You say it like a curse word, but I was born and raised here, California, Southern California.  These are my shopping centers and strip malls and slowly failing downtowns.  These are my half-empty subdivisions, palm trees, my blue skies.  These are my derelicts.  This is my sprawl, everything smelling of chaparral and exhaust. 

Joyce Carol Oates has authored a fine, small book on writing.  It is titled The Faith of a Writer. 

"We begin as loners, and some of us are in fact congenitally lonely; if we persevere in our art, and are not discouraged in our craft, we may find solace in the mysterious counter-world of literature that transcends artificial borders of time, place, language, national identity.  Out of the solitariness of the individual this culture somehow emerges, variegated, ever-alluring, ever-evolving." 

The Craftsman by Richard Sennett is a smartly structured and simply written study of the history and impulse of makers.  Sennett, a sociologist, takes us from ancient history to modern day as he traces the human impulse to make things.  He travels the distance between being a craftsman and being an artist--one with the goal of communal consistency, the other, singularity.

"In terms of practice, there is no art without craft..." 

Twenty Eight Artists and Two Saints by Joan Acocella.  What a lovely book of biography, of essays on the lives of artists, writers, dancers and more.  Writing for The New Yorker, Acocella investigates the themes of "difficulty, hardship" in the lives of successful artists. 

"It is commonly believed that a normal pattern for artists is to endure a miserable childhood and then, in their adult work, to weave that straw into gold.   This may be true...But that story--early pain, conquered and converted into art--is not what interests me.  My concern is the pain that came with the art-making, interfering with it, and how the artist dealt with this."

"There are many brilliant people--they are born everyday--but those who end up having sustained artistic careers are not necessarily the most gifted....The ones who survived combined brilliance with more homely virtues: patience, resilience, courage." 

The paragraph is what interests me.  Words, yes.  Sentences, naturally.  But the paragraph is the perfect unit of thought-idea, telling, story-telling.  Every genre of my literary arts depends upon it.  Every well-told story, history, argument, and so on.   My aspiration as a writer is to write the perfect paragraph.  

Following, I offer a group of stories made of single paragraphs.  I call them my Word Problems.  

EVERYTHING

Mary and Carol were lost in the apples.  They were more pretty than good, the women and the apples.  More shine than sweet.  They were dressed in white sweater sets over slim-fit khakis.  Their hairdos matched their handbags.  Everything led to canvas flats.  It was mid-morning, mid-week and their girls were in school.  The school was Our Lady of Perpetual Help.  Mary was interested in the Granny Smiths and Carol, the Red Delicious.  The Granny Smiths were on sale and the Red Delicious were not.  Mary was dying in her heart, but she didn't know it.  Carol was dying too, but she did.  Everything was the same with them, except for the dying and the apples.

THIS IS HARD TO KNOW

He lived in a house of things: honey and chocolate, love and anger, unicorns and unicycles.  He hoarded unicorns for love and sold unicycles for money.  He had a head for hats.  He had a heart for figures.  He was a real Wall Street Journal behind his ribs.  At this point, by now, so much had happened and so much had not.  He had had too much of this and too little of that.  He had had too much of what he was going to have and not enough of what he wasn't.  This is hard to know. 

THERE'S NOTHING ON THE INTERNET

There's nothing on the Internet.  I keep checking.  There's some pictures of some shooting at a Paris preschool.  There's some car-melt from some car bomb at the Hilton Afghanistan.  There's how to roast a chicken, how to tie a tie.  There's Richy Rich for President.  But that's it.  Nothing else.  Look for yourself.  Some runway shots from Fashion Week.  Some typing from that celebrity with the pretty face.  A fat orange tabby cuddling a stove.  I love those cats.  Pink and yellow raincoats.  But that's it.  Some pictures of some people and some stuff and some typing, a fat orange cat on a stove.  That's it.   

LAST WILL & TESTAMENT

I'd like to die after a brief illness, of natural causes, in my sleep.  I'd like to die primarily in the New York Times, at the back of my alumni magazine.  I'd like to die in 1974.  I'd like to have invented something, cured something, spawned an unusually large family.  I'd like to have. 

WRITE

It is the habit that is the reward, the joy.  It is the physical act, the hand moving over keys, across paper.  It is the freeing up.  It is the release.  Write as often and eagerly as you can.  Write quick and slow.  Write while you are standing in a line.  Write as your boss drones on.   Write when your cats begs to go out.  Write quick and slow.  Write.     

READ

Read with abandon.  Read the worst work of the best writers.  Read the tragedies before the triumphs.  Read everything one mind has muddled.  Read from start to finish.  Re-read.  Remember and forget and remember again.  Read with a pen in your hand.  Underline and highlight the perfect words, sentences, paragraphs.  Read against the grain and with it.  Read.   

PURPOSE

Enthusiasm is not enough.  Enthusiasm in writing is of the same use as envy.  You must write towards something or someone.  You must share what you've written.  You must take responsibility for your transgressions and the trouble they cause.  You must submit your performances for public view.  The public will listen and you will learn.  Write for yourself, and for others.  Write.  Read.  Create with purpose.