I’m stuck.
As I find myself in the process of writing another career
story (when I say career, I don’t mean kinareer,
in the vernacular—that I
worked extra, double hard on something—but
rather, that the bosses are paying more attention to this piece than any other
celebrity piece I’ve written before), and at this moment, I am stuck. Grasping
for straws, so the idiom goes, but thankfully I still have a few hours until
I’m supposed to turn it over. In moments like this, when I’m stuck and need
rhythm, I turn to writers that I like. One of those is Susan Orlean, probably
one of the living writers I have most respect for. Why do I love her? She knows
how to launch a kicker, charm you with unique turns-of-phrase, and install
milestones to launch spurts of dopamine to keep you reading from paragraph to
paragraph.
I have three books of her that I refer to all the time:
My Kind of Place
The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup
and Saturday Night
I also have a copy of The Orchid Thief but for the life of
me, I can’t seem to finish it.
