The Write Slice: Write or Wrong

I watched a movie last night that I thought was fantastic. It was called Equilibrium with Christian Bale. Not only was the storyline great, but the presentation was fantastic as well. This was a movie I was introduced to in my Utopian/dystopian literature class over the summer. It is a futuristic dystopian that has created peace by drugging everyone to eliminate emotion. Bale is the main character who is basically secret police seeking out those who are "feeling" by refusing to take their serum each day. One morning, he accidentally breaks his last vial, and before he can get a replacement, he starts to feel emotion. From that point forward, he decides he would rather not take the serum, and instead tries to help the Underground. Although a movie, it was presented very symbolically like literature. The most obvious symbol was a play on black/white symbolism. The "bad guys" were always in black, and when Bale becomes the "good guy," he wears white.  N...

In my academic and educational training, they spoke a lot about modeling, or "Guided Reading" and "Guided Writing." The idea behind these theories is that inexperienced readers and writers don't really know how to think through their process; they need someone to give them an example. For instance, a Guided Reading lesson would involve the teacher reading a selected passage (perhaps a page or so long), while students follow along with an overhead or personal copy.  Periodically, the teacher will stop the reading and basically voice his/her thoughts out loud. That commentary that goes on inside our heads is spoken aurally to the students.  The idea is that as they see how an experienced reader makes connections to their reading, students will begin to have that internal dialog themselves.  Guided Writing is similar only a teacher writes/revises and voices the decisions they make as a writer. I never disbelieved this theory, but its relevance has been made m...

So during my musings today, I made a discovery that there is an important aspect of writing that I can recognize, but I have no idea how to produce: tone. I will be taking a utopian/dystopian literature class in a couple of weeks and I'm reading some of the novels in preparation for it. I didn't realize how much dystopian literature I had read until addressed so directly by this class. I was reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Fascinating work. In describing the novel to my husband, I realized that (unlike a lot of dystopian literature), Huxley was not specifically creating a dystopian society; instead he was satirizing/warning about where he thought his society was heading. The tone of the novel is somehow different. But I can't figure out how. I can tell there is a difference, and intellectually I know that it has to do a lot with word choice, but I can't tell you what words are creating the tone. To me, it all just seems to be written matter-of-factly, a ...

Congratulations to all of you who have either graduated from college/university, or are about to graduate from high school. It's a big accomplishment. I just graduated myself with my MA in English, and it has been a blast. I am sad that I'm already done because there are so many other classes I want to take. It has been a thrilling and exciting ride. I've honed my craft, had the opportunity to explore genres other than the typical academic ones, and been exposed to a variety of works of literature. I've begun to understand the reason why certain literature lives forever, and I can start to apply those principles into my own writing. I've learned from professors, books, and colleagues. I wouldn't change my experience one bit. So not only is this a shout-out to the graduates, but it's also a shout-out for higher education. If you are debating on attending college, do it. If you are debating on earning your Master's degree, do it. You can learn things f...

So there's been a paradox I've noticed over the years that has become even more apparent to me the past couple of weeks.  As a Master's student I have been expected to write professional-level critical essays, which is all fine and good. But what I find absolutely ironic is the conundrum the world of professional criticism has established for itself in recent decades. Anymore, in order for a professional critical essay to be accepted for publication, its topic must be "new." In other words, you cannot just summarize what everyone else has said. You have to say your own thing, even if you are talking about something similar and just taking a different perspective from someone else. Particularly when it comes to certain authors or works, sometimes it can become downright impossible to find something no one else has said yet. Like for example, what else can we say about Shakespeare that hasn't already been addressed? Especially when there are several journa...

So, a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to take 5 pages of my novel to a critique session. It was a little bit different from previous sessions I had participated in, but it was a little refreshing too. I had never had any critiquing-type of contact with any of the members in my group. I picked 5 pages that were a pretty important scene in my story, but was right in the middle of the book. When I handed the group my pages for them to read, they had absolutely no background, no character development, and no story line. As one group member mentioned to me, it was kind of nice because then they had to critique my writing "based solely on its own merits." It was nice, actually, because their involvement with the story (before and after this scene) did not color their judgments. And it was a unanimous concensus: show more; tell less. Now, as I have admitted before, I am wordy, but I am trying to focus better on capturing my scenes in my writing. This critique ...

This is a plea for basic simplicity in writing. Too many authors think that using trendy buzzwords, inflated language, and complex constructions make them better writers. (This is particularly true in the academic world.) I believe that just the opposite is true. Instead, I respect the authors who can make a difficult topic, situation, or emotional response understandable to the reader. Anyone can look up a bunch of words and find a way to fit them into their writing. But very few can find understandable words to express complex ideas. Those are the real geniuses. Now I'm not saying that everything should be written as "See Dick. See Jane. See Dick and Jane run." But I am saying that your content should come a long ways before your ego.

So I'm sitting here listening to the drip, drip, drip of melting snow falling from my roof.  Constant, steady, but ever so small. And as I need a topic to write about this week in my blog, I begin to think... Writing can be like that drip, drip, drip. The most obvious comparison would be that our writing inspiration comes drip by drip. But for me right now, I like to think of it a little bit more as my writing process. In all honesty, I'm not working on my novel right now because  I just don't have the time. My "writing" is taken up by my homework for my classes. I anticipate, however, that my situation will change when the semester is over in a couple of months. In the meantime, I try to think about my novel and "plan" out my revisions in my mind. Drip. I learn about the things that (don't) work from the novels I have to read for class. Drip. And I work on my writing skills through the research and papers I write for classes. Drip. So, just li...

Whew, this week has just flown by. I realized today that I forgot my post this week. But something was reaffirmed to me in class this week: the best writing always comes from something you are passionate about. I was presenting on a novel I had read, and was sharing an insight I had that was different from every other critic out there. I had several people in class tell me that there was my paper topic because I was passionate about it. It reminded me of a similar experience I had in a criticism class during my undergraduate work. We studied several short stories and three styles of criticism at a time, and then had to write a paper using one of the styles. There was one story I read that I absolutely hated. I hated how it was written, and it hit a little too close to home for my comfort. Anyway, I racked my brain trying to come up with a paper topic, and I just kept coming back to this story and one particular method. I balked at it for as long as I could, but finally jus...

So, for those of you who don't know, I taught high school English for two years, and I plan to return to teaching as soon as the right job fits in with my schedule and priorities. In other words, I'm looking for a part-time, close-to-home job, and I haven't found one yet. But in the meantime...I think a lot about things I'll do or change when I get back into teaching. This morning, I had this brilliant idea and thought, "I need to write this down so I don't forget." Then I thought, "Hey, I need a blog post. Why not kill two birds with one stone?" So you get my teaching idea, and I have a permanent place to store the idea. I'll probably never come back and look at this post again, but having written it down will help me commit it and its details to memory. Anyway, I was thinking about how almost every secondary grade has a core standard concerning persuasive writing. And standardized tests require it too (i.e. UBSCT - Utah Basic Skills C...

I was trying to explain something in class last night that I've always kind of known, but I didn't have a very good explanation for. In trying to talk through my thoughts, I came up with some great terminology. This is probably a concept you are familiar with, even if you've never heard it spoken before. My terminology is classic of value vs. academic classic. I think every one of us can name a book we read "because we had to," but admittedly, we really didn't like it. Maybe we even questioned the point of it. Then there are other books we've read that we come back to over and over because they always contain something new for us. Last night we were talking about The Picture of Dorian Gray and how its themes and moral dilemmas are timeless. Shakespeare is the same way. I compared that to something like Ulysses by James Joyce which even the critics agree is not read for its story, but instead to "figure it out:" to try to reveal all the lite...

So I have this textbook for one of my classes (drier than dry), and it has adopted a "style" of punctuation that absolutely drives me nuts. Now, in the great grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter, especially since it is consistent throughout. But it just irks me, and since I have no where else to really complain, I'm going to spout off here. Then hopefully I'll be able to get over it and ignore it for the rest of the semester. This book has decided to put its initial quotation marks as single rather than double marks. So a direct quote would be, 'This is a direct quote.' Or 'This is a "quote within a quote."' Annoying. Especially since this is actually a collection of scholarly English essays. Come on, people. Hasn't anyone heard of MLA? Another grammatical pet peeve - bad signs. If you are going to expose something to the public (like on a marquee, flier, etc.), please for heaven's sake, make sure it's correct ...

So, I was reading an AP newsstory today about a new study coming out indicating that colleges really don't teach students anything. According to the report, having tested students across the country when they entered college and two years later as sophomores, they found that there was no increase in critical thinking skills, complex reasoning, or writing. Well, the writing aspect worries me a little bit because writing should be a part of every class regardless of subject area. But, according to the report, most of these students didn't have a single class that required 20 pages of writing (I understood that as a total amount, not a final paper), or 40 pages of reading per week. Now, I'm not expecting copious amounts of writing in many classes other than maybe English and history, nor do I think there will probably be much in classes like chemistry that are focusing more on the calculations/formulas. But, come on. Twenty pages?  That's less than a page-and-a-half p...

So one of my New Year's Resolutions is to blog at least weekly. I know, I know. I tried that once and then failed kind of miserably by the end of the year. But that's what new years are for, right? So, anyway, here I am, but I don't really know what to talk about. So I'm just going to kinda mention something I've been thinking about a little. So I'm working on my Master's and my current class is the Modern English novel ("Modern" not "Contemporary" -- think 1890ish through WWII). We've only discussed it a little bit, but we've examined a few novelists' philosophies on their art, and I have to say, they had it figured out a hundred years ago. Be realistic . Henry James and Virginia Woolf believed that in order for literature to "live" and breathe, it must be realistic. That does not, however, negate  fiction. Fiction in some cases can be even more "realistic" than reality if treated correctly. It just me...

I read this book a couple of months back, but the holidays were so hectic that I didn't get a chance to post my review before now. And this was such a fabulous book, there was no way I wanted to neglect it. Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time is written by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. It is Mortenson's memoir told from his perspective, but is actually written by Relin from extensive interviews. The story starts out with Mortenson attempting to summit the world-famous mountain K2, but through various circumstances not entirely his fault, failing to do so. As he climbs back down the mountain behind his guide, he misses a turn because he is so weak and ill, and ends up in a tiny Pakistani village. The villagers, who barely survive on the mountain themselves, selflessly nurse him back to health. In gratitude to their service, he promises to return to the village with enough money and supplies to build them a sc...