Monthly Archives: September 2012
Writing Exercise: the bookmark
A 4×5 index card found in a library book. There’s a story here. Who made the bookmark? Why? What was the book in which it was found?
Try free-writing about it for 15-20 minutes. Or write two pages. Whatever.
You Can’t Hurry Love: A Justification for Slow Writing
The crossing of luminous souls – Paul Vreeland copyright 2012
If Blog posts are quick, gut responses, the “Slow Scholarship” alternative, the “Slow Blog” or “Slog” involves the posting on the web of short, thoughtful essays that have been carefully thought through. Typically they will not be posted more than a few times a year. ~ from the “Slow Scholarship: A Manifesto”.
In allowing the thoughts that I expressed last month to percolate, and in pursuing the paths they opened up to me, I recently read In Praise of Slow by Carl Honoré. When I read his chapter on “Leisure: The Importance of Being at Rest” I wanted to take up knitting. If I did, maybe I’d finish my novel. Honoré cites Bernadette Murphy who claims, “It’s a wonderful cure for writer’s block.”
While there are many facets to the slow movement—slow food, slow sex—a few hold a particular interest to me as a writer. Surely you will not be surprised when I say that slow reading is one of them. Patrick Kingsley writing for The Guardian (Manchester, UK, not Charlottetown PEI) picks up where Nicholas Carr left off.(See last month’s blog “The Dreaded ‘D’ Word: or Why the Internet is not to blame for my Unfinished novel” for a link to Carr’s article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid.) Kingsley opens his feature “The Art of Slow Reading” with:
Is it time to slow our reading down? If you’re reading this article in print, chances are you’ll only get through half of what I’ve written. And if you’re reading this online, you might not even finish a fifth. At least, those are the two verdicts from a pair of recent research projects – respectively, the Poynter Institute’s Eyetrack survey, and analysis by Jakob Nielsen – which both suggest that many of us no longer have the concentration to read articles through to their conclusion.
While it may be obvious to you, I need to beg the question: just what is meant by “slow reading”?
ArtsConflicted 