The Daily News
1 Visiting Stephen King, John Steinbeck, and Amy Tan on paper this week awakened me to the fine art of writing. I always enjoyed it, but reading bits and pieces from these people worked for me.
2 It's been relaxing because I've spent most of my days hanging with the new babies, just sort of working as a runner for everyone, but also as a G-Pa who is decidedly useless.
3 Every now and again I walk past either Isla or Maren, the newborns, and find myself zeroed in on how absolutely beautiful they are. They're pretty good babies; they tend to sleep a lot, except when Caitlin is completely exhausted, at which time the two of them can and will go off loudly.
4 Overall, it's pretty peaceful work, hanging out and chit-chatting with others while writing this nonsense.
5 I don't often go back and read over anything after I have published. When I do I cringe at some of my inconsistencies: font size, for one. Pics with too many pixels for another. Stuff like that. I awakened this morning at 4 a.m. worried about something published yesterday. I fixed it, and my guess is that nobody even noticed. It was about an article I read on Amy Tan, but I didn't point out that it was an interview before I threw it out there. If you read it and got confused, blame it on the writer. I lost that game on one pitch. I live knowing full well I'm as imperfect as the next guy.
6 And so is technology. The spacing error in item five, (see above) for example, I duly noted, but saw that it was clearly a flaw in this odd thing called Blogger. I haven't the time nor the temperament to fuss with it. As long as I bring something to the table I'm fine. I'm not in the business of fixing a wrongful double space. I'm retired. I have no time for such tomfoolery.
7 So let's pick up on where we left off. I enjoyed discovering tidbits about Amy Tan. I have a story I was going to put up here yesterday but my laptop has been acting up, nothing new. It is a clunker that is re-vamped, a Dell, and it does stuff like freezing, jumping fonts, and worst of all, buffering, which I consider to be one of the highest crimes against humanity.
8 As I've noted, I'm pretty sure the remainder of the nonsense is user-based.
9 Moving On, Part One: High time. I feel I've told this story before, but it bears repeating, so here go: One evening I saw that Amy Tan was doing a speaking engagement at San Jose State's gymnasium.
10 When introduced, she was met with a huge, supportive audience. Small in stature but huge in heart, she proceeded to talk about her childhood, and how she wrote stuff about her life and of her family, all of which led to a day when she told a neighbor that she was working on a book.
11 That book was The Joy Luck Club. If memory serves, she was a bit embarrassed of some of the writing, and a bit fearful of finishing it up. Her neighbor convinced her it was a good book, and that it could become popular.
12 Tan finished the book, and in 1989, it became an international best seller. The rest is history.
13 She then told us that following the success of The Joy Luck Club, she was walking through a local book store when something caught her eye.
14 At that point in her lecture she fell silent. So did the gym. Amy put out what could only be described as a cat-that-ate-the canary smile, and lifted something slowly above the lectern.
15 It was a set of Cliff's Notes, instantly recognizable to any college crowd, especially in a university she had once attended, all of which resulted in thunderous applause, laughter and whistles.
16 I loved it.
17 "They turned my book into Cliff Notes," she said.
18 "With discussion questions!" she added. "Listen!" She then read from the notes, words to this effect: "Trace Tan's use of the number four throughout the novel." With that, she slowly raised both arms up, as if to say, "Huh?" She put out a wonderfully confused face.
19 Huge applause.
20 End of story. Disclaimer: That's as best as I remember it. All words were to the effect, but you get the idea.
21 Pretty fun stuff coming at you on a Friday.
22 Moving On, Part Two: Changing gears, yesterday morning I picked up Stephen King's On Writing once again. For the record, King is great friends with Amy Tan, so all of this ties in with my other nonsensical folderol. Anyway, I began reading about how he got the idea for his first blockbuster, Carrie.
23 He spoke of how his brother Dave, when in college, had gotten a summer job as a janitor at his former high school, Brunswick High. One day they were told to clean the rust in the girls' locker room. King met a guy named Harry, who could hold court with the best of them. He noticed that the girls' locker room had no urinals, like the boys, and that it had metal boxes on the walls.
24 He asked Harry what was in them, and it turned out that they contained free tampons and pads. He also noticed that the girls' showers had chrome U-Rings holding pink curtains so the girls could have privacy, something the boys' locker room didn't have.
25 Thus began the premise of Carrie: what if there were a girls' locker room that didn't have the chrome U-Rings and pink curtains? So the scene begins with a bunch of girls showering in a locker room, and one girl gets her period. She doesn't know what is happening and assumes she is bleeding to death. The other girls, confused, horrified, grossed out begin throwing tampons and pads at her, all the time mocking her.
26 I'll turn this over to Stephen King on this second day of October.
27 Here is Stephen King on the moment that inspired Carrie:
I'd read an article in Life magazine some years before, suggesting that at least some reported poltergeist activity might actually be telekinetic phenomena---telekinesis
being the ability to move objects just by thinking about them.
There was some evidence to suggest that young people might have such powers, the article said, especially girls in early adolescence, right around the time of their first---
Pow! Two unrelated ideas, adolescent cruelty and telekinesis, came together and I had an idea. I didn't leave my post at Washex #2, didn't go running around the laundry waving and yelling, "Eureka!," however. I'd had many other ideas as good or some that were better. Still, I thought I might have the basis for a good Cavalier yarn, with the possibility of Playboy lurking in the back of my mind. Playboy paid up to two thousand dollars for short fiction. Two thousand bucks would buy a new transmission for the Buick with plenty left over for groceries...
28 Fun stuff. I threw in the ellipses so that the piece would trail off gallantly.
29 The rest is history. Like Tan's The Joy Luck Club, King's Carrie went what we now call viral. Both author's experienced tremendous frustration getting words to go the right way. King wrote of the rejection notices he eventually hung from a spike on a wall.
30 Writing is not for the faint of heart, that's for darn certain.
31 Moving On, Part the Thoid: King's amusing narrative came to me yesterday at a perfect time. With all of the changes in my life lately, I had to keep checking my phone to see what day of the week it was, and what time it was, and what month and all. It's easy to lose track normally, but when life shifts, nothing is normal.
32 While balancing my laptop, mouse, and King's On Writing while sitting in a backyard folding chair, I glanced at my phone and noticed it was October 1.
33 It is around this time of year that I would begin thinking about how to go into my Halloween unit. I used to teach seasonally. In late August, for example, I would have my students work on creating their own magazines. The articles in the magazines would be considered expository essays. The term "magazine article" is more real to students; the term "expository" is at best mechanical, and at worst intimidating.
34 And the word "essay" could put a cheetah to sleep.
35 Magazines they could relate to. They would need to turn the finished "essays" into me a few days before they would turn their magazines in. The essays were formal; the magazines creative. For inspiration,they could look at magazines in stores, in beauty shops, in doctor's offices, or in tree houses. They could work in groups, but each student had to turn in a piece that they wrote and created.
36 There were guidelines, of course, but overall, the assignment was always due a couple of days before Back-to-School Night.
37 Years ago I secured two magazine racks from the school librarian, who was happy to get rid of them. So during Back-to-School season, my students made magazines, worked on them in class, and then shared them with one another. I would set my room up like a store display, which I learned from my years working souvenir stands at nearly every stadium and event in the Bay Area. I knew a good display sold products. Magazine stands worked immeasurably well for display purposes.
38 Back-to-School Night was an exhausting event; is to most teachers, parents, and staff. I spent almost an entire week getting my classroom spiffy and shiny, and when the magazines arrived, I staged everything. Parents came in and saw the magazines, with tons of selfies, pictures, articles, advertisements and all the rest. They always appreciated walking into my classroom after their own long days. I always appreciated parents who could come over and visit. Back-to-School night was exhausting, but usually rewarding to both parents and students.
39 Seasonal. You get free advertising from every store in America. Back-to-School is a business. Think about it.
40 So is Halloween. Free advertising from every grocery store and CVS in America.
41 And so this is Halloween season. Make no mistake. Oh, they already have turkeys and plates, and I've even seen some Christmas displays, but some of those were shamelessly displayed in July.
42 But this is the season of Halloween. The fact that King made references to both poltergeists AND to telekinesis becomes significant, especially when we consider what I have come to call Heidi trips, Heidi being a possible poltergeist who haunted the Yerba Buena High School Theatre.
43 And telekinesis? Some people reading this out there might remember the umbrella that used to hang upside down in the piano lab at the school. It used to spin slowly to the right. It would then reach a peak, and move slowly back to the left.
44 Once in a while it would stop.
45 During my prep period, I would often look up and, as a lark, command it to move right, left or simply to halt.
46 Of course I could anticipate the right and the left. Simple science.
47 I had read a little about telekinesis just fishing through Barnes and Noble, or libraries, and later on, through the internet. There are guys who give lessons on how to do that stuff.
48 The Catholic boy in me didn't want to mess with stuff that is supernatural, but I would still find myself staring up at that upside-down umbrella.
49 And I would command in my own frabjous head, Move right, Move left, Stop.
50 It would follow those commands.
51 Every now and then a student would come over to my desk with a question. I would look up and say, "Did you know I could move that umbrella with my mind?"
52 People who know me know that isn't an unusual thing for me to say quietly. The students became amused. You don't do that in front of an entire group, because it just won't work. But a student I could trust would get it. And it worked around 90% of the time. I would say, "right" and it would move right. I would then say "left" and it would usually slow its movement right, hesitate, and then move to the left. Again, that's just scientific. The "stop" command was the killer.
53 This is the absolute truth: when I would say, "Stop," the thing would hesitate, and then stop. I have tons of witnesses.
54 Could I do that with a pencil? No. Could I do that with a light piece of paper? No.
55 But the umbrella?
56 Welcome to October. You'll be meeting a girl named Heidi in the coming weeks. I think you'll like her. If she exists.
57 I gottago.
58 See you again.
59 Peace.
29 The rest is history. Like Tan's The Joy Luck Club, King's Carrie went what we now call viral. Both author's experienced tremendous frustration getting words to go the right way. King wrote of the rejection notices he eventually hung from a spike on a wall.
30 Writing is not for the faint of heart, that's for darn certain.
31 Moving On, Part the Thoid: King's amusing narrative came to me yesterday at a perfect time. With all of the changes in my life lately, I had to keep checking my phone to see what day of the week it was, and what time it was, and what month and all. It's easy to lose track normally, but when life shifts, nothing is normal.
32 While balancing my laptop, mouse, and King's On Writing while sitting in a backyard folding chair, I glanced at my phone and noticed it was October 1.
33 It is around this time of year that I would begin thinking about how to go into my Halloween unit. I used to teach seasonally. In late August, for example, I would have my students work on creating their own magazines. The articles in the magazines would be considered expository essays. The term "magazine article" is more real to students; the term "expository" is at best mechanical, and at worst intimidating.
34 And the word "essay" could put a cheetah to sleep.
35 Magazines they could relate to. They would need to turn the finished "essays" into me a few days before they would turn their magazines in. The essays were formal; the magazines creative. For inspiration,they could look at magazines in stores, in beauty shops, in doctor's offices, or in tree houses. They could work in groups, but each student had to turn in a piece that they wrote and created.
36 There were guidelines, of course, but overall, the assignment was always due a couple of days before Back-to-School Night.
37 Years ago I secured two magazine racks from the school librarian, who was happy to get rid of them. So during Back-to-School season, my students made magazines, worked on them in class, and then shared them with one another. I would set my room up like a store display, which I learned from my years working souvenir stands at nearly every stadium and event in the Bay Area. I knew a good display sold products. Magazine stands worked immeasurably well for display purposes.
38 Back-to-School Night was an exhausting event; is to most teachers, parents, and staff. I spent almost an entire week getting my classroom spiffy and shiny, and when the magazines arrived, I staged everything. Parents came in and saw the magazines, with tons of selfies, pictures, articles, advertisements and all the rest. They always appreciated walking into my classroom after their own long days. I always appreciated parents who could come over and visit. Back-to-School night was exhausting, but usually rewarding to both parents and students.
39 Seasonal. You get free advertising from every store in America. Back-to-School is a business. Think about it.
40 So is Halloween. Free advertising from every grocery store and CVS in America.
41 And so this is Halloween season. Make no mistake. Oh, they already have turkeys and plates, and I've even seen some Christmas displays, but some of those were shamelessly displayed in July.
42 But this is the season of Halloween. The fact that King made references to both poltergeists AND to telekinesis becomes significant, especially when we consider what I have come to call Heidi trips, Heidi being a possible poltergeist who haunted the Yerba Buena High School Theatre.
43 And telekinesis? Some people reading this out there might remember the umbrella that used to hang upside down in the piano lab at the school. It used to spin slowly to the right. It would then reach a peak, and move slowly back to the left.
44 Once in a while it would stop.
45 During my prep period, I would often look up and, as a lark, command it to move right, left or simply to halt.
46 Of course I could anticipate the right and the left. Simple science.
47 I had read a little about telekinesis just fishing through Barnes and Noble, or libraries, and later on, through the internet. There are guys who give lessons on how to do that stuff.
48 The Catholic boy in me didn't want to mess with stuff that is supernatural, but I would still find myself staring up at that upside-down umbrella.
49 And I would command in my own frabjous head, Move right, Move left, Stop.
50 It would follow those commands.
51 Every now and then a student would come over to my desk with a question. I would look up and say, "Did you know I could move that umbrella with my mind?"
52 People who know me know that isn't an unusual thing for me to say quietly. The students became amused. You don't do that in front of an entire group, because it just won't work. But a student I could trust would get it. And it worked around 90% of the time. I would say, "right" and it would move right. I would then say "left" and it would usually slow its movement right, hesitate, and then move to the left. Again, that's just scientific. The "stop" command was the killer.
53 This is the absolute truth: when I would say, "Stop," the thing would hesitate, and then stop. I have tons of witnesses.
54 Could I do that with a pencil? No. Could I do that with a light piece of paper? No.
55 But the umbrella?
56 Welcome to October. You'll be meeting a girl named Heidi in the coming weeks. I think you'll like her. If she exists.
57 I gottago.
58 See you again.
59 Peace.
~H~
fin.
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