Friday Fridge Clean-Out: Links for Writers -- October 27, 2017 Edition

> Invest three minutes with 19-year-old poet Amanda Gorman, reading "The Gathering Place" at the Social Good Summit recently. She's the first official U.S. Youth Poet Laureate. You'll see why.

> I'm looking forward to reading Amy Tan's new memoir Where the Past Begins: Where the Past Begins, especially after enjoying this interview at Shondaland. (So many of the pieces in The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life, her 2004 essay collection (memoir in essays?), are ones I re-read frequently. Especially "Mother Tongue," which I teach from.)

> At Book Riot, Christine Ro explores "100 Must Read Books for the Socially Awkward". 

> Since I am (and so many author friends are) brainstorming future book marketing and publicity ideas -- and not that I have anything near her pull -- it's been interesting to see the #misfitsmanifesto posts on Twitter in celebration of Lidia Yuknavitch's new book of the same name.

>  At LitHub, some of the best writing advice gleaned (and edited down) from 150 authors.

Have a great weekend!

Image: Flickr/CreativeCommons-1950sUnlimited

Three Good Books. Out of Three Hundred. No, Three Thousand. No...

Last year, when my husband helped me re-do my home office (after 23 years), we lined two-and-a-half walls with floor-to-ceiling, walk-to-wall, black wood bookshelves. I think they look great against the new red walls, and it's a huge change from my previous system for books, comprised of hand-me-down half-height bookcases, used beige office shelves, and repurposed odd pieces of furniture topped with baskets, milk crates, plastic stacking shelves, and clumsy piles (plus boxes stacked in a corner).

Would it surprise anyone to learn that it wasn't nearly enough room for my books, even after a careful reduction? That a second culling yielded four boxes of books, now in the garage awaiting pick-up by a terrific local service that matches no-longer-needed books with organizations that want and need them? That two more boxes are in the basement; I'm undecided about their fate. That at the end of every class I teach I haul a suitcase of books into the classroom -- duplicates of books I love, books left over from contests I've judged, books I didn't enjoy but are well written enough that others might -- and still, the shelves groan?

Honestly I don't expect the situation to get much better, and though I am slowly coming around to making use of my Nook, I don't mind a bit. When you are a writer, when you have a constant need to locate good material to teach from and learn from, when reading is like breathing, and when you work at home, being surrounded by shelves that spill over is a good problem. 

Which brings me to a month or so ago when Drew Myron, a lovely writer (who contributed a guest post here with tips on giving a reading), asked me to participate in the "3 Good Books" series at her website, Push Pull Books. She assigns each invited writer a specific topic based on what she knows about the writer's work. I was happy she asked me to talk about books that feature personal essays, and even more pleased that I could pick not-so-new books (the idea is to suggest what may be missing from other writers' shelves). I decided to narrow it a bit further to essay collections by women writers which have influenced me and my writing (I hope).

To do the "research" for this assignment, I didn't have far to go. I simply stood up from my seat at my still-new writing table (in the office re-do, I tossed the desk and the entire idea of a desk), and traveled a few feet to spend some quality time with my bookshelves. The section that houses essay collections is a single unit unto itself, about two feet wide and seven shelves high. It was a good trip.

My "3 Good Books" guest post is now up, and I hope you will jump over to Drew's blog to read it.  And I also hope you have shelves that spill their riches all over your home and/or office too!

Of Bathwaters, Babies and Tight Sleeping -- not what you think!

I love discovering the original meaning of expressions, sayings and words we routinely utter without ever knowing why. The real, and often surprising origins, often leave me speechless, and I usually encounter them in the oddest of ways.

A few weeks ago my husband and I took our sons to a local historic site we had long known about but never visited (think Manhattan residents who rarely even glance at the Empire State Building) – Historic Speedwell, birthplace of the telegraph system that first made Morse code workable. In addition to the ironworks and other industry-oriented buildings, is a restored home and in one of the bedrooms was a round, stout hammered metal tub with a lip seat on one side and on the other, a spout. Bathtime, according to the teenage docent, consisted of filling the tub and then each family member, in descending order of age, took their turns washing. When finally the youngest child, usually a toddler or older baby, finished, the tub was tipped, the water draining from the spout.

Careful: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

I immediately brightened, having now an authentic scenario to conjure when I used that expression. The boys predictably didn't find this so interesting; which shows my age I suppose more than any literary bent.

Next was another bedroom, set up to resemble one shared by several children, and the docent peeled up the straw-stuffed mattress to reveal ropes crisscrossed frame to frame. She picked up an odd looking wooden thing, called it a key, and demonstrated how, about once a week, those ropes needed to be pulled taut to ensure a restful and supportive night's sleep.

Thus: Sleep tight.

Both a practical expression: tighten the bed ropes or your back will be sorry – and a sincere sentiment: hope you have a comfortable night's sleep. See guys, I said to the boys: it doesn't mean pull the covers around tight after all.
They seemed both intrigued and abashed.

I felt really smart about my new Sleep Tight knowledge until last week when I read The Kitchen God's Wife, in which Amy Tan conjures pre-World War II China, and relates the lovely custom of snugly wrapping small children for sleep individually in their own personal quilts, even when sharing a bed. Nowhere in Tan's text does it suggest the Chinese have an expression for "sleep tight" that refers to this tradition, but don't you think it's possible?

And now, please feel completely free to leave a comment about how wrong I (and the folks at Speedwell) might be on all counts. Because if there's one thing I know, and love, about language, is that very often, there's more than one explanation, more than one way to skin a cat, that it's sometimes six of one and half-a-dozen of another, that….well, you get the idea.

What's your favorite unusual origin of a common expression?