writing skills/profession

A Request to Imagine is the Monday Meme


I was reading a review of a book written by a book critic on the art of writing.* The reviewer pulled a sentence from the book where the critic, James Woods, takes to task the idea that many writers apparently hold quite dear in that realistic fiction is too conventional. He says,

“Fiction does not ask us to believe things (in the philosophical sense) but to imagine them (in the artistic sense).”

I love that last part about asking the reader to imagine. Such a simple and yet daunting task.

There is so little imagination in day to day living.

How can we combat this? Comment or link back, s’il vous plait.

*That’s mainly what I do with highbrow “how to write” books. I read the reviews. When I buy them, they sit on the self. When I check them out of the library, I return them skimmed at best. Perhaps I need to pencil in a few weeks of reading about the art of writing? But I am booked through January with writing projects already.

The Godsend that is Google


All my life I have been plagued with a compulsion to know more. Television shows, movies, newspaper or magazine articles and books sent me running to the library to find more information on whatever, or whoever, struck my odd fancy.

I remember one blissful summer during university when I lived right across the street from the public library.

Right across the street!

The hours I whiled away in the non-fiction stacks, thumbing through tomes on subjects so trivial I might as well have been aspiring to a career on Jeopardy. But it was heavenly.

While I still love researching “by hand”, I am more likely to google something today than not.

“Google it.”

Bestowing action on a noun. Did that become commonplace with the rise of the search engine? Or have we always been inclined to morphing words?

My latest search topic is Edward R. Murrow and McCarthyism.

I don’t recall spending a lot of time on Sen. McCarthy in school. Most of what I know about the blacklisting and persecution of that time, I learned through the movies and reading about the entertainment industry. For example my googling today is a result of watching Good Night, Good Luck last evening. Well, watching half of it anyway. It’s not riveting but so much of history – the really important stuff – falls into this category it seems.

The movie, and the era it chronicles, has modern day implications.

Instead of a black list, we have a no fly and watch lists.

Instead of the media calling American’s attention to the misuse of power and pointing out how easily it could happen to anyone, our media distracts – when it doesn’t aid and abet.

The movie is drier than dust and unless you know that time period, and the industry, it’s hard to figure out who the players are aside from Murrow, Fred Friendly and William Paley. However, the irony of the fact that it was the media using McCarthy’s own words to bring him down, and the fact that this first use of “sound-bites” is what is now killing democracy in the U.S. by inches and yards, makes it worth slogging through.

The movie starts with a 1958 speech Murrow gave that all but ended his career at CBS. My research indicates he was not unaware of the effect he’d had on the television news industry and was uncomfortable even with the tools he helped pioneer. The speech reflects this when he accuses television, in so many words, of being an opiate of the masses* when it should be a tool of enlightenment for them.

A good movie for election year viewing and a not uninteresting mini-research sojourn either.

*A little irony in my choice of phrases as Karl Marx first used it to describe religion which I guess you could say television replaced.

Updates and T-shirts are Friday’s Offerings


Sadly, my short story lost the Dazzle contest. I didn’t bother to go and check for the winner yesterday because I knew I was out of the running after TenMile entered and the gushing began so I lost interest. However he did not win either. A late entry took the prize.

I am used to losing contests, but I still find it a bit annoying. I am still polishing up my own story and hope to send it off to Apex although it needs to be a shade darker. The last story I read in Apex was about a refugee scrounger on a displaced persons ship in the overcrowded future where the hopeless sell themselves to the ultra wealthy who get their kicks stuffing them with chestnut dressing, cooking them alive and then eating them. When I said “dark” I meant “ever so”.

Grade one is going well.

Reno is proceeding. Rob’s new plan is to break down tasks into small components and do a bit of as many as he can between supper and dark (which is coming far too early now).

MidKid claims to be moving out this coming weekend. We’ll keep you posted.

And as for T-shirt Friday…..

Nurse Myra claims no ownership, so I think I will adopt it into my rotation stable along with the Monday Meme and the Thursday Song Lyric.

Remembering what Silverstar had to say on the subject, t-shirts must have histories. Not just stains either. Although stains can have histories.

Today’s t-shirt comes to us via the beginning of the LDR days that made up the bulk of my pre-marriage relationship with Rob. He developed a habit of bringing a t-shirt along with him to leave behind for me. He would wear it until it smelled just like him and after he left, I would wear it until it just stunk too much for me not to wash.

MidKid gave Rob the shirt. She worked in a liquor store and was always acquiring tee’s from different label promotions. Canadian is Molson’s flagship and most popular brand. It’s probably one of the better beers up here, but any Canadian will tell you that the worst Canadian beer is kilometers better than the best American one. Americans, in the opinion of most non-Americans, drink swill for beer.

Anyway, one day Rob inquired after the shirt and I told him I wore it to bed. Then I whipped open my little Macbook, took this photo and sent it to him. Since this is kind of like a love letter, I had Rob crop out the disheveled come hitherness.

So there is my t-shirt and its story. Feel free to join in. Link or track back if you do.

this is low res and tiny but it's the best I got