Tag Archives: writing

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The 7-7-7 Challenge

I was nominated for this by @out_ofthe_fog on twitter. The 7-7-7 challenge is a fun little chain letter thingy encouraging writers to share a little bit of their work in progress. Once you’ve done the challenge you nominate 7 others. I chose 7 folks from twitter that I’m either stalking or find engaging in some way. I didn’t pick anyone that I’ve already bought books from and intend to buy more. I focused of folks who I’d like to see what they’re up to or how their progress is coming (provided any of them / you choose to take that challenge).
One of the motivators in finishing my work or just writing in general is getting out on social media and actually talking about writing and issues. Not only that, reading what others are up to has been helpful for me as well. That said, one of the biggest motivators / tools of encouragement is sharing my work. Even if I don’t get feedback, I still know that a couple people might take a look at what I’ve written and so I look at my own work with a much more critical eye. So, that there was a long-winded explanation as to why I decided to do the challenge.
The challenge works like this: You do this by going to page 7 of your manuscript, counting down to line 7 and then sharing the next 7 sentences in a blog post.
I’ve got two works in a state that I could give this a go. I chose a section of the first chapter of Wine Bottles and Broomsticks. The whole chapter is available over on http://www.channillo.com and the second installment is coming this Friday!

“Not completely. We get her to a place we can corner her and see if we can out her. Once we’ve done that, we bring her in, and work out whether or not we can tie her to anything.”
“This doesn’t sound legal. Shouldn’t we have probable cause? What is it that this woman is suspecting of having done?”
“Being a witch is probable cause.”
“But what if that witch hasn’t done anything -not that I’m saying there are witches.”
“You can’t be a witch, unless you’re a witch.”

So, there it is. Now, I’ve stalled my run long enough. Now, for another challenge: Time to get out there and raise awareness for usher syndrome.

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Art is the science of creativity

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School started two weeks ago, and this past Thursday was the open house. We don’t usually make it because one of us is around to see the teachers after school and we’ve got plenty of opportunities to ask questions. That’s not going to happen this year due to our new schedules, so this time I went. Before I launch into my rant, I’d like to give a bit of context. The school our kids go to is a Spanish immersion program and it’s very small, many of the students, teachers, and parents all know each other. It’s generally a good school.

After the usual beginning of year housekeeping items and shooting candy from a pneumatic candy cannon, I went up to our daughter’s classroom. Her teachers gave a presentation about class expectations and what-not. I didn’t stay for the whole thing. Between the two of them, they’ve been teaching one of our children since our eldest was in Kindergarten. We know them and their expectations. I’ll have an opportunity to speak with them during the first parent-teacher conference.

Second, I went on to our youngest son’s classroom. Again, we know one of the teachers, the other is new. When question time came around, I asked about homework, listened for a moment about their plans for the class and moved on – I don’t see problems there. The last stop was our eldest son’s classroom and teacher. This one was important because he’s in 5th grade, it’s a teacher we don’t know, and last year was a challenging year for all of us with respect to homework and expectations.

This particular teacher wasn’t doing a presentation, he was meeting each parent individually and answering questions. By the time I had gotten over there, most of the parents had cleared off and I had his full attention. I asked the usual questions about homework, what sorts of things they’re going to cover and so on. He started telling me about his plan for the year a his plan to take a ‘steam’ approach. “steam?” I asked, as opposed to “stem?” – YES. Science Technology Engineering Art and Mathematics. He explained that he would integrate art into the routine.

I thought this was interesting. Recently I feel like all I’m hearing with education is how important STEM is. My question is where’s the art? I agree these topics are super important for college and jobs and what not, but what do these things mean without art? Is this something that we really don’t value any more? We should. Every single STEM field demands creativity and some measure of art, but it’s not taught that way. You learn the technical bits of all of these, like how the math fits in and how the testing and rigor of science applies. I have to concede that creativity is encouraged, but the science of art, the heart of creativity is dismissed as not particularly useful. It’s as if art is something else and shouldn’t mix with science and technology. Art is a science in its own right though. You try new things, you test them see if they work, others may try to mimic it in some fashion. Sometimes ideas must be discarded, other ideas work and are propagated.

To put it in more concrete terms: People don’t buy iPhones because of what they do. They buy them because of the artistry in their design, from the elegant look and feel right to how the applications work. Plenty of cars are sold based on their look in addition to their function. Homes that are built to look good are more highly valued because of that. People don’t like websites that look bad, and they don’t buy books that read like a technical manual.

photo credit: Steampunk keyboard, office, London, UK 3.JPG via photopin (license)

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YES, I’m still alive.

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Alright, so I haven’t been blogging much. I’ve been uber-busy. As expected, starting a new job has thrown my entire schedule off. Not only that, school started last week, I’m trying to build a duck coop, and I accepted a challenge from a former colleague of mine to run every day to help raise awareness and research money for Usher Syndrome (learn more here). With all that, and trying to keep everyone fed and organized, the precious little writing time I get has been poured into Wine Bottles and Broomsticks, rather than a well thought out rant on various problems I’m hitting with writing. Not that I’ve made a whole lot of progress there either.

Sure, I could rant about how to deal with criticism again, that’s a good go-to or perhaps geek out on constructed language development, which would be fun, instead, I thought I’d just post to say I’m still here, and I will continue writing about writing, at some point. In the mean time, I’ll be off trying to keep up with my 1-mile or more a day running schedule, and one final chapter a month writing schedule.