A Good Idea

My mind hasn't been with this blog for the last couple of weeks.  I think that the Phil and Danny interview was on my mind for so long that when I finished it I automatically switched gears.  I could once again focus on things that I had been putting off because I was (or felt that I should have been) working on the interview.

During these past few weeks, however, I forgot one lesson.  I haven't been writing because I've been focused on things other than what I normally write about.  But I should have been writing all along; just writing about what was on my mind.  So from now on I'll be taking my own advice.  And for some of the things that I write that aren't compatible with this blog, I've started another.  Check it out at www.thesegoodideas.blogspot.com.

Don't worry, I'll still be sticking around here, too.  I'll just have to start working on this kind of inspiration.

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Phil Geffner and Danny Cardoso (Part 2)

The second half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local restaurant owners in NW Portland is now posted on the NW 23rd Ave Blog!  Phil and Danny share how NW 23rd has changed in the past 25 years along with how their businesses have grown.  Find out about their business philosophies and commitments to family and food.

Click here for a direct link to part two the interview or visit nw23rdav.wordpress.com

 If you missed part one of the interview, click here to read it or check out my earlier blog post on the interview and the process of putting it all together.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

On Punctuation

From today's Writer's Almanac, shared with me by a friend:

On Punctuation by Elizabeth Austen not for me the dogma of the period preaching order and a sure conclusion and no not for me the prissy formality or tight-lipped fence of the colon and as for the semi- colon call it what it is a period slumming with the commas a poser at the bar feigning liberation with one hand tightening the leash with the other oh give me the headlong run-on fragment dangling its feet over the edge give me the sly comma with its come-hither wave teasing all the characters on either side give me ellipses not just a gang of periods a trail of possibilities or give me the sweet interrupting dash the running leaping joining dash all the voices gleeing out over one another oh if I must punctuate give me the YIPPEE of the exclamation point give me give me the curling cupping curve mounting the period with voluptuous uncertainty "On Punctuation" by Elizabeth Austen, from The Girl Who Goes Alone. © Floating Bridge Press, 2010.

Visit:   http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org


Listen:

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Phil Geffner and Danny Cardoso (Part 1)

Usually these interviews are a piece of cake.  Send out an email with some questions, throw together a short introduction about the person, edit their answers for spelling, post.  That's it.  So when Phil insisted that we do his interview in person I knew it would be a little more involved than usual.  Then we threw Danny into the mix on top of that.  I ended up with a LOT to work with.  What was so overwhelming about it was not so much the quantity (although it did take me hours to transcribe the whole thing) but what was in there.  There was so much great stuff in this interview that I wanted to make sure I was doing it justice; I didn't want to just throw it together like usual.  So instead I did nothing.  For weeks I was paralyzed by the thought of working on this thing.  

As usual, I learned my lesson.  You just have to dive into it.  You decide that this has taken way too long to get done, you have to do it.  You sit down and start writing, you force yourself to get into it.  And before long, great things begin to happen.  Then you get excited about what you're doing and you actually want to sit down and do it.  It's a great thing. 

In the end though, I try not to put too much pressure on myself.  Maybe this interview wouldn't have come out the same if I had sat down and done it right away.  In fact I'm sure it wouldn't have.  Maybe it would have been just as good, maybe it wouldn't have been.  Maybe the weeks of procrastination, in which this interview was constantly turning over in the back of my mind, formed the way I thought about the interview and thus the way I wrote about it.  I suppose that's why they call it marinading.  

Regardless of how I got here I'm here now.  Part 2 is still to come, with a lot of insight and inspiration, the real heart of this interview.  But for now enjoy the first half of my interview with Phil and Danny, local celebrities of the NW 23rd neighborhood.  Get to know a little about their backgrounds, their sense of humor and how they got to where they are now.

Find this and past interviews at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

For a direct link to Phil and Danny (Part 1) click here.

Thanks for reading!

Words for Writing and Life

"There must be no gap between expression and meaning, between real and declared aims... It means not saying or thinking, 'I didn't mean to hurt your feelings,' when there really existed a desire to hurt.  It means not saying 'luncheon' or "home" for the purpose of appearing upper-class or well-educated.  It means not using the passive mood to contribute to no one in particular opinions that one is unwilling to call one's own."

- Donald Hall 

Inspirational Listening for Writers and Readers

Almost as great as reading what a writer has written about writing is listening to a writer talk about writing.  Every few weeks, Oregon Public Broadcast show Think Out Loud brings listeners into the minds of local writers with its series Northwest Passages.  Writers share their ideas, inspirations and philosophies on writing with host Emily Harris and even read a sample of their work.  They also answer questions emailed or called in by curious listeners who are writers and avid readers themselves.  

Northwest Passages is always one of my favorite listening experience if I am lucky enough to catch it live.  But fortunately for those of us who are not always tuned into OPB at 9am and for those of you who live outside of Oregon, past broadcasts are available to listen to online.  I hope you find them as enjoyable and inspiring as I do.  Happy Listening!

Click here for September 30th interview with Oregon writer Brian Doyle

Click here for past Northwest Passages broadcasts

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Scott Seibert

This week I had the privilege of interviewing Portland's 36th Rose Emperor, Scott Seibert.  Check out the NW 23rd Ave Blog to learn more about Scott, why he loves living in NW Portland and why the people of NW 23rd love Scott and don't even know it.

Click here for a direct link to the interview.
Thanks for reading!

"What the Hell is Water?"

This past Sunday marked the two year anniversary of the death of David Foster Wallace (who it just so happens that I Write Like).  A friend shared this excellent example of his work.  It makes me wish he had given my commencement speech.  Enjoy:

A speech by the late David Foster Wallace

A Northwest Gem and Some New Finds

Two weekends ago Matthew and I took a ten hour round-trip drive down to Ashland, Oregon on the California border.  Oregonians know that Ashland is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and America's first outdoor Elizabethan theatre.  This year Ashland is celebrating the 75th Anniversary of the Shakespeare Festival, but sadly our brief afternoon in Ashland did not coordinate with the performance times.

Ashland, however, caters in many other ways to the Shakespeare enthusiasts and book lovers who are drawn by the festival.  Among a slew of antique and book stores, one of our finds was Antiquarium Books & Antiques.  The shop is packed with interesting antiques, but the walls were lined with every kind of book a collector could dream of.  In the classics section I found a 1937 edition of Oscar Wilde Selected Works and a (not-so-antique) reprint of the original 1847 edition of Wuthering Heights.  Matthew found a 1975 Baseball Encyclopedia.  One of the owners checked us out and was very kind to give us a little bit of a discount on our stack of books which amounted to getting Wuthering Heights for free.  Can't complain about that.

After perusing Antiquarium the rest of our time in Ashland consisted of window shopping, dinner at the Standing Stone Brewing Company, a walk through surprisingly expansive Lithia Park and dessert from a local homemade ice cream shop.  We questioned whether such a short visit would be worth the long drive, but while we do plan to return and see a show at that outdoor theatre we were certainly satisfied on the long drive back to Portland.  I would call Ashland a must-see for lovers of Shakespeare, antiques, books, and quiet little towns with plenty of character.

Links:

Ashland Wikipedia

Oregon Shakespeare Festival

www.passporttoashland.com

A Month Later...

No one ever said that being a writer would be easy.  Vacation may not have been best time to try to build a writing habit.  Especially on a vacation with family there is always something to do and someone to talk to and never as much free time as you imagine there will be.  In just under two weeks we hopped from Portland to Rhode Island, New York City, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Carolina and back to Portland.  We saw sisters, best friends, family friends, aunts, uncles, grandmothers and parents.  Needless to say there did not turn out to be a lot of reading or writing time.  On the beach in North Carolina, however, I did manage to sneak some time for One Hundred Years of Solitude and a little bit of writing.

I am still picking my way through One Hundred Years of Solitude and I am loving it.  It is a beautiful story of the rise and fall of the Buendia family over the course of, appropriately, one hundred years.  What is surprising me, and pleasantly, is the whimsical quality of the story.  The superstitions and beliefs of the isolated culture in which the Buendias live defines truth in the novel.  It is fantasy and reality in one package and it is exciting to watch the development of the small culture with changes and discoveries in science and world knowledge.

I am also still slowly enjoying Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, and am currently inspired by her thoughts on character description and dialogue.  It makes me think that I should have done more writing while I was with my family or that I should begin paying closer attention to the array of characters that I encounter so frequently at Starbucks.

While on the beach my thoughts were more on description, and of course the natural focus was the rolling waves, the shadows that the seagulls cast as the fly and fight their way along the shore, long lines of pelicans parading over rooftops, white crabs with huge eyes that scurry fearfully trying to blend in to the sand and fishermen with their poles stuck in the sand who may or may not have been compensating for something depending on how important it seemed to make them feel.  Additionally, a common theme was that writing doesn't just appear out of nowhere... you have to actually do something.  I feel like often when I am not writing it is because I'm waiting for some great idea to hit me so hard that it's all I can do not to write it down on the side of a coffee cup or a napkin or my arm if it's the only thing that's handy.  I'm starting to get that it doesn't always work like that.  Maybe it did in school after weeks studying a topic or days of research and agonizing over a subject, but that's not the same as pulling something out of thin air.  You have to do the work and the work means pages of pages of worthless writing before something great starts to flow.  I'm still working on that.

Next on the reading and writing agenda is more reading and more writing... But isn't that always the goal.  This week I'll get Mockingjay, the third and final book of The Hunger Games trilogy in the mail.  Of course I won't have any trouble getting through that ten times faster than I've read anything recently, but just maybe after that I'll get on a role.

Beach Reading (and Writing)

For the next two weeks I'll be vacationing on the East Coast, taking some time to visit with family and friends and spending some considerable time on the beach.  While I plan to take this time off from "work" in the sense of writing that I am doing for others, I do hope to have a good amount of time for personal reading and writing.

I hope to use the change in pace of vacation to start getting in the habit of writing every day.  Essentially it's journal-keeping, but I hope to avoid the "here's what I did today and here's how it made me feel" form of the middle-school diary.  There can be great value in that kind of writing as well, but it has to be meaningful, not forced.  My biggest challenge with journaling is remembering that I'm not writing it for anyone; I don't have to make it interesting, it doesn't have to be about my life or myself or anything in particular.  This type of journal will be solely for practice in writing... essentially just to keep the pen moving.  I hope that doing this will help both my discipline to sit down and write every day and my writing itself. 

There is also a stack of books that I have been wanting to read or that I've started and haven't quite made it through.  I'm excited to have some airplane and beach time to finally sit down with these gems.  Here's what I'm bringing with me:

 

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - I have been plucking through this book ever so slowly.  I think I am reluctant to read it too quickly because I'm loving it so much!  It is great inspiration for anyone who loves to write.

 

Why I Write by George Orwell - This book promises more great inspirations in politics and writing.  I have read parts of it, including Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language," which is was originally published in 1946 and is included as the last chapter of this book.  It is always a pleasure to see what the great writers have to say about writing.  Click here to read "Politics and the English Language" online.

 

Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories by Katha Pollitt - My sister gave me this book when I saw her in Denver in May.  It has been rare in the past few years to see my sister more than once a year, so since I will be seeing her again already on this trip it seems only right to take as stab at finishing this one.  I imagine that Pollitt's observations of life will be inspirational, but I also look forward to reading it as an example of a successful publication of personal essays.

 

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez - A very nice local Portlander who I know from working at Starbucks gave me a 1971 paperback copy of this book as a (very belated) wedding gift.  It is in near-perfect condition and very much has that wonderful old book smell.  I've never had the privilege of reading anything by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, so I am really looking forward to this one.

I am also bringing the past three issues of The Sun Magazine that I have been wanting to catch up on.  The stories in these magazines are phenomenal and promise to be excellent airplane and beach reading.

Check out The Sun and read parts of current and archived issues at www.thesunmagazine.org

I hope that with all this I'll have some great recommendations for reading and writing endeavors when I return.  Happy reading (and writing)!

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Komo Bains

Check out my interview with NW 23rd local Komo Bains!  

Find out what Komo dreams about, why he wants to make hair grow faster, and of course what he loves about Portland and living on NW 23rd Ave.

For a direct link to the interview, click here.

And as always watch for more interviews with great folks at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

Unhappyhipsters:

The only activity that could combat the horror of the child’s clunky Ugg boots—organizing the upper shelves by color and size.

(Photo: Shawn Records; Dwell)

 I understand.

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Cecily Stevens

Check out my new interview with Cecily Stevens on the NW 23rd Ave Blog!   Cecily is a super-friendly district manager with Goorin Brothers based out of the hat shop on NW 23rd and NW Johnson.  Originally from the Berkshires in Massachusetts, Cecily gave some great answers about who she is, why she moved to Portland and what she loves about NW 23rd Ave.  For a direct link to the interview, click here.  Thanks for reading!

 As always, watch for more interviews at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com.

William Safire's "Great Rules of Writing"

Some excellent advice from William Safire, author of New York Times Magazine column "On Language" from 1979 until his death in 2009:

Do not put statements in the negative form.

And don't start sentences with a conjunction.

If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.

Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.

Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.

De-accession euphemisms.

If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.

Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.

Last, but not least, avoid cliches like the plague.

Funny... but it's true.  Good writing is simple writing.  My rule of thumb: If there are words that can be removed from a sentence without changing the meaning, remove them.  

Example:  I originally wrote "My general rule of thumb:  If there are words that can be removed from a sentence without changing the meaning of the sentence, then you should remove them." 

You get the point.  I'll be adding these to my wish list:

I Write Like David Foster Wallace

If you've ever tried to compare your writing style to your favorite authors (or if you're just curious), this one's for you.  On I Write Like, users can insert a sample of text into the analyzer and find out what famous writer their word choice and writing style compares with.  Who knows how this really works, but it has gotten some pretty solid recognition (check out the I Write Like blog) and it is great fun.  There are also a few other handy tools for writers on the site, including a blog of writing-related quotes, resources and recommendations.  I subscribed to the site's newsletter and was immediately emailed a link for a complimentary download of Short Story Writing: A Practical Treatise on the Art of the Short Story by Charles Raymond Barrett, Ph B.  So I'd say overall, I Write Like is worth a look.

I entered my last substantial blog post, Taking the Time to Write, into the analyzer, and here is my result:

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Josh Richardson

Check out my interview with the handsome Josh Richardson, OHSU PhD candidate and NW 23rd Ave resident.  Click here to learn more about Josh and why he loves living on NW 23rd Ave. 

As always, watch for more interviews at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com.

The Importance of Editing

I've been feeling a bit observant lately and have been noticing a lot of typos in web articles, blog posts, and even one of the books that I've been reading (I won't name names).  I usually try not to be too critical and I'm sure anyone could sift through this blog and find a good handful of typos, so I have been resisting the lecturing "get an editor people!" post that has been mounting inside of me.  When I came across this tidbit today, I thought that sharing it would suffice.  Enjoy!

The 7 Most Disastrous Typos of All Time

*Note: this article is not intended for young or easily offended audiences.

Taking the Time to Write

Yesterday my mom asked me about Joyce Carol Oates' writing style.  While I happen to be quite inexperienced with her writing, I was explaining to my mom what I know about her writing habits and the habits and writing styles of other prolific writers.  This got me thinking about the amount of dedication and time that writing, whether as a career or hobby, requires. 

In The Midnight Disease, Alice Flaherty describes writers who suffer from hypergraphia, an uncontrollable compulsion to write usually caused by high temporal lobe activity such as temporal lobe epilepsy and bipolar disorder.  People with hypergraphia write constantly and extensively.  For example, Lewis Carroll, who is believed to have had temporal lobe epilepsy, wrote 98,721 letters from his late twenties to his death at sixty-five.  Flaherty also talks about "normal" but prolific writers, such as Joyce Carol Oates, who do not have abnormal temporal lobe activity, but who write almost as extensively as writers who do.

It's not easy to put that amount of time into writing.  For me, the difficulty is putting aside all the other things that need to be done, or could be done.  There are always dishes to do, mail to sort, stuff to look at online or out the window.  A long day working at the job that actually pays is always a good excuse.  In Bird By Bird, Anne Lamott describes writing constantly, every day, even when she was working full time.  This is what is really hard, the commitment to just do it, just keep going.  Lamott follows the advice of her father, who was also a writer:

"Do it every day for a while," my father kept saying.  "Do it as you would do scales on the piano.  Do it by prearrangement with yourself.  Do it as a debt of honor.  And a commitment to finishing things."

I have friends who write, too and I think we all have the same trouble with it.  One has been writing for years, has even been published.  She tells me, "I'm going to start writing again," and weeks later she's still telling me the same thing.  Another says to me, "let's go somewhere and just sit and write" so we go to the park and we sit and we talk and we people watch with our notebooks and pencils in the grass beside us.  I think that there is value in the desire to write and in the intention to write, but at some point you actually do need to just sit down and write.

See also:  The Inner Manic

Peanut-Butter-Jelly Time

Check out my newest interview with the creators of PBJs Grilled Gourmet Peanut Butter Creations located on the corner of NW 23rd and NW Kearney.  Read about their vision for delicious grilled peanut butter sandwiches with everything from bananas to blue cheese to hot sauce to pickles.  It's brilliance on a piece of bread.

As always, find this and other interviews with NW 23rd Ave locals at: www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com.  Or click here for the direct link to the interview.

Go to www.pbjsgrilled.com for more information on PBJs.

Book Heaven

For those of you who do not live in the Portland area, you should know that there is a little piece of heaven here.  Powell's City of Books in downtown Portland is a must-visit for tourists and residents alike.  It is the largest new and used bookstore in the world, with a mapping system and color coded rooms to help visitors find the kind of books they are searching for. The variety of books; seemingly every book imagined including used books and even a rare book room with signed first editions can be overwhelming.  It's a good thing there's a coffee shop inside because visitors could quite literally spend an entire day... and probably come back the next day for more.

I recently spent a few hours wandering through Powell's with my good friend Laura.  I was searching specifically for literature by and about Oscar Wilde for a  project that I am hoping to work on over the summer.  In addition to a $4 copy of Richard Ellmann's well-regarded biography of Wilde. I found some gorgeous hardcovers, including Oscar Wilde's Letters and a pristine 1932 edition of My Friendship with Oscar Wilde by Lord Alfred Douglas.

In addition to housing a grand array of books, Powell's also hosts authors and other public figures including past names such as Joyce Carol Oates and President Jimmy Carter.  Learn more about Powell's City of Books here.

In other book news, I recently joined Goodreads, a website where users can share what they are reading, write reviews of books they have read, see what their friends are reading and discover new books to read.  If you'd like to see what I've been reading, check out www.goodreads.com/CABHayes.

Happy reading!

Be the first to know

I'm compiling an email list of people who are interested in updates about what I'm working on and future projects.  It will be periodic, once every couple weeks or so at most.  If you'd like to be included, leave a comment with your name and email address or just write to me at chayeswriting@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading!

NW 23rd Ave Interview with Tatiana Miletta

Check out my new interview with the beautiful Tati Miletta: newlywed, aspiring photographer, and long-time hostess of Papa Haydn on NW 23rd and Irving here.

Find out why Tati is so beloved by the NW 23rd Ave community and all that know her!

Watch for more interviews every Monday at:

www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

Thinking Backwards

I love discovering the ways in which different creative media influence one another.  Among other greats of the fashion and art world that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen interview in their book Influence, Mary-Kate talks to interior architect and designer David Collins.  He tells her that he is inspired by Gone with the Wind because of the way it was written.  Margaret Mitchell wrote her manuscript beginning with the final chapters and worked her way through the story backwards.  In fact, the manuscript was accepted for publication before she had even completed the first chapters (Blair Rouse).  Collins explains how this style of writing has influenced his work:

You have to know the ending; how you got there is the story--because there are so many things that are a series of accidental happenings.  That's why, when I'm approaching a design project, I've got to figure out what it's going to feel like in the end.  I need to think about the ending first.  You don't always know what it's going to look like totally, but you have to think of what its going to feel like at the end.

I think this is often true in writing.  Not that you always need to or even can know the ending, but that it often helps to know what it is that you are trying to accomplish.  The mood, the tone, the style; what you want it to feel like at the end; the effect you want it to have for you and for the reader.  For me, the first draft usually doesn't come out feeling like I want it to, so I have to reread, rewrite, revise and sculpt it into something that serves the purpose that I meant for it to serve.  This is what people in the writing world call the "felt sense," among other names. It is what you keep coming back to when you get stopped, or when you just need to make sure you're staying on track.  Without it, writing can go everywhere and be anything; with it, writing can be effective, focused and meaningful.

If You've Ever Try to Spell it "Fluxuate"...

First, you would have been wrong.  It is spelled "fluctuate."

With that out of the way, here is what might have happened if you've ever been thrown off by this seemingly common misspelling:

You might first have tried to type "fluxuate" into your word processing program, only to discover that it is spelled wrong.

With no help from the spell check suggestions, you might then have typed "fluxuate" into your google search bar with the hopes of being saved by the ever-helpful "did you mean..." correction function.

Instead, you might have discovered, high on your list of search results, a blog by the name of Spooks By Me.  Specifically, a post from February 27, 2007 titled "Today, I tried to spell fluctuate as "fluxuate." 

The post itself has nothing to do with the word or the spelling of the word fluctuate, but it seems to have become a bit of a phenomenon.  The post has a whopping 178 comments, including comments from within the past few weeks (for those of you who aren't paying attention, that's over three years later)!

The surge of comments has sparked a debate over whether all these people should have gone the dictionary route rather than typing their questions into google (I vote google... c'mon, how are you supposed to use a dictionary to efficiently find the correct spelling of a word spelled f-l-u-c... if you think that it begins f-l-u-x...? Seriously.), but it has also become a useful resource with many of the comments including the correct spelling!

I don't really know what all of this means, other than that an apparently common misspelling obviously isn't getting a lot of attention if this is first thing that comes up in google.  But if you are as amused by it as I am, you can check it out for yourself here.

NW 23rd Ave Person of the Week Interview

The first NW 23rd Person of the Week Interview is up!  Check out my interview with Nick Dothee here.

Thanks again to Nick for sitting down with me and giving me so much great material to work with. Thanks to Dave and the NW 23rd Ave Blog for letting me help out with your quest to spread the word about all NW 23rd has to offer.  

Interviews will post on Mondays weekly beginning June 28th. Watch out for them at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com

A Different Way of Writing

I was recently asked to write for a local blog that shares news and information about the NW 23rd Ave shopping district in Portland.  I was given full reign to contribute to the blog in any way that I desired, so I decided to use the opportunity to try out interviews.  It is a completely new form of writing for me but one that I have been wanting to take a shot at for a while.  So far, it has definitely been a learning experience. The questions are the easy part - just think up some basic questions, silly questions, questions about the interviewee's impressions of and experiences on NW 23rd - but introducing the person is different.  How do you accurately represent someone's story in your own words in only a few sentences?  How do you do justice to all the interesting things about them without going over the top?

My guide has been an excerpt from Ken Macrorie's Telling Writing.  Macrorie's mantra: 

"All good writers speak in honest voices and tell the truth."

Good writing is honest and authentic, doesn't waste words and shares with the reader the experiences of the writer.  My first interviewee put my ability to write this way to the test.

I chose to interview Nick in part because I see him regularly and could set up the interview quickly and easily; but also because he is a musician, so I knew he would have something to share and would be comfortable sitting down and talking with me.  Nick has a great personality so my expectations were high but he managed to exceed them.  Before he answered a few written questions I asked him to tell me a little bit about himself, his past, and his recent move to Portland.  He was incredibly enthusiastic and genuine about his story and I felt like I had to find a way to convey the experience that I had talking to him to the readers of the blog.  What came to mind, however, were cliches, not the truth.

To find the truth, Macrorie suggest writing continuously for ten minutes without stopping.  I think the point is that when you can't stop to think about what you're writing your mind can't come up with the cliches and the "great thoughts" that you might otherwise resort to.  Without the time to think, you don't have anything to draw from but the truth.  So I sat down and I started writing about Nick.

It worked, it didn't even take ten minutes of continuous writing before real, honest statements about what I had learned began to flow.  I began to discover what was really important about my interview with Nick and what it was that impressed me about him.  I really only had a few lines to write, but I think that I was able to express what was important to him and to me.

Thanks to Nick for being my guinea pig!  Check out the NW 23rd Ave Blog at www.nw23rdav.wordpress.com and I'll be sure to share the interview when it posts.

Punctuation Station

 A happy amendment to the Grammar With a Sense of Humor post!

Please enjoy The Oatmeal's new addition:

How to Use a Semicolon

Pleasure Reading

I wanted to share two great websites that I have recently had the pleasure of discovering.

"Personal, Political, Provocative"

The Sun Magazine features many pieces from their monthly publication online.  The Sun is a non-profit, advertisement-free magazine that features photographs, poetry, interviews, short stories and essays submitted by regular contributors and readers.  The subject matter is life, and The Sun looks for honest, personal and political writing that reveals some of its complexities.  The result is a fascinating rainy day read.

Find out more about The Sun and read select pieces at www.thesunmagazine.org

"You are traveling with us today, no?"

Border Hopping is an online collection of worldly goodies including visual art, photography, reviews and writing.  The theme is entirely cultural with the goal of giving readers a diverse experience of world travel from the comfort of their desk chairs.  The writing consists of all genres including stories, poetry and journalesque pieces.  Like The Sun, Border Hopping welcomes reader submissions.

Check out Border Hopping at  www.borderhopping.net

Grammar With a Sense of Humor

I use "grammar" here in the general sense, as the particular articles that I list here from The Oatmeal actually comment specifically on spelling and punctuation. However, I'll use this opportunity to include some other online resources for all forms of grammar.

Please enjoy these two entries from The Oatmeal. While hilarious, I think that they actually deliver some really great ways of remembering these rules. It's harder to forget absurdity, isn't it?

Ten Words You Need to Stop Misspelling
How to Use an Apostrophe


Here are a few more resources on grammar:
Grammar Girl
Grammar Bytes
Blue Pencil Editing Blog
The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

A Look at Perception

In the study of literature and the conversation about how it is interpreted, there is always the question of the reader's context. How a person reads a text is effected by her experiences, her viewpoint, her beliefs, even her immediate moods and emotions at the time of reading.

Visual and performance artist Amir Baradaran explores this subject in an absolutely fascinating way.

As if Marina Abramović's current exhibit/performance, The Artist is Present at MoMA weren't fascinating enough, Baradaran brought a performance of his own into the exhibit a few days after its opening. His performance, titled The Other Artist is Present highlights the perception of the audience by altering their experience. From the explanation of the piece on Baradaran's website:

"No doubt, certain patrons will recall the mysterious man upon entering the atrium and witnessing Abramovic’s piece, thus shaping their experience of what was once an unrelated work. By joining itself to the Balkan artist’s performance, Baradaran’s reactive piece has left an indelible mark- impacting and altering the perception and memories of the viewer."

View Amir Baradaran's four act performance The Other Artist is Present

More about about Marina Abramović and The Artist is Present:
Wikipedia
New York Times
The Artist is Present at MoMA
The Marina Film Project

Writing is Hard

Most of us would agree that writing is not easy. Someone was recently talking about the "struggle" of writing. I often use the word "agony." You have to find the best words to say what you mean; you have to make it interesting; you have to keep it organized; it has to make sense; you have to figure out how to transition to the next paragraph; you have to worry about whether your readers will get it; and so on...

Take this as a good sign.

One definition of a professional writer (a definition which much of their own testimony implies) might be this: one who finds ways to write in spite of, not without, the discomfort of writing.
- James Seitz

Experts on writing say over and over that a sure sign of an immature writer is one to whom writing comes easily. Immature writers write what comes to mind, assume that it's the best they can do, and are satisfied. Mature writers know that writing is hard, that they must struggle through it, even agonize over it, and that they may still never be fully happy with a final product.

Of course, this struggle is part of what makes great writing so great, and it is part of what does make writing so satisfying. To have worked through it, to have come up with something that you feel is worth something, or to have discovered something that you didn't know you had to say makes it all worth it.

Topic Block

Can you have writer's block if you haven't even started writing? What if the question is how to begin writing? or where to begin? or what to begin writing about? Whenever this question arises in my mind, my answer is simple: start anywhere. Just think of something, anything, and start writing. This tactic can have surprising results, as evidenced by the author E. L. Doctorow:

Well it can be anything. It can be a voice, an image; it can be a deep moment of personal desperation. For instance, with Ragtime I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall.... Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Broadview Avenue looked like then; trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in the summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was President. One thing led to another and that's the way the book began, through desperation to those few images.

I also like Anne Lamott's advice:

Start with your childhood.... Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can. Flannery O'Connor said that anyone who survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his or her life. Maybe your childhood was grim and horrible, but grim and horrible is Okay if it is well done. Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just start getting it down.

I find this helpful in academic writing, too. I just start writing about whatever I find interesting about the subject matter, and before long a topic begins to form. The most important thing, as Anne Lamott points out, is not to worry about how "good" the writing is. I remind myself that I am not committed to the words on the page, that they are changeable and that I have that power. I try to remember that there will be time to revisit it later, to sort the good from the bad and to rewrite if necessary. I repeat my simple mantra, again and again each time my writing begins to slow: just keep writing. just write.

Does Reading Turn You On?

In a recent class we were discussing the best way to read a text, specifically one written two thousand years ago. In no time at all the conversation developed into one giant sex metaphor and stubbornly remained there for the rest of the class.

There is, of course, no pure way to read any text, especially one this far out of our own context. We must, therefore, attempt to penetrate the text in order to discover its meaning. Upon penetration we may further be able to procreate, developing a new text out of the meaning we extract.

What problems does this metaphor bring to the reading of a text? For one, the penetration metaphor specifically implies that the submissive partner, the text is feminine and the active, dominant partner, the reader is masculine. The implications of this are an entirely separate conversation, so I will simply point out that this metaphor can easily be feminized by the reader simply attempting to wrap her mind around the text.

The second, and I think most fully problematic implication of the metaphor asks whether all this penetration and procreation is appropriate. Are we in fact violating the purity of the text through our penetration of it? Plagiarism has long been metaphorically associated with rape (see the work of Rebecca M. Howard). This metaphor comes from the historical sense of rape as the theft of a possession (specifically that of a husband or father - again, another conversation completely). So does the reading of a text fit into a rape metaphor? Is the formulation of idea, the speculation of motive, the dissection of language all inappropriate use, indeed violation of a text?

I have to agree with one of the other graduate students in class who pointed out the difference between rape and not is consent. She argued that the penetration of the text would be inappropriate if it were not indeed consensual. However, isn't the very act of publishing a work offering it up for interpretation and yes, penetration by others? At the risk of further encouraging this metaphor, I can only conclude that text and reader do in fact have a mutual sexual relationship.

The Inner Manic

What do prisoners do? Write, of course; even if they have to use blood as ink, as the Marquis de Sade did. The reasons they write, the exquisitely frustrating restrictions of their autonomy and the fact that no one listens to their cries, are also the reasons that mentally ill people, and even many normal people, write. We write to escape our prisons. - Alice W. Flaherty

In the first chapter of The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain, Flaherty draws the connection between mental illness and writing. She notes that studies have shown that "writers are ten times more likely to be manic-depressive than the rest of the population, and poets are a remarkable forty times more likely. Even student poets not diagnosed with mental illness have more manic traits than students who do not write poetry."

Importantly, Flaherty makes the distinction between these writers and those who write for outer gain, for recognition, for money, for success. Writers with mental illness write for themselves, to release what is within, to feel that they are being productive, or simply because they must. Isn't this why we should all be writing?

This, of course, does not mean that we need to have a mental illness in order to write. But reading this makes me want to look inside a little bit and search for signs of my inner manic.

Mozartians vs. Beethovians

The writing process. Now there's a topic. We all go about writing in different ways and as part of this we process the information that we are writing about in different ways. Some of us process it in our heads, but many, or perhaps most, of us have to process it in writing. This is what differentiates one-draft and multi-draft writers.

Here is Muriel Harris:

By one-draft writers I mean those writers who construct their plans and the pre-texts that carry out those plans as well as do all or most of the revision of those plans and pre-texts mentally, before transcribing. They do little or no retranscribing. True one-drafters have not arrived at this developmentally or as a result of training in writing, and they should not be confused with other writers who -- driven by deadlines, lack of motivation, insufficient experience with writing, or anxieties about "getting it right the first time" -- do little or no scratching out of what they have written.

Multi-drafters, on the other hand, need to interact with their transcriptions in order to revise. Independent of how much planning they do or pre-text they compose, they continue to revise after they have transcribed words onto paper. Again, true multi-drafters have not reached this stage developmentally or as a result of any intervention by teachers.

I find this explanation helpful, but I rather prefer Stephen Spender's terms. Janet Emig explains them well:

Spender divides artists, after their formidable ancestors, into Mozartians and Beethovians. The Mozartian is one who can instantaneously arrange encounters with his unconscious; he is one in whom the creative self leads a constant and uninterrupted life of its own, serene to surface disturbances, oblivious of full upper activity... The Mozartian can "plunge the greatest depths of his own experience by the tremendous effort of a moment" and surface every time with a finished pearl - a Cosi Fan Tutte, a Piano Concerto in C Major.

The Beethovian, on the other hand, is the agonizer, the evolutionizer. Scholars study his first notes to a quartet or a symphony, as Spender points out, are astounded by their embryonic clumsiness. The creative self in a Beethovian is not a plummeting diver, but a plodding miner who seems at time to scoop south with his bare hands. To change the metaphor, for the Beethovian, composing is not unlike eating an artichoke - pricks and inadequate rewards in our tedious leaf-by-leaf spiraling toward the delectable heart. I say our for how many of us can claim ourselves Mozartians?

To those who can compose completely in their minds and whip together an excellent first draft, bravo. As for the rest of us, those of us who are true Beethovians and those of us who fall somewhere in between, I say we embrace our multi-drafting tendencies. Make it work for us. Leave ourselves the time to work through draft after draft until we reach the heart of the artichoke.

Writer's Block. What the Heck Does That Even Mean?

I'm not sure that I believe in writer's block. It is, at the very least, an over-diagnosed affliction. You mean you can't produce an entire essay/novel/poem/whathaveyou off the top of your head at a moment's notice? How surprising.

I have come across far too much information on the subject to deal with at one time, so I'll start with a favorite. This is the introduction to "The Essential Delay: When Writer's Block Isn't" by Donald M. Murray:

Morison isn't writing. He's a professional writer, published and anthologized, but he's not writing. He goes to his typewriter and jumps up to find more paper. He organizes and reorganized his notes, makes a third cup of tea, visits the stationery store to buy a new pen, hunts through the library for that one elusive reference. He makes starts and notes and more notes and folders and outlines, but he does not produce a draft.

He wonders if he has writer's block. He clears writing time on his schedule, shuts the door to his study, and watches a tree grow. Slowly. He makes neat work plans, types them up, pins them above his desk, and doesn't follow them. He drafts letters - in his head - telling the editor he cannot deliver the piece. He considers going into real estate, or advertising, or becoming a hit person. He composes suicide notes - in his head - that are witty, ironic, publishable. He grumps at his wife and lies awake at night wondering if there is a treatment for writer's block.

But Morison knows he doesn't have writer's block. He's been writing for almost 40 years. He is passing through the normal, necessary, always terrifying delay that precedes effective writing.

Murray goes on to explain that this "essential delay" is just a period of waiting that writers must go through before they have collected all the necessary elements of writing. He identifies five of these elements: information, insight, order, voice, and of course, a feeling of need to write. These may seem simple enough but we should all know that they don't turn up overnight.

While Murray doesn't offer much in the way of a solution to this waiting game, I find it gratifying to know that my procrastination is not (necessarily) ill-spent. At least I know I'm not the only one.

Classical Literature for Dummies

Even literature junkies have their flaws. I, for one, hate reading Middle English (a la Chaucer) and Early Modern English (a la Shakespeare). It drives me crazy. Sadly, in addition to the great works of such masters as Chaucer and Shakespeare, much of Classical Literature, written in Latin and Greek, was translated during these eras. This is sad because, along with the Bible, these classical pieces have had some of the greatest influences on their literary successors. They are pieces that, if we can stand to read them, will bring great insight into literary work after literary work.

I, however, with the help of a great professor who is requiring the reading of Ovid's Metamorphoses at length, have found the solution. Find a modern translation. This may seem obvious, but I didn't realize that people were still translating this stuff.

A recommendation: Allen Mandelbaum. Among others, his translations include Inferno of Dante (1980) and The Odyssey of Homer (1990) and his 1972 translation of The Aeneid of Virgil won the National Book Award.

I am currently reading his 1993 translation of The Metamorphoses and it is brilliant. I'm no expert on the Classics myself, but according to my professor and the reviews, it is very accurate. In my opinion, it is beautifully written and, most importantly, it is completely readable.

The Why of Writing

According to the National Endowment for the Arts 2004 Reading at Risk Survey, personal writing was the ONLY literary activity that increased between 1982 and 2002.

The question of why we write is one that I will likely revisit often. There is a wealth of opinions out there and I can't seem to stop coming across them.

"The Artist is of no importance. Only what he creates is important, since there is nothing new to be said. Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer have all written about the same things, and if they had lived on thousand or two thousand years longer, the publishers wouldn't have needed anyone since."

William Faulkner (The Paris Review Interviews 1956)

How many titles would the average person recognize but not be able to match with an author? Worse, how many stories would we recognize without even knowing so much as the title? So few writers are recognized. So few win awards. So few make any real money. Do the few who find success really even matter?

"The more the public is interested in artists, the less it is interested in art. The personality of the artist is not a thing the public should know anything about. It is too accidental."

Oscar Wilde (Mr. Oscar Wilde on Mr. Oscar Wilde 1895)

So, unless you know that you have something to contribute, unless you are the successor of Shakespeare, Balzac, Homer and Faulkner, maybe there is no point in writing at all.

"But I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward."

Anne Lamott (Introduction to Bird by Bird)

Well said.

The Things I Mark

I am on the lookout for inspiration.

When I read, I read with pencil in hand. I mark lines, record quotes, make note of thoughts. This is the training of a degree in English. But I've found that the pencil helps me process.

I have been looking for a way to record these inspirations. It is the notes that get lost. The marks stay in the books where I left them, but the recorded quotes, the thoughts and interpretations end up scattered. I've attempted notebooks, journals, lists. But the day I don't have the right notebook on hand is the day it falls apart.

It is possible that a collection of inspirations, instructions, quotes and thoughts would be interesting and useful to someone other than myself. So I'll share them. It will be a look at the writing process. The quotes of literary masters. The name of a good book. A new technique for learning. A helpful resource. An inspiring practice. An interesting fact. I will do my best to keep it relevant, interesting, insightful, meaningful. I hope it will be inspirational. For you and for myself.


These are the things I mark in pencil.