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Day 34: This is Just to Say


Source: Parker, I. (2016, Sept. 12). Pete Wells has his knives out: How the New York Times critic writes the reviews that make and break restaurants [Online Profiles]. Retrieved from http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/09/12/pete-wells-the-new-york-times-restaurant-critic

What is Sacred: 
I don't know about sacred except that good writing is sacred. Writers who can write for the The New Yorker, New York Times, Washington Post - they have figured out how to post three columns a week and still produce writing worth reading. This is a profile of Pete Wells, the restaurant critic for the Times and what his process is. It is a lot of eating out and many balls in the air, many unwritten articles waiting for the right ball to land. It is also about compassion when delivering bad news for chefs. It reminds me of the movie Chef. It reminds me of my philosophy of feedback and how as I get older and have been in this longer, it is about compassion without compromise. I will still say I think your writing or your lesson or your planning failed, but I will try to be less passionate about it My passion comes off as anger because students do not understand the whole teaching with love and rage thing. 

Really I wanted to know how he gets through the not wanting to write. Pete Wells has some techniques. I am especially interested in those Oblique Strategies cards by Brian Eno. Mostly, though, he has an understanding that he can whine to others in the same way that Chang whines and swears, self-reflects, whines some more and then moves forward, but this is his job. He is a writer. According to Chang, what Wells replied that is perhaps most sacred here, "This is the life you chose."

Connections to Current/Future Work:
This is just to say, I needed to rant because I am feeling sorry for myself and I cannot write or look at my writing to revise. Even if I continually read and write down connections, I cannot put the pieces together.

I am beating myself up on voice issues. I am worrying about the word as if I were writing poetry, which I am not. I cannot seem to figure out who I am after the years of figuring out the kind of poet I am, it does not hold for academic writing, although I keep trying. Just get the freaking thing done. What is the message. It is the same with the poem. What is the message? What is worth reading? What is the sacred? Reveal it!!! 

Bottom line, this is the life I chose, so stop sniveling, and do it. 

I did look up Oblique Strategies, and I am lazy and cheap so I found websites where people put up a random card. Here is what I got (I pressed it three times because I was looking for some explanation until I realized the cards have none, thus they are oblique.)
  • Accept advice (yes I am trying to give myself advice - big straw - suck it up; do the work, dammit - as well as follow my advice since accepting is different from acting on)
  • Infinitessimal gradations -I don't know how to spell that and I pressed it again to get another card, so. . . yes, I see that. The connections I make with other pieces are my gradations that need to be put together, or not. See the infinite in a grain of sand.
  • Do the washing up. Yes. ok. I like this. 


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