Archives for September 2008

I just saw someone wearing one of these bags:

I think that’s a pretty cool bag.

I just saw that my Resources for Teen Writers site got mentioned in the book The Teen-Centered Writing Club: Bringing Teens and Words Together. In other news, I have a resources for teen writers site. It’s actually something my mom put together back when I was a teen writer and she was researching markets where I could send my stuff. Then later, when I was no longer a teen writer, we decided we might as well put all the info up online so that people who still were teen writers might benefit from it. I’m glad people seem to be finding it helpful.

Here’s what the book has to say:

Actually, the cover of The Teen-Centered Writing Club, which features a soulful-looking high school kid sitting next to a pretty girl, reminds me of something that happened when I was in high school. Some filmmakers came to my creative writing class to film the workshop and to interview a few students for a video about being a writer. I was one of the students that the teacher selected to be interviewed, and the whole time I was talking the woman interviewing me was just like, “Yeah! Wow! This is great! Yeah! Wow! Keep going!” So afterward I felt sure that I’d really impressed them and that I’d be featured prominently in the resulting video. Well, a few weeks later our teacher came to class with the finished video, and we all watched it. The video focused almost exclusively on this girl in the class named Cheryl, who was really pretty and appealing and who as far as I recall had no particular interest in writing whatsoever, but she said stuff like “I write about things that really happened to me” and “I keep a journal where I write down all my feelings,” sort of your standard high school-level writing crap. I had only one or two lines in the video, one of which I remember was, “Aliens” — in response to the question: “What are some of the things you like to write about?” (I also remember there was this kid Kevin whose response of “I wrote a story in which World Peace is achieved by replacing all objects with Nerf” also made the cut.) After class, as I was leaving, the teacher handed me an envelope and said, “David, this is for you.” I was befuddled. I went to my next class and opened the envelope, which contained a letter from the teacher apologizing for the fact that the video hadn’t used any of what I’d said. The teacher said she felt really bad, and that she’d argued with the filmmakers that they should include more of me, but they’d explained that I’d seemed way too thoughtful and articulate, and they were afraid that kids watching the video would be intimidated by me and would think that only smart kids could be writers. So that made me feel better … I guess. So anyway, high school, yay.

I see that one of my livejournal friends (fairfeather) is studying at University College Cork in Ireland. I also studied there, during my junior year of college, and seeing some of her photos brings back memories.

Not, it must be said, all super-wonderful memories. I did have some good times in Ireland, but mostly it was a pretty lonely period. I didn’t really click with anyone there, either among the small group of kids from my school (which, I discovered after I’d signed up, consisted substantially of an ex of mine of her friends) nor among my flat of Irish roommates, whose interests (pubs, raunchy jokes, cricket, television) didn’t exactly mesh with mine. I’d signed up for the study abroad program at the last minute so that I keep could working with my favorite creative writing professor, but he seemed pretty harried and distracted that whole semester, and I ended up seeing very little of him. (Later I found out that he was a little distracted because he was in the process of transitioning to a she.) The classes I took in the English department at UCC were awfully undemanding (I had one professor who always arrived late, always visibly hung over, and who always gave his lectures off of notes that he’d plainly scrawled on a bar napkin the night before), and since I didn’t really know anyone, that left me with a lot of time on my hands. Every day or two I’d walk across town to the bookstore, buy a book, and then walk back. Then I’d lie in the grass beside the river, below the great cliffside stair that led up to the campus, and read. And read. And read. Philip K. Dick is huge in Irish bookstores, so I read a lot of him. I discovered Iain M. Banks, who is also huge in Ireland (and who is — inexplicably — mostly unknown in the states, though this seems to be changing recently; his sf novels Player of Games and Use of Weapons are must-reads). I read Irish authors — Beckett and Yeats and Joyce (who’s on the currency there — can you imagine a writer on U.S. currency?) I also read a lot of philosophy and literary theory. (Like, I read through the entire 1,000 page Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory — I mean, why not? What else was I going to do?) Thinking back on this now, those sunny days of literary discovery beside the meandering river in Cork, Ireland actually seem kind of appealing, and I can actually feel nostalgic for them, but at the time I felt mostly a pervasive sense of emptiness and a longing to get back home. I did become much better at writing fiction that semester, though. Really, there’s nothing like five months of around-the-clock reading and writing new things, without the distractions of parties, friends, and social interaction, to really hone your writing abilities.

Oh, I’m probably exaggerating. I did spend an awful lot of time in pubs, watching Manchester United or Irish folk music. And there were weekend trips to Dublin (which I loved), Galway, Limerick, the cliffs of Moher, etc. And I eventually joined a roller hockey team. But when I think back on Cork, it’s the wandering-around-by-myself that really looms large. One other random memory:

I took a class called Romance & Realism. (This is Romance as in Romanticism, not as in the modern publishing category of Romance, i.e. two people falling in love.) The class was taught by two different professors, and they divided the workload, so that one day a week would be Romance and the other would be Realism. The books we read for the Romance section were entrancing — Frankenstein (the terrific 1818 text, before Percy and public opinion screwed it up), Caleb Williams, The Hound of the Baskervilles, She, The Moonstone — and the discussions about them were fascinating (Mary Shelley’s family life, the development of the detective novel). The Realism section was a thundering bore, the novels vapid and forgettable (so forgettable, in fact, that I honestly can’t even remember any of them — so forgettable that I think I’d already forgotten each of them by the time I turned the last page). The lectures on them were always really, really reaching — embarrassingly strained attempts to find something profound or interesting to say, usually through the application of silly jargony neologisms or vague and arbitrary categories that could be interpreted to mean anything, about books that always struck me as, ultimately, out-of-date sit-coms without the “com.” I always thought that the first professor, the one who covered Romance, was great, and that the second, who covered Realism, was a complete dumbass. But then something interesting happened. Halfway through the semester the two of them switched sections, so that now the second professor was covering Romance and the first was covering Realism, and overnight my opinion of their lectures reversed totally. Which was when I realized that it wasn’t actually the second professor who sucked, it was Realism. (Sorry Realism, maybe I’m being unfair. You produced some accomplished works of literature. But geez, give me Romance any day.)

Well, another day, another staggering catastrophe brought about by a Conservative ideology that openly disdains expertise, the scientific method, and empirical reality. I guess now is as good a time as any to cash in this:

I’m experimenting with a new look for my site’s splash page:

The “pop-punk geek lit” thing is sort of a joke. I may change that. Though it is more succinct than what I used to have.

I like this graphic that appeared on Countdown last night: