Month: April 2011

For some background on the discussion centering around Jacqueline Howett and the critique of her grammar, I need to refer you to Rachel Swirsky and Shalanna.

As I see it, besides Howett’s inappropriate and unfortunate response, which has been discussed in great detail in many other places, there are two issues that have been raised. The first is whether knowing grammar makes you more intelligent, and a better writer. The second is questioning the knowledge of youth today and its superiority or inferiority to the previous generations. I choose to tackle the second point first, because I need to use it to frame the first point.

Please read Rachel’s post now, if you haven’t yet. You know, I was so pleased to see someone write up so well the same kind of discussion that I’ve been having at faculty meetings and retreats for a very long time. I am SO tired of the idea that students now are inferior to students of previous times. This comes from so many instructors, and I sometimes wonder if the problem isn’t the students, but the older generation.

Rachel does a great job of tracing worthless new generation syndrome back to the ancient Greeks. The latest example I’ve had of this was a critique of eReaders from a speech teacher. She was recommending a seminar on the sunset of the paper book, and wanted to hold a seminar/reading circle that basically said that the Internet had curtailed the ability of its generation of users from thinking deeply.

Congratulations, if you’re reading this, by the way, you shallow thinker, you!

She had an expert book to back her up. The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. That reading circle is actually going on at our college right now. When called to task by other peers, the speech teacher suggested that what made this argument plausible was that she liked books, and her students seemed more shallow to her. Gotta love that anecdotal evidence from a biased party!

Anywhoo, two things came up in the discussion: One instructor (not me!) suggested that we were just this side of not being able to convince our students that we were the most out of touch dinosaurs (which says nothing about the claims of the book, or those no good youngsters!). The other thing was that myself and my friend Olga suggested that an adaption to a differing kind of media/medium did not mean that the person using the new literacy was inferior to the person using the previous literacy. Rather, the literacy and the perception of the world was different, not superior or inferior. We went on to talk about the advent of the book versus the oral tradition, the advent of television and so on.

And while the division in the resulting discussion was not generational entirely, it looked like there were many instructors who decided that today’s students had less rigor than yesterday’s students, and that we had let our academic standards go to crap, etc, etc, etc.

I don’t think so.

Continue reading “Gate Keeping in the Academic World: Part 1”

Patience has been a theme I have returned to at the Tamago, time and time again. My natural inclination is not to be patient. I hate waiting. I have grappled with “there is a season–turn, turn, turn” all my life.

Like a fool, I decided to pursue writing seriously. Listen up, Writer-me-of-the-past! You think that you can become patient, but you have no idea of the monumental task in front of you.

The publishing industry measures getting things done in measurements of epochs. Say you have a story accepted, and you are waiting on edits. That could take a long time? Three months? Try longer. A year? Maybe longer. Say you have a submission out. How long could that take? I know authors who have heard from slush piles 2 or more years later.

There are two things that will affect how long you feel you’re waiting. Of course, you are anxious for feedback about your efforts. In your case, Writer-me, the waiting is worse than the rejection. Of course you want feedback in your ethnocentric universe. You spent kaboodles of time on your work. The other thing is that you will mistakenly measure the speed of the publishing turtle by the the speed of your job. Even in a job like yours, Writer-me, where things take time, they don’t take this much time.

Forget all you know or think you know about patience. The only way you will survive this gig is to truly let your project go, and move onto the next thing. For the first few attempts, you will only be half-hearted in this effort. However, after you get to know other writers who are productive and are going through the insane waiting as well, it becomes progressively easier. It becomes cool to work on the next thing, and you will learn patience and letting go.

The other thing that will really assist you with the waiting is to assess your goals. This is the bus analogy I coined over breakfast one morning in Vegas hanging out with Miranda Suri. Different writers get off at different stops. It’s all good. For example, my goal now (and some day in the future, Writer-me) is to write a book good enough that an agent will love it. (Yes, marry it, or at least set it up in a long term relationship in a New York penthouse.) That means I have to be patient about learning a whole new style of writing.

This will come about, Writer-me, only after you’ve gotten past some ego issues (which may be another one of these entries). What this means is you will be on the bus probably after a lot of people have gotten off, and the the lights have come on, and most of the vinyl benches are clear.

Where are the other writers? Some of them got off earlier, because they weren’t wild about being on the bus. Others liked the nice little small press stop, and decided it was a good place to be (I got off there for a while, and it is!). Some have gotten off at other agent stops. Or at the commercial stop. Or at the phenomena stop (I hear that’s a great place, but the restaurants in the neighborhood are lousy!) At the indie stop. At the self-publish stop. On and on.

Do you see a theme? There’s so much waiting involved, and so many different ways to play the game, the question is do you want to do this? Really? As I mentioned in another entry, petty crime will get you results much sooner. The waiting really does get easier as you practice more, and the longer you stay on the bus. You will master it.

Now you can move on up to a monastery in Tibet and work out that life is an illusion. Or you can keep writing.

Next lesson: The world is full of good, talented writers, and what that really means for your career.