Creative

Yesterday I sat in a class on creative writing. It has been ages since I was creative, although many years ago, when I lived in Amherst, I attended Jane Yolen's critique group and another, less famous one in which I even presented my own piece.

I have always been slightly skeptical toward creative writing as an academic subject since I cannot see how it can be judged by the same criteria, but it has been done all over the world, and you can get your PhD in creative writing nowadays. You can even be a professor or chair of creative writing.

(Can writing be uncreative? I'd like to take a course in uncreative writing. Presumably, academic writing is uncreative. I'd say that 95% of published children's books are uncreative.)

The class I went to yesterday was on writing chapter books. From my uncreative academic point of view, chapter books is an unnecessary concept, but I know it's useful for marketing. And it was fascinating to listen to students critiquing each other's chapters paying attention to the implied audience. Can you use the word "stipulation" if you are employing a first-person child narrator? I am used to analyse published work, but the questions are the same: does the voice sound right? Is it consistent? Is the setting explicit? Is characterisation effective? It's just that I do it from outside rather than inside.

At least one text was really stunning.

The class brings back memories of a short time when I was at crossroads. I had published my first novel for children and was encouraged to submit another. There were no academic positions in sight. I was seriously considering quitting academia and embarking on full-time writing, creative or not. Where would I have been now?

A matter of habit

It is amazing how quickly you forget things that once were self-evident. In American universities, classes are taught either on Monday-Wednesday-Friday or Tuesday-Thursday. Everybody knows this. If I hadn't known, or rather hadn't retrieved it from the deepest corners of my memory, I would have problems decoding the casual referenses here. I used to prefer Tuesday-Thursday because the Monday-Wednesday-Thursday sessions are too short for a reasonable discussion. But in fact it is no more and no less strange that in Cambridge, we always teach part-time students on Wednesday afternoons. Everybody know this!

I keep saying "in Cambridge, we..." about things that two years ago felt weird. Team-teaching is the most natural thing to do now. How can it be otherwise? How can students take several classes at a time? How can possibly an instructor mark her own students' work?

I recalled yesterday, in a conversation with a colleague, the expression "freedom of the classroom".

And no, I am not saying that one is better than another. It's just that you get used to something and then you forget. Just as you forget Fahreheit if you don't practice.

Dream job

I am in Roanoke, Virginia, because it is the home of Hollins University which is the home of the famous Children's Literature Program that I have heard so much about and have finally been invited to, which is a great honour. Moreover, I am not invited to teach on the program, but just be around in case some student wants to talk to me. I gave a talk yesterday at a student-run conference, and this morning I met some of the students - incredibly, ten o'clock on a Sunday morning. Their dedication to children's literature is beyond imagination: it's three in the afternoon now, and I have just come home.

Home is Barbie house - sorry, Barbee House, and I have a suite with two bedrooms and a lounge, a little pentry and access to a larger pentry on the ground floor. This morning I did something I had never done before: boiled an egg in a microwave. Apparently, Hollins' guests are not expected to be cooks. There is a micro and a coffee machine and a toaster, but no cooker. Yesterday when I was taken to get groceries I was reminded of the American proportions: you cannot get a pint of orange juice, it has to be a gallon. I am not sure I will consume a gallon of juice in a week. I did find a pint of milk. Everything in the store was lite and low fat and no fat. Nothing for us LCHF people. But then I have been stuffing myself with bagels the past five days.

It is not the first time I live on an American campus without a car. When I was in Amherst it took me three days to realise that I didn't want to be dependent on a colleague's wife to take me shopping, so I bought a car. The year before we lived in San Diego, I went there for a short visit and stayed in a campus guest house. At least they had a convenience store nearby, but the guest room had no desk.

This apartment here has no desk either. Presumably, I am supposed to work in the office. I have an office and a pigeonhole! I feel important.

It's unbearably hot, and much as I would like to go for a walk I don't think I am going to. So I'll make use of this privilege of being left to myself and perhaps catch up with my blog.

I love New York

I love New York. I know it is not particularly original, but I do. My first encounter with New York, twenty-five years ago, was a surprise. I grew up with the image of NY as "stone jungle", as a city full of crime and avarice. Four years after I had moved to Sweden I still carried this image. And then I fell in love at first sight.

For those who have been to NY I don't have to describe it. For those who have only seen it in numerous movies - use your imagination. Before I came to NY I thought its extreme verticality would be oppressive. I hadn't known about the open vistas.

I've "done" NY several times, last time ten years ago with Anton and Julia, when it rained all week. I have a picture of them on top of WTC.

This time I am in NY en route to Roanoke, Virginia. Anton is in NY en route home from San Diego. I don't remember now whose idea it was that we should get together in New York.

I really and truly cannot understand why I love New York, when I otherwise love nature and hate crowds. Anton says that he is on holiday and doesn't want to make plans. We wander around without plans. We go to MOMA, and I make a discovery. I am sure I have seen it before, "One and three chairs". We go to the Museum of Natural History and realise that we had been there, but forgotten. It comes back vividly in the space center. We go to the WTC site and the little memorial museum. We stand in line at TKTS and go to see a show. We walk down High Line, a most fabulous urban solution I can imagine. I would have never discovered it on my own, but I have such a clever son, who also knows what fascinates me.

In the mornings, when he is still asleep, I go to the nearest Starbucks for my coffee and bagel with cream cheese, watching new yorkers hurry past the window. New York! Will I ever see you again?

Horticultural achievements

When I invented the word "hortotherapy" some years ago, I didn't know it existed. Seems to be a well-established idea. My interpretation is simple: gardening is good for your mind. This spring was full of surprises because everything I had done last autumn gave results. My tulips - at least those that survived the deer (or perhaps rabbit) attacks - bloomed beautifully. By mid-April I had flowers in the flower-beds, and by early May I had roses. The pear tree, which I last year thought was a cherry tree, bloomed beautifully as well. The frogs came back to the pond. Ivy and brambles came back too, but now I know how to fight them. The hedge is recuperating. I am planting and replanting, cleaning and weeding, and I am very pleased with what I see. My raspberry plants are huge. Regrettably, the birds like raspberries almost as much as Staffan.

I have been playing in the greenhouse a lot. The cucumber seedlings gave me much joy, and at some point it looked as if we would get tons of strawberries, but somehow they vanished - and I can't even blame rabbits or birds. Right now the greenhouse is fully occupied by beans. If you think that Jack and the beanstalk is a fairy tale, come and have a look at my beans. I suspect that the beans killed the strawberries in some secret nocturnal war. Plants are cunning, I've read some clever books about them.

We have scarified the lawn again. Not sacrificed. In a couple of weeks it will look like the lawn at King's College (which, frankly, looks awful right now). Last week I bought a sprinkler.

I have harvested the first courgettes. They are gratifying, just need plenty of water.

The perennial flowers I have grown from seeds will perhaps not bloom this year, but at least I see that they thrive. And I am still working on my Japanese garden.

One beautiful evening we had a visit from a hedgehog.

For pictures, have a look at my Facebook album.

Academic update

So what has been going on in academic life since April? April is, as I have mentioned, a bit of a dead season, and it didn't get better when half of the students couldn't get back to Cambridge because of a dumb volcano in Iceland! I had to cancel a class, and it all felt weird.

Morag went on study leave, and we had a lengthy induction session on what I had to do and when and how, and which of the zillions of admin people were doing what. By now I have a significantly better knowledge of the Faculty. Morag was anxious about leaving it all to me. She thinks the world will stop if she isn't around. Well, it hasn't, although it has been close sometimes. Allocating thesis marking is like making a jigsaw puzzle of 20 thousand pieces with most of the picture either sea or sky.

There have been some heated meetings around the undergrad degree. Cambridge has UK's best undergrad degree in Education, therefore someone up there decided it should be discontinued. I thought for a long time that it was a joke until it became serious. The trouble is that the rules change every day. Hours would be spent in meetings, good (and occasionally bad) decisions made, and two days later it would all become irrelevant because someone up there had decided differently. It's very frustrating. After months of discussions we still don't know.

There have also been some deliberations because we are going to have a new Head of Faculty. I will miss Mike, he has been so supportive in every possible way. You know what you have, but not what you are getting. I was asked whether I was going to apply. I said I was just about getting set with my chair job. To myself, I said I'd probably not have applied for my present job if I knew how much admin it implied. On the other hand, I definitely have learned to enjoy the admin. It's just as much fun as you make it. Well, most of the time. I managed a crisis meeting of the Undergrad Committee quite elegantly.

I hosted the end-of-year party for our masters students. I think everybody enjoyed it.

I survived another round of essay and exam marking. The supervisions are almost finished. It's almost vacation... um, research period. My second year in Cambridge is over.

A question of audience

I haven't blogged for a long, long time. I should have written: This blog is finished, thank you for your attention.

My youngest son claims that I have stopped blogging because I have discovered Facebook. He is wrong. Facebook is great to stay in touch with friends and colleagues and get suggestions about events and books and things. But in terms of self-expression Facebook is somewhat limited. It is a punchline without the story.

I have stopped blogging because I feel that my blog has served its purpose. I started it because so many friends were curious about our new life. It is not new any more. It has become routine.

But suddenly I get an email from someone I don't even know asking: Why have you stopped blogging? This is a bit like getting a message from the other side of the grave: Hey, someone out there is actually reading!

Yuri Lotman, one of the greatest thinkers of the 20^th century and my idol, if I have one, was said to give a whole year of lectures to one single student. I don't know whether it's true, but I heard it from the student. Apparently he thought one listener was worth while. So if I have one reader out there, perhaps it's worth while to resume. It will take some time to catch up because a lot has happened (there you are, it's not ALL routine).

But you, reader out there, if you leave a comment every now and then, I promise to write regularly.