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Category: writing

Of Birds and Words

Of Birds and Words

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The office is closed, magazine proofs stuffed in my bag. For now it’s just me and the laptop and the words that won’t come. It’s so easy to sidle over to the kitchen for another cup of tea. Or watch the birds fight over suet. Just now a pair of young bluejays sparring in the air.

But the empty page won’t go away, so I come back, pull the words from wherever it is they like to hide. They are fickle and stubborn. They won’t be willed into existence.

The thing is, sometimes they hang out with the birds or the cup of tea. That’s where they hide when they should be on the page.

Nothing to do but find them and bring them home.

Millennials and Books

Millennials and Books

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Talk about surprises, I almost missed one, tucked as it was beneath the Oscar photo. But the headline in yesterday’s Washington Post was unmistakable: “Wired millennials still prefer the printed word.” This according to textbook publishers, bookstore owners and the people themselves, those born 1980 and afterward — my kids, in other words.

They may text and snap-chat and send pictures by Instagram, but turns out they also like to read books. They learn better, they say, because there are fewer distractions. (Those who multitask while reading a printed book: 1 percent. Those who multitask while reading an e-book: 90 percent.)

A pilot study at the University of Washington found a quarter of students who were given e-textbooks for free still opted to buy the print version. Pew studies show the highest print readership rates among 18- to 29-year-olds.

That last statistic is hard to believe, but even if the data is slightly stretched, it’s still heartening to think that those who come after us will thrill to the smell of a new book, will feel the heft of one in the hand, will appreciate its superior knowledge delivery system! Maybe the sky is not falling; maybe the good old codex will be around a bit longer after all.

The Company of Writers (Again)

The Company of Writers (Again)

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I’ve written about this before, but it bears repeating. The company of writers is unlike the company of other folks.

Others may take issue with this, of course, may say it’s the company of actors or stamp-collectors or plumbers that does it for them. And they would be right. It’s the company of those with whom you feel an affinity. Or, to put it another way, writers are my people!

Take last night’s bunch. We talked of safety in university laboratories, the manufacturing of steel, a murder in Centropolis, Kansas, in 1905. One of us read poetry aloud, from a memoir penned in verse. Another passed around a coffee table book on the Chesapeake that was back in print after 20 years. Still another talked about her plan to bring computers to African kids.

I don’t mean to brag here, but writers have many interests. They ask good questions. They are curious. They are also endangered, now that book publishing is in free fall and newspapers and magazines are fading away. So we also traded frustrations, gripes, gallows humor.  But somehow the upshot of it all was overwhelmingly positive.

It was a cold, blustery night. I had worked 12 hours. I should have been exhausted.

I wasn’t.

Of Lions and Lambs

Of Lions and Lambs

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The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down
with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together;
and a little child shall lead them. 
Isaiah 11:6

 The program has been on my computer for a while, but I’m only just starting to learn it. InCopy works in tandem with the InDesign program. It protects design files while allowing editors to make changes directly in them.

While I don’t plan to do away with paper proofs, learning to make changes myself frees up the designers and guarantees more accuracy.  It means I won’t hesitate to remove the dash I just added in the last round of page proofs because I decided the comma was better after all.  It gives me a little more control.

More to the point, it brings words people and image people closer together. The lion may lie down with the lamb — which is how I thought the Bible verse read until about ten minutes ago, when I looked it up.

 

Stayin’ Alive

Stayin’ Alive

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My soundtrack this morning is courtesy of our parakeets, Sid and Dominique, who chatter and chirp and sing. They are cheerful little creatures, supplying much entertainment. I could spend hours just watching them climb and preen and jump from one perch to the other.

The birds outside are just as busy. They flit and feed and hop along the deck railing. Right now a red-headed woodpecker is chipping away at the suet block. It’s vital protein for these chilly mornings. After he flies away, I spot a cardinal in the back of the yard, bending the forsythia branch with his tiny weight.

I turn my gaze back to the page. This is my work. Not as direct as the bird’s daily toil. But just the same — it’s what I do to stay alive.

(Photo: Claire Capehart)

Speechless

Speechless

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For the third day in a row I woke up with no voice. Not just hoarse and croaking. No voice.

I’ve been making do with whispers and gestures. I say very little. People answer me with whispers, too. It’s a silent world I’m inhabiting, full of cotton batting.

It’s a strange time to be voiceless. Here I am with all these stories to tell and no way to tell them. I could, of course, write them down. And the magical-thinking part of me, which was heightened in Africa, says but of course.

Returning home after a long trip abroad is a time to set goals, resolutions. Saying less and writing more is certainly a good one.

So maybe being speechless has a purpose. C’est bon! I feel better already.

Mine the Gaps

Mine the Gaps

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I began this blog in February 2010 with only a vague sense of what I wanted it to be and how long I could continue it. I wasn’t even sure how often I would post. But a few weeks into the project I realized I could post almost every day — at least six days a week — and I’ve done that for  59 months and 1,500 posts.

That’s 1,500 posts exactly. Strange I would notice the total today. Strange because after tomorrow I may not be posting daily. Benin has spotty Internet access, spotty electricity, too. So while I’m taking my laptop in hopes of posting as often as possible, there may be gaps.

However … gaps could be good. Gaps mean less reflecting and more living. Gaps mean life comes at you so quickly that there simply isn’t time to write it down. So, dear readers, if there are gaps, please know I am mining them — and I’ll write about them here soon.

In Praise of Snail Mail

In Praise of Snail Mail

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The cards are arriving, my favorite part of  holiday decor. They’re displayed on the mantel and also in a contraption that holds the ones that don’t stand up as well on their own, the photo greeting cards.

The cards are all colors, shapes and sizes. Some say “Merry Christmas,” others say “Happy Holidays.” Some are religious, others are not. Dogs on cards are big this year, with birds on cards a close second. Somehow, despite the wide variety, they always work together beautifully; there is harmony in the disarray.

As the world evolves, becomes more digital, fewer snail mail missives make their way to the house. But there is still a critical mass — and I treasure the cards I receive even more.

I’m just off the phone with a dear friend whose card will be late this year, she says. We chatted about why we refuse to go totally electronic in our communication (she still sends magazine and newspaper clippings!), about how much it means to receive a note that someone has taken the time to write, stamp and send.  I’ll admit I’m a dinosaur — and I have the mantel to prove it.

What Is It About?

What Is It About?

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In his farewell to Washington Post readers yesterday, reviewer Jonathan Yardley said that throughout his 33 years at the Post (writing more than 3,000 book reviews), he came to the task as a “journalist not a literateur.”

I have high literary standards and delight in
the expression of strong opinion, literary and otherwise, but I also
read a book as if I were a reporter: looking for what it is “about” in
the deepest sense of the word, determining what matters about it and
what doesn’t, trying to give the reader a feel for what it is like as
well as passing judgment on it.

When I led workshops at the Writer’s Center, “what is it about?” was my standard question. It’s the one I ask myself as a writer, too. I suppose journalism has a lot to do with it, but it seems like common sense, too. If a writer has nothing to say or if the point is hopelessly muddled, there is no communication.

I like to think my journalist roots keep me honest, anchor me in sound thought and clear language. Often this is more aspiration than fact. But it’s a worthy goal — and one I was glad to see confirmed.

The Guestbooks of Thule

The Guestbooks of Thule

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I’ve always been an adventurous traveler, preferring trips to places
I’ve never been before. I’m seeing now what great good comes from
returning over and over to the same place, a family place, in this case a cottage named Thule. 

Flipping through the old guestbooks here, seeing the girls’ handwriting change through the years, reading entries from those no longer with us, I gain for a few minutes what I’m always craving but so seldom have — perspective.

I remember the party boats, campfires and paddles into secret coves, the skits and the late-night swims. I also recall how nervous I was when the children were young. Would they fall out of the canoe? Could they swim across the lake and back?

Reading the old journals, it all comes back to me — the time when Claire split her foot on a shell, the visit when Suzanne almost drove her grandmother’s car off the road, the summer when Celia learned to kayak. All those visits are part of them, part of me — and part of this place. Reading the guestbooks brings them alive again.