The Daily News
1 Well howdy!
2 <faking hard-of-hearingness by cupping hand to left ear>
3
4 I said, "HOWDY!"
5 <crickets>
6 Dudes. I officially suffer from CRS.
7 My twentieth year throwing this stuff out there and now this.
8 I officially suffer from this debilitating disease which I affectionally call CRS.
9 Bazillions of people suffer this same ailment.
10 I even wrote it up in a one-act I wrote years ago.
11 I stole it from some other thing I read or heard about at the time. My theatre folks might write and remind.
12 Poopy poopy.
13 For the uninitiated, it translates roughly to "Can't Remember Shit."
14
15 All apologies to my former EV students. Didn't even know I had it in me, right? Well, I'm pretty sure you knew I was full of hell. Just cover yer eyes, kids. There's always more.
16 I'm not one to rest on laurels, so shall we move on?
17 Well thanks.
18 Moving On, Part One: I thought to myself last night after holding Maren in my arms and then looking over at little Isla that I don't wish to be much more in this life than a G-Pa.
19 Something must be the matter with me. Who'd wish THAT on themselves?
20 <Points two thumbs to his chest> THIS guy.
21 Wow.
22 What just happened?
23 <crickets>...
24
25 Those babies. So cute, but babies are quite a handful.
26 Why do they not teach this stuff in school? How do you figure out feedings, balancing sleep, meals and sanity? Caitlin and Josh have amazed me. But yeesh. Shouldn't there be classes in real-life things in our schools?
27 Oh yeah. Calculus is more important than a baby's cuteness. Or their sincerity when they cry.
28 They know. They know.
29 Moving On, Part Two: The moon.
30 Anyone else see that? If you were outside and looked up at the exact right time, you found yourself looking at the moon from Ray Bradbury's porch.
31 I saw it last night. I stepped out on Caitlin's porch and saw the moon in straight-up 3-D, only live.
32 It knocked me out. It wasn't pasted in the sky like a wafer; rather it stood spherical, lights moving all through it. I felt I should reach out and pull it out of the sky, just as a baby might reach out and snatch a ball off a chair.
33 I don't know if that makes sense to you unless you stepped out onto a driveway and witnessed it.
34 I stared. Couldn't stay inside. I kept going outside, and then back in.
35 Okay, I'm over it.
36 Moving On, Part Three: I'm going to continue offering free writing tips into October, because I'm still learning the process of the craft myself.
37 East of Eden appeared again the other day on teevee. That's John Steinbeck, if you didn't already know. At one point in all of the things going on around me, I picked East of Eden off the shelf in my office, blew off the dust, and thought instantly, "No way."
38 Not a lot of teachers will admit this, but many of us don't like reading. Want that again? Many teachers don't like reading.
39 We read for a living. It's all we do when not teaching. Oh, we plan lessons as well, but we have to read and grade literally thousands of papers during the school year.
40 During the summer, it is all about organizing everything that became disorganized during the school year.
41 That's akin to taking balls of hair out of the kitchen sink.
42 It's glamorous, to be sure.
43 Anyway, during a peaceful afternoon over at Caitlin's, I decided to read at least the first chapter of Eden.
44 Steinbeck fascinates me. His opening descriptions of the area between Monterey and Salinas have references to all sorts of flora.
45 Retirement rocks sometimes because I started reading, but this time around I looked up pictures online of each image. It stunned me that most of it consisted of things one might see on a ride up the coast. Why it stunned me I don't know; it just did. It just might stun you as well. And it should teach you to give things names when you write. Be general introducing and then go in and be specific. That will be my thesis for the second part of today's DN. So. Point made. Where were we? Oh yes: being stunned by looking up the flora. Let's go.
46 I kept thinking, "Ah, THOSE!"
47 Here are the first few paragraphs WITH pictures following. I took none of these pics. Enjoy. And the writing tip today: name things. Don't just talk about flowers, for example. It's okay to use that vague term at the beginning of a sentence, but follow it up with specific flowers. So you need to learn about flowers. Writing is work. Just do it. Here is Chapter One, paragraph six of John Steinbeck's East of Eden.
48 Listen:
On the wide level acres of the valley the topsoil lay deep and fertile. It required only a rich winter of rain to make it break forth in grass and flowers. The spring flowers in a wet year were unbelievable. The whole valley floor, and the foothills too, would be carpeted with lupins and poppies. Once a woman told me that colored flowers would seem more bright if you added a few white flowers to give the colors definition. Every petal of blue lupin is edged with white, so that a field of lupins is more blue than you can imagine. And mixed with these were splashes of California poppies. These too are of a burning color— not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies. When their season was over the yellow mustard came up and grew to a great height. When my grandfather came into the valley the mustard was so tall that a man on horseback showed only his head above the yellow flowers. On the uplands the grass would be strewn with buttercups, with hen-and-chickens, with black-centered yellow violets. And a little later in the season there would be red and yellow stands of Indian paintbrush. These were the flowers of the open places exposed to the sun.
49 The guy can write.
50 Notice that the intro is pretty general: you have topsoil, grass, flowers, foothills, etc. Nothing yet named. It isn't long before we stumble upon more specifics, such as lupins, California poppies, yellow mustard, buttercups, hen-and-chickens, yellow violets, and Indian paintbrush.
51 Steinbeck knew the territory. And the specifics make it work better. Better still is if YOU look some of these up, particularly early in a book you are reading. It's nice to use your imagination, of course, but looky here:
35 Okay, I'm over it.
36 Moving On, Part Three: I'm going to continue offering free writing tips into October, because I'm still learning the process of the craft myself.
37 East of Eden appeared again the other day on teevee. That's John Steinbeck, if you didn't already know. At one point in all of the things going on around me, I picked East of Eden off the shelf in my office, blew off the dust, and thought instantly, "No way."
38 Not a lot of teachers will admit this, but many of us don't like reading. Want that again? Many teachers don't like reading.
39 We read for a living. It's all we do when not teaching. Oh, we plan lessons as well, but we have to read and grade literally thousands of papers during the school year.
40 During the summer, it is all about organizing everything that became disorganized during the school year.
41 That's akin to taking balls of hair out of the kitchen sink.
42 It's glamorous, to be sure.
43 Anyway, during a peaceful afternoon over at Caitlin's, I decided to read at least the first chapter of Eden.
44 Steinbeck fascinates me. His opening descriptions of the area between Monterey and Salinas have references to all sorts of flora.
45 Retirement rocks sometimes because I started reading, but this time around I looked up pictures online of each image. It stunned me that most of it consisted of things one might see on a ride up the coast. Why it stunned me I don't know; it just did. It just might stun you as well. And it should teach you to give things names when you write. Be general introducing and then go in and be specific. That will be my thesis for the second part of today's DN. So. Point made. Where were we? Oh yes: being stunned by looking up the flora. Let's go.
46 I kept thinking, "Ah, THOSE!"
47 Here are the first few paragraphs WITH pictures following. I took none of these pics. Enjoy. And the writing tip today: name things. Don't just talk about flowers, for example. It's okay to use that vague term at the beginning of a sentence, but follow it up with specific flowers. So you need to learn about flowers. Writing is work. Just do it. Here is Chapter One, paragraph six of John Steinbeck's East of Eden.
48 Listen:
On the wide level acres of the valley the topsoil lay deep and fertile. It required only a rich winter of rain to make it break forth in grass and flowers. The spring flowers in a wet year were unbelievable. The whole valley floor, and the foothills too, would be carpeted with lupins and poppies. Once a woman told me that colored flowers would seem more bright if you added a few white flowers to give the colors definition. Every petal of blue lupin is edged with white, so that a field of lupins is more blue than you can imagine. And mixed with these were splashes of California poppies. These too are of a burning color— not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies. When their season was over the yellow mustard came up and grew to a great height. When my grandfather came into the valley the mustard was so tall that a man on horseback showed only his head above the yellow flowers. On the uplands the grass would be strewn with buttercups, with hen-and-chickens, with black-centered yellow violets. And a little later in the season there would be red and yellow stands of Indian paintbrush. These were the flowers of the open places exposed to the sun.
49 The guy can write.
50 Notice that the intro is pretty general: you have topsoil, grass, flowers, foothills, etc. Nothing yet named. It isn't long before we stumble upon more specifics, such as lupins, California poppies, yellow mustard, buttercups, hen-and-chickens, yellow violets, and Indian paintbrush.
51 Steinbeck knew the territory. And the specifics make it work better. Better still is if YOU look some of these up, particularly early in a book you are reading. It's nice to use your imagination, of course, but looky here:
Lupins
California Poppies
Yellow Mustard Flowers
Meadow Buttercups
Hen-and-Chickens
Yellow Violets
Indian Paintbrush
52 Makes me want to get into the T0000000NDRA and fly through the hills to Highway 1.
53 I'd say a ride down 101, through Salinas and over to Monterey would rock my fat socks. You turn off at a Valero station somewhere in there, just can't remember off the top of my head.
54 I'd probably bring warm clothes, a folding chair, a blanket, a Starbuck's Caramel Mac, and a dog-eared copy of East of Eden. Sip, read, and listen to the sounds of gulls, waves, and of children laughing. Feel the breeze and smell the hint of fires.
55 Writers out there, I hope you enjoyed this relatively brief writing lesson. Give names to things. Keep in mind never to use my personal writings for anything but shits and giggles. Pretty sure my writing is at best shaky.
56 But give things names. Most good writers know this and have studied this.
57 End of lesson.
58 I'm headed to the beach, at least in my frabjous mind.
59 See you again.
60 Peace.
~H~
fin.
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