Results of Ruminations

Time: 11:04am. Timer: 25 minutes. Go. Case #1 Here's a thing I've been thinking about: Fame. Part of it comes from the book I started listening to this morning, But What if We're Wrong? . I'm still early in the book (about an hour and a half so far), but there are ideas that are challenging and interesting. It's part futurism, part history, part critical analysis--definitely up my alley, even if it does make me uncomfortable with some of the implications of the cheerily described tendencies of humanity. Klosterman begins by talking about Moby-Dick , one of my favorite novels. I've read it once in college (where it ought to be read, if only so that the worthwhile conversations that the book inspires can have regular space; in lieu of college, a good, dedicated book club could tackle the Whale over the course of, say, three or four meetings), then half again whilst playing a Batman video game. It's not easy to read by any stretch, and its purpose is far...

What's the point of questions? This is asked not as an accusation, nor as a subversion of itself, but as an inescapably ironic process of inquiry. Questions are powerful. Very powerful. World changing. Yet their ubiquity seems to also enervate them. Can we question questions? And if the point of a question is to ask the question, can we come to an answer about questions that doesn't open up for more questions? But first, a story: I was sitting in a Sunday School class a year or so back, doing my best not to nurse my professional grudge against most (though certainly not all) Sunday School teachers*. It never is a personal grudge, but, having not only gone to college specifically to learn about different methodologies, studies, and theories of teaching, I have also completed nearly a decade of teaching. Students seem to appreciate my class, insomuch that I dare say that I'm probably a fairly good teacher, and one thing that I have practiced for that time is carrying on a c...

This is the second time that I'm giving this "timed-write" thing a go. I won't bother linking to my first attempt, since that would be a waste of time. This is probably good practice for tomorrow, when I want to have my students do "writing sprints" for their novels. The idea behind that, which I took from NaNoWriMo is to have a mini competition to write as many words as possible in 15 minutes, post the quantity, and then do it again. You repeat that for about an hour--we'll do 45 minutes in my class--and see how many words you can get. It's interesting, because it really helps you to focus on what you're doing at that very moment, but it's also something that can boost your word count by a lot. When I went on my writing retreat with my writing group friends (which was different than when I went by myself), I suggested giving this a try, but we never got around to it. Heh. When we went as a group, I accidentally left the keys behind. I had ...

The website DeviantArt  has a thing its artists do--or perhaps it's something artists on DeviantArt do and it has nothing to do with the website--called "timed sketches". I don't know if there are specific rules, but the concept interested me. I decide that I'd do a similar thing today: A timed post. I'm writing for twenty-five minutes (I've already started) and will write the entire time. I haven't a topic, per se , that I'm going on about. Instead, it's the idea of writing and staying focused on writing the (almost) entire time. Art by FunkyMonkey1945 and this pic is the only thing not writing I did for this post. Because this is a timed write, I have to keep my fingers on the keyboard as much as possible. Editing (inasmuch as I ever edit these essays) will be kept to a minimum, since the whole point is to get as many words down as I can. Additionally, I will likely end in the middle of a sentence, because when the alarm stops, I have to...