To write erotica or not to write erotica

Many life lessons can be found in the 1999 classic "10 Things I Hate About You." For example, flashing the soccer coach can get your would-be boyfriend out of detention, and male models are generally undesirable in every way except their looks. (Both true, though I admit to no personal experience in either case.)

The most applicable life lesson for a writer, however, can be found in Allison Janney's character. She fills the obligatory teen comedy role of the wacky authority figure (think Principal Rooney in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"), spending her office hours as a high school guidance counselor crafting a thesaurus-enhanced work of erotic literature starring, you guessed it, the effervescent Reginald.

Beside the fact that Janney is a scene-stealer in absolutely everything, her character's identification as an author has always led me to wonder about her back-story. Was she an aspiring writer that found work as a guidance counselor (ie gave up on her preferred field), or a guidance counselor that found an outlet in writing out her erotic fantasies while simultaneously, you know, counseling teenagers?

As with any genre, the bulk of erotic romance novels (writer Mary Roach discusses the difference between pornography, erotica and romance here) are badly written dime novels. But unlike horror or comedy or drama, this presumption of poor craftsmanship defines the overall reputation of the romance category.

I mean, how can you take this seriously as literature?

Captain Obvious points out that it's hard to make it as a writer in any genre. Even if you do manage to survive NaNoWriMo or get a publisher to look at your manuscript, most authors don't come anywhere near being famous, or if they do they're often a one-hit wonder. (Dan Brown, I love you, but please stop.)

But romance novels are a serious market. It is the most popular genre in modern literature: In 2008, out of more than 47,000 fiction books published in the U.S., about 7,000 were romance novels, which generated $1.37 billion in sales -- a solid eighth of the market. A quarter of the American population -- more than 74 million people (90% women) -- read at least one romance novel that year. And of those, almost 30 million (mostly married women in their 30's and 40's) are regular romance readers.

Not to mention that the genre is one of the oldest. Vātsyāyana wrote the Kama Sutra like 1,600 years ago. Two hundred years ago, Jane Austen provided a cornerstone for the non-erotic body of romantic fiction work. Even Mark Twain got in on the fun in 1880 with the rather risque 1601, which (it goes without saying) created some waves.

So who are we to be choosy? Getting published is getting published, and a paycheck is a paycheck. With a literary landscape so saturated with both good and bad romance novels (mostly bad, or at least horrendously cheesy), aspiring authors would be smart to re-think their scorn.

According to stats drummed up by romance novelist Brenda Hiatt (author of our representative book cover above), the payout for a romance novel is anywhere from a few hundred bucks to more than $100,000. Top-paying publishers are, not surprisingly, the giants Random House, Ballantine (a member of the Random House Publishing Group) and Grand Central Publishing (formerly owned by Time Warner, now a part of the Hachette Book Group). But a number of smaller publishers -- notably Harlequin, Pocket, Silhouette and Berkley/Jove -- provide a pay-out of at least $10,000-$20,000, which ain't bad for something that probably does not need to be labored on for years (or even months) on end. Royalties tend to hover around 6-8% for print and 30-40% for electronic, which is standard in the publishing industry.

Writing romance has the potential to be a lucrative side gig, and there are plenty of pseudonyms to go around, and yet to people who take themselves too seriously (ie literary critics and most writers), the romance genre is a joke. We've been cultured to assume that romance novels are trashy, pathetic and aimed at lonely women. And many of them are. But wouldn't it be great if the industry could evolve to the point where writing any brand of romance or erotica wasn't a dagger to the heart of a mainstream career? Where a pseudonym wouldn't be necessary to preserve credibility as an author?

Not everything one writes needs to be published. The best part of being a writer, in fact, is not the moment of publishing but the moment of composing something that really carries weight, that means something to you and could possibly mean something to someone else. That last part is the gravy on the publishing boat. I'd never embark on a journey to write something I wouldn't consider publishing, and I don't think I'm quite ready to proudly post my name over sentences like, "He played with her disheveled, mahogany hair with one hand as the other slowly crept up her creamy leg, pausing to trace the skirt hem that lay flat against her long, lithe thighs." *

Of course, I'm being hypocritical: I criticize the genre's reputation for bad writing and then dismiss the writing process as easy, when obviously it's not. But some authors publish more than half a dozen romance novels a year, so it can't be all that hard, can it? (Hi-o.) For now, I'll content myself with dreaming up double entendre pseudonyms and searching for a genuinely well-written erotic romance novel. (Suggestions welcome for either.)

The big question on writing romance: Is the juice worth the squeeze? Reginald's quivering member would probably say so.

* Wow, a thesaurus of some kind really is necessary.

Happy holidays, blogosphere!

So I was on a tropical island 24 hours ago. And how does Chicago welcome me home? Making me spend an hour carving my car out of the snow. It took pounds of kitty litter and a friendly neighbor to whom I now karmically owe baked goods. It's just too cliche to bother whining about.

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas! If you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope your Chinese food was greasy and delicious.

In case any of you were looking for a last-minute gift for me...

LEGEND

You guys. Charlie Brown is on the Northwestern football team.

Charlie Brown. CHARLIE BROWN!!

Made my day. Thanks, Dozer.

It's my Friday

I'm going to Hawaii tomorrow for a long overdue vacation and to see my family. As a result, I'm finding it hard to get anything done today. Join me.

This is pretty much the best thing I've seen since the Pachelbel Rant. Enjoy!



via Gabby Frate.

It burns the soul

The provided embed link is broken, but if you've ever wanted to be a journalist, or if you've ever loved someone who thought they wanted to be a journalist, click here and prepare to weep tears of recognition.

via the actual, real-life working journalist (a rarity!) Erin Dostal.

Happy Monday

I'm a sucker for fancy, animated infographics. And English accents. Check out this neat article from The Economist on how the world will reach a living population of seven billion in about a year here. The world has changed more in the last 60 years than in centuries before it; can you imagine where we'll be in another 60?

Found via wimp.com, a circa-1993-looking site that nevertheless links to cool and/or funny and/or informative videos on a daily basis.

P.S. It's 9 degrees in Chicago today. For any nerds reading, it's basically Hoth out there.

Sometimes it hurts...

...to be a Northwestern fan.


Case in point, the beating we suffered versus Wisconsin last Saturday. Congratulations to Badgers fans; I'm sure you're all excited to go to the Rose Bowl. But 70-23? Bielema, you're a dick.

I'm as hardcore a Northwestern football fan as they come. I've been to every home game since 2005, and I've been to eight out of 10 of our conference opponents' stadiums, as well as this year's season opener at Vanderbilt. (And planning to road trip out to Lincoln next year when we add Nebraska to the Big Ten, er, Twelve, er, whatever.) I was in the marching band for four years. I bleed purple. I got comfortable with seeing our team steadily improve throughout the season, and end on a fabulous note in November. That's typically the month we beat Iowa, after all. Beating Iowa is my favorite.

That's why losing Persa, and then dropping the two games at the end of the season -- Illinois at Wrigley (WRIGLEY) and then Wisconsin over Thanksgiving weekend, both on primetime TV -- really, really hurt. For the first time, 'Cats fans are starting to have real expectations, and when we don't fulfill them, our hearts ache.

But I'll take this opportunity to remind everyone -- and myself -- that this program is on an incredible upswing, and -- if you'll excuse my French -- fuck if I'm going to miss watching Fitz end his fifth season as head coach with our first bowl win since 1949. I am simply not willing to risk it. So I'm putting faith before evidence, fashioning some Bielema voodoo dolls (yes, I hold grudges) and planning a trip to Texas.

Bowl announcements are this Sunday; Northwestern is projected to be given the second-to-lowest Big Ten spot at the TicketCity Bowl in Dallas on January 1st. (The lowest slot will go to a non-Big Ten team, since Purdue, Indiana and Minnesota are not bowl-eligible. As tough as it's been to be a 'Cats fan this year, it's been worse to be a Boilermaker, Hoosier or Gopher fan.) (No love for the Boilermakers this year, though.)

So go 'Cats, beat the Texas Tech Red Raiders (our projected opponents). 2011 is going to be a wicked awesome season -- a (knock on wood) healthy Persa, an experienced depth chart, a non-spastic run defense -- but we've still got business to attend to this year. Fitz, Watkins and crew will just have to figure out how to take care of business.

Until then, I'm just going to watch this on loop:

The Medill School of...oh, whatever

I went to college to study journalism. I chose Northwestern because it is home to the Medill School of Journalism. It's a fantastic school and as a result the name "Medill" carries weight in the industry, and I wanted to be a part of that.

So I've watched with waning interest and waxing exasperation as the Medill administration has been dicking around with the name of the school. At first they announced that it would just be "The Medill School," dropping the "of Journalism," as reflected in the current logo (above). This was done, they said, in consideration of the Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) program, which is also housed in Medill (and which, in my opinion and that of others, really belongs in the Kellogg School of Management or perhaps the School of Communication).

We wouldn't want the IMCers feeling left out by having the name of a journalism school include the word "journalism" in it. I know, we're so thoughtful. But whatever, I can swallow that. It's not like the value of a Medill degree isn't understood.

But that solution was too simple, and someone* changed their mind, so earlier this month the faculty voted (38-5) to change the name to "The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing."

Let's just let that soak in for a minute.

The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing**

Seriously? At what point did we decide that verbose and gawky is better than clean and simple? And also that conjunctions are unnecessary? It just feels like we're trying too hard. It's inelegant. By attempting to list everything that Medill is, we limit ourselves to that list.

As a way to soothe our collective indignation, I did some brainstorming with my unofficial panel of fellow Medill alums for alternative title ideas. (Warning: They get progressively angrier.)

My suggestion: The Medill School of Muckraking, Pandering, Asyndeton
E.D.'s suggestion: The Medill School of Journalism and Not Journalism
T.H.'s suggestion: The Medill School of Whatever D.L.* Wants to Name It, Apparently
B.M.'s suggestion: Medill: Who Gives a Fuck So Long as It Sounds Pretentious

I'm proud to have studied journalism and to have graduated from Medill. But I don't have confidence in what this shift means for the program. I just hope that the word craft doesn't get lost amongst the verbiage.

* That'd be Medill's dean, John Lavine.

**UPDATE, 11:06 p.m. - So the Daily Northwestern messed up the name -- it should actually be the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. That's...so much better.

Blogs: Shitty First Drafts

I'm reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, a fantastically funny and informative book that offers "some instructions on writing and life." A typical piece of instruction, taken from the chapter titled "Shitty First Drafts:"

"All good writers write [shitty first drafts]. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)"

First of all, is that not wonderful? Lamott mixes in so many elements -- humor and a relaxed voice, mostly, not to mention a successful, totally tangential parenthetical -- that we can't help but wonder what the first draft of this very paragraph must have looked like.

But mostly, this is incredibly comforting. I'm sure I'm not the only writer who's ever written something I'd rather eat than show to another living soul. Getting over that hump -- making myself just sit down and write and not worry about spitting out polished prose on the first attempt -- is probably the most important thing I've learned in two quarters of a master's writing program. Taking the time to write a shitty first draft and then revise it -- this must be how the great writers do it. Why didn't I realize that before?

I think this is also why we consider blogging such an inferior writing outlet: It's almost always comprised entirely of shitty first drafts. This, what I'm writing right now, is a shitty first draft. I won't revise it, save maybe fixing some spelling errors. I might read it through once, but I'm not going to go back over it and take the time to really craft it. There are way too many people like me out there, throwing up their shitty first drafts all over the Internet.

See? Being a writer is a practice in self-hatred. Being a blogger, doubly so.

So really, thanks for reading. I promise I do actually edit my posts sometimes.

NU @ Wrigley

I've missed you all. Not as much as I've missed NU football.

Obviously.

P.S. I turned in my final assignment for this quarter at DePaul, which means I should have more time to post interesting things for you to read. We'll see how that goes over the next few weeks.

Yeah, Toast

Last Leaf

OK Go | Myspace Music Videos

With this video, released yesterday, OK Go continues to blow everyone else out of the water when it comes to music videos. At this point we can safely assert that the treadmill guys (53 million views, holy crap) are more than just a gimmick; they obviously see the music video as an art unto itself.

Last Leaf is the latest song off the 2010 album Of the Blue of the Colour of the Sky to get the video treatment: check out WTF?, White Knuckles, and End Love, as well as two separate videos for This Too Shall Pass (video 1, video 2), the first one of which features members of the Notre Dame Marching Band.

I'm not a food blogger (yet)...

...but damn, I'm proud of tonight's cooking achievements.

Martha's Curried Carrot Soup

Serve hot or cold, 185 calories per serving. Check out the recipe here.
(UPDATE, 11/11/10: This dish has received official roomie approval. Win.)

Rosemary Roast Beef with potatoes, scallions and mushrooms

And my own recipe. Now accepting applications for future rich husbands seeking kickass homemaker. I'll provide the apron, you provide the bon bons.

These days, a self-pleasuring bear isn't enough

Wrong Conan, but just as amusing.

I watched the new Conan show on TBS last night. It was fairly engaging, but I can't shake the latent concern that Conan's weirdness, while an endearing quality, is also what drives viewers away. It's obvious that the target audience is my generation: The show was preceded by a Family Guy marathon, the guests were under-30'ers Seth Rogen (who told a bunch of weed jokes) and Lea Michele, as well as prodigal musician Jack White, and the cameos included pseudo-household names Larry King, Jon Hamm, Ricky Gervais and the teenage-boy-gag masturbating bear, among others.

But while it's amusing to revel in Conan's self-proclaimed awkwardness for awhile, the ruse can't last an hour every night of the week. My 20-something attention span, which has been ravaged for years by things with glowing screens, is over it after a few revolutions.

I hope Conan succeeds. I want him to, because he's sincere and cleverly droll, and I appreciate his brand of vaguely band geek humor. But at the end of the day, awkward is just awkward, and if the first show was supposed to wow me, I don't think they're quite there yet.

Bo Burnham Update

After spending so much time on this post last week, I caved and paid the $8 from Amazon for the new (DRM-free) Bo Burnham album. And you guys...it's pretty good. Mostly recordings from live shows, with a few studio versions, it's a comedy album that I'd put in the same league as Stephen Lynch, with more re-listenability than Dane Cook.

Also, two weeks ago Collegehumor posted an instructional video on how to parlay playing the piano into getting laid starring -- you guessed it -- Bo Burnham. (Embedding disabled, you'll have to hit the link, but it's worth it.) Apparently all it takes is some hair flipping, arpeggios and scribbling of notes. PMA boys, take note.

Oh Bo! Or Oh No?

So I wrote this post last night and I woke up this morning with a mash-up of both these songs (the new ones, "Words Words Words" and "Oh Bo") stuck in my head. I can't help but be both impressed and annoyed, and I'm curious as to what you guys think of this guy, so let me know in the comments!



I first heard about Bo Burnham when a friend sent me the above video in November of 2008. My response to the email: "Ha...pedophilia..."

(For context, that video was posted on YouTube in July 2008, more than a year and a half after this kid posted his first video in December 2006 at age 16 to amuse his older brother, who was away at college.)

Despite my caustic response, I enjoyed the video; the quips are quick and the puns roll off almost effortlessly. He's obviously got talent. About a year later (fall 2009) I looked him up again to find, along with a slew of other videos and appearances, this:



I mean, c'mon. That's hilarious. It looked like the kid's career was really taking off. I then forgot about him again until this week.

Turns out Burnham's been busy. In 2008 (before I'd even seen the first video), he headlined an episode of Comedy Central Presents. That was four days after he turned 18, making him the youngest stand-up comic to be on that show. Ever. He also released an EP, "Bo Fo Sho," via Comedy Central. (He's got an agent and a record deal for three more.) In 2009 he released a self-titled CD/DVD and had a bit part in Judd Apatow's 2009 flick Funny People and in his spare time, he wrote a script (an "anti-high school musical") that Apatow might (maybe) produce. To top it off, this month Burnham released a third album, Words, Words, Words, that has already hit #1 on the Billboard Comedy charts (a chart I'll admit I didn't know existed), paired with yet another Comedy Central special (aired October 16th), and he's launched his second national tour, making a stop in Chicago next Friday.

Whew. Did you get all that?

The point is...

I've decided that I want this kid to succeed. Sometimes it takes a few listens to get into (and to catch all the jokes), but I think he's legitimately funny, and I appreciate the heavily satirical and un-PC subject matter. I especially appreciate that he considers himself a comedian (way) before a musician, but he can still hold it down on the piano.

Not to mention that he's 20 years old. Twenty. He's got a better comedic sensibility than the collective mind of the Saturday Night Live writers room at this point and he's just starting out. He's not a household name but, as they say, he's doin' it right. There are two videos off the new album and this one is legit funny, well-produced and well-directed (warning: not safe for work):



Even though his intended audience is in college, I'd bet a decent number of Canadian dollars that a large portion of his fanbase is under 18, and so the same sexual references that I find hilarious are also being watched by my 10-year-old cousin. But I mean, I would have loved this guy when I was a teenager. So who am I to say?

Though I'm not really sure what to make of this one...



P.S. It doesn't hurt that he's much cuter at age 20 than he was at 16. Just sayin'.

(That's not creepy, is it?)

(Hi Mom.)

UPDATE

Post-Election Haze

This blog is not political, and that's the way I'd like to keep it. Therefore I have little to say about the results of yesterday's midterm elections except to mention that I cast my first ballot ever -- yay! (I even did my homework on the minor races, though I still don't know what the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioners do, exactly.)

I'd also like to direct you to this blog, written by a pair of hilarious octogenarians. Talk about street cred: surviving the Great Depression, WWII, Vietnam, disco, the transformation of the two-party system, and Vanilla Ice and then launching yourself onto the blogosphere. I hope I write like that -- clear, eloquent, and in touch with reality -- when I'm in my eighties and capable of wielding almost a century of experience. My favorite passage by Helen Philpot, to entice you to make the jump:

"Folks, from where I sit, we’ve never had it so good. One less war. Most of the TARP money paid back and another Great Depression avoided. Unemployment numbers are shitty – yes - BUT imagine how bad it would be if Republicans had done away with unemployment benefits like they wanted. And as someone who has Medicare, I can assure you that government-run healthcare isn’t Obamacare, it’s common-decency-care.

"The Tea Party wants to complain about Obama’s “run-away spending” but the fact is Bush spent billions on wars while Obama has spent billions on an economic stimulus package. Fact. More private sector jobs were created in the last 8 months than in the entire 8 years of the Bush presidency. Fact. The only thing the Republican Party has increased recently is the number of gay teen suicides."

Talk about sassy.

NaNoWriMo

Wrong month but same idea.

It doesn't take much to convince me to over-commit myself. If something sounds like fun, or like something I should be doing, I jump in.

Such is the case with NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. My friends and fellow Medill alums (tools) Tian Huang and Bethany Marzewski pointed out to me this morning that today, November 1, marks the first day of the 2010 month-long, group-oriented catastrophe that attempts to make writers of plebeians. The basic idea is to complete 50,000 words in a month -- an average of 1,667 words per day. Quality isn't as important as just getting something down on the page, which for many writers (myself included) is usually the first and most daunting hurdle. I tend to edit myself as I write, so the idea of just trying to hit a word count each day is strangely appealing; therefore color me intimidated but determined. My plan is to respond to one writing prompt per day via a list of prompts from my Memoir Writing class, which ends in a few weeks but has planted a stubborn seed in my brain. So it's not a novel, but hey, it's daily writing -- something I've never before attempted or sustained, not even for this blog.

I'm cutting myself just a bit of slack right at the beginning by including in my word count not only my prompt from today, for which I wrote 1,689 words (woot!), but also a piece I wrote for class last month. The prompt I used was "Write two pages of your relationship to Sundays (at various points in your life)." I don't expect much of what I write this month to be blog-worthy, since again the goal is not quality but quantity, but if any gems emerge I'll be sure to share them with you. The Sunday piece is pasted below.

----

Sunday was for church. I wore my little dresses with bows and black patent shoes. I sat in the church until the hymns were over – that was the fun part – and then the pastor excused the children to Sunday School. When I got too old for Sunday School, I had to stay in the service the entire time. I was bored, because you can’t make kids listen to sermons on marriage and being a good person when they don’t understand what that means. I started reading the Bible every Sunday during sermons instead of listening. I intended to read it cover to cover, but by the end of Genesis I was exhausted, and I knew that was probably the most fun chapter anyway, what with all the stories about arks and Abraham and stuff.

My grandma is the one that took me to church. My mother is an atheist and the man who became my stepfather is Jewish. One of my grandpas is Catholic. I was baptized Lutheran, because my mom wanted to appease her Nebraskan relations, particularly her grandparents. My great-grandmother sewed my white baptismal dress. So at least I had the sin officially washed away once.

My grandma took me to church because she felt it was her duty. She took me to Presbyterian church at first, and I really liked their Sunday School room because they had Mr. Potato Head and I didn’t have a Mr. Potato Head at home. My aunt got married in that church when I was seven. I was a junior bridesmaid and I wore purple with white lace around the collar and took my first limo ride. Then my grandma decided she disagreed with the views of the pastor (or is it minister? I can never remember) and we started going to an Evangelical church across town, which my grandma explained to me meant that they accepted all the different Christian sects as parishioners. I didn’t have an opinion either way, but luckily I was starting to get too old for Mr. Potato Head.

When I was old enough (eleven) I joined the youth group. We met once a week on a weeknight and ate pizza and played games and talked about God. I was really into it. I liked going there because it meant I had another set of friends, one that I didn’t go to school with, which was good because I didn’t consider myself that popular in school. But that didn’t matter as much in youth group. I went away to Bible camp for long weekends and played furiously and talked a lot about God and cried when I accepted Jesus into my heart. I was sure I’d remember the exact date forever, but I’ve forgotten now. It was summertime.

When I was 14 my parents moved and I went with them and my grandma couldn’t take me to church anymore. After a few months in the new town I made friends with a girl named Candice and she took me to her church, which was Baptist. I didn’t know anything about Baptists except that they like to sing a lot and they wait until people are older and can actually accept Jesus into their heart before they dip them in water. I didn’t need that, because I’d been baptized as a baby and besides, I’d already accepted Jesus into my heart. He was there to stay. I really liked the singing though.

I attended Baptist youth group with Candice and it was much more laid-back than at my old church, almost disorganized. We didn’t spend as much time talking about God, or maybe I just didn’t pay attention.

I would go home to my atheist mother and Jewish stepfather and assumedly agnostic baby sister and I could tell they didn’t approve of my church-going. Since I couldn’t rebel with marijuana or alcohol (I wouldn’t know where to get it) or sex (I was too shy), I went out on the religion limb. I helped found the Christian Club at my high school. My stepfather tried to tell me that we couldn’t have a Christian Club because of the separation of church and state, but I told him we could and then I talked to the principal or someone else in charge and they said we could too. I started the club and then only went to a couple of meetings. I was getting disgruntled with God. I started to have questions that no one could answer, at least not to my satisfaction. How did Adam and Eve start the human race without their children engaging in incest, which would be a sin against God? How can we live by the Bible when the Bible says homosexuality is an abomination? I stopped going to youth group, and I stopped going to church. I still hung out with those kids but we didn’t talk about God.

When I went to college I declared myself an atheist, but that probably wasn’t true. I was actually agnostic; I just didn’t know what to believe anymore because the Bible is obviously total bullshit. I took an Intro to Religion class at one point and visited a Baha’i temple to write about their services, because I felt like it was one of the few religions with which I was completely unfamiliar. Plus my college campus was just a few miles from the only Baha’i temple on the North American continent, a stunning, all-white, domed building with nine sides and exquisite architectural details, surrounded by gardens. The service was fifteen minutes long and consisted of readings out of different holy books. No hymns, no sermon, no collection plate. Just different members of the community getting up and reading out of the Bible, the Qur’an, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (the Baha’i holy book). The man that read the Qur’an actually sang it, and I’d never heard that before. It was beautiful, and if it had been a movie I would have cried and thrown up my hands and said you know what? Religion doesn’t matter. Faith matters.

But it’s not a movie, and I still don’t know what I believe.

Rock Band seems to be a theme for me lately

My friend Megan is in a band. A rock band. We were also in marching band together in college so when she started saying stuff like "I have band rehearsal now," I'd snicker and advise her to be more specific. She took to declaring "I have rock band rehearsal now," which was way more awesome.

I also find myself in something of a rock band, and I would be remiss if I didn't include somewhere in this blog a mention. It's called Tyranny of Dave and is led by a guy named Dave Wechsler, who has been writing and performing his own music for years. I met him when he came to my undergrad campus to record an SAI recital in the spring of 2009; in return we recorded some background vocals and horn parts for his self-produced album, "The Decline of America: The Bush Years," released in May 2010. (Follow the link to download the album for free; we're on tracks two and four. You can also download ToD's 2007 album "Vacations.")

A year later Dave paid me a huge honor by asking me to sing and play trombone with him and his reassembled band. He also offered me a tambourine once and then quickly took it away and gave me an egg shaker instead. Smart man.

The full band played our first show together this past May, and then Dave and I played an acoustic set last Thursday. We're busy rehearsing and setting up more shows; if you want to be kept in the loop, "like" us on Facebook.

Ahhh, social media. Making music easy since MySpace 2003.

Setlist: Thursday, October 28, 2010, Horseshoe Chicago
American Man
Everyone Says that I Love You
Wake Up in Brooklyn
Salt of the Earth
Too Late
Poison
Ballad of John Banvard
We’ve Finally Come Home
Velocity - I sing the lead on this one :)
Border Guard

Happy Halloween, America

Let's celebrate as Americans do. With guns.



I mean, the commentary writes itself.

Persnickety Preconceptions

I wasn't expecting to like Virginia Woolf. I had some preconceptions, I guess. I mean, she is British. And that can only lead to trouble. Or maybe that movie with Nicole Kidman rubbed me the wrong way. (I haven't actually seen anything but the opening scene, where Virginia Woolf, played by Kidman, drowns herself in a river.) I don't know what my deal was, but as we readied ourselves to read eight of her essays in my English Prose Style class, I was setting myself up to not like her. I was prepared.

Wow, did I have my head up my ass.

Before I say any more, go here and read "Craftsmanship" (written in 1937, 2,900 words) and go here and read "Professions for Women" (written in 1931, 2,400 words). I'll wait.

For those of you too lazy to hit the jumps -- but really, especially if you've never read Virginia Woolf, spend 15 minutes of your day and read these pieces. Trust me on this one -- here are some excerpts from "Craftsmanship":

"No writer presumably wishes to impose his own miserable character, his own private secrets and vices upon the reader. But has any writer, who is not a typewriter, succeeded in being wholly impersonal? Always, inevitably, we know them as well as their books. such is the suggestive power of words that they will often make a bad book into a very lovable human being, and a good book into a man whom we can hardly tolerate in the room."

"Think what it would mean if you could teach, if you could learn, the art of writing. Why, every book, every newspaper would tell the truth, would create beauty. But there is, it would appear, some obstacle in the way, some hindrance to the teaching of words. For though at this moment at least a hundred professors are lecturing upon the literature of the past, at least a thousand critics are reviewing the literature of the present, and hundreds upon hundreds of young men and women are passing examinations in English literature with the utmost credit, still--do we write better, do we read better than we read and wrote four hundred years ago when we were unlectured, uncriticized, untaught?"

"...words do not live in the dictionary, they live in the mind. Look again at the dictionary. There beyond a doubt lie plays more splendid than Antony and Cleopatra; poems more lovely than the Ode to a Nightingale; novels beside which Pride and Prejudice or David Copperfield are the crude bunglings of amateurs. It is only a question of finding the right words and putting them in the right order."

I mean honestly, the woman is writing an essay about words. Just words. Stylistically there is so much going on here; the repetition that suggests she's rewriting, clarifying her ideas as she goes ("if you could teach, if you could learn" could almost have a "nay," in between the clauses) -- this is the major stylistic element Woolf employs that we talked about in class. We see her thought process as she goes, and gimmicks aren't needed to add emphasis; it's almost, in a sense, pure. She also can never seem to find exactly the right word, so she uses a bunch of them along with some asyndeton to give us a fuller picture: "unlectured, uncriticized, untaught." (In other essays, "it creates; it adorns; it enhances" and "a cat--a beautiful cat, a Persian cat." And so forth.) It's almost poetic, this apposition, this redefinition. Both of these stylistic techniques -- along with Woolf's characteristic interrupters and parenthetical asides -- have already made their way into my own writing, as evidenced by this very paragraph. It's amazing how quickly something like that clicks in the brain and adds itself to the standard cannon. It seems simple enough, but I'm continually surprised by how much you can learn about writing simply by reading a lot.

Plus, how could you not love a woman who makes a joke about a typewriter? That shit's hilarious.

And then there's the content of what she's saying -- that "words, English words" really do offer an infinite number of possibilities. The relative ease of the modern publishing process -- as opposed to 200 or 100 or even 50 years ago -- has created a completely different literary landscape. There's a lot of crap out there. And yet Woolf points out that it doesn't matter, because there is still so much greatness to come. Isn't that just a wonderful and refreshing idea? I'm going to get straight to work creating beautiful, never-before-seen prose!!

Or, you know, writing a blog post about not hating Virginia Woolf. I think we'd be friends. Maybe we'd like hang out and go to the movies and she'd be the kind of person who talks through the whole movie about all the elements they didn't consider when writing the script. Then I'd shush her and tell her that you know what, Sofia Coppola is doing the best she can, and anyway she's been nominated for an Oscar and so you should just calm down and enjoy the cinematic presentation. And then she'd sulk and be silent at dinner and she wouldn't call me. And then she'd drown herself in a river.

Wow, that hypothetical went downhill really quickly.

Journalistic Ownership & Rock Band 3

Hardcore, I'm sure.

A somewhat unexpected side effect of working as a journalist is that you come to feel ownership over certain issues, especially those which you spend a lot of time researching and reporting on.

So I felt when I saw this news development, posted on Gizmodo this afternoon: a week from today Rock Band 3 drops, and it's made a huge advance in controller options: one controller features buttons that you play just like a regular guitar, and another is actually a guitar, with pressure sensors under the fingers so the game knows whether you hit the note. What this means is that Rock Band can actually market the idea that the game will teach you how to play a guitar (or at least how to follow along with certain songs).

Of course, being a former PC Mag intern, I was familiar with the idea, to the point where I immediately went and found this story, which I wrote in the spring of 2008. (Because of a PCMag.com redesign, the publish date says January 2009.) I wrote about how games like Guitar Hero have roused interest in rock music, but aren't doing anything to actually teach kids (or somewhat reclusive adults) how to play guitar. My theory was proven when I gave my stepdad with 20 years of experience playing guitar the game for Christmas: He could barely keep up with strumming along at the beginner level at first.

I mentioned in that article a product called Guitar Rising, which had won an award in 2007 and was being developed to be released as just what Rock Band has now: a game into which you can plug in an actual guitar. The Guitar Rising website doesn't seem to have been updated recently, so one can only wonder what happened to the "licensing talks" that were underway when I wrote the article more than two years ago.

This is a super cool development -- using video games to actually teach people a musical instrument is a whole new frontier -- but of course, there's always a flipside, though a minor one. The Gizmodo writer notes, "Harmonix, do you realize that you've got in your powers the ability to make kids learn the songs you want them to? Which is basically shaping the future of music? Use it well, my friends." Everyone will know the Billboard Top 100, but no one may know [insert obscure, largely unknown song that is actually a brilliant piece of music]. But that just may be my wannabe music snobishness talking.

Fun fact: Rock Band 3 will also add a keyboardist to the band. Now people get the chance to butcher those musical lines as well! Wonder if it'll be as effective as teaching drums and guitar now will be?

Movement

Some days you don't want to move. It has nothing to do with sadness, and only a little bit to do with fatigue. Movement just seems like a lot of effort.

You can take the girl off campus...

Hey Ma, look, they're still publishing me! Somewhere! As in, the forum page of the student newspaper where I went to college!

Letter to the editor: Northwestern football: We'll bounce back.

Oh. That's pretty cool.

I would like it noted that I did include an apostrophe in my spelling of "'Cats" in the copy that I turned in. The Daily editors are apparently not a fan of correct punctuation. Otherwise I'm honored that they ran my letter; I wrote it as a coping mechanism and in response to a friend's plea to flood the paper with letters in support of the team. Pull it together, guys. Let's go 'Cats, beat the Spartans!

FWP: First-World Problems

My life fell apart this weekend, in a number of ways. Central to the implosion was the 'Cats' loss to Purdue. I'm not sure I've ever been so crushed by a football game. Throw in car trouble -- a fender bender and a leaking gas tank (unrelated) in the same day -- and a few other questionable decisions on my part, and you've got a whole lot of first-world problems. It's Monday morning and the figurative hangover hasn't even begun to lift. (Thankfully the actual hangover was cured with a quick trip to McDonald's. Another bad decision, but one I definitely do not regret.)

Here's to using Monday to shake off the blues and refocus. Maybe I can set an example for the 'Cats and we'll come back with an amazing victory over MSU at homecoming in two weeks. We are the perennial underdogs; maybe we're just more comfortable down here.

A little affirmation may be in order:

Semantics, Syntax and Split Infinitives, Oh My!

A Google image search of "words" turned out to be quite fruitful.

You know you've made a good choice in grad school programs when a required class that you didn't expect to like finds its way under your skin. Such is the case with History of English Prose Style, which on its face sounds not at all riveting; in fact by the course description I really had no idea what the class was about:

This course seeks to make meaningful distinctions among various prose styles in two ways: first, by considering alternative theoretical approaches to the study of style, ranging from the purely impressionistic to the rigorously quantitative; second, by exploring the rhetorical dimension of stylistic choice by examining the intersection of style and rhetoric in English prose from the Renaissance to the present, including writings by John Lyly, Thomas Browne, Elizabeth I, Addison and Steele, John Ruskin, Thomas Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

I mean, that sounds impressive, but in practice I had literally no clue what the class would actually cover. I cheerfully signed up for it anyway and just hoped that it would somehow be useful in my development as a writer.

It turns out that it boils down to studying the style of writing -- ie the sentence-level elements like structure, word order, figures of speech, etc. Our working hypothesis is that you cannot strip away these stylistic elements -- for example, an author's incorporation of repetitive schemes like isocolon and alliteration -- without taking away some of the meaning. In other words, style and content are inextricably intertwined (hey there alliteration!), and if we understand why the author made the stylistic choices they made, then we can start to gain an understanding of the author's epistemic world view.

I'll insert a note here to remind the reader that I am a graduate student in the study of English writing, and yet this class made me realize that I was never once taught the basics of English grammar. Like, clauses and phrases and predicates and participials and basically why we put words in the order that we do. Understanding syntax -- the combination of words that indicates their relationship to one another in a sentence -- is apparently the key to being a good writer. A high school diploma and a Bachelor's degree, and no one really ever explained that to me until now.

Anyway, as one example of how style impacts prose, our professor had us read a piece written in 1578 by John Lyly. Think of it as a 16th century Oprah's Book Club choice. Everyone who's anyone read it, including a moderately famous contemporary of Lyly's named William Shakespeare. (He was 14 when it was written.) Lyly writes in a way that would make a high school freshman and a college professor weep, but for completely different reasons. (If you're super curious, you can read the piece -- titled "Euphues: The anatomy of wit" -- here. Jump to page 33.) Eventually the prose came to be seen as outdated -- think still talking like a 1980's Valley Girl in the year 2010 -- but it's a really amazing example of what can be done with antithesis and repetitive structures to reinforce the ideas expressed in the content of the piece. In other words, if you're going to compare two things, Lyly showed us how you can write it in a way where the sentences are balanced to the point of ridiculousness, to better make your point.

Lyly was also a big fan, at least in this piece, of playing with the sounds of words. A typical Lyly sentence: "[I]t is no marvel that the son, being left rich by his father's will, become retchless by his own will." See what he did there?

Our assignment for the week was to replicate Lyly's prose style. Mine isn't perfect, but I'm posting it up here as an example. Note the parallel structure and use of opposite ideas (lawless harmony, lascivious entropy) to make the point. Enjoy, and go forth about your day pondering how the public education system is completely failing us when it comes to teaching basic English grammar.

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It may be that a mother’s love is unconditional, a child’s trust complete, the bond between the two absolute—but what guarantees this connection? One look into the eyes of the infant born of her may be enough to bring any woman of any level of maternal nature to her knees, but how is she to maintain this relationship with one whose eventual humor she cannot foresee, whose sense of wit may be overlooked given the child’s garish characteristics? What natural fortune can this child expect, when her mother’s own unfortunate circumstance was to bear a baby amounting to such a ghastly abomination of nature?

Surely the father is not to be left out of blame; he was present when her entry to the world was painfully wrought, the future population perceptively wronged. Through her wide-set eyes stares the narrowness of a soul without a trace of means or modesty, a person whose holed pockets can do nothing to contain the whole of her ego. Her perfume may be stridently pungent, but her manner is surreptitiously repugnant. Her upbringing stressed lawful harmony, but her subsistence relies upon lascivious entropy. She prefers the payoff before the production, the profit before the performance, the promotion before the presentation.

I mean not to suggest, having evidenced my hypothesis that her existence is unsavory, that her very animation lends itself to the inanity, or even that her parents are to be shackled and shellacked—though I would be dishonest to claim that the thought had not entered my mind. Rather, would you not also conclude that, based upon the evidence, perhaps some sort of winch should be employed to ensure that this particular wench is denied admission to this painstakingly selective program of higher learning?

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Special shout-outs to Chrissie Watras and Liz Tavares, who will enjoy this post more than anyone else, and who also help me process my homework each week. Thanks ladies.

Snow

I give you my first piece for my memoir writing class. I'm still working on it, so comments or suggestions are certainly appreciated.

Taken the evening this story is based on.

Snow fell for the first time. It glittered like pixie dust in the light from the street lamps and landed on the ground softly, as if it didn’t want to cause a fuss. But there was no one around to be bothered; the streets and sidewalks were empty, hushed.

I stepped outside and filled my lungs with the cold air, watching my breath slowly leave me in exhale. I smiled. For the first time since arriving on campus I felt at peace, light on my feet. I’d just finished finals week, placing an emphatic period at the end of my first quarter of college. I was giddy, practically euphoric.

I started toward my dorm, where my friends were waiting to celebrate. I hummed. I knew I’d aced that test, and I looked around for someone to rejoice with before remembering that everyone else had gone home for the holidays already. The snow was my only companion.

To be alone in a place that is usually full of people and life and noise unnerves me, but on this night I reveled in it. I soaked it in and I felt like a god, alone atop my snowy mount. I walked with my head back, my face pointed straight up, watching the snow come down. My snow. The sky was a dark gray, almost black, and the white flakes were falling evenly, a perfect grid, as if it had been planned that way. I had planned it that way.

I’d moved to Hawaii with my family right before starting high school, and aside from the occasional visit to family on the mainland, I hadn’t seen snow up close in more than four years. Moving back to the Midwest felt like coming home, though my years on a tropical island had severely depleted my cold weather wardrobe. I owned two pairs of socks when I arrived at college, and no winter coat. One extreme winter clothing shopping trip later, I was fully outfitted for even the most arduous blizzard. My collection of long underwear was something to be envied.

On this night, then, the gentle snowflakes had no chance against my many layers of clothing. Still they landed on my cheeks, in my hair, melting in contact with my skin and dripping down the back of my neck. I shivered as I walked past the arch, the gateway to campus. It looked like a postcard. Untouched snow glazed every tree branch, every surface. It was beautiful. Everything was beautiful. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt as though everything in the world were just perfect.

I considered the fact that I was done with a third of my freshman year. I felt like a little kid, one that counted her age to the closest fraction possible so as not to be mistaken for too young. I wasn’t five, I was five and three quarters. I wasn’t a college freshman, I was one-twelfth of the way done with college. I would go on to harder classes, and a thousand new experiences, and I would walk this sidewalk hundreds of times. I would lead the marching band, join an a cappella group, dance for 30 hours straight (twice), and teach myself how to make giant papier-mâché ants. I would also gain 30 pounds, have my heart broken, and feel utterly lost more often than not. And I’d meet my best friend.

But at this moment, alone in my winter wonderland, I was blissfully unaware of all that lay before me. My life was uncomplicated. College was still a concept. I was still figuring it out. As I walked up the steps to my dorm I realized that, for the first time, I felt ready to handle whatever came next. I’d survived one quarter. I could certainly make it eleven more.

I walked inside and the warmth embraced me.

'Cats are 4-0!

I had a short and late post this week over at LTP. Check it out here.

Feeling really good about my 'Cats this year. (I mean, I always feel good about my 'Cats, but it's an extra special good feeling right now.) I've been saving up already in anticipation of a post-season bowl game; last year's trip to the Outback was absolutely phenomenal, save the last 3 seconds of the game. Still, what a game, and you could almost see the college football scene start to take notice of the program at that moment. At this point we're just hoping Fitz is here for the long haul.

Next week is Minnesota, and I want to win as much as ever, especially because I want to bring back the "5 and 0" high-five from my senior year. So awesome. Go 'Cats!

Grad school, quarter 2, week 3. Desire to shoot myself in the face: waning.

This humorous piece in the Sunday Post is speaking to me this week, as I continue to be embroiled in the finer points of the English grammar system. Special shout-out to Chrissie, a goddess of lexicon. On the slate today: schemes and tropes. It baffles me that I never learned this stuff in high school, at least not to this depth. I learned the basics, of course - metaphor, parallelism, alliteration - but it seems as though my teachers avoided anything for which the term has only a Latin name. Epistrophe. Anadiplosis. Antimetabole. Paranomasia. At this moment, it's all Latin to me.

The goal is for it to make sense by 5pm today, which means I should probably stop here.

Future study break.

These guys can do no wrong

Seriously, it's absolute genius. OK Go is completely rewriting the rules on music videos.

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming: staring helplessly at a detailed guide to English grammar and wondering why your seventh grade teacher didn't warn you that someday you'd need to recall the differences between prepositional, participial, gerund, infinitive, absolute, and appositive phrases. Or really why she didn't teach you any of that in the first place.

Business as Usual

Goofs.

As usual, I rounded off my week -- which included donating blood and NOT fainting, finding out my car is broken and I have to pay for it DESPITE having a warranty (curse you, Sierra Auto), boring things like eye exams and grocery runs, and completely and utterly freaking out re: grad school before realizing it wasn't as bad as I thought -- by talking about NUMB over at Lake the Posts.* Check it out, and have a great weekend!

* How's that for a complex sentence, Professor Mulderig?

The Novel

This is the kind of stuff that makes Family Guy hurt so good. Writers everywhere cringe with every uptick in Stewie's voice. Way close to home.

Monday morning...

...is for 'Cats recaps. I love fall.

A Cappella PSA

In college I sang a cappella with the women of Ladies in Red, the a cappella group of the Beta Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota. We graduated, and immediately were sick over how much we missed singing together. We got the band back together, so to speak, and are working on filling out our repertoire before beginning our grand tour of Chicago-area nursing homes, which was a favorite philanthropic pastime while at Northwestern. Bringing a cappella to the elderly masses, you might say. In the meantime we're performing for our friends in my dining room.

What I'm saying is, please like us. I posted recordings of all the songs we've done so far, which are (click on the artists' name to hear their original version):

Happy Ending by Mika (arranged and soloist Brittany Petersen)
Hide & Seek by Imogen Heap (arr. Renee Altergott)
Put Your Head on My Shoulder (arr. Megan Mitterer, soloist Elizabeth Bourgart)
Walking on Broken Glass by Annie Lennox (arr. and soloist Megan Mitterer)
Samson by Regina Spektor (arr. Laura Sloman, soloist Brittany Petersen)
Wake Up by Sliimy (arr. Renee Altergott, soloist Megan Mitterer)
When Sunset Burns and Dies, written and arranged by Renee Altergott

Music has played a big role in my life -- to the point that I got a tattoo celebrating it -- and I'm so grateful to have an outlet to continue to perform, and the wonderful friends and lifelong sisters to share it with.

Old Ladies in Red (photo by Xixi Cheng)

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UPDATE: Check out a recording of Old Ladies in Red singing "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap.