Monday 30 January 2006

a little Presbyterian boarding school

One walks into the sagging halls of a school that houses students as it has since the early 20th century. These chosen few hundred are Spanish speaking, yet not all from Mexico City alone. Grown children of many an adventurous parent, the eyes of these students give back silent pictures of glimmering hope, of glassy un-revealing, of dim but steady willingness to try--so many brown pools of livliness asking common ancient questions with a vision to know a brilliant future.
I tutor these boys and girls, though we have yet to understand one another.

Friday 13 January 2006

why are you writing?

Anne Lamott tells the tale of her reasons for writing: ideas grow out of a need, as if necessity really were the mother of Invention. We mainly need a sense of belonging, she says, and to know that everything is going to be okay. She writes to give a fellow human being the sense of wholeness, connected to the other characters who feel the same things as that reader and the peace that comes from knowing you're not alone. Not peace only, but a levity of pleasure in the laughter she invokes in a reader is a sort of sacred gift to be exercised to the soul satisfaction of both reader and author.

Thursday 5 January 2006

Notes on Bird by Bird

One writes to tell the truth. The truth is best told by starting with short assignments and writing bad first drafts. Stories are the most common way in which we tell the truth, which one might carry to the extreme of saying the message of truth is held in the medium of story. Stories are about characters, people who live and breathe with eccentric habits and chronic self centredness.
To tell stories, one must be observant and read and practice writing as diligently and as hopefully as a music student aspiring to mimic Mozart.