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Remington Roundup: #Stories, #SoundBites, & #Spanbauer

IMG_0702-300x300-2The April Roundup is for breaking in a new set of earbuds or million-dollar Beats (depending on your level of fancy-pants), with a handful of picks that will fill your listening card with stories, soundbites, and words of wisdom from author, teacher, and mentor, Tom Spanbauer.

#Stories

woman-girl-technology-musicPodcasts are all the rage these days, so I appreciate a curated list that appeals to my writer/reader self. Bookriot’s recent post on 25 Outstanding Podcasts for Readers includes Storynory, which “brings you a new children’s audio story every week….classic fairy tales, new children’s stories, poems, myths, adventures, and romance” (fun times for kids).

Also listed is The New Yorker Fiction Podcast. I’ve been listening to this one for a while, having heard several episodes on repeat (like the one where “David Sedaris reads Miranda July”).

#SoundBites

food-vegetables-meal-kitchenA website that archives sound bites (for purchase) ranging from traffic noises to chopping vegetables (I’m not kidding!), SOUND SNAP boasts:

“200,000 sound effects and loops. Unlimited possibilities.”

Good stuff for padding a movie or even a podcast with auditory atmosphere, or if you’re creating an audio version of an essay. But this kind of resource, as Joan Dempsey reminds us in her tweet (where I found the link), is also great for writers in the midst of creating a story on paper.

IMG_2311I’ve been known to take long walks in the north woods and record the entire experience from the sound of feet on gravel to the racket of grasshoppers hidden in prairie grass and wildflowers. I keep these recordings as research in case my memory fails when I sit down to revise my novel that is set in the north woods. But I can’t record every sound I might need. So this link is gold.

You can look up anything. And you should! One tiny sound bite may be all you need to rejuvenate an old draft or start a brand new story.

#Spanbauer

So, bookmark those first two links, but get over to this next one right away for a beautiful interview that honors an amazing writer, teacher, and mentor from Portland, Oregon: Tom Spanbauer.

unnamed+copy+2“It’s through the personal…through the people that surround you and how you talk and how you live and how you love each other that will create the art.”
~ Tom Spanbauer

This is a long listen, full of Spanbauer’s own words of wisdom, and it’s as entertaining as it is inspirational. The interview incorporates music as well as tiny love letters from his students; when you reach the end you’ll feel contented, full of love for the work and for the power of community.

What’s on your list of links this month?

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Remington Roundup: #Love, #Truth, & a #VeryLargeCat

Woman at typewriter March brings new snow to Wisconsin, a driveway to be shoveled, and (so) a reason for me to get out there in boots and exercise. To warm us up during this final stretch of winter, the March Roundup brings links to love, truth, and a very large cat.

Meow.

#Love

ml-300x211For years, the New York Times has been running a wonderful column on the “joys and tribulations of love.” Now, you can hear actors read chosen essays from the column in a weekly podcast series of Modern Love.

“I have always loved falling.”
~Natalie Lindeman

Here’s a link to the podcast episode of Dakota Fanning reading “The Plunge” by Natalie Lindeman (who, by the way, was seventeen when she was published in Modern Love!).

#Truth

Ellen Urbani, author of LANDFALL (read her Q&A here), has an amazing essay on The Rumpus, “There Is No Such Thing as a True Story,” in which she says “Perspective is a fickle beast, and memory is an unreliable traveling companion through the years.”

“So tell me the truth,” he says. “The whole truth! Don’t leave anything out.”

“Why do you want to know this truth?” I ask.

“Because knowing the truth is the only way to figure out who is lying.”

She writes about the two sides to a story and the strange workings of memory. Go read this if you and someone you know have very different perspectives on a shared experience.

A #VeryLargeCat

I’m cheating here a little with this part of the March roundup, as I’m highlighting a book in print rather than an essay or article online. But if you have kids or you’ve read Katherine Applegate’s THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN (or if you’re keen on cats), you’ll love Applegate’s newest book, CRENSHAW. Crenshaw is a cat. A very big cat. And that’s not the only odd bit about him.

1384631a39c39f20c1f737b5d6ed667cI noticed several weird things about the surfboarding cat. Thing number one: He was a surfboarding cat. Thing number two: He was wearing a T-shirt. It said CAT’S RULE, DOGS DROOL. Thing number three: He was holding a closed umbrella, like he was worried about getting wet. Which, when you think about it, is kind of not the point of surfing.

The cover alone draws me in, and the story is so sweet. I’m reading it with my daughter right now and had to stop myself from turning pages the other evening, it being a school night and all, but I could have swallowed it up in one sitting.

What are you loving this month?

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Remington Roundup: The #Classics, #Art, & #Writing

IMG_0702Clickety-clack, copy and paste.

Here’s your February round up of articles and essays on lessons from a classic, making art until the end, and why I carry a stack of paper & pens in my backpack every day.

#Classics

28 Lessons We’ve Learned from Pride and Prejudice on Bluestocking Salon, which mentions Colin Firth three times. But that’s not the (real) reason I love this post.

12592293_10208681678268381_5700226019705664968_n“2. Be persistent in the face of rejection.
…
19. “Obstinate, headstrong girl!” really is a compliment.
…
21. When it comes to a man’s library, size matters.”

#Art

Elizabeth Gilbert’s post on David Bowie’s death, which shares the link to his music video, “Lazarus.” I didn’t grow up a die-hard Bowie fan (hey, don’t hate me…only because I was very religious when I was young), but I certainly appreciate his art and what Gilbert says about him and his work.

“[He spent] his final months dying doing what he’d done his whole life–making outrageously original, beautiful, complicated art. . . . This is what it means to be a great artist.”

As a bonus, read Richard Z. Santos’ “A Partial List” about David Bowie on Barrelhouse Magazine.

#Writing

On Keeping a (Writing) Notebook (or Three) by Randon Billings Noble in Brevity Magazine. Noble opens her essay with a few quotes from Joan Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook,” and that could be enough. But in the end Noble herself explains why she (and I) have more than one notebook within reach on any given day.

12390869_10208342498749105_771019349669136394_n“there’s a difference between a diary and a journal…in a diary you record each day’s events and in a journal you write whatever you want about your day whenever you want to write about it. . . . my writing notebooks keep me writing – through rejection, triumph, inspiration, and disenchantment…on the crests and in the troughs; at home and away….”

What have you bookmarked lately?