Thursday, May 31, 2007

Little duck intrudes



I wasn't planning on letting it be known that I had a little duck in my messenger bag, but the little thing had other plans. It stayed silent for a while, enough to get me thinking the class would be over before it starting making a fuss. I should have known better. But it's periodic chirps eventually got noticed with John exclaiming "Is there a dog in here?!" Not exactly. I had to reveal the extra class member when it wouldn't shut up. The class got a kick out of him though. How could they not?, such a cute little helpless creature. Hopefully all turns out well for the little guy thanks to Julia who is taking care of the feisty fellow. I would have crushed him on my bike ride home. I have plans for tomorrow, potentially a gosling but it might cost me some scrapes with their mother. Once I get my mind on something there's little that can stop me. I'm very impulsive. Oh dear.




Immediately on seeing my photos of the little duck my mother brought up the 'Are You My Mother?' book, like members of the class. I suppose the children's book created a strong association between it and the helpless position we imagine that little duckie, or another cute animal, to be in. A little analysis here, like in class. The book is in the first person central perspective, and it has a close narrative distance, taking place in the present. But there's no internal dialog, we don't know what the duck is thinking besides what is indicated by his repeated 'Are you my mother?' This has a particular effect though of indicating it's single mindedness and simplicity of thought. Okay, I won't go on. Over analysis can be quite funny; I love this scholarly psychiatric article I recently came across diagnosing Winnie the Pooh and his friends with all sorts of pathologies. Fantastic.


Children's books are nothing to be scoffed at though. John Galligan highly recommended the 'youth' novel 'Bridge to Terabithia' which he mentioned has a main character, a young girl, drown. Wow. That says a lot right there. I look forward to reading it. There's such a long list though of so-called kids books that are just plain great books, better than whole swaths of 'adult' material. I'm currently enjoying the 'Harry Potter' books (strictly first person central throughout, close narrative distance, internal monologue...)by borrowing each in turn from a different friend; it seems everyone but me has read them already. I've got to catch up in time for the latest release of the final, the seventh, novel in July. I also have a kind of rediscovery project in mind to do something with the hundreds of children's books in the closet at home.

I am so enjoying this class, thanks to everybody. There's so much great stuff happening, too much perhaps to catalog, all of which I love.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Dredging up memories

Even a quick, cursory sifting through of boxes upon boxes of old photos raises a lot of mixed emotions, simply because there is so much there of a wide variety. But they are so very important, as with their loss I would lose any chance of regaining knowledge of certain moments of my life. There are probably key insights I could gain about myself, which seems quite worthwhile. Each one contains something probably quite elusive. Perhaps thinking and writing would work well for this kind of discovering, which I hope to do.

A quote shared in class:
Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings. -W.H. Auden
upon which the instructor added:
So is short fiction. - J.G. Galligan
They can do what other things can not, doing more with less.

As we try to write scenes it is crucial to have the scenes we choose, emphasis on choose, to elaborate on be ones that tell a lot in a small, intimate space. With only five hundred words you must summarize the stuff that doesn't show much. It's a hard task and will take a lot of thought and analysis and good deal of practice.

I intensely look forward to untangling myself, if that is even possible. I don't know what I'll find but the search is on. Something about a pony.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Photos and such

Flickr is one of the best photo sharing websites out there and may be very useful, although Blogger now has made it easier to upload photos with them for use on your blog. I've been using Flickr for about six months and have found it invaluable for sending emails with a link to photos, archiving photos that are available anywhere and happily sharing my photos with whoever is interested. They also have some very nice, cool features like creating sets and collections, adding little notes to specific regions of photos and placing photos on a map.

Additionally, if anyone in the class wants to take some photos during class I always have a nice camera on me.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Day 2: Objective, then subjective

Today we read through the well done photo descriptions done by the class and looked for descriptions that stood out, discussed objectivity and subjectivity and their desirability, and discussed how all of these descriptions influence the perception of theme and tone in a piece of writing.

Describing a photograph with only visual details is not as easy as it sounds. Our minds quite naturally go beyond just basic details to interpret what one is seeing. And often this is done rather subjectively, drawing from things not present in the image. So making a concerted attempt to be as objective as possible is an important first stage, which relates to narrative distance. All of the word choices for all of the details are profoundly critical, as it is the chains of details that create a certain mood, theme, a character. Then you can move on to adding the subjectivity that a writer brings to what they have before them.

The next assignment is to expand upon the first through the use of a sensory imagination thats required to show what the other four senses would extract from what's depicted in the chosen photograph. This is necessarily quite subjective, we are leaving the objective realm. We are to use figurative language to compare, using simile and metaphor.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Course materials

In a change of plans to help keep the cost down the required books are no longer, well, required. The "Visual Quick Project: Publishing a Blog with Blogger" manual is apparently somewhat out of date with the recently improved Blogger software. Using Blogger myself just today I'm sure that everyone will have the basics down in no time, without need of a walk through as it's rather self-explanatory. The other title, "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers" (2nd edition) by Renni Browne and Dave King is also not required and the relevant sections will be photocopied for the class. But it is only $13.95 in the MATC Bookstore and John highly recommends it to fiction writers.

It also might be handy to have a flash drive, which are fairly close to dirt cheap these days. And a notebook and writing instrument usually aren't the worst idea for a writing course, even one that uses computers a lot.

Start of class

We began right away with some malleable clay making an object that would represent something about us in our introductions to the class. There was an elephant, a cat playing the drums, a brain, a condenser, a person reading a book, a horse and that's all that I can recall.

By taking this course we have entered into a relationship, not simply a one directional, individual learning course, perhaps in contrast to a more traditional creative writing course, which this certainly is not. I probably would not have taken such a course. John told of us of the Japanese greeting "Yoroshiku onegaishimasu" which can be translated interestingly as 'Please take care of me, for I will be a burden for you.' We were encouraged to acknowledge, and share, our frailties right off the bat, and along with our written introductions we have begun sharing ourselves with the class.

I'll end with a quote from John: "The goal of writers is to make up shit that's true."

よろしくお願いします