Assignment 5: Writer Bio

Three bios: the first adheres (ish) to the “30 words or fewer” guideline in the assignment; the second is ever-so-slightly longer. The third is the bio for this blog (copied and pasted below) – much longer and in first person, and not something that would be published, but as it’s what an editor might see if she followed, say, a link to my blog in a pitch, it’s perhaps relevant to the assignment anyhow.

So in various manifestations, here I am:

1.
Miranda Ward is mostly a writer but also an expat, a geek, and a sporadic but enthusiastic runner. She grew up in California and currently lives in Oxford, where she is working on her first book. Find her at A Literal Girl or email her: miranda.ward@gmail.com.

2.
Miranda Ward is mostly a writer but also an expat, a geek, and a sporadic but enthusiastic runner. She grew up on a working cattle ranch in California; currently she lives with her partner in Oxford, where she spends a lot of time at the pub. She is working on her first book, having earned an MA in creative writing. Find her at A Literal Girl or email her at miranda.ward@gmail.com.

3.

I’m Miranda Ward. I’m a writer and an expat. This is my MatadorU blog, where I put assignments and related posts. I have another blog, too. It’s a bit more plural.

Here’s some stuff for you:

A man called Gotthold Ephraim Lessing said, “Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy.”

I’m really very good at that.

I like words. Sometimes I like words too well. I own a lot of books. Once I had to ship them across the Atlantic and it cost me more money than I care to admit, but taking them with me was not, is never, optional.

I like the travel state of mind. I do not ever want to forget what it’s like to notice things. I’m interested in place: geography of the mind, borders and boundaries, the flâneur, the incorrigible wanderer.

I like cheese and a good cider (Luckily I also like to run). I wear leather shoes, mostly, though I also have a soft spot for converse and good hunter green wellies. I wish men wore hats still and women comported themselves with the grace of 1930s film stars. I however have no grace of my own and often trip over my own feet.

I like to watch a stormy sea, climb a grassy hill, and to stand under the lamplight in cities. When I was little I lived on a ranch and I would look out at the Pacific and pretend that the oilrigs were actually the ships of great explorers winding their way around the globe, or else that they were pirates on the horizon. Then I lived in an east coast city where I wandered for hours like Walter Benjamin or Baudelaire, making notes of how things are.

Now I live with my partner in Oxford, where I’m working on my first book, often out of my local pub, which has free wifi.

I’m a bit of a geek and I believe in the power and necessity of the internet.

I don’t however believe in work. Not as such. Instead I agree with this (it’s a Steve Jobs quote): “I don’t think of my life as a career…I do stuff. I respond to stuff. That’s not a career — it’s a life!” So yes: I do stuff and I respond to stuff and that’s the only way I could ever really be.

Thanks for reading and commenting and contributing and for emailing me at miranda.ward@gmail.com, if you feel so inclined.