Purposeful

I have noticed that some people who are participating in National Blog Posting Month have started to run out of steam. They hastily post short items or things that they think are not well thought out. Today, I'm going to put my teacher hat back on to tell them that they are doing as they should. I taught writing for eight loooooooooooooooooong years (college freshmen can make every minute an eternity) and you know, put together 200+ pages of bullshit they called a dissertation. Plus, I allegedly write every day at my job. So there are my credentials.

I finished my dissertation not because it was fascinating or because my director was retiring, but because I wrote every day (not the first four years, but in the couple of months that led to the defense, I wrote every day). Some days, it was one craptastic idea that got deleted the next day. Some days, pages of words flowed from my fingertips. But the important part was that I paid attention to the project every day. If you are trying to become a better writer, then even those quick posts at 11:45 do something. They stimulate something in your brain so that when you sit down again the next day or the day after that or fifteen years from tomorrow your writing is a little bit better, a little bit closer to something. You will never hear me say that it will be easier or quicker. In fact, the more you know about writing, the harder it is. You can imagine that the freshmen loved to hear that. That's what made it all the more pleasurable to tell them. So the moral is you have to think about why you are posting in order to see what you are getting out of the exercise. For me, it's been about providing my readers with fodder (justifies the polls) and about recording every day in this month (for two years now).

This time last year, the anesthesia was wearing off. And I was about to spend days on the couch. It almost makes me want to count my blessings, and then I remember that I'm going to the doctor for my one year check up on Wednesday to talk about carving up the other foot.

The UFO Project: Watercolor Geraniums

It occurs to me that I just started posting these ufos without ever explaining myself. Don't you know why I've done it? Can't you read my mind? (When I was teaching writing, I always told students I could only read their papers, not their minds. Because, inevitably, they'd write a lot less than they had been thinking about a subject, and their much more interesting thoughts would come out in conversations with them, never in their papers. But I digress...)

I was up in the craft room and decided I Needed to Take Stock. And here it is, my stock taking. It has lead me to have Big Ideas about my 2007 resolutions, which I will share with you at the appropriate time.

Today's project is Watercolor Geraniums. I believe it was featured in Just Cross Stitch magazine. I started this in the late 90s for my mom, an avid gardner. Well, really, my mom has a tendency to get really into things--horseback riding, piano lessons, gardening--until the Next Big Thing comes along. But she's very earnest, and so charming, in her enthusiasm. I intended it to be a Christmas gift, but when I realized I wasn't going to finish on time, I put it aside. I put a few stitches in it this year, but it's stitched 3-over-2. Three is just too many. And what an ordeal it is to gather all the floss for this one!

Boing!

When I was studying the teaching of writing (really), I had to review this book--for the life of me I cannot remember the name of it--where writing pedadogy theorists and rhetoricians wrote about their own experiences as writing students. I often shared some of the essays with my students because they truly believed people were born writers. And those rhetoricians were not only thinkers, they were born great writers. Except they weren't. Isn't it funny how wrong 18 years olds can be?

One of the essays that I shared later in the semester was about style. This young rhetorician-to-be was assigned to write an essay about a painting. She dutifully went to the museum and took notes. And then she wrote her paper. Starting in the upper left hand corner of the painting, she described it in meticulous detail. Her teacher gave her a scribbled grade (which was later revealed to be an "F") with the comment "Boing!" Except, of course, the comment didn't say "Boing," it read "Boring!" Which, of course, a meticulous description of each bit of something is, unless it is tied to a greater theme or purpose. The lessons for the student were twofold: yes, they could learn to write and they should try not to be meticulous, they should strive to have a higher purpose in their writing.

I am continually reminded of that essay when I read the articles in Piecework. No one will ever fault their writers for being detail-driven. The problem is we just get the details. And I'm often left wondering, "so what?"

Here's an example from the recent issue:

Most Irish-stitch pocketbooks were worked in wool or silk yarn on a linen evenweave fabric with a pattern of notched diamonds outlined in white or off-white and filled concentrically with different shades of red, green, blur, yellow, or purple, leaving a contrasting center. Some pocketbooks followed a strict pattern of color repeats, but most were more casual in their design, the only concern being to avoid having two adjacent diamonds of the same color. Linings ranged from silk, linen, and damask to worsted and durant or durance (similar to felted wool). Cardboard or leather stiffened some pocketbooks.

First, I am not picking on the writer. The editor should know better! This paragraph might be boring but essentail if the article of four scant pages wasn't illustrated with nine photos of Irish-stitch pocketbooks. Instead, it's just boring. It's just a list that does not promote the article's thesis "Irish-stitch pocketbooks were important in America from the mid 18th to the early 19th century." This example isn't nearly as mind-numbing as some. I once read an article where scads of fabric used to make quilts in India were described.

I do hope the magazine works to improve this as they have changed their direction, or refocused on their early roots. They will continue to offer projects, but they will "focus more on exploring and promoting historic hand needlework and the elements behind the tradition." Too much opportunity methinks for the "Boing!" I'll be watching.