Spoonfed

Away we go

Interview with Vendela Vida, who wrote the script for Away we go with her husband, Dave Eggers. Basically, she just took all the funny and surreal things that happen to you while you're pregnant -- people relaying their terrible labor & delivery stories, unasked for advice in the grocery store, wierd things that happen to your body -- and making it into a movie. Brilliant. I wish I had thought of it.

Nick and the candlestick

Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath's son, commits suicide.

Doris is too elegant

More Doris... talking to the LA Times about her life. The headline reads: "Too elegant to be a jewelry thief."

I think they must have meant "Too elegant to be spending a decade in jail at age 79," because the whole point of the story is that she was able to get away with stealing jewels because she was so elegant.

No mention of the movie starring Halle Berry; but they did quote her son, Ronald:

"It took me a while to become proud of her," said Ronald, of Louisiana. Now 61, he was born when his mother was a teenager. He was raised partly by his grandparents. "I realized she was very good at what she does and had fun doing it."

Meanwhile, it is week 6 of me trying to get a simple visitor's pass to see her at the Denver Women's Correction Center. The latest letter requires me to provide proof that I knew her before her incarceration.

The Doris I know

Now that Doris is back in town, I've been thinking about the story she tells over and over, her own personal mythology. Especially the part about stealing from the racist "Mr. Benjamin:"

"The seeds of this vocation were planted in 1944. The teenager convinced the proprietor of Benjamin's, a store in Beckley, W.Va., to show her some watches. Payne, who is black, enjoyed the attention he lavished on her — right up until a white customer walked in.

"Mr. Benjamin's demeanor totally changed and he shooed me out," she recalls. "It bothered me tremendously."

To spite him, she walked to the door with a fancy watch on her wrist. Benjamin didn't notice. Rather than stealing it, she called it to both men's attention.

"I showed that white man that Mr. Benjamin wasn't taking care of business. It was my way of spiting him," she says."

She told me this story dozens of times. She won't answer questions about it, because questions disrupt the crystallized version of events. She knows drama, and she knows that this story gives her a compelling reason to go on stealing after this, to humiliate every other shopkeeper she meets.

But the real Doris was the one who fondly recalled planting seeds in the garden with her mother. Her mom gave her a clothespin, and it was Doris' job to dig the holes out, then sprinkle the seeds in, then cover them up with dirt.

I did this with my 2 year old son the other night after dinner, and the joy he took in performing this simple task was complete when we woke up this morning to find tender green shoots popping up from the soil.

Maybe those are the important moments anyway, not the ones we turn into mythology to explain our bad behavior.

Doris Payne is back in Denver

Doris Payne is back in the Denver Women's Correctional Facility for an extended sentence, since she broke parole back in 2005 and went and stole a diamond ring. She's served three years in Nevada, and now has to come serve more time here.

She gave Susan Greene an interview that won't do much to get her an early release.

She did the same thing in Vegas a couple of years ago. Told a reporter this exact story right before her sentencing hearing, about how proud she was of it.

The good news is, Halle Berry is still in talks to play her in the movie.

Who do I think I am anyway?

My husband bought the Ocean's 13 Hi-Def DVD the day it came out. We don't own a HD-DVD player, and I was a little embarrassed to see it anyway, but tonight my curiosity got the best of me and we watched it.

I mean, we watched the bonus feature Masters of the Heist featuring yours truly narrating the segment about Doris Payne, the jewel thief.

There we were, my husband, my rambunctious kid, me and the teenage salesboy at Circuit City, huddled around the 60 inch plasma watching a darn good synopsis of Doris' hijinks.

| the online novel |

I'm wondering: has anyone successfully published a novel online? Feeding out one chapter at a time, like a soap opera?

I remember in like 1999, there was some murder mystery website, with a story and video and clues (what was it called??) and people followed it... for a while.

Here's a list of online novels.

Here's a writer who started out with a free novel, then went on to publish more.

What does the publishing world think of this?

| tricklit |

Via Seth Godin:

Trick Lit is the term for a chick lit novel that pretends to be something else, hoping to rope people in with an interesting premise. 30 pages later, you discover that you were deceived, that it's just another piece of genre trash.

I don't invent really good neologisms very often, so I felt compelled to share.

Give me an example of tricklit, people!

| san diego writer's conference |

Registration for the 2008 San Diego Writer's Conference is open.

If you're an aspiring writer and have a novel or book of nonfiction that you're ready to let loose on agents and editors, some advice: get thee to a writer's conference!

San Diego is a good one to go to. Not only will you meet a lot of other writers, you'll meet editors, agents and publishers.

You can buy pitch meetings with specific agents or editors. They'll read your sample chapter or proposal before the conference, and you get to pitch to them face to face.

If you're serious about getting your work published, this is the conference for you.

I found an agent interested in my book, and I've kept in touch with her.

Too bad the book will most likely never happen, since the subject has stopped communicating with me.

Pam Houston and her dogs

Pam Houston sounds a little lonely.

She's one of my favorite authors. "Waltzing the Cat" contains some of the best, most perfect short stories I have ever read.

She lives in the middle of the San Juans, just her and her dogs and horses, hours from towns and people. So she brings her favorite people to her, and that includes a women's writing group who has been together forever.

What I wouldn't give to be in a writing group with those women!

She has some great and sort of disturbing things to say about writing.