Fess Up Friday – back in the burgh

I have nothing to report. I was working most of the week in Chicago and after working all weekend and all week and facing the prospect of working some this weekend (not a terrible amount, but still) I only wrote one paragraph.

Yesterday.

On the novel.

No blogging. No hitting page 100. No writing for work. No visiting my essays.

Between not writing, the lack of exercise, the excess of croissants and cappuccinos, the fact I had to cancel weekend plans, well, is it any wonder I am out of sorts?

Sometimes, a paragraph is the equivalent of a whole  chapter.

Sometimes, a paragraph is a triumph.

That’s how the paragraph I wrote yesterday feels, anyhow.

I finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – looooong review forthcoming. I loved it, but for those of you who have read it, and have read this blog, can you guess the part (hint: near the end) that stressed me out, just a tad? That put me off? If you think you know what I am talking about feel free to let me know in the comments. Another hint…it’s nothing significant…no chapter is set around it or anything. Something I love, though, is mightily criticized.

Of all the wonderful things I have to say about Kingsolver’s book, I think the highest complement I can pay her is she brought me back after many years to nonfiction, and I’m currently reading Annie Dillard’s beautiful An American Childhood, which takes place in Pittsburgh. I’m also reading a terrible Christopher Pike novel, but it’s terrible in that good way, if that makes any sense. The characterization and dialogue may be lacking but the plot zings.

I’ll leave you today with a beautiful bit from Dillard’s prologue – it made me fall in love with Pittsburgh all over again:

I will see the city poured rolling down the mountain valleys like slag, and see the  city lights sprinkled and curved around the hills’ curves, rows of bonfires winding. At sunset a red light like housefires shines from the narrow hillside windows; the houses’ bricks burn like glowing coals.

The three wide rivers divide and cool the mountains. Calm old bridges span the banks and link the hills. The Allegheny River flows in brawling from the north, from near the shore of Lake Erie, and from Lake Chautauqua in New York and eastward. The Monongahela River flows in shallow and slow from the south, from West Virginia. The Allegheny and the Monongahela meet and form the westward-wending Ohio.

it makes me happy just to know somewhere out there, Annie Dillard keeps on writing.