Clover Jean Gardener - "Professional" "Writer" of "Books" "and" "Plays"
It is comical for me to do an intro post at this point but I figure it might be helpful for people who want them links. Them good good links.
So hello! My name is Clover Jean Gardener, and I'm a queer, PDX-based novelist and playwright. I am here, on Tumblr, where I ramble on the regular and post development updates of what I'm working on. You can also find me on the following links.
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a fun fact about songbird elegies is that scott is named scott because i asked my wife to give me the least-fitting name for a wizard. just the most normal guy name for a guy that can do wizard shit.
do you think levi would be a little pissed to find out that regina just named their kid after him? like simultaneously touched by the gesture and also a little bit like you just named him scott??? that's so fucking boring dude god damn.
Finding Diverse Art: A Guide To My Main Method in Broadening My Own Perspectives and Tastes, For Enrichment, Information, And General Bone Health
I see a lot of people pushing for more attention given to marginalized writers, and artists as a whole. This is ultimately a good and cool and great thing to push for! But when it comes to specifically the written word, I've noticed that a lot of people generally don't know how to broaden their literary scope beyond what they already read. There is, of course, the age-old method of just picking a book because the premise on the back cover sounded neat. Or because you heard someone somewhere say it was good. But sometimes those methods aren't enough for a person to really engage with a work, especially if reading in general is already hard to make time for.
I'm in that last boat! But I also don't like when I can tell I've defaulted to the same writers or general eras. I like to mix things up when I can, so I thought it might help someone if I showed an example of what I do to find new books. Typically books by some kind of marginalized author. My niche has always been modernism and post-modernism, and I've determined I've read more than my share of white guys. Some of these white guys have been vital to my growth as an artist. But at this point I benefit from the insight gained from different lives and newer voices.
Uh. so I'm going to find some books to read right now. And if you want to walk through my steps with me, maybe it'll help you find some books too!
So I typically start all this by looking up an author I already know I love and seeing how the public at large describes their work. In this case, I've picked Kurt Vonnegut. I have loved every Kurt Vonnegut book I've ever read. So I searched for "kurt vonnegut genre".
Kurt Vonnegut is mainly considered to be a satirist and science-fiction writer. It's not like this is wrong. But for my specific tastes the thing I love most about Vonnegut is the style of his writing rather than the themes or plots. He has a really unique prose that scratches an itch in my brain. I feel like part of it is the era where he published the bulk of his books, so let's try "kurt vonnegut literary movement".
Oh hey, Kurt Vonnegut is considered to be a post-modernist. I already know I am a sucker for post-modernism. So I'll just search up something around that. Let's say, "black post-modernist authors"?
Okay, that didn't get the results I wanted. how about "black post-modernist novels"?
This is an improvement. I see a few authors on this list I've already tried out before. But it's also a long list that is immediately jarring to imagine clicking through. At this point I realize that post-modernism is another one of those movements where black artists were inexplicably held to a completely different standard. Maybe it would be worth looking at the way post-modernism is described, and then using those descriptors to try and find black authors -
"Where is our black avant garde"? Yeah, man. I have the same goddamned question.
Hey, that's showing up on a Goodreads page. So is that the title of a book? I'm going to look it up.
Ooooh shit, ZInzi Clemmons? Author of the gorgeously tragic 2017 autofiction novel What We Lose???
Holy shit ZInzi Clemmons you did it. You completed my quest Thank You So Much.
This is part of longer form essay that I would be a fool not to link and encourage people to read on their own. I thought just the suggestions would be a godsend. But I have read and enjoyed Clemmons' last book, and if there's any great way to find new authors it's through what the authors you like consider to be great authors.
So I have a lot to work with! And two more holds to pick up at the library, ideally later this week!
I'm sure this is not the only way to find new authors and gain new perspectives to read. But it's definitely what works the best for me. And statistically, that means it might help at least two other people!
Hi dropping some of my favorite non-fiction books I've read!
You Look Like A Thing And I Love You by Janelle Shane: A pretty accessible examination of what LLMs are and how they're able to function. Pretty funny and silly at times. Good for trying to understand more about the methodology behind all the new programs being pushed.
Fuzz by Mary Roach: sometimes animals break the law because they don't know about human laws, and if they did they wouldn't really care. Roach talks about some cases of these and what humans have done to navigate them, to varying degrees of success. I would suggest anything written by Mary Roach, she's delightfully warm in the way she can express information.
The Hilarious World of Depression by John Moe: this is the book version of Moe's podcast. It's part memoir, part relayed stories from his years of interviews. Moe is incredibly funny without ever losing insight on the depression he's struggled with for most of his life. He really impacted how I try and talk about my own mental illness. I emailed him to praise his book after I finished it, and he emailed me back and was just so so nice.
The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson: a peek into the career of professional obituary writers, and the culture of newspaper obituaries as a whole. A fascinating depiction of a very odd industry. Far more lighthearted at times than you might expect.
We Had a Little Real Estate Problem by Kilph Nesteroff: stories of the lives and efforts of indigenous comics. Depicts the lives of both historical native comics, and modern people making a name for themselves. It is equal parts heartbreaking, relatable, delightful and informative. Even just the sliver of learning about the vaudeville scene was fascinating.
The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair: I will suggest this book anytime I have a chance to suggest nonfiction books. It's an examination of a variety of pigments, with a description of their creation and their prominence in history. It's great. It's a really easy read and it's easily one of my all time favorite books.
I literally had On Advertising by David Ogilvy on this list, but I took it off at the last second. I figured my fascination with the methods and history of advertising might not be welcome on the Silence Ad website.
Uh but if anyone else is interested in learning about the internal workings of how ads once functioned from a pioneer of the industry, Ogilvy is the GOAT.
Hi dropping some of my favorite non-fiction books I've read!
You Look Like A Thing And I Love You by Janelle Shane: A pretty accessible examination of what LLMs are and how they're able to function. Pretty funny and silly at times. Good for trying to understand more about the methodology behind all the new programs being pushed.
Fuzz by Mary Roach: sometimes animals break the law because they don't know about human laws, and if they did they wouldn't really care. Roach talks about some cases of these and what humans have done to navigate them, to varying degrees of success. I would suggest anything written by Mary Roach, she's delightfully warm in the way she can express information.
The Hilarious World of Depression by John Moe: this is the book version of Moe's podcast. It's part memoir, part relayed stories from his years of interviews. Moe is incredibly funny without ever losing insight on the depression he's struggled with for most of his life. He really impacted how I try and talk about my own mental illness. I emailed him to praise his book after I finished it, and he emailed me back and was just so so nice.
The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson: a peek into the career of professional obituary writers, and the culture of newspaper obituaries as a whole. A fascinating depiction of a very odd industry. Far more lighthearted at times than you might expect.
We Had a Little Real Estate Problem by Kilph Nesteroff: stories of the lives and efforts of indigenous comics. Depicts the lives of both historical native comics, and modern people making a name for themselves. It is equal parts heartbreaking, relatable, delightful and informative. Even just the sliver of learning about the vaudeville scene was fascinating.
The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair: I will suggest this book anytime I have a chance to suggest nonfiction books. It's an examination of a variety of pigments, with a description of their creation and their prominence in history. It's great. It's a really easy read and it's easily one of my all time favorite books.
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Yeah, yeah, Cassandra Clare got her start writing fanfic, old news.
Rebecca Thorne wrote She-Ra fanfic before writing Tomes & Tea.
Matt Dinniman wrote GI Joe and Transformers crossover fanfic before writing Dungeon Crawler Carl.
Pierce Brown wrote Greek Mythology fanfic before writing Red Rising.
Andy Weir wrote Ready Player One fanfic that later got canonized by Ernest Cline before writing The Martian.
Fanfic has never been, and will never be inferior to published works, and writing one does not discredit or devalue the quality of your work when writing another.
Alice in Borderland is possibly my all-time favorite drama series ever. I haven't started season three yet, but seasons one and two alone were like catnip to specifically me. Unbelievable. I was left eating chips in a daze.
You know how pretty much all online recipes start with an inexplicable, unrelated ramble before the recipe itself? Like someone talking about their garden, or their grandparents, or some other aspect of their life that I guess loosely connects to their recipe for paella or something?
Can you write one of those, only it's the prelude to a recipe for something Absolutely No One Should Eat? You don't have to share the recipe itself. It should just be jarringly inedible.
My grandfather is Scandanavian, vaguely, but I often didn't feel connected to that aspect of my heritage. While other people would eat lefse or lutefisk, my grandfather would sit by the fire and carve. Usually, whenever I would visit his house he would order pizza for me. But on occasion, if I visited him just before dinner time, then he would sigh, take an extra log out of the fire and we would eat together.
As a child, I thought this was a cultural thing. My grandfather was very Norwegian, he only spoke Norwegian to me and would always use the sauna and such.
In college, there was an exchange student from Norway, and so I decided I should do something to make him feel welcome. I welcomed him in my rusty Norwegian (as my grandfather had died a few years ago and I hadn't kept up practice), took him skiing, and then cooked up a log, just as my grandfather had, and the exchange student stared at it in confusion.
So that was when I learned that eating logs isn't a nationwide experience in Norway. I haven't found any one else talking about it, but to preserve my own heritage and to allow any one else into this satisfying meal, I'm sharing my recipe for how to easily cook a perfectly done log.
Me: yeah so it's weird that so many of my compulsions are based around food. Like you'd think I grew up with some severe food insecurity, but I didn't.
Therapist: didn't you say that you taught yourself to cook when you were eleven because your parents decided it was your responsibility to make dinners and grocery shop for yourself and your older siblings?
Me: yeah
Therapist: and how you would get overwhelmed with the stress of figuring out meals and preparing them while also keeping up with all the other obligations of adolescence? And that you felt burdened because you were the only one consistently making meals in your household despite being a literal child?
Me:
Me: so there's a chance I maybe don't know what food insecurity is, actually
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if you ever go back (wouldnt blame you for not) they have amazing freese dried strawberries dipped in dark chocolate at their checkout! Only their family of stores carry them (home goods, and im not sure who else), and they dont have soy!
Oh man I was definitely seeing that TJ Maxx was like a reskin of like three different chains I know of! If they're all from the same company that makes a LOT more sense.
Also TJ Maxx was not entirely haunting to me. They had a collection of pantry staples that looked like props they would be in the background of a mid-budget tv show. But they also had Tim-Tams for a surprisingly reasonable price! And you know how I love me a Tim-Tam.
Marshall's was the one I knew for sure. Because I used to work at a Marshall's, and my employee discount applied to TJ Maxx. Marshall's is the... off-price branch. Where the...less than perfect stuff goes. (At least I think that's how it is. I haven't stepped foot in one in over 25 years.
hello! do you want to write but aren't? do you have an inexplicable degree of faith in the whims of some random, mostly-responsible indie author?
if you comment on this post i will send you an ask with a short-form writing prompt for you to do. the prompt will probably be weird and silly and potentially something requiring you to go out on a whim and be a bit strange. if you do not do it the only people who know you have rejected my challenge will be you and myself. and then within 42 hours it will just be you because i will almost certainly have forgotten i've done this.
trust the clove to tell you what to write! the clove has good and regular ideas. the clove is good and normal-style for trusting.
I was diagnosed with OCD on Friday during my neuropsych evaluation. I don't think I was supposed to be diagnosed with anything during the assessment itself, but my doctor caught a discrepancy between two of the like eight tests I filled out, and in going back to ask follow up questions she ended up having to tell me directly that I was either downplaying or misunderstanding symptoms of the condition.
At the end, we scheduled a follow-up in a few weeks to discuss the full report.
"But - did you diagnose me with OCD?" I asked, wanting to make sure I understood.
The doctor faltered a moment. "Well, I didn't write it down yet," she clarified. "But, like, once I write the report..."
I have tried not to think too much about all of this yet. It ultimately changes very little, and only really serves to add context and explanation to a lot of how my brain works. But it was difficult not to use this snippet of information as reason to spiral, or to overcorrect and change random facets of my life in the name of poorly thought out Accomodations.
Today is therapy, where I told myself that I'd talk to my Guy and start to do some better, more structured processing. But to get through the weekend in one piece, I used the best coping mechanism I could.
I made a bag.
It's a pretty ugly bag. I used a jumpsuit that didn't fit me and a T-shirt I didn't like anymore. The hems are poorly aligned, and the whole thing is a mess of crooked backstitches. I have never finished a hand sewn project on this level. It's visibly amateur, but I stress-tested it and it is suitably strong.
My wife and I went through most of Alice in Borderland, and I just stitched through it on the couch. The strap was poorly measured, giving the bag a sort of sack-like hang when I wear it.
But, like I said, it functions as a basic bag. The strap is pretty comfortable. It even has a lining, which I am pretty proud of myself about.
I don't really know why this is what I ended up spending the whole of my weekend on. But I guess it beats an extended panic attack or pit of despair? So that's something.
If anyone ever told me in a face-to-face interaction that generative AI is "democratizing art", I would have to just end the conversation. Ideally I would end the interaction, but in a situation where I couldn't I would have to just immediately talk about anything else.
There is virtually no way for me to engage with that concept in a physical conversation without getting antagonistic. I think I would be a LITTLE calmer over the text, but in person I would need to redirect all of energy into not shouting increasingly frantic and confused follow-up questions. The effort to keep calm while being approached like this would be enough on its own for me to pass out from exhaustion.
I have just rented What's the Story Wishbone? and I'm like sixty percent sure it won't devastate me psychologically. I'm sure I will be normal about Soccer the Dog, who was so sweet and good and was treated so well as a Dog Actor.
There is definitely something to be noted about how the stark rise of policies and societal action aimed at "Protecting Children" is happening simultaneously with the rock-bottom standards of children's media.
Like it's disingenuous to say that twenty years ago everything aimed towards kids was valuable and had intrinsic, well-meaning intentions behind it. I was a kid in the 90s. I remember the constant kids tv commercials for Candy Goos and Objectively Dangerous Toys. But I definitely think there was a percentage of kids media creators who saw younger audiences as human beings and not just Fetal Consumers.
They built a whole town to shoot Wishbone on. They built a whole goddamned town from nothing.
Haha oh shit I'm like 90% certain What's the Story Wishbone? uses some AI graphics.
I can't imagine it was a choice by the original team, and instead just a stupid flourish by the graphics editor for the documentary. And maybe I'm wrong! They definitely don't disclose anything about it. But the editor has gone on the record before saying he appreciates gen AI as a tool, so uh.
For use in a documentary about the Wishbone team I would say this sucks. This fucking sucks and I'm like heartbroken to a disproportionate degree. I actually didn't even really want to talk about it on here, but since I've already posted about it (I've been looking forward to watching this for months), I wanted to say something. I know there are a few people on here who will sometimes use my praise as a reason to watch a movie.
Uhh so I personally wouldn't watch this one. I actually turned it off halfway through once I caught it. The cognitive dissonance between the two artistic philosophies is just too much of a bummer.
Take this as a sign to go out and get a book from your local library. I actually have a hold tomorrow for Mood Machine by Liz Pelly on the inner workings of Spotify.
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I have just rented What's the Story Wishbone? and I'm like sixty percent sure it won't devastate me psychologically. I'm sure I will be normal about Soccer the Dog, who was so sweet and good and was treated so well as a Dog Actor.
There is definitely something to be noted about how the stark rise of policies and societal action aimed at "Protecting Children" is happening simultaneously with the rock-bottom standards of children's media.
Like it's disingenuous to say that twenty years ago everything aimed towards kids was valuable and had intrinsic, well-meaning intentions behind it. I was a kid in the 90s. I remember the constant kids tv commercials for Candy Goos and Objectively Dangerous Toys. But I definitely think there was a percentage of kids media creators who saw younger audiences as human beings and not just Fetal Consumers.
They built a whole town to shoot Wishbone on. They built a whole goddamned town from nothing.
I have just rented What's the Story Wishbone? and I'm like sixty percent sure it won't devastate me psychologically. I'm sure I will be normal about Soccer the Dog, who was so sweet and good and was treated so well as a Dog Actor.
clover j. gardener, word-person @goodluckclove - Tumblr Blog | Tumlook
