This week's novel was Sourdough by Robin Sloan. It's magical realism (kind of) about bread. This was a Goodreads Choice Nominee and NPR's Best Books of 2017, so that's how I heard about it.
Lois is a software engineer at a Type-A robot arm company, if companies can be described as Type-A. She has a favorite take out place, run by two brothers who are ambiguously foreign. The takeout place is delivery only and has basically one item on their menu, the double spicy, which is a spicy soup and a sandwich on sourdough bread. When Lois starts eating the double spicy every night, she starts feeling better about her life, as if the bread has magical properties that can lift her spirits. When the takeout guys are forced to leave the country, they leave her with their sourdough starter and a CD of the music of their people. Lois figures out how to bake bread, and discovers that the starter glows at night, sings the music of their people, and makes bread with a crust that looks ominously like a human face.
I loved this book, you guys.
Sourdough starters are naturally weird, and pushing them into the realm of magical is not too much of a stretch. But the book makes it seem like maybe there's a rational explanation for the starter's behavior. There are experts in microbe colonies sprinkled throughout the book who have scientific explanations for why it acts that way, but it's always ambiguous as to if they just don't understand how whacky the starter is or if the ominous nature of the starter is all in Lois's head.
In fact, I really like how science and magic work together in this book. I went in expecting Lois to turn away from her soul crushing programming job to move to the country and bake bread in a brick oven she built herself. That never happens, because Lois' love for technology, and how good she is at her job are a part of her. Just like how baking comes to be a part of her. I really appreciate how the two can live together instead of them working against each other, instead of the book ultimately coming out as a condemnation of technology.
I also really liked the ambiguously foreign brothers. Turns out they were deported to Edinburgh. They are Mazg, which is a group of people who relocate frequently and don't have restaurants with signs and tables and don't mix their own music to dubstep beats, because they're "second floor people" who remain mostly anonymous. The two brothers have some tension about this, because they want to share the music and food of their yeast based culture with the world. They share stories of the Mazg, which are familiar and yet yeast based.
There really isn't that much of a plot to this. There's no bad guy trying to steal the starter or use the sourdough for nefarious purposes. No one is pushing Lois to give up technology and be a baker, or to quit baking and get back to work. The big conflict at about 2/3 of the way through is how Lois is going to feed the starter enough to make enough bread to meet demand. But it's so enjoyable in its simplicity as Lois learns to work with the bread and works with her robot arm and meets other food experts and learns about the Mazg over e-mail with the brothers. There are great descriptions of food. It's a good time.
April 19, 2018
April 11, 2018
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky
This week's short story collection is What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah. I heard the titular story of this collection on LeVar Burton Reads, along with an interview with the author, and I was impressed so onto the to-read pile it went!
This collection revolves around Nigerian women or Nigerian ex-pats, which is a super refreshing theme and setting. It also deals heavily with the relationship between mothers and daughters, and it comes at that theme from a lot of different angles. The titular story is about a post-apocolyptic word where Europe and North America have been flooded and people have fled to Africa. There's an additional speculative element where mathematicians have found a formula that describes the universe, making it possible for mathematicians to allow people to fly or take away people's grief, which is a skill in high demand in a country overwhelmed with refugees. In another, women make babies out of objects, their mothers bless life into them, and then they keep the yarn/clay/whicker/whatever baby safe for a year until it becomes flesh, a process made difficult when you don't have a mother to bless your baby. But most of them are slice of life stories with no speculative elements. The one I love most is "Light" about a man who rises his daughter through her teenage years when his wife goes to study in America. It's about how distance affects relationships and how hard it is to parent when you're not on the ground, how hard it is to relate to your parents when they're not an active part of your life. There is one of the most perfect examples of what a short story can be in "The Future Looks Good," which I'm going to talk about later, and I'm tearing up just thinking about it now (with emotion for the characters and a stunned sense at the story's beauty and maybe a little bit of envy at how well it's executed). No matter how high-concept these stories are, the focus stays on the people and relationships that are relatable. The characters are colorful and flawed and engaging.
There's a technique that I heard about at the writer's conference I went to a month ago, that I will write a full blog post about later. After some round-aboutness, it basically boils down to how you can create an emotional moment by setting up sensory details that puts the reader there with the character, and then the last sentence in your paragraph (or the last sentence of your story or whatever) tells something emotional that gives the character a feeling and the reader is there with them, feeling that feeling. I was thinking about how it would be really great if I could do this, and then I read the first story of this collection and had to lie down because it was such an exquisitely well executed example of this concept. The story tells about a family's backstory through a handful of vivid moments, so when the turn hits at the end, it doesn't have to be much, but I'm terrified for the main character. And then the story ends. And, like I said, I had to lie down. But that one's going to be hard to show you, so let me give a different example. This is the first paragraph of "Second Chances."
This collection is so good, y'all. Check it out.
***
Next week: Sourdough, a novel by Robin Sloan
This collection revolves around Nigerian women or Nigerian ex-pats, which is a super refreshing theme and setting. It also deals heavily with the relationship between mothers and daughters, and it comes at that theme from a lot of different angles. The titular story is about a post-apocolyptic word where Europe and North America have been flooded and people have fled to Africa. There's an additional speculative element where mathematicians have found a formula that describes the universe, making it possible for mathematicians to allow people to fly or take away people's grief, which is a skill in high demand in a country overwhelmed with refugees. In another, women make babies out of objects, their mothers bless life into them, and then they keep the yarn/clay/whicker/whatever baby safe for a year until it becomes flesh, a process made difficult when you don't have a mother to bless your baby. But most of them are slice of life stories with no speculative elements. The one I love most is "Light" about a man who rises his daughter through her teenage years when his wife goes to study in America. It's about how distance affects relationships and how hard it is to parent when you're not on the ground, how hard it is to relate to your parents when they're not an active part of your life. There is one of the most perfect examples of what a short story can be in "The Future Looks Good," which I'm going to talk about later, and I'm tearing up just thinking about it now (with emotion for the characters and a stunned sense at the story's beauty and maybe a little bit of envy at how well it's executed). No matter how high-concept these stories are, the focus stays on the people and relationships that are relatable. The characters are colorful and flawed and engaging.
There's a technique that I heard about at the writer's conference I went to a month ago, that I will write a full blog post about later. After some round-aboutness, it basically boils down to how you can create an emotional moment by setting up sensory details that puts the reader there with the character, and then the last sentence in your paragraph (or the last sentence of your story or whatever) tells something emotional that gives the character a feeling and the reader is there with them, feeling that feeling. I was thinking about how it would be really great if I could do this, and then I read the first story of this collection and had to lie down because it was such an exquisitely well executed example of this concept. The story tells about a family's backstory through a handful of vivid moments, so when the turn hits at the end, it doesn't have to be much, but I'm terrified for the main character. And then the story ends. And, like I said, I had to lie down. But that one's going to be hard to show you, so let me give a different example. This is the first paragraph of "Second Chances."
Ignore for a moment that two years out of grad school I'm old enough to buy my own bed and shouldn't ask my father to chip in on a mattress, so that he shows up with my mother, who looks like she's stepped out of a photograph, and she tries to charm the salesman, something she was never good at, but it somehow works this time and he takes off 20 percent. Ignore for a moment that she is wearing an outfit I haven't seen in eighteen years, not since Nigeria, when she was pregnant with my sister, though not yet showing, and fell down the concrete steps to our house, ripping the dress from hem to thigh. Ignore that she flits from bed to bed, bouncing on each one like she hasn't sat on a mattress in a while, and the salesman follows her around like he'd like to crawl in with her. Ignore all this because my mother has been dead for eight years.Whoa! That deceptively simple sentence hits because we've got this vivid, solid idea of her mother. In a very short time, I've grown to like her mom as a resilient woman who's outgoing and joyful about mattress shopping. But this person I've come to like is dead. And that sentence blows open the whole paragraph that came before, hints that she's an image from a past time that I didn't catch on first read.
This collection is so good, y'all. Check it out.
***
Next week: Sourdough, a novel by Robin Sloan
April 3, 2018
Rootabaga Stories Review
This week's book is Rootabaga Stories, a collection of American fairy tales by Carl Sandburg. When I was a kid, we had these on cassette tape, read aloud by (I think?) Carl Sandburg. He had a distinctive cadence to his voice, which I found myself falling into when I started reading these aloud to my son because my mom sent me a brand new copy of this book for Valentines Day.
It would be hard to give a synopsis of these. There are several of them, they're very short, and the point of the stories is not what happens but rather the language and the imagery. So you'll excuse me if I post a longer excerpt than I usually do:
It's poetry. That cadence that I remember so well, even though I couldn't have told you what any of the stories were about (except I remember Hatrack the Horse, who wasn't in this collection), just arises naturally from your breathing when you read these stories aloud.
I appreciate how this fits the fairy tale form by use of repetition and flat characters that you can read more into if you want or you can use as an avatar for yourself. And the repetition also works to make the story lulling, almost hypnotic, which is great for bedtime reading.
I appreciate the odd imagery. A cliched phrase could get the point across, but these stand out, not because they're inaccurate, but because they're so novel. The kids in this excerpt have "the shadows of valleys by night in their eyes and the lights of early morning, when the sun is coming up, on their foreheads." I can perfectly picture children with light on their foreheads, but I have never heard that before, and I never would have come up with that.
I also really like how Midwestern these are. There's a story about corn fairies who wear overalls, and there's a story about two skyscrapers that fall in love. But it's more than the content, more than let's tell a fairy tale about a staple of life in Illinois. There's something in the delivery that not only makes it clearly a fairy tale, but also makes it clearly Midwestern, and I still haven't pin pointed what that is.
***
Next week: ???
It would be hard to give a synopsis of these. There are several of them, they're very short, and the point of the stories is not what happens but rather the language and the imagery. So you'll excuse me if I post a longer excerpt than I usually do:
Gimme the Ax lived in a house where everything is the same as it always was.
"The chimney sits on top of the house and lets the smoke out," said Gimme the Ax. "The door knobs open the doors. The windows are always either open or shut. We are always either upstairs or downstairs in this house. Everything is the same as it always was."
So he decided to let his children name themselves.
"The first words they speak as soon as they learn to make words shall be their names," he said. "They shall name themselves."
When the first boy came to the house of Gimme the Ax, he was named Please Gimme. When the first girl came to the house, she was named Ax Me No Questions.
And both of the children had the shadows of valleys by night in their eyes and the lights of early morning, when the sun is coming up, on their foreheads.
And the hair on top of their heads was a dark wild grass. And they loved to turn the doorknobs, open the doors, and run out to have the wind comb their hair and touch their eyes and put its six soft fingers on their foreheads.
And then because no more boys came and no more girls came, Gimme the Ax said to himself, "My first boy is my last and my last girl is my first and they picked their names themselves."
Please Gimme grew up and his ears got longer. Ax Me No Questions grew up and her ears got longer. And they kept on living in the house where everything is the same as it always was. They learned to say just as their father said, "The chimney sits on top of the house and lets the smoke out, the door knobs open the doors, the windows are always either open or shut, we are always either upstairs or downstairs in this house--everything is the same as it always was."
It's poetry. That cadence that I remember so well, even though I couldn't have told you what any of the stories were about (except I remember Hatrack the Horse, who wasn't in this collection), just arises naturally from your breathing when you read these stories aloud.
I appreciate how this fits the fairy tale form by use of repetition and flat characters that you can read more into if you want or you can use as an avatar for yourself. And the repetition also works to make the story lulling, almost hypnotic, which is great for bedtime reading.
I appreciate the odd imagery. A cliched phrase could get the point across, but these stand out, not because they're inaccurate, but because they're so novel. The kids in this excerpt have "the shadows of valleys by night in their eyes and the lights of early morning, when the sun is coming up, on their foreheads." I can perfectly picture children with light on their foreheads, but I have never heard that before, and I never would have come up with that.
I also really like how Midwestern these are. There's a story about corn fairies who wear overalls, and there's a story about two skyscrapers that fall in love. But it's more than the content, more than let's tell a fairy tale about a staple of life in Illinois. There's something in the delivery that not only makes it clearly a fairy tale, but also makes it clearly Midwestern, and I still haven't pin pointed what that is.
***
Next week: ???
March 27, 2018
Mortal Engines Review
This week's novel is the YA steampunk Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve. This book is getting a movie adaptation, and my husband showed me the trailer, saying, "You've read this book, right?" I hadn't. But now I have.
After the apocalypse, where there were earthquakes and tidal waves and all sorts of natural disasters, cities became mobile to survive, and now they roll around the wasteland searching for smaller cities to eat and take their resources. But these days the hunting ground is running dry of small cities and to survive, London's mayor and head historian, Valentine, have a plan to use a death ray to burst through a mountain stronghold and make its way into Asia, which is populated by static cities and easy pickings. The story follows Hester Shaw, who has sworn vengeance on Valentine, who disfigured her and killed her parents. She gets teamed up with Tom, a London apprentice historian who idolizes London and gets thrown off the city in the first couple of chapters, and together they have to work their way back to London, although they have very different motives for doing so.
This is going to make an epic movie, because the set dressing is the big draw here. The world building has a great aesthetic. There are several London landmarks that are still around from the London we know, but steampunk-ified. The city was stacked like a cake into nine layers, where there are still squares and parks and museums. St. Paul's Cathedral is on the top tier, but it was never meant to be moved around, so it's covered in scaffolding.
I like the idea that they created movable cities, but I never really understood why they run around and eat each other. I guess they take the resources from the smaller cities, but I don't understand how that could possibly sustain a city the size of London, and it implies that the small cities got their resources from somewhere. This ecosystem doesn't feel sustainable. But then that's kind of the point: they're running out of small cities to eat. And another part of the equation is that they don't have to be movable. There are anti-traction cities who have figured out that the city-eat-city way of life is not sustainable, and it's an issue late in the book that this way of life is all the people of London know and that's their whole motivation to keep doing it. And really that's enough motivation.
There was some technical stuff that struck me funny. The book is written in the past tense except for when you're in a section that focuses on a bad guy. Then it's suddenly in present tense, even though it's happening sequentially with the past tense sections with Hester and Tom. Every time I had to stop and go, "Wait, this is written in the present tense? I hadn't noticed that until just now!" And then I'd flip back a page and go, "Wait. No." At first I attributed this to the fact that the bad guy these sections focused on was a robot monster with little understanding of his own past, some present tense for him would make sense. But then it does the same thing with Valentine and the mayor, so I don't know. The point of view is also strange. It could be omniscient, with large sweeping views of history and what different cities are up to, but then it zooms in to what I would call close third, only to switch to a close third of someone else in a way that always threw me out for a moment. Some chapters are broken up into sections, switching from one point of view to another with a section break, and that makes it really strange when it switches point of view midstream. But then maybe it was all setting a precedent for one particular, well executed moment when a character dies, and you're thrown from their point of view to someone else's.
One thing I really like is that towards the end, you sympathize with the different sides of the conflict enough that you realize there is not perfect outcome. It made the ending wonderfully messy and human and tragic.
***
Next week: Rootabaga Stories, fairy tales begging to be read aloud, by Carl Sandburg.
After the apocalypse, where there were earthquakes and tidal waves and all sorts of natural disasters, cities became mobile to survive, and now they roll around the wasteland searching for smaller cities to eat and take their resources. But these days the hunting ground is running dry of small cities and to survive, London's mayor and head historian, Valentine, have a plan to use a death ray to burst through a mountain stronghold and make its way into Asia, which is populated by static cities and easy pickings. The story follows Hester Shaw, who has sworn vengeance on Valentine, who disfigured her and killed her parents. She gets teamed up with Tom, a London apprentice historian who idolizes London and gets thrown off the city in the first couple of chapters, and together they have to work their way back to London, although they have very different motives for doing so.
This is going to make an epic movie, because the set dressing is the big draw here. The world building has a great aesthetic. There are several London landmarks that are still around from the London we know, but steampunk-ified. The city was stacked like a cake into nine layers, where there are still squares and parks and museums. St. Paul's Cathedral is on the top tier, but it was never meant to be moved around, so it's covered in scaffolding.
I like the idea that they created movable cities, but I never really understood why they run around and eat each other. I guess they take the resources from the smaller cities, but I don't understand how that could possibly sustain a city the size of London, and it implies that the small cities got their resources from somewhere. This ecosystem doesn't feel sustainable. But then that's kind of the point: they're running out of small cities to eat. And another part of the equation is that they don't have to be movable. There are anti-traction cities who have figured out that the city-eat-city way of life is not sustainable, and it's an issue late in the book that this way of life is all the people of London know and that's their whole motivation to keep doing it. And really that's enough motivation.
There was some technical stuff that struck me funny. The book is written in the past tense except for when you're in a section that focuses on a bad guy. Then it's suddenly in present tense, even though it's happening sequentially with the past tense sections with Hester and Tom. Every time I had to stop and go, "Wait, this is written in the present tense? I hadn't noticed that until just now!" And then I'd flip back a page and go, "Wait. No." At first I attributed this to the fact that the bad guy these sections focused on was a robot monster with little understanding of his own past, some present tense for him would make sense. But then it does the same thing with Valentine and the mayor, so I don't know. The point of view is also strange. It could be omniscient, with large sweeping views of history and what different cities are up to, but then it zooms in to what I would call close third, only to switch to a close third of someone else in a way that always threw me out for a moment. Some chapters are broken up into sections, switching from one point of view to another with a section break, and that makes it really strange when it switches point of view midstream. But then maybe it was all setting a precedent for one particular, well executed moment when a character dies, and you're thrown from their point of view to someone else's.
One thing I really like is that towards the end, you sympathize with the different sides of the conflict enough that you realize there is not perfect outcome. It made the ending wonderfully messy and human and tragic.
***
Next week: Rootabaga Stories, fairy tales begging to be read aloud, by Carl Sandburg.
March 20, 2018
Scythe Review
This week's novel is Scythe, YA utopia by Neal Shusterman.
In the future, a powerful, benevolent AI called Thunderhead controls the world, ending hunger, poverty, and death. People who are hurt have nanites in their blood to dull the pain and heal them overnight. People who die are revived in a matter of days. When people get too old, they "turn a corner" and get their appearance dialed back to their mid twenties. In all this, in order to curb population growth, Scythes are given a license to kill, and the people they kill stay dead. Scythes have a quota and are disciplined if they show bias or seem to be enjoying it too much. Scythes are revered, and although people fear them, people also offer up food and opera tickets and cars in hopes that they'll gain favor and be spared. Citra and Rowan, two teens, are taken on as Scythe apprentices, a job neither of them wants (which is a qualification of a good Scythe). They learn how to kill, how to be merciful, and how to be just, while wrestling with morality.
There are so many things about this world building that I find interesting and refreshing. I like that it's not a dystopia. The AI really is benevolent and trying its best. It flat out says it won't be responsible for who dies, because that's a human issue and humans should be responsible. There's no conspiracy, no big reveal that the soylent green is people. The conflict arises from people within the system getting up to human hi-jinks, and the Thunderhead allows room for people to still be awful to each other, which makes a statement about how even in a brilliant future, people are still going to be crummy sometimes.
It also makes a point about how people in the post-mortal world don't have all that much to live for. On the whole, death is meaningless, so throwing someone in front of a bus in a rage doesn't accomplish all that much and everyone gets over it eventually. With no threat of death, there's not much to make people treasure the lives they have, and so emotions aren't as strong as they once were. Art isn't as good. It's stated that since the Thunderhead has already solved all the technological problems, there's nothing to be innovated on.
And that gets into the parts of the world building that I'm not thrilled about. There's nothing left to be invented? Really? No one's writing books about their fear of Scythes or overcoming the sadness of someone you love being killed by a scythe or how painful it is to drift away from your family after a hundred years or so? There aren't new fears that arise in the post-mortal world? A few of the characters deal with being parts of huge families (since everyone can have a kid a decade and still have dozens of kids) and feel like no one cares about them. That seems like a fertile place to make some art. I don't buy that there's nothing left to feel, but I'll go along with it because these aspects are here to strengthen the "without death, there's no life" theme. I'm also skeptical of the economy of this world. Several people complain about how expensive it is to be revived, but there's no danger of people not doing it. It doesn't bankrupt anyone; it's just an annoyance. How did Thunderhead eliminate systemic poverty? Again, these are questions that the book isn't interested in, and I get it that they don't really matter.
The heart of this book is about transition in the way Scythes do their jobs. The old guard believe you should be respectful and get it done quickly. Do one a day or so and get to know a lot about the person whose life you're taking. The new wave though believe that people should go out in a blaze of glory and it should be an exciting end. Isn't dying in a huge explosion a better story? The old guard believe that the point when you start to take pleasure in killing, you stop being a Scythe and start being a murderer. Meanwhile the new guard wants to know why they shouldn't like what they do, and why they shouldn't enjoy being an essential component of society. The apprentices are presented with both these views and have to wrestle with them.
While I really like books that say, "here's a weird situation, how would a human react?" it's not super clear what this book has to say about our world. Enjoy life to its fullest? It's a good thing we can't all be immortal? Treat the people you kill with respect? Not sure. But the lack of obvious relationship to our own existence makes this a pretty fun, quick read.
***
Next week: Mortal Engines, YA steampunk by Philip Reeve
In the future, a powerful, benevolent AI called Thunderhead controls the world, ending hunger, poverty, and death. People who are hurt have nanites in their blood to dull the pain and heal them overnight. People who die are revived in a matter of days. When people get too old, they "turn a corner" and get their appearance dialed back to their mid twenties. In all this, in order to curb population growth, Scythes are given a license to kill, and the people they kill stay dead. Scythes have a quota and are disciplined if they show bias or seem to be enjoying it too much. Scythes are revered, and although people fear them, people also offer up food and opera tickets and cars in hopes that they'll gain favor and be spared. Citra and Rowan, two teens, are taken on as Scythe apprentices, a job neither of them wants (which is a qualification of a good Scythe). They learn how to kill, how to be merciful, and how to be just, while wrestling with morality.
There are so many things about this world building that I find interesting and refreshing. I like that it's not a dystopia. The AI really is benevolent and trying its best. It flat out says it won't be responsible for who dies, because that's a human issue and humans should be responsible. There's no conspiracy, no big reveal that the soylent green is people. The conflict arises from people within the system getting up to human hi-jinks, and the Thunderhead allows room for people to still be awful to each other, which makes a statement about how even in a brilliant future, people are still going to be crummy sometimes.
It also makes a point about how people in the post-mortal world don't have all that much to live for. On the whole, death is meaningless, so throwing someone in front of a bus in a rage doesn't accomplish all that much and everyone gets over it eventually. With no threat of death, there's not much to make people treasure the lives they have, and so emotions aren't as strong as they once were. Art isn't as good. It's stated that since the Thunderhead has already solved all the technological problems, there's nothing to be innovated on.
And that gets into the parts of the world building that I'm not thrilled about. There's nothing left to be invented? Really? No one's writing books about their fear of Scythes or overcoming the sadness of someone you love being killed by a scythe or how painful it is to drift away from your family after a hundred years or so? There aren't new fears that arise in the post-mortal world? A few of the characters deal with being parts of huge families (since everyone can have a kid a decade and still have dozens of kids) and feel like no one cares about them. That seems like a fertile place to make some art. I don't buy that there's nothing left to feel, but I'll go along with it because these aspects are here to strengthen the "without death, there's no life" theme. I'm also skeptical of the economy of this world. Several people complain about how expensive it is to be revived, but there's no danger of people not doing it. It doesn't bankrupt anyone; it's just an annoyance. How did Thunderhead eliminate systemic poverty? Again, these are questions that the book isn't interested in, and I get it that they don't really matter.
The heart of this book is about transition in the way Scythes do their jobs. The old guard believe you should be respectful and get it done quickly. Do one a day or so and get to know a lot about the person whose life you're taking. The new wave though believe that people should go out in a blaze of glory and it should be an exciting end. Isn't dying in a huge explosion a better story? The old guard believe that the point when you start to take pleasure in killing, you stop being a Scythe and start being a murderer. Meanwhile the new guard wants to know why they shouldn't like what they do, and why they shouldn't enjoy being an essential component of society. The apprentices are presented with both these views and have to wrestle with them.
While I really like books that say, "here's a weird situation, how would a human react?" it's not super clear what this book has to say about our world. Enjoy life to its fullest? It's a good thing we can't all be immortal? Treat the people you kill with respect? Not sure. But the lack of obvious relationship to our own existence makes this a pretty fun, quick read.
***
Next week: Mortal Engines, YA steampunk by Philip Reeve
March 18, 2018
Chicago Writers Association Conference
The Chicago Writers Association Conference was last weekend. I was
my first writer's conference, so it was pretty exciting. The things I
learned will probably take a few weeks to explore, so today I'd like to
tell you about the most immediately beneficial parts, which are the
meditation and mindfulness practices of Kelly Harms. Here are some things that I found helpful.
1. "Deep work" is when you get in the flow of writing and it's all pouring out of you. This is opposed to to trudging through the writing bog for hours and hours. You can get the same amount of work done in a shorter amount of time if you do deep work.
2. The way to get into deep work is to separate it off from your other activities. It's the "don't half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing" idea. If you sit down to write, but you're still thinking about your day job or your e-mails or you kid or whatever, that distracts. So start writing time with a beginning ritual like meditating.
3. My beginning ritual (I made it up. It works for me) is that I lie down (if I'm at home) or sit in lotus pose in my chair (if I'm at the library) and listen to five minutes of rain sounds through my headphones. While listening to that, I imagine that the sound is the sound of all the tension in my muscles and the distractions in my head pouring off me. I go through my major muscle groups and release the tension I'm holding. I let go of any thoughts that crop up other than the sounds of the rain, my breath, and whatever muscle group I'm relaxing. Then, when I'm all nice and emptied out, I imagine that the rain is gold--the color of creativity (your rain might look different)--and it's filling up all the hollows in my body emptied out when I let all the tension drain out of me. And then five minutes is up and I'm get some really solid writing done. It's a little counter-intuitive to spend the first five minutes of your limited time not working, but when I only have an hour to work, taking five minutes to get in the zone means I get more done in those remaining 55 minutes than I usually do in a couple of hours.
4. It's important to tell your body how much time you're going to write and then stick to it. If you tell your body that you're going to write for two hours, and after a half-hour you get interrupted, your body stops trusting that you're going to have time to write. I talked to Kelly Harms about this after her talk, because most days my free time is during nap time, and who knows how long that'll last. Her advice was to err on the shorter side. Tell your body you're going to work for half an hour and then do it and feel good about yourself. If he's still asleep when you're done, you can work longer, but don't promise anything.
This is really working for me. A lot.
1. "Deep work" is when you get in the flow of writing and it's all pouring out of you. This is opposed to to trudging through the writing bog for hours and hours. You can get the same amount of work done in a shorter amount of time if you do deep work.
2. The way to get into deep work is to separate it off from your other activities. It's the "don't half-ass two things. Whole-ass one thing" idea. If you sit down to write, but you're still thinking about your day job or your e-mails or you kid or whatever, that distracts. So start writing time with a beginning ritual like meditating.
3. My beginning ritual (I made it up. It works for me) is that I lie down (if I'm at home) or sit in lotus pose in my chair (if I'm at the library) and listen to five minutes of rain sounds through my headphones. While listening to that, I imagine that the sound is the sound of all the tension in my muscles and the distractions in my head pouring off me. I go through my major muscle groups and release the tension I'm holding. I let go of any thoughts that crop up other than the sounds of the rain, my breath, and whatever muscle group I'm relaxing. Then, when I'm all nice and emptied out, I imagine that the rain is gold--the color of creativity (your rain might look different)--and it's filling up all the hollows in my body emptied out when I let all the tension drain out of me. And then five minutes is up and I'm get some really solid writing done. It's a little counter-intuitive to spend the first five minutes of your limited time not working, but when I only have an hour to work, taking five minutes to get in the zone means I get more done in those remaining 55 minutes than I usually do in a couple of hours.
4. It's important to tell your body how much time you're going to write and then stick to it. If you tell your body that you're going to write for two hours, and after a half-hour you get interrupted, your body stops trusting that you're going to have time to write. I talked to Kelly Harms about this after her talk, because most days my free time is during nap time, and who knows how long that'll last. Her advice was to err on the shorter side. Tell your body you're going to work for half an hour and then do it and feel good about yourself. If he's still asleep when you're done, you can work longer, but don't promise anything.
This is really working for me. A lot.
March 13, 2018
We Wear the Mask Review
This week's book is We Wear the Mask: 15 Stories of Passing in America, a collection of personal essays from people who "pass" in different ways.
I came into this book with an understanding of passing that came mostly from my trans friends. My trans-men friends who look stereotypically male don't get as many micro-agressions when they walk down the street. People don't openly stare at them when they ride the bus. Strangers don't stop them and ask about their genitalia. People don't freak out as often when they use the restroom. People assume they're cis-men and grant them the privileges (which here translates to "basic human decency") that cis-men enjoy. I also had an understanding that light-skinned brown people can pass as white for access to the privileges that white people enjoy (again privileges that everyone ought to have.) My son is white-passing, and he's going to have the privilege of not getting searched at airport security the way my husband is every single time he flies.
I viewed passing as access to the resources and respect that everyone should have in the first place.
So I found the forward of this book to be jarring when Brando Skyhorse is quoted: "Passing is when someone tries to get something tangible to improve their daily quality of life by occupying a space meant for someone else." So the space "meant" for cis-men isn't "meant" for trans-men? The space for white people isn't "meant" for brown people? I am bothered by this.
I was thinking of it as punching up, because while I think anyone who wants access to white spaces should have access, I don't think anyone who wants access to, say, Native American spaces should be granted access. And that's where Skyhorse is coming from. His parents were Hispanic until his mother decided she was Native American and raised her son that way. It's a fascinating story, and it didn't fit with my understanding of passing.
This anthology has a number of essays from people of color passing as a different ethnic group. Achy Obejas is a proud Cuban, but while living in Hawai'i, no one had any concept of where Cuba was or what it was like, so they would say, "That's like Puerto Rico, right? So you're Puerto Rican."
This is one of the main take-aways of this anthology: there are two parts to passing. One is altering your appearance or actions in order to fit better with a group, and the second is that how well you "fit" is decided by other people making assumptions about you. Sometimes you don't have to alter anything about yourself for people to assume things, like when Patrick Rosal is mistaken for a waiter at the National Book Awards. If you fit into someone's stereotype of a group, they'll mentally put you in that group without you having any say in the matter. On the other hand, Rafia Zakaria, a Muslim American, talks about how she passes through US customs and Pakistani customs by changing her clothes, one to emphasize her American-ness and one to emphasize her Muslim-ness. She's working her knowledge of what other people expect, what other people want to see. She's not lying. She's both American and Muslim. She's just pushing the aspect that will help ease the experience and thereby passing.
There is also talk of how if you don't fit into someone's stereotypical box, their ideal of what a group is like, they get angry. Strangers angrily ask about my non-binary friends' sex, because they don't fit in the neat boxes that people have created for "man" and "woman." People in Hawai'i didn't have a concept of Cuba, so they put Obejas in the Puerto Rico box. I'm reminded of my mother-in-law's story about visiting the US back in the 60s. While she and her father were taking a train, the white conductor told them to go sit in the "colored" car. They moved to the colored car, where the black conductor told them to go back and sit with the white people.
I'd like to end with a quote from Gabrielle Bellot's essay about her experience as a trans woman.
Next week:
I came into this book with an understanding of passing that came mostly from my trans friends. My trans-men friends who look stereotypically male don't get as many micro-agressions when they walk down the street. People don't openly stare at them when they ride the bus. Strangers don't stop them and ask about their genitalia. People don't freak out as often when they use the restroom. People assume they're cis-men and grant them the privileges (which here translates to "basic human decency") that cis-men enjoy. I also had an understanding that light-skinned brown people can pass as white for access to the privileges that white people enjoy (again privileges that everyone ought to have.) My son is white-passing, and he's going to have the privilege of not getting searched at airport security the way my husband is every single time he flies.
I viewed passing as access to the resources and respect that everyone should have in the first place.
So I found the forward of this book to be jarring when Brando Skyhorse is quoted: "Passing is when someone tries to get something tangible to improve their daily quality of life by occupying a space meant for someone else." So the space "meant" for cis-men isn't "meant" for trans-men? The space for white people isn't "meant" for brown people? I am bothered by this.
I was thinking of it as punching up, because while I think anyone who wants access to white spaces should have access, I don't think anyone who wants access to, say, Native American spaces should be granted access. And that's where Skyhorse is coming from. His parents were Hispanic until his mother decided she was Native American and raised her son that way. It's a fascinating story, and it didn't fit with my understanding of passing.
This anthology has a number of essays from people of color passing as a different ethnic group. Achy Obejas is a proud Cuban, but while living in Hawai'i, no one had any concept of where Cuba was or what it was like, so they would say, "That's like Puerto Rico, right? So you're Puerto Rican."
This is one of the main take-aways of this anthology: there are two parts to passing. One is altering your appearance or actions in order to fit better with a group, and the second is that how well you "fit" is decided by other people making assumptions about you. Sometimes you don't have to alter anything about yourself for people to assume things, like when Patrick Rosal is mistaken for a waiter at the National Book Awards. If you fit into someone's stereotype of a group, they'll mentally put you in that group without you having any say in the matter. On the other hand, Rafia Zakaria, a Muslim American, talks about how she passes through US customs and Pakistani customs by changing her clothes, one to emphasize her American-ness and one to emphasize her Muslim-ness. She's working her knowledge of what other people expect, what other people want to see. She's not lying. She's both American and Muslim. She's just pushing the aspect that will help ease the experience and thereby passing.
There is also talk of how if you don't fit into someone's stereotypical box, their ideal of what a group is like, they get angry. Strangers angrily ask about my non-binary friends' sex, because they don't fit in the neat boxes that people have created for "man" and "woman." People in Hawai'i didn't have a concept of Cuba, so they put Obejas in the Puerto Rico box. I'm reminded of my mother-in-law's story about visiting the US back in the 60s. While she and her father were taking a train, the white conductor told them to go sit in the "colored" car. They moved to the colored car, where the black conductor told them to go back and sit with the white people.
I'd like to end with a quote from Gabrielle Bellot's essay about her experience as a trans woman.
"And it can be difficult, though it is necessary, to learn that passing is not our goal if we identify as binary transgender women, as I do. We are women, no matter what we look like, even if not all of us can pass for a woman by the statistical norms of what cisgender females look like. There is nothing inherently wrong with wishing to pass visually, aurally, or otherwise as cisgender; but we do ourselves an intellectual disservice if we fail to realize that the language of passing implies both temporariness and trickery, and aiming to be recognized as women, regardless of what we look like, is much greater goal."***
Next week:
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