My zucchini seedlings came into their own this week. From between the generic cotyledon lobes that feed the plant before it takes energy from the sun, they unfurled their true leaves. Spikey, spunky, furred. The original solar panels.
Image for the [May] Day
“Don’t just watch us; come and join us,” the marchers chanted yesterday, surging down 14th Street in D.C. from a rally in Meridian Hill Park. Three or four passersby stood in Thomas Circle. We took pictures. We shot video. This was not my father’s May Day.
Photo by Harry Chauss
Filed under DC, Image for the day
Image for the day
I count two references to Chinese political dissident Chen Guangcheng as blind and 22 lines of text before his name appears in this article. Other articles do bump up Chen’s name.
Filed under Image for the day, International
Affliction
I’m applying to a fellowship that wants journalists who make a difference. It wants those who, in the words penned by Peter Finley Dunne and evoked by many a Mike Wallace obituary, “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
This phrase pops up often in narrative journalism circles. For the first time I wondered: Does this mean that journalists should play the activist role?
The answer came partly from the program concept itself. The main draw of the fellowship is its affiliation with two highly-regarded news organizations known for painstaking fact checking — or admitting the lack thereof with painstaking thoroughness. (Oops — just gave away one of the organizations). Continue reading
“Are you trying to decide…?”
-“Are you trying to decide between two workshops?”
-“I really appreciated what you said on the panel.”
-[At reception] “Do you mind if I just put my beer here?”
-[Reading name tag] “Hello, Tom.”
…Four ways to start a conversation with a fellow conference-goer
-Throwbacks coming back: Unedited storytelling, knitting, fermentation
-Child adoption statistics: Where, who, and why around the U.S., a data journalism story
-My memoir about Science Olympiad and snow days in clickable essay form
…Three story ideas I generated this weekend
…Two fragments of a conversation
-“A Short List is made from your experience or research or daily life.
You read it out loud for about 60 seconds and then tell us at the
end what the list WAS. It’s a story, with the title at the end.”
…One explanation Jay Allison gives of his concept
A list of Short Lists inspired by NarrativeArc: Storytelling journalism goes digital
Filed under Community of writers, Writing and technology
Cracking into the truth
Sometimes you need to cover the truth to best expose it. This is what I decided as I sat in the parking lot behind my apartment building, a hammer in my hand and a crackling paper bag sitting on the cold pavement. The truth, in this case, was black walnuts. Notoriously tough to crack, this bitter, perfumed species native to 15 states does not succumb to nutcrackers. They do, however, help me think about how I conceptualize good writing and what a metaphor fanatic I am.
A little background: I ordered a case of these things for a locally-sourced meal not realizing it would take a research mission just to taste them. The most common advice I found for the home cook is to use a vise. Yes, a vise. Because of course you have one in the drawer right by the lemon zester.
I didn’t have the equipment for that, so I developed a technique involving soaking the nuts, placing them in a paper bag, and then whacking the heck out of them. Stay with me here. The writing/metaphor part is coming.
This nut-busting technique was not easy. I couldn’t see what I was doing and had to feel blindly for where to bring down the hammer, then painstakingly loosen each bit of nutmeat with a fork. But I had to admit this was the best way to go. Continue reading
Write like who you are. Right f#@% now.
I wrote my first—and only—novel when I was 11. The author was a skinny, shy sixth grader, and, true to first novel form, my protagonist happened to be a skinny, shy sixth grader.
There were some differences. For instance, the boy this girl had a crush on was a green-eyed redhead, while there was nary a Ron Howard lookalike in my class. For another thing, this character associated with one of the bad girls—you know, the kind who smoked once in the girls’ room. Though I could conjure a rough tobacco smell wafting over the bathroom stall in the scene I wrote, the only cigarettes I’d come remotely close to were the Marlboro Light packs my father kept in his shirt pocket. But generally, the girl was me.
The resulting work was what the modern publishing house would call a young adult novel. I just remember it as a treat to write, with a plot that challenged me at times, but generally flowed from my hands. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
Hitting the ball around, part III: Prewriting your landscape
Imagine an artist who wants to paint a landscape. She does not sit right down and start smearing colors across a canvas. Before the easel is even unfolded, she might take in her subject from a hillside and then work studies of trees and ponds and boaters in a sketchpad. Later, she could play with a spectrum of brush sizes and shapes to produce various textures on scraps of canvas, and peruse other artists’ takes on a similar scene. Or, if she’s anything like me, she’ll develop an urge to spackle a hole in the wall or scrub the grout in her bathtub, and get right down to it. After all of that, she can sit down to her piece.
A writer can do the same thing.
For the final installment of this miniseries on prewriting that started strangely and bounced back in time, I offer some straightforward advice, including examples of prewriting. You’ll even find it clearly laid out in two numbered lists: How to Prewrite and How Not to Prewrite. You’re welcome! Continue reading
Filed under Humor
Hitting the ball around, part II: Stop — Hammer Time!
For this next part, I would like to return to the first person and then take you back to the fall of 2007. If you’re still with me after the odd beginning to this series, let me set the scene. Your fearless writer guide is in her first graduate-level writing course, “Nonfiction Techniques.” Like each of the other students in the class, I have signed up to provide a writing tip during one of the classes. Mine falls on Halloween.
I dug up that tip and would like to present it to you now. Here goes. And don’t worry – even though this debuted on Halloween, I did not wear (and never have worn) Hammer pants.
(Keep reading for a fun bonus at the end!) Continue reading
Filed under Humor
Hitting the ball around: A mini series about prewriting
Let’s say that last semester, you taught with an art professor who goes by this mantra:
Art is 80 percent thinking, 20 percent doing.
In writing, you’ve always believed in a similar concept, but could never articulate it very well. Then suddenly the prof delivers this sentence and you want to print posters about it, broadcast it on Facebook and Twitter, and check in when you pass this professor guy on campus – just to be the mayor of By the Genius’s Side.
So you know that in theory, this sounds good. Considering your next story idea or fleshing out your main points in your head must be brilliant. Until you start thinking about how much time that will take.
How can I afford the decadence of mulling ideas all over the place while my allotted writing time ticks away? You think. You realize that your blog readers – one, or even both of them, being fellow writers – may be thinking the same thing. Continue reading
Filed under Humor
Rhea Kennedy Morgenstern, writer 