The Scrawl

Sorry, I’m going to have to put off the “Five Books for Boys” recommendation to recommend something a little more timely. National Novel Writing Month begins tomorrow.

“NaNoWriMo” encourages people to write a 175-page (50,000 words) novel in the thirty days of November. Prepare to write something wonderful, prepare to write something awful, but just write, write, write. Some perspective directly from their website:

NaNoWriMo is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

In 2007, we had over 100,000 participants. More than 15,000 of them crossed the 50k finish line by the midnight deadline, entering into the annals of NaNoWriMo superstardom forever. They started the month as auto mechanics, out-of-work actors, and middle school English teachers. They walked away novelists.

Basically, be open to writing anything so long as you get the work done. Don’t mistake that for a referendum on good prose, but rather a challenge to step up and finish a project. NaNoWriMo is also pretty good about getting things happening, community-wise, with participant-heavy online discussion boards, the ability to seek your friends and create “buddy lists,” and regional and local gatherings called “write-ins” in real life for you to sit and work in the midst of other writers. The whole deal is a non-profit run pretty much by volunteers and donations.

I’ve started, though never finished, NaNoWriMo every year since 2002. Some stories I remember clearly (my most successful at somewhere near 14,000 words out of the NaNoWriMo goal of 50,000 was a hard-boiled thriller in which a corrupt priest, a desperate woman and her dead brother, and a man who robs a bank in the nude, all find their threads intertwining as the story goes on) and others I don’t remember (I have some odd story bits on my hard drive from a few years back that might be NaNoWriMo attempts, but their true identity eludes me).

If you haven’t tried writing a novel, or you’ve always wanted to, what better excuse do you need?

-nm

The number one way to fail at reading is to fall out of practice. That’s the number one way to fail at anything, by the way.

Ever give up on a sport? A diet? A relationship? Knitting? Writing? Blogging? Not everything is like riding a bike. Sometimes one can lose many of the skills they once held dear or at least tried with all their might to achieve. And I think this pertains to 1. the enjoyment of reading, 2. the ability to be a careful reader, and 3. remembering, after a long absence from reading, that reading is a good thing.

I understand reading isn’t for everyone just like spearfishing isn’t for everyone or parenthood isn’t for everyone or combining peanut butter with chocolate isn’t for eveyone. That said, reading has been around for a long time. A few billion people throughout history have said it’s not only good but downright important. People have died so that others might read (don’t believe me? Read about Avorres and his allies or watch the Arabic language film, Destiny). I’m not sure those are attributes to be taken lightly.

Maybe I’m preaching to the choir. If you’re reading my blog, you likely enjoy reading. And if you like me teaching reading, you too hope to put the right book in the hands of a non-reader and open their eyes. All right, all right, I won’t get too sappy here, but this is important to me. Important enough for me to write about five books for boys tomorrow as the latest Your Friday Recommendation.
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Yesterday I wrote about reading a young friend’s Facebook profile and discovering their immense hatred of reading. Today I press forward to take a look at some more Facebook-based reading hate.

The thing about Facebook is most everything one types into their profile becomes a link to search for other people with similar interests, and by clicking the “F*** Reading” in one person’s profile, I found 46 people in my two Minnesota-based “networks” who included some variant of F Reading under the section “Books” in their Facebook profile. Here are the results:

27 Peope who outright say F*** Reading:

F*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

F*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

F*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading

f*** reading lol

F*** reading!!!!!!!!!!

f*** reading…it sucks

yeah, f*** reading

F*** reading. Yes i can i just choose not too!

f*** reading (Their About Me section: “im 5 11 dirty blonde hair. great looking. and i like to f*** around alot so yeah.)

F*** ReAdInG (1st of 3 females)

F*** reading. I got other b*****s to read for me. (2nd of 3 females)

i started reading a book once, and then it came out on dvd, so i said f*** it!

11 People who appear to enjoy at least some aspect of reading:
Magazines f*** reading

F*** reading unless its a magazine or shopping catalog!

f*** reading, unless i have to for school (I’m not sure he means he likes his school books, but that’s certainly what he wrote.)

F*** books (It’s possible they like other forms of reading.)

rolling stone… car and driver, the five people you meet in heaven, me and hank, f*** harry potter im not reading that bull * * * * , chronicles of narnia

jaws would have to b my favorite book but other than that. F * * * READING!!!

F*** Reading lol naw but -The Outsiders & Night

F*** reading, but there are a few good books I know of. “I Hope They Server Beer In Hell” by Tucker Max. “The Alphabet of Manliness” by Maddox and “Piercing the Darkness”

Thousand Splended Suns, Opium Season, and 1 fish 2 fish…f*** reading I wanna go fishing.

f*** reading, (Goosebumps?) (<- Is that a question?)

2 People who may or may not enjoy reading:

YAY!!! Reading Rainbow!!!!…..haha f * * * !

f * * * reading. numbers rule (I guess he prefers math.)

1 Person who isn’t going to lie and who has no time for reading:

BOOKS??? what the F * * * are books??? nah, just playin, id have to go with the NOTEBOOK! lol RIIIIIIIIGHT! the notebook, what the f * * * ! Not goin to lie, no time for reading, id rather be drinkin and hoofin it or sleeping!

1 Person who has a question for you:

who the f*** really enjoys reading?!!!

3 People who feel reading is synonymous with sexual orientation and want you to understand they are clearly of one sexual orientation and not another:

reading is g** as f***

f*** reading its g** as f***!!!!!!!

reading is for f * * * ing f * * s (Favorite Activities include: “PARTTYYYYY!!!! otherstuff…”)

1 Person who uses the words F * * * and reading in their profile but who actually reads for enjoyment:

All time favorite book: The Great Gatsby, by: F. Scott Fitzgerald

Other favorite authors: Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Richard Wright… There’s this book Ishmael by: Daniel Quinn…I recommend it to all who are reading this…it will f * * * up your mind, but you’ll be okay… I love to read, love literacy, love writing…if you know of good books…put me on!! I’ll put you on…we’ll have a grand ol’ time. (3rd of 3 females)

This is already a pretty unscientific sampling, so I hasten to include stats on, for example, how many of these people list themselves as liberal or conservative, religious or atheist, single or in a relationship, in high school or out of high school, are drinking in their profile photo, use the F-Bomb at least one other time in their profile, or how many of them aren’t wearing a shirt so they can show off their grill in their profile photo (okay, there is one guy who did this, FYI). Those sorts of statistics have their place in some sort of actual, factual research that requires a grant, not my fifteen minutes writing up this post.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Part III “How to fail at reading” and this week’s Your Friday Recommendation – “Five Books For Boys.”

-nm

I have met a lot of teenagers who don’t like reading, some of them outright hating it. They were forced to read a novel they considered boring or had too much reading homework for comfort or just didn’t understand the significance of Oedipus no matter how much their English teacher tried to explain, and so on.

This morning I was on Facebook and in under “Books” in the profile of a teenage friend (I know this person, I’m not a stalker), they have written, “F*** Reading,” only spelled out in its entirety. Sorry, I won’t pretend the F-Bomb doesn’t exist but I’m not interested in having it appear in my blog (you can send me an email about the hypocrisy of self-censorship later, dear reader). I know this person doesn’t like to read – they and I have spoken about it – and while they can’t pinpoint what made them decide reading wasn’t for them I was surprised by their volatile, public (yes, Facebook is pretty public, no matter how private you think it is) proclamation against reading.

I’m concerned for two reasons. First, much of what I write is aimed at teenage boys, often considered the most difficult demographic to get to pick up a book on their own for the sheer joy of reading. Second, in my anecdotal experience, it appears if a young man dislikes reading, they really, really hate reading and it often takes a grand and profound experience for them to be open to reading ever again.

All of this has lead me to believe a radical new proposal that will shift how America conducts its public education system is in order. Maybe instead of pushing reading or English class altogether they could replace that curriculum with classes about drugs, swearing, sex, and all the other things parents don’t want their teens doing and let the classes cover every single detail, no matter how “obscene.” Maybe this way the youth of America will stop wanting to have unprotected sex and start sneaking away to read copies of Charlotte’s Web in the closet or jump in the back seat with a special someone to analyze Walt Whitman poetry or get together with a group of friends in someone’s basement when their parents are out of town to have dirty, nasty group book club meetings.

What do you think? Will my new educational platform fly, or have I doomed my chances of ever running for office against someone who doesn’t understand satire? Do you know anyone who hates to read and do they tell you why?

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Part II (“F” Reading) and Thursday’s Part III (“How to fail at reading”) and this week’s installment of Your Friday Recommendation – “Five Books For Boys.”

-nm

Close your eyes and think of a place you know well in the day time and write about what it’s like in the night time (or vice versa). Maybe your favorite donut shop by day is meeting grounds for an anarchist organization by night. Perhaps your garage by night is a child’s lemonade stand by day. See what surprises you when the familiar becomes the unfamiliar and you allow your imagination to run wild. Give this exercise fifteen minutes of your time.

Write it up and see what happens.

-nm

Despite having gone to see Beck and Ben Folds in the last two weeks, I’m missing a concert tomorrow night to see my wife do her roller derby thing. And while their latest record is still in the mail, I’m happy to recommend the first album I picked up from Of Montreal entitled “The Sunlandic Twins.”

I won’t pretend I’m all that great at covering why music is “good” or “bad,” but I do know what I like:

I like Of Montreal’s combination of poppy, staccato techno beats and blaring, raw guitars in songs like “I Was Never Young.”

I like the frantic, relentless pace of the fast songs like “So Begins Our Alabee” and “The Party’s Crashing Us Now” and the mellow melodic hues of the slow songs like “Knight Rider” and “I Was a Landscape in Your Dream.”

I like the lyrics, whether they be smart and esoteric (“Boredom murders the heart of our age while sanguinary creeps take the stage / Boredom strangles the life from the printed page”), funny, silly, or lovey-dovey (“Let’s pretend we don’t exist / let’s pretend we’re in Antarctica”), or even weird and near indecipherable (“The chrysalis is breaking and the super ego’s waking
/ I’ve been a gloomy Petrarch with a quill as weepy as Dido”).

Maybe it’s because it’s the band and record I discovered in the same weeks I met my wife in early 2006 and they’re an artist we enjoy listening to together, but I’ve listened to Of Montreal as much or more than any other artist in the last three years or so and I urge you to give them a try, dear reader.

Their live shows are amazing, by the way. Old stuff, new stuff, loud, nasty-raw guitars, and a gallons of gushing energy blasting over the audience.

-nm

Next spring I’m teaching a section of “Introduction to Literature” and my curriculum will likely span across short stories, poems, at least one novel, and perhaps a play. I’m interested to hear from you, dear reader. Do you have an anthology recommendation? Any short stories or poems you find accessible or maybe a few that changed your ability to understand literature as an undergrad? I’m toying with a few ideas but I’m curious to hear what you may have for me.

I select books in early November so I’ll keep you posted with what I ultimately select. Thanks in advance for your thoughts and help.

-nm

Write a story in which one character persuades another character to their point of view. Maybe it’s a YA tale of peer pressure, or it’s an election yarn of choosing candidates, or perhaps some doomed soul begs for their life at gunpoint. Let emotion guide the actions of the story and consider choosing to write the story from the first-person perspective of either the person doing the persuading (the doomed soul) or the person who’s on the receiving end of the persuasion (the man with the gun). Give this exercise fifteen minutes of your time.

Write it up and see what happens.

-nm

This one specifically goes out to those who write on their computers, and even more specifically to those who write on computers hooked up to the internet. Would you like to know how I wrote 2,000 words on my computer this morning?

I wrote on a computer that was disconnected from the internet.

I’m easily distracted and the more I set myself for focused work, the more likely I am to get it done. Even in the middle of writing that sentence, I checked my email, adjusted my ukulele so it wouldn’t rest against the blinds, and stared at something shiny. Okay, that’s an exaggeration (I did move my uke), but that sort of situation has certainly happened to me before. Today I managed to sit down and write 2,000 words for the first time in a long time (I’m lucky if I squeak in a few hundred, and 1,000 words in a day is an amazing feat for me, though it is my daily goal). Removing all other distractions was helpful – I was at a coffee shop away from my TV and DVD player and books and video games and household cleaning projects – but the number one thing to cut myself off from to get writing done was definitely the internet.

Whether the internet was created to help government communication or how save organizations money or connects us all globally, really for me the internet is one huge distraction, and sitting down to write on a laptop with a broken wifi card helped me get the job done (that said, the story I’m writing is really sad and I think I need to go watch a funny TV show for a little while or see a toddler play with a puppy).

My recommendation to those of you who write on a computer connected to the internet? Disconnect your connection and start up your focus on writing.

(The awesome photo accompanying my post is borrowed from a post at GearFire: Tips for Academic Success about ways to keep busy without the internet, which was a response to an article at Speaking Freely that gives advice on things to do sans said dreaded shiny internet distraction.)

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So I watched the presidential debate last night and found the back-and-forth between the two candidates about personal attack issues fascinating. It made me think of something that could have made the debate, while likely not better, at least a little more cool:

If it helps you vote, UrbanDictionary.com has some definitions of OWNED for you (definition #4 is pretty thorough).

Like yesterday’s political poll, I know what the right answer is, but that doesn’t mean I necessarily agree with it 100%.

-nm