I've neglected my infant blog for the last couple of weeks, due to a perfect storm of complicating factors. I was hired for a short-term project, researching and writing bios for a forthcoming poetry anthology. I also got hit with some weird virus that has taken me out of commission for almost a week. (Not a computer virus, though, thank goodness.) And I had so many topics (and suggestions for topics) to write on that I never could settle on one to "git 'er done." (Thanks to Sheena, my primary source!)
I'm taking off tomorrow for Chicago, to read at Columbia College's Creative Nonfiction Week celebration. One of my essays, "Blood," was excerpted in the current issue of South Loop Review: Creative Nonfiction + Art. My fellow UMN alum and good friend Priscilla Kinter also has work in the issue, and will also be reading. (One of the topics I had considered putting up here was the relative merit of bringing my daughters to the reading; on the one hand, the essay is, in large part, about them, and it would also be nice for them to see Mom reading for an audience. On the other, they're 7, the reading and Q & A is two and a half hours long, and I'm bound to be stressed out about whether they're behaving or not. So the other hand won.)
I'll try to post from the road, but meanwhile, I'd like to get some thoughts on the following article from NYT: Picture Books No Longer a Staple for Children. What do you think, especially you parents? Are we pushing our kids to chapter books too soon, or is this a "manufactured crisis"? Do you think the cost of picture books (upward of $20) is a factor?
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Practical magic.
The Writer's Life is Best When It's Boring, from Tayari Jones by way of SheWrites.
I think Tayari and I must have similar writing styles (by which I mean the act of writing, not necessarily our work), because a lot of this resonated with me. I'm not good at the whole starving-artist-miserable-alcoholic method of creating. I need to feel secure, well rested, and relaxed.
So a question for the readers who are also writers: What's your practical magic? What routines help you be more productive? What routines are you failing to follow, even though you know you probably should?
I think Tayari and I must have similar writing styles (by which I mean the act of writing, not necessarily our work), because a lot of this resonated with me. I'm not good at the whole starving-artist-miserable-alcoholic method of creating. I need to feel secure, well rested, and relaxed.
So a question for the readers who are also writers: What's your practical magic? What routines help you be more productive? What routines are you failing to follow, even though you know you probably should?
Life Lessons from Klickitat Street, Part Two
(Or, "Speak, Memory of Teaching Undergraduate Creative Writing")
Ramona's hopes soared. Her teacher had smiled at her. "Miss Binney, I want to know--how did Mike Mulligan go to the bathroom when he was digging the basement of the town hall?"
Miss Binney's smile seemed to last longer than smiles usually last. Ramona glanced uneasily around and saw that others were waiting with interest for the answer. Everybody wanted to know how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom.
"Well--" said Miss Binney at last. "I don't really know, Ramona. The book doesn't tell us."
"I always wanted to know, too," said Howie, without raising his hand, and others murmured in agreement. The whole class, it seemed, had been wondering how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom.
"Maybe he stopped the steam shovel and climbed out of the hole he was digging and went to a service station," suggested a boy named Eric.
"He couldn't. The book says he had to work as fast as he could all day," Howie pointed out. "It doesn't say he stopped."
Miss Binney faced the twenty-nine earnest members of the kindergarten, all of whom wanted to know how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom.
"Boys and girls," she began, and spoke in her clear, distinct way. "The reason the book does not tell us how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom is that it is not an important part of the story. The story is about digging the basement of the town hall, and that is what the book tells us."
Miss Binney spoke as if this explanation ended the matter, but the kindergarten was not convinced. Ramona knew and the rest of the class knew that knowing how to go to the bathroom was important. They were surprised that Miss Binney did not understand, because she had showed them the bathroom the very first thing. Ramona could see there were some things she was not going to learn in school, and along with the rest of the class she stared reproachfully at Miss Binney.
from Ramona the Pest, by Beverly Cleary, 1968
I've been meaning to post about this for days, since I read it with my kids. Seeing Ramona and Beezus sparked an interest in the series, which is great, since I've been desperate to spark an interest in chapter books, any chapter books, and if they're written well, so much the better. But anyway...
My first, visceral reaction to the passage above was a flashback to teaching Intro to Creative Writing. Oh, the frustration I would feel when trying to get undergrads--many of whom just needed a writing credit, thought creative writing would be "easy," and had zero interest in learning how to write a poem, short story, or work of creative nonfiction ("isn't that an oxymoron?")--to distinguish between significant detail and, well, too much detail.
I can't really blame them, because it was my job to convey the concept, and clearly I wasn't holding up my end of the deal. I can't blame them, but I kind of do anyway. I wonder if Miss Binney felt that inner exasperation. If she did, she was probably better at hiding it. Why is it so hard, I reflected, to think of your narrative in cinematic terms? To know that you focus the camera, maybe even in tight close-up, on the things that are meaningful, either to the plot or the characterization? If you throw in everything up to and including the kitchen sink, it becomes a muddle.
Wow, am I insufferable, or what? Had I written this point four days ago, when I intended to, that's what it would have been about. How undergrads just don't get it. Poor Miss B., holding it together while her students fixated on an insignificant detail. But the post has had time to simmer a while, and in typing the passage above, a few things occurred to me.
I still relate to Miss Binney. I mean, I got the same reproachful stares. But I can see where I might have let my students down. "More detail!" I would write on the papers of the ones who came to me for help. "Make this setting come to life!" "What did the air feel like?" (Oh, dear Lord.) Then I would hand their portfolios back a few weeks later, with comments like "I don't need to know this" and "This is bogging down the narrative" and "This image is important because...?" written in the margins. Most of these kids had no interest in creative writing, and while they could and should still be required to meet the course expectations, I don't think most were motivated by a strong desire to master the craft.
But this is also about writing for your audience, and I haven't really come to any conclusions about that yet. Maybe you can help me talk it out, get me from half-baked to fully baked and frosted. The passage above is funny to an adult with a grasp of what is important in story-telling, with a concept of "message" or "theme." But when I questioned Pink about it, about what she thought, she pondered a moment and said, "Well, maybe Mike Mulligan went in the bushes."
Did the author of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (which, incidentally, is a real book) fail to consider her audience? The kids miss the point of the story, latching on instead to what they see as missing information. The same could be said for Cleary; my kids are in 2nd grade and they didn't get the point of that scene. Absent an adult to explain the deeper meaning, they never would have gotten it. Actually, even with an adult explaining it to them--in both cases--they still don't get the point.
I don't even know what my question is, frankly. I certainly don't advocate dumbing anything down, no matter who the intended audience may be. I love books and films that require me to do a little work. But at some point you risk obscuring the "message" (for lack of a better word) or, at worst, alienating your audience. I just don't know how to identify where that tipping point is. It's a problem I struggle with in my own work, so bring the insight.
My first, visceral reaction to the passage above was a flashback to teaching Intro to Creative Writing. Oh, the frustration I would feel when trying to get undergrads--many of whom just needed a writing credit, thought creative writing would be "easy," and had zero interest in learning how to write a poem, short story, or work of creative nonfiction ("isn't that an oxymoron?")--to distinguish between significant detail and, well, too much detail.
I can't really blame them, because it was my job to convey the concept, and clearly I wasn't holding up my end of the deal. I can't blame them, but I kind of do anyway. I wonder if Miss Binney felt that inner exasperation. If she did, she was probably better at hiding it. Why is it so hard, I reflected, to think of your narrative in cinematic terms? To know that you focus the camera, maybe even in tight close-up, on the things that are meaningful, either to the plot or the characterization? If you throw in everything up to and including the kitchen sink, it becomes a muddle.
Wow, am I insufferable, or what? Had I written this point four days ago, when I intended to, that's what it would have been about. How undergrads just don't get it. Poor Miss B., holding it together while her students fixated on an insignificant detail. But the post has had time to simmer a while, and in typing the passage above, a few things occurred to me.
I still relate to Miss Binney. I mean, I got the same reproachful stares. But I can see where I might have let my students down. "More detail!" I would write on the papers of the ones who came to me for help. "Make this setting come to life!" "What did the air feel like?" (Oh, dear Lord.) Then I would hand their portfolios back a few weeks later, with comments like "I don't need to know this" and "This is bogging down the narrative" and "This image is important because...?" written in the margins. Most of these kids had no interest in creative writing, and while they could and should still be required to meet the course expectations, I don't think most were motivated by a strong desire to master the craft.
But this is also about writing for your audience, and I haven't really come to any conclusions about that yet. Maybe you can help me talk it out, get me from half-baked to fully baked and frosted. The passage above is funny to an adult with a grasp of what is important in story-telling, with a concept of "message" or "theme." But when I questioned Pink about it, about what she thought, she pondered a moment and said, "Well, maybe Mike Mulligan went in the bushes."
Did the author of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (which, incidentally, is a real book) fail to consider her audience? The kids miss the point of the story, latching on instead to what they see as missing information. The same could be said for Cleary; my kids are in 2nd grade and they didn't get the point of that scene. Absent an adult to explain the deeper meaning, they never would have gotten it. Actually, even with an adult explaining it to them--in both cases--they still don't get the point.
I don't even know what my question is, frankly. I certainly don't advocate dumbing anything down, no matter who the intended audience may be. I love books and films that require me to do a little work. But at some point you risk obscuring the "message" (for lack of a better word) or, at worst, alienating your audience. I just don't know how to identify where that tipping point is. It's a problem I struggle with in my own work, so bring the insight.
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