Web Cowgirl Reads Proust

It is incredibly cool to find technical people with a bookmark somewhere in Lost Time. Web Cowgirl http://webcowgirl.livejournal.com/1404525.html is another one of us plugging away at Proust.

Or am I the only plugger and everyone else is skimming along like it's a cozy novel that you start at 9:00 and finish at 11:00? Agatha Christie was like it. About 2 or 2 1/2 hours of a quick read.

Right now I am reading Sarah Winnemucca, a biography of a Paiute from Northern Nevada. The problem with this biography is that it is so heartbreaking I have to stop from time to time to avoid a complete meltdown.

I just finished Donald Maass' How to Write the Breakout Novel, which is edifying and something Proust learned instinctively. How did you do that, Marcel? I am also reading Jeff Herman's 2008 book about finding a publisher or a literary agent, again something Proust didn't need or maybe he did.

This bumbling around trying to get published is, well, the word is "painful." I don't "do" pain well. There are no drugs one can ingest to dull this pain. Well, I suppose booze and illegal substances, but they probably make it worse, don't you think? Why did so many writer's drink? Good writers? But not our narrator. He just locked himself in the corklined room and wrote. My admiration knows no bounds.