Reading and writing

The Daily Writer: 366 Meditations to Cultivate a Productive and Meaningful Writing Life ~ by Fred White, 2008, writing

"From getting in a creative frame of mind to maintaining good writing habits to breaking through writer's block, this helpful guide is every writer's key to developing the discipline, focus and dedication needed to become successful."

My friend Donna actually bought this book, but she suggested we could do the writing prompts together and read what the other said.  That sounds interesting to me, so I took a look at the book this evening.  The 366 in the title refers to days of the year, with February 29 included.  I found this book-related meditation on the page for January 5:

Reverence for Books and Reading

One cannot become a good writer without being a good reader.  After all, since writers create reading, they learn to appreciate the range of quality and content that makes reading so rewarding.  In order to develop such appreciation, writers must read widely and deeply.

It goes on, but that gives you an idea.  "For Further Reflection" includes this:

Describe your favorite kinds of books and what it is about the genre that you enjoy.

That's your assignment.  Tell me in the comments what you enjoy about your favorite kinds of books.

Nowhere Hair ~ by Sue Glader

Nowhere Hair ~ by Sue Glader, illustrated by Edith Buenen, 2011, children's

This is the story of a young girl who tries unsuccessfully to find her mother's missing hair, only to learn that medicine has made it fall out. She learns that she didn't cause the cancer, she can't catch it, and Mommy is still very much up for the job of mothering. The book, written in rhyme, explains hats, scarves, wigs, going bald in public, and the idea of being nice to people who may look a little different than you. It ends with the idea that what is inside of us is far more important than how we look on the outside. It's silly, and touching, and real.

"Let your hair down, and let yourself go" is a refrain in this video.



I came to this post in a roundabout way.  I am reading a book whose main character has survived cancer, so obviously, chemotherapy was mentioned.  Think of the word itself, its syllables:  che-mo-ther-a-py.  Long words are the ones most likely to by hyphenated in a book.  With the first syllable at the end of one line in my book, the word seemed changed, much as the poetry of e. e. cummings finds new meanings because words are re-arranged on the page.  The second part of this hyphenated word caused my reading to lurch to a stop as I pondered what I was seeing.

che-
motherapy

Do you see what I saw?  The word "mother" stopped me mid-sentence.

che-
mother-
apy

The word's meaning is far from where my thoughts were circling:

chemotherapy = the treatment of disease by means of chemicals that have a specific toxic effect upon the disease-producing microorganisms or that selectively destroy cancerous tissue

I re-read the sentence to assure myself it had nothing to do with mother or mothering, even though "mother" is in the middle of that word.  Am I too easily distracted when the layout of a sentence — when a word must be split — derails my attention from the story?

I googled "mother chemotherapy" and this book popped up.  I've never seen it, and there's no copy at my library (I checked).  But doesn't it seem like a perfectly wonderful book?  Especially since October is breast cancer awareness month.

Jaxon's books

Today, I had lunch with my daughter Sandra at Applebee's, which is in the mall directly across from a bookstore.  (You already see where this is going, don't you?)  As I headed toward the books after lunch, my daughter declined to join me, saying she's too weak and can never leave without buying books.  I assured her I could.  I was wrong.  I held temptation at bay while browsing the tables of fiction and nonfiction and bargain books and YA fiction, but the sales table of books for babies snagged me, and I got this board book for 10-month-old Jaxon.

Good Night, Baby ~ by Elizabeth Hathon

The book goes through the routine things a child does before bedtime, like bath time and brushing teeth.

I was planning to take it to Jaxon, but they were out of town for the day.  So I left the little book with my son and his wife, Sharon.  She keeps the baby while his parents work and showed me a book that Jaxon dearly loves.

First 100 Words ~ by Roger Priddy

"Features 100 everyday words for children to learn and help build their vocabulary. Beautiful color photographs. Simple design in a sturdy format."

He loves it so much she plans to go back and get the other book like it, by the same author.

First 100 Animals ~ by Roger Priddy

It appears Jaxon will be a book lover like 2-year-old Raegan, my other great-grandchild.

Beginning ~ with filigree-handled scissors

Imagine starting your life's work at seventy-two.  At just that age, Mary Granville Pendarves Delany (May 14, 1700-April 15, 1788), a fan of George Frideric Handel, a sometime dinner partner of satirist Jonathan Swife, a wearer of green-hooped satin gowns, and a fiercely devoted subject of blond King George III, invented a precursor of what we know as collage.  One afternoon in 1772 she noticed how a piece of collored paper matched the dropped petal of a geranium.  After making that vital imaginative connection between paper and petal, she lifted the eighteenth-century equivalent of an X-Acto blade (she'd have called it a scalpel) or a pair of filigree-handled scissore — the kind that must have had a nose so sharp and delicate that you could almost imagine it picking up a scent.  With the instrument alive in her still rather smooth-skinned hand, she began to maneuver, carefully cutting the exact geraniun petal shape from the scarlet paper.

Then she snipped out another.

And another, and another, with the trance-like efficiency of repetition — commencing the most remarkable work of her life.

The Paper Garden: An Artist (Begins Her Life's Work) at 72 ~ by Molly Peacock, 2011, biography (England)

Adding to what I've already told you in a library loot post, I admit I've already looked at all the colorful flower mosaics — or "mosaicks," as the artist would say — but I have not yet read the book.  I can't imagine doing such intricate work with scissors, though I'm almost the age she was when she invented the art of collage.  I'm very impressed by her work.


Katy at A Few More Pages brings us this Friday meme about Book Beginnings.  Browse there to find interesting books for your own reading list.  Click here for today's list, and don't forget that Katy and all the contributors (including me) love comments.

A blog-hop treasure hunt

You Are My Only ~ by Beth Kephart, 2011, YA fiction

Emmy Rane is married at nineteen, a mother by twenty.  Trapped in a life with a husband she no longer loves, Baby is her only joy.  Then one sunny day in September, Emmy takes a few fateful steps away from her baby and returns to find her missing.  All that is left behind is a yellow sock.  Fourteen years later, Sophie, a homeschooled, reclusive teenage girl is forced to move frequently and abruptly from place to place, perpetually running from what her mother calls the "No Good."  One afternoon, Sophie breaks the rules, ventures out, and meets Joey and his two aunts.  It is this loving family that gives Sophie the courage to look into her past.  What she discovers changes her world forever.

You Are My Only will be published on October 25, 2011.  Beth Kephart, the author of this book, challenged us to a treasure hunt, giving us the rules on September 8.  We were to look for five guest posts she would do.  Each one would tell part of the story about the making of You Are My Only:

• The transformation of Sophie from the 40-year-old character she began her (fictional) life as to the 14-year-old at the center of this book.
• The voice of Emmy — where it came from, how it seized Kephart.
• The history behind the asylum that inspired a key setting in the book.
• The story behind Cloris and Helen, characters Kephart had been developing for more than ten years.
• The story behind the book's title (and insights into titles that were considered, then rejected).

These posts would be going up on different days.  Our task was to find all five entries, post them collectively on our own blogs, and send her the link to be entered into the drawing.  Here are the prizes she offered:

Two winners will be selected.  Each will win these two things:  A signed copy of You Are My Only AND a critique (by yours truly) of the first 2,000 words of a work-in-progress.  As many of you know, I teach memoir at the University of Pennsylvania and served as the inaugural readergirlz author in residence.  I have written in multiple genres and critique adult fiction for major U.S. newspapers.  Your manuscript can, I am hinting, be in any genre, save for a screenplay, about which I have absolutely zero expertise.

So here are links to Kephart's guest posts (along with the dates published):

• Sept 9 @ Mundie Moms ~ "The (furious) metamorphosis of Sophie"

What would happen if I told the story of Sophie as a 14-year-old girl?

• Sept 21 @ My Friend Amy ~ "Opening the door to Cloris and Helen"

Cloris and Helen belong to Sophie. She needs them and their kooky ways, their endless baking, their shiny Airstream, their Alice-in-Wonderland dioramas, their love for Willa Cather—to show her what is kind and good and right in this world. To show her a salvation version of normal.

• Oct 10 @ The Story Siren ~ "When Emmy called, I listened"

Below are the first Emmy words I ever wrote, and the fact is, in draft after draft after draft, I barely changed them. "The baby is missing. The baby is not where I had left her—checked the rope and strapped her in, pulled my weight into the branch above, and said out loud, This is good and nice and sturdy."

• Oct 11 @ Chick Loves Lit ~ "What name should we give this book?"

"But nothing was right. Nothing fit just so. Too grown-up. Too childish. Too familiar. Too obscure."

• Oct 11 @ Bookalicious ~ "I was obsessed with an asylum"

"What would it have been like to be committed against one’s will in an institution like Byberry?"

Since I am also a published writer, I was very interested in (1) how she came up with the details of this book, and (2) the prize, which includes Kephart's critique of the first 2,000 words of what I'm writing.  (I've gotta be optimistic, here, you know.)  I would love to have Kephart take a serious look at what I'm writing.

I'll give the last word to Beth Kephart, posted yesterday on her blog:

"I live my quiet writer life knowing this:  stories make their way to the right readers."

Library Loot ~ October 12-18

The Paper Garden: An Artist (Begins Her Life's Work) at 72 ~ by Molly Peacock, 2011, biography

Mary Delany was seventy-two years old when she noticed a petal drop from a geranium. In a flash of inspiration, she picked up her scissors and cut out a paper replica of the petal, inventing the art of collage. It was the summer of 1772, in England. During the next ten years she completed nearly a thousand cut-paper botanicals (which she called mosaicks) so accurate that botanists still refer to them. Poet-biographer Molly Peacock uses close-ups of these brilliant collages in The Paper Garden to track the extraordinary life of Delany, friend of Swift, Handel, Hogarth, and even Queen Charlotte and King George III.

Close Your Eyes ~ by Amanda Eyre Ward, 2011, fiction

One morning, six-year-old Lauren and eight-year-old Alex awoke after a night spent in their tree house to discover their mother’s body and their beloved father arrested for the murder.  Years later, Lauren is surrounded by uncertainty. Her one constant is Alex, always her protector, still trying to understand the unraveling of his idyllic childhood. But Lauren feels even more alone when Alex reveals that he’s been in contact over the years with their imprisoned father—and that he believes he and his sister have yet to learn the full story of their mother’s death.

I Am the Messenger ~ by Markus Zusak, 2005, YA fiction

Meet Ed Kennedy — underage cabdriver, pathetic cardplayer, and useless at romance. He lives in a shack with his coffee-addicted dog, the Doorman, and he’s hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence, until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That’s when the first Ace arrives. That’s when Ed becomes the messenger.  Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary), until only one question remains: Who’s behind Ed’s mission?

Library Loot is a weekly meme co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.  Claire has the Mister Linky this week, if you'd like to share a list of the loot you brought home.  You may submit your list any time during the week.

Children's interpretation of the Bible

Elementary school children were asked questions about the Old and New Testaments on a test.  Incorrect spelling has been left as written.

1.  In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, God got tired of creating the world so he took the Sabbath off.

2.  Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree.

3.  Noah's wife was Joan of Ark.

4.  Noah built and ark and the animals came on in pears.

5.  Lot's wife was a pillar of salt during the day, but a ball of fire during the night.

6.  The Jews were a proud people and throughout history they had trouble with unsympathetic genitals.

7.  Sampson was a strongman who let himself be led astray by a Jezebel like Delilah.

8.  Samson slayed the Philistines with the axe of the Apostles.

9.  Moses led the Jews to the Red Sea where they made unleavened bread which is bread without any ingredients.

10.  The Egyptians were all drowned in the dessert.  Afterwards, Moses went up to Mountcyanide to get the Ten Commandments.

11.  The first commandments was when Eve told Adam to eat the apple.

12.  The seventh commandment is thou shalt not admit adultery.

13.  Moses died before he ever reached Canada then Joshua led the Hebrews in the battle of Geritol.

14.  The greatest miricle in the Bible is when Joshua told his son to stand still and he obeyed him.

15.  David was a Hebrew King who was skilled at playing the liar.  He fought the Finkelsteins, a race of people who lived in biblical times.

16.  Solomon, one of Davids sons, had 300 wives and 700 porcupines.

17.  When Mary heard she was the mother of Jesus, she sang the Magna Carta.

18.  When the three wise guys from the East Side arrived they found Jesus in the manager.

19.  Jesus ws born because Mary had an immaculate contraption.

20.  St. John, the blacksmith, dumped water on his head.

21.  Jesus enunciated the Golden Rule, which says to do unto others before they do one to you.  He also explained a man doth not live by sweat alone.

22.  It was a miricle when Jesus rose from the dead and managed to get the tombstone off the entrance.

23.  The people who followed the Lord were called the 12 decibels.

24.  The epistels were the wives of the apostles

25.  One of the Oppossums was St. Matthew who was also a taximan.

26.  St. Paul cavorted to Christianity, he preached holy acrimony which is another name for marraige.

27.  A Christian should have only one spouse.  This is called monotony.