On writing: Exercising your writing muscles

In January, 1990, I began keeping a diary on my computer. I'd often kept handwritten diaries before, spasmodically, but this one was much more regular, and more detailed. It was written on my old computer and then printed off regularly, finally amounting to some 700 pages. It was good that I printed it off, because the disks that the diary was saved to are long gone, not being compatible with later models.

Much of the stuff, of course, is private family material, but in 1989 I'd been unemployed for six months, and had started doing a writing course by correspondence. (My father, Frank Crowl, used to play chess by correspondence.)

By 1990 I was well through the writing course and between being father of a family with five children and working as a manager of a bookshop, I found time to write articles and the occasional short story. Most of the articles got published, because I'd been advised to aim not only for the major New Zealand magazines but for the small ones: trade mags and special interest magazines. The latter proved to be the place that was happy to publish my work. More on that in later posts.

Anyway, scattered with varying degrees of frequency throughout the diary are references to my writing joys and woes. I thought these would be of interest on this blog, and have decided to include posts with extracts from the diary as and when I can. I'll keep an index of these on the blog for reference.

Here's a brief opener from the 6th of January, 1990.

In doing the index for my filing system I came across a quote again by a poet who talks about the need for exercises, even in writing poetry. He compares it to the concert pianist who must exercise each day in order to play the pieces well. I think it's something I've avoided because it appears to take away too much time from 'real writing,' but in fact it's out of that exercising that the ideas often flow, and the work of writing is limbered up. I've been reading two books in the last few weeks, one on writing plays, and the other on writing in general. The latter has some excellent ideas for working out as exercises and the other, though it sometimes seems simplistic in its exercise approach, is probably what I need to really write plays well. I don't want 'just' to be a playwright, but an all-rounder. However, I want to be able to write plays as well as I can when I do.

I'm not sure that I took my advice about doing writing exercises as seriously as I should have, subsequently, but I do recommend this all the same. There are other ways to do exercises, of course. Blog posts are a great writing exercise, as are typing notes galore for the children's book I'm currently writing. In fact, anything that gets you putting down words on the page/computer is worth doing, even if those particular words aren't ever used as part of something publishable.

I have an interesting book called The Exercise Book which lays out dozens of ideas for exercises, some of which various people have turned into poems, stories, books. The book is by Bill Manhire and others. Manhire is one of New Zealand's literati, and a creative writing teacher. Don't let that put you off. The exercises are the thing, along with the stimulation of approaching writing in a different way.

See also an earlier blog post from 2014, in which I mention Peter Elbow and Anne Lamott, both of whom saw first drafts and writing even without any aim in mind as of great value.

Upskilling

Having a (newish) daughter-in-law who's in the medical line of business (she's a Physician's Assistant) I'm a little more aware of the wider world of medicine than I was when I was purely a patient.  Not that I've been a patient very often - at least as far as being in hospital is concerned.  I've only ever stayed in hospital twice in my life, once when I was 21 and once in 2009, by which time I was 64.  

And my daughter-in-law now has some very funny stories to tell about medical experiences - although when she tells them they seem much funnier than when I try to repeat them.  We were on Skype to her and my son yesterday (they're in the States) and she was telling us about how she was treating a Spanish patient in the ED where she works.  He spoke no English, so there was a translator involved as well.   My daughter-in-law had hiccups while she was examining and questioning the man, and suddenly he said something in Spanish and then went BOH! at her.   She was a little puzzled, especially when he did the same thing again.  Finally it was explained: he was doing to her what he would do to a child who had hiccups: giving her a fright.

This isn't the sort of thing you're likely to learn in medical school, and it's probably not something you'd use very often.   And I'm not sure if my daughter-in-law wants to go learning anything more at the moment: she's been studying for what seems like forever, and has some student debt to catch up on.  

However, for those who feel the need to catch up on some extra credits, or to upskill, there are a variety of courses available, courses that once upon a time wouldn't have been dreamed of: it was assumed that when a doctor was trained, that was it.  But these days there's a sense that a doctor's training needs to keep going, and not just in catching up with the latest developments in medicine.  Consequently there are all sorts of courses available, such as a medical teaching course or a medical management course.  These are especially useful for those who already do some training of other staff themselves, and who need to make sure they have the requisite skills.  It's a bit like the assessments students do of their lecturers; if the latter don't come up to scratch, then some updating of their teaching skills may be necessary.  Not every University- trained person automatically makes a good teacher.   In the medical field you can even attend a teach the teacher course (I sometimes think some school teachers and lecturers could do with something similar!)  And if you're in the administrative department of a hospital you might even attend a consultant interview course.

Of course, you might not want to keep attending courses!  Fitting these into an already busy medical life may be something you'd want to put off.  However, from my experience as a patient, I can assure you that the more informed the medical staff are the better.  For some doctors a 'treating the patient as a human being' course would be a good option.  I note that this kind of thing is now being included in the six-year course that doctors go through.  Thank goodness!

Further learning

I was just reading this morning about one Polybius (in a book entitled Jesus and the Eyewitnesses) how he, along with many ancient writers, regarding the written word as less instructive than an eyewitness account, or reading a manual less helpful than a teacher speaking about his subject.

Certainly that's still often the best way of learning: face to face with a teacher (a teacher, mind you, rather than a lecturer). Just to be disagree with my own argument, however, both the varsity courses I've done in the last couple of years have been primarily online, and both of them were perfectly satisfactory in that form. For me.

However, to contradict myself again, I note that there are online degree programs in music available. I'm struggling a little to understand how that could work satisfactorily, music being such a hands-on art, to me. I think Polybius and I would be on the same wavelength with this one. Of course, the theory of music on its own is teachable away from an instrument (up to a point), but music is much more than theory. I guess you can focus on the history, or on form and so on, and these could be done reasonably satisfactorily online - probably more than satisfactorily. Nevertheless, I think music is something that needs to be taught face to face.

I have been wrong before...

There are online Courses on everything under the sun, these days - art, art history, film, photography, fine arts (another subject that sounds less doable online) - the list goes on. If you click on this link - http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/ -you can find out more about what's available, whetting your appetite for more learning, slavering over the possibilities.

Having been brought up in a family environment where learning per se wasn't highly regarded I used to be of the school (pardon the pun) that thought learning for the sake of learning was a pointless exercise. Now, after having been around the world for a little time, I'm much more of the opinion that learning for the sheer enjoyment of it is something we humans thrive on. Too many of us fail to get our teeth into something new as we get on in life, just because it means work, or taking up time from other things, or...whatever your excuse is. Some of us even think: what's the point of learning more? I'll be dead soon enough.

Yup, you will, and possibly sooner than you imagine. But I think the ability to learn is a God-given gift, and something we should all grasp while we can...

Study in retirement?

I had thought retirement might have a few more moments when I could sit and relax. Just a few.

So far that's not really been the case. Twice this week we've climbed up and down stairs carrying boxes of books from a church storeroom to the car and then, at home, piling them up around the place as we sort them out for sale. The books (and sundry other items) are leftovers from the OC Books, which closed three years ago. It's one of my retirement 'hobbies/jobs' to sort through them and try and find homes for as many of them as possible. My wife is working like a Trojan at putting them on zotero, so that we have a database of the titles.

So if I had a mind, say, to do some Online University work, it's not going to be happening in the meantime. Both the papers I've done so far through Otago were primarily online, and were paid for by my former work. That's another aspect: I'll have to actually save up to do any more study, to complete my online degree programs in crime scene investigation for instance. (Doesn't that sound more interesting than a vague degree in Humanities?)

New Zealand has a wide range of online courses available, but if I wanted to go further afield, I could investigate the huge range in the States, for instance via the college navigator at this address: http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/. Having worked with stats for the last three years (and having always had an interest in them) the title of this Stats Centre appeals: I can look up crime and safety surveys, for example, which would help me with my course in crime scene investigation, n'est pas? (Did you know there was a blog called, Ceci n'est pas une endive?)

They also assist in finding the right college for a person to learn through, and when I put in my zip code (adding a nought onto it so that it falls in line with the US system) and ask for non-profits that will teach me a bachelor's course in two years, I find there are all sorts of places handy to where I live (in Los Angeles, as it happens, since that's what the 90010 zip code applies to). I could study through the World Mission University, the Cleveland Chiropratic College, the Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad West Coast Talmudical Seminary, the Loyola Marymount University (just in case I preferred a Catholic focus instead of a Jewish one) and the Otis College of Art and Design. To name only a few.

I'm not sure that any of them would focus well on crime scene investigation, but I'd have to get more information before dismissing them out of hand.

It could give me a third/fourth/fifth hobby to add to my retirement....

Photo of someone studying, by Aaron Concannon

The play begins

I'm writing this as a way of both getting warmed up for my next (and final) essay for the Research Methods paper I'm doing, and to also note that the play had its first night last night, and went very well. A few missed lines, a few moments when nobody spoke (but somebody should have) - including me - but overall a success. The audience delighted in it. It seems like a very wordy play (I guess that's hardly unusual) but the words have a lot of subtlety and heaps of humour. In fact, I think the cast continues to find it funny, which is always a plus. I certainly do.

There's a 'window' in the set, so that those backstage can actually stand there (without being seen by the audience) and watch at least part of the stage. It's interesting to see how the various actors have developed their characters; no one is just being there saying the lines: there's lots of detail and lots to keep the audiences eyes interested, as well as their ears.

We had an after-show 'do' last night. The South Dunedin Rotary Club had been the bulk of the audience, and were using it as some kind of fundraiser (to do with polio in third world countries). So all the actors trouped upstairs to the socializing area (which is where we did most of our rehearsing, in fact) and met up with the various bodies who make up the Rotarians.

What was interesting is that the two groups barely mixed. Here we have on one hand a bunch of people who can cope with performing on stage in front of a crowd of strangers, and yet when they come face to face with the same people, they mostly become introverts. I thought it was just me, but several of the cast were like that - or else they honed in on somebody they already knew and spent most of their time with them. And on the other hand, we have a bunch of people who are socially adept, and yet who kept their distance from the actors. Surely actors are 'okay' people these days? Or is it that they just didn't know what to say? Intriguing.

On another issue entirely...

There are always new jobs turning up (or maybe old jobs with new titles). I'd never heard of the job that requires medical coding, but apparently it's a job just like any other. The are medical coding training courses available. According to one site: Medical Coding and Billing Specialist are employed by hospitals, clinics, physicians' offices, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), mental health care facilities, insurance companies, consulting firms, health data organizations and information system vendors. As an Insurance Coding & Billing Specialist, you play an integral role in your employer's office. You help make it possible for your employer to collect monetary reimbursements from patient insurance providers. Medical insurance billing/coding and its related occupations are among the fastest growing opportunities in the healthcare industry.
Maybe the reason we don't hear so much about it here in NZ is because we don't, in general, have medical insurance. Or rather, there are medical insurers, but they're not the way the medical system is run, basically. Anyway, if you want to become a medical coding trainee, you can do it online - a kind of distance course, like my Research Methods.

Copying the Answers?

I once did a correspondence course in Retail Management. I passed with flying colours, but I never figured out whether I was allowed to look up things I wasn’t sure about when I was doing the question sheets. There was no exam as such, so the people doing the course must have trusted that I was learning the stuff because of the way I was answering it. I guess it was okay, because some of the questions required me to actually think about the answers, and think about what had been said in the course book. I certainly didn’t answer those ones off my head, as I might have been inclined to do (being a know-all).

I suppose it’s different when you do a distance learning degree. A degree assumes that you’re actually doing some studying, not just going back through the course book checking up whether what you’re writing down is correct or not. It also requires you to produce essays and assignments. And no doubt there is an exam. I haven’t done an exam, I don’t think, for over twenty years, so I’m not sure whether I’d still be able to cope with one. Who knows? Maybe that’s what I should do when we return home to NZ. Become a full-time student doing distance learning. Beats sitting around twiddling your thumbs.