BJ is a friend of a friend who gave me a copy of her book a few weeks ago when a group of us met for dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Shepherdstown, WV. Actually she traded it for a copy of my book of poetry. Her book is a refreshing memoir about visiting a woman in a nearby nursing home. <\/p>\n
Berry Morgan is a writer, whose books Pursuit<\/em> and The Mystic Adventures of Roxie Stoner<\/em> both received Houghton Mifflin Litereary Fellowship Awards. She also wrote fiction for The New Yorker<\/em> between 1966 and 1988. BJ helps Berry by transcribing a memoir and some stories that Berry dictates, while at the same time Berry becomes a mentor to BJ, teaching her to write.<\/p>\n Among other things, Berry keeps saying to BJ: “You’re trying to do too many things at once” and “I wish you would just write.” Between part-time jobs, volunteer work, and trying to start a series of classes, BJ is always busy. <\/p>\n Berry’s advice resonated with me. For one reason or another, many of my regular activities have been suspended for the last few weeks, and I have found myself writing much more. It has not so much been that I’ve had more time to write as that I’ve been better able to concentrate when I do sit down to work.<\/p>\n I mentioned Ishiguro’s The Unconsoled<\/em> a few weeks ago. After finishing the book, I read a review of it in the London Review of Books<\/em> where Frank Kermode compared the fractured and frantic narrative to the distractions that pull a writer one way and another. And not just a successful writer like Ishiguro, though of course fame brings additional distractions.<\/p>\n I’m not willing to give up my other activities permanently\u2014some of them are part of my exercise regimen and others give me a chance to get away from the computer and socialise\u2014but I can sharpen my focus. Set the to-do list aside. Stop trying to do too much. Especially this time of year when the calendar quickly fills up with holiday traditions, social occasions and other, er, entertainment options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BJ is a friend of a friend who gave me a copy of her book a few weeks ago when a group of us met for dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Shepherdstown, WV. Actually she traded it for a copy of my book of poetry. Her book is a refreshing memoir about visiting a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eatmytoronto.com\/bmorrison\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}