“The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof b.s. detector. This is the writer’s radar and all good writers have it.” –Ernest Hemingway
All posts by Buffy
I’m unpacking. This means spending time with my junk. Souvenirs. Trinkets. Making mental notes never to buy crap again. Only invest in quality pieces. You don’t go to Italy for trinkets. You go for the food and the wine and the history. For silks and leather and glass. And, occasionally, for a handful of dirt
“I can’t stress enough how different it is to write about the real and the unreal. When I started writing my memoir my whole metabolism changed. I’d just turned 50 and I assumed it was just age, but I didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning and I had the most delicious
We’re moving. In two days. To a very Wisteria Lane looking little street with mock Victorian lampposts which I think I might love. I’m not sure yet, because I’ve only seen it once. I can’t even remember what the bedrooms look like. This is important because I’ve ordered one of those super sized posturepedics and
I should be in bed, because I’m about five miles past exhaustion. But I’m watching some sort of Fox News. Idol just went off, the remote is on the other sofa, and I’m too lazy to get up and get it. A blond and a Ben Stiller looking fellow are chatting about ‘bring your gun
I’ve lost my voice. I had it when I went to bed last night. Ask The Euro. He was getting an earful of something – I can’t remember what. It’s terrible. Like one of those really bad dreams. Where you want to scream, but can’t; and then decide well, just throw a jar of peanut
Couleur locale. N’est-ce pas? “Couleur locale has been responsible for many hasty appreciations,” Nabokov once wrote, “and local colour is not a fast colour.” What did he mean? I think it’s rather like watching The Full Monty from your sofa in West Virginia and thinking ‘That’s just so awesome.’ Then visiting a Job Centre in
Mal is long and lean and (Good grief, I sound like a George Jones song…) and makes everything look effortless. Marie is like a little Tasmanian devil. She moves faster than any non-Olympian has a right to move and she laughs the whole time she does it. Me, I just make weird faces and hurt
A friend of mine told me to go to bed an hour early. Use that time to read. It’ll help you relax. Only reading never helps me relax because I get too excited. I spent Friday afternoon at Borders. I picked up “CRANFORD” by Elizabeth Gaskell. It’s a tiny little thing and I had to
I spent all day drinking coffee and eating nothing, then came home to Burger King at midnight. I don’t know if it was the hour or the not quite food but just after I fell asleep I fell down the rabbit hole. And that’s about as close as I can come to describing the dream
When or how I knew is still something of a mystery because it all came at once and with such force, the way knowing sometimes does, I wasn’t sure I knew at all. I looked at the napkin, yellowed with age the same shade as Sarah’s skin; and at the silverware, Edwardian and platinum; and
