Brief Review of

In the memoir, _The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating_ by Elisabeth Tova Bailey I learned as much of the Writer as I did the snail.  It’s both an enjoyable and scientific read.  I was happy to learn about the fascinating world of snails.  Well written.  

Why do Humans Do This?

We have all seen nature programs.  There is a human narrator, a guy perhaps narrating an environmental landscape, how a certain group of animals live, how a certain species of animal have sex.  Then it is filmed and broadcast and put on a network for us to watch how this narrator narrates how this species of animal has sex. 

I personally believe on some level that our human fascination with watching and narrating another species of animal having sex is a warped.    I believe that is a personal sacred act.  Let me put it this way.  Would you like a well-articulated conure with a microphone standing at a safe distance narrating you having sex?

Can you imagine? It would go something like this.  Female Host named Manilla of this nature show perches on a branch, the cord to her microphone dangles down the tree.  “It’s not clearly understood why the humans remove their feathering,” she tells the audience, to us it would feel like we were plucking ourselves.”  A wave of anxiety goes through her at this thought and the audience sees her feathers puff up and down.  “As you can see you the female of the species mounts the male. The female is the dominant one in the sex act.  The males have these elongated appendages common to their species.  Science has yet to define what they are.”

Manilla our Host extends her left foot to her lower mandible and massages the feathers in deep contemplative thought, “HMM.”      

“But they are very crucial to mating and reproducing offspring.  See how they are mating in an enclosed transportation vehicle.  At the moment I cannot recall the name of it.” 

I’ll end here because Our Host, Manilla needs to speak to her camera crew. 

                      

Works of Fiction are not the Enemy

When I had asked a devout Christian Teacher friend of mine some years ago, 

“Do you read fiction?”

Her reply was, “No, because I only read what is true. I only read the Bible.” 

At the time I was depressed by her reply because I thought she knew me well enough to know what I planned to do with my life.  I was essentially sharing about myself which is hard to do.  I also thought she knew I was a Writer, and I felt like shit knowing she would not read anything I wrote.  But this philosophical argument made me think. 

I disagree with her/this reasoning. 

She is implying a great work of fiction is equal to a lie. 

Art and literature are in its own category.  They teach.  They entertain.  They make people think of ideas.  God created some people to create. I create. I am a Christian, but if any one implies to me a dogma that literary fiction, arts and entertainment are an enemy to the Christian faith we are not friends. 

Fiction is a style of writing, Bible Scholars know there are fictional pieces within the Bible, aka parables; psalms are poems, another fictional form of writing.  Jesus spoke in parables.  What are parables? Fictional stories to illustrate an idea.  Maybe some of the parables were based on actual interactions, but I know from listening to them some are fictional.     

This interaction made me think of other things like I was at college to establish myself in a career and joined the on campus Christian organization because it had value...but had I not gone to college I would not have been in this Christian Organization... 

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Man, I have so much understanding about myself in relation to the world.  After college I was frustrated.  I felt lost.  I thought I apply to a job (that doesn’t suck up all my time to write) I get a job. I earn money.  I work at job whether it is great or not, and keep open my time-portal for writing.  I was also trying to figure out myself in the sense of keeping opportunities open like Teaching or going for a Masters in Library Science or an MFA.  So the thing is I never actually had planned to become a Teacher.  But in my junior year of college because I was a Literature and Writing Studies Major here and there a person would ask, “Are you going to Teach?”  I sometimes would say it as a response to please the said person because I believed that is what they wanted to hear.  I did start to wonder what it would take to become a Teacher.  What I really was a Writer, but I normally have too many fears to admit that to someone I don’t exactly trust.  Besides the follow up question is always implied, “What are you really doing?”  Being a Writer IS a job, but it doesn’t pay bills unless you are actually at the stage of publication.  The whole it’s a job it’s not a job conundrum left me depressed at times as well.  But the question “Are you going to Teach?” was actually disorienting because it said to me I have to put what I want to do aside.  In some ways it felt like a trap.  After college I didn’t understand why I couldn’t do what I wanted to do and why I was somehow barred from doing what was socially acceptable to do i.e. Teaching.  I actually took a college junior level Lesson Planning class.  It was teaching theory.  But what I thought I needed was to actually be in a classroom and see how other people teach NOT from the perspective of a student in the class, but from someone observing how the Teacher interacts and communicates with the kids or students of whomever age.  I had no choice but to withdraw from that class.  Sorry, but I read those texts books.  But Teaching a class isn’t in those text books…

It took me way more years after college to understand what Teachers and those with Teaching in mind have.  They have hope in people that they never even met.   And because I understand this to be an actual thing, I understand I didn’t have that.  And this isn’t something my college life gave me per-say not in any classroom.  I would on and off deal with depression, so perhaps the people who go into Teaching are not depressed people.  This doesn’t mean I didn’t have hope.  But it was a different kind.  It’s crazy to think, but apparently hope does come in different forms.    

Where Does This Come From?

         This post is in particular addressed to lady writers.  Lady Writers, When you tell someone you write, does anyone ever ask, do you write Romance? Where does this comes from? I don’t even know what Romance is these days.  The only thing I can think of is those Harlequin Romances which I don’t care for but are easy and fun to make fun of.  I don’t want to be type cast or associated with one genre.  Writers’ write when they have story to write.  In some settings it is hard to be not honest with people and equally hard to be honest with people.  There’s a bit of a romance with the two rodents in my novel, but I didn’t incorporate any sex scenes.  I’m either going to be loved or hated for saying that, needless to state, at my childcare job it was very difficult to be my writer self.        

It is No Tragedy, a Short Lexicon Lesson

Everyday on the television news the news journalists use the word tragedy and they are killing the word.  In fact they use it so much I don’t really know what they mean by it.  A tragedy refers to a preventable event caused by hubris and or by fate as I learned though literature classes.  A news journalist does not know enough personal information about person’s life to know this. 
Even dictionary.com doesn't get to what is probably the newscaster’s definition of the word until the 5^th and 6^th entry.  Dictionary.com is written by word people though, so they understand these things.  I could never be a news journalist probably for this reason.  I’d prefer to say horrible ordeal.  

National Write a Novel in a Month Month

This month is National Write a Novel in a Month Month.  Sadly I am not taking part in this beautiful yearly event.  Yet I am still plugging away on the novel I am currently working on.  Hopefully one day I will be awesome enough to attempt it.  For those of you who are doing this or working on another piece of literature I salute you.  Keep your mind open and give yourself time to write.