Category: Writing

Just writing

Let ‘er come

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date August 31, 2002

I’m back on track with the RDF book, though slowly. I want to write, frequently, strongly, and to cover the screen with pixels, but, lately, my thoughts have not been on technology. I think my new office location has something to do with it — my desk faces towards a window overlooking the housing complex and there is so much interesting scurrying about that I find myself easily distracted.

At this moment, exactly at this moment, I’m watching a wild rabbit hop around the bushes across the street. And one of the women that shares the townhouse where the bunny is foraging left just a bit ago, every hair in place, dressed perfectly. As always.

(Rather than be envious of her, though, she makes me feel oddly thankful to be so comfortable with my own rumpled condition. If she and I were cars, she would be a BMW, and I would be one of those volkswagon buses that has been around — you know the kind I’m talking about.)

I have also been spending time getting the web site for my online book (Coming of Age in John Birch Country) organized. I’m using pictures from the University of Washington Digital Collections to annotate the site, thanks to the school’s open copyright policy. One of my favorite photos is titled “Let ‘er come” and features a farmer and his wife talking to a reporter about the oncoming flood caused by the Grand Coulee Dam.

It’s easy to be sanguine when you know your home is above the water line.

Writing

More words than five

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date August 31, 2002

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m seeing a metamorphosis in many of the weblogs I visit lately — people not only moving their weblogs to new servers or new weblogging tools, but also looking to redefine what their weblogs mean to them. Why am I here?

I wrote the following in an email to a good friend yesterday:

Today, I stopped weblogging and started writing using weblogging tools.

It’s just a sentence. It’s just words. But it changes my view of why I’m here.

Weblogging Writing

Browsin’ them links, written’ them postings

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date August 30, 2002

Loren wrote a wonderful essay about To Kill a Mockingbird for the Banned Books project that’s a must read. For the record, I am also quite fond of this book, as well as the movie based on the book starring Gregory Peck.

I am aware that the book does use racially explosive and derogatory terms, the primary reason it appeared on the banned books list. However, the tight integration into the material makes the phrases/words an integral part of the story — they add to the richness of the scenes and provide defining nuances for both the time and the place.

In addition to the essay, following my earlier discussion about trying to write a weblog posting or two based on the style of writing demonstrated in whatever book just finished reading, Loren uses the style of writing from To Kill a Mockingbird in a new posting that, well, tripped me into a full throated, from the belly, rip-roarin’ guffaw.

Thankfully I work on home.

(Loren is packin’ his weblog and movin’ it over to that there Movable Type. This means that we’in these parts can comment and use these new fangled permalink things. That’s a rought smart move, boy.)

Writing

Daily at the “Daily Summit”

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date August 29, 2002

I can’t tell you how much I enjoy reading David Steven’s frequent World Summit postings at the Daily Summit. Not only is he pointing out pertinent and relevant information of interest (to all of of us), he’s also providing an insider look into the proceedings that one misses with mainstream news reports.

Favorite line today, from recounted comments from NGOs:

“You have to be careful whether you catch him before or after a demonstration. He has a metabolism that thrives on tear-gas.”

Humor aside, hearing about the champagne and caviar lifestyle lived by the delagates who are meeting to, among other things, work out plans to prevent starvation around the world is sadly, and terribly, ironic.

Weblogging Writing

Trying something new

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date August 29, 2002

I’m trying something new: as I finish each book on my recommended and want-to read list, I’m attempting to incorporate a little of the author’s unique style into a few of my weblog postings. With this, I hope to get a better understanding of what I liked or didn’t like about each book.

For instance, I tried to use just a little of Sebald’s wonderful stream of conciousness effect from “The Rings of Saturn” in the posting The Three Boys.

Of course, I don’t have Sebald’s amazing ability in this regard, and I can’t possibly match his own unique genius. However, I’m hoping that this effort will allow me to explore the richness of each author’s writing in a more personal way, as well as to experience a little personal growth in my own writing. Trying on new suits to test the feel, as it were