May 17th, 2019

How blurbs work: blurber perspective

Following on from my last post about blurbs, this one takes the perspective of one who writes them instead of the one who solicits them. I’ve been lucky enough to be asked a bunch of times to write blurbs for Canadian books and I’m always thrilled to be asked (seriously, who doesn’t feel great when they are told their opinion matters?) I’m hardly an old hand at it, though I have blurbed some great books (I’ll put a list at the end of this post!)

I’ve also said no to blurbing a bunch of probably also great books (well, some of them). The thing about writing blurbs is that if I’m going to be in the ecosystem, I need to do it, but at the same time it is unpaid and time-consuming work to do well (I neither want to read carelessly and give a stupid quote, nor have my name associated with a stupid book). Here’s how I handle the process–would be curious if others who blurb occasionally have any different approaches…

I read every request with the ardent hope I can say yes, yet knowing I can say no for any reason at all. In truth, I never find it easy to say no to anything (something about being a woman, maybe??) but sometimes it should be easy: rudeness (the guy who wanted me to blurb because he already had two men and needed a woman for balance and he’d “heard” my work was great), unreasonable timelines (I once nearly cried saying no to a request for a blurb in WEEK!), subject matter not in my line (this has never happened to me, but anyone ever asked for me to blurb, say, a sci-fi adventure, I’d say no because sci-fi readers don’t care what I think). I also mainly say no to digital copies–I don’t have a digital reader and I feel really aggrieved spending time and money figuring out how to print an entire book so that I can then do someone a favour. I have done it in the past, but I probably won’t again. That last one is a me thing, but whatever–any reason at all.

So if the request is polite, the book sounds interesting and appropriate for me, they’re willing to give me some kind of hard copy, and I have enough time, I’ll usually agree to take a look. I always clarify that that doesn’t mean I’m promising a blurb–I might not like the book, love it but have nothing to say, or simply run out of time before the blurb is due. I’m simply agreeing to give it a shot. I think most people in the publishing game know this, but it never hurts to be extra clear. I do try very hard to read at least a chunk of everything I’m sent for blurbing, though I don’t 100% manage.

If I can’t do it, it often goes down to the wire. I wish this didn’t happen, but if I’m running out of time I’m always hoping I’ll find some and if I’m reading the book but not loving it, I’m always hoping it’ll get better. In the end, I do always follow up with the publisher or author, whoever my correspondent is. I usually just apologize and say I was unable to provide a blurb–no one needs to know which ones were time constraints and which ones were books I just didn’t click with. I wish I were able to get back to people earlier–I think it would probably help them in their planning. No one has ever been anything less than lovely about hearing no, which just increases my guilt but is also how it should be. Let’s all be lovely and hopefully there will be another opportunity to work together down the road!

If I start reading and the book seems like my jam, I try to read faster in order to get the blurb in earlier. This often does not work out, but it’s a thought. Blurbs go on book covers and that requires some designing so, better get it in early if I can. Once I sent a blurb very late and it did not get used!! That was very frustrating but largely my own fault! Anyway, I usually send maybe 3 sentences, knowing they all probably won’t get used, or the whole thing will go on the website but just a bit on the bookcover. I also offer to revise the thing if it’s not what they wanted–I really don’t want my words edited without my knowing about it, so I figure offering to revise it myself might cut down on that. Truncated fine, edited no.

I support the book in other ways if I can. I usually mention the book on social media when it comes out, go to the launch if I can make it, and generally do all the signal boosting I can. One of the first literary events I ever attended in Toronto was an awards night a friend took me to for a book he’d blurbed. I had it in mind after that once you blurb something you’re invested–you’re part of the team. I like that feeling.

Here are some books I’ve enjoyed being on the team for! (Am I forgetting one or two? I think…maybe? If I forgot your book, it is not because I didn’t love it–just because I am old and absent-minded! Please tell me so I can add it!)

• Late Breaking by KD Miller
• The Weather Inside by Emily Saso
• Circle of Stones by Suzanne Alyssa Andrew
• Resort by Andrew Daley 
• The Work by Maria Meindl (forthcoming from Stonehouse Publishing)

Fellow blurbers, what is your process? What do you love and hate about blurbing?

May 13th, 2019

How blurbs work: blurbee perspective

Blurbs a weird little ecosystem that exist only in the book world. Movie posters or art exhibitions or similar will often put flattering lines from published reviews on their posters, but the filmmaker won’t go and ask another filmmaker to say something nice for the express purpose of the poster. Some authors opt out of the ecosystem entirely–don’t accept blurbs on their own work and don’t write’em for others, which seems fair. Others don’t write them but do accept them, which seems a little hinky.

But blurbs, because they are this unofficial, super-cas thing, are very hard to figure out if you are just-the-facts sort of person or hate owing people favours or are just uncomfortable with over-the-top praise, which they are by their nature. Even the word blurb just doesn’t sound very professional, and the system for getting them sourced and put on book covers is just not very formalized either. I don’t know everything about it, but here is everything I do know, which is a hell of a lot more than I did when I started both receiving and giving them.

NOTE: I don’t know why this post is so long. I tried to edit it shorter but I can’t seem to do it. This is really not a hugely important or weighty topic–what’s with all. these. words???

There is no standard person across publishing houses who is responsible for blurbs. I’ve seen editors, marketing, and publicity people handle these, as well as publishers and quite often the authors themselves. Agents are also sometimes involved. The key as an author is to assume neither that you aren’t responsible for getting blurbs for your book nor that you are. It would be terrible if you really wanted some but thought someone else would get the ball rolling and no one did; it would also be bad if you started soliciting blurbs only to find out that someone in-house had a plan for this that you were screwing up. That’s not to say that if someone with a recognizable name says something lovely about your work you shouldn’t immediately ask to get that in writing to use as a blurb, but then you should check with your editor or publicist (whoever your contact is at that stage) about how you should be handling potential blurbs. Even if publishing people want to steer the ship, they will almost certainly be open to your input and you can tell them who you think would be good and/or who has already indicated interest.

You can dream big, but carefully, about whom to approach for blurbs. Whether you as the author are doing the asking, or you are just submitting a list of names to someone else who is, there is no harm in shooting for the stars a little bit. It’s fine to spitball some big names for your list as long as you approach them respectfully and have well-thought-out reasons that would actually like your book. Also make sure whoever you ask has a readership that would like your book too. That’s a big part of what blurbs are for–a reader sees the name of a writer they like on the cover a book by a writer they don’t know, so they pick that one up too. That won’t work if you write, say, historical romance and you solicit blurbs from someone who writes exclusively horror. Not that that writer–or even their readers–might not be open-minded enough to enjoy your work, it’s just that a blurb is a certain type of signal: this is like that.

But in terms of big-name authors, sure, when approached through the appropriate channels, with a fair idea that they are asked all the time and will likely say no, sure, why not. They might say yes. But mainly you want to approach more normal people. Brainstorm a list that includes writers you admire in your own community, including maybe a few you have met as teachers or mentors or colleagues. Your editor or publicist or agent may have worked with other writers and know their work to be similar enough to be a good match, and also have an idea of what their schedule will allow.

How to ask: earlier than you think. If your publisher is handling the blurb, this is where you step out–they’re going to do what they’re going to do. If you as the author are responsible for making contact with potential blurbers, do it as early as possible. What you should provide:

• the reason you thought they might like your book (they have done similar work, you admire them for their work on x, they once said something nice about your writing before)
• all the marketing material that exists at this point (the cover and cover copy, an ad if one is being done, etc.) If none of this exists, you’ll have to describe the book yourself–be clear about the subject, structure, genre (don’t be coy about this–say what shelf in the store your publisher wants it to go on) and themes. Also mention page count.
• the timeline for the blurb: when you can provide the book, and when you’d need their response back

Needless to say, this should all be going to whatever official “contact” email address this author has. If you can’t find one but you can find a professional/”author” social media account, it is ok to send a tiny (a couple line) version of this message asking for an email address–please don’t try to jam a bunch of content into a Twitter DM, though.

Timelines: whee! If you as the author are actually coordinating the handing off of the pages to the potential blurbees, I cannot stress this enough: give them lots of time. More than you would think–as much as humanly possible. No, it doesn’t take that long to read a book and write a couple sentences about it, but the other person probably has other stuff going on, and didn’t slot this in until just this conversation right now.

You’re probably balancing this need for time with a need for quality–you want to wait long enough so that the book is in the best possible shape, without making the actual reading/think/blurb uncomfortably squeezed. So yeah, send the best possible version of the book you can well still balancing the most time you can give. Tough, but you have to try!

And what do I actually send? Publishers that have the time and money to do so send ARCs–advance reading copies–which are copyedited and typeset but not proofread, but are printed and bound. They have covers and often look basically like books, though they can also be more cheaply bound in cerlox (plastic spiral spine). If that is not an option for you, a stack of printed typeset or even manuscript pages (with the copyedit incorporated, I’m really hoping) is also fine, though more awkward for the person on the other end.

If you have not been given a budget for printing and mailing, you can ask blurbers if they are willing to read a digital copy. Many people read mainly on their devices these days and would be happy to. However, do be upfront about this–ie., your initial request should be about “consider reading a digital copy of my new novel” or some such. For people who get stressed out by the idea of adding another screen to their day (eg., me) it is pointless to get into whether I’d like to read this book or the logistics of scheduling time for it if I can’t even get a copy that suits my life. Also, do keep in mind that if your publisher has given you a $0 budget for obtaining blurbs, then maybe blurbs aren’t a very high priority in this market and it shouldn’t be a source of stress/expense for the author either.

What if I hear no? If you ask someone to consider blurbing your book and they say any version of a polite “no thank you” you should just say “thanks for letting me know” and move on. Resist the urge not to respond, because most of us in the book mines agonize over every no and are maybe hoping there will be a chance in the future to say yes to you and make this up–you want to fan that flame! Also, it is unpleasant to say no–thank them for replying because replying really is a kindness. If anyone is polite, even if it isn’t the answer you wanted, build the relationship and be polite in return. “No”s later in the process will hurt more, of course, but unless someone is rude about it, just thank them for their consideration and move on. If anyone seems particularly dejected at being unable to say yes, perhaps due to time constraints, try inviting them to the launch–you never know!

What if I hear yes? Be delighted! Now read the blurb and make sure there isn’t a weird typo or confusing sentence in there you need to ask about. Ask if you need to, then go back to being delighted again. Thank the blurber profusely, invite them to the launch, pass the blurb to your publisher, and that’s it.

When the book comes out, the classiest thing you can do is gift your blurbers a copy of the finished book. This is less important if ARCs that are basically books anyway were used for blurbs, but it is still a nice thing to do and shows that you are really mindful that you’ve been a good turn. If your blurber comes to the launch, you can make a point of giving it there, or send it via mail. If your publisher was the one arranging the blurbs and you’re not directly in touch, ask for them to send it on. You probably don’t want to inscribe these, though of course sign them, as they’re going to folks who have already read the book and they may want to give away these copies. Instead, tuck in a genuine thank you note.

And–this completes the circle. Blurbs are never paid back in any way other than the above. Rather, they are paid forward: what you do is wait hoping that sometime after your book comes out, someone will ask YOU to write a blurb for THEIR book, and you’ll be able to be generous and thoughtful the way others were with you, thus repaying your debt to the universe. I went on to write a post from the blurber perspective next, so hopefully now I’ve got it completely covered!

May 7th, 2019

Throwback: May 3, 2009: Making Maki

Note from the future: This is a fairly cute, innocuous little post about what it claims–learning to make maki sushi. However, from the perspective of 10 years and 4 days later, I find it BONKERS because the people who threw the maki-making party were Mark’s brother and sister-in-law and that evening was the first time I ever met them. I have NO IDEA why I decided to document the event in such detail or what they made of my efforts to do so. They let Mark marry me, so I guess they gave me a pass for nerves? They are lovely people, and I still only make sushi at their place. Also: I miss that watch.

This barely counts in my Japan prep-course, because a) I don’t think anyone’s going to demand I make them food while I’m there, and b) the sushi-party was thrown entirely in the interests of good times and deliciousness, not education. But I got all three out of it, and some good pictures and advice, as well. If you are curious as to how it’s all done, I can try to share what the party-throwers told me, below. Keep in mind though, I was only told once, I was nervous trying to do something dextrous in front of strangers, and my googling powers are only so great. So take this all with a grain of salt (or rice?)

First you need a maki su or sushi rolling mat (a mat of little bamboo sticks/that thing on the bottom layer in this picture). On that you put a sheet of delicious nori (dried seaweed). You cover two-thirds of that with a layer of sushi rice, which is both a specific kind of white short-grained rice and a recipe for mixing said rice with sushi or rice vingar. You flatten the rice on with this flat paddle-shaped spoon the name of which I can’t find, and then you are ready to start adding toppings.

The toppings can be whatever you want, unless you are hanging out with snobs. Here, our toppings are salmon, avocado, carrots, and fish roe. It was delicious.

Then, you roll. The secret to rolling is a) keep it tight (this was repeatedly emphasized, to the point where I suspected a joke I didn’t get. I can sense those, you know), b) use your fingers to tuck errant fillings inside, and c) take your time. This is not a rolling race.

Then, when it’s all rolled but the riceless nori-flap, you stick your fingers in a glass of water and moisten the inside of the flap, like an envelope and seal the thing shut. Ready to slice into rolls which maybe fall apart a little, but still taste delicious and don’t get photographed because this is when your camera dies. Which is fine, because at this point, one wants all available hands free for eating.

I hope everything I do relating to Japan is this entertaining and delicious.

Is the world so big / it make you feel small?

RR

May 3rd, 2019

Throwback: May 2, 2009: So many ways to be right…and yet still, some aren’t

[Note from the future: I’m less into being right than I used to be–comes with age, I guess. I doubt I would use a snarky title like this these days, but I don’t think the tone of the piece is too smug so I don’t feel the need to just delete the whole thing. Mainly, this is a post of the wild variety and vagaries of the English language, which I always find fascinating and fun.]

Ever since my post about vocabulary confusion a couple weeks ago, I’ve been asking around for other people’s word-dislocation pet peeves. And, boy, are there some amazing ones, including mistakes it would never even occur to me were possible and some I make (have been making; will now stop) every day. I kept meaning to post this list, but I’ve been in too good a mood for a vocabulary rant. Thank goodness for Mondays!

From Saleema:

Weary/wary/leery/chary–*weary* means exhausted by, or at the metaphorical edge, bored with. *Wary* means cautious or suspicious of. Because they are pronounced similarly and take the same construction (with “of”), people seem to use them interchangeably, but they aren’t aren’t aren’t. To this Saleema adds *leery* off, which actually does mean the same *wary*, and I add *chary* which is actually defined in my dictionary as “wary”. Why we need 3 slant rhymes for the same concept, I don’t know. English is weird. 

Nonplussed–It means bewildered, or perplexed, but people seem to think based on the sound of the word that it means not excited about something. 

Bemused–Again, bewildered or perplexed, though it’s true that the word seems to suggest some kind of wry amusement. I’ve seen this in more than one book with the wrong implied meaning. (And confession: one of my first published stories used it in the wrong sense, too.) That’s Saleema’s comment, to which I add that I always remember the definition of *bemused* by “benign + confused = bemused.” Bemusement is not the kind of confusion you get during a bomb scare; it’s the type of confusion you feel when you find the pepper mill in the fridge.

From Mark:

People are entitled; books are titled.–Entitled most often means you have a right or claim to get something; ie., “I am entitled to a big piece of cake since I’m the one who baked it.” Someone coming into an aristocratic title would also be “entitled” in that moment (a transitive verb; the title is conferred by someone else). The second meaning is of course far less common in the Canadian 21st century, but to me they are related, since the aristocracy does/did feel entitled to so much. And if you have a book with a title, it’s “titled” not “entitled”–“my book is titled *Once.* You can stretch thisdefinition to make entitle the verb of giving a title to, but who does that? “I spent the afternoon entitling my book, and I think I finally got it right.” I actually didn’t know this one until M’s explanation last week, so please strike any prior Rose-coloured talk of entitlement from the record. 

From K:

Apparently addicting is making it’s way into the vernacular. This is a mistake I had never heard of anyone making until K mentioned it–apparently some use it as a synonym for “addictive.” Which is, to my mind, insane, since addictive is the adjective we all know and love to describe the dependency-engendering effects of heroin, nicotine, and Pilates. Addicting derives from the same root, obviously (addict) and so adds not a jot of nuance when used *incorrectly* in place of addictive. Addicting is a transitive verb, indicative of an action done by one to another: “we are addicting the puppy to Pupperoni by giving her slightly more each day.” But that doesn’t come up very often. Apparently there is debate over whether “addicting” will fly as a participle adjective and *could* actually be used in place of additive. But this is my blog and I refuse to brook that argument. 

I look a little bit older / I look a little bit colder
RRPosted by Rebecca Rosenblumat 8:46 AM

 Labels: Words

5 comments:

August said…

Interesting. Your last example is the only one I’ve encountered before. Perhaps I’m just not paying attention.May 4, 2009 at 2:14 PM 

AMT said…

the nonplussed thing is everywhere — i finally looked it up because i saw it used in its *intended* way and couldn’t see how that could possibly be right…

but what i really wanted to say: last month i *did* find the pepper mill in the freezer.May 4, 2009 at 7:29 PM 

Andrew said…

The excessive misuse of “penultimate” really steams my green beans.May 4, 2009 at 9:44 PM 

The Storialist said…

I’m quite enamored of (not by!) this post.

Really enjoy your writing (loved Once)!May 5, 2009 at 1:08 AM 

saleema said…

chary — oh boy, another one to add to the mix!May 19, 2009 at 9:24 PM 

May 1st, 2019

Throwback: May 1, 2009: Romantic Traffic

I’m reading reading reading student stories this week, and they are *good*! I’m exhausted, but intrigued, and thrilled by all I’m learning (and, sigh, wishing I’d emphasized how dialogue tags worked a little better). One thing I’m learning is that kids write the storylines everyone else does, and they care about what everyone else cares about–a lot of these are love stories, and even the ones that aren’t have love interests in them. They aren’t getting every detail of how grown-ups couple *quite* accurately, but actually, they aren’t that bad, probably because things actually *don’t* change that much, post-high-school.

One thing they all seem to know, and to relate with such consistency that I’m worried that they actually heard it in a Guidance class (better than my Guidance class, which mainly taught us about chlamydia) is that if someone is right for you, it’s easy to talk to them. I’ve seen over and over, “the conversation was so easy and natural,” “they could tell each other anything,” “they talked about everything as if they had known each other forever.” I, of course, am writing in the margin, “I’d love to read this conversation,” “Would be nice to read what they say,” “Show a bit of this!!” [Note from the future: A less naive/more savvy reader would have noted that plenty of professional writers say things like this in their published fiction, too. Where it also sounds like nonsense to me.]

Show, don’t tell, central tenet of creative writing classes everywhere. And really, what’s more fun than flirtation? Why *don’t* they want to write about it? As soon as that thought strikes, it becomes pretty obvious–because it’s *hard* to write that stuff, or at least hard to do well, so that a reader can feel the frisson that the characters are supposed to be feeling. 

Think about the last time your own companion went to the bathroom in a restaurant and left you eavesdropping on the couple at the next table (I’m not even going to pretend there are people in the world who don’t listen). So often, they’re enjoying each other, charmed and delighted and intrigued by each new comment and insight, and I’m…a little bored? Happy for them, of course, but not really getting it when he simpers, “Wow, that’s so right, what you told that prick. I’m so proud of you,” or she squawks, “Oh, my god, that’s the funniest thing I ever heard. Hah ha HAH!”

Flirting can be pretty inane if you aren’t a participant, and even when people are “confiding their deepest secrets” it might not roll along punchily; one girl’s deepest secret is another’s boring angst.

So how do you write romantic banter that people will actually want to read? Obviously, it’s been done, but it’s hard!! I’ve been working on it for a while now!

So today’s exercise is–one “I’m so into you” conversation that is neither dull nor nauseating. Situate it at any point in the relationship’s trajectory that works for the characters: meet cute, first date, post-coital, whatever. Just make’em like each other, and make that charm evident to the reader. I’ll post mine when I manage to write it. This is really harder than it sounds, even if you aren’t 15.

She’d already taken all of the dye out of her hair
RRPosted by Rebecca Rosenblumat 9:16 AM

 Labels: Exercise, Love, Teaching, Writing

3 comments:

AMT said…

confession: when i write short stories that nobody is supposed to read but me, they are almost always (a) only dialogue (b) flirting.

this is why i never get further than two pages in. it IS hard. but it’s fun.May 4, 2009 at 7:24 PM 

AMT said…

p.s. i think the 15 year olds are kind of right and kind of wrong. i agree that everyone i have ever fallen in love with was very easy to START talking to, and i wanted to talk to them forever (still do, in the relevant case)… but i think it’s also true that the more people matter to you the harder it is to talk to them about some things, for lots of reasons (including the fact that anything you say to them will always remain something you said to them, and if you have a future that’s a long time, and that if you disagree on something really important you can’t just not have coffee with them next week, and so forth…)

but i guess this is not the point. 🙂 though it might be *a* point.May 4, 2009 at 7:27 PM 

Rebecca Rosenblum said…

I think it *is* a good point–the more attracted one is (ok, ok, *I* am) the more I want to say everything that pops into my head…but that doesn’t mean I *should*.

April 24th, 2019

Good old Jake Addison

A standard question for writers is “which of your characters is your favourite?” and a standard answer is “that would be like choosing my favourite child.” Largely, I stand by the standard answer, but there are characters I come back to again and again, finding an ease with writing about them that I don’t find with others. Jake Addision appeared in stories in my first two books, a number of uncollected stories including my most recent published fiction from December 2017. He’ll also be in the new book if I ever finish it, which is iffy. I’ve written Jake at a number of ages but I come back to him again and again at six years old, the year his parents separate and his toddler sister is diagnosed with a serious vision impairment. A crystallizing year, maybe? Or just an interesting one?

He’s a kid who sees everything and he has seen a lot. He’s got a tonne of energy and parents who want him to be confident in himself, but who keep shaking his confidence in the world around him, and in the parents themselves. He is loving but his love takes the form of action–he is always trying to do something with those he loves. He also often the only kid his age around, one of first kids born in his parents’ group of friends, and that makes him doubly unable to sink into the background and “go play” because he’d have to play alone. When Jake is in the story, Jake is IN the story. And frankly, I hate fiction where there’s little kids around but they get ignored for hours at a time and are fine with it. I’ve never spent more than 20 minutes in a home with a conscious little kid and not realized it.

I’m wasting a lot of time with this project, writing unusable but fun bits-. I seriously doubt I’m going to get to keep this chunk below, but it’s one of my fave things I’ve written in a while. Jake is obviously an amalgam of some of my favourite real-life kids, but he is also definitely his own unique being, and I like to write him partly just to see what he’ll say next. This is him talking to his aunt Bella after a long day (Rae is his mom):

Jake tells her repeatedly she’s loading the dishwasher wrong, and finally she just lets him do it. It doesn’t look to her like he’s doing a better job, and he too has sauce in his hair somehow, green flecks among the dark curls, but Rae didn’t offer any instructions, and the boy is tired and loud. 

            “An’ see, you gotta, you gotta, like you see, you PUT it in, like you see?” He glares at Bella, so she nods, though she just sees Jake jamming a sauce-smeared plate beside the others. She doesn’t have a great view peering over the kitchen island so she comes around to where he has a heap of dirty forks and spoons on the floor and is sticking them into the basket one at a time. It’s still light out, not even 7 yet, but it feels late, probably because the kid so tired that he keeps rubbing his eyes with his sticky hands. After Rae told him thirty times to eat two more bites of pasta, he finally got the doughnut and now has powder sugar all over his t-shirt. 

            Bella sits down beside him on the floor. It’s nice and cool. “Hey, Jake, who’s that dog on your shirt?”

            Jake looks down as if he’s surprised to find the shirt there. “It’s not a dog, it’s a pup. Ruble. He builds stuff.”

            “A pup is a kind of dog. Like a kid is a kind of person.”

            “Ok.” He misses the basket with a jammy fork and it splatters on the floor. Who eats jam with a fork?

            “Do you want to go up and see if your mom is ready to help you get to bed? I can do this for you.”

            His eyes go huge and he stares through her eyes into the back her skull. “But this is my chore.”

            “But I’m your friend. And sometimes friends help each other out. Once in a while.”

            “Um, ok.” He presses the fork into her bare foot for some reason. “Thank you, Bella.”

            “You’re welcome. Go find your mom now.” She hopes this is ok with Rae, but she doesn’t know what else to do with him and she’s worried about him being crouched over the knives sticking up from the basket, gross and glinting.”

            “I love you, Bella.”

            “I love you, too, Jake.” And she does.

            “Are you gonna live at our house now?”

            “No, I’ll go home to my house to sleep. I’m just visiting you.”

            “Oh, ok. I have two houses.”

            “Yes.”

            “This house and my old house, with Daddy.” 

            “How do you fe-”

            “Daddy is your brother.”

            “Yes.”

            “Your big brother, just like I’m Marley’s big brother.”

            “Well, actually, I’m bigger—older. But only by a year.”

            This is the thing that startles him out of his conversational pose. “Really? Sisters can be the big ones?”

            “Sure. It’s whoever gets born first. Can I have a good-night hug?”

            Kids are so good at hugging.

April 21st, 2019

Rose-coloured reviews The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

I occasionally read self-help books. I don’t often have the patience but once in a while something crosses my radar and sounds intriguing. I do like to run a lean operation at home, but find myself tripped up by extra stuff time and again, so this book sounded useful. Couple that with the inane hot takes you read in the media–angry people sounding off in reputable newspapers about a book they clearly hadn’t read just because they don’t want to take advice no one said they had too. I always like to be able to counter that sort of BS with an informed opinion. So I read the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.

The first thing about this book, which you probably know unless you live in a cave, is that isn’t really about tidying up–it’s about throwing things away. So although my home is, like the one I grew up in, a relatively tidying place with a lot of stuff neatly organized, Marie Kondo disapproves. And so really do I. I have a lot of things I don’t need to have–old papers, books I’m never going to read again, clothes I don’t want to wear. Even though I have, for the moment, sufficient space for them and am able to keep them tidy, I would have more space and less dusting to do if I just got rid of them all. And then I’d have an easier time finding my remaining, actually desirable, stuff. I would also have room for more better stuff or just flexibility to downsize, should it ever come to that.

That’s the point of Kondo’s book, more or less, but she loses track of it a few times, such is her fiery certainty that it is inherently bad to have excess stuff, and that purging for purging’s sake is worthwhile. She compares un-Kondo-fied homes to “storage sheds” a number of times and is dismissive of just not wanting to take the time to sort through all your sh*t and get rid of the excess. I can think of half a dozen things I should toss right now, if I had the energy to go hunt them down, assemble them, and find the correct method of disposal. But I am not going to do that–i’m going write this post. And my day–and my life–are going to be totally fine.

Kondo’s life-changing method of getting rid of stuff is a good one–I totally agree with her that if you’re going to purge your stuff, you should actually take the clothes out of the closet or the books off the shelves, and look at each individual item one by one and decide: stay or go. Her description of this process is looking for a “thrill of joy” that will tell you you should keep the item–otherwise, trash it. She’s gotten a lot of mockery for that phrase, because no one feels a thrill at a dictionary or a bottle of cough syrup, and yet we should probably keep both. I also read an article that said the phrase was mistranslated from the Japanese, but basically I think those that harp on it are being willfully obtuse–I think that we all know Kondo is asking us to find a reason to keep EACH fun run t-shirt and novel about a troubled marriage. No categorical imperatives, no laziness. And humans are lazy! If the books are on the shelf, and effort would only be expended if we found one that had to go and had to remove it into the giveaway box, of course our brains would contrive to keep as many as possible. It’s only when everything’s on the floor and we move every book, either into the stay or keep pile, that the brain’s laziness can’t win out. Kondo isn’t stupid.

She does appear to work mainly with wealthy people, or the non-working partners of wealthy people, though. She says to properly execute her method on an entire family home would take about six months of hard work, and I believe her. I can live with a little extraneous matter in order not to spend six month living in chaos and devoting my energies to staring at old t-shirts. It’s not that I don’t think it’s worth doing–it’s just that so many other things are MORE worth doing, and I need to earn a living and cook dinner and write a book.

She doesn’t appear to comprehend that viewpoint. All the anecdotes included in the book to apparently make the author “relatable”–tales of how she started getting to home organization at age 5, how she spent every afternoon and evening after school throughout elementary and high school attempting to organize and purge items from her home, how she was an ignored middle child and she thought all this “tidying” would earn her parents’ notice and approval–made me really uncomfortable. She has obviously found great success with this book, so a lot of people must have actually read and liked it–I read the thing cover to cover, and found it kind of creepy and grim.

Also, for a book about getting organized, Magic is quite disorganized. Tonnes on how to choose a box, nothing about furniture. Endless pages devoted to books and especially clothes, but almost nothing about organizing a kitchen or a home office, the two areas that I don’t find necessarily intuitive to organize but are frustrating if they are aren’t set up well (clothes go in a bureau or in a closet, books go on a shelf, what else is there to say??) There is a very verbose description of how to fold clothes that I couldn’t make heads or tails of when a couple diagrams would have solved the problem in seconds–there are no illustrations in the entire book for some reason (I wound up getting the folding thing explained on Kondo’s TV show’s first episode). There isn’t really any acknowledgement that it’s 2019 and fewer and fewer people keep photo albums, or any physical form of music or movies, or even books–but they might need some help organizing their digital manifestation of these things. The section on organizing documents is almost entirely devoted to product warranties and instruction manuals–does no one pay taxes or sign contracts in Japan? It’s all very odd.

In the end, I would compare Magic to Gary Chapman’s self-help book The Five Love Languages. The core idea of each book is very insightful, and it would do most of us a lot of good to think it over in detail, but neither Kondo nor Chapman is a writer, whatever other qualifications they have in their respective fields, and their books are weird and annoying to read (Chapman’s, which I also read in full, is written in a old-school Christian framework for marriage and loaded with example couples where the man is “a good provider” and the wife “a good homemaker” though there are a few sops to dual income and even same sex couples–Chapman’s ideas could would used extremely productively by anyone, but he can’t quite make himself write that convincingly).

So spend ten minutes reading an article about The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up (honestly I think this blog post might almost have covered it) and decide if you want and need to do the work to purge your home of excess. I have no doubt it would be a good thing to do, though I probably won’t.

April 18th, 2019

Eat the ingredients

I’m a fair-to-middling cook but I enjoy my own cooking and I’m pretty knowledgeable about food and nutrition. My husband can also cook ok, and between us we cook usually 5 out of 7 dinners each week, along with almost all our breakfasts. We both aim to pack a lunch 4 out of 5 days at work and usually succeed. I know, we’re gooddamn heroes, right?

The trick to cooking most of your own food and it being fairly nutritious and tasty and also not a giant hassle/time-vacuum is keeping your standards fairly low. I keep getting sucked into various “meal-planning in minutes” type magazine articles and programs. The most recent time, I was *shocked* at how complicated it all was. People want to eat 4 or 5 different foods at every meal? With a sauce? No wonder so many people feel like they “can’t cook” if that is what they think cooking is. The ingredients travel so far from what they started out as to become the actual meal–for a weeknight supper, I would have usually stopped after a step or two, or just eaten the raw ingredients.

Even “super-simple” recipes I come across these days aren’t that simple. I keep seeing salad dressing recipes that have 10+ ingredients and require a blender. I’ve eaten those–they’re good!–but unless someone falls at my feet asking for it, salad dressing at my house is going to be balsamic vinegar shook directly out of a bottle, or else one of those Kraft prepared ones. Yes, with all the sodium.

I can cook fancy things and they usually turn out nicely (thought not always), though I wind up resentful as I wash all those endless dishes. But really, most of the time, I just like most foods, and I’m happy to have them be a little boring if the tradeoff is that they are easy and I don’t have to wash a blender. Here are some examples of things I like to eat:

• roast chicken made by washing a chicken and putting it in the oven with some salt and pepper on it
• microwaved sweet potato
• frozen vegetables and fruits
• bagged salads
• baked fish made by putting some fish in the oven with salt, pepper, and lemon
• lentil soup made by cooking red lentils (the kind you don’t have to soak–other kinds of lentils are too much work) in broth I made from a package with some chopped onion and a can of coconut milk
• poached eggs in the microwave, scrambled eggs, all forms of eggs
• canned tuna
• chopped vegetables sauteed with a jarred sauce (hoisin, marinara, curry paste/coconut milk) plus some sort of protein
• smoked tofu, because you don’t have to cook or marinate it for it to taste ok, unlike stupid regular tofu, which is too much work
• cheese cut and eaten directly out of the package

I am very big on looking at a recipe and calculating how many dishes I’m going to have to wash if I make it. I’d say that that consideration is right up there with how the meal will taste! I fear this post makes me sound really lazy and…yeah? But as I say, I also cook most of my own meals (or Mark does) and like them well enough, which is something many people say they are striving for, so I thought I’d offer the humble suggestion: try just being really lazy! Cook yourself the easiest possible thing! See if you like it.

I’m going to go have lunch now, which will be: carrot sticks, hummus, an apple, yoghurt. All foods I like, almost zero effort.

I feel like laziness is a totally under-considered option. You really don’t always have to go the extra mile.

April 9th, 2019

More readings!

I did two readings at the end of March and it was so fun! I think I only did one all last fall, and fall was months ago anyway, so this was a delight. I read with great folks and really enjoyed all I got to listen to–part of the joy of reading is it just gets me out of the house and engaged with the world! There are other ways to do that but the other joy is that I get to read to, and sometimes even other people engage with me! It was fun to get some great questions, a few compliments, and yes, even some applause! I admit it, it was a long dark winter and I didn’t feel great about my writing, so it was lovely to hear people say they liked what I read. Even if they were just being kind, although I hope not–kindness is still nice!

Anyway, I still have a couple more readings before this spate of leaving-the-housedness peters out. One is a tiny brief one at Draft Readings on Sunday afternoon, with so many other great readers I can’t even tell you (see the link) and the other is a classroom reading on Tuesday next week. Exciting times, I tell you!

April 3rd, 2019

Throwback: April 30, 2009: Writing Rubrics and Evaluative Criticism

**Warning: I have a migraine, my shower only sometimes has hot water these days, and I’m freaking out about educational assessment…so, if there were ever a day to just keep on scrolling down the old RSS feed, this might be it. I’m just saying.** [Note from the future: you still might want to skip this post, but not because it’s bad, as past RR thought, but because it’s a bit dull. I’m still fascinated by the real nitty-gritty of pedagogy and assessment but, 10 years on, I have more awareness that not everyone is.]

The old-school way of grading school papers, tests and presentations was called “norm-based”, and unless I wildly misjudge the Rose-coloured reader age demographic, most of us were graded that way. We’re basically talking about the bell-curve, which means that the teacher reads all the papers and ranks them. Then a small top tier of papers gets A-plusses, a slightly larger tier gets As, with the graph belling out around the middle-range of C+/B-, and slimming down again for approximately as many Fs as As. Thus, if one class is a somehow sharper than another, or simply has a better teacher, in norm-based assessment, one A paper could be light-years better than another. It depends not on the work the student did, but on the competition.

Another, more current pedagogical theory suggests criterion-based assessment, in which a defined standard is linked to a each tier of grades. And if I understand correctly, there is no expectation of failure; every student is expected to achieve a minimum level of comprehension, and every teacher, to teach towards universal success. There is no “acceptable” number of Fs.

In order to understand what success looks like, teachers create or are provided with rubrics that describe specifically what student achievement will look like at *each level* of comprehension. For those of us who have marked as university teaching assistants, we usually have a basic idea of an A paper based on our own understanding of the material, and simply deduct marks for all the ways a student’s paper fails to coincide with that A. Rubrics eliminate a lot of that subjective leeway by providing parameters for As, Bs, Cs, and so on (if you want to get technical about it, criterion-based learning and its accompanying rubrics often don’t endorse letter grades, but some do, and sometimes teachers just write’em in anyway, and anyway that assessment structure is a bit beyond me to explain in my current state of migraine-induced malaise).

So, obviously, criterion-based rubrics offer a lot more structure and guidance for a teacher, while still leaving *some* room for subjective interpretation (what does “well-thought out” mean, for example? “some evidence of structure”). There is no substitute for a tough, smart, prepared and aware teacher; but rubrics offer support and keep you from going too far off the rails. Especially for someone like me, who is in the classroom without benefit of formal training, who is without the years of education and experience that would train my subjectivity to coincide with typical student achievement.

Except…I teach creative writing…isn’t that *all* subjective? Can anyone ever really say what defines a “good” story? Should one even try, or does that just quash the students’ experimental impulses? Shouldn’t all creativity be encouraged?

???

I’m treading on sacred ground here, but I don’t actually think that. I come from a family of opinionated people who mainly don’t bother anyone with our opinions…unless we are fairly confident our insights are well-informed and might help. I don’t venture advice very often, because, well, what do I know? [Note from the future: now that I am in my forties, this assertion is sort of falling apart…not necessarily sorry…]

Except sometimes I think I do know about a few things. And sometimes, I think the person who might be on the receiving end of my opinion might actually hear what I’m saying and actually use it for the good. “Veer left or you are going to back into that pole,” is a classic example, because sometimes the driver’s side blindspot just hides the pole. Other than potential carwrecks, however, mainly I venture opinions on writing. I like to think I read deeply and carefully, and if a writer were interested in hearing what I thought, I might be able to tell things, both good and bad, that would give him or her a little insight into the work.

Mainly I keep quiet about my thoughts on my reading, because nobody asked me, because the writer is faraway and famous, because plenty of reviews have already been written, because I don’t think anyone needs or wants to know what I think. When I’m not asked to read critically, I usually don’t–I read happily, even if I do twig on things that aren’t working from time to time. 

However, I think my students are open to feedback–maybe more so than they ever will be again. And they expect my opinion and, mainly, respect it. I have trained them to answer the question, “What’s a useless thing to say in workshop?” with,

“That sucks!”

“Or??”

“That’s amazing.”

“Why?”

“Because they don’t help the writer improve the story.”

Big opinions don’t say anything that matters. A careful, detailed assessment of a work will improve it; a blanket compliment might encourage furture work, but does nothing for what’s actually on the page at that moment.

It must be plenty obvious by now that I am knee-deep in marking short stories by grade 10s and 11s, that I have written an assessment rubric to help myself do this, and that I am plagued with doubts. Some good and dedicated students have worked hard on stories that miss the mark in a variety of ways, and I am surprised and sad to be writing that down in red ink (I’m switching to blue) on their pages. I wonder if my assessment of this one particular story will make students hesitant to write the next one, and that thought is terrifying–I want them to improve, but even more, I want them to *write.*

The thought that comforts me is that I am reading polished stories that I have seen in previous drafts and, in several cases, I can see exactly where my feedback and feedback from their peers has spurred the writer to new heights. That’s thrilling, to see evidence of learning right there on the page. Some kids ignored me and found their own new heights, and some kids ignored me and stayed at the same level, but I do think most of my students are capable of hearing feedback and using it if it resonates.

And that makes me want to be stringent in my grading, to respect these young writers enough to ask for more than they’ve done so far and assume they are capable of doing it. I think they are; I hope I am.

There may be 10 or 12 things I could tell you / after that you’re on your own
RRPosted by Rebecca Rosenblumat 8:23 AM

 Labels: Teaching, Writing

4 comments:

Mark said…

Re the colour in which to mark: I always use green ink when evaluating children – it’s the colour that means “move forward”.April 30, 2009 at 12:22 PM 

AMT said…

re: this whole messy mess, which as you know is a big part of my messy life… i will just say two small things. ok, three.

1. i am very impressed with you for caring this hard. no, seriously — it takes SUCH energy, don’t you find? 

2. for what it’s worth, my attitude wrt grades: if a class’s grades are supposed to matter for something like getting into university, then you WANT them to be bell curvey. i mean, if your high school grades are supposed to act as gateways to university, then the question of whether somebody’s writing puts them in the top 10% or 20% or 70% is kind of relevant. but having said that they are on a curve doesn’t answer the question of where the *mean* is — if you get a batch of geniuses, you put the mean at A- and then curve away. 

if the grades don’t serve some purpose like that, but are supposed to be a purely evaluative tool themselves — then tell your students they are dumb, because they are, and then try to come up with rubrics that give you a lot of leeway, and make the real evaluation come from the comments. i realize this is not practical in high school, for lots of reasons.

3. … i think an interesting thing to think about is to have two rubrics in assessing written work. one is the criteria on which the work is judged in isolation — the things you mentioned above — and then the other rubric is about the work in context. so: did they improve from last time? did they try to do what you suggested, even if they failed at it, or even made things worse? or did this student try something hard, did they take a risk, did they try to be genuinely original? … you see what i am getting at. 

one of the classes i teach sort of annually involves a writing component, and i decided i wanted two essay-like things from them. on the first one, i grade based almost only on the ideas themselves, but i tell them that the second one will also be graded on the writing, and then i write fairly harsh comments on their academic writing, fairly extensively. so then on the second one, if they are still writing insanely but really trying hard to improve i can give them points for that, and hopefully they will have gotten something out of it. 

it’s hard work, eh? really humbling and infuriating and affirming all at once. man, now i need a nap. too bad i’m at an airport.May 4, 2009 at 7:49 PM 

Rebecca Rosenblum said…

That is interesting, both about moving the mean and the double-rubric. There are so many things I think I could have done better with this class, and so many things I’m dying to try next time. I really hope the program asks me back so I have a chance to put all these lessons into action!