by Tricia Khleif
Reading a writer’s posthumous diary is a guilty undertaking—absorbing words I was never meant to see, glimpsing the private corners of a mind I was never meant to explore. In this particular case—A Writer’s Diary, by Virginia Woolf—the act of reading is perhaps mitigated by the fact that Woolf’s husband Leonard culled and collected the entries himself. Nonetheless, I approach the book with both hesitation and awe. And I cannot help but be moved by Woolf’s observations on the delights and struggles of writing, of reading, of being a soul alive in the world.
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by Dilruba Ahmed
I was a long-time cell-phone holdout. Even while living in Silicon Valley (or perhaps because of its fast-paced, ever-wired atmosphere), I loathed the idea of becoming “one of those people.” On the train, in the local coffee shop, and in line at the grocery store, I struggled to ignore the one-sided snippets of conversation that inevitably seized my attention and overtook my thoughts. Eventually, I embraced the cell phone for its practical purposes (What if I get a flat tire on the 101?) as well as the frivolous (Need to find milkshakes while returning from Yosemite with a caravan of East Coast friends determined to eat at In-N-Out Burger before leaving California? No problem.). While I’ve adapted to cell phone ownership fairly easily, I remain ambivalent about my use of social networking tools such as Facebook, largely because it confirms, for me, the true death of the letter.
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by Ashley David
Like the bulk of writers and artists in the U.S., I do many, many things in order to carve out space for my creative work. I have, for example, tended bar, worked on Wall Street, taught classes, held three jobs at once, babysat movie stars’ children, babysat movie stars, developed marketing campaigns, cleaned houses, made jelly, ghost written dating advice for a matchmaker, enrolled in degree programs, started a dot.com, cooked meals on land and sea, juggled friends and family, and fought the demons of other people’s expectations and my own insecurities. What I have not done, until now, is find myself with four weeks of nothing to do but write. No meals to cook, no house to work on, no critters to care for, no 1001 things competing for my time and energy. Just the work. A desk, a chair, some paper, a computer, some books, a pen, and a view of the Gihon River. What a terrifying and beautiful prospect.
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