on writing every day

"Will I really write a novel? I'll answer this and only this. I'll proceed as if I were going to write one." -- Roland Barthes

In my last blog, I examined the theory that, if I wrote a page a day, I'd have a book by the end of a year.  So let's just say, my book is about to be several pages shorter.

If you write a page a day.....

According to 365 Attempts (At Life), in order to overcome writer's block, she will write something every day for a year.  No matter what it is. I remember getting this kind of advice when I was writing my dissertation: if you write one page a day, at the end of the year you will have a 365-page monograph.  Same for "how to write a novel" - type books.

But who writes this way? I have the most over-revised first pages of a dissertation--happily, now a book--that ever existed, because it is impossible for me to sit down and NOT revise what I've already written.  Who can just write a page a day and run with it?

It might work for a certain kind of writer--one who isn't compulsive, and who can wait a whole year to revise. But would the writing make any sense? How would it help me overcome writer's block? Does it matter? At the end would I look through it and find a thread that links it together? Or would I just find Virginia Woolf's "diamonds in the dustbin"?

Thinking I might try it.

Document Design, or Why I Hate Times New Roman 12

It's not just me, apparently.

ProfHacker, in this case, Evan Snider, recommends teaching document design as part of teaching writing--liberating us from the standard "Times New Roman, 12 pt., black ink on white paper, 1" margins all around." I don't like it, don't use it, so why impose it on my students? Of course, some guidelines have to be provided--or we'll be getting first-year comp essays in Joker (hot pink!). But teaching the basics of visual design should be part of composition; to convince yourself, read this essay by Anne Wysocki.

Stop Sex Trafficking!

"jumping off the gw bridge sorry"

I can't stop thinking about Tyler Clementi.  What goes through someone's mind as puts down his wallet and stands at the edge of the George Washington Bridge? What was he thinking about? Had he, maybe, thought about suicide before, and decided this was a good option?

How much emotional pain does it take to make someone jump off a bridge so high and so imposing it can be seen from miles away? A bridge so high, I avoid it as much as possible.

But what would it feel like for a first-year student, in college for barely a month, to learn that his most intimate moments were streamed live to over a hundred people? How much humiliation can a person withstand? For one teenager, jumping off the George Washington Bridge was a less painful alternative.

What Any Teenager Will Tell You, Now Confirmed by Science

Ways of Learning : noisy, crowded, disorderly, or all of the above

Dreaming in the Dark

I rarely remember my dreams, and maybe that's a good thing, because last night--or I should say this morning, when I was in that deep second sleep after waking up to the barking of a hungry dog--my silenced, but buzzing, phone dragged me from a nightmare that seemed like it would never end on its own. I'm superstitious, so I won't try to assemble the pieces aloud, but in the dream I was told that I was 4% sick, 96% healthy, and I was terrified, in an unknown house where the apartments were divided by curtains instead of walls, and none of the phones worked.

I attract people who have premonitions, powers, who are just plain tuned in to all the information that is out there.  For a fascinating example, read the first chapter of my friend, Kim Sillen Gledhill's book, Seeing in the Dark at her website seeinginthedark.net.

Kim also introduced me to The Paranormalist, and in a moment of synchronicity, I sent the link to my friend Kory, who had recently reported having a dish-washing ghost (only Kory would have a tidy ghost, for reasons that will have to be explained later).  Kory's response? "You know me so well...need any "psychic" help?"  I'd forgotten Kory is one of those special people, too. But maybe the point is that I unconsciously remembered. . . .

And did I mention that I met Kim just where I saw the apparition of Rachel, which I wrote about below?

Support Restore NYC

Help Restore NYC maintain and supply its new safe house for victims of sex trafficking.


http://my.restorenyc.org/JudithBroome

REDLIGHT on Showtime

“REDLIGHT”




to Air Tonight

on SHOWTIME®



8:00 PM ET/PT









If you missed the red-carpet premiere screening of REDLIGHT this past June in New York City, please tune in tonight on Showtime®.



REDLIGHT, a powerful feature film documentary exposing the horrors of the illegal sex trade market in Southeast Asia, will make its television premiere on SHOWTIME® on Thursday, September 9th at 8pm ET/PT and on-demand from 09/10/10 until 10/07/10. The film is narrated by actress/producer/UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Lucy Liu.

Also available OnDemand.

Ghosts

I was just leaving the last of the Grand Rounds in Columbia's program in Narrative and Medicine and, walking out in the light, warm evening I thought I saw Rachel - again. Columbia and everywhere around it was the part of New York that Rachel called home, but I wasn't thinking about that when I glimpsed - only for a second - a tall, pale, slim woman with Rachel's blue eyes and uncontrollable hair. How long will Rachel haunt all of us, who enjoyed her smiles and raucous laughter (when they were there), but never told her; who thought she was a brilliant talent, but only sometimes told her; who wanted to be her friend, but didn't know how.

After that awful day in December, that shocking phone call, the helplessness settled in on me like a thick fog; I was in despair, but it seemed way out of proportion, because in truth, I didn't know Rachel that well. We never went out for drinks, never went to a museum or had dinner. But I'd met her long before I ever knew where I would wind up, and in the six degrees of separation, she was only at a single remove. When I arrived, she greeted me with genuine pleasure, and I felt proud to say that we were already acquainted.

The spring semester started maybe three weeks later, and my fog had dissipated enough to let me get some work done. But as I was going up the elevator, a chill seized me: because it was always in the sunny airy atrium space where the elevator opened up that I would run into Rachel, coming out of her office, and there we would chat, never in a darkish, crowded office, but always in full view, in the sun. I always thought there would be time, for us to hang out, one day, always one day.

Extra credit...

...for anyone who can tell me where I got the blogname from.