing as I take in the reading. I like sugar in my coffee and depth in my reading with sentences and paragraphs I want to read more than once because they’re so good. I can’t count how many times I’ve read Chapter 19, Train to the Urals in Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago for just this reason. While I’m at it, I might as well cop to my other literary bias. I like quality not quantity, and have no confidence in the current publishing push for word count. When a writer tells me he’s added 10,000 words to his manuscript I want to ask, and sometimes do, “But are they good words?” Too many blockbuster novels have as much filler as story, and filler is just filler. You are not required to agree with me, but I’ll take Michael Ondaatje over any pageturner you can name any day of the week.
And -
THOUGHTS ON WRITING...
My thoughts on writing – process and product – have been all over the place this past month. Moving will do that. As you sort through all the detritus, you unearth more than just the lost gloves, the sandals in the back of the closet that you never liked anyway, and the artsy earrings from an old beau (I wondered where those things had gone. When all around me is chaos a lot of other things come to the surface, including thoughts on writing.
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If you are not on my mailing list but would like to receive occasional newsletters, announcements, book recommendations, pep talks, recipes, good quotes, diatribes and whatever else I'm sending out, please send an email to jazzcookie@frontier.com and ask to have your name added. You can, of course, opt out any time.
Molly's list is Molly's list, by the way, and is not shared with anyone else.
Also, I don't use one of those wide distribution email gizmos that make you think you're getting a personal message when you're not. Who's inventing that stuff?
A Molly message is hand-crafted/typed...it'll be much more personal - just words and whatever music you provide, and I always suggest reading it with a cup of good tea, a glass of good Scotch or whatever works for you.
