Friday Five

1. Let’s get this Friday Five off to a kickin’ start. This is  the peanut butter chocolate cupcake from Crumbs Bakery. It is heaven on earth. I cut it in half to show you the delectable peanut butter filling. And to pretend that I didn’t just eat an entire cupcake that is the size of a CD.  (Psst. I did.)

2. On to more exciting news. (Well, the cupcake was pretty exciting for me, but here’s news that you can participate in!)

My first collection of essays was published this week as an Amazon Kindle Single. The Subway Chronicles: More Scenes from Life in New York is chock full of 23 short essays by yours truly.

Here’s what they had to say (pretty neat, huh?):

Jacquelin Cangro is back with more essays from underground New York. In this follow up to The Subway Chronicles: Scenes from Life in New York, all of the tales are her own. From run-ins with subway preachers and the Chinese Curses Lady to Pickles the dachshund to the man whose girlfriend bit his ear off, she documents the hilarious, poignant, and thought-provoking adventure that is the New York City subway. Her original voice chronicles the highs and lows of discovering who you are while living in an indomitable city with a character all its own. Together these essays create a fresh and real portrait of one woman’s attempt to find her own New York.

Best of all, you can get my pearls of subway wisdom for only $.99. That’s cheaper than your morning coffee. For those of you who are Amazon Prime members, it’s FREE! What’s better than free? Not much, my friend. If you’re in the UK, France, Italy, Germany or Spain, it’s already available on your country’s Amazon. Don’t have a Kindle? You can download the Kindle app (also free!) on your PC, Mac or smartphone. (I did it and it just takes a few moments, promise.) It will be coming out on other platforms later this summer, not to worry Nook-lovers.

If you do get the Kindle Single, I would be so grateful if you left a review on the Amazon page. Then I can move up the Amazon list and take over the world (insert maniacal laugh here.) I hope you like it!

3. The Big Think. I’ve written about the folks at Soul Pancake before, but I just came across this terrific video they did a few months ago. Here, on the streets of LA, they set up a giant board of sticky notes and invited people to contribute to a billboard of meaningful words. Check out the short clip. I think my message would be a reminder from my old pal Henry David Thoreau, “Live Deliberately.”

What message would you write? It would be so inspiring if we got our own mini-billboard of meaningful words going right here.

4. When I was in grad school, I remember one of my professors said that the test of a good story is its ability to satisfy. The goal is to leave the reader feeling nicely full like after Thanksgiving dinner and patting his or her belly, thinking about that last piece of pumpkin pie.  But as I started to write more, I realized there were sometimes when “satisfying the reader” meant doing a disservice to my characters. My obligation is to be true to the characters and tell their story to the best of my ability, and sometimes that is at odds with what the reader may want.  Over the years, I’d never really found anyone who agreed – saleability being the primary concern of most agents and editors – until now. Finally, I’ve got author Barbara Brown Taylor (and by extension Annie Dillard) in my corner.

Until then, I thought the best books were those that completely satisfied. Like good hosts, they invited me in, supplied all my needs while I was with them, and when we were done they let me go without too much talking at the door.

After Pilgrim at Tinker Creek [Annie Dillard's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel], I decided the best books are those that refuse to satisfy. They don’t want to meet my needs; they don’t even care if I am happy with them. What they want is to enlarge my world, even if that means sending me away hungry for my own encounter with what they have brought to life.

What do you hope for when you pick up a new book? What does it mean to you to feel satisfied by a good read?

5. Is it a frog or a Reggie? Reggie often lays like this with all of his limbs splayed out like a frog.

 Then when I talk to him, his tail swishes back and forth like a clock. like this. It’s good for sweeping the floor.

Hope your tail wags a bit this weekend! Have a great one! 

Friday Five

1. What I talk about when I talk about editing. (Apologies to Raymond Carver.) Before my first half marathon, I trained for months so I could complete the 13.1 miles without walking any part of the course. Actually my larger goal was to complete the course without going into cardiac arrest. For months, I followed a strict training regimen. I was out there in rain and snow, before work and on weekends, on steep hills and on gravel paths. (This all came in handy because race day saw wind chills in the high 20′s and the start line was on the boardwalk at Coney Island.)  So when I reached mile marker 12, I nearly cried. I knew I was going to make it to the finish line. This formerly asthmatic, overweight kid who got a “D” in phys. ed. because she couldn’t make it around the track once  was about to finish a half marathon.

I had that same feeling last week.  I’ve been making final edits on my 325-page novel in bits and spots. I’ve been getting up before work (5:00 am) and taking pages on my subway commute and spending hours in the coffee shop on weekends (where now everybody really does know my name). For a while, I’d been stuck on page 25, unable to move forward for an inexplicable reason. I had written the whole thing and edited it once already, so clearly I’m dedicated to it. It had nothing to do with the story itself. It was me. This New Year’s Day I decided to create a theme rather than a resolution I could easily break. The theme is focus. Whenever I sat down to watch an hour of t.v. or  realized I was surfing the internet mindlessly, I reminded myself to focus and that helped me get back to work. Just like with running, the more I grow my novel, the more it comes back to me and feeds me. So this week, when I reached page 315, I nearly cried. I know I can make it to the finish line. The End.

2. I don’t usually buy coffee table books to display in my living room. I have a very small apartment and I don’t even have a coffee table. But Pilgrimage, by Annie Leibovitz, made me think twice. The acclaimed portrait photographer stepped on out a different path this time, shooting landscapes and objet d’art. She fell into this project quite by accident. She’d taken her children to Niagara Falls on vacation. “I was stunned by the beauty of the water,” she told The New York Times. The picture she took that morning became the cover of the book.

From that auspicious start, she went on pilgrimages around the globe to connect to historical places and people she cared about. We get treated to photos of Emily Dickinson’s only surviving dress, Virginia Woolf’s writing table, a silver tray in Eleanor Roosevelt’s bedroom, Sigmund Freud’s couch, Elvis Presley’s Harley-Davidson, and more. The photos are, of course, stunning and enlightening. (Virginia Woolf’s desk is pretty darn gross, um, well-loved.) But more than that, I love this idea of a pilgrimage which has a religious connotation, but doesn’t have to be to a religious site. I went on one to Walden Pond some years ago and it was a total game-changer for me. (See the header of this blog.)

Have you ever been on a pilgrimage? Where did you go? 

Annie Leibovitz. From “Pilgrimage” (2011) The cover of the book: Niagara Falls from the Ontario side.

3. Up the Down Volcano. I found Sloane Crosley’s Up the Down Volcano featured as an Amazon Kindle Single. I’ve been a fan of her writing ever since her hilarious 2008 essay collection I Was Told There’d Be Cake. (Kindred spirits, we must be.) In this short essay, she tells the tale of her trip to South America to climb that continent’s highest volcano. Based on a recommendation from a friend, which seemed so benign from 4,000 miles away, she is woefully unprepared for altitude sickness, the language barrier and the weather.

I enjoyed reading this though it’s not a traveler’s delight. It won’t make you want to take the next plane to Ecuador in the way that Under the Tuscan Sun makes you want to spend the rest of your life in the Italian countryside. If anything Up the Down Volcano is a cautionary tale. But a really funny one.

Aside: Even if you don’t have a Kindle, you can still access these Kindle Singles through the free Kindle app, available for most computers and other devices. If you’re a writer, I highly recommend Ann Patchett’s single The Getaway Car.

4. Kiva Update. One of my favorite ways to give and receive is through donations to charitable organizations. For Christmas a wonderful friend in San Diego sent me a gift card to Kiva. For those of you not familiar, Kiva is a non-profit that connects lenders and borrowers around the world to help alleviate poverty. Through their site, you can find someone in need of a micro-loan and send a donation to fund their dreams. How cool is that!

I’ve helped fund several loans thus far and all borrowers paid back on time, which frees up my donation to lend to another borrower. With my gift card in virtual hand, I searched the Kiva site this week and found an inspiring woman in Paraguay who makes bags from recycled materials.

image via Kiva.org

Here is her story: Fabiana is 26 years old and single. She lives with her brothers in the city of Itá. She was a teacher and now makes bags, purses, flask carriers, etc. from recycled materials such as plastic bottles and small cans, among other items. Currently she is exhibiting her products at handicraft fairs in the cities of Luque, Itá, Argeguá and others. Fabiana works with the municipality and the government to exhibit her wares. She is a very hardworking and creative young woman, as well as a very busy and modest one.

5. Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love. ~Lao-Tzu

Have a great weekend, everyone!