{"id":840,"date":"2007-03-22T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-22T01:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=840"},"modified":"2007-03-22T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2007-03-22T01:05:00","slug":"gallimaufry-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=840","title":{"rendered":"Gallimaufry"},"content":{"rendered":"

¶ From an obituary of Frank Conroy (once director of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop) on what a writing teacher does<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“You have to get across to them that the work is separate from them. That’s what good work is: a life independent of the life of the author. So you have unintended qualities in the prose — personal tics, pretending to write, instead of really writing. All writers have to go through this and get it past them. I try to make that quicker for them rather than longer.<\/em><\/p>\n

¶ “The Law of Attraction.” Jeff Lilly at Druid Journal has a great round-up posting<\/a>.<\/p>\n

¶ I always wondered how much money it takes to get people to appear on “Wife Swap<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

Then an acquaintance who is active in Paganism-and-popular culture was contacted by a staff member for the show. (An illiterate email, she said, which made her think he was some kind of Internet troll instead.) <\/p>\n

It’s $10,000. And, yes, they want more Wiccans. We’re the reliable “other” now.<\/p>\n

At one time, Wiccans were rare enough in the public eye that we were seen as a motley collection of individuals. Now we are a class, a group, so it is possible to stereotype us. That is a measure of success, in a sort of back-handed way–except when too many negative traits are projected onto us. This process is know as “alterity<\/a>,” if you speak PoMo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

¶ From an obituary of Frank Conroy (once director of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop) on what a writing teacher does: “You have to get across to them that the work is separate from them. That’s what good work is: a life independent of the life of the author. So you have unintended qualities in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3,22],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-blogging","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-dy","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3811,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3811","url_meta":{"origin":840,"position":0},"title":"Thought Crime in the Writing Classroom","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I taught writing for twenty years. I heard some shocking stuff\u2014especially in the \"Creative Nonfiction\" class, which occasionally produced some, shall we say, highly confessional material. And there was one outright psycho student who, lucky for me, fixated on a different professor as the cause of all her problems\u2014not to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":84,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=84","url_meta":{"origin":840,"position":1},"title":"Neil Gaiman on blogging versus\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 15, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Neil Gaiman on blogging versus writing Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods, a favorite novel of mine, interviewed at Slashdot, responds: \"I'm not sure that there's a conflict between journalling and writing fiction. (I'm not sure that there's not.) The big picture problems with doing the journal are more to\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1285,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1285","url_meta":{"origin":840,"position":2},"title":"Writing English as a First Language","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Some writing is bland because it does not take chances. Other writing is bland because of poor technique.William Zinsser deals with the second in this talk to international students in the Columbia University journalism school: \"Writing English as a Second Language.\"Actually, writing\u2014as opposed to speaking\u2014is a \"second language.\" That is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1762,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1762","url_meta":{"origin":840,"position":3},"title":"Freelancing: the Horror","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 14, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Via Rod Dreher's new blog, Macroculture, comes this essay by Richard Morgan on the horrors of freelancing. By the time that I finished it, I was thinking of Knut Hamsun's novel\u00a0 Hunger. See the movie version\u2014I saw it as a teenager, and how I ever became a writer afterwards, I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4659,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4659","url_meta":{"origin":840,"position":4},"title":"Rhetoric: It’s “Classical” Because It Works","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Back to the basics\" works if you chose the right basics. (We could debate that.) \"The Writing Revolution,\" an article in The Atlantic, argues that attention to basic rhetorical principles \u2014 as opposed to expressing your feelings or writing in order to become a better person\u2014 helps disadvantaged high school\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"education\"","block_context":{"text":"education","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=education"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4352,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4352","url_meta":{"origin":840,"position":5},"title":"On the Necessity of Writing","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"M. gave me this vintage (late 1940s) Smith-Corona \"Silent\" portable typewriter for my birthday earlier this month. Let it be a sign. Time to start writing\u2014with the latest technology! Speaking of writing, my former department chairman used to teach a once-weekly one-credit course called \"Careers for English Majors.\" He would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"Smith Corona \"Silent\" portable typewriter","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/SilentSmith_sm-300x243.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}