I just don’t feel like blogging today. I’m not miserable or anything, just every time I start to write or think about writing, I know that I won’t get to where I want with the topic I’m choosing today because I slept very little last night and am feeling slightly disconnected from myself today. So here, this is my blogging today, and I’ll try again tomorrow.
📚 finished reading The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
This is a re-read; I read The Elements of Style when I was Managing Editor for LEARN NC. I picked it up again because I’ve created a writing/editing/research comm syllabus for myself (more on that in another post).
Most of the rules here are things I do in my writing intuitively and have for years, but there are always a few gems to pull out, especially from the final chapter about style.
Writing, to be effective, must follow closely the thoughts of the writer, but not necessarily in the order in which those thoughts occur. (p. 15)
This is such a strong argument for freewriting and Ann Lamott’s shitty first draft. You get the thoughts out of you and only then do you figure out what order they should be in. (Huh. I didn’t realize Peter Elbow developed freewriting as a practice. I’m currently reading his book, Writing with Power.)
Never imitate consciously, but do not worry about being an imitator; take pains instead to admire what is good. (p. 70)
This reminds me of Austin Kleon’s exhortation to steal like an artist, as well as his thoughts about the relationship between input and output.
With respect to the place of feelings in writing, Strunk and White argue that a design, or structure for writing, tends to be incompatible with feelings, because
one’s feelings do not usually lend themselves to rearrangement. (p. 71)
This can certainly be the case, but I don’t think emotion-driven writing and highly-structured writing are incompatible. Poetry is a good place for structure and emotion together. (Joss Whedon once said in an interview that his writing process is about structure and emotion.)
Look at sonnets, for example. Whether Petrarchan, Shakespearean, or otherwise, they are highly structured and often draw on emotion. See for a specific example, my favorite of Shakespeare’s sonnets, or a more modern sonnet my friend wrote, or Sir Patrick Stewart reading a sonnet a day.
Revising is part of writing. (p. 72)
I know. I know. I really struggle with this. For all that I’m a proponent of freewriting and an initial round of revision, I really struggle with later rounds.
No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader’s intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing. (p. 84)
Yes! Trust your audience to be smart.
The whole duty of a writer is to please and satisfy himself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one. (p. 85)
This reminds me of another bit of Austin Kleon advice, to write the book you want to read. I recently finished reading Wallace J. Nichols’s book, Blue Mind (more on that in another post), and joined a Zoom call he had to discuss his upcoming plans for 100 Days of Blue Mind. He said that Blue Mind was a book he’d wanted someone else to write so that he could read it, but he couldn’t find it, so he wrote it. (He also said, “Be careful what you wish for, because you might start out studying marine biology and end up studying neuroscience.”)
I’m glad to have re-read The Elements of Style. I feel like people joke about it a lot, but I think it’s a useful little book.
I spent the me-time my family generously gave me today mostly on brushing up my web development skills. It’s really beautiful coming back to myself in this way.
We got a new hammock with stand for our deck, big enough for our whole household to fit in at once (for now), and it is truly the finest thing to lie outside snuggled up with your family on a beautiful day and look up at the leaves and the sky and watch the birds and squirrels.
Settling In
My son is registered to start at a Quaker school in August. I don’t know what that will end up looking like, but one practice that they (and Quaker meetings) have that I’m thinking about today is settling in. I first encountered this practice when my advisor, whose son attends the same school that my son will attend, introduced it to a class for which I was serving as teaching assistant. This is time at the beginning of a gathering to settle in silence, to transition from the world to the meeting. It’s a practice that I have done without realizing it at the times that I consider most sacred.
Usually before getting ready to perform. I like to get to the theater early. Preferably before everyone else. (For my first community theater show, I got there so early that the company ended up being charged for extra time in the theater. Whoops.) I need this time to transition between spaces.
Early in my teaching career, the only teaching job I could find was part-time - 30% I think? I taught two Latin III classes in the afternoon. I needed more money than that paid to pay my bills, so I took a customer service representative job. I was a CSR in the morning and a teacher in the afternoon. I had a 15 - 20 minute drive between my two workplaces that served as the beginning to a transition, and then lunchtime in the teacher workroom to complete the transition. I needed that time to shift my headspace.
I have 2 - 3 jobs now, too. I spend about half the work day momming and the other half the day scholaring. Which one I’m doing when varies depending on the day, but either way, I need to transition from one to the other. And there’s no physical space where I can transition, because everyone who can works from home right now. So I need time.
I get frustrated at myself for taking the time. Why oh why, I think to myself, can’t I just hand my kid off to another caring adult, then plop in front of my laptop and jump into my research?
Because I need time to settle in.
So I’m giving myself permission to settle in. Today, I’m writing this blog post, and that’s how I’m settling in. Do you need transition time? How do you settle in?
📚 Just found my copies of Making Sense of Qualitative Data (Coffey & Atkinson) and Writing the New Ethnography (Goodall). I’ve been looking for them since November and my little qual researcher heart is SO HAPPY right now.
If I get one more listserv email advising me to use this time productively, I will be even more annoyed than I have been by all such emails thus far.
🔖 From Austin Kleon: Not Everything Will Be Okay But Some Things Will I share Kleon’s frustration with platitudes like “We’ve gotten through worse, we’ll get through this.” Many of us won’t. But more of us will.
Life update: How things are going for me
How’s your day going? Aside from the continuing world situation + its impact on higher ed (and thus my possibility of being funded for next year) and an ongoing I-think-it’s-fibromyalgia flare-up, things are going well from where I’m sitting.
Yesterday was W’s birthday. He’s 42 but not a Douglas Adams fan, so it was not as thrilling a birthday for him as it might have been otherwise. He doesn’t seem more enlightened than he was on Monday but he might be keeping the reason why 42 is the answer to the life, the universe, and everything to himself. I made him his favorite casserole for dinner and he ended up with two cakes (this is the advantage of having the mom who gave birth to you and the mom your dad married after the one who gave birth to you both in town).
We’ve been experimenting with standing in the driveway talking to local family members. We try to keep the 6 feet between us. I fear we don’t always succeed, but we try. It feels so nice to see them in person instead of through a screen. It’s just more jovial.
There are some lovely cardinals that have been courting in our yard. I just saw the female hop down some stone steps. Apparently bird watching has become a huge hobby since folks started staying at home, and I get it. I was already noticing birds (and other wildlife) more after reading Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing, but I’ve started noticing them a lot more lately. Birds and bunnies. And bees. I really paid attention to a bumblebee for the first time the other day. It flew like a hummingbird does, zooming and stopping to hover. I watched it eat some clover. I noticed how whenever anyone walked by it on the trail, it would get up and fly away and seem to lose its place before returning to the same bit of clover after they had passed. If you’re looking to learn more about birdwatching, DCist has an article about How to Get Really into Birdwatching While You’re Stuck at Home.
We propagated some rosemary from a plant in our front yard. I took three cuttings and put them in water, changing it every day, for several weeks. Eventually the cuttings grew roots and this week we planted them in 6-inch pots. I’m planning to do this with mint next.
I’ve been crocheting my first sweater. It’s the Sailor’s Moon Cropped Sweater. I’m hoping to wear it over camisoles once it’s finished. I’m also creating a bundle of all the size-inclusive crochet sweaters I can find on Ravelry. KatieBea’s Sweaters for All group inspired me. I tend to be a uniform dresser, wearing a black dress or t-shirt with black or more interesting leggings. I’m adding black bike shorts to the mix for summer. My hope is that if I crochet a bunch of sweaters and cardigans for myself, I can wear those to make my wardrobe a bit more interesting.
I’ll save what I’m reading, watching, playing, and listening to for another post. Let me know how life is looking for you!
Taking a break from scrolling micro.blog and Twitter for a while. Still checking mentions occasionally. ♥️