I love the fact that my students have great senses of humour. They’re quirky and fun, and they know they have the freedom to express that in my classes.
Last week, one of my students told me a funny story about what he did in Biology class. To his delight, I appreciated the humour a lot more than his classmates or the Biology teacher had done.
He was more than willing to give me permission to write his story creatively. I decided a Drabble would be perfect for creating a snapshot of that moment in the classroom.
I hope you enjoy his very classy humour as much as I did.
And thank you, James, for making me laugh on a regular basis. You’re a legend.
The teacher stood at the front of the room, textbook in hand, as the students settled down to business.
“Please open your text book to page four hundred and four, and… yes, James?”
The teacher looked with anticipation at the young man sitting in the second row, hand raised and an awkward smile on his face.
“That page cannot he found.”
His classmates looked confusedly at James, and then at the specified page in their own books.
The teacher frowned. “Are you sure? There must be some kind of mistake.”
James’ smile became a triumphant grin. “It’s an error 404.”
***
Credit for this story must be given to my student, James, who actually did this in one of his classes, and gave me permission to write it as a drabble.
Macbeth is certainly one of Shakespeare’s very interesting characters.
Macbeth and his wife present an interesting study of power, control and submission. A proven warrior, he lets not only his imagination, but also his wife’s, run away with him, and completely submits to her manipulation and taunting. Instead of waiting for things to take their natural course, they took matters into their own hands in pursuit of the position and power promised in the prophecy of the wyrd sisters.
As things are wont to do in Shakespeare’s tragedies, things get way out of hand and end up with a bunch of people dead.
I hope you enjoy this very good character study of Macbeth, courtesy of the Interesting Literature blog.
An Interesting Character Study: Macbeth
Macbeth is one of Shakespeare’s most famous tragic heroes, not least because he represents the Man Who Has It All (seemingly) and yet throws it away because of his ‘vaulting ambition’ to have Even …
My granddaughters and I were sitting on the floor of their pink-painted cabin at the bottom of the garden. I had evicted yet another invading spider and, while the youngest sat on my knee, her almost-five year old big sister was sprawling in the pink armchair.
The three of us had been playing. I had pushed little Imogen on her swing until she giggled with joy and had chased Hollie around the garden, swinging her up onto my shoulders and teaching her to stand on her head in a fairly unorthodox manner. Somehow, small children make you forget the aches and pains… at least until next morning when you try to move again.
By this point though, we had settled down in the playhouse and eaten a meal of chocolate-dipped worms and green slimegrobbels with custard… a menu chosen by Hollie and lovingly prepared by the…
The blogpost ‘Only Way Out’ by Allison Marie Conway moved me powerfully.
This is me. This is the power writing has over me. It is my therapy. My escape.
And yet, lately, a deep, overwhelming sadness that has wrapped its weighty fingers around me, constricting my thoughts and paralysing my creativity.
“Give yourself time. Breathe. Be kind to yourself. Be patient.” I keep telling myself these things, hoping to make myself small enough and relaxed enough to slip from its grasp.
I will get through this. I will write my way out of it yet.
As a poet and author, I know full well what many do not: delivering a message of great import in one hundred words is much more difficult than writing it in one thousand. Condensing meaning, crafting and shaping ideas with an efficiency of words, is harder than it looks.
I enjoy the challenge, though, of telling a story in such a very compact form. A well-written drabble is a thing of beauty, and while I am not suggesting every one I write is excellent, some of them are.
The poem ‘Inside My Head’ was published on The Drabble blog yesterday. It is one hundred words long, yet captures the experience of being inside my own mind perfectly. It’s so relatable, so deep, so powerful – and yet, so concise. I doubt I could explain it better, so I am sharing it here for your enlightenment and enjoyment.
Memories
Reminders
Fears
Prayers
Occur in a mere
Sixty seconds
Images
Lists
Problems
Answers
Circling thoughts
Take control
Whirling
Spinning
Crashing
Linking
Hypnotic space
Easily lost
Wake up!
Eyes wide
Ears open
Life surrounds
Be still
Fully aware
Face reality
Move ahead
Be engaged
Time’s too short
To remain
Inside my head
Kelley is a wife, mom, pianist, and an elementary music teacher. She enjoys writing honest, personal stories and reflections about life. Writing helps calm her sometimes over-thinking brain.
I fully agree with it for the most part. And yet, the past three weeks would have been a lot more satisfying and a lot less sucky if my car would quit jerking me around, the garage door would open and close as it’s supposed to, and if the costumer for my show had not done a “no show” on me seven weeks out from putting my school’s musical on stage.
I’m independent. I’m resilient. But golly gosh, sometimes satisfaction does come from outside oneself.
Before dying at the age of 68, Seneca the Younger made vast contributions to the school of philosophy, most notably in Stoicism.
The influence of Seneca’s work, however, would reach far greater than the school of ancient philosophy, and many of his principles and letters have moulded the landscape of the modern self-help world.
During his retirement and not long before his death, Seneca spent his days writing letters to his friend Lucilius, which have since been collated into a series of 124 letters known as ‘Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium’— Moral Letters to Lucilius. (These are summarised in the modern-day translation, ‘Letters From a Stoic’.)
Seneca’s letters detail his innermost thoughts, offloading his lifelong wisdom before passing. These writings contain a wealth of thought-provoking and insightful material…
I am a real sucker for posts that offer writing tips, publishing tips, and the experiences of other authors and bloggers. I’ve shared a number of them on this blog, because some people have genuinely good advice and share their experiences in a very positive and constructive way.
This response to those kind of posts is quite refreshing in its honesty and in its explanations of why those posts can actually be demotivating for some people. I can totally relate to the feeling of disappointment in myself that I haven’t adopted and implemented more of the great advice given by other Indie authors since beginning my own author journey, and to the sense of “exhaustion” at the number of “You Can Do This If You Follow My Formula” posts out there.
It’s true that those hints and tips for success aren’t “one size fits all”, and nor is success. There are many ways to measure success, and we all have individual goals that determine what our own standards or images of success might be.
It is also fair to say that there is so much advice, so many tips, so many things people tell us to do, that it’s simply not possible to try it all out, and we really do need to remain realistic about what advice we are going to take on at any given time.
I do like Daegan’s points about daily and weekly reviews of what has been done or achieved. I actually do this, and it helps me stay on track because I find achieving small goals and milestones along the way incredibly motivating.
I don’t meditate as such, but I do set time aside for quietness and reflection in my daily routine. I wear a lot of hats in my day-to-day life, so taking even just a few minutes when my brain has nothing to do is a vital means of refreshing and resetting my mind at various stages of the day. As an introvert who is often surrounded by people all day long and again at home, that quietness is also how I recharge my energy, so it’s a crucial thing for me to do.
My “takeaway” from this article is that it’s important for each of us to set our own goals, define what sort of “success” we are hoping to achieve, and find what works for us as individuals.
The one thing we should all do is keep striving to make it happen.
I have read so many articles that have a headline similar to:
“If you want to be successful, adopt these 5 habits right away!”
The problem is, the author is always telling me what I should do to be successful as if my success and their success looks exactly the same.
I get so many of these articles telling me about the habits that I should have or my life is clearly falling apart. I’ll admit, many are good and I have certainly tried them.
But what about the author? Are they using all of those tips? Do they really have all of those habits locked down when they had a post a month ago telling me 12 other success tips? I want to know the person behind the word and if it’s actually worth my time.
Maybe I’m small minded and not wired for success, but…
I found these writing tips by Paul Skenazy to be very pertinent to myself as a writer.
I really like the one that says “Never lose your awkwardness,” I have awkwardness by the bucketload, so I’ve got that part covered.
Really, though, when I read and consider these points, they converge into an encouragement to be the writer only you can be, and to tell the story the way only you can tell it.
Writing is an invitation to humility—you realize you’re on the wrong track, you’ve lost connection with a scene, an emotion, a voice. The return on that humility is when your imagination lets you slip into someone else’s skin. The tales you come up with tell the story you are trying to tell when you sit down to write and also the story of the years you spend working on the book. Rendering a/your life into art changes you.
Trust your intuitions but trust (admit) that you don’t understand what your intuitions are telling you. They have their own truth and direction; your job is to follow where they lead. This doesn’t mean you don’t exert control, but you don’t exert as much control as you think you do. And you are often at your best when you don’t.
I’m always interested to see how different people react when I tell them I’m a published author. You can never really tell which way it’s going to go.
I’m accustomed to people saying, “Oh, that’s nice” or “Oh, interesting! I’ve never met an author before!”. Some people look at me with pity, others adopt an expression that suggests I have three heads.
I am, I confess, always puzzled by people who say, “I don’t read”. I have absolutely no idea what that kind of existence must be like, so I just smile and nod.
The response I find most confronting, though, is “Oh, you must be rich!”
I have two favourite responses for those people: I either say “Nobody gets rich writing poetry!” or “You don’t become a writer if you’re looking for an easy way to make a buck.” To write really well is hard work. It takes time, commitment, energy and attention to detail – and those things generally don’t see a vast return in cash.
My motivation as a writer doesn’t come from money – if it did, I’d have quit after the first book. Sure, I’d like to sell more books, and be able to quit my job and write full time. That would be great… but it’s not likely to happen anytime soon.
For me, writing is a passion, a drive that I find it almost impossible to resist. When I write something good, I feel fulfilled. When I refine it, edit it, craft it, polish it and finally publish it, it’s both exciting and immensely satisfying.
The real thrill comes when a reader responds positively to my work, especially my poetry. To know someone has enjoyed one of my stories or been touched by one of my poems is the best feeling because that doesn’t happen accidentally.
This post by Sara Wolf, which I found on Ryan Lanz’s blog, addresses the issue of the vast differences between what the majority and the minority of authors earn. It’s a well-written article with a message that comes as no surprise to me or any other Indie author.
Most authors aren’t rich. Some manage to make a living. Only a very small percentage make it into the big league and get rich and super famous.
It is a frequent occurrence in the news to hear about authors cutting multi-million (or even billion) dollar book or movie deals. Famous examples of ridiculously successful authors, such as J.K. Rowling, E. L. James, and Stephen King, often lead people to think that becoming an author will undoubtedly lead to an equally as lucrative outcome. However, it turns out that the average author makes much, much less.
I discovered this post on the abooknation today. It reminded me of starting my own book blog, although my reasons were slightly different.
Like this blogger, I have always been an avid reader, but it was really only when my first book was published that I began to understand the true value of a review for an author.
It’s really the only feedback you get from readers.
A negative review can crush your soul until you think about the fact that you haven’t liked every single book you’ve picked up, either. Sometimes it’s a matter of taste.
A thoughtful review helps you improve your writing and motivates you to keep going. And if someone praises your work, it’s incredibly satisfying and fulfilling because you know you’ve connected with a reader’s soul.
The fact that such a small proportion of readers leave reviews does not really surprise me, because I had never done so before, either.
Once I recognised the need for reviews of Indie books, I saw that this was an opportunity for me to use my love of reading to help other Indie authors by leaving an honest, constructive review.
Thus, Book Squirrel was born.
After developing my confidence with book reviews, Book Squirrel’s blog extended to include author spotlights and interviews, book events and, recently, a range of integrated Indie book promotion services.
I love blogging about books and supporting other Indie authors. I enjoy giving back to the Indie author community and showing others how positive and proactive Indying is done.
Book Squirrel brings me, and others, joy. And that is the best reason ever to keep going.
I’m not sure if I’ve actually ever mentioned why I got into book blogging but if I did I don’t think I made a blog post about it so… HUR WE GOO:
I’ve always loved reading but I feel like I went through phases where I went on a bit of a (very) long slump until I read a book that hooked me back into reading! I’m someone with the shitest memory, even now when someone asks me for book recommendations I have to skim through my posts to jig my memory of what books I’ve read. So around 4/5 years ago when I got back into reading, I had no idea that book blogging was a thing, I thought why would anyone want to hear my rambling thoughts about a book I’ve read??????
Whenever I finished a book I would write up a review and literally just leave it…
WordyNerdBird 