1. What distracted me last week from reading Lonesome Dove? I didn't read a word of it. I guess trips to Spokane and CdA for medical stuff and the airport and an event at Gonzaga kept me busy. Well, whatever it was, I returned to the book for a short stint of reading today and hope to increase my reading hours on Tuesday.
I've missed the long stretches of reading I enjoy.
2. I puttered around the house today: laundry, making dog food packets for Gibbs, and making a mammoth green salad with vegetables, apples, and strawberries. I didn't get everything done (ha!). I'll chip away at some other tasks on Tuesday.
3. When he answered questions from the stage last Tuesday, Jess Walter repeatedly emphasized that as he composes a novel, he focuses his efforts primarily on characters. Over the last week, I've thought a lot about what he said and have tried to remember how much emphasis the courses I took in grad school focused on characters and how much, when I taught novels, my instruction focused on characters.
My memory might be faulty -- a lot of time has passed -- but what sticks with me is all the discussion we had of ideas or genre or narrative voice.
As I returned to Lonesome Dove today, I could feel Jess Walter's influence on me as I admired Larry McMurtry's creation of his characters, especially the physical details and their habits. I can, as I should, see the plot growing out of these characters' different perspectives, preoccupations, attitudes, hopes, memories, and more.
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