-
friends say
Jon on Time for art erica on Patience and Fortitude: Update… lyn on Patience and Fortitude: Update… Katie P on Patience and Fortitude: Update… Jessica Hanscom on All You Need is Love (and a jo…
Monthly Archives: January 2010
All About My Mother
Please visit The Desk Set to read my essay about children’s librarianship.
(Dad, don’t feel left out, I have a whole book to write. Remember how when I was a kid and you kept saying it would all be good material for my novel?)
Posted in found
Tagged brooklyn public library, children's librarians, children's literature, library, mother
Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us by Alyssa Katz
Ms. Katz goes into gruesome detail with classic readable muckraking style- you get to know a lot of characters as she explains what can only be described as a nationwide conspiracy on every level to inflate home prices and commit mortgage fraud. She says “titling a show Flip this House or Flip That House is like titling a show Theft is Easy” So many neighborhoods and lives were destroyed by the deliberate stripping of equity from cities, and lying cheating to sell mortgages to people who don’t need them and shouldn’t have them. Depressing!
I’m not buying a house. I’m not ready to “marry a building” as Scott phrased it. Or to deal with sewage in my basement, or the thousands of other little fun projects that the homeowners I know enjoy. I did like scraping up carpet glue in my old apartment for months with a one inch scraper, but that was performance art.
Posted in book review, real estate
Tagged alyssa katz, book review, first time home buyers, our lot
On Revision
There was an article a few years ago in New York Magazine on children’s self esteem. The premise was that children who are praised for things they don’t work for can become mentally paralyzed. “I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.”
I was a natural test taker, because my parents read to me when I was very small. I easily excelled in school until homework became important. Then, I would ace the tests but still slack on the homework. I felt that my parents and teachers were proud of me when I did well, but my achievements were not sustainable over time, because I hadn’t learned to study effectively or use constructive criticism. I would do all work at the last minute instead of plugging away slow and steady, because I believed pulling off an adrenaline fueled B+ on something you know you didn’t try very hard at was better than spending weeks and weeks to get an A.
So now I am trying to learn how to use criticism and build muscles in my writing, to see it as a process rather than the kind of standardized test you can’t study for. It is working. (Thanks for your help, readers.)
