Well, my living room no longer looks like we just moved in (we moved in June ~ should I be admitting that online?) and the hours - yes, hours - that it took were doubly productive because I was listening to Fiction 101 on my Nano the whole time. Talk about the teacher appearing when the student is ready! This is my third time through the course start to finish, though I’ve spent extra time listening to more complicated bits. It seems to be coming together in my head far better than ever before, and I have to say it makes me feel empowered as a writer.

Conversely, in the writing class I am taking at Selkirk College we just got an assignment to read an essay about the craft of writing. I read the essay. Here’s how I found it the first time through

1. He begins by saying that all of history is class struggle, makes several Marxist references and insists that there being a “proper” definition of words is vile oppression
2. It made me feel ignorant by constant name-dropping without informative context
3. My very good vocabulary was grossly insufficient to the task
4. There were extreme run-on sentences pretending to make a point but never getting there

Not even thinly veiled political propaganda, really. The working class he contends for would surely have difficulty understanding it.

I’m supposed to write a reader-response to this, relating it to my own work and experience as a writer.  I think my bottom line will have to be “this is what NOT to do” !

I think I’ll listen to my Nano a little more…

ps. I think I fixed all the broken links - leave a comment if you notice that I missed one