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This article was written by blogger, Maddie Laberge, of The Wicked Step-Mom.

What the hell does Hygge (pronounced Hue-gah) mean?

First, let me ask you 5 quick questions to make sure Hygge is a good fit for you:

  1. Are you emotionally burnt out? (You’re on my last nerve, kid!)
  2. Does it seem that no matter how hard you try to keep your house clean, the dishes, laundry, and chores just never seem to get under control!! (Fold your own fucking laundry!)
  3. Are you having a small problem transitioning from the long bright summer days to the 4:30 p.m. sunset? (I go to work in the dark, I drive home in the dark. Does the sun still rise every day?)
  4. You were so jazzed about your big salads and smoothies all spring and summer, but now the cold leafy greens and frigid drinks aren’t cutting it. (Where can I get a hot cup of java around here, yo?)
  5. Can you relate to this: “It is not your body or your mind that is ailing. It is your soul that is in need of healing.”

Have you had enough busy, mindless days pass you by? Yeah? Me too.

Hygge is a Danish word that describes a genuine mood or a feeling. It is choosing not to be distracted. In a nutshell, it’s waking up with new eyes to see simplicity as both cozy and meaningful: being conscious of the present moment and shaping it into an art. You can live your life creating soul-satisfying rituals!  Tell me, who can’t use a little soul nurturing now and then?

So let’s cut to it and give you 5 easy ways to create some magic:

  1. Do you have your own space? A cozy chair? A place where you like to sit and read or watch a movie? Even just the corner on your couch would work! Warm it up with a beautiful soft throw blanket. (Cost of blanket $20-30 IKEA)

Here’s my dog Quinn keeping my chair warm for me. Snuggle in with your favourite pet or partner and just bask in the moment of love!

cozythrowblanket
Don’t let that face fool you, she’s a spoiled brat.
  1. Bundle up and take a walk! Nature’s anti-depressant! Get off your phone (and your ass), grab your camera and take some pictures of nature! Be mindful of the smell in the air. Now is also a good time to take the advice of one of my kids: “Just think about what you want to think about, not what other people want you to think about.” Here’s a picture of me from a little solo adventure to a ravine near my house. (Cost FREE!)

takeawalk

  1. Buy a book shelf. Put things you love on it. Don’t let it get cluttered. Then curl up in your cozy throw blanket and read a good book! Here’s a cross-section of what I read:

books

Diversify and read whatever you’re in the mood for! I usually choose something that makes me ponder my existence or something that makes me laugh; sometimes they are one in the same. (Cost of book shelf $35 IKEA, and books are cheap at second-hand stores.)

bookshelf

  1. Do you own a lamp? Fantastic! Start using it to create some ambiance in your home.

lighting

Note the box of tissues in the picture? Give yourself one night every month to watch a romantic movie and cry your eyes out. Ok, crying ain’t exactly what ‘hygge’ is all about, but being at peace is, and you know what crying can do? Release stress hormones! So have yourself a big ugly cry! I suggest classic tear-jerkers like ‘The Bridges of Madison County’, or ‘The Notebook’. Whatever works to release those tears with the intention of feeling refreshed afterwards! (Cost: FREE!)

  1. Last, but certainly not lease, soft luxurious flannel sheets to keep you warm at night!

flannelsheets

Climbing into a cozy bed, taking a deep breath and counting three things you’re grateful for will help lull you into a peaceful slumber. And get your stupid phone out of your room! (Cost of Flannel Sheets: $40 on sale in the summer.)

So the next time you feel your day is becoming hectic and stressful, think hygge! How will YOU create some hygge in your day today?

Maddie Laberge is the mastermind behind The Wicked Step-Mom – a 30-something year old woman who has been a Certified Holistic Nutritionist for nearly ten years (more recently a Certified Herbalist), and a full time step-mom for over three. So what does a woman who chased a career do once three kids get handed to her? She shifts gears and begins a new journey. Her blog is about life and how she gets through her days by holding on to the values of eating good food and living a simple life.

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For the past 5 months, I have been studying the Arabic language at the University of Alberta. This is not my first foray into the Arabic language: I have been enamoured with it for years, even before I converted to Islam. I have taken some online self-study classes, bought books at the local bookstore to teach myself, took a few private tutoring lessons and the like. I even lived in Morocco for three years where I picked up a significant and usable amount of Moroccan Arabic to survive taxi rides and trips to the enchanting Moroccan souk (market). Even though Moroccan Arabic stuck with me and is really the first language I can safely say I speak besides English (my strengths in French are reading and writing), darija as it is called, is quite far from the formal Modern Standard Arabic (fus-ha, as it is known).

arabic-calligraphy

Since I began my Master’s degree in History at the University of Alberta, I have had to focus on learning the Arabic language to further my research in Islamic-Jewish studies, particularly if I want to continue on and do a doctorate degree in a similar study area (which I do). As such, I enrolled in a couple of courses to learn Modern Standard Arabic and it has been an incredible experience, but for reasons that might surprise you, as they most certainly surprised me.

The Camaraderie: The last thing someone would expect when I tell them I am taking an Arabic class is that the class would be full of Arabs. Well, it is. I weaseled my way into the “heritage” class which is full of students who have grown up speaking the dialects of their parents but have little to no knowledge of formal Arabic or how to read and write it. There are three other non-heritage students in my class, each of whom I love dearly for various reasons, most significantly a kind of solidarity in the face of the madness of learning this language. Mainly the class is full of amazing, jovial people who are enjoying learning the language together. The class takes place at night, for two and a half hours, twice a week. Since the class is so long and at a weird time of day, we tend to get a bit delirious together especially when you add the complexities of Arabic grammar concepts to the mix. I have rarely had as much fun in a class as I do in this one, and I have to say that I actually miss the class when there are days between meetings. Part of this has to do with the fact that I am a convert to Islam and I don’t have much of a strong connection to the actual Muslim community even though I do a lot of activist work on behalf of that community. Most of my time, however, is spent with academics or family and both of those groups don’t necessarily overlap with Muslimness at all. The Arabic class, however, is full of Muslims and even though we don’t always mention much about our way of life (deen), just being in close proximity to people who have a similar religio-cultural context as you is more of a relief than I expected it to be. To not have to explain ever micro-action of your behaviour or character is refreshing, even though I normally relish in the opportunity to do so with people who may lack knowledge about Islam.

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Pages of Arabic: I regularly have moments of looking down at my homework or an exam I have just written, or even some extra writing I have done for my professor, and I have to marvel in awe at the fact that the entire page (in fact, pages upon pages) is written in Arabic. How is this even possible? How can I possibly understand what I have just written? And time does not cure the awe either. It just keeps getting more and more pronounced as my writing improves and expands. This used to happen to me when I was studying Greek and I think it is for no other reason than the alphabet is different. I genuinely feel like my brain is being rewired (and it is) because I am introducing an entire new set of meaningful symbols into my linguistic repertoire. And more than that, I can express myself with these symbols in ways that are affective for people who know and understand Arabic. I’m living part of my life in another language; I’m saturated by it. When you choose to express yourself in another language, it is not merely an act of translation. You are adopting and carrying the depths of meaning from that language into your self-expression, and with a rich language such as Arabic, where oceans of meaning are contained in one word or phrase, the expressions are almost limitless – especially when combined with those I have in English and French and Italian as well.

Egyptians are hilarious: This is not news to many people, especially not me. One of my best friends is Egyptian and his wit simply cannot be matched, so this is one cultural stereotype I am happy to uphold. My professor, Mai, is Egyptian and the stereotype holds true and strong for her as well. Her sense of humour is impeccable and she puts up with all sorts of class antics with a smile on her face and a laugh on her tongue. I have come to know a bit more about how Egyptian people view themselves through her (passionate, temperamental, hilarious, lovers of love and beauty, impatient, generous, kind, caring etc) even if I don’t necessarily subscribe to universalizing narratives about cultural systems. I am interested, however, in how individuals within that system talk about themselves and what stories they tell, and especially when this is done in good humour. Frankly, there is a kind of rapport between the heritage students and Mai that you don’t find in other classes and it reminds me of how my students were with me in Morocco – always trying to get away with no homework or leaving early, being trolls in general but respecting their professor to death at the end of the day. Her presence has only fuelled my unnatural obsession with the Arab world in general and the Egyptian world in particular, so I look forward to the day when I can visit the homeland and see these gorgeous stereotypes firsthand. I only hope I can touch a fraction of the language before then to make that experience really come to life.

Using different parts of my brain: It should come as no surprise that learning a new language messes with your head in a good way. You are forced to think about things in a completely different way, especially when the alphabet is something different than what you are accustomed to. Sometimes I find this process painful, especially during vocabulary lessons in class where it feels like every heritage speaker in the class knows everything and I can’t even remember how to spell the first word on the list; however, that kind of hyperventilating suffocation that I feel when learning Arabic is pure bliss. It’s the feeling of being on a precipice, about to tumble over an edge, head-first into the world unknown. It is the feeling of pushing your own boundaries of knowledge and existence, of unlocking worlds within worlds and breaking down our assumptions. I love this kind of ego-slay, especially when it is as humbling as learning Arabic is for me. This is exactly the kind of work that academia should be for people: the kind that makes the boundaries of who you think you are, and what you think your world is, ambiguous and blurry.

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Thinking in Arabic: When I am particularly immersed in my studies, which is a lot these days, I find myself thinking in Arabic. I will pass street signs written in English and imagine how I would spell such a thing in the Arabic alphabet. Or I will try to translate simple conversations or sentences to Arabic in my head. Sometimes, especially because of my visceral understanding of Moroccan Arabic and the fact that I am Muslim, I feel compelled to respond to situations in Arabic, uttering a Yallah or an Alhamdulilah wherever it fits. In Arabic there are just so many key words and phrases that encapsulate so much meaning in a tiny package that sometimes I find I am at a loss for words in English. It just doesn’t sound the same when you see a particularly beautiful sunrise and you say to yourself “All praise, glory and thanks are due to God Alone” when you can just say Subhana Allah instead.

Reading the Qur’an: On that note, my connection to Arabic is not only cultural in the sense that I love Arabic cultures but it is also cultural in the sense of religion. For those who do not know, Arabic is the language in which the holy book of Islam (the Qur’an) was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him for all eternity). One incredible outcome of learning to read and write Arabic fluently is that I can now read the Qur’an in Arabic at a pace that is a lot faster than before (let’s be realistic, I could barely read 6 words every 2 minutes before). Even though Qur’anic Arabic is quite different than Modern Standard Arabic, many principles are the same and the same basic letters and sounds apply, even though there is an entire science behind reading the Qur’an (tajweed). The fact that I can read what I and other Muslims consider to the exact and direct word of Allah (God) in the language it was revealed lessens the temporal and spatial gap between myself and the Prophet Muhammad and brings me closer to my spiritual practice, even if I am slow in learning the meaning(s) of such words in their own context.

My journey with the Arabic language will be life-long and this is only just the beginning. There have been moments of real agony already where I feel like I will never touch the depths of meaning that I want to with the language, where I lose myself in its music, tinged with melancholia and sorrow that it is not my mother tongue as I fail to remember terms or pronunciation again and again. But there are successes along the same path, big successes, things that I could never imagine were possible like those pages full of words I can understand and feelings I can describe. And for now, that will have to be enough until the day when  I will fully memorize the Qur’an while internalizing its meaning and when my own Arabic poetry will roll flawlessly off my tongue, insha Allah.

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Being a writer is a life-long journey that comes with its own unique challenges and opportunities. There is a large corpus of myths surrounding the life of a writer that many great writers try to debunk but somehow they persist. On the other hand, there are a few key characteristics and lifestyle choices that aid in being writer that aren’t talked about enough. I am all about breaking down the mystification of writing as a vocation and the sacralization of the writer as an individual, so why not start with this handy list?

  1. You don’t need to be depressed to be a writer. This myth continues to this day. It is true that some really great writers (see: Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath etc) were depressed and eventually committed suicide. This, however, is tragic and unfortunate. It didn’t make their writing any better or worse. I heard once that suffering is a necessary precondition of all great artists and while I understand that heartache and social alienation and culture clash might constitute as ‘suffering’ to some, I also think that these kind of quotes glorify clinical suffering that people actually need to get help for. Sure there are studies that show that depressed people might tend to have different outlooks on life that may or may not help them to be more creative; however, being dead is pretty much the end of all creativity. Get help. And then keep writing.
  2. Writing does not need to be your only job. There are plenty of writers who worked real day jobs (see: Herman Melville, John Steinbeck, Nathaniel Hawthorne) and even though writing was their real passion in life, they didn’t sacrifice everything for the craft. In fact, some of the best writers will tell you that sitting at home all day, worrying about the bills and procrastinating by binge-watching Netflix is the worst writing inspiration they could possibly imagine. Just ask anyone working on a doctorate dissertation and you know why it is critical to have social contact and some other work besides writing to keep you going. Plus, it offers the possibility of expanding your knowledge base and allows for your financial freedom to focus on your writing.
  3. You should write AND read every day. Every single published author who is worth listening to will tell you this. You must write something every single day. It doesn’t have to be the big project you’re working on; it doesn’t have to be a complete poem in its entirety. It just shouldn’t be an email response or catching up on Facebook comments. To qualify, you should be writing to hone your craft every day. Set a word limit or a time limit and watch how easy they are to achieve and surpass. A lot of writers work best if their time for writing is the same time every day, particularly if they set a time limit (like starting with 15 minutes per day and working your way up to an hour or two). The other important thing is that you MUST read every single day. It doesn’t have to be much but if you are working in a particular genre and you want to keep things fresh and exciting, you should be reading at least one thing per day. Set a time or a page limit and you are gold. Most authors have several books on the go so this is a no-brainer.
  4. Read outside your genre. Expand your knowledge base – I cannot emphasize how important this is. It is very easy to spot an author who sticks to stereotypical similes, tropes and metaphors of their genre. The more you know, the more you add to your writing toolkit – information and ideas that you access at a moment’s notice while you are typing or scrawling away.
  5. Really study your favourite authors’ craft. How many times have you sat down with your favourite book and studied how the author described people? How many times have you highlighted transition passages between chapters? Are there margin notes in your books? If the answers are never, never and no, you will be very limited in what you can accomplish in your writing. De-mystify what makes a good book a good book. Figure out exactly how descriptions of people and places happen. Underline and jot down the key elements of good dialogue and keep these things in mind for your own writing. When you get stuck, it can offer a simple solution to getting unstuck. Emulating the greats brings no shame with it either! The best learn from the best!
  6. Not all of your writing has to be good. Destroy your Messiah-complex. Not everything you write is going to be the lost gospel. In fact, most of it will be destined for the wastebasket. The pressure to always perform can lead to serious (surprise, surprise) performance anxiety – just like any other vocation. Realize that in every piece of drivel, you might be fortunate enough to find something salvageable and transformable for later. Keep at it. I had a brilliant writing instructor who used to force us to take our favourite sentences and black them out with a sharpie. “Kill your babies!” another writing instructor would shout, at our pouty, ego-bruised faces. Liberate yourself and keep writing.
  7. Not everything you write has to be the next great novel. Same idea as number 6. You don’t always need to be working on projects that are going to be published to be considered a writer. Write for the sake of writing. Figure out interesting writing exercises you can do (write in vignettes, write on a specific memory, write like it’s a different genre or era) that will help you expand your horizons and (no surprise here) will. Get. You. Writing.
  8. Writers are constantly learning. If you are not learning, you are not writing. Writing doesn’t just come out of nowhere. You are not a divine hierophany through which the writing muse speaks. You have to be on top of your learning. This doesn’t mean sitting in a library all day either. Learning means reflecting on things – whether this be people-watching, travelling, psychoanalysis, reading a book, learning a new hobby, attending a social group etc.
  9. Good researchers make good writers. This goes hand-in-hand with number 8. The best writers also do the best research. They are not lazy with their research and will often seek out multiple sources to find the same information. Absolutely nothing is worse than reading a book or short story that is riddled with historical mistakes, the wrong dates or things that are totally implausible. It tears your reader out of the magical reading-space and starts their brain questioning immediately – a writer’s worst nightmare.
  10. When you fail, try again. A lot of what you do will suck. You will get a lot of rejection letters. Some people will tell you that you aren’t meant to write. Just keep reading, researching and, above all, writing. You will improve. You will find your genre, your audience and your stride. If you stop trying, the only thing you’ve found is defeat.

 

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One of the most important aspects of being a good writer is also being a good reader. Both characteristics require consistency and practice as one continues to evolve their craft. Both Nakita and Michele of The Drawing Board are avid readers that have a perpetually evolving reading list. It’s often hard to nail down just what we are reading at any given time because it changes daily, but here is a list of current books, open to varying degrees, on Nakita’s desk. Let’s hope they inspire and feel free to share your reading list too!

patterns-culture-ruth-benedict-paperback-cover-artPatterns of Culture: Ruth Benedict – In Patterns of Culture, Benedict presents sketches of three cultures, the Zuni, the Dobu, and the Kwakiutl, and uses these cultures to elaborate her theory of ‘culture as personality-writ-large.’ Before introducing the ethnographies, Benedict includes two theoretical chapters and introduces the term ‘pattern,’ which she interchanges with similar phrases in the rest of the text.

9780300085242Introduction to Metaphysics: Martin Heidegger – This is the published version of a lecture course he gave in the Summer of 1935 at the University of Freiburg. The book is famous for its powerful reinterpretation of Greek thought. The content of these lectures was not published in Germany until 1953.

maaloufIn the Name of Identity: Amin Maalouf – In this work, Maalouf discusses the identity crisis which Arabs have experienced since the establishment of continuous relationships with the west, adding his personal dimension as a Christian Arab. The book is intended for both Arabs and Westerners (as well as for people with mixed heritage). This work is divided into five major chapters, “Identity and Belonging”, “When Modernity Comes From the Other”, “The Era of Cosmic Tribals”, “Taming the Shrew” and a glossary. He begins with universal values of identity, which he dissects, describes the extremes, then applies them to the Levant. He tries to describe how the average modern Arab feels, along a wide spectrum of ideologies in practice throughout the Arab world…from religious beliefs and traditional practices to total secularism. The book also sheds light on recent events in the Arab world, from civil wars to relations with the west.

0226285111Islam Observed: Clifford Geertz – “In four brief chapters,” writes Clifford Geertz in his preface, “I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan.”

Genealogie_der_Moral_coverOn the Genealogy of Morals: Friedrich Nietzsche – An1887 book by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It consists of a preface and three interrelated essays that expand and follow through on doctrines Nietzsche sketched out in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). The three Abhandlungen trace episodes in the evolution of moral concepts with a view to undermining “moral prejudices”, specifically those of Christianity and Judaism.Some Nietzsche scholars consider Genealogy to be a work of sustained brilliance and power as well as his masterpiece. Since its publication, it has influenced many authors and philosophers.

816RGvGUV0LThe Yacoubian Building: Alaa-Al-Aswany – Published in Arabic in 2002 and in an English translation in 2004, the book, ostensibly set in 1990 at about the time of the first Gulf War, is a roman à clef and scathing portrayal of modern Egyptian society since the Revolution of 1952. The locale of the novel is downtown Cairo, with the titular apartment building (which actually exists) serving as both a metaphor for contemporary Egypt and a unifying location in which most of the primary characters either live or work and in which much of the novel’s action takes place. The author, a dentist by profession, had his first office in the Yacoubian Building in Cairo.The Yacoubian Building was the best-selling Arabic novel for 2002 and 2003, and was voted Best Novel for 2003 by listeners to Egypt’s Middle East Broadcasting Service. It has been translated into 23 languages worldwide.

41JlIxpjNuLArchaeology of Knowledge: Michel Foucault – The premise of the book is that systems of thought and knowledge (“epistemes” or “discursive formations”) are governed by rules (beyond those of grammar and logic) which operate beneath the consciousness of individual subjects and define a system of conceptual possibilities that determines the boundaries of thought and language use in a given domain and period. Most prominently in its Introduction and Conclusion, the book also becomes a philosophical treatment and critique of phenomenological and dogmatic structural readings of history and philosophy, portraying continuous narratives as naïve ways of projecting our own consciousness onto the past, thus being exclusive and excluding. Characteristically, Foucault demonstrates his political motivations, personal projects and preoccupations, and, explicitly and implicitly, the many influences that inform the discourse of the time.

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Very recently, The Eleventh Stack posted an interesting blog about Little Golden Memories – the acts of reading and being read to, particularly in childhood, that left a lasting impression on you. I have to say that as a book nerd, some of my favorite memories of my childhood (if not almost all of them) involve reading or writing in some capacity. I can scarcely remember a time when I wasn’t reading something. From the ingredients on the box of breakfast cereal to the instructions on the shampoo bottle, I’d find time to read every line of text in my house again and again. Often, my mother would find me in the wee hours of the morning, head buried in a book under the covers, flashlight in my mouth.

This kid lacks the coke bottle glasses I needed to wear after I ruined my eyesight.
This kid lacks the coke bottle glasses I needed to wear after I ruined my eyesight.

Oddly, my love of reading came from my fear of dying. I had two grandparents pass away when I was very young, just around the time I was getting into reading and I have very vivid memories of reading voraciously to “fight the clock.” When my mother would come in my room to take away the flashlight so I could get some sleep, I’d wait until she headed back to her room or the living room before yanking open my curtain to squint out a few chapters by the moonlight. Reading, for me, was almost pathological.

50 below
This is how we roll in Canada…

The first book I ever “read” (see: memorized) was Fifty Below Zero by Robert Munsch when I was around five years old. (Actually, I have no idea when it was. It could have been earlier. I started reading very very early). I remember begging my brother to read it to me until I could mouth the words along with him, savouring the sounds coming out of my mouth, knowing that I was doing the next best thing to reading – that my words were lining up with my eyes scanning all those foreign alphabet letters on the page, that every line I got in before the page turn was a victory for my mimicry. One afternoon, my brother and I were in the basement of my grandmother’s house. My mom and her parents were in the second kitchen discussing grown-up things when my brother called them over.

“Nakita wants to read something,” he said.

They had the look of surprise but listened attentively while I cleared my throat, holding up the Munsch classic and proceeded to “read” the entire book cover to cover.When I was done, they clapped and clapped. This was the first positive experience I had with reading and it is one of the only memories of my grandfather that still remains in my mind. In a way, when I return to it, I am reading him again and again, a memorized version of someone once written in life.

I will never forget the sweet taste of victory.
I will never forget the sweet taste of victory.

As I got older, my appetite for reading only increased to disturbing levels. I remember in the fourth grade, my teacher created this classroom challenge called “Around the World” which was designed to encourage us to read. We all cut out and coloured our own Pink Panthers, and labelled him with our names. My teacher had set up little points all around the room and for every book you read, your panther would move a space. If you made it around the room, your panther had gone around the world! Well, this is exciting stuff for a child-freak like me who savours both reading and competition. Naturally, I checked out dozens and dozens of books from the public library and in the month, had lapped the other students in class several times totalling over 80 books. I clearly had an issue.

In the fifth grade, I got accepted into the Advanced Placement class at my new elementary school and we learned about mythology as part of our curriculum. I will never forget our project for the mythology unit which entailed researching the storytelling structures of myths and writing our very own. Mine was called Why We Call the Moon Lunar (wow hahaha) and I even had the cover laminated. I cherished that thing for years.

 

Too LEGIT to quit
Too LEGIT to quit

Another story my mother just loves to tell everyone, much to my embarrassment (but obviously not too much because it is hilarious and I am now blogging about it), is what I have dubbed The Aardvark Tale. In the summer between Grade Six and the beginning of Grade Seven, I was terrified that I lacked the knowledge to participate in the great academic halls of JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL. During the first week of summer holidays, the sun was shining, birds were chirping and my mother entered my bedroom to find me holed up at my desk, surrounded by papers and books, writing furiously. She peeked over my shoulder at the essay I was working on and discovered that I was crafting a history of… the aardvark. Turns out, I had started the very beginning of my knowledge journey at the first entry in the encyclopedia which my mother tore out my hands and locked away, pushing me to go play outside with children my age. She also (mercifully) enrolled me in a performing and visual arts school for junior high to diversify my interests and skills… basically so that I’d be something more than a massive nerd.

Instead, I became a painter and a band geek. Much cooler, I know. And even though I had a number of years of pure creative output, it was my experience in my history, english and philosophy classes that really stuck and I enrolled in University in the history program. It was basically my dream: reading and writing all day. Every day. Just because.

886cfe31a187018ceebe1a23bdbdbfc8e3a2f8661b1c7d8b46b141323e3828c8I’m a now pursuing graduate studies in history and the volume that I read and write has only increased. I remember in my first semester back at school after a five year break (in which I read at least 200 texts, if not more – I lost track –  I have a legitimate disorder), one of my classmates commented on my speed reading in front of the class. I felt like that Aardvark expert all over again –  a complete and utter, undeniable nerd, in other words. That first semester saw the following stats: the reading/skimming of 78 books, the watching of 16 films, the reading of at least 47 articles, the giving of 4 presentations, and the writing of 165 pages in 3.5 months… I want to say that is all I did in that time, but (as you know), I am also the owner and head writer for The Drawing Board and so was reading, researching and writing for many clients in that time as well.

 

In the words of a dear friend of mine: I need to be “quaratined.”

Now that I have a kid of my own, I can’t help but wonder if she will be like me in this respect. I would love the opportunity to share my love of the written world with her, but don’t want to pressure her if is not as “into it” as her mom. That being said, if I catch her writing essays on Antelopes or something, I’d love to help her hone her craft and nerd it up just like me… with a lot more outside playing thrown in the mix too.

What are your favourite reading and writing memories?

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Original written by Maria Popova for http://www.brainpickings.org

“Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.”

“Often the object of a desire, when desire is transformed into hope, becomes more real than reality itself,” Umberto Eco observed in his magnificent atlas of imaginary places. Indeed, our capacity for self-delusion is one of the most inescapable fundamentals of the human condition, and nowhere do we engage it more willingly and more voraciously than in the art and artifice of storytelling.

In the same 1948 lecture that gave us Vladimir Nabokov’s 10 criteria for a good reader, found in his altogether fantastic Lectures on Literature (UK; public library), the celebrated author and sage of literature examines the heart of storytelling:

Literature was born not the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him. That the poor little fellow because he lied too often was finally eaten up by a real beast is quite incidental. But here is what is important. Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.

Vladimir Nabokov by William Claxton, 1963

He considers this essential role of deception in storytelling, adding to famous writers’ wisdom on truth vs. fiction and observing, as young Virginia Woolf did, that all art simply imitates nature:

Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature. Nature always deceives. From the simple deception of propagation to the prodigiously sophisticated illusion of protective colors in butterflies or birds, there is in Nature a marvelous system of spells and wiles. The writer of fiction only follows Nature’s lead.

Going back for a moment to our wolf-crying woodland little woolly fellow, we may put it this way: the magic of art was in the shadow of the wolf that he deliberately invented, his dream of the wolf; then the story of his tricks made a good story. When he perished at last, the story told about him acquired a good lesson in the dark around the camp fire. But he was the little magician. He was the inventor.

What’s especially interesting is that Nabokov likens the writer to an inventor, since the trifecta of qualities he goes on to outline as necessary for the great writer — not that different from young Susan Sontag’s list of the four people a great writer must be — are just as necessary for any great entrepreneur:

There are three points of view from which a writer can be considered: he may be considered as a storyteller, as a teacher, and as an enchanter. A major writer combines these three — storyteller, teacher, enchanter — but it is the enchanter in him that predominates and makes him a major writer.

To the storyteller we turn for entertainment, for mental excitement of the simplest kind, for emotional participation, for the pleasure of traveling in some remote region in space or time. A slightly different though not necessarily higher mind looks for the teacher in the writer. Propagandist, moralist, prophet — this is the rising sequence. We may go to the teacher not only for moral education but also for direct knowledge, for simple facts… Finally, and above all, a great writer is always a great enchanter, and it is here that we come to the really exciting part when we try to grasp the individual magic of his genius and to study the style, the imagery, the pattern of his novels or poems.

The three facets of the great writer — magic, story, lesson — are prone to blend in one impression of unified and unique radiance, since the magic of art may be present in the very bones of the story, in the very marrow of thought. There are masterpieces of dry, limpid, organized thought which provoke in us an artistic quiver quite as strongly as a novel like Mansfield Park does or as any rich flow of Dickensian sensual imagery. It seems to me that a good formula to test the quality of a novel is, in the long run, a merging of the precision of poetry and the intuition of science. In order to bask in that magic a wise reader reads the book of genius not with his heart, not so much with his brain, but with his spine. It is there that occurs the telltale tingle even though we must keep a little aloof, a little detached when reading. Then with a pleasure which is both sensual and intellectual we shall watch the artist build his castle of cards and watch the castle of cards become a castle of beautiful steel and glass.

Indeed, as important to the success of literature as the great writer is the wise reader, whom Nabokov characterizes by a mindset that blends the receptivity of art with the critical thinking of science:

The best temperament for a reader to have, or to develop, is a combination of the artistic and the scientific one. The enthusiastic artist alone is apt to be too subjective in his attitude towards a book, and so a scientific coolness of judgment will temper the intuitive heat. If, however, a would-be reader is utterly devoid of passion and patience — of an artist’s passion and a scientist’s patience — he will hardly enjoy great literature.