Jingling &
oscillating
youthfully!
editing September 1, 2010
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve edited the work I’m gathering in my MFA application portfolio. It is quite amazing how many times one can read something and still find things to adjust. You think it’s perfect, and then you read again and find another typo, another sentence to re-phrase, another word to tighten up meaning.
It makes me laugh when I ask my students to edit something they’ve written and they refuse, because they are sure it’s perfect as it is. First draft perfection. The Mozart Effect perhaps? Do you remember the scene in the movie when Salieri realized that the perfect music score he’s looking at is a first draft- that Mozart took entire scores out of his head and just put them on paper without a single erasure? It was traumatizing for him that the irritating, immature Mozart had such a glorious genius to craft heavenly music apparently without effort.
While my students are amazing, I don’t teach that many geniuses. Trust me, even the geniuses have no excuse not to edit.
There is a strange power in understanding that while perfection may be an impossible goal, the process of editing is a journey toward finding the best in our ideas. Getting the ideas out initially is one process, but trimming those ideas to bring them to a polished brevity that catches the reader with its brilliance is something else. Editing never ends. Improvement is always possible. Perfection is a journey to understanding.
Edits of this post: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
The faith paradox August 31, 2010
There are some ten thousand extant religious sects–each with its own cosmology, each with its own answer for the meaning of life and death. Most assert that the other 9,999 not only have it completely wrong but are instruments of evil, besides. None of the ten thousand has yet persuaded me to make the requisite leap of faith. In the absence of conviction, I’ve come to terms with the fact that uncertainty is an inescapable crorllary of life. An abundance of mystery is simply part of the essential inscrutability of existence, in any case, is surely preferable to its opposite: capitulating to the tyranny of intransigent belief.
~ Jon Krakauer Under the Banner of Heaven
Faith is such a complex thing. By definition it is illogical and inexplicable. Having faith in something is empowering. By lifting responsibility out of ourselves (like accepting the Higher Power of AA) it seems as if we eliminate a lot of decision making variables. It provides a compass for evaluating behaviour. So often, however, it can become an excuse for irrationality. When I read the atrocities committed by both knights and Saracens during the Crusades, I am appalled that these were people of faith who believed their faith obliged their actions. When a student was murdered and her house burnt down by her father because she wanted to date out of her faith, I wept for the tragedy. When I watched the agony as a couple in love had to walk a tightrope as their parents’ pulled them in different directions, it was crushing. So paradoxically, we pray that unity happens.
The conflicts often break families and destroy faith. Sometimes there is a resolution that finds a medium. The fight becomes irrelevent when the grandchildren arrive, for example, and in loving the children, the parents are both accepted.
Faith is a paradox. God is love and here’s the war to prove it.
It takes a lot of faith to make it through.
Optimism in action. August 27, 2010
If 20 years ago, optimistic Rotarians had not theorized that it would be possible to eliminate polio from the planet, a thousand children per DAY would still be stricken with polio, instead of the 618 people TOTAL who have been afflicted to date in 2010.*
Helen Keller said, “Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
I am so proud to be part of an organization that has the hope and confidence to change the world. Participating in Rotary projects at home and abroad is optimism in action. Let us be thankful for the optimism that fuels our actions.
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* data current as of August 27, 2010. Check http://www.polioeradication.org/casecount.asp for today’s count!
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© Shawn Bird 2010. Free use within Rotary.
Why I love poodles
- Three sizes for your convenience (4 if you’re in Europe).
- Unlimited solid colour options (and unofficially, parti colours too).
- No shedding.
- Intelligence
- Enthusiasm
- Unexpected delights
- No shedding
- Topiary opportunities
- High energy when high energy is required
- Low energy when low energy is required
- Friendly
- Really intelligent
- No shedding
- No stinky dog smell
- Problem solving abilities
- Affectionate
- Loyal
- No shedding
- Versatility- hunting, obedience, agility, conformation, anything goes! (and sometimes all at once!)
- Old, established breed (no surprises)
- Funny
- Sense of humour
- No shedding
- Established, well documented pedigrees (know family health history)
- Beautiful faces
- Elegant & sophisticated (from a distance!)
- Goofy
- Laid back
- No shedding
- Joyful
- Valued so much that everyone wants to mix their breed with a poodle in order to improve it (Just get a poodle and save yourself the trouble!)
- Long lived
Why do you love poodles?
The publishing process August 26, 2010
I was just asked by a budding novelist to tell something about the publishing process. Here was my rather abbreviated response:
The best suggestion I can give you is to spend a lot of time on www.writersdigest.com reading articles and chatting on the forums. A subscription to the magazine is also very worthwhile. It’s an excellent manual to the process of getting published in a variety of genres.
In my About Me section there are links to some writerly organizations you may want to check out.
My own personal experience with the process is given at https://shawnbird.com/grace See the article (link at the bottom of the page) called The Story of Grace.
The simplified version of the process goes something like this:
1. write your novel
2. edit your novel 20 times, cutting 10% each time
3. leave the novel for a year
4. read it again, re-write all the parts you now realise are crap
5. send out query packages to agents and/or publishers (cover letter identifying your credentials and a bit about the novel, a one page synopsis of the novel, a 10 page sample of the novel)
6. get a lot of rejection notices in the mail- make particular note of any suggestions given by professionals about your manuscript, fix them
7. get an offer to publish
8. negotiate a contract, get a cheque for your advance
9 (at this point, the publisher may leave your ms in limbo for years. It might never actually be published, even though they paid you for it)
10. edit with the publishers’ editors. They will force you to make painful cuts
11. see a published copy!!!
12. work with the publishing house marketing team to publicize your novel
13. wait for royalty cheques to roll in! 😉 (One friend tells me he sometimes gets royalty cheques for amounts like $1.32)
Optimism August 25, 2010
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.”
~Helen Keller
This was on the white board at Curves today. It made me think of all the people I know with clinical depression, and how they so rarely achieve the things that the rest of us think they are capable of. Depression steals optimism. Pessimism does not breed greatness.
If you have hope, then the pages you write, or the course you take, or the person you call up fit into a possible future that you are willing to trust will be a good one. A depressed person thinks, “Why write it down? It won’t be any good. No one will ever want to read it. No one would buy it.” Words of genius are lost to the world. A depressed person thinks, “I’ll probably fail the course. The prof won’t like me. It’ll probably be boring.” They miss the inspiration and enlightenment of education. A depressed person thinks, “Why call? She’s probably not home. She wouldn’t want to go out with me. I would probably embarrass her.” An opportunity for a new friend or a great romance is lost.
Optimism is just a glimmer of faith that not only will something be fine, but that it might be better than it is. Optimists fuel creativity, exploration, adventure, and thought.
I am optimistic by nature. When I envision a poem, a painting, a needlework, a knitting project, a sewing project, a story or a lesson, I am not expecting failure. This is not to say failure doesn’t happen. I have a lot of unfinished knitting projects around, in particular. However, that fact just makes it more exciting when one finally does get finished!
If I wasn’t optimistic, I couldn’t do the job I do, particularly in the environment I’m in. I have been teaching 18 years. When I started, I never imagined that I would have spent 18 years without belonging to one school, without knowing that the school district valued my labour and creativity enough to attach me to a single school where I could blossom forth brilliance that would make my class one parents encouraged their own kids to take, as the generations wrapped around. One that inspired kids to become teachers or writers. Instead, even after all this time, I can’t even plan a semester in advance. I can’t arrange a terrific field trip to Ashland Shakespeare Festival a year hence, because I don’t know where I’ll be in a year. I can’t invest in products or literature for my classroom, because next semester I might not be in that school. Keeping teachers ‘lean and hungry’ does not make for quality education. I miss the teacher I could be with security.
Still, I’m blessed, because I always find some place that needs my service, and I know even if the students are in different schools around the district, and even if I’m only a semester in a school, that I am inspiring some of those I teach. Just today I had an email from a former student wondering if she could switch into my English 12 class. Ironic, since I don’t know what school I’ll be at this year, let alone what I’ll be teaching. If I wasn’t optimistic I would have curled into a ball and given up a long time ago.
Optimism is the key to happiness and success.
Anti-depressants don’t hurt.
Bug Joy August 23, 2010
There are stereotypes about people who drive VW Beetles. The VW people perpetuate this stereotype in their literature. In the promo pamphet I got, there is a coupon book for you to give after you do a good deed; for example, “The meter was fed by an anonymous New Beetle driver” for parking lots or “Your coffee was purchased by an anonymous New Beetle driver” for drive throughs.
What words come to mind when you contemplate the stereotype?
For the old Beetle: hippy?. For the New: Cute? Joyful? Non-conformist? Kind? Considerate? Quirky? Happy?
I have completely bought into the stereotype and raised the ante by covering my Cyber Green New Beetle (affectionately known as “Sheila the Bug”) with butterflies and flowers. That intensifies the ‘happy’ and ‘quirky’ parts of the stereotype. I like it. People smile when I drive by. Small children wave.
"Sheila The Bug"
Enter the anti-Beetle lady. I don’t know who she is, but she really bugs me. (Pardon the pun!) She drives a Beetle in an even sunnier, more joyful colour than mine. You’d think she was a bubbly, happy person! But she’s definitely not. If I do The Bug Wave to her on the road, the universal hand flick of greeting between passing Bug drivers whether or not they know each other, she ignores it. People talk to her in the gym and she ignores them. One day, someone changed the music, and she exclaimed loudly as she rose from her machine and stomped right out of the gym. I have spoken to her and while she answered my questions, “It’s a special edition colour, no longer available” and “My husband bought it for me,” she was scowling the whole time.
The only explanation for this odd behaviour is found in that line, “My husband bought it for me.”
Was the poor man hoping that by buying his wife a happy car, that he’d be buying her a personality transplant? Did he hope that the quaint bubbliness of her vehicle would inspire her to a happier attitude in life?
It doesn’t seem to be working. She is more suited to driving a hearse. I think she needs to sell her car before she gives people the wrong idea about the rest of us.
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Tell me what your stereotype of your vehicle is. Do you agree with me about the New Beetle stereotype?
beguiling August 22, 2010
I’m just thinking about the way we sometimes get attached to things that are not good for us. Something tantalizes us and we are drawn, perhaps against our common sense, perhaps completely innocently. Suddenly we are trapped as attachments glue us firmly to the thing that beguiles us.
It might be a person we fall for. It might be a substance. Others can look at us and see the dangers. We are blind to them in the immersion of our delight as the endorphins of discovery flood our senses.
Our intoxication might destroy us, as alcohol, cigarettes and heroin break down those who adore them. In a short time or a long time their impact is always negative. However, what beguiles us might benefit us. While it might fill us with a gleeful obsession for years, it may also act as muse, fueling dreams and imaginings. So while others only noticed irritating dangers looming over us, some take the danger, celebrate it, and turn it into something beautiful.
Petrarca’s obsession is a case in point. Sure his adoration of Laure endured for decades, well past the time she was moldering in her crypt in Avignon. The poetic expression of his obsession has lasted even longer, coming onto seven centuries. Petrarca prayed to be released from it, to be free to focus his adoration on his God. The writings at the end of his life suggest he felt he reached the stage of relief eventually, but thankfully the hundreds of poems about her remain as a testimony to the benefits of obsessive adoration and addiction to an ideal.
Shawn L. Bird 
Feeling like a patriotic lift? September 3, 2010
Whenever people complain about the state of our youth, I tell them not to believe the bad press. Youth crime is actually WAY down. Our kids are quite all right, and they’re doing amazing things! Check out this wonderful music video crafted by a couple of Ontario teens Julia Bentley & Andrew Gunadie. What a super job of highlighting the things we love about being Canadian! I’m proud of them, and I don’t even know them! 🙂
If you aren’t already, after hearing this I know that you’ll want to be Canadian!
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