Strongly Worded

The Dori Bibliography

Have I mentioned that I'm in a writing group? In fact I am. We convened four years ago in a very expensive writing class (financed by my cushy job which provided every employee with $500 a year for "personal and professional development"). When the class ended, we decided to keep meeting on our own, and we took turns submitting work and facilitating the meetings. Over time, we've gotten increasingly close, and increasingly lazy. We sometimes chat more than we write. Last week, the exercise was to write about why you write. It was inspired by a book, aptly titled Why I Write.

It was a thought-provoking question, and one I've thought about a lot recently, not just because of the book, but because of repeated questions about what it means to have a blog and why it's so enchanting to write for an audience (albeit a small one). It's also interesting that I enjoy the blog so much, but have little desire to submit pieces for print publication.

Upon reflection, I'd say that I enjoy writing for many reasons. The act of changing ideas into words clarifies them. Writing the words down makes them permanent and powerful. And writing for any kind of audience brings purpose to the whole enterprise. The actual technical aspects of writing also intrigue me--I love words, and sentence structure, and editing my own and others' work. One of my proudest writing achievements was fixing up a mediocre and confusing article a kid submitted to the high school newspaper. It ultimately won an award, and I am satisfied by my role in that outcome.

Additional highlights of the Dori bibliography, for your perusal:

1) The Dolphin Who Couldn't Swim (1982). First publication, kindergarten. Parent volunteers would type up kids’ stories and bind them with contact paper and velotape. We could “borrow” one another’s books through the kindergarten lending library. Dolphin, with its complex characterization and invented spelling, kicked off my literary career.

2) "Spur Sparingly" (Horse Illustrated, 1986). First strongly worded letter. I was obsessed with horses, and felt outraged by what I perceived to be an inhumane response to a reader’s question (I think it had to do with whips and spurs). I wrote a letter to the editor, explaining my position on the use of whips and spurs, and lo and behold, it was published. I brought compassion into the barnyard!

3) Andrea of the Manor (1987). First novel, a virtual homage to what was then—and remains—a favorite book, Anne of Green Gables. By the time I lost interest in it, the "novel" was about 100 hand-written pages long, and it was a plaything, a companion, a source of joy. The “book” probably mirrored Anne of Green Gables in WAY too many ways. I think there was at least one horse in it, and two evil aunts, and a lot of mist. I was big on mist. I am too embarrassed to read it now, and it sits in a box under the stairs in my parents' basement.

4) "The Passover Rap" (1988). Performance piece, debuted at a family seder. It infused religious study with the burgeoning Hip Hop movement. A key line: "Those Israelites! They rocked and ruled!/ They escaped from the Pharoah who was mean and cruel".

5) "The Lady of the Sea" (1989). Foray into poetry and the harsh light of literary criticism. The poem was about the ghost of a drowned woman, if I remember correctly. When I read it to my dad, he told me, brutally, that its last few lines "the seagulls wailing/wailing, wailing/the seagulls' cry was the only sound" was repetitive. I now realize that a) my dad knows nothing about poetry b) the repetition served the meter of the poem, which I somehow sensed without knowing what meter was and c) I probably had some nascent idea that the repetition sounded a little bit like seagulls. The poem was crap, of course. But still.

7) "Saints in Short Skirts" (1991). "Investigative" piece for the high school newspaper on the unsung virtues of cheerleaders. Part of a series which also included an editorial call for mercy in phys. ed.: "Don't Drop the Ball on the Athletically Inept.")

8) Sixteeen (1994). Play performed as part of my high school's annual "Student Writtens", in which students wrote plays which they then cast and directed. My play had the number 16 in it sixteen times. It was about 25 minutes long, and paralleled five friends' growth and development with the baking of a cake. A real refrigerator was part of the "set." The theme song was Madonna's "Borderline". It was performed between a play about Japanese internment camps and and one about a jailed rapist.

9) "Salamander Crossing" (1995). Creative nonfiction piece, written for the toughest and best writing workshop I've ever taken (I still have stressful dreams about this college class). "Salamander" compared the mating rituals of salamanders with those of sexually frustrated students at my intense women's college.

10) Strongly Worded (2005). Foray into the genre of weblogs. Source of ongoing delight.

Posted by Dori at 8:04 PM