NEAR 91 DEGREES LONGITUDE-

Here’s the good news. My first novel was reviewed by the New York Times.

Here’s the bad news. It was a horrible review.

I do not hyperbolize. It was really bad. So that you understand how terrible it is, I’ve included it entirely as the next full paragraph. Please feel free to gasp, snicker, or laugh aloud at any time during my cautionary tale, even if you think you shouldn’t. Release the humours. It’s healthier that way.

Fiction Chronicle, Sunday, November 20, 2005. The Mercy of Thin Air (Atria Books)

Domingue’s first novel is like “The Lovely Bones” minus the lovely prose;

(more…)

SAN FRANCISCO-

I recently flew south to do a piece for Poets & Writers magazine about a rather unorthodox writers camp. Called The Write Stuff, it’s run by a writer named Rock Adams. Ever hear of him?

(more…)

JERSEY CITY, NJ-

Being that October is coming to a close and November fast approacheth, it’s that time of the year again. No, not the time to dress up like a naughty schoolgirl. Well, okay, maybe that time, too. And not taxes time, either, unless you’re on the quarterly taxes schedule, about which I’m sorry because that totally sucks for you. And while it’s the end of one year and the beginning of another according to many traditions, I’m not talking about that time, either.

No, it’s time to search the recesses of your hard drive for that one document that’s been languishing unfinished for so long, the one you promised yourself you would finish someday, when you had time. When you’re not dawdling about on Facebook and Twitter or making sure to keep up with every blog or following the exploits Kate plus eight sans Jon. You know the document I’m talking about. You think about it often: What if?

Everyone’s got one. Writers used to stick them in drawers, or trunks, and there they would remain, waiting for some attention, any attention.

So now it’s time to dust it off! It’s time to sign up on an Internet forum with lots of other people who all have Long Languished Projects, and it’s time to finally dedicate to those projects the time they so deserve.

A whole month!

That’s right: it’s National Novel Writing Month time. Are you quaking with anticipation?

(more…)

NEW YORK, NY-

I always said I wanted to be a writer. (Actually, when I was very little I wanted to be a waitress at my favorite restaurant, Wags. But when Wags went out of business and was replaced by a Denny’s, my dream to serve pancakes and coffee to senior citizens was replaced, too.)

In fifth grade, I won a National Pride Award in Writing, and from then my destiny was set: I was going to be a famous author. By the time I reached high school, I was pretty sure I was going to be the next Stephen King. Or Margaret Atwood, or Faulkner, or Steinbeck, depending on what I was reading that week.

(more…)

AUGUSTA, ME-

In my worst moments, when I’m awake and shouldn’t be, when I feel as though I am merely surviving this life, I think: what am I? I don’t know what I am but I do know a little about the habits of the creature that is me. Maybe the most important duality I inhabit is that between focusing on my mind and focusing on my heart. When I’m in my mind, I’m serious, possibly a little cranky, and doing something useful like accepting my next friend on Facebook. When I’m in my heart, I’m either writing my next new poem or practicing one of my more inspired hobbies like autoerotic asphyxiation or Reiki. (more…)

NEW PALTZ, N.Y.-

Today is the official release date of Totally Killer, my first novel.

That’s what my oh-so-brief bio leads you to believe, anyway. “This is his first novel,” it says, as if I’d suddenly decided, after floundering about for the first thirty-five years of my life, to bang out a book, and a few months later, voilà.

As Hemingway concluded in his first novel, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” (more…)

ANNAPOLIS, MD -

I learned to curse from the kids down the road. I don’t know where they learned it. Maybe they snuck into the living room late one night and watched Cinemax. Or maybe someone let them listen to that George Carlin bit (Carlin, of course, has become my cursing idol - what an appreciation for language that man has). They knew all the basics and a few interesting combinations. I didn’t know what “fuck” meant but understood it to be foul and taboo, so the combination “buttfuckers” struck me as joyously obscene. We were the kind of kids who integrated new words into our vocabulary by shouting them while jumping on the trampoline, leaping off the bed or bounding from one piece of furniture to another trying not to touch the floor — lava, obviously. If you had first encountered cursing in such a magnificent, joyful, wild atmosphere, you would love it, too. Few things entertain me more than the thought of my eight-year-old self in mid-air shouting “buttfuckers” with glee. (more…)

NEAR 91 DEGREES LONGITUDE-

I don’t remember giving consent. Or protesting. Or having a choice, not with adult forces at work. A secret committee decided that I should represent my elementary school at the Little Miss Lafayette pageant. How I got the news, I’m not sure, but my guess is this:

My mother: “Ronlyn, you’re going to be in a beauty pageant. You were picked out of everyone from the whole school. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Me: I likely scowled. I likely pondered the real threat of dress-up clothes. It’s possible I asked, “Why me?”

(more…)

AMHERST, MA -

Yesterday, in my Fiction II class, as the students introduced themselves I asked them to speak about what they’d been reading over the summer. One student impressively admitted to reading both Underworld and Infinite Jest. Another, though, shyly said she was reading YA novels.

“I suspect they’re more fun,” she said.

“To read or to write,” I asked.

“Both,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “I think it has something to do with what Doris Lessing said once about 20th century literature, that it was a long cry of pain.” (more…)

NEWPORT COAST, CA -

I have participated in a number of political demonstrations, but few as memorable as the March for Women’s Lives in 2004.  More than 1.15 million people converged on the mall for the largest march on Washington in U.S. history.  Organizers jammed more than 100 speakers into the program; exemplary speeches demanding access to contraception, sex education, global family planning, and choice.

 But what I am starting here—it is not the memory of a massive protest, or a recollection of the Bush Administration’s use of women’s rights as a political bargaining tool.  Writers do this. We begin with something approachable, something we trust we might get onto the page or screen correctly.  We try for a moment to hold the story in our heads, even as we know we have to let it go. 

(more…)

LOS ANGELES, CA –

If one loves language, if one loves its power and beauty, isn’t it pretty stupid to spend all of one’s time reading writing that butchers it? That steamrolls it, shoots it a hundred times, hacks it to pieces with machetes, and then napalms it? And wouldn’t it destroy one’s spirit to repeatedly subject it to this torture?

By this torture, I mean this torture:

“Anyone who has seen or not seen a building can always enjoy looking at one.”

Or this:

“Our bodies enable us to get out of bed every morning, build ancient pyramids, or even watch our children play a game of soccer.”

(more…)

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY-

Hello! I’m new to The Nervous Breakdown, so I thought it would be appropriate to, in addition to expressing my gratitude, provide some kind of context for the posts I’ll be contributing.

I don’t know what I’m doing with my writing life, I don’t know how close I am to attaining my ultimate goals, and I don’t know if the knowledge that I’m lacking with regard to these issues is problematic, or whether that very lack of knowledge is essential to my progress.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly revelatory in the statement above—sociologically, it probably puts me squarely in a majority, not minority, position—but it’s a difficult utterance nonetheless. And it’s one that, perhaps due to my vocation as a writer (artist?), I find myself returning to over and over again.

(more…)

HONG KONG, CHINA-

No matter how far and how resolutely Hong Kong remains off the terrorist radar, a young Semitic chap in a backpack, stepping into an underground railway carriage, muttering and clutching what appears to be a Qur’an to his chest, is a particularly acute species of brain violence, as far as I’m concerned.

(more…)

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA-

Some day, I like to think to myself, I will write Important Books. They won’t start revolutions, highlight the problems of the free market, or end global warming, but they will highlight the frailties and follies of the human condition. Yes, people will say after reading them, yes, this is exactly what this means. My God! How could one Australian of above average height have grasped - and so easily - the deeper meaning of the subtle movements of life?

Also, the books will sell well, and I will be very rich. (more…)

WILMINGTON, DE-

She had my thing in her hand when the monkey swung in.

Like the monkey, I wish to make a dramatic entrance.

But what constitutes a great dramatic entrance?  Is it some thing or some act that rises above ordinary by its very existence or action?  Or is it an invitation for one’s imagination to go someplace it hasn’t been lately — or someplace it has never been?

The great dramatic entrance — whether it’s an opening sentence, an architectural feature or a theatrical introduction — has a come-hither quality, I think.   It startles one pleasurably with certain unspoken possibilities.

Some people’s flair for the dramatic goes way back.  Take the du Pont family, for instance.  They fled the French Revolution, it is said, and landed on these shores on New Year’s Day 1800 — kissing the still-new world on the first day of a new century.

(more…)

SOUTH COAST, ENGLAND-

It’s around midnight.

It’s a warm night; I’m sitting in my dimly lit bedroom, hearing about how some guy in Mountain got shot by his girlfriend.

And I can’t help but think that’s what happened to Troy McClure.

Deuces are Wild is playing; classic Aerosmith.

I don’t mean Troy McClure, obviously.

I mean Phil Hartman, the voice of Troy McClure and Lionel Hutz on The Simpsons.

His wife shot him in a cocaine fuelled rage.

Say Hello To My Little Friend.

.38 Caliber gun, twice in the head.

Whilst he was sleeping.

Phil Hartman was the guy who designed the Crosby, Stills and Nash logo.

(more…)

HONG KONG, CHINA-

“It’s easy to be cynical,” people say. Does it follow then that being a nihilist is like falling off a log?

Rejecting all systems of belief or belonging on the basis of their existence, no matter how attractive or unattractive they might be?… I don’t know about you but that sounds pretty difficult to me.

(more…)

SOUTH COAST, ENGLAND-

This is my tenth post on TNB, which I’m treating as some sort of milestone. And as with all milestones, I’m going to take this moment to look back and reflect on what a crazy journey it’s been… (Imagine some sort of bubble effect or that wibbly-wobbly screen wipe with harp music at this point.)

As far back as I can remember I’ve always wanted to be a gangster writer. Or kind of. I’ve always wanted to be a writer when I haven’t had crazy schemes of what I was going to be.

A memory that haunts and embarrasses me to this day is standing up in class at the age of about five, wearing glasses and no doubt a zany waistcoat. I was a nerd as a kid, I dressed like a fucking magician. I was standing in front of a class with a list of books I was going to write (most of them about dinosaurs) and how much they would retail for.

(more…)

SOUTH COAST, ENGLAND-

Yesterday afternoon I was strolling through the park muttering the phrase ‘apocalyptic cult’ repeatedly.

This made me look more than a little insane; although the small town in which I live is home to the craziest fucking person I’ve ever met, and my aunt has been sectioned twice. There is a woman who just appears to drift about having extremely animated discussions with her self, or other selves. There are a lot of raised voices and wild gesticulations. I’m fascinated by her; by most ‘broken machines’ (that’s a Midnight Express reference, not bigotry.)

Anyway, there I was, in the absence of crazy lady, looking like a satanic nutjob. But I had my reasons, reasons which I shall explain.

(more…)

HONG KONG, CHINA

“Is there anything more ridiculous than a blog about blogging?”

Yes. There are a great many things more ridiculous than a blog about blogging. Stop trying to make it sound more important than it isn’t. For instance - the career of Oliver North. Oliver North is infinitely more ridiculous than a blog about blogging.

(more…)