Matt's Journal

I’m taking this great writing class at Sacramento City College, taught by Jan Haag — for which this blog was started. It has gotten me to write more. I want to share some ideas both from the class and from my head. This list will grow.

Exercise your writing muscles. This is a Jan-ism. It means — write. Write even if you don’t know what to say. Literally flex your finger muscles.

Take a walk then write a list of story ideas from it. Then write some questions related to the ideas. Then — write a ‘nut graf’ for each idea. This last term, ‘nut graf’, is newspaper slang for ‘core paragraph’ in an article. It has caught my ear. Here’s an instantiation of this exercise.

• Art on the sidewalks
  • They have themes in common: why?
  • What does LPCB mean?
  • The kids seem really happy – it reminds me of my childhood with moms being around, dads. Is this really the case? Might we make it more permanent?
    • The virus pandemic has resulted in one unexpected bonus: beautiful chalk art springing up on the sidewalks. Everywhere you go there’s chalk writing and art, often delineated by blue painters tape and some with the initials LPCB. You see kids making the art together and often their moms and dads too, helping out or chatting with each other– all this on a weekday morning.
• How to make art with chalk on the sidewalks
  • What are different ways to make chalk art – such as the ones at the chalk festival, as well as those seen all over now? I asked a mom…
  • Why the painters tape?
  • Can you use water or liquid?
  • Is there some unseen presence at work–a website, school directives?
• Art as what we do with leisure
  • Might we have an annual one-month worldwide shutdown of business?
  • Does art training really help people manage leisure?
    • Economic depressions sometimes have a bright side – Cuba saw lifespans increase during some depression there. The pandemic is bringing family and neighborhood cohesiveness and a blooming of art from children. Our world is reeling from resource usage and pollution and the pace of life is driving us crazy. It’s possible to stop!
• Variety of azaleas in bloom.
  • — history of them? Horticulture in general?
• Closed businesses including good Taiwanese dumpling place.
• How to get along in a crowded family with assertive people in it.

Write a rev 0 quickly, get it reviewed, then change it. There are lots of similarities, I suspect, between writing software and writing human-readable articles. The two practices could inform each other. “Agile programming” is a way to write software that emphasizes speed over accuracy, products over process, and continuous delivery over scheduled output. This seems applicable to article-writing: make a quick version and get it reviewed (or do it yourself), and be willing to update articles (should be easy enough what with them being online). One other idea is testing: how to do that, though, in a human-readable article? The idea of scope creep: how software can bloat as requirements are added. I’m writing an article now and feel the onset of scope creep as I learn more — and need to control it.

Write with a pretend listener – a dialogue. This is an old technique. Here’s a bad attempt.

• Matt: government’s nice to have when we have a big threat like this virus!
• Ttam: no, it’s a threat! Bad guys can take over while everyone’s distracted. And we’re likelier to give them power they shouldn’t have.
• Matt: yes, but you have to trust SOMEONE. Right?
• Ttam: no, you can’t. It’s every man for himself.
• Matt: You’d have us hole up in caves, then?
• Ttam: well, no…but…