Poetry Friday here tomorrow

I know some of you like to get your selections in early, so leave your info in the comment section and I'll round them up tomorrow.

Ugly pots, awful sentences

A little while ago, over at the Tollbooth blog, Sarah Sullivan related the story about two groups of pottery students. One group was told their work would be judged solely on quantity, and the other group, quality. The result surprised me: the "quantity" group produced the higher quality work. When I read the same story again, this time on my friend, Cheryl's blog, I reacted again to the results.

My surprise has to do with my experiences as a musician. For most of my childhood, my approach to piano playing was sloppy. I got by with as little practice as I could get away with. At around fourteen, attending a music camp and going to a different teacher turned my mild interest in music into full-blown love. I became a piano fiend and gobbled up music. Beethoven, Debussy, Schubert: anything my teacher put in front of me, I learned, quickly.

That period was my equivalent of "work judged on quantity alone" in the pottery story.

When I got into conservatory, my professor was impressed with my big repertoire but appalled (he was, and is, a true gentleman and never showed it) by my lack of finesse and detail. Under his tutelage, I revisited pieces I had "learned" earlier so that I could improve on phrasing and voicing and fingering and articulation etc.

To my dismay, I discovered that my fingers and arms knew those pieces in a certain way and changing it was very difficult. In my earlier haste to learn new music, fueled by eagerness and passion, I had overlooked details, ploughed over important sections, and smothered all nuances. Even with determination and hours and hours of re-practicing, I wasn't always successful in changing old habits.

I gained a much deeper respect for the process of learning a new piece.

In twenty years of teaching, I've seen the same thing in my students. Those who took time to analyze their pieces, work out fingerings, and began learning at slower tempos mastered their music more quickly and securely. Those who wanted to get to the finished product quickly found themselves addled with stubborn mistakes that would surface, even months after they'd been eradicated, at auditions, recitals, competitions and other stressful situations.

Quality from the start: that has been my belief. Haste in "finishing" a piece: a guarantee of unpredictability.

And that's why the pottery story surprised me.

Obviously there are a number of other factors besides the contrast of quality vs. quantity. For example, the pottery students' interest in quality. That is why during the process of producing their many ugly pots, they learned how to make beautiful ones.

The thought I concluded from this story and my own experiences is this: thank goodness writing does not have a physical-memory component. In music, my muscles become conditioned when I learn something new. Reconditioning it takes a lot of time and effort. In writing, I can type a thousand bad sentences and the physicality of it won't hamper me from writing good ones.

I'll take time when I learn new music (gearing up forChristmas is when I get to learn lots and lots of new music for the church choir) but I'll be writing lots of words to get the ugly pots out of the way.

Tell me your favs!

The list I posted yesterday is a reminder that systems of categorizing are imperfect. Obviously most people reading it won't come to the conclusion that the "books that may appeal to boys" are off limits to girls, or that books under "multicultural" have nothing, besides cultural details, to offer, or that The Underneath is only a good book because there is a hound in it, but I'm still bugged.

Before I get completely off-tanget and vent my frustrations at other imperfect human-concocted systems, let me offer more book suggestions. Yesterday most of the books are for children, today I focus on mostly books for adults:

Books, fiction and non-fiction, that show in vivid details how difficult life can be, but also convince us that hope exists:

• Broken for you by Stephanie Kallos
• The Unfinished Life by Mark Spragg
• Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• True Notebooks by Marc Salzman
• Home at the End of the World by Michael Cummingham

Books I simply love:

• Emma Jean Lazarus Fell out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis (middle grade)
• What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn

What are some of your favorite books you think would make great gifts?

Move over AIG and BIg Three Auto

Save the publishing industry!

The current economic crisis is hurting industries across the board. The one that concerns this blog has just experienced a particularly bad October. Moonrat explains it much better at her blog. It has to do with bookstores returning so much inventory to the publishers that an entire year's profit has been wiped out at some smaller houses.

As a book lover and hopeful future author, I ask that you consider buying books as gifts this season. And since I'm nothing but helpful, here is a list of suggestions, totally subjective with no discernible common factor except that I think they're well-written, entertaining, and just plain good.

Multicultural books
chapter books and early middle grade

• Rickshaw girl by Mitali Perkins
• The Year of the Rat by Grace Lin
• The No No Boys by Teresa Funke (hot off the press!)
  
• A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park

young adult

• Good Enough by Paula Yoo

Books that may appeal to boys
chapter books and middle grade

• Dodger and Me by Jordan Sonnenblick
• Humpty Dumpty Jr. : Hardbolied Detective series by Paul Hindman and Nate Evans
• Five Ancestors series by Jeff Stone

Books about strong sibling relationships
middle grade

• The Penderwicks (and sequel) by Jeanne Birdsall
  
• Saffy's Angels (and sequels) bu Hilary McKay

Poetry books for children

• Poetry Speaks to Children
• Birds on a Wire by J. Patrick Lewis

Books for doglovers (who also love lyrical writing)

• The Underneath by Kathi Appelt
  
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski

Poetry Friday

Our family celebrated two birthdays in the past couple of weeks, my daughter's and mine. These milestones brought to mind thoughts about growing up, growing older, changes. My daughter is still young, but she's gaining independence every day, and lately I find myself wondering the kind of adult she'll grow up to be.

Between
by Marie Ponsot
...

The child was a girl, the girl is a woman; the shift

is subtle and absolute, worn like a gift.

Check out other posts on poetry at Check It Out this week.

Big Sur in the Rockies: a second report

Learning from the experience and wisdom of the faculty was wonderful, but that's only half the reason why the Big Sur in the Rockies Workshop was so valuable. The other half was meeting like-minded writers.

The weekend was structured around critique groups. Each attendee was assigned two groups led by two different faculty members. Each group met twice. Attendees chose what they submitted at each group meeting.

The talent and passion of these writers are amazing. From inventive premises to tender treatments of difficult subjects such as death and divorce to a touching corridos (Mexican and Southwestern US traditional ballad) to hilarious yet heart-warming poetry, I was treated to some excellent writing. And let me tell ya, you haven't lived till you hear an ancient Japanese / Jewish / African folk tale re-told in authentic cowboy.

Reading and critiquing the work, and listening to the critiques, of so many thoughtful writers taught me volumes.

And then there are my two cottage mates. Not only are they brilliant writers with a great sense of humor (and sass), they are also the most considerate, respectful sharers-of-space one could ever ask for. I am forever spoilt.

Big Sur in the Rockies: A report

The Big Sur in the Rockies writing retreat provided me with a wonderful time away from the day-to-day concerns and focus on writing. The workshop is small, with only about 50+ attendees and ten faculty members.


Here are Lyron Bennett and Lynda Sandoval, two people filled with wit, intelligence, knowledge about the publishing industry, and boundless energy. I was trying to figure out how to bottle it all weekend long.


And here I am with Laura Backes, writing teacher extraordinaire. Her superpower is way better than that of any fake super hero: she can get to the heart of any manuscript and make magic-wand type suggestions that any writer would want to immediately follow.



From l to r: Laura Backes, Linda Arms White, Marilyn Marks, Andrea Brown.


From l to r: Claudia Mills, Phyllis Perry, Hilari Bell.

The only faculty member whose picture I didn't manage to take is Paul Hindman.

I didn't get to know every one of the faculty but from listening to other attendees talk about how one or the other faculty member helped them, I can attest to the fact that every faculty has a heart for helping writers of children's literature. And God bless them for their generosity.

Post-retreat shlump

I came back from the first ever Big Sur in the Rockies writing retreat earlier this afternoon. It's great to see my family but I am in a bit of a post-retreat shlump-funk, or feeling melancholic, as my fellow-writer, Cheryl, said in a much more sophisticated way. This melancholy reminds me a lot of the feelings I used to have at the end of camps I attended as a teen.

I'll be posting more of my time at the retreat in the next few days, but right now, I think I'll go mine the emotions for my music camp novel.

(All right, call it wallow if you must, but I'm calling it part and parcel of my writing process.)