Writing

Why Are Writers Great at Procrastinating?

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headstandMegan McArdle, a columnist at Bloomberg View, attempts to explain why writers are great procrastinators. She suggests many, perhaps most, writers haven’t failed enough. They have rested on their natural talent for too long and believe that the talent is all they have to offer. They don’t see their talent as a muscle that will grow with exercise; rather they see it as a solid that can be tested for purity. If the world discovers they aren’t as good as they sometimes appear to be, they will be certifiably, undeniably doomed.

“This fear of being unmasked as the incompetent you ‘really’ are,” McArdle writes, “is so common that it actually has a clinical name: impostor syndrome. A shocking number of successful people (particularly women), believe that they haven’t really earned their spots, and are at risk of being unmasked as frauds at any moment. Many people deliberately seek out easy tests where they can shine, rather than tackling harder material that isn’t as comfortable.”

When faced with this fear, people may choose to hamper their own performance. She quotes Alain de Botton, saying, “Work finally begins when the fear of doing nothing exceeds the fear of doing it badly.” “For people with an extremely fixed mind-set,” she continues, “that tipping point quite often never happens. They fear nothing so much as finding out that they never had what it takes.” (via Lore Ferguson)

Authors

Interview with Whit Stillman

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Whit Stillman on speaking French: “I wasn’t one of these people that love Paris and always talks about it. In fact all my friends were dropping out and taking a year off or semester off and going to France and I was the one who didn’t want to go to France. I went to Mexico because I was so intimidated by my experience in French class. I’d done so poorly in French class that I went to Mexico and learned Spanish first. To this day I’m mocked by French friends who say I speak French like Zorro.”

On American cliches: “One of the bad things America has done is that in trying to be popular it’s relied on certain formulas and gone back to the pump again and again and again and with the same formula. It’s flattering the lowest common denominator and it’s this underdog thing, and it’s very seductive, it’s in all the templates in our brain. But it’s a wrong view of the world.”

Authors

How Can You Say That?!

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When you leave 50 replies to a negative review of your interactive ebook, you’re doing it wrong.

Maybe you need more creativity. But then, “how did we come to care so much about creativity? The language surrounding it, of unleashing, unlocking, awakening, developing, flowing, and so on, makes it sound like an organic and primordial part of ourselves which we must set free—something with which it’s natural to be preoccupied. But it wasn’t always so . . .” (both via Prufrock)

Authors, Non-fiction

Podcast: C.S. Lewis vs. The New Atheists

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C.S. Lewis grew up among some well-known atheists and may have believed the same things argued today by speakers labeled “New Atheists.” Peter S. Williams has written a book on the subject, and this podcast introduces a series of discussions on that book, C S Lewis vs the New Atheists, with an overview. You can get a brief review and chapter list here.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Death’s Doors’ reviewed at ‘I Saw Lightning Fall’

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Our friend Loren Eaton, at I Saw Lightning Fall,reviews Death’s Doors:

Imagine a blender. Chuck in Atwood’s aforementioned novel, Ray Bradbury’s “A Sound of Thunder,” Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and Walker’s own West Oversea. Add a generous pinch of profanity, a scoop of Christian church history, and several comment sections plucked at random from various Huffington Post articles. Now pulse for two or three seconds. Voila! That’s Death’s Doors. Yes, it’s just as lumpy as it sounds. But it’s also works.

Fiction

Song of the Sea Movie

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In case you didn’t see this at the beginning of summer, here’s the teaser trailer for the next animation from the people who brought us The Secret of Kells.

“SONG OF THE SEA tells the story of Ben and his little sister Saoirse — the last Seal-child — who embark on a fantastic journey across a fading world of ancient legend and magic in an attempt to return to their home by the sea. The film takes inspiration from the mythological Selkies of Irish folklore, who live as seals in the sea but become humans on land. SONG OF THE SEA features the voices of Brendan Gleeson, Fionnula Flanagan, David Rawle, Lisa Hannigan, Pat Shortt, Jon Kenny, Lucy O’Connell, Liam Hourican and Kevin Swierszsz. Music is by composer Bruno Coulais and Irish band Kíla, both of whom previously collaborated on The Secret of Kells.“

Authors, Non-fiction

Andrew Klavan To Write Kermit Gosnell Movie Script

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The movie project about America’s worst serial killer is moving forward with the announcement that Andrew Klavan will write the script. He says the challenge will be writing a movie that people will want to see, because the base story is almost too repulsive. He tells NRO what’s most important about the Gosnell story:

I’m a crime writer. It’s a great crime story. But you know, I notice I’ve gone through this whole interview without saying the words “abortion” or “abortionist.” But that’s a part of it too, a central part. I’m in a sort of — I won’t say “unique” but certainly strange position on this. I’m a natural-born libertarian. With every fiber of my being, I want people to live the lives they want to live, whether it suits me or not. You want to be gay? Have a good time. You want to condemn gays? Knock yourself out. You want to dress up as Beyonce and get a tattoo of Louisiana on your forehead? I’m the guy who’ll buy you a drink and say, “Nice tat, Yonce.” I know a lot of women who’ve had abortions — people I like and love. I know a lot of people who are pro-abortion, likewise. But moral logic has convinced me that this is wrong — more than wrong – as wrong as a thing can be. It’s not about your feelings versus mine. It’s not about social conservatism. It’s not about libertarianism. And it’s not about feminism either or “women’s health care.” What nonsense that is. It’s an actual question of good versus evil. And listen, in the end, that’s what all great stories are about.

(via ISI)

Uncategorized

Challenges in Higher Education

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Many families and individuals are weighed down with graduate or under-grad debt while national theorists continue to recommend higher education as the solution to boosting the economy. These growing concerns have lead two authors to ask whether students are expecting too much from a college degree. One of two story trends that emerge from the research is seen in this student called Nathan.

His sputtering progress after college was foreshadowed by his choices during it, Mr. Arum and Ms. Roksa write. Nathan coasted, focusing more on socializing than on academics. He studied mostly with his friends, doing so alone for just five hours a week. When asked to name a significant academic experience, he at first couldn’t think of one. Still, Nathan graduated with a 3.9 grade-point average.

If he had received a 2.1 grade-point average, would he have changed his trajectory and tried to raise it, or would his final record simply reflect his work accurately? (He was given a Business degree, by the way.) Is it the college’s fault in even a small way that he has trouble finding a good job within a few years of graduating?

On another topic in higher education, Gregory Thornbury of The King’s College in New York City, says we must continue to cast a vision for the next generation to run with.

I think we’re guilty of assuming that young people have signed up for the evangelical project or that they’ve signed up for democratic capitalism. We definitely get students who have signed up for that, who come from homeschooling backgrounds and so forth. They’re all charged up and ready to go. But there are also many who have never heard the case for the truthfulness of Christianity, for the things that caused flourishing in Western civilization. When people ask me, “What’s your personal mission?” I often say to them, it’s to re-enchant this generation with the animating ideals that made Western civilization in general and America in particular great. We are legatees of a great intellectual inheritance, and we have to make that case again.

Non-fiction, Publishing

No, the Vikings weren’t gender-neutral

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Had to post about this, before there’s further confusion.

This article from Tor. com has been making the rounds.

Researchers at the University of Western Australia decided to revamp the way they studied Viking remains. Previously, researchers had misidentified skeletons as male simply because they were buried with their swords and shields. (Female remains were identified by their oval brooches, and not much else.) By studying osteological signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper burial with their weapons

It didn’t take long for a rebuttal to come from what looks like a somewhat more credible source, Stuff You Missed in History.

But, this paper essentially uses the presence of six female migrants and seven male as evidence that women and children most likely accompanied the Norse armies with the intent of settling the land once it was conquered, rather than migrating in a second wave once the fighting was over. It is, sadly, not at all about female Viking warriors, and not some Earth-shattering evidence that Norse armies were evenly split among women and men.

They’ll still have to prove to me that there were any female Viking warriors at all, but the point is made. The Tor article drew unwarranted and exaggerated conclusions from a study that examined a mere 13 graves.

Hey, Tor Books rejected my novel Wolf Time (soon to be re-released in e-book form) with disparaging comments, about 30 years ago. That should tell you all you need to know about them.

Authors, Fiction

Reviewing ‘Herzog’ after 50 Years

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Jack Hanson writes about Saul Bellow and his 50-year-old novel, Herzog, a story about a professor who can’t handle his life after losing his wife to divorce. Bellow, who died in 2005, said the story is something of a joke about how education can ruin you, but many are not convinced that’s all there is to his National Book Award winner.

“It may be hard to imagine what the neurosis of a restless, mid-century academic have to do with Ferguson, militant jihad, or any of our other woes,” Hanson states. “But if the book has a single theme, it is that we are dominated more than anything else by ideas, and it is only when we confront ideas and our allegiance to them that we might be able to set our house back in order. Life will never be an easy affair, but it may become, at times, manageable. Herzog is not a morality tale, in the sense of being didactic, but it is highly moral, while being forward-looking.”