November 22nd, 2007

Correct Writing Demands Respect

I’ve been meaning to post this for ages. It’s a list of quotations from the materials that I used this past summer to teach basic writing skills. My students were elementary-school kids who had recently immigrated from South Korea, so it’s super-simple stuff. Shockingly relevant. It’s funny how these basic facts of words-on-pages, things I should scoff to be reminded of, are not actually how I think of my writing, at least not very often.

–What is a paragraph? A paragraph is a collection of sentences connected to a single idea.
–No matter how well you write, you are not likely to create a perfect paper the first time you sit down to write.
–Ask yourself whether all of your sentences and paragraphs make sense.
–Adjectives that tell what kind, how many, or which one can be used to add information to sentences.
–Adverbs that tell how, when, or where can be used to add information to sentences.
–Vivid verbs help your readers form a clear picture of the action.
–Some stories seem so real that we believe they could actually happen.
–Writing is about making decisions. As the writer, you decide what to include and what not include.

I could stand to approach English as a new and difficult language more often, I think.

C’mon/belly up /to this brand new language
RR

Rose-coloured Police Blotter

Item #1 — Next-door neighbour bitten (on ass) by vicious dog in Mac’s Milk. Dog was supervised only by small child, who cried at the sight of blood. Neighbour gave up on recrimination, went to get tetanus shot.

Item #2 — Car spun out on the street in front of my building, crashed into the front door of the house next to us. Fire engines blocked traffic, police traffic director unsympathetic to pedestrians.

Item #3 — Colleague’s expensive high-heeled shoe (1) lost/stolen at gym. Colleague angry, sad.

Item #4 — The meeting I came in early for has been cancelled.

What a world in which we live.

Now I know I had plenty of time
RR

November 20th, 2007

Charity Begins in the Head

As the season of goodwill towards mankind begins, there are of course more charitable appeals in the air, the mail, email, street. While in general I’m pretty sloppy about donations–I always *mean* to give more than I do–I can usually get it together in December, at least a little. My whole rationelle for being a Jew who loves Christmas is probably another blog post, but I think it should suffice to say that people *do* try to be extra nice around this time of year, and remember what they have in common with others, less fortunate or not.

I’ve been thinking about giving along a couple of lines, and the suggestions I’ve gotten have shown me that it’s not just cellphones and video games that are moving ahead by leaps and bounds unbeknowst to me. One possibility suggested as a gift to people who are anti-gift, and the Gifts of Hope. It’s a website where you can donate $$ for a specific purpose in a specific purpose–literacy in Ghana, farm animals in Ethiopa—they’ve got it priced right down to the goat, so you know that your money does not go into a pool where it is diluted by other people’s donations, you bucks go purely to one family that is the recipient of *your* goat. This is a new and, to me, somewhat humourous invention, but it’s cool and makes a cute card, and will certainly drum up investment in what is it bottom a deeply humane program to try to help people help themselves.

What’s funny about it though is that everyone wants to be *involved* it seems. Just a cheque, to assign decision-making and responsibility to the administrators of the charity is becoming passe. The Christmas drive that I’m involved in this year, as many years in the past, is not a cash one, or even just a big box of canned goods and unwrapped toys. We have been assigned families in the nearby community who are in dire straights (I’m sorry, I would normally post a link here for your interest, but it’s a corporate giving program and there isn’t one of the public) and our donations are to be specific items on their wish-list, specific to their unique needs, purchased by the donators ourselves.

The profiles we receive are incredibly detailed. We get names and ages, clothing and shoe sizes, personal preferences, and a hierarchy of needs from toys and games to sweatpants and sanitary napkins. To me, it seems dreadfully invasive and undignified. The kidstuff is fun to shop for, but I feel like it’s not fair to the parents to take away the joy in picking out the pretty toys for the kids. And the grownup stuff–knowing that mom Sandy takes three sizes different between top and bottom, knowing what basic household items are missing, is really too much for me.

I made these complaints to a colleague–it all seemed to be a bit of bourgeois mistrust, an update on “You can’t give a panhandler loose change because he’ll just spend it on booze. Better to give money to an agency, that’ll make sure it goes towards food, clothes and a sensible job-training program.” Only now, tales of misappropriation and scandal lurking in our heads (“I can’t remember when, or which one, but one of them there charities was spending like *ninety* percent of the revenue on ‘administration’, and we know what that is!”)–if you want to make sure your donation doesn’t evapourate directly into ethanol, better make sure it’s in concrete form of something practical (“Blue jeans, a teddy bear and four cans of baked beans!”) with a name and address gift card attached.

My colleague pointed out the system isn’t really all that cynical–many of these are single parent homes, and shopping with the kids, or finding time to do it at all for a working parent, might be an issue. Plus they’d signed up for the program, so they clearly either lacked my qualms or found their need to be greater them.

Fair enough. She made good points, and vehemently, clearly concerned that she not let my potential aid to these families disappear due to some semi-imagined PCness. It was good of her, and I shut up and returned to reading my list.

And quickly got sucked in. There are several toys on the list that I loved as a wee one, and I’d like to go see the updates. And there were a couple requests for “teen novels,” a category that I have very strong opinions on, and then of course there’s the vegetarian baked beans. So I made my own shopping list and that’s when I realized the genius of the thing. If I buy everything that twigged my interest, and I probably will, I’ll wind up spending sizeably more than what would strike me as a “decent donation” in cash. That’s what all these details are really about–it’s easier to give more to people you relate to as in some way just like you. And in reading the list, I found that connexion, as I suspect most people did. Everybody needs sweatpants, warm socks and novels. We’re all human, after all.

Went upstairs and had a smoke
RR

November 17th, 2007

What’s Up Today

Today is the only day of the year when I buy a daily newspaper (unless of course someone I know publishes something in one, or gets married or dies and it is annoucned in one): it’s Milk Calendar day! Lots of places publish pretty recipe calendars, but the Dairy Farmers’ organization were first (I have no proof) and best (I have no proof of this either, but am sure, having tried to cook things from others). I could not figure out from the website exactly what newspapers have it today, but in Toronto it’s The Star and I know a number of other TorStar owned papers carry it too. I hope you get one, it’s groovy (no, it isn’t, it’s the polar opposite of groovy, but still wonderful).

Lalalala!
RR

November 16th, 2007

Hey Day

I keep forgetting about it, because I’m not actually going to be there, but today is my graduation day. Huzzah! I may have said it before, perhaps when I completed my thesis, when I submitted my thesis, and/or when I defended my thesis, but this time, absolutely for sure, I am a Mistress of the Arts…as of slightly after 2pm, I suppose.

Raise your heavy eyes
RR

Blindsided by Celebrity Gossip

So last week I was all abuzz about how good the film Michael Clayton was, and how very talented (ok, ok, and dreamy) George Clooney is. I thought I would like to see some other films with him in them, and happily the internet obliged with the above-linked filmography…which I found staggeringly bereft of any film I particularly wanted to see. I’m sure lots of those are quite good, he won an Oscar after all, and maybe I’ll get round to seeing something eventually, but not as exciting as I hoped.

*Anyway*, my Googling led me not only to lists of professional accomplishments but to crazed fan sites (man, a lot of people loved ER a lot) and to news stories concerning the Googlage subject. As a matter of fact, just moments before my search (I love how they rank recently posted stories, usually pointless given what I’m searching for, but I imagine useful if you read the actual news), there was an real, seemingly true news story that Clooney got into a fight with Fabio in a restaurant over, conservative estimate, nothing, but it was so funny I kept searching.

I think I need to be banned from the internet, because I now know a *lot* about George Clooney, and none of it is information that I need…or, I’ve discovered , information that anybody wants to be told (cue you to close the page!) But wait, because George seems to be sort of a decent guy, with a good sense of humour (but not about Fabio) and lots of right-headed political opinions. Also, and this is the point in the search when I got upset, he has a lot of problems that you can feel really bad about: he did a torture scene for a movie and fell and hit his head, tore the envelope thingy of his spinal cord and wound up with spinal fluid *dripping out his nose*. Is that not the worst thing you ever heard? He said the pain was so bad he considered killing himself–even if it wasn’t, gosh, it would still seem possible. Poor guy.

So I was horrorstruck and fascinated, and on I foraged, hoping to find the “George Clooney Regains Will to Live, Control of Nostrils” *Us Weekly* story or something. Such a story is not to be found, but eventually as the years pass (this was in 2005) you find the focus in interview shifts away from brain damage and on towards swearing off marriage, Oscar speeches, Darfur, etc. Which is nice to see.

I thought I had it licked. George Clooney is all right, I don’t need to see any of his movies, I’m moving on. Only there I was in the grocery store lineup, and I turned my head to be confronted my Owen Wilson and *his* woes. Outside the store, I demanded of my friend P–“Why is Jessica Simpson trying to help Owen Wilson get over his woes?”

“I don’t know, Becky.”

“Are they friends? I didn’t know they were friends.”

“Um, I don’t know, Becky.”

“Because if she’s just some chick, I don’t think that will help much. Do you think she knows him?”

“Um, I have a job.”

I might very well get into this, possibly after I finish this post. I have never before known the joys of famous people and what they might be doing, thinking and feeling. I have never thought it might be fun to know, and now I do. Why? I’ve been theorizing, trying to feel less like salon lady with lips full of Botox and a fist full of tabloids. Here’s what I’ve got: I love a good story, and I really don’t like endings. If I like anything–a book, a movie, a relationship, a sandwich–I don’t see why it can’t go on forever. I hate having to give up on characters i’ve grown attached to, having to admit that once the credits role they aren’t my friends anymore. That they were never my friends in the first place doesn’t enter the picture–I related, we got involved.

Michael Clayton, the fictional character, is not coming back–the movie is over, my DVD player is broken, and there’s unlikely to be a sequel (although–I could sorta see it). George Clooney, on the other hand, is likely to be back next week, making fun of Bush, doing something complicated with a motorcycle and that girl who ate a scorpion on tv. And thank goodness, because narrative arc be damned, I just like the story to keep going. Maybe this is why people get so histrionic when famous people die…?

My love she throws me like a rubber ball

November 13th, 2007

Metabooks

So I’ve been polling semi-seriously on this readers reading readers thing, and I’ve found a good number of books about the act of reading–not surprising, writers are told to write what we know, and that’s what we know. So we have characters reading Great Expectations in Mr. Pip and characters reading (I believe, I haven’t read it myself) the seven complete novels of Jane Austen in The Jane Austen Book Club, while the characters are reading everything and nothing in Italo Calvino’s brilliant (I believe; I have read it and loved it, but my friend J once threw it across a room) If On a Winter’s Night a Traveller.

But but but…would I sound ungrateful to the nice and well-read people whoe helped with this list if I said these are none quite what I meant. This is reading as *plot*, which is wonderful, but I wanted reading as *character*–what and how characters read developing who they are. I only got a couple of those: Anna cutting the pages of her French novel in Anna Karenin and, my favourite of the whole game, the March girls reading and interpreting Pilgrim’s Progress in Little Women. Isn’t that a lovely one? Not only because *Little Women* is one of my most favouritest childhood books, but also because it’s a small little anecdote in a novel that’s about million other things. It’s just a fun (and yes, semi-moralistic, but all of a piece) incident that shows how the sisters work together, how they imagine, how they believe and think things in their world work. I think my point is that books are, yes, sometimes monumental and life-altering and the single burning ember of our consciousnesses…but mainly not. Mainly books are part of the fabric of our lives and our selves, the gentle background hum that, along with food and friendship and warm socks, make our days.

An illusion to me now
RR

November 12th, 2007

So cute!

Hey, do you guys know my adorable friend Corinna? Did you know she’s famous? She made a how-to video and it’s on the internet. I’m going to break my “No Christmas in November” rule to post it here: Corinna Decorates with Pinecones!!!.

If I had an aeroplane I still wouldn’t make it on time
RR

November 8th, 2007

Readers reading readers

I am thinking about metaness today, hence the previous post. Partly because I am headed to my brother’s this evening to watch 30 Rock, that hilarious tv show about writing a hilarious tv show. We’re trying to use the structure of the sitcom to help us write our own (sadly, no link [yet]), but also watching the sheningans of the writers gives us (me, anyway) about how writing as a team might go, or at least things we could throw at each other. And then, mentioning the story “Sleep” yesterday put me in mind of the fact that that was a story, in large part, about someone reading, which is very rare.

Insightful Kerry posted this about how important it is to see characters in fiction working if we are to fully imagine their lives, something I so utterly believe. I have been wondering what else that is normally left out would be good to have in? We never see the housework, but perhaps the times in people’s lives most worth immortalizing in story are not the weeks and months when the stove was always sparkling. And maybe the events of novels and short stories often preclude a lot of leisure time for reading, television watching, movie attendance. God knows, a week in which I finish three books is not one you want to read a story about (or even a blog post).

But writers are word creatures and we build our lives as well as our fictions out of words, and I think characters can’t help but reflect this. Yet I am having trouble thinking of concrete incidents of this–who wants to help me make a list of books read by fictional characters? Or even tv shows watched by them–I very much enjoyed in the current New Quarterly when Amelia Defalco’s characters in “Monuments” watched rented episodes of Monty Python and Kids in the Hall as an excuse for time together. That wreaks of real life. Where else have I seen that?

On the other hand, writing about writing, whether on the page or on the screen, gets boring real fast. Writers are self-absorbed creatures, I know, and so I try to tread lightly on interests of my own that might not be anyone else’s. Some can pull it off, of course: Roth’s Zuckerman, Henry on Bosom Buddies and everything Aaron Sorkin ever wrote (think about it: tv sports writers, speech writers, tv comedy writers).

But is this sort of thing charmingly meta, insight into a delicate craft, or solipsism? As a girl who will, in 2008, attempt to finish a novel in which one of the central characters is a playwright, I do not know if I wish to push this question too far…

But a list of readers you’ve read about, that I’d like to see.

I wanna talk to you
RR

PS–And then there was of course, Black’s Books, the best (and only) tv show ever set in a bookstore. Every now and then on that one, someone actually read something, too!

Think about It (iv)

metafiction: writing about writing
metadata: data about data
metacognition: thinking about thinking
metalanguage: words about words (even more elegant: metalingual)