Tag Legend

I decided to establish a tag system. Here are my tags:

Writing – bad: when the post is about the exercise and/or experience of writing, and the writing is not going well. This will be to help clear the cobwebs.

Writing – good: see the first part of the explanation above, only this tag will be used when the writing is going well. These posts will probably be all about gloating.

Reading – good: When I’ve read something, and it was good reading. Books I recommend.

Reading – bad: When I’ve read something and didn’t like it. I’ll blast it away in posts tagged “Reading – bad”.

Slice of life: all blog posts are by definition slices of life, but in my tagging system, this means the post won’t be about writing or reading. That still leaves a heck of a lot of things, I’ll probably hone the Slice of Life tag as I go along.

Now, if I could just figure out how to have the tag list appear on the menu bar... (=.=)

Impact of a Name

I read something the other day by someone who chose Reneé Something-or-Other as her pseudonym. For those who know French, I did not just misspell, it really is written with the accent on the second e. Reneé. At first I thought: What a dork, she chose a foreign name, the least she could do is check out how to spell it properly.

Then: No. Careful planning goes into choosing a pseudonym; she surely saw the Renée name, then decided it was visually much cuter spelled Reneé. Okay, I can go with that.

And then: But still. Reneé. It means nothing. I can’t even be said properly. Reu-neu-ay. Oh. Maybe this is how she wants it to be said. Her pseudonym would be “Rene-ay” and not “Renay”.

And finally: ... Reneé... aargh! I can’t stand it, it looks all wrong! It’s so PHONY!!!

Conclusion: I could not read what she wrote. I started but that Reneé kept turning round and round in my head. Because of it, she’d lost all credibility with me and her story was a dud. Now, I can’t even remember her full name or her story.

What an impact a name has. Now, I shudder every time I think about Spanish speakers coming across my name... I hope it only sounds weird and not too fake. Robin Oak. Joan Pine. It doesn’t look awful does it, to have a tree as a family name...? ...except mine would be more along the lines of Elizabeth Cactus.

Darn. It does sound fake.
And it's not even a tree.

Mrs Dalloway

I’m reading Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

I loved the opening; Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. It is not grand or punchy, but I found it particular for an opening line and so liked it (I think it's the intimacy that struck me, it's written as if the reader know what the flowers are for, and who was supposed to buy them).

Then I got through a couple of pages and wasn’t so sure I liked it anymore, until I read (in the introduction?) about the stream of consciousness narrative. With it, I went back to the text and what I’d before seen as meaningless jumping about became much more interesting, a window to a subjectivity that felt so very personal for not being mine. The way the sensations flit on random links is fascinating.

I love how a character whose strands of thoughts are laid bare for us meets another character and has all kind of emotions and opinions and feelings about that other character; then later on, we’ve moved on to the insides of the second character, and we see how circumscribed our information about this second character was. Was it Einstein that said there’s a big difference between what we are, what we think we are and what other think we are, or at least, what they say they think we are...?

But then again, what is the “real” us; I could go into all kinds of pseudo-intellectual babble asking whether the me in my head is or isn't truer than the me in the other’s perceptions, or - for that matter - who is “the me in my head” and from where does it come, are its origins physical or spiritual... but, blergh, I can never stand my own for long in these talks, I always run out of steam and/or arguments (as I've already determined, I have no staying power) and deep philosophical reflection is not what I want to do with this blog anyway. All I wanted to say was, I’m enjoying Mrs Dalloway.

Staying Power

My pitfall in life? I have no staying power. It often blends in with laziness and a general lack of self-discipline and it results in lots of starts but few finishes. The only thing I easily go through are books, and even then it sometimes is touch and go -- but I don't feel guilty about not finishing a book anymore, not since I read Daniel Pennac's Rights of the Reader.

I want to be a writer. I'm only a wannabe now, but I hope to change that one day. That is, if I ever correctly finish a piece (see above, the "pitfall of my life" thing).

See? I'm so much a wannabe, I'm not even at the Why Won't Publishers Publish ME?! stage, but still stumble on the I Hope I Finish Something block. *sigh* It's all because of this story I'm doing; I stopped working on this other story to start on this one, only to run out of steam now that I near the end and I dither and I read and I start a blog and I don't. finish. the story. Darn.

At a class reunion an old classmate asked me: "So, publish anything yet?" and I was kinda dumbfounded because I never talked about it and how the heck did she know, so I stammered more truthfully than I would've wished about doing stuff but nothing done yet and she said: "So you're scared of being judged." Then I thought of not having yet gotten my degree because of never turning in my final reports in most of my classes and thought Oh crap.

I don't know if it's fear of judgement, but I definitely have a problem. I'm working on the symptoms - I've since completed my degree as well as another diploma - but the root cause is still nebulous for me.

Oh well. I don't have time for this now. I have to go and write.