My Kind of Blogger

You Are a Snarky Blogger!

You’ve got a razor sharp wit that bloggers are secretly scared of. And that’s why they read your posts as often as they can!

I blame Clancy.

No Comment

I will not listen to evil spawn of the devil who say that I must have comments.
I will not listen to evil spawn of the devil who say that I must have comments.
I will not listen to evil spawn of the devil who say that I must have comments.

Yes, evil people, I just skunked my entire blogger account and was about to search you out at your homes and force you to pay for your evil ways.

You are lucky. I found a way to get it back. Now if I could just figure out how to synch my LJ and Blogger. This is all way too complicated.

Indecent Proposals

I have written three proposals in the last week. Together I think there are fewer than 15 pages, but it feels like I’ve been writing all day, every day just to get those few pages. Heck, two of them are linked and, therefore, repeat sentences with only minor changes–one for a book series and the other for the first book in the series.

I tried to convince myself that the proposal writing was harder than the actual writing. I mean, after all, you have to figure out the structure for the whole thing, project what will fall into each chapter, pretend that you actually know how long the end product will be. I was doing really well believing that till I just tried to write the sample chapters that I should turn in with the proposal. I figured that I’d follow the same kind of logic that my friends have used on their dissertations. They always made official title pages and wrote up acknowledgements long before the text was done.

I figured I’d knock off the Introduction. It’s only 2-3 pages in the model books. So far I think I have one finished paragraph, about 100 words. This brilliance followed by the start of a second paragraph that I don’t think I like and then two throw-away sentences that I’ve copied over and haven’t decided whether to delete yet. Whose idea was it to write a book?

At least I can claim that I figured out RSS feeds this last week too. Who knew how much easier an aggregator would make my life? Actually lots of people (cyberdash, Dr. B, rhetboi, culturecat….). I just wasn’t listening. Thank goodness I’m saving all this time now though. I’d probably have only 50 words in that first paragraph.

Okay, this feels like a crazy question that has an obvious answer. My problem is that I can’t decide whether the obvious answer is yes or no. Can a writer’s voice and style change in a matter of a few months, almost a year?

Maybe it’s not that the voice has changed, but that I’ve finally found it. I reread something that I wrote in June or July. It’s been sitting in its folder ever since. I just haven’t had the chance or the energy to write. But I pulled it out, and I felt almost compelled to grab a pen and mark out huge sections—sections that felt like a fake attempt at sounding like I knew what I was doing. It read to me like a sort of unnatural pasting together of varying sources.

I read it, and I suddenly knew that that wasn’t my voice. My voice is different now. Much more straightforward, stronger. It feels very odd, and odder still that I don’t know whether my voice changed—or maybe I had it all along and I just never heard it. Whatever the answer, maybe now I can get that manuscript written.

The Worry Web Site

Finished The Worry Web Site (Dell Yearling, 2003). The book is comprised of linked short stories about students in a British classroom and the various worries that affect them—problems with parents and step-parents, self-esteem issues, and first loves. The book is well-suited for fourth and fifth grade students who face similar worries. Its portrayal of Natasha, a student with an unidentified disability who uses a wheelchair and a “special speaking machine,” alongside the worries of all the other students nicely addresses the many similarities between Natasha’s worries and those of the others in the class.

The Worry Web Site, set up by teacher Mr. Speed, links the stories in the book, as each featured student writes about a particular worry on the Web site. At most, the technology sounds like an anonymous Web form that students can fill out. After a student posts, other students in the class can respond. The site seems to be something like an anonymous blog. Anyone can post, and anyone can reply. There are classroom netiquette rules, but we don’t really learn anything about the technology that the teacher has set up to make it all work . Technology plays the role of connecting the stories, but readers have to guess about what that technology actually is. There’s no indication, for instance, that students can access the site outside of the classroom. Readers might guess then that the Worry Web Site is a local site, available only on this one classroom computer. There is not enough detail about the technology, however, for readers to be sure.

Perhaps the undefined nature of the Worry Web Site is an attempt to keep the book, originally published in Great Britain in 2002, from appearing dated. If written today, the technology might be described as an anonymous blog, but there’s nothing else in the few details that would cause a problem.

In fact, there’s nothing really special about the Worry Web Site. The same sharing of worries and classroom feedback could easily be achieved with a shared classroom journal. The only benefit of the Worry Web Site over such a handwritten journal is the posture of anonymity—there is no handwriting on the Web site to betray the author. Of course, Mr. Speed knows who writes every message in spite of the anonymous postings. There is no way to know if Mr. Speed is simply very clever or there is a backdoor that lets him check the author’s name. It’s likely the former, however, as even the students are able to guess who posts which worries:

          One of the boys wrote that he liked one of the girls a lot. That made everyone giggle—and Greg went very pink. Hmm! I wonder who he fancies?
          Someone else went on and on. Oh boo hoo, it’s so sad, I miss my dad, etc, etc. We all know who that was. (p. 4)

Technology plays a role in the stories, then, but a subtle one. The messages that the students write are always the focus, rather than the technology that the students use to write those messages. Perhaps, then, the book shows that technology has become more of a commonplace element of students’ lives. It just is. There is a classroom computer, and students use it matter-of-factly during their school day.

Jacqueline Wilson, the book’s author, is a two-time runner-up for the Carnegie Medal, so I was expecting a bit more from the book. Terry Pratchett won the Carnegie for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, and Wilson’s book doesn’t really compare to Pratchett’s—yes, I know that Pratchett doesn’t really compare to anyone :) In many ways, The Worry Web Site is predictable and the stories rather simplistic. It is a good book, but not a great one.

I would recommend it to students facing worries similar to those in the book, but those readers with more complex anxieties would certainly need more support than this book provides. There are suggestions of domestic violence and alcoholism, for instance, but the student’s worries are treated rather superficially and the bigger issues are not dealt with. It is not a book to give to readers looking for stories about technology. The computer and Web site do not play a significant role, and students looking for something akin to video game action will be disappointed.

********** (5 of 10 stars)

Worked on the Tuesdays lesson, but didn’t finish. Mostly I spent the day being angry, pissy, and mad. I seemed to have everything go wrong at work today. Everything. And on top of that, I suffered horribly from dysmenorrhea all day and all night and every moment and I want to take a billion, zillion drugz. (Note the use of a scientific name for things makes them sound worse so that other people will feel even sorrier for you).

Okay, seriously, not quite everything. Duck is now wearing a rabbit costume, complete with cotton tail; and my mother sent me flowers for Easter. I just seemed to have all the real work things go wrong. When the various NCTE websites began stopping this afternoon, I began packing. Went by Great Harvests for unnecessary loaves of bread that I have gorged upon. Went to Pages and used one of my gift certificates to buy these:

• Whale Talk (need to find out about the censorship issue)
• The Worry Web Site (for my collection of tech in child/YA lit books)
• Speak (cuz I never got around to it)
• Click here: (to find out how i survived seventh grade) (again for the tech collection)
• After (cuz it seemed so topical given Red Lake)

Now I just need to find time to read all of them, and the dozens of other books over there on the bookshelf.

Watched most of Possessed (1947)
(“It’s pain that made her this way. Only through major pain and suffering beyond belief can we change that.” and “‘I love you’ is such an inadequate way of saying I love you. It doesn’t quite describe how much it hurts sometimes.”)

Then watched most of The Philadelphia Story
(“I’m such an unholy mess of a girl”)

I finished The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things this evening. I looked at Love and Other Four Letter Words when I was at the bookstore, since I liked The Earth and was so close to finishing, but I just wasn’t up for a divorce story right now. I can always get it later. It’s not like I’m miserly about my book buying, as the 12+ sagging bookcases can attest.

When not watching TV, I have been the eating machine. Something is seriously wrong with me. I think I have eaten everything in completely senseless ways today. And I’m still not happy about it. I seem to be eating my way toward something, and I am just not finding it.

Things that are pissing me off today:

1. People who are praying that God will intervene for Terri Schiavo—how do they know God hasn’t already intervened? How is it that God’s will is only what they decide that it is?
2. Michael Jackson’s armbands—What the fuck is the point? (there are so many additional WTFs related to Mr. Jackson, that I have chosen only one in the interest of space and bandwidth.)
3. From the NYTimes’ QUOTATION OF THE DAY
   “My party is demonstrating that they are for states’ rights unless they don’t like what states are doing.”
   – CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Republican congressman of Connecticut, on the Schiavo case.

4. People who don’t remember earlier statements they have made. Example: “The level of insurgency in postwar Iraq wouldn’t be so high if the U.S.-led coalition had been able to invade from the north, through Turkey, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Sunday.”—You go to war where your army is, Donnie. Not where you wish it might be.
5. National Vanguard Books
6. That I have never and will never have the guts to dye my hair “Pimpin Purple”—and that the unfortunate truth of the matter is that it’s very hard for young girls to dye their hair, get crazy piercings, and buy clothes that their mothers don’t approve of unless they have someone’s credit card. And impetuous airline tickets to Seattle are right out.
7. Not knowing what to do with RSS feeds, not knowing enough about Lawrence Lessig, and not being able to understand a single convincing argument for installation “art”
8. The fact that the Army raised the maximum age for enlisting in the National Guard and Army Reserve from 34 to 39—because it suddenly made me feel very, very, very old to know that I’m too old even for the new age max. Not that I have any interest in any of this. I just feel very old.
9. That I created What Your Shoes Say even though I don’t have a clue what I mean to say or do with it.
10. Commercials that suggest people might want to buy shoes that animals try to eat or carry off, that there is a correlation between taking a shower/bath and buying a car, or that Internet connections are sandwiches, that spam is chili, and viruses are jello and whipped cream.

• In the week that I have been hibernating, Rubbish A. Toddles, Nosebleed U. Ruckuses, and Litigious D. Glee sent me mail. I’m not sure if they are leprachauns or an odd sect of elves.
• I save too many things for the “right” moment. My pile of unwatched films includes not only The Return of the King but also The Two Towers. That means that I’ve owned TT for over a year and still haven’t found the time to watch it.
• My household inventory clearly indicates that too many of my things are not near where they belong. After all, no one can explain a reason for cereal to be stored in the living room.
• I finished reading Life in the Fat Lane and am about two-thirds of the way through The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. I still can’t quite like Life in the Fat Lane. How can it go to the trouble of fairly accurate info on prednisone and doxepin (I’ve taken both), and then create a completely fictional malady? It all feels a little too fake for me. The point wasn’t to deal with what a real girl might go through, but to create some kind of Twilight Zone reality that she crosses into. Maybe I’m just too unrealistic about that can and can’t be done in a book. I liked TTYL; but I think I had the same problem with it. It’s not quite real I know what it looks like when teens IM and e-mail each other. Somehow things just were’t quite authentic. I mean what person uses u and r and ppl but spells out with. And where did we find kids who only have one msg window open at a time? Come on. I just can’t square the things in these books that aren’t quite genuine, that tie up in a package that’s just a little too perfect to be real. Maybe I should go back to fantasy.
• Sometimes the sirens are so loud because the fire truck is coming down your street. I am not hearing things. They really are outside.
• Too frequently I have dumped full super-sized diet cokes on the floor of my car through perfectly normal driving. I am very tired of this failure to control my beverages and I mourn the loss of precious brown diet beverage.
• A week can pass and I can get nothing done. No lesson plans posted. No entries. No nothing. Oh, I guess I did write an Inbox section on cartoons and graphic novels yesterday. Maybe that counts as something.
• I don’t seem able to write anything. I have a million starts in this house, piles of notes, jotted ideas. But I don’t ever write. More than anything I want to write a book, but I never do. I never do anything.

Today’s Horoscope Says…

My exciting horoscope (“Money matters you’ve been concerned with lately will iron themselves out nicely — very nicely, indeed. All you have to do is cover your bases and be sure that you don’t trust anyone your antennae warn you about.”) seemed to be true. And that’s all I’m saying cuz I’m superstitious about such things.