SubscribeApril 16th, 2011
gov speak and a sense of engagement
I loved this little 7 minute Ted Talk. The first segment, on gov speak (government documentation of process supposedly for the public but in fact for each other) (0:49) compared to a Nike ad is hilarious. I also really like the idea of redefining apathy as something not an inherent problem of a single individual but an institutionalized set of barriers and limitations. It seems to me, if nothing else, worth playing with as an idea.
via Wimp
February 12th, 2011
What it takes to get a writer to…
OMG! OMG!
I downloaded Scrivener about two hours ago and I already have the structural outline of that first little book my daughter wants me to write.
I’ve always been an index card kind of writer when it comes to bigger things and the idea of starting all that work and organization for this little guy (A Witch’s Guide to Celebration) proved too much for my tired (post-return-to-work) self. But now I have Scrivener, and there it is. Done. I even have most of the writing seeds in the digital index cards that are part of the software design so, should I have some energy left after my volunteer gig at the charity telethon tomorrow (I’m manning a phone line), I can just write that little section – address that one little seed.
Now I have to figure out how to update across computers so that I can take my baby laptop and then update my home system when I return.
February 8th, 2011
how I write
An interesting coincidence: someone asked my how I write and at litopia someone started a thread asking “on pen or keyboard.” Between the two questions the following germinated.
I always start writing in my head. For me it’s either a word, or a phrase, sometimes an image or feeling that surfaces or reflects off something happening on the bus, or on the street. Then I play inside my head. Say the trigger is a word that surfaces with its “monster” face exposed. Take “tillicum.” The first thing that happens is the word takes on a shape. In my case it is a little painted wooden sculpture of a salmon, mouth wide; I notice it is inscribed with t.i.l.l.i.k.u.m. Then a new image pops up. It is a baby fish but it is part cod and part salmon; on its side is inscribed t.i.l.l.i.c.u.m. (The piece is gathering bones now, but it has no clear shape.)
I get up from where ever I am and start walking. The fish swim in my head. Words begin to gather as water droplets.
Walking, I might see an Indian woman I know who sells her art for the money to pay rent. She turns the corner before she gets to me and as that happens the two fish start swimming in tandem because an octopus has entered the river and is swimming toward them. In each tentacle is grasped a piece of coloured parchment with words. On the red one is the word “human”. One the yellow one, the same. Odd I think. Then I ask the octopus why. (At this stage the muscles are starting to grow on the new piece.)
Walking up the street takes me a good deal of time. I can’t seem to think and walk at the same time any more so when I mean slow, read glacial. The fish swim; the octopus dances, waving words. Then I remember, oh, tillicum really means “people” even if it’s used as a greeting. Octopus answer.
Words are swimming in the river too. I mutter them, try them in different combinations, repeat, repeat, repeat the ones that cling to the growing piece.
Go into the coffee shop, order espresso, put in lots of brown sugar, sprinkle it with nutmeg and go back outside to sit.
Salmon, odd hybrid fish and an octopus swim to the sea in a river made of words.
As I sit down the three jump and arm their way into a birch bark canoe (McPhee immediately comes to mind – so a nonfiction piece. Hmm.) and fly right over the falls, topping the lodgepoles as they stream by. The lodgepoles fall gracefully into the meadow forming the tripod that holds up a teepee.
Three trees, three sea creatures. To the sea, to the sea, and the bones of home. Tillicum – tillikum. Tripods and triangles. Indian, European and the land. Three characters. (The flesh fills out the shape.)
It is only when the shape begins to grow skin that I can put things down. Then it doesn’t matter what I use. If paper is there I use that. If not, I use whatever, including my baby laptop if I happen to have it with me when the skin starts to grow. Even if I’m at a coffee shop.
I do draw the line with my choice of headgear. I do not wear a black beret.
Now what does that tell you?
June 20th, 2010
The urge to defenestrate
A pet peeve of mine is an organization that makes a push to produce more client-friendly information bulletins, pats itself on the back for being so culturally/politically/ethnically aware and then uses phrases like “an urge to defenestrate.” Imagine a leaflet speaking to a generally vocabulary-challenged client base and further that the whole point of that particular leaflet is to foster the sense of inclusivity of said clients. The manager responsible for the final version of the leaflet strikes out “want to jump” and replaces it with “urge to defenestrate.” Why? Because that’s the term in the policy that underpins the organization. Imagine further that in all the back-clapping for “speaking like the common man”, no one gets the deep irony, nor the underlying offensiveness.
The thing that strikes me is not that the average manager thinks they can use words effectively outside their personal comfort zone, and without any training or study, but rather that the average manager doesn’t really understand that there is anything outside their personal comfort zone. Those ones out there – those clients, or customers, or user group – they are viewed as assets. The only point of view is from the bowels of the organization. Even when the mission of the organization is to provide a service for that group, and being able to understand from the point of view of the served would be clearly valuable, managers often simply cannot do that. People become assets because the manager’s point of view is tied (seemingly irrevocably) to the heart of the organization. Having being nurtured on the policies and procedures that are the nerve pathways and circulation network of the corporate body, interaction with clients is moderated through them. The assumption (usually unconscious) is made that the client should come from the same stand point. Bad assumption, but there you are.
Of course I understand that policies and procedures are critical to the success of the venture, but the whole idea of management is (or should be) to steer a course between the needs of the people the organization exists to serve and the policies which limit and order what those interactions can be. So if you run a suicide prevention organization that targets people who largely come from the less educated portions of society, then just because your policy manual uses the term “defenestrate,” that doesn’t mean you should use it in the documentation that tries to convince your client base to believe that you want to include them, that you want them to feel included in the world that they wish to leave. If you are any kind of decent manager, then you need to give up the language of the manual and cling to its meaning: use “want to jump out your window?” If you don’t then you have proven that you value position above person.
Now it may be that you do value position over person. In fact, if you are a manger, that is probably because you do have that value set. Despite how you may imagine yourself, the fact is that to get to where you are you have probably had to maneuver past others who equally deserved what it is you seized. You have almost certainly ceased being friends with those who no longer match you in status. But whatever, right? You’re there. The thing is, do you also want to do the job you landed? Do you want to serve your clients? Then you need to grow some empathy, even if it is a learned response. Learn to let the manual go long enough to say “please don’t jump.”
May 25th, 2010
School assignment
So I took this class (writing for magazines) because I like (sometimes) to write and I thought a new style might be interesting. I was right about that. Love the class. It’s a real “how to.” The teacher is great, providing practical instruction backed by a whole lot of personal experience.
Here’s the first little assignment. We had to submit a description of something – a place or event and not use the word “I”. Bad me, I procrastinated and then had to write it in the hour before class. Hence, I picked something from my own history because I am fundamentally not a fiction writer. Nevertheless, this was fun. I got to make me into something I’m not and not feel bad about it.
Edna hummed tunelessly as she came up to the final bend before the long straightaway. Around the curve a crow at the edge of the road pecked at a flattened house cat, the orange hair still visible on parts of the tail, but its face gone all these days into its death. “Get now” Edna told the crow. “Get” as she slowed coming up onto the crow, “get” until the bird let go its meal and hopped out of the path of the car. She sped up a bit then, the long road, narrow between the pocket farms with their geese and gardens; a road usually empty of other people but this time not. A white four door, venerable, slightly dusty but unmarked, with good paint and good tires. Edna slowed again, and looked for the white peacocks that were usually strutting this time of the day at the blue farm. Not there, Edna sighed and with one hand straightened her box of tissues that had slipped from its place on the shelf below the dash. She glanced up for the white car, just ahead now, and slowed even more. She picked at a piece of dust on the shelf made visible by the now properly square tissue box. Her eyes moved back to the white car; her hands clutched at the wheel as she braked. The car, so close now she could see the streaks in the young men’s hair, Edna slowed to a crawl to stop from hitting them. She saw the driver turn to grin at the passenger.
The heat of the car, now that she was moving so slowly, bloomed. She undid the button at her throat, dropped her speed until she had enough room to move around the car and pulled into the oncoming lane to pass. The young man stepped on the gas to keep up with her. Edna’s head snapped up as she turned to look at them; she saw the driver’s blonde head turn and the passenger’s wide grin turn into an open mouthed laugh. She slid the car back behind them. The white car slowed again. Crawling, Edna’s face flushed.
From the little wetland she passed a red-winged blackbird flashed and the deep mud smell of the rushes flowed up into the air tumbled by the wings’ passage. Edna hardly noticed, her eyes merely twitched toward the bird now vanished back into the reeds at the back of the wet. She pulled back again, giving her self room to pass and when she tried to move ahead, again the boys pulled in front of her. Their mother’s car, she thought, as she yanked her steering wheel and aimed her car right for the driver.
The grin froze and later, Edna remembered herself laughing that rather unbecoming snort like thing she sometimes did. The boy yanked his wheel too, but unlike Edna, he was close enough to the edge of the road that in order to avoid her, the edge of his passenger-side tire went too far and caught in the ploughed dirt. The car tipped, the wheel jerked from his hands and the boys went over the edge, off the road, the car bumping, sliding sideways into the fallow field, brown dirt billowing in waves around them, as if they had hit a patch of black ice and landed in a half frozen muddy lake.
Edna relaxed her grip on the wheel, undid another button to cool down, and then sped up.