Tag: Writing

In Defense of Poetry: “Oh My Heart”

On By John d'AndrioleIn The Weekend Redirect

This week, we visit P.L. Thomas’ excellent site “The Becoming Radical.”

In this post, Thomas discusses the need for poetry in education, and how poetry and fiction seem to be falling by the wayside in favor of testing scores needed to justify school funding.

The testing requirements alone are evil, but the cutting out of poetry from the curriculum is a travesty. Poetry is an essential to education as well as life. But I’ll shut up about it because Thomas puts it far better than I can.

In Defense of Poetry: “Oh My Heart”

plthomasedd's avatardr. p.l. (paul) thomas

“No, no. You’ve got something the test and machines will never be able to measure: you’re artistic. That’s one of the tragedies of our times, that no machine has ever been built that can recognize that quality, appreciate it, foster it, sympathize with it.”

Paul Proteus to his wife Anita in Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano

“So much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens” is, essentially, a grammatical sentence in the English language. While the syntax is somewhat out of the norm, the diction is accessible to small children—the hardest word likely being “depends.” But “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams is much more than a sentence; it is a poem:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

A relatively simple English language sentence shaped into purposeful lines and stanzas becomes poetry. And like…

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Why Boys Should Read Girl Books

On By John d'AndrioleIn The Weekend Redirect

I asked Representation Project staffer Cristina Escobar what happens when boys read only books by males, about males. She said that they will be “taught that girls are objects, that they are prizes that they can win,” and that “boys go out and do things and girls sit back and wait to be rescued.”

This “Weekend Redirect” takes you to Caroline Paul’s excellent article about the need for boys to read “girl books.”

Continue reading “Why Boys Should Read Girl Books” →

Not So Much Writer’s Block More Writer’s Freeze

On By John d'AndrioleIn The Weekend Redirect, Writer's Advice, Writing

In the latest post on LionAroundWriting, the subject of “writer’s freeze” is addressed.

Specifically, this refers to a total writer shutdown when panicking about word counts and trying to keep your subject as brief as possible without cutting everything interesting out of a story.

 

This is more than a post; this is a conversation. So please join in the talk!

LionAroundWriting's avatarLionAroundWriting

writers freeze chemistrydotabout

…ANYONE ELSE GET THIS? Maybe this terror of going over a word limit began at university with 2000 word limits on essays. I get the freeze when I’m writing a short story. Maybe freeze isn’t a great word for it but I’ll explain. Sometimes I will be writing a piece and I’m so conscious of word count that I end up writing lazy sentences, freezing up; instead of describing the world and filling in those all important details that bring a story to life, I’ll write stubby sentences, providing a skeleton but little else as a result of being way too mindful of the number of words. It’s some form of mental block.

And if I plan to write for a WordPress post, I’m always trying to keep it snappy, under about 5-600 words, and the freeze begins again. I’m so habituated to strive for 500 words online…

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Handling Negative Comments

On By John d'AndrioleIn The Weekend Redirect

Amanda McCormick brings up an important notion in this “Weekend Redirect:” how to handle criticism. Not constructive critiques, but full on “you suck” verbal assaults.

Read on to learn her excellent suggestions which DON’T feature a kick to the sternum or slowly walking away from an explosion.

The Paradox of Sci-Fi

On By John d'AndrioleIn The Breakdown, Writing2 Comments

A recent post shared on Patty Jansen’s excellent blog “Must Use Bigger Elephants” via the recent Weekend Redirect via got me thinking…

Great Sci-Fi is about the present. Whether addressing general inequality, sexuality, norms, political conflict, terrorism, the nature of power, or whatever other bees angrily circle out bonnets, it places contemporary problems in the future. There, characters can hash it out using fantastic technologies and hide behind applicability or metaphor.

Because of this Sci-Fi authors and audiences tend to be dreamers. Many have suffered from some kind of persecution themselves, or at the very least feel like square pegs. There is something egalitarian about Sci-Fi… something that lauds the individual.

So why is there so much sexism and racism in the Sci-Fi genre?

Continue reading “The Paradox of Sci-Fi” →