Writing-Related Ramblings

Last month, I gave my students a frightening assignment: Write a story. 

I provided them with a few guidelines—mainly that there must be some sort of conflict, big or small—and let them go. I was curious to see what they’d come up with.

Many stories involved hockey or car chases, time travel or plane crashes, exotic animals or long-lost twins. Several plots classically concluded with the main character waking up... it was all a dream; whew! A handful of stories straight-up didn’t make sense. But for the most part, I was impressed by the creativity, cohesiveness, and humor found in my students’ work. 

A few of my kids ended up writing longer pieces of text and met with me after school to edit and develop their work. Over cinnamon brownies and juice, we started talking about what makes up a good story, and if those qualities are the same across different languages.

Searching for some outside sources to contribute to our discussions about good writing, I came across a column by Jhumpa Lahiri published in the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt:

“When I am experiencing a complex story or novel, the broader planes, and also details, tend to fall away. Rereading them, certain sentences are what greet me as familiars. You have visited before, they say when I recognize them. We encounter books at different times in life, often appreciating them, apprehending them, in different ways. But their language is constant. The best sentences orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail.”

I like the idea that a sentence can orient us. We talked about how not every sentence is great, and not every sentence is valuable enough to end up in a story. But the only way to create a story is by building sentences, so experimenting with their tone and variety, and sometimes writing silly or pointless or powerless sentences, is how we find our way to the worthwhile ones.

“They remain the test, whether or not to read something,” writes Lahiri. “The most compelling narrative, expressed in sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me cold. In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense, painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil. The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace. Style and personality are irrelevant. They can be formal or casual. They can be tall or short or fat or thin. They can obey the rules or break them. But they need to contain a charge. A live current, which shocks and illuminates.”

One novel that jumps to mind is The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Her sentences stirred me to the point of feeling as though I was reading the book more for the words than for the plot. Kidd's beautifully-composed sentences challenged the ways I think about death, motherhood, bees, even the act of lying down:

“Every human being on the face of the earth has a steel plate in his head, but if you lie down now and then and get still as you can, it will slide open like elevator doors, letting in all the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently, pushing the button for a ride to the top. The real troubles in life happen when those hidden doors stay closed for too long.” 

What sentences orient you?

A Narnia-esque lamppost at the cottage where I stayed with my parents last month. Also: More photos of their wonderful visit to Sweden will be posted soon!

Stockholm Sun

Drinking my Earl Grey in the sunshine this morning, I thought to myself how lucky I am to be in a place where I can crawl out of bed, pop out the door still wearing my pajamas, and enjoy the crisp autumn air this late in November. We still haven’t gotten snow here, and while the sun is low and has taken on a very pale yellow color, it manages to show its welcome face for at least an hour almost every day. I’m usually inside teaching in the late morning when that happens, but today is a glorious lazy Saturday, and I couldn’t help but sit on a piece of granite and soak up that pale yellow light this morning. (Never mind that I was seen in my pajamas by two familiar fourth graders… ah, the joys of living so close to school.)

I’m teaching at a new school just west of Stockholm. The building itself isn’t new (in fact, it’s an uninspiring 70s-era gray structure with very heavy doors and frustrating window latches), but the entire staff was just hired this past spring and we all met over the summer. With 35 teachers from all over the world, the school has a remarkable and motivating atmosphere that’s unlike anything I’ve been involved with before.

Our little multi-cultural staff is having an American Thanksgiving gathering tomorrow afternoon (sans turkey, gravy, and stuffing), which will be a hodgepodge of delectable dishes, I’m sure. I’m bringing roasted garlic mashed potatoes and some sort of apple-raspberry-blackberry concoction involving brown sugar, butter, and oatmeal. Can’t go wrong there, as long as I add enough cinnamon, right?

Returning to a bit of background: I teach about 150 sixth grade students in five classes of 30. Most of the time, I try to avoid sounding like a naïve and blindly optimistic first-year teacher (although that’s exactly what I am). But let me just say that my kids surprise me and challenge me and inspire me on a daily basis. They are awesome. For most of my students, English is a second, third, or even fourth language, which makes me feel pretty deficient in my mono-fluency. We’re currently exploring journalism—reliability of sources, how to conduct a successful interview, how their personalities have developed in relation to social media—and I find myself shaking my head when I think back to how I thought it was necessary to teach them the days of the week at the beginning of the year. These kiddos are capable.

…They are also curious. I’m living in an apartment next to the school along with another teacher, and we have NO privacy. Out sick without a voice one day, I realized the full extent of how curious our students are about who really lives in this mysterious apartment. Kids on the front steps, kids at the windows, kids leaning against my door. Yikes. The location is convenient, yes, but I can say with certainty that I will not be living here next year!

Today as I ambled along the beach with a friend (who hails from Finland but teaches French to Swedish students in English), we squinted in the low afternoon sunlight and listened to the cobalt water lapping against the rocky shoreline. As the sun began to set (at a prompt 2:50 pm), we walked home, and had some tea, and I felt—once again—very, very lucky.

A Swedish Education

There are about ten channels on the TV in my apartment. After coming home from a long Friday of teaching my lively sixth graders, I flopped onto my Ikea couch, turned on the TV for the first time in awhile, and found myself watching Öppna Kanalen (which means open channel—public television). No matter what country you’re living in, you never know what you’re going to get with public television. I am watching what is essentially a filmstrip featuring mediocre photographs of birds and flowers with their names written on each slide in Comic Sans font. Sweden is weird. And wonderful. And beautiful, and surprising, and, at the moment, pretty devoid of sunlight.

Four months ago, I moved to Stockholm to teach. But I’m learning a whole lot more than I’m teaching, I think. Even as I become comfortable with the public transportation system, the winding streets in the city, some common bits of Swedish conversation, and the unpredictable seaside weather, I realize how many things I have yet to learn about this place.

However, here are a few pieces of information I’ve assembled so far:

1.) “Fika” is a vital part of any work meeting or general gathering. Before, after, and/or halfway through a meeting, everyone drops their work, stops talking “shop,” pours a strong cup of coffee, and eats some sort of delicious baked good. I have never eaten so many cakes, cookies, brownies, sweets, pies, tarts, muffins, pastries, crumbles, and candies in my life. (My subsequent gym membership now has me using an elliptical while doing my best to pick up new Swedish vocabulary as I eavesdrop on others’ workout gossip sessions.)

2.) Schools are chock-full of germs. As a first-year teacher, I rarely feel like I'm NOT coming down with a cold.

3.) In my experience, Swedes are welcoming and open. Before I arrived, and throughout my time here, I’ve been continually advised that Swedish people may seem closed off and disinterested in making friends right off the bat. But I am amazed by the warmth of the culture that I’ve experienced while living in Stockholm. I realize I’m making some sweeping generalizations here, but I’m just calling it like I see it. It helps that the majority of the population speaks excellent English (this allows me to have conversations on public transportation about topics such as Nicolas Sarkozy and wild strawberries).

4.) “Allemansrätten” is a customary law that allows people to share the land. Earlier this autumn, I took a walk with a friend into a forested area so that he could show me the array of edible mushrooms that grow this time of year. I asked whose land we were on and he looked at me like I was crazy, shrugged, and bounded over a felled tree to point out a particularly bright (and non-edible) mushroom. Also, I can make applesauce using the apples that I picked during my walk home from the beach without worrying about being accused of stealing fruit from someone’s property.

5.) Stinging nettle… really stings. Kneeling down one afternoon to investigate a particularly fuzzy-looking plant that grows all over my front yard, I gave myself a quick and unexpected hands-on botany lesson. One of these days, I’m going to face that stinging nettle head-on and make some tea out of it, but for the time being, I’ll just eye it irritably every time I walk past.