Writing Whenever You Can

Yesterday, I read the following suggestion on one of my favorite blogs:

I am lucky that I can open a document of an article or chapter at any time and do five or ten minutes of work on it. Many writers tell themselves they need at least an hour, or at least an entire day, or five hours, or a week without interruption, in order to get work done. Some writers say they need the semester to be over and have the entire summer in front of them before they are able to work. Or they know that significant work will only happen during a sabbatical. The problem, then, is that they don't bother with shorter periods of time at all. Because they have in their minds a minimum period, they will never even see if they can get lucky too.  If you have a minimum like this in your mind, then re-examine it. If you need three hours, see if one hour is enough. If you need a month, try a week. If you need one hour, try twenty minutes. Just try it once as an experiment and see what happens.

Thursdays are days when I teach, advise students, respond to emails and take care of administrative issues. There are several moments during the day when I just sit there in the office for 15, 20 or 25 minutes with nothing to do. So I decided to follow this piece of advice and at least try opening my file with the document I'm writing to see if I can add anything to it in those "empty" stretches of time. 

Today, I opened the file and discovered that it had magically grown by almost 650 words. This happened on a day of the week that I usually just give up on as one which is useless in terms of doing any writing. I have to confess that I had been pretty sure that this method wasn't going to work. I had convinced myself that I can only write if I have long, uninterrupted stretches of time ahead of me. It turns out that I was fooling myself. 

All I can say at this point is a surprised and delighted "Hmm . . ." Let's see if the method continues working for me.

From My Literary Translation

The following is an excerpt from my literary translation. I'm worried that the female protagonist (Klara) is turning out quite unsympathetic, which was definitely not the way she was conceived by the author. It would be great if people could take a look and tell me how they feel about this character based on the following excerpt. Please disregard the horrible punctuation. Somebody will take care of that for me because I'm useless with English punctuation.

Klara was quite sociable but while she was socializing with people and allowing them to socialize with her, she was unwittingly creating a transparent and at the same time impenetrable bubble that surrounded her and separated her from others. She wasn’t doing it on purpose. Rather, her perennially terrified admirers did it for her. It was their own fault, of course, because Klara never asked them to fear her comments and think that she was making fun of people who made fools of themselves. She wasn’t laughing at them (like she cared enough for that) but simply because she felt like laughing.

To give an example, Marik Steinberg, one of the top students in the entire city of Kharkov who was slated to receive a golden medal for his outstanding grades, fell in love with Klara to the point of stuttering. Of course, it is quite possible that he always stuttered, who knows? Finally, he decided to inform Klara of his feelings that were evident not only to her but to everybody else within  a hundred mile radius. She burst out in a bout of compassionate (yes, compassionate, why can’t anybody understand that?) laughter so that her blush turned from pale-pink to aggressively red. In a similarly compassionate tone that suggested she only wanted the best for Marik, she responded, “Marik, have you ever seen yourself in the mirror?”

“Sure I have,” Marik responded. His face was covered with huge beads of sweat that looked like boils.

Klara stopped laughing, looked at him seriously, and concluded, “In that case, your actions are incomprehensible.”

She had nothing else to say, nor did she want to.

Rabbits and Civilization

Civilization is making small inroads into the area where I live. Yesterday I discovered that our grocery store now sells farm-raised frozen rabbits. Rabbit is the first thing I ever learned how to cook and over the years I have honed my rabbit cooking skills to achieve amazing results. In the Midwest, though, people are terrified when I mention that rabbits can be used as food. People around here are decidedly unadventurous in terms of food. I asked my students, and they unanimously agreed that chicken is the best meat ever. Which is kind of sad.

So, of course, I bought the rabbit and I will share my rabbit recipe with my readers over the weekend.

Funny Cartoon to Celebrate April 1st

Of course, it would be a lot funnier if so many people didn't spout this stuff completely seriously.

Happy April Fool's Day!

I was going to celebrate April Fool's Day by telling my readers that this blog was closing down. Then, however, I realized that they might believe it and go away for good.

The reason I like April 1st is not because it's a day you can play practical jokes on people. I think most practical jokes are stupid anyway.

But I love it because it's the first day of the loveliest month of the year. Which, incidentally, is also the month of my Birthday.

Pequenos Milagres

A gente nem percebe, mas pequenos milagres acontecem a toda hora.

O estímulo de uma palavra amiga, a cumplicidade de um sorriso, a sutileza de um gesto...

Essas são pequenas coisas que podem mudar o nosso dia.

E sem sentir, a gente também acaba fazendo milagres por aí também.

Sabe aquele conselho, aquele toque no amigo que precisa de ajuda?

Pois é, parece bobagem, mas a gente pode transformar o humor de alguém com um simples carinho.

E quantas vezes nós mesmos não experimentamos pequenos milagres?

O elogio inesperado de um colega no trabalho.

O telefonema do filho que está longe.

O resultado feliz de um exame de saúde.

O doce bom na sobremesa.

A folga pra ir à praia.

O caminho sem engarrafamento.

Pequenos milagres são porções de alegria que a gente vai ganhando ou doando todos os dias.

São pedacinhos de cor que enfeitam a alma.

São trechos de música que acalmam o coração.

Por menores que sejam os resultados, por mais anônimos que sejam os sucessos...

Os pequenos milagres precisam existir pra que a gente não esqueça nunca do milagre maior de estarmos vivos.

(Lena Gino)

Dizemos que a mentira tem pernas curtas porque sabemos que ela não costuma ir muito longe. Cedo ou tarde, ela cambaleia, tropeça e acaba sendo alcançada pela verdade. Isso acontece por, pelo menos, dois motivos: primeiro, porque quando mentimos fazemos mais esforço do que quando dizemos a verdade, em função do dilema moral envolvido na questão, ainda que inconsciente. Segundo porque, quando precisa ser repetida, a mentira perde força, sendo contaminada por fragmentos da verdade ou por outra mentira, pois sua base não é a realidade, e sim a ficção. E cá pra nós a mentira grande ou pequena, danosa ou inconseqüente, piedosa ou maldosa, sempre será uma mentira e, como tal, poderá ferir alguém. (Eugênio Mussak)