Recent Teacher AHA! Moments

In the last couple of months, we’ve had some great PD at our school. I like any PD in that it makes me question what I do, but I really love good PD that inspires me, reminds me, or gives me a good poke. We’ve had three different visitors: Ellin Keene,  Reading Consultant, Ron Ritchart of the Cultures of Thinking Project, and Ruben R. Puentedura, creator of the SAMR ladder (see below).

Ellin Keene 

We were lucky to have a couple of sessions with Ellin Keene. She’s a gifted speaker, and I could listen to her all day. She’s warm, funny, down-to-earth, and she really knows her stuff. Our sessions reminded me of the reading teacher I used to be, back when I was lucky enough to be able to include a reading hour and a writing hour every day. She taught a lesson in my classroom, and my students were enthralled. Her focus was inferring, and she used the first poem from Jacqueline Woodson’s award-winning Brown Girl Dreaming. She challenged my students by asking them to bring what they thought, felt, and believed to their discussion and writing. Their discussions were very insightful.

Here are some of my take-aways:

• Kids don’t improve as readers by being tested more. (Duh!) Research shows that the most significant factor in student improvement in reading is time. They need to practice. Choice improves comprehension. Kids need extended time every day.
• She shared a great model of conferencing with kids about their reading, checking in on their progress in individual and class reading goals.
• I want to get back to this: Students construct a portfolio of responses, including written, visual, artistic, drama pieces, as assessment. I used to do that!
• It’s all about the thinking.
• A reminder: Proficient readers infer, ask questions, determine importance, active background knowledge, determine importance, create images, and monitor for meaning.

I took pages of notes and was quite inspired. I was very pleased, too, that she spoke to our whole faculty, not just the Language Arts teachers.

Practice: My 7th-graders are working on their Champion projects at the moment—researching the life of someone who embodied creativity, resilience, compassion, and collaboration. We’re about to start the creative stage of the project: constructing a multi genre research project. I always tell my class to imagine finding a box under their subject’s bed, full of mementos of their life: what would be in it? Last week, my students were researching, and I focused on the strategy of determining importance. I stopped them and asked them to write on a post-it note how they decided what to include in their notes. Many came up with great criteria: Is it something that impacted the direction of her life? Is it related to creativity, resilience, compassion, or collaboration? Is it something for which he is famous? Was I still thinking about it the next day? I  saw an instant picture of their metacognitive skills and was able to work closely with those students who needed some direction.

This kind of strategy is not new to me, but I really did need a reminder of what I used to do.

Ron Ritchart

My teaching philosophy largely developed at my previous school in Australia, where thinking and the teaching of thinking were highly valued. Listening to Ron Ritchart made me a little nostalgic. His work at Harvard in the Visible Thinking Project is a little different though. Back in the old country, we used a lot of ‘thinking strategies’, but the Visible Thinking Routines really go a little deeper. He talked about the concept of enculturation: learning through the culture in which we live and work.

Here are some of my take-aways:

• Getting kids to think and understand is a social practice.
• The culture we create in our classrooms is teaching our students, regardless of our intentions.
• It’s all about the questions.
• Teens who are free to argue at home develop skills that will help them stand up to others when they need to.
• Great question: What makes you say that?
• The importance of a growth mindset.

Practice: I used the See, Think, Wonder Routine with my Champion researchers. I asked them to try to identify a turning point in their subject’s life. What would it look like? What does the student think about it? What does the student wonder about it? I was pleased with their ideas, and I think it will help them construct more meaningful artifacts of their subjects’ lives. My 8th graders have just read Of Mice and Men, and in our last lesson, after reading a slightly abridged version of ‘I’m not a tart: The feminist sub-text of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men‘, students paired up for a written conversation. Next we’ll read ‘The Impact of the Great Depression on Families‘, and students will use the Chalk Talk thinking routine to compare male gender roles in the 30s to today.

Ruben R. Puentedura

What an interesting guy. He was here in Hong Kong for the 21C Learning Conference, and we were lucky to be able to have a session with him after school. His SAMR ladder relates to the different levels of integrating technology. Hurray! I was pleased to listen to someone who incorporated thinking and rigor into use of technology. We’ve all seen so many apps and tools that are really just a substitute for writing on paper or drawing with pencils. The SAMR model breaks tech use into four levels:

I thought this was brilliant! He went into detail for each level, and his blog has lots of links and resources.

The big takeaway:

The most meaningful integration of technology is when the technology actually shapes the task.

Practice: I pinched his example of using Comic Life, and had my 8th graders make pages using their vocab words. I then collated them into a comic book on Google Presentation, which became their resource for that cycle. They really enjoyed it, and almost all of them learned all 40 words in about 8 days. This cycle, I’ve decided to use film, and we’re doing something I’m calling Stand-Up Vocab. I’m filming and then editing students’ 15-second performances using iMovie to create our class film.

This idea of using tech to shape a task is exciting, and I’m going to squeeze my brain to find ways to do it more often and more effectively.

I feel as if I’ve been richly fed in the last couple of months, and I’m glad I’ve finally been able to get some notes down.

Oh! I’m writing again:) More on that later. Boy do I have a whacky idea…

A veteran teacher turned coach shadows 2 students for 2 days – a sobering lesson learned

This is from Grant Wiggins’ blog, written by an anonymous HS learning coach who shadowed students for two days. It’s an authentic teacher perspective of student experience. It gave me cause for pause.

Granted, and...

The following account comes from a veteran HS teacher who just became a Coach in her building. Because her experience is so vivid and sobering I have kept her identity anonymous. But nothing she describes is any different than my own experience in sitting in HS classes for long periods of time. And this report of course accords fully with the results of our student surveys. 

I have made a terrible mistake.

I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. It was so eye-opening that I wish I could go back to every class of students I ever had right now and change a minimum of ten things – the layout, the lesson plan, the checks for understanding. Most of it!

This is the first year I am working in a school but not teaching…

View original post 1,853 more words

Creating a Reading Culture

A Facebook post by NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) this week made me think about my students’ home reading. In the linked article, parents were complaining about excruciatingly tedious tasks their children were given to track their reading. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big believer in tracking what my middle school students read, but it’s as simple as noting titles and authors. It can lead to reflection and discussion and helps students see patterns and movement in their reading choices.

But daily recording and written responses? As a reader, I can’t think of anything worse than having to record time spent and pages read every single day in addition to some kind of summary or other ‘activity’. It’s unappealing to me as an adult, and it would have been torture for me as a kid.

So how do you get students to read? Create a reading culture. How do you do that? Here’s what works with my middle school students:

1. Be a reader yourself. Love reading. Read what you love; get excited about what you’re reading. Consider joining a book club. Join Goodreads. Follow authors on Facebook. Read whenever and wherever you can. Fall in love. Sigh.

2. Let your students know that you love reading. If you’re not passionate about it, see suggestion number 1.

3. Subscribe to Publisher’s Weekly and School Library Journal. You’ll get regular emails about debut authors, favorite authors’ new books, new books in series, author events, and much more. Find out what’s going on and pass on irresistible tidbits to your class.

4. Show book trailers. See if your librarian will show playlists of book trailers in the library before or after school, or during lunch. (Well made) Book trailers are so much more appealing than a jacket blurb. They’re exciting, they project a sense of the voice, characters and conflict. Great for discussion! You’re welcome to use any or all of my playlists. I’ve got dozens and I add a new one most weeks:

5. Let students read every day, if possible.

6. Read aloud to them, no matter how old they are.

7. Applaud surreptitious reading! Ask your class,’ Who has ever read in the dark with a flashlight when you were supposed to be asleep? What other places have you read when you weren’t supposed to?’ They love this conversation. If no one has done it, challenge them!

8. Steal occasional class time for reading, just to show them that you can! I didn’t broadcast this at the time, but a few years ago, my eighth grade class were voting on the Kirkus Video Awards during class. They were enthralled by The Maze Runner trailer, and one student quickly and quietly found an excerpt on the publisher’s page. She asked if we could read the beginning, and the class all begged. Of course, I read it aloud. They loved it. Seizing the opportunity, I bought a digital version online, and we ditched our regular programming to read the whole book over a week. They raced in to class every day to find out what would happen next. I got a little behind in my already over-stuffed unit plan, but some of those kids turned into readers that week. I asked our wonderful librarian to order some for the library and they’ve been in constant demand ever since.

9. Let them read good literature in class. Let them be swept up in a narrative. Take them to another world. Give them a taste of the power of reading.

10. Get them talking about what they’re reading. Ask them to raise their hands if they’re reading a really great book? Ask them to tell the class why it’s so great.

11. Whip them into a frenzy when a new movie is coming out based on a book. When it comes out, make sure you’re there! Ask in class who’s seen it, and excitement will grow.

12. Find a way to bring authors to your school.

13. Find out about local author events and publicize them in your class. Go to them yourself, and then tell your students about your experience.

14. As a class, write to authors. So many MG and YA authors tweet, instagram, blog, and are on facebook! It’s easy to contact them personally in a way that didn’t previously exist. When I wrote to Neal Shusterman on his Facebook page and he responded, my classes were amazed that he was so accessible and interested in talking to readers.

15. If you have students who say they don’t like reading, spend some one-on-one time with them in the library. Find out what they’ve read recently, what kind of movies they love, and go from there. Build a stash of secret weapons for reluctant readers. Try Once by Morris Gleitzman, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, The Maze Runner by James Dashner, or Sold by Patricia McCormack. Find out what’s popular and push it.

16. Discourage students from thinking that 18th century books somehow make more virtuous reading choices. Students need to be challenged, but they can be challenged in many ways. My students in each year level construct a ‘Rich Reading’ list. They categorize books as follows:

• What books challenged you in terms of language?
• What books made you angry about injustice?
• What books helped you understand others and their struggles?
• What books broadened your understanding of politics, power, or ethics?
• What books increased your understanding of historical events?
• What books made you reflect deeply about your own experiences or beliefs?
• What books offered examples of excellent writing?
• What books had characters you could use as role models?

We review and update our lists frequently. Books suggested by multiple people are asterisked.

17. Try and get your whole school on board. If you can wangle a pajama day in which every teacher allots some class time on free reading, do it!

18. Let students read with a buddy or a small group. It doesn’t have to be organized with roles and tasks. Just give them a little time to talk to each other.

19. If you can afford it (or can find funds somehow), buy a new book that’s going to be popular (e.g. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green) and lend it to kids. I had an old Kindle that I used purely for lending to my students. They loved it. It meant that they could read it before it became available in the library. Unfortunately, one day it came to school with a broken screen. That’s life. Alternatively, if your local public library lends digitally, and you have an old reading device, use that.

20. Celebrate reading events. At my school, I organize an annual Reader’s Cup: a grade-level competition including games, puzzles, video challenges and other book-related tasks. It’s great fun.

21. Look for author webcasts in which your class can participate. A couple of years ago, Charlie Higson presented a webcast on ‘fear’ on October 31st. It aired in the afternoon in England, but in my region, it was on at about 10:00 at night. I held a Halloween event in my classroom, late at night. Kids came dressed up, bearing candy and Halloween treats. We submitted questions to Charlie Higson, and the kids were thrilled when he answered one of our questions and named our school. Afterwards, we watched the 1931 version of Dracula. It was a hoot. Warning: school is rather scary at 1 a.m.

22. In the US, you can occasionally obtain Advance Reader’s Copies of new books from publishers. This is advertised sometimes in Publisher’s Weekly newsletters, or you can approach publishing houses directly. Reading something before it’s publicly available is quite motivating.

23. Wherever possible, give students autonomy in their responses to what they’ve read. When it’s time to do a reading response to their home reading in class, make it engaging. Use hotseating, create videos, write scripts, or let them choose.

24. Be flexible in what students can read. Allow manga, comics, newspapers, magazines, foreign language books, graphic novels, and websites as a part of a balanced reading diet.

25. Make friends with local booksellers, or your school librarian ( I hope you have one…) and ask for book posters to put up in your classroom.

26. Every year, Teen Sync gives away two free audiobooks per week over the summer. Tell your students! Look for other local opportunities like this.

27. Teach students to look at ratings on Goodreads and Amazon and check out reviews.

28. Build a collection of excerpts (links to Amazon or publisher pages) so that students can read the first few pages before borrowing.

29. Introduce students to figment.com and other platforms on which students can publish their own writing and read and review the writing of peers.

30. When a student recommends a book to you, read it. In the last twelve months I’ve read two thrillers set in Cold War Russia and a novel in blank verse about the Manson murders, neither of which I would probably have chosen myself. If I want students to read some of my recommendations, I should be prepared to read some of theirs. In a culture of reading, you’re building a community.

Now I’m thinking about the copy of Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein, waiting for me on my bedside table…

Valentine Skull-Crackers and Killer Pens

Do you ever find out about something and realize that everyone else has known about it for years? I hate that. This week, as I was watching a medical drama (I’m a sucker for a found foot, larvae under the toenails, and all kinds of crazy that show up under ultra violet light), a character wielded a ‘sap’. It made me sit up straight. The characters talked about it like everyone must know someone who owns one. Writers are curious. I needed to know more.

Saps are impact weapons made from lead-filled leather, somewhere around six inches long. They used to be carried routinely by police, but now less so. They can crack a skull, break bones, and damage organs. You wanted to know that, right?

I had trouble believing such a small weapon could cause such damage, so I turned to YouTube. Thus began my descent into the nether world of personal weaponry. I know weapons aren’t funny, and I’m very much pro gun control, but I must admit I laughed. A lot. I don’t know why. It was often inappropriate.

This video explains what a sap is. It also offers some pretty Valentine-themed choices with embossed hearts:

This one, showing some classic sap moves, is somehow reminiscent of Napoleon Dynamite. Unfortunately, it was not embeddable, but I promise it’s worth it, if you want to see in which direction you should wave your sap.

The same guy demonstrates some serious coconut destruction with a different sap in this video:

Apparently it’s illegal to carry a sap in most US states. Wait. Does that mean they’re more dangerous than guns?

I moved on from saps to something that kept me busy for at least an hour: tactical pens, made by companies like Uzi and Smith and Wesson.

These pens come with optional ends: a glass breaker or a DNA collector (a crown-shaped gouger). I looked at these for so long that I started to want one. The most enjoyable part of looking at these on Amazon was the user reviews:

The point would deliver a very painful jab even though it’s not “sharp.” It makes a nice intermediate stage between pulling a tactical knife and the use of pepper spray, both of which I also carry. (Smith and Wesson Military and Police Tactical Pen: Black)

This is something every Girl or Lady should have handy and know how to use. The pen looks too girly to be tactical, but what you have here is a stout little impact weapon that can be carried pretty much everywhere, especially on planes or other areas where even a small folding knife is a no-go.(Schrade Tactical Pen: Pink With Hearts)

If placed in luggage, clipped to an envelope, it will slip though x-ray security scans. I take mine through security every day, so I have some way to defend myself on the subway before arriving at my locked-down office that uses x-ray and metal detector. No need for it once inside. (KZ Zombie Pen-Etrator Tactical Pen: Blue)

There is a wealth of quirky character ideas to be mined in Amazon reviews.

I guess this means that the pen really could be mightier than the sword, so long as you had the lid off, and your attacker was very close and unarmed. And maybe not looking. He or she THINKS you’re going to sign a check, but you’re about to inflict six inches of aircraft-grade grade aluminium. This is another good reason not to write with a blunt pencil.

This sub-culture of personal weaponry was at once repugnant and irresistible. I couldn’t stop! And actually I think I want to buy a tactical pen. The middle schoolers I teach would probably be impressed. And perfectly behaved. “Just let me get out my pen …” I didn’t know it, but maybe I really do need one. I’m feeling kind of under-weaponed.

I had to shut myself down last night after I spent another hour looking up easy homemade weapons. I live in one of the safest cities in the world, but if I were in the movies, I’d definitely want to make one of these, so long as I had some old planks hidden under the porch.

It’s difficult to explain why I found so many of these videos and comments funny. I’m telling you, I chuckled out loud. Often. I think it just seemed so unreal to me to be so worried about safety that I found it difficult to relate to or take seriously. What’s happened to the world? I know personal safety is a serious matter and that physical assault is no joke, but it’s hard for me to imagine living as fearfully as some of the people in these videos. As a writer, I find them very interesting. Are they really afraid of being attacked everywhere they go? Do they perhaps wish their lives were more like an action movie? Were they affected by something that happened to someone else?

I love to watch adventures and thrillers. Adore Jason Bourne. Envy Scarlett Johannson in The Avengers. I could never write it though. I grew up with guns, but I really don’t know how to write a scene with fighting or guns or other weapons. Yes, I fantasise about being caught up in some dangerous (but ultimately happily-ending) shenanigans, but, in reality, I fear I wouldn’t go into fight or flight so much as flee or pee.

Maybe I could manage a fight scene with spoons.

Goodbye Lizzie Bennet

Goodbye Lizzie. And Darcy. And Lydia, Jane, Bing, Charlotte, and all the rest. Episode 100: The End of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was uploaded to YouTube on Thursday. Almost one year after the first episode, it’s over.

I love Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

I love the fact that there are dozens of adaptations because we can’t let the original go. One of my favorites was Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. The Bennet girls wielded katanas and lace handkerchiefs – fantastic fun.

But The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, developed by Hank Green and Bernie Su, is the best of all. Why?

1. the story took a year to tell. I’m sure you’ve had this experience: You start reading a book and you can’t put it down . You find yourself instantly invested in the characters. You’re living in their world. You have to know what happens. You read the whole thing in one or two sittings, maybe when you’re supposed to be doing something else, maybe secretly, in the bathroom. And then it’s over and you grieve. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries stretched out what might have only lasted a few hours to a whole year. A year of living with the characters, their world, and their story. 

2. We were given brief story instalments. This is the flip side of the story taking a year to tell. If you’ve read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, you know what’s going to happen. You’re dying for it to happen. You cannot wait for Lizzie to meet Darcie. Who will they cast? Will he live up to Colin Firth? You cannot wait for the Lydia and Wickham debacle. How will they modernize it? Will I want to slap Lydia? When a five-minute episode ends with a knock at the door, it’s a deliciously excruciating agony to have to wait until the following Monday or Thursday.   

3. The characters are all likeable. Except George Wickham, obviously. We’re never, ever going to like George Wickham. In every adaptation, George Wickham is, and must remain, a pig. He will always be the opposite of William Darcy: a poseur. He’s cuter than usual in the LBD, but we always know it’s going to end badly. On the other hand, I’ve always found Lydia an annoying, extremely stupid character, but in this version, Lydia has a lot of depth, and the viewer can’t help but sympathize to some some degree. Even Caroline is a little more likeable than in the original story.

4. You don’t just get your LBD fix on YouTube. You can follow the characters on Twitter, or read their Tumblr posts. You can go to the LBD site. You can find actor/fan/character interaction. Pemberley Digital have their own website.There are even spin-off vlogs: Pemberley Digital’s channel, hosted by Gigi Darcy, and Lydia Bennet’s channel. You can join a discussion community. Now that it’s all over, I’m not only going to miss my YouTube twice weekly fix. I’m really going to miss the Facebook page Socially Awkward Darcy, whose daily fan posts have kept me going between Mondays and Thursdays. Does it have to end? This multi-platform drenching of LBD has made it not only a long-lasting pleasure, but one that can be experienced richly, in many ways. It’s like eating chocolate cake with chocolate ganache, chocolate sauce, shaved chocolate, and chocolate truffle ice cream while drinking chocolate milk through a chocolate straw. For a whole year.

5. Even though you know the story, it’s unpredictable. It’s not exactly the same as the original. I don’t want to spoil anything, but some plot points have been modernised to reduce your desire to hit some of the original characters over the head. In addition to changes in the setting so that it’s believably modern, it generally reflects contemporary attitudes to women, marriage, and work. In this context, Mrs Bennet is even funnier than in the original story. Don’t misunderstand: Even though some elements have been changed, the intention of every original plot point is still very visible. 

6.  The vlog creates the illusion that Lizzie Bennet is confiding in you, giving your viewing experience a sense of intimacy. You’re listening to Lizzie talk through her problems, and she often realizes things while she’s talking to you. There’s also an element of secrecy. She worries about certain characters watching the videos. Even though Lizzie talks about her viewers in the plural, it feels as if you’re part of a select inner circle. You’re Lizzie Bennet’s fake best friend—fun!

7. It’s Pride and Prejudice.

If you haven’t seen The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on YouTube, this long weekend is the perfect time to watch all of it. That’s what I’ll be doing.

Enjoy!

Luka Lesson

One of the greatest perks of my job as a teacher is author visits. Last week, Australian (Brisbane!) performance poet and 2011 Australian Poetry Slam winner Luka Lesson came to the high school library. His work inspired me to move forward on a writing project I’ve been stewing over. Confession: I’ve secretly harboured some prejudice towards rap. Sorry, rappers. My loss.

Luka Lesson calls himself poet, rapper, and artist. What he does is overpowering. His poetry is alive. It gets into all your senses.

When he writes/talks/performs about writing, it’s a passionate love affair. When his subject is juveniles being processed as adults in the Queensland legal system, it’s angry.  When his subject is love, it’s consuming.

And you feel it. Here he is performing in the 2011 Australian Poetry Slam.

On his site you can watch and read a lot of his work.

I take back everything I ever thought about rhyming and rhythmic poetry. Luka Lesson’s work is power.

Power to make you see. Power to make you feel. Power to make you get up and do something.

Here’s a snatch of his poem, “May Your Pen Grace the Page“:

May your pen express upon the page every feeling you’re in

May your white page – Yang

Love your black pen – Yin

May the ball in your ball point roll ‘cause that’s the point of the ball

And if we can’t make our points then what’s the point of it all?

My Parkour Career

I’m thinking about becoming a parkour expert. It’s not that hard. Watch this:

Just after I watched this video and several others, I wondered at exactly what point in my life I stopped wanting to do forward rolls. Can I get that back? As I was pondering this, waiting for my internet to blink back in, I turned to my iPhone for guidance. Look what came up.

I know. I didn’t believe it either. Right in front of me.

It isn’t spelled incorrectly. It’s spelled the French way—in its original form— which makes it an even more meaningful message from the universe. I have no idea what the correct answer is for the puzzle, but it clearly has something to do with balance, vision, and philosophical significance. Do you see it? My iPhone is telling me to take up parkour, less than three minutes after I was watching the youtube video.

Yes. I get that I might not, at first glance, seem like a typical parkour type, but let’s look at the facts: I know how to spell parkour, in BOTH English and French. I live in a city in which there are plenty of buildings, all of which have walls. I’ve watched my son play Assassin’s Creed. I’m very alert. The universe  wills it.

I’ll need some special gear. I’m thinking springy shoes:

Just for a little extra bounce. And I’ll need some very grippy gloves:

I’m going to be a little bit Lara Croft, a little bit Black Widow. I’ll probably look like this:

Except with better foundation garments. Or surgery.

Update: I just practiced rolling from left to right on my bed and I’m getting really fast. This is going to be awesome.

Querying Quandaries and a Slice of Orange

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve moved into the next stage of writing my YA novel, Orange. After I’d sat on it for a while and worked on feedback from a few people I trust who’d read the whole thing, I decided it was time to start querying. Two humdinger agents had been sitting on my middle grade novel, Samson Blake is Doomed, for several months, so I did the old query/nudge combo. I queried them about the new novel, while politely, gently reminding them about the old one.

Within a few days, one of them wrote back (via her assistant) and said that while she was passing on the old novel, she’d ‘LOVE” to see 75 pages of the new one at my ‘EARLIEST’ convenience (upper case added for effect). So I did a little dance and sent off the requested pages. This agent is fantastic and represents a Newberry winner. Plus, she’s a funny tweeter, which is important to me. And she’s from an uber agency.

While waiting to hear on that, I decided to start querying other agents, so last weekend, I wrote to ten great agents with the first five pages of Orange. A few days later, I heard back from one, and her assistant said the agent would love to see the entire manuscript. This agent is more than my dream agent. I danced again, threw my head back and let out a great big fat belly laugh, and sent off Orange. So now TWO humongously fantastic agents had either part or all of my novel.

A day or so after sending off the full manuscript to the second agent, I heard back from the first agent, via her assistant’s intern… The agent liked lots of things about it, but there were two things she was concerned about, and she suggested that I try rewriting in 3rd person to address these two issues, and then I could resubmit it. If you haven’t queried a million agents before, and received a million form rejections or no response at all, you might think that this is a less than great response. Agents, in fact, rarely give feedback, and the opportunity to resubmit is wonderful. That said, I’ve been mulling over the idea of rewriting in third person, and I don’t think I want to. I think I can address her concerns without doing that.

Now, I have a problem. One of the first agent’s concerns really resounded with me, because someone else in my critique group had felt quite strongly the same way. As I said, I think I can address this problem without rewriting in third person. In fact, I think I could sort this out over the weekend.

So … I don’t know whether to wait and see what the second agent thinks, or email her and ask her to hold off reading it while I make a few minor adjustments and resend. I’ll look like a sausage if I do that, but I only have one shot! I’m telling you—she’s amazing!

I hate writing queries, but I secretly enjoy the part where you start sending out your work and then drive yourself crazy checking your email constantly to see if anyone’s written back. It’s terrifying fun! While I haven’t found an agent yet, I have had quite a few agents request to see more work, and give me great feedback. The quality of my rejections is definitely on the up and up.

So you know what I’m talking about, in a whacky fit of risk-taking, here are the first few pages of Orange.

Chapter 1
I’ve been to 179 funerals in three years.

I know what I want and don’t want at my own. It’s not like I’ve got a Pinterest board, but when it’s my turn in the box, my best friend Marcus has a list that had better be followed. The first rule: Do not let the mortician do my make-up. I do not want the glow of the living.

You’ve seen it before. It’s a special kind of creepy when your great great aunt has suddenly regained the rosy youth she lost seventy years ago. It’s more disturbing when she’s wearing the dress she wore to your cousin’s wedding last month, and—despite the cherry red lips (she wore the palest of pinks in life), she looks ready to reach out and tug at your skirt hem, telling you some things should remain a mystery.

She won’t. She can’t. She’s dead.

I’m sitting at the back of Roseleaf Memorial Chapel, a funeral home on the west side, with Marcus.

Gray-haired, pink-cheeked Arthur Stewart, the star of today’s program, definitely has the glow. He looks like a colorized version of the black and white photo that has been blown up to Broadway proportions on an easel next to the podium. His slightly younger self stands next to a car. No smile. No dog. No one else.

There are only eight people in the pews in front of us.

No matter the size of the audience, the deceased will be glorified. I’ve seen it 179 times.

This man probably hadn’t heard from most of these people for years before his death. That’s the way it works. When you’re dead, people appear from far away and long ago, to see you shine brilliantly one last time before they move on in a world in which you no longer exist. They come to prove that there was a time when you were not dead. They want to assure themselves that you were real. It’s as if every action, every relationship, every achievement of your whole life is all compressed into 45 minutes of eulogies, photos, and tears, of which I’ve seen bucket loads.

Marcus and I don’t wear black. We wear our regular street clothes. He has cultivated a raw, scruffy look, and it suits him, but he tends to choose his least wrinkly jeans for our Saturday funerals. He’s tall and blond, and he looks great in pretty much anything he wears. I just try to look normal—a skirt, orange top, and print jacket. No one cares about what two teens up the back are wearing. People focus only on their own grief at funerals.

I know I did.

I am fifteen. I am sitting on a hard, wooden pew. I am tired. Silent. All I can see is coffins. Aunt Gina is crying. She is sitting right next to me but the sobs she is trying to stifle sound far away.

“Corinne,” whispers Marcus. “You go first.”

We’ve played this game a lot. “Acrobat,” I tell him. “He worked in the same circus for forty years.”

“No, everyone loves acrobats. The place would be packed. I’m thinking more along the lines of organ pirate,” he says.
“Organ pirate?”

“He trafficked in human organs.”

“Organ pirate. Marcus? Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?”

Recorded panpipes surround us.

“Married?” I whisper.

“She left him because he was an alcoholic.”

“An alcoholic organ pirate. He’s in entry-level pine. Shouldn’t he have died rich? ”

“Some CEO came after him when he got a dud kidney,” says Marcus. “The business went bust. He started drinking.”

“Kids?”

“They hate him.”

“The car in the pic?”

“Totaled in a DUI.”

“Too obvious, Marcus,” I say. “He was a spy, as are four of the eight guests. He sacrificed his life for his country. Or for money. For something. He was a good guy, in a spy kind of way.”

Marcus looks at the mourners. “They’re not spies. Look at them.”

“Really? What do spies look like?”

“Spies don’t wear mothballed suits from 1973 to a funeral.”

“The clever ones do.”

The minister begins. “We will remember Arthur Stewart as a quiet man who never harmed anyone.”

“Don’t let them say that about me,” I whisper.

“Arthur Stewart grew up on the family apple orchard,” the minister says, “working in the business into adulthood. He loved the land, and when the business failed, Arthur fell upon hard times.”

“You’re right,” I tell Marcus. “Alcoholic.”

He nods, and we listen to the rest of the eulogy, which takes about 60 seconds. We’re then treated to a staticky recording of Amazing Grace on the bagpipes, after which tea, coffee, and store-bought choc chip cookies are served.

We eat a couple of cookies. No one speaks to us. Sometimes you can’t get away from people during the refreshments phase. They need to ask you how you knew the dead person. They want to connect all the dots between the people at the funeral—draw some giant web of the deceased’s life, to hold on to them a little more tightly, for a little longer.

Not today.

The Unfollowing

Politics, racism, anti-Islam, anti-refugee, anti-women, and other hate posts: I banish you from my Newsfeed.

I’m okay with pandas, bizarre news articles, and time-lapse photography. I just wish it weren’t so easy to shoot misattributed, illogical garbage around the globe as fast as you can click ‘share’.

I understand that Facebook has many functions (How’s it going?): keeping people aware of what you’re eating, posting pics, passing on things that amaze, sharing private griefs, telling the whole world when your relationship ends, expressing indignation, even anger. Here’s the problem: We’re not all angry about the same things.

Maybe we need to bring back the wooden soapbox. If people used a real soapbox instead of Facebook, they’d have to actually think through what they were going to say, rather than hit ‘share’.  Instead of finding my newsfeed full of hand-me-down hate rants and misattributed baloney, I could make a choice to go and listen to what someone had to say.  I could question their sources and argue with them. I’d know whose thoughts belonged to whom. Angry ideas wouldn’t sit on someone’s page for all digital eternity. It might be fun. We might even go and get lunch afterwards. I guess they could also start a blog.

I know. I’ve been on my own Facebook soapbox many times. My in-some-instances probably liberal views have no doubt aggravated many friends, but they’ve politely refrained from commenting. Me? I can’t leave it alone. I can be a self-righteous, priggish know-it-all, and it’s driving me crazy. My favorite website in the world? (after the weather ) Snopes: buster of all online hoaxes. I can look up its references. I can find out for myself. That’s good. I can’t stop myself from sharing it with almost religious fervor. That’s annoying.

The Facebook usage agreement prohibits hate speech. What does Facebook consider to be hate speech? Content that attacks people based on their actual or perceived race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or disease is not allowed. 

Part of the hate-on-facebook problem is that perhaps people don’t always realize that what they’re posting is hate-driven. For them, it’s fear-driven. People are scared of a lot of stuff and a lot of people. I’m sure that my friends who share anti-people posts don’t see it as hate speech.

I know I post too much. No doubt the volume of my posts has been enough to send some of my ‘friends’ screaming towards the ‘unfollow’ button. Yeah. Sorry about that. Maybe others see things I’ve passed on and think, “Will she just shut up?”

Maybe we should be allowed to post whatever we want, but I’ve always felt strongly that freedom of speech should not extend to hate speech. I’m not American, but I think freedom of speech is a universal notion.

Do you get hate speech in your Newsfeed? How do you deal with it? Is it cowardly to unfollow someone without explaining why?

Never swim with a Sim

Recently, two of my three children were home. We had a lovely week of cave time: eating, sleeping, reading, writing (that was me), watching, playing, (that was them), and more eating. My daughter, 19, and my son, 16, pulled out Sims, a game they used to play a lot when they were younger.

Apparently it’s tough being a parent in Sims. It’s a lot of work. It makes you tired, frustrated, and the kids drive you crazy. You have to press buttons to feed them, clothe them, educate them. One of my kids told me that after you’ve picked the baby’s name and outfit, they’re no more fun. After that they’re annoying and they make you tired and hungry and you don’t have time to clean the shower and the toilet gets clogged. And Sims toddlers have to be potty trained. Oh! The list goes on and on! It’s a nightmare!

My kids worked out a long time ago that there are ways to get around your problems in the Sims. For instance, if you stop your Sims kids from doing their homework, and keep feeding them spaghetti, and put their books away when they’re supposed to read, eventually the ‘social welfare people’ will come and take the SIMS kids away. Hurray!

Since no one but you can activate instructions regarding your babies, you can actually leave your littlies on the sidewalk outside your house, when you go to check the mail. And since no one can interact with you when they come to your house unless you officially greet them, you can just leave the baby outside and refuse to greet the social welfare person who comes to reprimand you.

When parenting really gets to be too much, you can just speed up time and make the hard stuff pass faster. Of course, all of life generally happens faster. One morning, my daughter came down and said that her Sim character, a pregnant mother, made spaghetti and put it on the dining table. She clutched her stomach and became uncontrollable. The Sims game gave the kids the instruction to cry softly, and the whole family went into the living room. The grim reaper turned up and turned the mother character into an urn. The children’s instruction continued to be to cry softly, but the father swung between crying and laughing. The game instructed him to call a therapist. Fun stuff!

Sims teaches other lessons about life. The people aren’t real, so almost anything goes. My son learned ages ago that if someone really annoyed you, you could simply build a swimming pool, invite the offender to go swimming, and then delete the ladder. Sims can’t dog-paddle indefinitely. My daughter came up with another equally good plan. You build a room, put the annoying SIM character in it, throw fire crackers in, and keep instructing the character to play with them. Voila!

I just don’t get why people want to play games that simulate everyday life. And I’ve got doubts about the morals the game teaches. Got a problem with your boss? Invite her to come see your firecrackers. That thing you’re responsible for? Ditch it. The hard stuff? Rip through it at triple time. There’s something Twilight Zone about this virtual experiment in adulthood.

Maybe I should encourage them to play Assassin’s Creed instead. Blood? Sure. But killing the enemy with a sword seems less brutal than inviting them to go swimming.

Wrinkles, hemorrhoids, apostrophes, and millionaires

While on break, I suppose I’ve been more relaxed, and, for the first time, I’ve started to notice how ridiculous a lot of the ads are on my Facebook feed.

I have two concerns. First, I can only imagine that certain words in my statuses, or my friends, have triggered particular ads. That said, I’ve never had hemorrhoids. And I don’t remember writing about wrinkles. Perhaps Facebook made that decision based on my profile. My second concern is the images that are thrown up with the ads. Sometimes they just make no sense.

For your viewing pleasure, here are some the ads that have popped up on my feed over the last couple of weeks.

I kind of want to go to the apostrophe workshop.

Merry Christmas. Write your report cards.

Christmas vacation: one week of eating, sleeping, reading, watching, writing, reading, some more eating and sleeping; one week of grading, grading, and grading. Here’s what I’ve achieved. The dalek is real.

If it means anything to you, most of the pile is writing. Stupid, stupid. Every semester I say I won’t collect writing in the final week, but I always do it. Half of this pile is NaNoWriMo excerpts. I was thrilled with what my students wrote!

This afternoon, I grumbled all the way to my classroom and started working out final grades and tidying comments. I was working away busily in my classroom when the door rattled. I ignored it – the wind, no doubt. A minute later I heard someone try the handle. As far as I knew I was the only person at school. Loud banging followed. The guards wouldn’t bang like that. I couldn’t see anyone through the glass panel next to the door. I carefully opened it and saw—

My Power Ranger son, accompanied by my human daughter, had come to visit me. After peanut butter and Vita Wheats,  they lured me into watching funny cat videos and Ellen’s greatest pranks. Two hours later, they’ve gone home, and I’m still procrastinating. Not my fault. The blog was really overdue.

They’re going to call me when dinner’s ready.

What have I achieved in the last two weeks?

I did quite a bit of editing on my own NaNoWriMo novel in the first week and sent it to two people I trust. They really liked it. I’m a bit torn about how to proceed with revisions.

I’ve seen a ton of movies: Les Mis (Yay!), The Hobbit, Life of Pi, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, The Andromeda Strain (1971) and today I discovered Portlandia.

I’ve also been reading a lot over the last couple of weeks:

Delirum and Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver: Absolutely loved these.

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver: I didn’t love this one as much at first, because the MC is quite awful at the start of her journey, but I warmed to it. It’s great.

The Power of Six by Pittacus Lore: Fast fun. I think I like those books because I wish I was one of the ten. No burning scars, though. I guess my powers could still kick in.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: I thought the best way to start this book was to sneak into the school library after dark and steal it. I might not have super powers but I do have keycard access to the library. Kind of the same, don’t you think? And don’t worry. I left a note for the librarian. I’m really enjoying this. It’s pace is very gentle—I’m about two thirds through, and the mood is brilliant. It’s magic in the Victorian, mysterious sense. Love it.

Now I’d really better get to work, or the spaghetti will be cooked and I’ll have nothing to show for it.

Happy New Year!

Winning NanoWriMo

I did it. I won NaNoWriMo. It was a fantastic, crazy, all-consuming Herculean task. On one forum where I often lurk, someone started a thread asking people what they’ve learned during NaNoWriMo. Here’s what I learned.

If you’re the kind of writer who likes to spend half an hour crafting one sentence, you’re in for a shock. It’s a completely different experience to just turn on the word taps and let them gush. You have much less control. You have to trust your brain to keep pouring. Later you can sift it, and see what’s valuable, but in the process, you just gush. Yes, you find yourself thinking about the novel a lot between writing sessions, trying to plan it, but once you’re sitting at your laptop, clock ticking, you just have to let it flow.

This kind of pressure can lead you to places you didn’t expect. When forced, characters may reveal things about themselves that you had no idea about. Your ideas, by necessity rushing onto the screen, may forge their own paths, taking you, quite possibly, into a completely different novel. This is incredibly exciting.

About halfway in, I stopped thinking about it as a ‘first draft’ and thought of it instead as a giant free write. I could experiment—try things as they popped into my head.

There were two downsides for me. I accept that I will have to restructure the plot. No problem. What was a problem, under pressure, was maintaining both authorial and character voice. Even if the plot is completely flexible, I like to create vivid, individual characters. I didn’t always. Hence, I have revision notes like: Give Bob a personality. Yeah. That’s a big one.

I’ve started reshaping and revising. I still like the first chapter. It’s certainly the chapter that was the most planned. What I need to do is build from there. Off it goes to the critique group this week.

Here’s my new opening: I’ve been to 179 funerals in three years, and this is what I know: No matter how happy, sad, pretty, plain, corrupt, saintly, or anything else you were in life, at your funeral, you will be a star.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. It’s a wonderful writing challenge.

Am I sad it’s over? Yes. It was motivating knowing that there were thousands of other writers like me, all pushing themselves to achieve the same crazy goal.

An unexpected perk: Now that it’s over, I can’t believe how much free time I have. What on earth did I do before Nano?

Make her a little more obsessed with death

I said I wouldn’t keep writing about nanowrimo, but since it’s two weeks since I blogged, I thought it might be all right. It’s not like anyone has to read daily updates. Be grateful. At this minute, I’m at 22,000 words—about 6,000 behind, I think. Parent Conferences—83 in 3 days last week—burnt me out, and I’m just recovering. But I’ve been thinking. And watching movies that may prove useful. And ten minutes ago, I promised by nanowrimo buddy that in ten minutes I’d be working hard at it, and here I am, not working hard at it.

One thing I find challenging in nanowrimo is that in order to write 50,000 words, you absolutely do not have time to go back and revise. Perhaps if you don’t have to go to work, you might be able to, but this is not my situation. Not, not, not my situation. One way I cope with this is to keep a list of revision instructions to remind me of things I need to fix after November.

So, here’s my revision list:

• Add writing quotes (Looking back, I have no idea what this means. Drat.)
• Sort out the time continuity
• When Corinne and Marcus spin around on the grass, describe it in more detail
• Make her a little more obsessed with death
• Give her flashbacks of her life – bit by bit.
• Change from Marcus mom’s car to his mom’s old car.
• Make sure each day starts with a msg from Marcus
• Have her take a sweater to the party so she can use it to staunch S’s bleeding
• Go back and have the doctors take an x-ray of Shanelle’s head, rather than a scan, and keep her in overnight. They’ll decide tomorrow whether or not she needs a scan. She goes home in the morning.
• She is in French class in Chapter 11. Add that earlier.
• Compare Shanelle to Barbie
• Don’t make Marcus into the sufi religion so much. Just whirling. The Eat Pray Love lady is into Sufi poetry☹
• Change her AP English novel from 1984 to A Room With a View.
• Make her lie about year book club. She hasn’t really been going. She just says she is. The counselor calls her in about it. She also purposely doesn’t go to her college planning meetings.
• Make sure Corinne and Shanelle are in the same English class.

Riveting, non?

I just thought of a better way to start this blog, but I’m not going back. I’ll add it to my revision list.

Here is one of my favorite sentences:

“Make up your mind. Is he a German or a battery hen?”

Back to it.

NaNoWriMo

My 84 students are all participating in Young Writers’ NaNoWriMo this month. I hadn’t really intended to do it myself; I have to support my students, after all, but one thing led to another. The support teaching materials are wonderful, and I just couldn’t resist the pull. The biggest challenge is that adult NaNoWriMo participants have to write 50,000 words during November.

This doesn’t really sit well with my writing style. I usually revise as I go, always starting the day’s work by reading the previous day’s work, but when you have to write about 1,700 words per day, you just don’t have time to do that. If every day was a Saturday or Sunday—sure, but I seem to have a lot of Mondays through Fridays in between.

The day before NaNoWriMo started, I realized that I didn’t actually have a plot. I liked my premise, but I didn’t know what was going to happen. We’d discovered in our classes that it was fun to work out what our protagonists’ most basic needs were, using an updated Maslow’s Hierarchy. This had me stumped, and I stewed over this for several days. I didn’t have time to do any planning the night before, either, because a) it was Halloween and b) something possessed me earlier in the day and I decided to make all of my 84 students a little NaNoWriMo Survival Kit. This took about five hours longer than expected and I went to bed exhausted, planless, and just a bit cranky that I hadn’t had the time to do my full witch getup. Poo.

Today it’s the end of Day 4, and I’m on 5057 words. It’s a little under par, but not too much. I’ve learned that the secret to my success to to follow a plan. I’m terrified that at the end of the month I’ll have unusable rubbish, so I’m using every spare minute to think ahead. I learned tonight that there are tons of NaNoWriMo-ers in Hong Kong. Can’t wait to get together for a writing session or two.

Here’s my first sentence:

I’ve been to 179 funerals in three years, and I can tell you that the most alive you will ever be is at your own funeral.

I promise not to write about NaNoWriMo every month.

The Wondrous Colm Toibin

I’m a bit of an author groupie. I admit it. There’s nothing better than listening to an author talk about how and why s/he does what s/he does. So, last week, when I had the opportunity to go and listen to Colm Toibin, author of one of my favorite books, Brooklyn, I was ridiculously excited. When a friend offered a VIP ticket, I was dizzy!

First: his name. In the Australian Radio National interview, below, you’ll see he says something like ‘collum toe bean’. Those are terrible phonetics, but I think you get it.

Here are the main ideas I took away from the public discussion at City University here in Hong Kong. Please note that this represents how I understood what he said. It may not be exactly what he intended!

On mothers as characters:
As characters, mothers can get in the way. They replace indecision and they can be an obstacle in a son or daughter’s journey. He said that characters need to grow away from their parents to become themselves.

On the difference between fiction and theatre:
Fiction lends itself to a lack of communication in a way that theatre can’t.

On home:
He said someone once said that home is where the heart breaks. He said home is where you keep your CDs. When he arrives in the US (where he teaches part of the year), the next morning, he misses Ireland. He misses things he doesn’t even like, like Irish bread. Out of this, he creates a short story every year. He talked about how, as a child, his family in Wexford would travel to the coast every year. His mother made them swim even if it was raining. He didn’t like it – it was miserable, but later, living in Dublin, he missed those beach holidays. He built a house on the cliffs where they’d holidayed as children. It’s kind of miserable, but when he’s not there, and he thinks of it, he likes it. When he stays there, the morning after he arrives, he wishes he were back in Dublin. He reminded us of Thomas Wolfe’s take: You can never go home. Colm said home is a place of the soul. He knows it and it knows him. He said he can’t work with a character at home. He needs to take them out—they need the displacement.

On writing female characters:
He said men often don’t talk about important things. Women worry about things. They’re more interesting to write because everything is a decision.

On writing what’s in the shadows:
Rather than write about the new marriage in Pride and Prejudice, he’d be interested in what happens five years later. He said love is of no use to a novelist. He wants to know what it’s like on a Monday. He’s interested in broken things and shadows—they’re much more interesting. (This was my favorite part.)

On writing a novel:
The idea of imagining others is a terribly important skill—desperately important. An idea’s not enough to write a novel. The characters have to move into a rhythm. The piece has to move of its own accord. It becomes something that matters. Take the first idea or paragraph as a gift and then work hard.

You must tell a story that you should not tell, must not tell. Break the rules. Open things up for people. Use parts of yourself that everyone else keeps secret. Reveal yourself. Our calling is a very serious one. Writing is rewriting and reading.

On writing the end to a novel:
It can’t be planned in too much detail. If you have an image of what the end has to look like, you’re condemning it. You need a looseness in your character development. See where it takes you. Don’t force the structure. The ending has to be organic rather than deliberate. He likes to find a way to vaguely establish some kind of future for the character—a door slightly open. You need an honest friend to read your ending. He said there’s no good ending for a book.

On his writing practice:
He said excuses are rubbish. In Barcelona, he went back to writing longhand. He said that even if you have to work in a windowless room, get down and do it. Reward yourself as necessary— for instance, with chocolate or checking email. We fight a constant battle against laziness and excuses. You can always find an hour in the day. There’s only one way to work. It’s to work.

I love the idea of writing what’s in the shadows. You can really feel that in Brooklyn. I felt often, while I was reading it, that the story was actually happening between the words. You understand so much that is not said. He’s really a great writer.

ABC Radio National Interview:

The Mousetrap, Gangnam Style

This has been a week of wonders. On Tuesday night I got to see The Mousetrap, here in Hong Kong. Last night was my favorite night of the month—my SCBWI critique dinner, and on Friday night I’m going to a free session with Colm Toibin, who wrote the brilliant Brooklyn. And yet one more writing delight: yesterday, a student brought me a cupcake with my initials frosted on top.

The Mousetrap was fun. It’s not Wicked, or Macbeth, or Much Ado About Nothing. I think its greatest claim to fame is that it’s been performed for 60 years straight. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t overwhelmed. It’s a cozy little thing.

Perhaps my expectations were a tad quashed when I learned that the cast was ‘mostly South African’. I wanted ‘entirely West Endian’. The actors were fine, though. I would like to talk about the plot, but, as after all performances of the play, one of the actors asked the audience to please never reveal the identity of the murderer. Since I quite enjoy being one of the select millions who share the secret behind the mystery, I won’t breathe a word.

The evening’s drama began ten minutes before curtain. My 16-year-old son and I arrived at the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, and in the foyer, a crowd of photographers and journalists had gathered around someone in front of The Mousetrap posters. It was impossible to see who it was until we were halfway up the escalator, on the way to the Lyric Theater.

And that’s when I burst.

Me (loudly): It’s the Gangnam guy! It’s the Gangnam guy!
Son (quietly): It’s not the Gangnam guy.
Me (getting louder): It is! It’s Psy, the Gangnam guy from Korea!
Son (getting quieter): It’s not the Gangnam guy.

At the top of the escalator, I turned around and went straight back downstairs, iPhone at the ready, completely ignoring my son’s warning that we would miss the start. The bell was ringing.

When I reached the crowd of journos and photographers, I held my iPhone up in the air and started clicking Psy and the two models/dancers/whatever that he was wearing. It’s hard to say at what point I realized it wasn’t Psy the Gangnam guy from Korea, but I was already committed to the shot.

He was definitely a little older than Psy. And he wasn’t doing anything Gangnam Style. Who was he? I had no idea. It was like running screaming up to someone in the street, hugging him or her, and realizing that he or she is a complete stranger. Horror hit me: what if one of these journos accidentally took a picture of me taking a picture of not-Psy the Gangnam guy? I’m just grateful I didn’t call out, “Psy! Psy!”

Trying to look as if I meant to take a picture of whoever this was, I swaggered back to the escalator. My son was waiting at a distance that stilled any suspicion that we were together. I walked past him and said quietly, “It’s not Psy the Gangnam guy.”

His response? “Gangnam style, Mum.”

Do you ever think I’ll hear the end of that?

Let me show you the facts.

Here is the picture I took. Well, one of them.

You did a double take, right?

At work the next day, I asked a couple of people if they could identity my idol. No. It wasn’t until my critique group on Wednesday night that someone clever recognized the mystery man: Cecil Chao, local tycoon. In Hong Kong, Mr. Chao is almost famous as Psy the Gangnam guy from Korea.

He recently made news by publicly offering over $60 million USD to anyone who  married his daughter. She’s gay and married, but he wants to find her a good husband. He’s quite the character.

May you never embarrass yourself in front of—well, behind—a news crew as I did.  To be sure we’re clear on this, study these photos.

This is Psy the Gangnam Guy:

This is Cecil Chao, tycoon and son-in-law hunter:

Psy. Cecil.

Psy. Cecil.

Gangnam Style, Mum.

Some Banned Book Week Bits

At the ALA website, you can follow a timeline graphic showing frequently challenged books over the last 30 years.

My favorite? 2001: Captain Underpants. Reason? Unruly behavior.

The ALA lists most frequently challenged books, year by year:

2011

1. ttyl; ttfn; l8r, g8r (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
2. The Color of Earth (series), by Kim Dong Hwa
Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
3. The Hunger Games trilogy, by Suzanne Collins
Reasons: anti-ethnic; anti-family; insensitivity; offensive language; occult/satanic; violence
4. My Mom’s Having A Baby! A Kid’s Month-by-Month Guide to Pregnancy, by Dori Hillestad Butler
Reasons: nudity; sex education; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
Reasons: offensive language; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit; unsuited to age group
6. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; religious viewpoint
7. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Reasons: insensitivity; nudity; racism; religious viewpoint; sexually explicit
8. What My Mother Doesn’t Know, by Sonya Sones
Reasons: nudity; offensive language; sexually explicit
9. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily Von Ziegesar
Reasons: drugs; offensive language; sexually explicit
10. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
Reasons: offensive language; racism

Megan Cashman blogs about BBW, looking in particular at the banning of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harry Potter books, and The Giver.

Skylight Books’ Banned Books Display

I know what you read last summer

A week or so ago, I followed a link from Twitter to Slate Magazine. I don’t remember what I wanted to read, but that’s not really a problem, as you’ll see.

Over on the righthand side, Slate told me what my friends had been reading. Curious, I discovered that each friend’s article was a snapshot of how I see her. No one can be summed up in a news headline, but I think they’re all a perfect match. Another friend has been added since I originally checked, and her choice, once again, is spot on.

Meet the friends:

1. She has a Master’s degree in political science and she’s working on a second Master’s while she energetically mothers her young children. This warm, brilliant woman can do anything.

2. A long-time educator, she is active in promoting social justice. She conscientiously stands up for what is right, with a particular passion for women and girls’ rights.

3. Also an intelligent, wonderful teacher, this woman loves to bake. It brings her great joy, and she loves the joy it brings to others.

4. This woman might be the most like me. (I’m flattering myself). She loves the classic and popular, she finds humor in unexpected places, and one day we hope to do some urban exploring together.

Here are the news articles:

A. Female Athletes Still Having Sex Appeal Put Ahead of Performance.

B. What I Learned About Baked Goods—and the Human Condition—by Trying Every Variety of Pepperidge Farm.

C. Hollywood’s Most Uncanny Portrayals of Robots.

D. A Fabulous Postal Experiment That Explains Why Some Governments Work and Others Fail.

See? It’s easy, isn’t it? In case it wasn’t, the answers are at the bottom of this post.

After I posted this on my facebook, understandably, most of my friends were concerned that their reading history was public. When you started reading this blog post, did you instantly wonder what you’d read and hope no one knew you looked up that article about latest advances in toenail fungus treatments? Or maybe the secrets of the Kardashians?

Shortly after I posted, one of my friends posted to say that according to her Slate feed, I had recently read “Do Olympic or competitive swimmers ever pee in the pool?”

Do I wish it said, “The BLS Just Discovered Almost 400,000 Missing Jobs in Its Rebenchmarking”? Maybe, except I don’t know what that is or who they are, and while I was looking for an impressive article to quote, I was distracted by the titles including words and phrases like ‘UFO’, ‘Liam Neeson’, ‘mountain goats’, ‘quackery’, ‘creatures’, and ‘bacon’.

It’s true. I’m more interested in what goes on in the pool filter than in who’s getting the gold at the Olympics.

This whole ‘reading history’ notion gave me an idea for character building or exploring. What news article would fictional characters be reading? You can look at this two ways: work from the titles, or from the character.

While I mean this as a serious exercise in character construction, I couldn’t help wondering if Anna in Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper would have zeroed in on “Your mother has a favorite. It may not be you.”

What about the characters in your own writing? Take a look at today’s Slate articles. What would your MC read?

Answers:

1 D
2 A
3 B
4 C

Vomit is not a countable noun.

I received this email from a 13-year-old student yesterday morning:

Dear Ms. W,
I’ve been wondering about that sentence I showed you on Friday: “… my lips succumbed to the legions of vomit, who ripped apart the barricades, trampled over the barriers and shattered that fine line between the success and failure of my plan.” You said that vomit can’t be “a legion” but, can that part be a metaphor? I wanted it to analogize the vomit as an army crushing down on another army.

Jack

My reply:

Here are my suggestions to improve this sentence. Simply leave out ‘of vomit’. We know what you’re talking about. Secondly, something’s not right with the last part—’and shattered . . .” It creates a mixed metaphor. You can’t start with a metaphor about vomit being an army and then end with an imaginary line. If you leave out that part of the sentence, the reader still understands what’s going on. It’s superfluous, really. We know that vomiting is ruining your plan.

One more thing to think about: In your vomit metaphor, I see your lips as the barricades, but what are the barriers? They can’t also be your lips. The metaphor has to relate piece by piece to the thing it is talking about. I think barricades and barriers just about the same thing? You might also want to consider words such as ‘surge’ or other examples of battle language. Not too many images in one sentence, though!

This is fun but sickening!

Ms. W

And that is why I teach middle school.