#reading this book like jstor my friend jstor i am so looking forward to seeing if you have gossip

[astriiformes]

Always interesting to read a book and wonder what's been written in dialogue with it since. I've recently been working my way through Clifford D. Conner's "A People's History of Science" and both finding it very interesting and very frustrating in parts, and particularly considering it was written in 2005 I'm going to have to poke at what's been written in response to it once I finish.

I love the concept, and Conner cites a lot of sources I'm going to have to look into, and some of the very socialist/working class politics woven into the book are right up my alley. But this is also a book that unironically cites Jared Diamond a fair bit, and has made one comment about radfem scholars that has me eyeing all the somewhat gender essentialist attempts at a more feminist history of science with suspicion, despite in theory liking the egalitarian aims.

However! I am also loving the emphasis on science as a network of knowledge, and while I think the pushback against the Great Men model of history of science is a little clunky and has some real holes, it's still delightful seeing more of an effort to trace the many places knowledge comes from, even if some of the specific claims feel a little far-fetched. Others are perfectly grounded, and why I'm almost more interested in Conner's sources than the book itself.

Anyways. I am having a fun time with a book I sort of like and sort of don't and I bet seeing what other people have to say about it will be an interesting time. Sometimes being academic about things is very satisfying actually.

[dakardreamsofsheep]

My Writing Project

I had a lot of goals for my sabbatical year, but the one that might have taken the most time was unplanned. Looking back through my journal, I had wondered that first week how I would fill my time besides surfing, learning French and hanging with friends. Would it be diving into painting goals more deeply? Music? A quick note in my phone’s "Project Ideas” list from September and one clear image set the faint cornerstone, although I didn’t realie it at the time. Nine months later, these three first draft manuscripts sit on my desktop. It still doesn't seem real. I’ve had the goal of writing a book for a long time, since first grade at least. Now, I'm closer than ever, though nervous with my sabbatical year coming to an end how I'll advance forward.

The image I started with was Colombus’ little fleet landing in North America. Arriving, they meet a fully mobilized tribal army armed with gunpowder and resistance to European diseases. How different history might have been. That was the image I imagined the book closing with, and spinning back from there led to this ambitious project. One book become two became four. Once the core of the story came out it never changed, but there was just too much that needed to happen, too many little tales to fit inside.

I don’t want to say too much here about the story itself, though I hope anyone reading this post will also read the books. If I had to pitch the story in Hollywood I’d say Moana meets Mad Max meets Guns, Germs and Steel. If I had to pitch it in a blurb I’d say “A group of navigators in the 15th century chase a vision across the ancient world, diffusing new ideas and technology, changing the course of history and challenging their own beliefs and identities in the process.”

The first push was NaNoWriMo, the National November Writing Challenge, which I’d heard about for a few years. 1,500 words a day for a month gets you around 50,000 words, enough for a short novel or most of a longer one. I gave myself the challenge of writing a few different short stories in October, and fleshing out my original idea the month before. The most productive I’d ever been was in creative writing classes at the university, pacing around the campus at night and returning back to bang out prose I’d later edit. If I had a smartphone then, in 2012, it certainly didn’t have the lures of my little pocket portal today. Leaving it at home (and leaving home) during morning writing sessions made a world of difference.

There is so much research that’s gone into getting the details of pre-European contact life just right. I’m leaning heavily on my alumni access to the JStor scholarly database, and I am definitely going to outsource the works cited writing. Old maps, details of rival city-state clothing and regional food during specific times of the year, original names for constellations from neighboring tribes…there’s a lot. I’m glad I started without consulting anyone, because I might have been talked out of it, and now I’m in too deep to stop. It’s been intellectually fascinating, and also tough and often lonely. No one should ever boo-hoo the writer privileged enough to spend time on a *bonus* pursuit. Our discomfort is entirely self inflicted. Still, where our early human storytellers spun out myths exclusively in groups, the written word demands solitude at first. It’s only later that you see how people have received your creation. That never quite registered with me, spending a night or two writing short fiction in college. Now that I’ve spent hundreds of hours creating worlds no one has yet seen, with characters who seem as real as my friends, who in this last book I feel like I’ll be following more than writing, I appreciate those creative souls who came before me. Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Just single people hunched over a writing desk, pecking away.

My goal is to finish the first draft by summer 2023. Hopefully this next winter I’ll have the chance to travel to the Marshall Islands in Micronesia where much of the first book takes place, and add to my research with real faces and names and smells. I’ve lived in many of the places I’m writing about, but doing justice to the cultures not my own requires incredible care. I want to get the details right, and my hope is to partner with cultural organizations for a first look sensitivity read on related parts of the books.

There’s also the fear of spending so much time working on something…that might not be very good. The story might feel overstuffed. The writing might feel flat. My attempts to bring complex characters from different backgrounds might read as gimmicky. Writing gorgeous prose in addition to a compelling story is so tough! Young adult writers have it easier; the bar is significantly lower. I’ve been working to try and root my definition of success in just bringing this to completion. To be sure, I’m going to iterate the hell out of it, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be satisfied with the final result as it sits in my head now. I have to be okay with that.

[brilliantheartbeautifulmind]

google + my reading list

Nicholas Carr picks up where our previous readings from Phaedrus and about the invention of writing and movable type left off.  He brings us to the present day, when we get our news in 140-character tweets and our attention spans are smaller than they have ever been.  The invention of the Internet and, to a lesser extent, Google, changed the way we approach knowledge and information forever.  No longer are extensive allusions in literature and the possession of arcane bits of trivia impressive; the information that once was reserved for those with excellent memories and expensive educations is now available to all with a few clicks.  This is an extension of the fear that Plato expressed in Phaedrus, of people being “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.”  We don’t even have to read and absorb knowledge, we can find a definition or opinion for us to read off our glowing screens.

The part that struck me most in this essay was when Carr talks about Taylor’s theory of automation in factories and Google’s plan of applying that to the internet.  My favorite quote at the moment and one that I have been basing many of my actions around recently comes from the Victorian art critic John Ruskin.  In The Stones of Venice, a book that nominally addresses the form and function of Gothic architecture but is really about humanity, he says, “…while in all things that we see, or do, we are to desire perfection, and strive for it, we are nevertheless not to set the meaner thing, in its narrow accomplishment, above the nobler thing, in its mighty progress; not to esteem smooth minuteness above shattered majesty; not to prefer mean victory to honourable defeat; not to lower the level of our aim, that we may, the more surely enjoy the complacency of success” (178).  As a perfectionist myself, it is tempting to only attempt projects I know will succeed, rather than trying for something that will stretch me that may also completely fail.  The internet takes away the possibility of failure but removes much of the potential for learning.  To illustrate this, allow me two examples.

In the first, I am trying to recall the name of a poet.  I tell my mother, “I can’t think of the name of that poet who wrote a ton of depressing poetry and eventually stuck her head in the oven and killed herself.  Do you know her name?”  My mom nods her head and I quickly interrupt her, “Don’t tell me!  I’ll think of it.”  

“Let me know if you need a letter,” she replies.  In our family, we frequently play the name game.  Someone asks another person for help remembering the name of a family friend or famous person, living or dead, and the person who has the answer gives the first letter of the searched-for first or last name. Needing a letter is, of course, admitting defeat, so I start rattling off the things I remember about this nameless poet.  

“She had a horrible husband who cheated on her and knocked up his mistress…he wrote a radio play about the affair and she was horribly humiliated and that led to her successful suicide…It’s not Edith Wharton; she’s a novelist…” This tactic is not working out so I switch to the Alphabet Game.  “A…B…C…D…E…still not Edith Wharton…F…G…” Somewhere around “M” I have my eureka moment and shout out “Sylvia Plath!”

This whole interval took me about three minutes.  I just tried Googling the exact question I asked my mother.  It took nine seconds for me to type in my vague clues and get the correct answer.  In the week since my little memory work, I have never once had to reach any further than a second to find Sylvia Plath’s name.  

My second example finds me, as is typical, needing the answer to a technical question.  I enter “how to screenshot on a mac” into the Google bar and find the answer (command + shift + 4).  A few days later, I need to screenshot something yet again and can’t remember how to do that, so I return again to Google for my answer.  

These examples show, to me, the difference between memory and accessibility. In the first instance, I searched my brain for a bit of knowledge I knew was there, but couldn’t remember at the moment. After a few minutes of musing, I found the answer within myself (in the least cliché way possible) and have had no trouble recollecting that answer since.  The process of looking and coming up empty, of trying and failing has cemented certain pieces of knowledge into my brain in a way that instantly retrieving information from a secondary source will never achieve.  However, knowing how the invention of printing revolutionized the way we interact with and gain knowledge, it seems foolish to decry what is obviously the next great step in accessible information.  Instead, I would encourage everyone, where and when it is possible, to take a few minutes to search your own personal information database before turning to that blinking cursor and typing in “what is a word that means outside but attached to your body?”

 What I’m Reading and Why

After much deep thought over the past week, I have come to the realization that I am avoiding the inevitable.  I have been staying in my comfort zone.  I have written short stories before and the idea of writing 12 short stories was not as formidable as what I now understand I must do.  This is a novel.  A novel about three women, related to each other by blood and experience and location. The inspiration I took from Paul-Albert Besnard’s prints does not lead me to a series of vignettes, but rather to a larger work, encompassing generations. 

I avoided this decision because I will need to have a grander theme with a more acute reason for the action to begin.  Since I’m writing literary fiction, the need for a momentous action is not as necessary as it would be if I was writing a mystery or thriller but the need still exists.  I also want to keep the original order of the Besnard prints intact.  In addition to an overarching plot, I will also be jumping around in time quite a bit and will need to decide how to do that. These struggles and decisions will impact the research I need to do, hence this announcement. 

Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay:  This poem by one of my favorite poets depicts the sensation of dying, being buried, and deciding to rejoin life.  It will be helpful when crafting the chapters that deal with suicide and apotheosis.

Willa Cather: Our Nebraskan author fulfills several needs from the fiction I am reading.  She provides a female voice and a rural setting.  I have loved her work since I first read My Antonia years ago and am really looking forward to reacquainting myself with it.

Mari Sandoz:  This historian provides stories from the rough and tumble days of the homesteaders, an important group to know about when you are writing about people who still live in the glory of their successful ancestors.

Non-Fiction and Essays:  I will be using my favorite search engine (JSTOR) to find academic essays and research papers on the psychological and emotional repercussions of the various traumas my characters will undergo.  JSTOR offers a list feature in which I will collect these various articles until it is time to read them.  A few examples of the search terms I am using are:

-       After effects of rape within a family

-       Hereditary mental illnesses

-       Influence of evangelical Christianity on self-esteem after trauma

-       Results of a matriarchal society on adult children

-       Drug abuse in rural America

As you can see from these categories, the issues I will be doing research on are the themes on which I feel unqualified to address without further study.  If necessary, I will expand my search past journals only to books, documentaries, etc.

Sylvia Plath:  A famously troubled poet, Plath tried and eventually succeeded in taking her life. The themes she expresses in her poetry are similar to the themes that I will be working with and will provide additional insight into the emotional mindset of my troubled characters.

The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney:  This is a great intergenerational family drama that fits into the genre I chose.  I read this book when it first came out, but I think it warrants a reread so that I can learn at the feet of a master.

Literary Fiction:  The former is only an example of that, but I will be reading this genre in general so that I can truly understand the mechanics. This isn’t as pressing a To Be Read item as the rest of the items on this list, but I will be focusing my “fun” reading time on this style. 

Of course, this is only the start of my list.  I feel like these texts will give me a good jumping-off point from which to begin outlining and writing.