Wednesday's Wisdom for Writing

   I don't know how much you, the reader, are enjoying these posts. I will say that going through Steinbeck's book, Journal of a Novel, has allowed me to revisit much of what I had gathered when I was reading through it the first time and I have even noticed other passages that I have gleaned a lot from. I would suggest reading each excerpt slowly and really thinking about each one. I believe there are multiple items one can learn from in almost each of the excerpts. Well, let's get to Steinbeck and away from Dark. 

"Now the innocent sound and the slight concealment are not done as tricks but simply so that a man can take from this book as much as he can bring to it." --pg. 16&17

"Now that I am in it (the writing of East of Eden) I cannot see beyond it and increasingly it becomes difficult for me to see out of it." --pg. 19

"I don't suppose writing consists in anything more than doing it." --pg. 19

"I don't understand why some days (in writing) are wide open and others closed off, some days smile and others have thin slitted eyes and others still are days which worry." --pg. 19

"It is always amazing to me how we forget our failures. I guess if we didn't, we could not survive."-- pg. 22

"And as I have mentioned before and again and again--a story has a life of its own. It must be allowed to takes its own pace. It can't be pushed too much. If it is, the warp shows through and the story is unnatural and unsafe."--pg. 23

"There are few enough true things in the world. It would be a kind of sin to conceal any of them or to hide their little heads in technique as the squeamishness of not appearing in one's own book. For many years, it did not occur in my writing. But this was only apparently true--I was in them every minute. I just didn't seem to be." --pg. 24

"A chapter should be a perfect cell in the whole book and should almost be able to stand alone. If this is done then the breaks we call chapters are not arbitrary but rather articulations which allow the free movement of the story." --pg 25

"Things do happen and continue to happen on the outside. Isn't it odd that I now regard the book as the inside and the world as the outside. And just as long as that is so the book is firm and the outside cannot hurt it or stop it. And I must be sure that it remains that way by never letting time go by without working on it. For it is one thing to have in one's mind that the book will never be done and quite another to let it stop moving." --pg. 27

"And the book does move along little by little....It lacks tension and that is just exactly what I want and intend it to do. But it may cause trouble to you as a publisher because people have grown to expect tautness and constant action. It's like in present-day theatre. If there isn't shouting and jumping around, it isn't liked. For people seem to have lost the gift of listening. Maybe they never had it." --pg. 29

"The fact of the matter is that you just cannot tell how anything is going to work or how hard or easy it will be. It always fools you." --pg. 35

(I hope the ghost of John Steinbeck doesn't read this blog after reading this!) 

"But God save me from amateurs. They don't know what they are but it is more serious than that. They immediately start rewriting. I never knew this to fail. It is invariable. For that matter, I think I dislike amateurs in any field. They have the authority of ignorance and that is something you simply cannot combat." --pg. 36

"Aren't they really living people? This is the time when I am glad I am or try to be a writer--the growth and flowering of something I seem only to plant and nurture for a while." --pg. 39

"And I think I want to make it clear that true things quite often do not sound true unless they are made to." --pg. 48

"I am not writing for money any more now than I ever did. If money comes that is fine, but if I knew right now that this book would not sell a thousand copies, I would still write it." --pg. 55

Happy Reading and thanks for stopping by,

   David

An Endorsement of TED.com

   It is the season for endorsements and so the folks here at HTH have put together a few posts of things we put our full weight behind. One of the items we put a lot of stock in is TED. TED is an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Each year, in Long Beach, California or Palm Springs, Arizona and Edinburgh, Scotland, the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers come together and are challenged to give the, "talk of their lives", in a time limit of 18 minutes. You can listen to talks on a variety of topics ranging from technology, of course, to science, to music, to medicine. Most of the talks are really quite interesting and the good part is that each talk is of such a limited amount of time that you don't have to invest a lot of your day into listening/watching each talk.

    TED was begun in 1986 as a nonprofit organization with the sole goal of bringing together the brightest and most talented people on the planet and beginning a dialogue amongst them in an attempt to learn from each other and from them and to solve the problems and crises that our modern world presents to us. Since then, over 1200 talks have been given and most of those can be found on their website. (HINT. HINT. Click on the word, website.) The website was begun in 2007 and is one that I use each year in the subjects that I teach (Physical Science, Earth Science, Biology, and Anatomy & Physiology). And most recently, Mel and I discovered a TED channel that we could subscribe to (for free) through the use of our Roku box. I would encourage you to check out the website. They add new talks to the site each month, so one can always find something to watch. To end this post, I will post my three favorite TED talks. I hope you enjoy. Feel free to peruse the site and send me your favorites.












Happy watching and thanks for stopping by,

   David

Wednesday's Wisdom for Writing

  As I mentioned, the good folks here at HTH  will be enlightening your Wednesdays from now on with some wisdom and knowledge that we have gained from some of the finest writers of the past hundred years. We do this in an attempt to share what we have learned in hopes it will enrich both of our lives and our writing. An item that I also really found very cool about Steinbeck's, Journal of a Novel, but failed to mention in the original blog post is that each letter is dated with the day on which Steinbeck wrote it and the days and their numbers correspond to the year 2012. It added to the book for me because it was as if I were reading it on the same day that Steinbeck wrote it. I know that is somewhat delusional, but it still felt neat to me. Well, without further adieu  here are some more great quotes from the book: 

 "A good writer always works at the impossible. There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights. And giving up the impossible, he gives up writing." pg. 4

   "And so I start my book addressed to my boys. I think perhaps, it is the only book I have ever written. I think there is only one book to a man. It is true that a man may change or be so warped that he becomes another man and has another book but I don't think that is so with me."  (Steinbeck has previously published 22 books including, Of Mice and Men, and, The Grapes of Wrath) pg. 5


   "Surely I feel humble in the face of this work." pg. 5

   "But I want to write this one as though it were my last book. Maybe I believe that every book should be written that way." pg. 8


"My choice of pencils lies now between the black Calculator stolen from Fox Films and this Mongol 2 3/8F which is quite black and holds its point well--much better in fact that the Fox pencils. I will get six more or maybe four more dozens of them for my pencil tray. and this is all I am going to do on this my first day of work." pg. 9


"I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one. It is as though the words were not only indelible, but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing. Almost no progress has taken place since it was invented. The Book of the Dead is as good and as highly developed as anything in the 20th century and much better than most. And yet in spite of this lack of continuing excellence, hundreds of thousands of people are in my shoes--praying feverishly for relief from their word pangs" pg.9

"The pipes are tasting very good. I have a feeling to buy a meerschaum and start coloring it as I do this book. Maybe I will do that. By the time the pipe is brown the book should be done. More magics. I think tomorrow I will look for a meerschaum, a small light one. Saw one in a window the other day, but I forgot where..." pg.13

"You know I always smoke a pipe when I work--at least I used to and now I have taken it up again. It is strange--as soon as a pipe begins to taste good, cigarettes become tasteless..." pg.17

"Of course I feel that any imposed institution, even conditioned, is bad and not conductive to the development of the two great foundations of art and science: curiosity and criticism." pg. 15


Happy Reading and Writing,

    David

Calico Joe--A Book Review

   I have never read a John Grisham book. Gasp! Sigh! There...I said it. I even have a paperback copy of Grisham's novel, "A Time to Kill", that was given to me by a former student that has been sitting in my attic waiting to be read since 2006. I don't know what it is. I find myself looking at the book sometimes telling it that, "Its me, not you." Its not that I'm afraid of Grisham or that he writes about things I'm not interested in. I guess it was the ever-present "New York Times Best-Selling Author" title that accompanies his name that makes me so nervous or self-conscious. I just had this vision of me picking up a book of his and Flannery O'Connor watching me do so from a chair in the corner and then shaking her head at me. However, several weeks ago, my mom mailed us a package of goody's and in the package was this book with a note that said, "I know you don't have time to read, but when you do, read this."And I decided to flub my nose at Miss O'Connor and my pride and settle down each evening to the words of Mr. Grisham, a "New York Times Best-Selling Author". My mother after all is the one who retaught me to read and then introduced me to the difference between just reading and reading good books. And there is a difference. It is akin to the difference of watching someone kiss in a movie and actually kissing or looking at a picture of a sunset and seeing one from the top of a lone mountain ridge and feeling as if you are the last human among a planet older and larger than life itself.

  It is odd how subjects move in cycles for me. Several years ago, it seemed like everything that made its way to me had something to do with cycling. Last year, it seemed like everything was about gardening and composting. But this year, it has been baseball. We have been to some games, we took Ford to his first game, the Braves made it to the post season, Ford and I have been making our way slowly through the Ken Burns documentary about baseball, and then my mom mailed me the book, Calico Joe, which was and is about baseball. So, 2012 may be an election year, but for me, it has been the year of baseball.

  I will make two good observations and one bad observation about the book. We will start with the good. Calico Joe, is a very easy read and this was a nice change of pace for me since the only time I really get to read is right before I fall asleep and if you ask Mel, I am getting better and better at that. (This may NOT be a good thing.) Several years ago, I used to think that books that were "easy" to read were easy to write and thus made the author either lazy or not very-talented, but I think very differently about this now. I have seen many authors ranging from Steinbeck to Twain and many others who say that if it reads easy, it was very hard to write. And I guess that is true in most anything else. When you watch a professional anyone or anything, they make whatever they are doing look easy. If you took any time to watch the Olympic Games, you know what I'm talking about. If you didn't catch them, go to the Food Network, watch one episode of the Barefoot Contessa, then find that same recipe and try it at home. You will then understand. Or go find a poem written by John Keats or Emily Dickinson, read it several times, then go try to write a poem about the same subject and try to fit all that he or she does into the same amount of lines. I'd suggest starting with Keat's, Ode to a Nightingale. Calico Joe, is both an easy read and it is also an enjoyable read. There are times when you feel the book and the characters in the book are real because Grisham does such a fine job weaving real events that occurred in baseball's long and storied history with events that he made up. I enjoyed this facet of the book very much and am so glad I got to read this book. And if you like baseball, I would suggest this book. It makes you want to visit a ballpark or at least go pick up your glove and get in some throws before you go eat some Stove Top from Johnny's house.

  Now for the bad...I really didn't care for most of the dialogue that was in this book. Each time it surfaced, for the most part, it felt contrived and forced. And please know I do not in any way think I know much of anything about writing in general or about writing dialogue. I do know that writing dialogue is exhausting and when you read it back to yourself, it all feels contrived, silly, and very forced. Many times, I would catch myself reading through the dialogue and asking myself if someone would really say that and I was left saying, "no". I wish that this wouldn't have been so because the dialogue really took away from the story rather than adding to it. All the people in the book spoke as you expected them to speak or spoke like characters in movies speak, not like people who breathe real air and interact with real, non-virtual people speak.

  After reading this, I would say that I enjoyed the book. I would suggest the book. I would even go as far as to say that I might climb into my attic now that its not 150 degrees in the shade in middle Georgia now and get the Grisham book that I've kept locked away and place my beloved Indigo Bunting bookmark that I bought for $1 from the Birmingham Audubon Society seven years ago within its worn pages. Something I would suggest is reading Bernard Malamud's novel, The Natural, before or after this book and then comparing and contrasting the two. And I believe the teacher in me just came out, so I'd better finish off this post.

Happy Reading,

   David

Wednesday's Wisdom for Writing

    Over the past two years, I have been reading a certain book and that book is, "Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters". It has taken me this long for a multitude of reasons, but the main one is that for being  a book that is less than 200 pages (my copy contains 182 pages), it contains more wisdom and knowledge about writing, the writing life, and a plethora of other subjects than I've gathered from a single book in a very long time. When it comes to reading books about the subject of writing, I've only read five of them from authors that I put a little or a lot of stock in either what they wrote or how they wrote it. If you were to go to your local bookstore and locate the section where these types of books are kept, you would notice that the number of titles is mind-boggling. And what is even more bizarre to me is that almost a third of these titles are written by someone who has not written much else besides the guide. Yes, they usually have their Master's degree or PhD in Literature, but I just find it a little odd. It would be like me writing a guide on parenting because I've been a father for almost 6 months now. Of the books about writing that I've read, Flannery O'Connor's, Mystery and Manners, and now this book have had the most impact on me in relation to how I think about writing in general and how I attempt to approach my own weak attempts at setting my own thoughts down in written form. 

    I was going to do my usual book review for this book, but after finishing it about a month ago, I began thinking that just doing that would really sell it short after all that I had gathered from this book. As mentioned on the back cover, this book is not just Steinbeck waxing eloquently about how he writes, it is more like the book you would get if you mixed an autobiography, with a writer's workshop, and then added some personal letters in for either extra flavor or an added, edible garnish. If you have never heard of the book, stop what you are doing (except the reading of this blog, of course), go to the library, check this book out, and read it very slowly. The whole concept of this book is that each morning from January 29th of 1951 to November 1st of 1951, Steinbeck wrote a letter to his friend and editor, Pascal Covici, on one side of the notebook he used to write the original copy of his novel, East of Eden. He did this in an attempt to" get his mental arm in shape to pitch a good game...". Each of these letters reveal so much about the novel, Steinbeck himself, the trials and tribulations of the writing life, Steinbeck's love, care, and concern for his family, and lastly the "gladness and terror of writing". 

   So, what I've decided to do is each Wednesday, offer to you, my loyal readers of the HTH, some advice about writing from a master writer. I'm going to start with Steinbeck and then move onto O'Connor, add some Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dillard, and many others along the way. Wednesday's will for a very long time be known as, Wednesday's Wisdom for Writing, around this place. And yes,  your Wednesday's will never be the same. So here we go:

  "I am choosing to write this book to my sons...I shall tell them this story against the background of the country I grew up in and along the river I know and do not love very much. For I discovered that there are other rivers. And this my boys will not know for a long time nor can they be told. A great many never come to know that there are other rivers. Perhaps that knowledge is saved for maturity and very few people ever mature. It is enough if they flower and reseed. That is all nature requires of them. But sometimes in a man or a woman awareness takes place--not often and always inexplainable. There are no words for it because there is no one ever to tell. This is a secret not kept a secret, but locked in wordlessness. The craft of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness. In utter loneliness, a writer tries to explain the inexplicable" 

                John Steinbeck, Journal of a Novel, pg. 4

Happy reading and writing, 

  

   David

Building a Simple Compost Bin-A How To

"Earth knows no desolation. 

She smells regeneration in the moist breath of decay."
-  George Meredith 

   When I was fifteen, I began working for this elderly woman who would pay me $15 every Wednesday when I worked for her from 3:30 to 5:30. Her name was Marion Smith. She was and is was one of the most interesting people I have ever gotten to know. She grew up in New York and her family lived on Long Island long before it became what it is now. I never knew her age because she was only old on the outside. Each Wednesday, she would have a list of jobs for me to do or for us to do and every Wednesday, she would have us a "pick-me-up" snack to eat at around 4. It was when we were eating our always healthy snack that she would tell me about her life in New York where she attended school and then taught school for 40+ years or about something she read in the New York Times or The New Yorker; two publications I'd never really heard of and definitely never read. She loved to talk politics and always made me think about my side of thought. It was one of the first times, I'd ever had to really make my beliefs my own. And I guess, there really isn't a better place to talk politics or books than while picking oranges and tossing them down to an old lady on a ladder or washing 150 windows in an afternoon before youth group. One of my jobs each week was to add things she had been collecting for a week to her compost pile and then turn the soil. And for some odd reason, I kind of liked doing it. I get some odd satisfaction from using a tool like a shovel and using it for the reason it was invented. It just feels right. So, I wanted to build us a compost pile like her's so that we could benefit from it like she did. And so, I looked up a bunch of plans on the ole' inter web and decided that I would ignore them and build a replica of what she had. I have seen better or prettier compost piles, but if it was good enough for her, it is going to be good enough for us here at Hines Terrace Herald. 

    Here is how I put our's together. It has been finished for several months now and the "compost" it is making is looking very dark and rich. I am looking forward to adding it to our garden boxes next spring. It is also more fun than I thought to save something each day to add to our compost pile. Between saving items for recycling and the compost pile, our daily amount of trash has been greatly reduced (one of the three R's, if you remember). The only downside is that often times, most of what I throw into it, some how makes its way back to our backdoor when our dog Jack decides he wasn't really ready to throw it away, but that is for another day or another post. So, without further ado....

These two create much waste, but Mel, Ford, and myself need it for some other endeavors. So, Eudora and Flannery, we salute you and thank you. Our lives are greener and fuller because of you. 

One good cleaning of our chicken coop gives us one good wheelbarrow full of what we will call "ideal compost".

Our green, full garden at its best this summer. We can thank the chickens for this. 

The nice little spot I picked out in the rear corner of our backyard.

The first thing you need for a good compost pile is a carload of blocks. (Car sold separately)

Then you can level out one side. 

Then you can lay out several blocks on one side and level them.

Now, its time to clear and level the back side of the compost pile. 

I made our compost pile three blocks wide, three blocks deep, and three blocks high. 

Now, time for the third and final side.

Two of the three blocks down and leveled.

Level one of our compost pile almost level and complete.

The beginnings of level 2. 

The leveling of the corners.

The pile with two layers.

The beginnings of the third level. 

The finished compost pile.

The first addition to our newly finished compost pile. 

And so our pile begins to grow.

A new delivery fresh from our eggstrordinary, poultry factory.

And so our new compost pile begins its baking of some new soil for our 2013 garden.

Happy Composting and thanks for reading,

   David

   

It is XC Season, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Steve Prefontaine--The Patron Saint of Running

    There is no sport quite like cross country and the reason that I think that is so, is in how the sport came about. 200+ years ago, school children of England and Scotland would play a game called "foxes and hares". They would pick several very fast kids and designate them as the "hares" and they would send them off for a small amount of time, then the rest of the kids would play the role of "foxes" and chase after them and the kid or kids that caught the "hare" were declared the winners. Many years rolled by and the game expanded to older kids or schoolchildren and they added barriers, like fences, hedges, and hay bales, for the runners to cross in their hunt for the "hares" and pretty soon the role of "foxes" was changed to the role of being a "huntsman". In the late 1800's, this game of chase began its its slow move to something a little more like the modern-day version of cross country and it is also when the sport made its way across the "big pond" and was brought to America. It was at this time, that some rules and a fixed course for the runners were laid out and made known. 

    Flash forward 200 years and we find one of the fastest growing sports in the country and a sport that is still very similar to its founding. Cross country is not included in the Summer or Winter Olympics because it is not considered a summer or winter sport, but rather a Fall sport. However, each year, there is both a US Championship XC race and there is a World Championship XC race.  The fixed distances for elementary and middle-school runners is somewhere between 0.5 miles (a 1k) to 2 miles (3.2k). The fixed distance for high school runners is 3.1 miles or what is known as a 5k. Once a runner leaves high school, this distance stays the same for women, but for men this distance increases to a 4.96 mile race (8k). 

    Each year, I look forward to the next cross country season the day the preceding one ends. I have coached basketball, soccer, track and cross country and nothing comes close to excitement and joy I find in the sport of cross country. Yes, basketball is a true spectator's sport and its fast-paced and exciting. Yes, soccer is the number one sport in the world and very fun to watch and has even been known to cause riots. And yes, track is fun and every four years, the world stops to watch it. But...for me, there is nothing like standing in a little huddle before the start of a race and breathing in the calm before the storm, praying in earnest for swift feet, calm nerves, and stable footing. Watching each runner read his/her best times written in Sharpie on their hands along with a memory verse. Hearing the pre-race instructions for the 1000th time and waiting with heavy anticipation and my finger on my watch for the blast of the gun or the deafening sound of the air horn to go off. Watching the runners release all their anxiety within the first 100 yards. Dashing to the 1 mile mark to write down times, count runners, watch my watch, call out times, and shout my head off before I rush to the two mile mark. Then running against the runners telling them to pick it up and standing at the 2 mile mark and shouting at my runners to be strong than themselves, where they are in the race, that they can easily run just a mile more, and once again the counting of runners. And then the mad scramble for the finish line shoot where they throw off all their excuses and find that extra gear and go into that place deep inside themselves that they never knew was there. And the ever-present tick of those red numbers at the finish line measuring how fast a man can run 16,000 feet or 3.1 miles. And lastly, the joy or the anguish of the runner who has either given their all or who hates the fact that they had more to give, but didn't. It is the most honesty that one can see in life on most days. And as a XC coach, I get to see all of this and remember what all that felt like and to know that I get to let these runners know that one bad race doesn't define them and that one good race is only the beginning. 

   XC season is short and fast and many times, I am glad it is so. Many days, it is so hard to go straight from teaching for 8 hours to another 2 hours of coaching and instruction, but once I am halfway through the warm up and my little group of runners are getting into the stride and feel of practice, I am so glad that I am getting to share that small piece of life and earth with them. We are running where others have run long before us and we are taking part in a ritual that has been taking place for as long as mankind has walked this planet. We are breathing the freshest of air and moving our bodies in ways that we were created to do. XC is not the most popular sport and I used to be bitter about it, but know I feel like it is my little secret that I get to share with only a handful of people each year. XC is like no other sport and I'm so glad it isn't. 

Happy Running and may the next three weeks of the XC season go slowly,

  David