Weekend Reading

The Happiness Project – 6 Simple Strategies To Pitch Your Ideas. And To Make Them Irresistible.

Apartment Therapy – Day 2: Set Up Your Outbox

(Ha. This is my method. Which I’ve been using since I was a kid, tyvm. I wish I had a mental alarm that pinged every time I had an idea that was going to show up later as a cornerstone of someone’s empire.)

Stephen Elliott – The Problem with the Problem with Memoir

Most people’s lives are very interesting but most people don’t look at their lives in an interesting way. The unexamined life is never interesting. If a good memoir was merely predicated on having an interesting life then some of the best books would be celebrity memoirs. These people live a life most of us know nothing about. But celebrity memoirs are rarely interesting, despite how interesting their lives appear from the outside. The problem is not that they don’t live interesting lives, it’s that they’re not writers.

Tayari Jones – Finding the time is write is hard, but finding the courage is harder

Michael Bourne – My New Year’s Resolution: Read Fewer Books

On Writing

In the comments to my writing goals post, Sparky (aka kingmidget — he’s Sparky @ TC) wrote:

I consider blogging to be a distraction from my fiction writing, which is what I “should” be doing. Yes, it’s writing, but it’s not … trying to come up with the right word for this … meaningful.

He goes on to say that taken as a whole he finds his posts meaningful as a record, but maintains they’re a distraction on an individual level.

I disagree, and I’m going to try to articulate why.

Some of my posts are not writing. For example, sometimes I blog a quote or a comic or a video. I do consider these posts meaningful, however, because generally they capture something I’ve been thinking about or meaning to write about or trying to find a way to put into words. For example, if I’ve posted a quote about topic X on my blog (my commonplace book) when I do start writing about topic X, it’s easy to find and refer back to the quote I posted about it, even it was months earlier. Often it’s these bits and pieces I’ve collected that help me work through a topic and pull my own ideas about it together.

Some of my posts are writing (technically) but not particularly meaningful as stand-alones. For example, when I post about a new issue of TC or what progress I made on my dissertation. In these posts, the meaning isn’t in the content (words) of the post, but in what it represents. (Generally: research or writing or editing elsewhere.)

And some of my posts are both writing and meaningful. The ones where I actually write about something. My book posts, for example. I try to avoid calling these “reviews” because they’re not reviews in the strictest sense. When I write about a book, I’m thinking: what did I learn from this book writing-wise or life-wise? how or why did it affect me? what worked for me and what didn’t? etc. These are all valuable things to write down, even if my ideas about them are rough and incomplete.

All writing starts out rough and incomplete. Blog posts are version 1, the first draft. Or even version 0, pre-writing. As Anne Lamott says: shitty first drafts. You might say, but I don’t ever plan to do anything with that blog post. But the point is: you never know. That post might be the start of an essay or an article. It might even be the kernel of a story. All good stories have themes and in writing—just writing—you start to identify what themes and ideas are important to you.

Back in the nineties, the book that was pivotal to reframing myself as writer (i.e. “I am a writer” vs. “I want to be a writer”) was Writing Down the Bones. The most important take-away for me from that book was the idea of writing as a practice, a process, a way of life—rather than just a means to an end. In WDtB, Natalie Goldberg advocates filling notebooks and just writing (i.e. not worrying about the publication aspect) for at least two years after one starts to write. This completely changed my perspective on writing. It wasn’t about sitting down and banging out a complete story in a single draft, i.e. story first, writing last. (Which, by the way, never worked for me. All I produced via that method was steaming crap.) It was about writing. First you write—whatever—and out of that, the story grows. The writing guides you to the story.

Once I started looking at writing this way it made perfect sense. Whatever you do, you have to practice if you want to become good at it. To put it in running terms: it would be silly to say that the only runs that ‘count’ are races, therefore you’re not going to practice because practice runs are just a distraction from the real thing. If you skip the training runs, you’re not going to win the race; you’re probably not even going to finish.

What happens the more you run? It gets easier. You remember that first run, the first time you put on your running shoes and said: ok, I’m going to do this. How far did you get before you were panting and your legs were burning? How long did you last before you had to walk? And now? You’d kick first-day-of-running-you in the pants. Because you put in the practice.

It’s the same with writing. The more you write, the easier it gets. Even if you don’t do anything with that blog post, it’s still practice. It’s still words on the page. You can think of it as a warm-up, like Julia Cameron’s “morning pages.” It’s a way of clearing your mind and opening it to creativity.

And that’s why I think all writing counts.

New Year’s Day

In service of my goals, yesterday I walked downtown and bought some things:

a 2013 planner (50% off)
a sketchbook, 5×8-ish, big enough not to feel cramped, small enough to carry around. and I pulled out my pencils/erasers/pencil sharpener and put them with the sketchbook, so no excuses.
a 3-pack of Moleskine journals (like this, except these ones have a pattern on the cover) — one of which I’ve already started writing reading notes in. go me.
a box of all-purpose cards. now I just need some stamps. I think I’ll also get some Vancouver postcards. (want snail mail? email me your snail mail address. I promise not to do anything nefarious with it.)

I walked around Canada Place for a bit (drinking a latte and taking phone photos of the snowy North Shore mountains, like everyone else and their dog who was downtown) and then I went to see Argo. It was good, no doubt. I have to give BAf props for being able to create suspense when I already knew the ending.

When I first heard about this movie, I was puzzled because it was advertised as some untold story and I was like what? Because I knew this story. I imagine it was plastered all over Canadian news at the time. I can’t explain why I have a vivid memory of this story and nothing of the Marathon of Hope when they happened the same year. The only thing I can think is that the constant repetition of the Terry Fox story over the past 30 years has obliterated any of my personal memories of it.

Anyway. The “untold” part of it is the CIA involvement. But the movie makes it seem like the Canadians were just doofy bystanders, undeserving of any of the kudos they received. Which, if you think about, makes no sense: Tony Mendez, the CIA guy Affleck plays was in Iran for like a day. Clearly, there was a lot going on in Iran in the 79 days preceding Mendez’s appearance that is totally glossed over. Like the real Canadian passports that just magically appeared. There’s a slam in the postscript at the end of the Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor, which seems totally uncalled for. But if you don’t think about any of that: good movie.

Oh. Before the movie, there was trailer for this. It was almost entirely Ryan Gosling shooting people. Intercut with Sean Penn emoting intensely. It has the same rating (R) as Argo, which did have some violence but I would guess probably got its R not from its violence but from the number of times ‘fuck’ was used. Because impolite language is totally equivalent to violent death. And we (society) remain puzzled as to why some people get it in their heads to go on shooting rampages. Just saying.

As I left the theater, I was thinking hmm, need food. I didn’t feel like going grocery shopping. I wanted something like fast food but not fast food if you know what I mean. As I walked to Stadium Station, I passed T&T. Through the doors I could see what looked like a deli case. Hmm, I thought. I went in. As I suspected: sushi. Perfect. Well played, T&T, well played.

And then I went home and started reading book #1 of 2013, Turtle Valley.

It was a good day.

Writing Goals for 2013

First, I guess I should revisit my 2012 writing goals:

Goal 1: 1hr creative writing 5x/week.

First two-thirds of the year: #fail. However, I turned this around in the last third of the year. In September, I did the TC Mini-Nano. In October, I did the 250 words a day challenge. In November, I did NaNo—I didn’t “win” but I wrote a lot. In December, I started the 500 words a day challenge and my final word count for the month was almost 19k.

Goal 2: draft of dissertation by end of year.

Argh, no. But I have made a lot of progress since September. I still hope/plan to have the thing done in 2013.

Goal 3: blog 3x/week.

Yes, check. Ok, so it wasn’t a nice M-W-F three times a week, but I posted 165! times in 2012, which works out to an average of 3.17 times / week. I’ll call this one a #win.

Goal 4: 366 project.

366 terrible haiku written. Check. And blargh. Never again.

I guess I did learn something (didn’t I already know this?): every day for a month = fun challenge. Every day for a year = enough already. My attention span rebels at the year-long challenge.

Also in 2012:

I wrote 4 articles + 2 editorials + 2 reviews for TC:

The Toasted Cheese Wish Book: Books by TC Authors, December 2012
Keeping a Commonplace Book, November 2012
Face Your Writing Fears, June 2012
Beyond NaNoWriMo: Writing Challenges for Everyone, January 2012
Like Alice, TC 12:4 (December 2012)
Don’t Forget the Confetti, TC 12:3 (September 2012)
Review of Evidence of Murder, TC 12:4 (December 2012)
Review of The Toucan Magazine, TC 12:2 (June 2012)

I finally bought my own domain. Professionalism!

I entered a writing contest. (I wrote something! I submitted it! #win)

I read a bunch of books. It was a pretty good reading year with only one real clunker (I’m looking at you, King of Torts). Best fiction: Ayiti. Best nonfiction: Quiet.

Onward.

Susannah Conway suggests selecting a word to represent the upcoming year. Sure, why not? So my word is…

ALOHA

Haha! Expecting something else, were you?

Aloha because it means both goodbye and hello and 2013 is a year I hope to say goodbye to some things (The Dissertation) and hello to some new things.

Aloha because it also means (amongst other things): love, affection, compassion, mercy, sympathy, kindness, grace, charity. And we could all use more loving-kindness in our lives.

And aloha because Hawaii is going to be my reward to myself for finishing The Dissertation. (I have one vote for Kauai—anyone else care to weigh in?)

2013 Writing (+ Reading) Goals

continue with 500 words a day challenge (see sidebar)
write at least one essay + submit it
read more books, especially fiction (b/c reading novels makes me happy)
- read some of these books + write reviews and/or interview authors
- read some new-to-me books on writing + write an article
- read some of these books (eventually all, but not all this year or the dissertation will never get done)
keep a reading journal (i.e. jot down notes/page numbers while reading so it’s easier to write about them afterward. efficiency ftw.)
keep on top of my book posts!
blog better (i.e. more posts other people might actually be interested in reading)
tweet about new blog posts (i.e. get over my squeamishness about self-promo)
work on a business plan
start a sketchbook
snail mail (admit it. you’d love to get a letter, a card, a postcard.)
finish The Dissertation

Project 366 – The End

365/366
all I’ve done this week
is read and write, write and read
complete perfection

366/366
in conclusion, I
share with you this post about
Kerouac’s haiku

Project 366 – Week 52

358/366
week 52! and
so, at long (very long) last,
we approach ‘the end’

359/366
what started out fun
has become daily torture
(slight hyperbole)

360/366
eggnog coffee and
The Log crackling on TV
peaceful quiet calm

361/366
reading, puttering
at the end of each chapter
savoring a book

362/366
new rule! no starting
a new book till I’ve read this
stack of magazines.

363/366
the grocery store
is always out of sourdough
…something I should know?

364/366
I wish The Log was
available all year or
at least all winter…

21: This I Know

This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart by Susannah Conway

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

I picked this up at Chapters on Robson while I was birthday present shopping. It was the last copy. It was that kind of day.

I read about this earlier this year when she was doing a blog book tour (I posted the quote that caught my attention here) and I started following her blog. The book interested me because it’s about navigating grief through a creative process.

[W]hen something bad happens that’s big enough to make you question your entire life, all the other hurts that are hanging around, all the wounds you’ve collected in your lifetime, will come out of the shadows and ask to be healed too.

This I Know (xiii)

In 2005, Susannah Conway’s boyfriend of two years died suddenly/unexpectedly from a heart attack. But there’s a parallel story of loss: when she was a child, her father left his family (Susannah, her sister and her mom) and moved to Australia. He wasn’t dead, but he was gone.

As I read This I Know, and the ways she worked through her grief, I couldn’t help thinking about what a difference how you lose someone makes in the grieving process. There’s a purity in grieving someone who has died vs. someone who has left. When someone dies, you get to keep your memories. You can reread the letters. You can look at the photographs. You can remember all the things you did together. These things are yours and no one can take them away.

When someone leaves, you not only lose them, you lose your memories—or rather, your memories are taken from you. All the mementos you thought were the most important inanimate things in your life (the stuff you’d rescue if your house were burning down) are now just reminders that what you once thought was true, you now know was false.

There’s also a difference in how people react to different kinds of grief. You’re not likely to hear someone say “you’re better off without him/her” to someone grieving a death (there are exceptions, I know). Everyone sympathizes/empathizes with the death of a loved one. But when a loved one leaves voluntarily, people just see someone who hurt their friend/family member. But for the person grieving it’s more complicated than that.

I don’t know if this book will resonate with everyone. I think those who share similar characteristics (read: introverted interdisciplinary creatives) will find it inspiring. For example, she writes of the exhaustion of needing to be ‘on’ all the time and writes of the luxury of solitude, the gift of time to herself. For her, being alone was a necessary part of healing. This is something I understand implicitly. (Though I’m not sure others do.)

When I have to my work—myself—out there, I do it with as little fanfare as possible.

This I Know (72)

Which is not to say I agree completely with everything. She does a lot of talking through her grief, whereas that’s something I hesitate to do. A long time ago, I read something about not talking too much about the things you want to write about because if you do, your need to write about them will dissipate and I think that’s true (at least for me). But she is, I think, a photographer first and a writer second. So maybe putting things into words doesn’t carry the same weight as it does for someone who’s primarily a writer. (Further to this point, I will be reading Emily Rapp’s forthcoming memoir The Still Point of the Turning World in 2013. She’s been writing through her grief at Little Seal.)

Susannah channels her grief into a journey of self-discovery that leads her to create her own perfect job for herself (she runs online photography-focused classes). This of course ties in perfectly with my theory that hitting bottom frees you to take risks that you otherwise never would have. This I Know is set up kind of like a workbook. At the end of each chapter there’s a ‘reflection’ with a suggested activity (writing + photography) related to the chapter topic.

One final quote I have to share (because of this and also this):

I once met [an artist] at a party whose words have always stuck with me: “Boyfriends come and go, ” she said, refilling my wine glass, “but my work is always there for me. It’s this rock I have in my life I can always rely on.”

This I Know (156)

20: Life Class

Life Class: A Novel by Pat Barker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

View all my reviews

From The Book Shop in Penticton, Summer 2010:

And… Pat Barker reminds me why she is the best.

Previously on The Remainder Table, I read Liza’s England and wrote about Double Vision. Have I really not read a Pat Barker book since 2006? Yikes. That’s crazypants. *Checks Wikipedia* Ok, so not entirely my fault. Looks like she didn’t publish anything between Life Class and Toby’s Room, which came out this year, and I’ve read everything else except her first two novels (Union Street & Blow Your House Down). Her husband died in 2009; I expect that has something to do with the longer-than-usual gap between books.

With Life Class, Barker returns to World War I. This time the main characters are art students studying at the Slade. The Slade is real, as is Henry Tonks, one of the professors who appears in the story. If Madeleine L’Engle’s trademark is her crossover characters, Pat Barker’s is her use of real people as characters in her fiction.

When the story starts, it’s the summer of 1914. The main characters are Paul, Elinor, and Neville. Elinor’s already an accomplished artist, winning prizes for her work, but her family doesn’t take her painting seriously because she’s a woman. To them, painting is a nice hobby for a woman to have; it’s not work. Neville’s also producing good work, but he’s a bit avant-garde for pre-war tastes. Paul is struggling. He’s starting to think he’s wasting his money taking classes because he doesn’t seem to be making any progress. He goes to Tonks to talk about quitting. Tonks tells him he should stick out the semester and that he is improving technically. Then he says:

“Most people who come here are bursting with something they want to say, and the trouble I have with some of them is that they can’t be bothered to learn the language to say it in. Whereas with you it’s almost the opposite.”

Paul would have like to defend himself but didn’t know how. This wasn’t the criticism he’s been expecting.

“I do have a problem with life drawing. I know that. But I thought my landscapes were … Well. A bit better.”

“There’s no feeling.”

“Perhaps I’m not managing to express it, but—”

“I don’t get any feeling that they’re yours. You seem to have nothing to say.”

“I see. No, yes, I do see.”

“Well, then.” Tonks spread both hands on his desk, preparatory to rising. “I wish I could tell you what to do about it, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to thrash this one out on your own.”

“I don’t now what to do.”

“Why don’t you start by asking yourself: Do I want to paint? Or do I want ‘to be an artist’? Because they’re two very different things. And try to be honest with yourself. It’s not any easy question.”

Life Class (36-37)

Any of this hitting home, writers?

—Do I want to write? Or do I want ‘to be a writer’?

So the question then becomes ‘will Paul find something to say?’

When war is declared, all the men in the story plan to participate, but their motivations vary. Neville sees the war as a painting opportunity, and signs up with the Red Cross (partly because he’d never pass the army physical and partly because this will get him to the front lines faster). Toby, Elinor’s brother, seems to think it’s something he has to do (for duty/honor/country), even though everyone seems to agree with their father that he’d be of more use if he completed his medical studies first. Paul also doesn’t question enlisting, but the army rejects him. Like Neville, he signs up to work with the Red Cross. He starts out in a field “hospital” in Belgium.

There’s a lot of conflict/contradiction within Paul. He clearly doesn’t buy into any of the romantic notions of war. He’s tortured by what he sees. And yet… he’s compelled to be there. He can’t not be there.

Meanwhile, Elinor is being pressured to go into nursing (a “real” job) but she keeps resisting, even though she is made to feel that she is being frivolous by continuing to paint. For Elinor, her real work is painting.

I read some reviews that called Elinor unsympathetic. Reactions like that are exactly why the Elinor character is important. Essentially—

reader reaction : Elinor-the-character :: community reaction : Elinor in the story

It takes strength not to cave to that kind of pressure. In some ways, Elinor is stronger than any of the male characters. None of them were able to resist societal pressure to go along with the war in some respect, even though none of them were enthusiastic (ok, maybe Neville, who saw his opportunity for fame and fortune). Even Lewis, a Quaker, ends up at the same field hospital as Paul. Of course, you could argue Elinor has her head in the sand. But, then again, if everyone refused to participate, it wouldn’t make for much of a war, would it?

Along with the themes of war/love/class, which Barker keeps returning to, there are interesting questions explored here about the nature of work and what subjects are acceptable as art. What is the place of artwork that makes the viewer avert their eyes, turn away?

We might ask the same questions of writing.

Fall 2012 – Week 16

What I did this week:

Completed 10 author pages.
Returned books to library. Waiting till January to pick up another batch.

Well… that’s it for the fall. I’m taking a week off. Didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped, but I suppose that’s always the case, and I’ll try not to feel discouraged about it. I am much further along than I was in September. And at least now I have a much better idea of how much work is left / how long it will take.