Lilian Nattel's Blog, page 42

spring from the frog's p.o.v.

via vaido.aminus3.com




Filed under: Miscellany

peace: animals in slow motion

If you're like me, this video will make you smile and bring with it a sense of peace and beauty.

Filed under: Beautiful, Uplifting Tagged: nature video

Draft 10

I've been reading a lot and writing a lot and thinking a lot–but not blogging about it. The reason is that I'm hard at work on the last draft of the last book. I haven't yet received my editor's notes, but I wanted to take advantage of her being away for a couple of weeks to read through the ms on my own first. Having done that, I decided to have a first pass at revision, knowing in general what she was after and having gauged my own reactions after the ms had been laid aside a good while.

I've been working long hours, spending time, lots of time, in picking out the right word or phrase where the wrong one had jumped out during my reading. I've also been spending a lot of time on one particular aspect of the novel, which has been a thorn in my side since the beginning.

It doesn't amount to a lot proportionately, maybe 15-20 pages scattered throughout, but it's immensely important to the psychology of the novel. It can't be cut, but it's a challenge to get right, putting something essentially non-verbal into words that don't sound kitschy or purply or incomprehensible.

I've tried a number of failed approaches, like Edison's light bulb, not 10,000 of them (his non-working bulbs), but enough. And I hope this time I've got it.

When I'm done with this go-round I should have time to take a break before getting the notes, and then with her notes in hand can have another look at what I've done and make further changes.

I've read How Fiction Works, Persuasion, Ali Smith's The First Person and Other Stories, and am currently reading a book of crime fiction, but at the end of the day am too exhausted to say anything very intelligent. I hope it's all going into the draft!

Filed under: Literary, Personal Tagged: the writing life

the writing life of Allan Ahlberg

Usually you can't build a house without an architect doing drawings – there is an intention prior to the existence of the building. But books are made up like sandcastles: you add stuff and knock it down and change it – and, in fact, you didn't even know you were building a castle at first, you thought you were building a garage. Or you were going to have a cave and instead it turned into a garden full of shells.

via guardian.co.uk

That's a quote from Allan Ahlberg in this touching and inspiring article about his life and work. Raise in a tough working class family, so shy he couldn't buy a bus ticket, he was working as a grave digger when his boss encouraged him to become a teacher. Read the whole story. It'll brighten your day.

Filed under: Literary Tagged: Allan Ahlberg, Peepo

writers and promotion–the lineage

The most revered of French novelists recognized the need for P.R. "For artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed," Balzac observed in "Lost Illusions," his classic novel about literary life in early 19th-century Paris. As another master, Stendhal, remarked in his autobiography "Memoirs of an Egotist," "Great success is not possible without a certain degree of shamelessness, and even of out-and-out charlatanism." Those words should be on the Authors Guild coat of arms.

Hemingway set the modern gold standard for inventive self-branding, burnishing his image with photo ops from safaris, fishing trips and war zones. But he also posed for beer ads.

via nytimes.com

Beer, I don't think so, but if anyone wants me to try out a new e-reader, I'll pose. Or I could take a leaf from Herodotus who, back in the day millenia ago, pumped his Histories at the Olympic Games. What do you think? Standing up in the stands at a hockey game?

Filed under: Literary Tagged: promoting books

Persuasion by Jane Austen: Thoughts

It seems strange to review a book a couple of hundred years old, moreover by a literary icon whose books have given rise to movie adaptations galore, as well as zombie and vampire spinoffs.

So rather than a review, let's just say that I want to share some thoughts. Persuasion was Austen's last book, written during the months of an illness that resulted in her death. The exact diagnoses isn't known, there are various theories based on what little is known of her symptoms. So this novel had two strikes against it, ill-health and lacking the re-working and polishing of her earlier novels.

Interestingly, though, it provides the only existing manuscript. She re-wrote the climactic chapter and I found the original online, but can't right now! (I'll post if I do.)

As an aside, a couple of interesting historical tidbits from the novel: naval success and speed of travel. Travel by horse and carriage was 3 miles an hour. I can understand, in that context, how revolutionary trains were, increasing speed by 10x. It's comparable to today's fastest passenger jets relative to car travel.

War was profitable. Captured merchant vessels (probably American, who were supplying the French in the Napoleonic wars) were sold along with contents and the spoils divided among the crew, 1/4 going to the captain and smaller and smaller proportions down the line. Fortunes were made this way, the equivalent of millions of dollars today.

Back to the novel. The heroine, Anne Eliot, unlike Elizabeth Bennett and so on, isn't a teenager but an adult (albeit young) woman in her late 20′s. She is compliant out of a sense of duty, insightful, intelligent, observant, competent, aware of her feelings which run strong though seldom expressed, and aware of how to manage her feelings.

Like other Austen novels, there is a silly selfish parent and a silly selfish sibling, as well as a selfish sibling who's a hypochondriac. Love is thwarted through bad advice but comes out well in the end. Unlike the other novels, the heroine doesn't overlook her true love and focus her affections on an unworthy though seemingly attractive other.

There is a character like that, who charms everyone but the heroine and turns out to be the no-good cad that is prominent in other novels. However the main thrust of the narrative isn't affected one way or the other by that, and that is a weakness in the story.

I wasn't grabbed by the heroine right off the bat, just as in the novel many around her aren't, but after a bit I came to really like her quiet intelligence and zipped through the story waiting for true love and fortitude to win the day, which, it being an Austen novel, even the last one, does of course.

A good deal of the story takes place in Bath, and I wondered if there was any autobiography in the choice of heroine. By the sound of it, from what I read, Austen was rather funnier and more caustic than Eliot. And though she suffered from the same kind of financial reverses as her characters, she had much better family support.

I also found it interesting that Austen worked on novels for quite some years before being published, and that she even had to pay to get the first novel back from a publisher who never did anything with it. So, folks, it seems there is hope for all of us yet.

Filed under: Literary Tagged: Jane Austen's last novel

Patrick Chan wins gold!

Record score for Canada's Patrick Chan winning world title for men's skating in Moscow. Congratulations Patrick Chan and way to go Canada!

Here it is:

Filed under: Miscellany Tagged: Patrick Chan skating in Moscow

what are a billion people hungry for?

We asked Oucha Mbarbk what he would do if he had more money. He said he would buy more food. Then we asked him what he would do if he had even more money. He said he would buy better-tasting food. We were starting to feel very bad for him and his family, when we noticed the TV and other high-tech gadgets. Why had he bought all these things if he felt the family did not have enough to eat? He laughed, and said, "Oh, but television is more important than food!

via foreignpolicy.com

Fascinating and thought provoking essay about research and experience with poverty.

Filed under: Miscellany

what nation is the most trusting?

not the u.s., they're in the bottom 10, The Economics Of Trust http://ow.ly/4IAOV

Filed under: Miscellany

Ramble with Camera

I went for a walk today, taking advantage of a bit of sun coming out between rain for days past and rain for days coming. While I walked, because I had my new camera with me, I was thinking about Vivian Maier. She had no recognition in her lifetime, in fact was completely unknown and only known now because the negatives were fortuitously acquired and promoted by John Maloof.

She was a gifted photgrapher, an urban photographer, her pictures mostly portraits. What amazes me is the way she was able to get these fantastic photos on the fly. People aren't posing or sitting for her. Somehow she had her camera at the ready and was able to get narrative photos of people in the city. It astounds me and it's inspiring, especially because, here in the city, I don't have a pastoral landscape to photograph.

I've been hesitant to take pictures of people because it seems to me a usurping of people's identities, their image, which ought to belong to them. But as I walked today, and looked at people, I thought that this is much of what I love about living here, the variety of people, their unending stories, which is their beauty.

Well, I'm not in Maier's league, not even many leagues away, but here's a sample of what I took today. (Click on pics to enlarge)

This is my favourite because you see so much of this in the neighbourhoods I walk: people on stoops or standing on the sidewalk chatting. It's what is best about the city, this different pace, a walking pace.

I saw this mural while on my way to a mall to shop with my kids and wished I had the camera. I went back there to take the picture.

The workmen posed, but I was shy and far away, so I couldn't see whether they were really smiling when they said, "cheese."

I liked this because of the colours. Someone took the trouble to paint that blue and green, the colours echoed the grass pushing through, and there were echoes, too, in the shapes.

Filed under: Miscellany