While I don’t particularly enjoy reading at this pace (roughly 2 to 2.5 half books per week) what makes it way more difficult is trying to synthesize everything I’m taking in. The concepts I’ve highlighted—magical realism, science fiction, and the fantastic—are notoriously hard to define. Yet critics need to stake out their ground by providing definitions for how they’ll be using these terms, and the deficiencies in the terms lead to holes, small and large, in their theories. For example, Chanady does a good job of improving Todorov’s definition of the fantastic, which she claims speaks to a too narrow set of texts; while her definition expands it significantly, she wants to separate “the fantastic” from “fantasy” and both of those from “magical realism.” To me, I don’t think you can deal with “the fantastic” without grappling with “fantasy,” yet that’s what both Chanady and Todorov do. I really liked Mendlesohn’s book on fantasy (writers of fantasy would do well to read it) but she completely whiffs on her definition of magical realism, suggesting that the only non-Latin writers of magical realism could be found in the American South. While I agree you can find strands connecting magical realism to the Southern Gothic and the grotesque, this leaves out European writers like Günter Grass.

So keeping track of all this—underlining, jotting notes in the margins—slows reading considerably. I’m learning a lot and will have plenty fodder when it comes to exam time, but it’s taxing work. On top of teaching two classes and the small matter of watching a baby a couple days a week. On it goes for a bit longer…

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I’ve been burning the midnight hours on the weekends cramming in time Fallout 3. It’s the classic “I’ll just search this next room” and the next thing you know it’s quarter to four. I will say it gets a little less intriguing the higher up the ranks you get (I’m closing in on Level 16 of 20) and neither money nor ammo should cause me any problems from here on out, unless things get severely twisted.

As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I’d like to propose using a video game as the launching pad for a creative writing class. The more I play, read, and think, the more I’m convinced it would be a good idea. Every time I mention it to one of my colleagues I get the “WTF? are you kidding?” look, but that goes away almost immediately as I explain how and why it could work. The timing would work out well for me too, as I get a course release next spring to work on professional development (i.e. work on publishing and presenting) and I will likely get an upper-level creative writing class that semester. While I had planned on teaching a workshop on science fiction, fantasy, and horror, I’m going to ask to swap it out for this course. Fallout: New Vegas will be coming out sometime in Fall 2010. Again, the timing is close to perfect. More on this as it hopefully develops…

I actually got to watch some footie last weekend and I have to say, it has been a fascinating year. The race at both ends of the table will almost certainly go down to the last day and there will be plenty of twists and turns between then and now. For the title, you really can’t pick between Man Ure, Chel$ki, and Ars*nal. The season has shown that the first two are considerably weaker than in previous years, while the latter is only marginally improved but good enough to legitimately challenge. The race for the cash cow that is fourth is likewise tight—Liverpool’s losses to Wigan and Man Ure seriously dented their chances, Villa can’t buy a win at present, and Citeh is as unpredictable as ever. This means Spurs will never have a better time to put a lock on fourth, which inevitably means they won’t. They needed wins against Blackburn and Stoke and got them (nervy wins but wins nonetheless), which they will need given their run-ins with the top teams in the closing weeks. The relegation race is just as tight, although Pompey’s point deduction and near auto-relegation makes it a bit less interesting than it could have been. But it’s still pretty interesting.

Oh, and Spurs are also in the semifinals of the FA Cup. That’s kind of a big deal, innit? As is Real and Barca fighting it out at the top of La Liga, with Lionel Messi fast guaranteeing his ascension to godhead with each passing game. And the MLS avoided a players’ strike by coming to their senses in the 11th hour, but it’s far too late to start writing about that. The Champions League has likewise been fascinating, what with Lyon and Inter dumping out richies Real and Chel$ki, but that too is old news. One could do little else than sit around, watch soccer, and blog about it.

All in all, exciting times in world football, especially when I can find time to watch over the top of a book or baby’s head.

Current Mood: Bleh |

I’m particularly interested in this genre due to Brian McHale’s concept that modernist fiction is like a detective novel, whereas postmodern fiction is like a science fiction novel. The former is rooted in epistemology (questions of knowing) whereas the latter deal with ontology (questions of being). This table does a pretty good job parsing out other areas that tend to define modernism and postmodernism.

The Sign of the Four would be a perfect book to use for teaching. Published in 1890, it really exemplifies the shift from the Romantic era (as embodied by Watson, who is ever-emotional) to modernism (as embodied by Holmes’ unwavering faith in reason and logic). There is a ton of other great stuff to mine, including colonialism (the back story happens in India and many servants are Indian), issues of class (Holmes employs “street Arab” boys to do intelligence work; the gentlemen Holmes and Watson regularly comment on the labor class, to name just a few), and gender (Watson’s courtship and interactions with Mary Morstan). Also, I like the fact that Doyle wrote these stories for the masses, even if they only would have found their way into the hands of the literate class. I think it would be a lot of fun to read in a group and talk about all of the above.

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I’m also getting close to finishing my reading for the “digital pedagogy” area for my prelims and I’m really enjoying what I’ve read thus far. I am inclined to agree with most of what I read, but the major challenge is that to fully incorporate technology into the classroom even (especially?) at the college level, the ways we thinking about what it means to teach and learn need to radically change. And of course, radical change is always a hard sell.

My personal (and professional) goal is to make some of this theory applicable to teaching creative writing. Both rhet/comp and professional writing seem to be asking interesting questions about incorporating technology into the classroom, yet it’s difficult to find much from the field of creative writing. What I have found tends to suggest using blogs and wikis to facilitate critiques, yet many digital pedagogy scholars would say these are the kinds of baby steps merely use the tools of technology while holding on to fixed notions of learning. Basically, you’re doing the same old workshop type stuff, only you cut out the paper.

James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and Good Video Games and Good Learning lay out a strong case for how educators need to consider how we can use games and game-like strategies to teach better. Gee does not say, as some Amazon reviews suggest, that we need to be incorporating video games into our classrooms; although he isn’t against it either, since many good video games have content well worth talking about in an academic or intellectual setting.

This has started me thinking about creative writing pedagogy and whether a good video game could help teach students about the choices an author makes when writing a narrative. I’ve been playing Fallout 3 over the last day or so, and it bears many of the hallmarks of Gee’s “good” video games, and I’m impressed with how the story and its world are inseparable. Before the game starts you hear the wasteland is dangerous and so it is; because the game is a sandbox (a non-linear story taking place in a large, explorable virtual world) you find out first-hand just how deadly it is by dying over, and over, and over again. You, as the character, have a limitless number of options before you; yet in reality, the nature of the world drastically limits your options to a mere handful due to your lack of equipment and resources, and you learn very quickly that you need to adapt your behavior in order to survive.

For me, this ties back very neatly to creative writing. Many, many times I see student stories where they want to portray a world as stark and deadly as the one in Fallout 3, yet the character traipses around as s/he sees fit without any negative consequences. Likewise, characters very often look, think, and act like they were 21st-century Midwesterners rather than looking, thinking, and acting like they were the last pocket of survivors of a nuclear holocaust. Characters often tend to be without a personal history, and little thought has been given to the multitude of attributes that make a character unique and well-rounded.

Part of me wonders how much this has to do with most students not being experienced fiction readers. Another part of me wonders if students fail to fully identify with characters in print fiction. And yet a third part of me wonders if this could be a situation where one of Gee’s “good” video games could help in a classroom setting. In games like Fallout 3 (and others), players have to customize their characters from the onset, so they do certain things better than others. Part of this selection reveals value judgments; would I rather have my character be good with small guns, or medicine and healing? These early choices make a big difference as the game progresses, and players are stuck with those attributes for good or bad, at least in the short term. These attributes also shape how players have to deal with various situations, and how in-game characters treat them.

In other words, good video games immerse players in an invented world, which is of course what good fiction writers do to their readers as well. The big difference is that players experience all of those little world-building nuances for themselves, albeit through a virtual character. Still, I think Gee makes a good point that players tend to become quite invested in characters they manipulate, and even more so when they had a hand in customizing that player with certain attributes and characteristics. This investment comes more easily than, say, with a character in a film or in a story.

What I’m kicking around here is the idea that a creative writing instructor could use a good video game to teach narrative and world-building to novice fiction writers who have more experience playing games than reading. The video game could be talked about in terms common to fiction writing (plotting, tension, character development, motivation, etc.) and then you could reverse the process, and look at a short work of fiction as though it was a video game, perhaps even deconstructing a story into some video game elements (skills, attributes, coping strategies, etc.) to help students “see” fiction as a kind of game. For example, I’ve been thinking The Sign of the Four would make a terrific video game.

This is something I am thinking long and hard about. I can smell a paper coming on…

Current Mood: Pondering |

The final assignment in the poetry unit asks students to try their hand at writing some visual poetry. Last semester most students opted for collage, and this semester many more leaned toward the calligrams. A few students chose to do Humument-inspired pieces and I was really impressed with the results and asked if I could share them here.

Clicking on the images will take you to a bigger version so you can read the text and better appreciate the artwork.

Lindsay Davenport	Shawn Matson
Abby Veitch	Megan Zingsheim

Pretty cool, huh?

Current Mood: Beaming with Pride |

For example, students in my College Writing and Research class often show interest in something Robert Davis and Mark Shadle refer to as a “multimedia research essay,” whereby the writer incorporates a number of different media into the paper: images, music, videos, links, etc. I happen to be interested in the academic hypertext, and I could see students taking a number of unique approaches to constructing a non-traditional research “essay” in the form of a blog or even a small website with a variety of content linked and/or embedded. But there are problems. One, the way our program does portfolio review, there is no mechanism for the assessment of a hypertext document; two, I don’t know if all of my colleagues would feel comfortable applying the course goals and objectives to a hypertext document (though perhaps they would); and three, most students won’t know how to create a multimedia document. And of course, it could also be argued that students in English 102 should focus on rhetorical strategies common to print documents.

For the instructor (i.e. me) it becomes a battle of what stays and what goes in the syllabus if you want to take, say, two weeks to engage with the question of the multimedia research essay. This quickly becomes tricky. And, as I point out earlier, it’s much easier to “make time” during course planning rather than trying to “find time” after the starting gun has been fired.

I’m also reading James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and I’m buying what he’s selling hook, line, and sinker. Gee’s basic point is not that video games should take the place of classroom learning, but rather that educators should rethink their teaching styles in order to get students as engaged with school material as they are with video games. My memory of my K-12 experience was one of boredom. I did not (and still do not) learn very well by rote, and I tend to get bored with a lack of variety. I distinctly remember one (awful) high school Spanish teacher telling the class with unmistakable irritation that her job was not to entertain us. While I agree with this sentiment, she also went beyond the call of duty to ensure that she never tried anything new to make the material more engaging. Gee makes a lot of great points about situated learning and semiotic domains and I keep saying, “Yup… yup… yup…” as I’m filling up page after page of notes. If you like video games and are interested in education, check it out. It’s fast and pretty accessible.

Gee’s book has also gotten me thinking about creative writing pedagogy and questioning the generic workshop format that’s commonly used. But more on that as I kick it around…

The Champions League kicks off this afternoon (or tonight, if you’re in Europe) and it’s going to be interesting. AC Milan versus Manchester United and Real Madrid versus Lyon on the docket today and both should be good matches. All four of these teams run hot and cold so the first leg matches are very hard to predict. Ah, what the hell, I’ll 2-0 to United and 2-1 to Madrid. I think both Milan and Lyon will be pushing to get a goal at home and will leave themselves exposed to these two good counterattacking teams.

Otherwise I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of European football and some of the changes that UEFA and the Premier League are thinking of instituting, and wondering if we’re nearing another crisis moment between the big clubs in Europe and all the rest. The big talk is how Germany’s clubs are largely sensibly run and community owned, which has led to relatively inexpensive tickets, huge attendances, lots of turnover in the league table, and poor performances in European competition. The problem is that German clubs largely operate within their means, which means they get crushed by teams from other countries with ridiculously deep pocketbooks (Madrid, Barcelona, Chelski) and those big-spending clubs mired in massive debt (Liverpool, Man Ure).

In the next decade, the situation will tip in one of two ways: either something like a European-wide salary cap will come into play and make the playing field a wee bit more competitive, or the European giants will kick their marketing into a higher gear and form a breakaway league that’s sold to a global audience. I’m rooting for the former but expecting the latter; insert your cliche’ about geese and golden eggs here.

Current Mood: Sick |

Except reading of course. Last week I finished two books heavier on practice than theory in Teaching the New Writing: Technology, Change, and Assessment in the 21st-Century Classroom and The Digital Writing Workshop. Both had some interesting ideas, but I’m realizing that it’s quite difficult to work digital projects into a class during the course of the semester. It seems like things will work much more smoothly if the course is tailored to these kinds of projects, since you need to dedicate time to scaffolding how to use the necessary technologies over the course of several weeks. Good to get me thinking.

I’m really enjoying A Better Pencil, which is a highly readable account of how the acts of reading and writing have changed since ancient times. Good stuff, and lots of things to incorporate for the next time I teach English 101.

Current Mood: Fine But Tired |

This past semester I worked on a project developing WordPress websites for academics and writers (funny, that) and decided to once again revamp the site. Now, trenthergenrader.com has a completely different look than this page, where I plan on keeping my blog and its six-year archive as well as links to my personal photos. That page houses my professional information (i.e. writing credits and academic work) that hopefully will come in handy when I hit the job trail in the next two or three years. It seems like a pretty good solution.

(sigh) One of the benefits of getting older (turned 36 last week, thanks for the well-wishes) is that you tend to develop perspective as well. I started following Spurs during the 1990-91 season on the heels of the Italia ’90 World Cup, having fallen in love with Gary Lineker and Paul Gascoigne. Of course, Spurs won the FA Cup that year, looooooong before you could watch any kind of footie on television on these shores, and it’s been more or less a disappointment since then. Two League Cup wins in about twenty years? Yes, I feel like I’ve been long-suffering enough to be a true Spurs fans.

Tottenham missed out on fourth spot in the 2005-06 season on the last day of the season thanks to a bout of food poisoning known as lasagne gate. I knew then that they’d missed a huge opportunity. In subsequent seasons, they’ve lost Michael Carrick, Dimitar Berbatov, and Robbie Keane when those players were at their peak and I’ve never believed that they had the mettle to crack the top four again. So this season when everyone’s been saying “this is Spurs’ year” I have to say, no, no it’s not.

Even though Spurs have been loitering in spots three through six for the entire season, my hopes have never been raised because I never let myself believe they could pull it off. The home loss to Stoke, the away draw to Everton, the home draw to Hull, and today’s draw to Leeds in the FA Cup: these results reveal Spurs for what they are, and that’s a team that doesn’t have the nerve to see out tough matches. My prediction is that Spurs will have a tepid second-half to the season and will end up in sixth. I hope I’m wrong, I’d love to be wrong, but history is on my side.

I splashed some Christmas and birthday cash on some XBox 360 games: FIFA 10, Bioshock, Assassin’s Creed, and Gears of War 2 to be exact. Besides the soccer game, I got those last ones in a “buy two, get one free” deal that was too good to pass up. Gears 2 wasn’t supposed to be part of the promo but some strange wording in the ad (I misread Gears of War 2 Disc Set) worked to my advantage as the cashier at Best Buy wasn’t sure how to do handle returning an online promotional transaction, so she let me swap for Gears 2 instead of voiding the whole purchase. Yay her, yay me.

My initial reaction to FIFA 10 is disappointment. The game play is better in that you have better control with passing and dribbling, but I’m in that unenviable spot where I can beat Barcelona with Lincoln City on the professional setting, but I can lose to Lincoln City with Barcelona on the next level up. Three of my biggest problems with FIFA 09 was defending against high balls (I lose every header), defenders who either sprint past the striker with the ball or who get nutmegged thirty times a game, and keepers who flap at the most innocuous of shots and crosses. All of these still feature prominently in FIFA 10 too. Also, I lament the fact that so many games are geared towards mastering crazy, split-second controller combinations. I have a feeling that my inability to flick the left-joystick in a clockwise motion while dragging the right one back and holding both triggers down means that I can’t dribble past a single opponent. That’s pretty frustrating. I haven’t tried the manager or Be A Pro modes, but if the game still features these major annoyances, they’re going to be there too.

I took a very brief look at Bioshock and Assassin’s Creed last night and both appear to be highly entertaining. I didn’t realize Bioshock was from the same company that made the Half-Life series and I was a little disappointed at first, because I found parts of Half-Life 2 to be really annoying. Bioshock has some cool features where you can genetically enhance your character and the great weapons management system is still in place, so I’m hoping that they took the best from the Half-Life series and added some other interesting features.

Assassin’s Creed is visually stunning, to quote a cliche’, and I think it will be fun to explore the world beyond the first couple levels I got through last night. On the annoying side, the storyline makes little sense whatsoever (does the main character really need to be a genetic descendant of an assassin, traveling back through time to reenact his life because they share the same genetic code… couldn’t the game just be about a medieval assassin already?) and the basics of climbing buildings and fighting guards already seem a little predictable and repetitive. Also, the cut-scenes are painfully long, made worse by the incoherence of the plot-within-a-plot about finding a traitor to the Brotherhood of Assassin’s organization… or something like that.

I also find it troubling that everyone in the game is Middle Eastern except for the protagonist, who has lily-white skin. Everyone speaks with heavy accents except for the protag, who speaks an “unadulterated” English. Also, the protagonist is by nature violent, rash, and stubborn, and who bristles at being brought to heel by white-bearded elder who tells him he needs to listen and follow directions. Let’s just say I won’t be surprised when said elder turns out to be the traitor in their midst, blah, blah, blah…

Of course, this game will predominantly be played by teens and the above paragraph reaffirms a lot of bad messages. In the next couple weeks I’ll be reading James Paul Gee’s What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy and Good Video Games + Good Learning and I’ll be interested to see how/if he tackles these kinds of issues. It’s early days, but I can’t help but feeling that’s there’s a definite hierarchy of “right and wrong” in Assassin’s Creed that isn’t reinforced by, say, the Grand Theft Auto series, which seem to be amoral. Or maybe it’s that in those games, both the developers and gamers know that what the characters are doing is wrong, wrong, wrong and that’s what makes it fun. Maybe.

More on this as I read more. And hopefully have time to play more too.

Reading and reading and reading and reading, and not loving much of it. I read a dozen books over break and the only one I loved was Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar, although I enjoyed Ben Okri’s The Famished Road quite a bit. For most of the others, there’s a gap between “intellectually interesting” and “enjoyable to read” that’s wider or narrower from title to title. For instance, The Woman Warrior, House of the Spirits, Kingdoms of the World and The Light People were mostly enjoyable reads, while Bearheart and Love in Two Languages were not.

I’m well on my way to blowing last year’s book total out of the water. That number was a mere 43; by this May I should be around 30 or so as I continue to plow through my preliminary exam reading list.

Classes begin Monday. I am more or less prepared and looking forward to it. More or less.

Current Mood: Numb |
Currently Listening To – Uncle Tupelo – “Uncle Tupelo 89/93: An Anthology”

Reading, mostly. I finished my ninth book in three weeks tonight. If you’re interested to see what I’ve been reading, count backwards on this list (or everything between Gordon Henry’s The Light People and The Kingdom of This World by Alejo Carpentier. Tomorrow I begin Gerald Vizenor’s Bearheart, and I plan on finishing Ben Okri’s The Famished Road and hopefully one or two others before school starts again on the 25th.

I also finished my prelim rationale and book list and sent it along to my committee. Two have already signed off adding a book a piece (gah!), but I’m still waiting on two others. My minor area of “digital pedagogy” currently has about 12 books and 70-some articles and that’s probably going to grow, but hopefully not too too much or I’m down the proverbial creek. Fingers crossed all goes well.

Over the past couple days I’ve been plugging away at my spring courses, College Writing and Research and Intro to Creative Writing. In the former I’m changing very little, and in the latter I’m changing quite a lot. I’m also setting up custom websites for both and I plan on using D2L for a bare minimum, although that bare minimum will include submitting all assignments and the grading. This way students can have an accounting of how they’re doing as the semester goes on, and allows me to keep all versions of their work so I can quickly compare draft one to subsequent drafts.

A number of my colleagues have noted a lot of students lobbying (*cough*whining*cough*) for better grades at the end of the semester. I too have noted students trying to apply pressure on me for a specific grade, and I have to say it doesn’t go down well especially when they’ve done mediocre work for most of the semester. (As a related side note, two students have asked “What does it take to get an A in this class?” in the first couple weeks, and then went on to be two of the lazier students I’ve ever had. As if asking the question somehow convinces me from the get-go that they’ve got the right stuff.)

The biggest and most disturbing news to come out of the world of soccer has been the machine gun attack on the Togo National Team’s bus during the African Cup of Nations. Every once in awhile, a news story really strikes home and this one has unsettled me a lot. I think it’s because with the World Cup in South Africa this summer, this was supposed to be the year to showcase the brilliance of African football, but this event sends all the wrong messages. It’s tragic, and my heart goes out to the families, the players, and the fans who should be celebrating the exciting of a major tournament rather than mourning the needless loss of life.

I can’t keep up with all of the twists and turns in the Premier League anymore. One week it looks like Ars*nal are out of the title race and Liverpool will be lucky to finish sixth, then the next week it looks like Ars*nal are contenders once again and Liverpool are right in the mix. And Man Ure and Chelski can’t decide whether they’re even going to put their foot down on the pedal or not. Crazy, riveting stuff. The same is true for the teams chasing fourth, including Tottenham, Villa, and Citeh.

I would much prefer the leagues in England, Spain, and Italy to resemble the German Bundesliga in terms of the competitive aspect. Every year there are six or seven teams vying for the title, which makes it much more exciting to follow than Spain (is it going to be Barcelona or Real Madrid) or the constant shuffling of the top four in England and, to a lesser extent, in Italy. With Man Ure and Liverpool in dire financial trouble right now and Citeh being bankrolled by billionaires, the order could be upset in the next decade. And not a decade too soon…

My story “The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter” is now online at Zahir: A Journal of Speculative Fiction. Go read it!

In other news, Ellen Datlow has been forwarding the reviews of The Best Horror of the Year #1 to the book’s contributors and they’re overwhelmingly positive, although a few people complain that the stories aren’t scary enough—which as Ellen points out, horror works in a variety of ways. One Amazon reviewer says that “‘The Hodag’ is the kind of story I would write if I could write better,” which is probably the best compliment I’ve ever received, full stop. The vast majority of reviews, both good and bad, haven’t singled out my story for individual comments but that’s okay. A lot of gushing reviews say the book is great cover to cover, so I’ll take it!

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Yay! for the Badgers, whipping up on Miami in their bowl game. I had serious doubts about this one. And boo! on the Packers for losing to Phoenix, having spotted them the first 14 points. Oh well, better to lose to the Cards than F*vre…

I’ve been playing a lot (too much?) indoor lately, both on the O30 team I signed up for and the open-division team that’s perpetually short of players. Both teams started out hot with a streak of wins, and both teams have hit the skids having lost the last several. I’ve got a strong goal streak going having scored in the last six games or so (including a hat-trick a couple weeks back) but too many of these are in losing causes. Still, I’d rather be scoring goals and losing than not scoring goals and losing. I would take not scoring goals and winning over both, though.

Current Mood: Sure |
Currently Listening To – Wilco – “A.M.”

Well, first things first. 2009 was definitely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, dominated by the one we call G-Man, G-Money, the gooch, the goon, Mr. Moo, and every so often we actually use his name: Grey. He arrived late morning on May the 4th and it would be cliche’, stating the obvious, and completely accurate to say that life hasn’t been the same since. Being a parent is exhausting work but we have a great little boy with a very easy going disposition. He sleeps well, he eats pretty well, and he’s all-around healthy and happy, and for that we are truly grateful. All of our friends assure us that things don’t slow down from here, so we’re bracing ourselves for the first steps, first words, and all the other many firsts that tumble out of babies. 2010 will present Grey with a number of firsts inflicted upon him as well. He flew well back in October, so we’re upping the ante by traveling internationally just after his first birthday. We’re heading to Switzerland to visit Aunt Stephanie and Uncle Todd and who knows where side trips might take us. Germany? France? Who knows? One thing we do know is that wee man will get some English culture in him as we’re spending another few days in London on the way home. Have baby, will travel.

Writing has been a great year despite an extremely low output for me. The year started with a bang as my story “Eskhara” was selected for John Joseph Adams’ anthology Federations, and then I was blown away to find out my story “The Hodag” had been chosen by Ellen Datlow for The Best Horror of the Year #1, which is by far the most significant achievement of my still-young writing career.

2010 will also start out with another publication, this time in Zahir, a smallish magazine that I’ve always admired. They’re going entirely online this year and my story “The Lighthouse Keeper’s Daughter” (which was part of my Masters final project) will appear in the first issue of the year.

I’ve got big ambitions for 2010. This includes submitting a bunch of new stories as well as making the final revisions to my first novel and shopping that around as well. 2009 did not afford me much time to write at all, but with school work winding down I’m looking to rectify that situation.

Speaking of which, I submitted the last seminar paper of my graduate school career a few weeks ago. No more coursework (ever) for me, but I do have my preliminary exam in the spring. I’ve mentioned this exam before, but in brief I’ll have three days to write three, 15-page papers that cover a book list of about 100 or so titles. I have it on good word that it is not nearly as bad as it sounds, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

Three of the four courses I took in 2009 were in professional writing, a discipline that makes many of my colleagues shudder but I find it pretty interesting. Once I put a final portfolio of my work together (also this spring or even in the fall) that means I’ll have fulfilled the requirements of getting a special emphasis in professional (i.e. business and technical) writing with a specific focus on information technology. I should teach my first professional writing class next fall too.

I also taught two new courses this year, one in creative writing and the other in college research writing. I’m teaching these again next semester and have a good idea of how I plan to improve both of them, although my students seemed to like them both as it was. The old saw that teachers learn from their students is pretty true, and I hope to be getting better with each passing semester.

‘Twas a dreadful year for reading—only 43 books in a list that includes 10 graphic novels. That’s down from 54 books last year and 64 (!) the year before. There are many reasons for the decline. The biggest is that my courses in 2009 assigned way more articles than books; I probably read nearly 100 articles this year, or the equivalent of about 10 books. The second big reason is that I starting listening to footie podcasts rather than audio books, so that counts for at least another five or so. The final reason is that normally I cram some pleasure reading in over the summer, but see the first item of this blog post to understand why I spent my free time sleeping this past summer.

Even though I read fewer books, there were some doozies in the list. M y favorite were Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (I finally finished every story), The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares, and probably my favorite of the lot, Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar, which I finished today, the last day of the year. I plan on hunting down the rest of Cortázar’s short fiction this year.

There’s way too much to sum up succinctly about the beautiful game, but it’s worth noting that Spurs’ stock has steadily risen over the last twelve months, even though I fight back any kind of optimism whatsoever. They lost to Wolves and Stoke at home for God’s sake, so you can’t get too carried away even if they did stuff Wigan 9-1, tying a Premier League record for biggest win.

Long-time readers of this site will know that I lean towards Real Madrid if forced to choose between the Spanish giants, but I (along with everyone else on the planet) have to admire what Barcelona has accomplished this year by winning everything in site. I get very tired of Barcelona fans, but I can’t say that I dislike any of their players now that Eto’o left (although Zlatan Ibrahimović’s ego is enormous and annoying) and the football they play is pure class. Unlike some teams that I will not name here, Barcelona plays the most beautiful football on the planet, they win things, and they remain humble. There’s not much here to dislike.

The US National Team had more lows than highs in my opinion. The Confederations Cup run will live long in the memory, but just like 2002, the team needed a hell of a lot of luck to go their way. They looked pretty dodgy and uninspiring throughout qualifying despite winning the group, but is it because they’re an average team or because they play down to their opponents? Either way, they were gifted a lovely draw for next summer’s World Cup and the need to figure out how to play better more consistently if they want to take advantage of it.

That should wrap it up. This past year was not great for blogging either and I expect that to continue, but thanks to all of those folks who read this space, whether it’s through our past friendships, through following links from Facebook, or via f-lists on LiveJournal. Happy holidays, hope your 2009 was a good one, and all the best in 2010.

Current Mood: Fine |

My picks: Wins for Liverpool and Villa and a draw for Chelski and the Ars*. Not confident picks mind you, but picks nonetheless. Last week’s “Last Man Standing” pool ended in a push, as I picked Stoke (1-0 winners) and Larry picked Spurs (9-1 winners). No bonus points for a blow-out thankfully, and this weekend we both took Man Citeh over a suddenly resurgent Hull. Since neither of us can win or lose, we chucked this one and re-picked. I took Fulham at home over Bolton. C’mon Dempsey! Grab another brace, son!

Equally exciting is the top o’ the table clash betwixt Barcelona and Real Madrid over in sunny Spain. Madrid is somehow topping the table despite not playing all that well (a close look reveals they’ve played mostly crap teams thus far) while Barcelona is head and shoulders the best team in the world when they’re on their game, yet they have also been falling into cruise control and drawing games they should win.

I kept on eye on both of these teams in the Champions League this midweek and if their form extends to the weekend, I would bet my house and the lives of everyone in it on Barcelona beating Madrid like a rented mule. Barca absolutely shredded Inter whereas Madrid stuttered and herked and jerked against the world powerhouse that is FC Zurich. Los merengues can be frighteningly good when they’re firing on all cylinders with Kaká and that Ronaldo kid looking particularly dangerous, yet too often their play doesn’t result in clear-cut chances. Barcelona on the other hand always end up threading the ball through the fourth dimension, finding players in the box without a soul around them, and they duly stuff it in the net. Seriously, it borders on black magic.

Prediction: Barcelona 3-0 winners.

I’m enjoying the brief calm before the storm of work that starts raining down at midnight tonight when my research writing students submit their final portfolios, followed by my creative writing students’ portfolios on Monday night. I’m reading about 44 draft portfolios, all of which are around 20 pages each, and giving feedback before the final drafts are due Wednesday, December 9th.

‘Tis a lot of work, but hopefully well worth it in the end. The only thing that drives you nuts is when you put in the considerable effort to provide thoughtfully commentary, and that commentary is then ignored and you see a final copy that’s identical to the draft copy in the final portfolio folder. Such is life.

One of my students is writing his research paper on Bob Marley and Rastafarianism. Natty Dread and Rastaman Vibration have been on heavy rotation for the last couple weeks. Happily, Baby Grey digs it!

Current Mood: Is That A Baby Stirring? |

Speaking of Brother Todd he (foolishly) invited me to take part in a “Last Man Standing” competition, where players all kick in some currency and get to pick one team who is certain to win over the weekend in the Barclay’s Premier League. The catch is that you can only take each team once, and they have to win—a draw is as good as a loss.

Out of a field of 23 players from various countries, two players remain—me and Larry, one of Todd’s friends from high school who now lives in Wales. Unlikely draws and losses for Ars*nal, Man Citeh, and Spurs in the last few weeks thinned the field considerably, topped off by Liverpool’s draw yesterday with Birmingham to put me and Larry head-to-head. I stand to win (or lose) about $115 US, but we’re idle this weekend for the international break. Can’t you just feel the tension?!?!

Over the next two classes in my creative writing class my students will be reading short shorts by Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Italo Calvino, and Ben Marcus. I am more than interested to hear what they have to say. A good number of them appear to appreciate complicated, confusing, and somewhat perplexing stories, but there is also a contingent that seem to feel if a story doesn’t have a pronounced linear plot that features rising action, climax, and denouement, then the story is deficient.

I teach intro to creative writing again in the spring semester and will be changing things around, but not a ton. Conversations about modernism versus postmodernism seemed to help adjust reader expectations somewhat, so that if a piece of creative nonfiction or a short story appears to be devoid of a fixed “meaning” that it doesn’t automatically mean the author sucks. I plan on building this more deliberately into the syllabus next semester since a surprising number of essays and stories in the course textbook definitely bear some hallmarks of postmodernism.

Have to stop here and start working, unfortunately. A lot of stuff on my mind that seems blog worthy, but it’ll have to wait.

Current Mood: Pretty Good |