On getting free HBO for a month

[This essay has been removed and is being polished for publication elsewhere.]

Maybe all writers need pen names now, given our Googlubiquity

It just so happens that the same day I was invited to participate in yet another list exercise on Facebook (this one called “The Name Game”), I  discovered that there are several other Beth Blevinses in the United States who write blogs.

The Name Game asks you to combine your and your family's names to create new names that are sometimes silly, sometimes distinct. For example, combine your grandfathers' first names to create your Nascar name (mine would be "Parks Monroe"), or your mother’s and father’s middle names to create your Witness protection name ("Rose Bret"). 

Despite my list-burn-out (25 Random Things being the main culprit), I probably would have been drawn to the Name Game since my southern family has such great first names: Guy, Bertha, Stella, Lola Belle, Maxie, Collie, Monroe, Hobson, Mattie. But realizing my lack of uniqueness, even in the blogosphere, spurred me on. I was in search of a new name.

I already knew there were other Beth Blevinses in the world. I started running vanity searches as soon as Google became available. There is a golfer Beth Blevins, a doula/nurse Beth Blevins and a realtor Beth Blevins. I long ago corresponded with the writer-editor-intuitive Beth Blevins who lives in California after finding her web site (we both agreed we should hold a "Beth Blevins" convention someday.)

Still, I clung to my name. It has a certain alliteration and, well, it's what I'm used to.

However, to see that I am not the only Beth Blevins in the more limited world of the blogosphere was a blow from which I'm not sure I can recover. 

There is a Beth Blevins who blogs about World of Warcraft in a blog called "The Family Business" (which uses the same template I originally used with “Writing Home”). The writer-editor Beth Blevins in California has a blog called "Sacred Feminine Rising"—the postings appear to be descriptions of meditations.  The realtor Beth Blevins appears to have reserved blog space, but has yet to post.

Here are my options, I think:

• I could choose some variation of "Beth Blevins": My gmail account is "thebethblevins" since "bethblevins" was already taken. But, as a byline, "The Beth Blevins" is just too pretentious, and most catalogers would drop the "The" anyway. Perhaps I could go by the hybrid single name, "Beblevins," which I have used for several email accounts, or split it into "Be Blevins"—but it reminds me too much of all those placards people put on their kitchen walls, or in their gardens, like "Be Peace" or "Just Be." Just Be Blevins.
  
  
• I could add my middle initial or middle name; but, neither "Beth F. Blevins" nor "Beth Frances Blevins" sound that great and "Elizabeth Frances Blevins" just seems too long.
  
  
• I could use initials, e.g., "E. F. Blevins," but when I mentioned this to someone recently they said it sounded like I was "trying to be 'J.K. Rowling'."
  
  
•  Or, I could add a different/better middle initial in place of the "F.", like "Beth X. Blevins" or "Beth Z. Blevins."
  

None of these options is really grabbing me now. Taking a cue from the Name Game, perhaps I should henceforth go by my soap opera name (middle name, then place of birth).

Signing off as:

Frances Wilkesboro

And so I begin again...

I have a quiet morning for the first time in weeks. There are no pressing deadlines, nothing to do except a household to-do list that can be checked off gradually over the next couple of days.

It is not the sudden-silence that bothers me, but all the ideas I've been waiting to convey—they are not lined up politely in my head, waiting their turn to be let out, but are crowding at the exits eager to be written down, transformed, made public.

My house is quiet but my mind is chaotic. I have been trying to choose an idea to write about, but with so much noise in my head I can’t hear anything particularly, it’s all static. Not being able to choose, or to simply begin, I feel something akin to panic—that there might be nothing there after all. So, I take the easier, perhaps more cowardly approach by choosing none of them, merely writing about the unquiet.

The thoughts are not appeased. If not written down, they will come out in my dreams. Characters who could-have-been will be dream characters, berating me; unwritten stories may become the themes of dreams repeated over and over and never resolved.

Now I understand why a writer should keep a regular schedule. John Updike was quoted as saying he wrote three hours a day, six days a week. Barbara Kingsolver has described herself as a working mother who writes non-stop eight hours a day. The idea here is that the creative mind is a muscle that needs to be exercised regularly, if not daily.

But I think regular writing also is a conduit for visions, an exorcism even. I sometimes wonder at people who sit in bars, drinking until they are numb, or all the housewives given Valium to calm their nerves. Maybe their heads are brimming with ideas, and they don't know how to let them out, or even acknowledge them.

Being able to write—having to write—is both a blessing and a curse. When I am unhappy it is most often because I haven’t been able to write for a few days. At least I know that I want to write, whether I have made the time to do so or not—the pencil is a cheap and easy cure.

Missing in action, trying to get back to words

I normally update this blog at least once a week. So it felt funny last week when Tuesday rolled by, then Friday, and I hadn't posted anything. I walked around with a vague sense that something was missing, there was something I hadn't taken care of—but I didn't have time to attend to it.

A convergence of events kept me from spending any guilt-free time gathering my thoughts. There was the inauguration and fun activities in D.C. leading up to it; family visiting; paid editing work coming in; volunteer work deadlines; and, on top of everything else, the school system offering first a four-day weekend (MLK Jr., and Inaugural Tuesday off) then a three-day-weekend through yesterday—which has turned into another four-day-weekend due to what is, so far this morning, a wimpy dusting of snow.

Often in my adult life I've been swept into a current of activity that keeps me from getting to my desk or laptop for more than a few rushed or exhausted moments. Sometimes the current sweeps me further down shore than I imagined I'd be and I have a hard time getting back to where I had been before, or remembering just what lines or dialogue or ideas I'd been conjuring in my head, burning to set down. Ideas not extinguished, exactly, but no longer the same.

Yet I wouldn't want to be out of the current, sitting on shore observing it all. I chose this life, I know, because I would suffer a deep loneliness if I weren't around people in daily, home-based circumstances. I want to be part of a tribe, however small, rather than merely writing about the tribe.

The biggest problem for me in not writing for a few days is not the lost dialogue or forgotten metaphor but the little bit of unease in starting to write again. I've been waiting this long to say something, so it'd better be good. The long silence, though, has left me a bit tongue-tied. The act of writing feels a little unnatural. I've snatched a few moments to type this up this morning before my family awakes (sleeping in late due to the snow). It's all I'll have today since I really should attend to the edits that are sitting in my Inbox and I'll surely need to entertain a child at some point.

I want this to say more, and I wish it had more craft in it, but at least I've said something now and the white box I type into on Blogger is now filled with words.

Literary publications, contests and submissions guidelines available on the Web

In a continued effort to plump up the "Writers' Tools" section of this blog (and for my own use, so I'll have one place to put all these links), here is a list of useful and FREE (non-subscription) web sites for writers yearning to be published in literary journals:

• Literary Magazines :The NewPages Complete List - an A to Z listing of literary magazines, online and print, with links to their web pages. [Note: Newpages.com also has links to Writing Contests and other useful stuff, so check it out.]

• Poets & Writers Literary Magazines  - presents info in a useful column format, so you can see right away which journals accept electronic and simultaneous submissions, and what their reading periods are. Offers a search and a browse feature, as well.

• O. Henry Prize Stories has lists of journals from which it has drawn stories over the years arranged by frequency. It also offers a list of alphabetical Index of Literary Magazines, which gives contact info and web site only for each. The list appears selective (as in journals from whose works they take submissions for the O. Henry Prize) rather than comprehensive.

• The Best American Short Stories anthologies does not seem to have a similarly helpful web site; their web site offers only the barest of details. However, if you look at a paper copy of the most recent anthology, it lists American and Canadian magazines that print short stories.

• Finally, before entering a literary contest, you might want to check it out against the Writer Beware web page: Warnings About Literary Fraud and Other Schemes, Scams, and Pitfalls That Target Writers.

Writer Profile: Mary Amato

Mary Amato is a Maryland writer who writes children’s books and teaches workshops on writing for children at the Writers Center in Bethesda (her next WC workshop, “What’s So Funny: Finding and Writing Humor in Children’s Books,” starts on January 15). Her books include Please Write in This Book, The Naked Mole-Rat Letters, The Word Eater and The Riot Brothers series of chapter books. She has also adapted “Chicken of the Family” as a musical, which premiered in Virginia in April 2008.

Mary has taught public and private school and also has worked as a dance teacher, a choreographer and a puppeteer. She also loves to write songs, sing and play the guitar and is in the duo, Two-Piece Suit.

I’ve heard Mary give presentations on aspects of creativity and spirituality to both children and adults at a local UU church, and have also heard her sing. To be truthful, I’m a little jealous of her ability to get up and perform and speak with such assuredness and grace, and of her seeming ease with moving between public and private personas as a writer/performer/artist. But that jealousy has provided me with much-needed kick-in-the-pants inspiration. She is a mother who has made time to write and has found a way to make a livelihood from her writing—a worthy goal for any other mother who loves to write.

For a list of Mary’s books, additional biographical information, descriptions of the presentations she offers to schools and libraries, and FAQs, see: http://www.maryamato.com/.

How did you decide to write children’s books? Did you write articles for children’s magazines first, or did you start out with a book-length project?

When I was eleven years old, I read Little Women and Harriet the Spy, and those two books made me want to write books of my own. Since I was reading children’s books, those are what I wanted to write! As I grew older, my love for the genre never dimmed. I didn’t know any writers, though, and didn’t believe it was actually possible. Raised to be practical, I got my undergraduate degree in teaching and gave up my dream for a while.

My desire to write kept popping up, though. I tried my hand at writing lots of short books (picture books) first and tried to get those published. I was rejected, but I often received nice rejections, which kept me going. After my first son was born, I decided that if I was going to spend any time away from him, I should spend it doing something that really mattered. I made an intentional commitment to embrace my dream of writing children’s books. I went back to graduate school in creative writing and chose a novel-length children’s book as my thesis project.

Did you have any kind of contract or interested party before you began writing your first children’s book?

I didn’t have any specific interest from an editor, but I did have those “nice rejections” from previous projects. By that time, I had also published a lot of articles, essays and some poetry in major, national magazines. Writing for newspapers and magazines taught me a lot about working on deadline and about being edited.

You said recently that you went from being a very unfunny writer to being a funny one. Was it an intentional change, since you’ve gone from writing for magazines and now write for children, or is it something that just occurred naturally along the way?

I was in graduate school, writing that thesis project—a very dark young-adult novel—when a fellow student told me that my writing lacked even a glimpse of humor. I took that criticism very seriously and began to study humor. I gave myself the task of trying to write a completely new, FUNNY, short story. I did it. Since that day, I have tried to consciously look for and exploit humor in some way in every book I’ve written. I don’t always read the front-page news, but I generally read the comics analytically—to see what works and what doesn’t.

You’re the only female in your household (two sons and a husband). Has this affected what you’ve chosen to write about? Do you think your children’s books would be different in any way if you were raising two dainty little girls?

I have four books out in a series called The Riot Brothers, which are about two wild and crazy boys named Orville and Wilbur Riot. Because I have two sons, people often ask me if the Riot Brothers are my own boys. They aren’t. I do think that my boys have had a huge influence on me as a writer. I grew up in a family of girls, so I didn’t really ever see things from a boy’s point of view. Being a mother of boys has given me much insight into the experiences and inner lives of boys. I feel my boy characters just as vividly as I feel my girl characters.

As a girl, I was a lover of dolls and making doll clothes and little things for my dollhouse. Sometimes I think that if I had girls of my own, a lot of my creative energy might be going into all those projects. Perhaps I would be writing less. Who knows?

Has being a mom influenced your writing or creativity in any other way?

Fay Weldon, an English fiction writer, once said that she refused to allow motherhood to be an excuse to keep her from writing. If she could only write one sentence before being interrupted, she would at least write that one sentence. I gave myself a little lecture when my kids were young: Don’t use them as an excuse. If I had a spare hour to write, I would write as much as possible in that spare hour. My husband would do something fun with the kids every Saturday—like take them to the park—and I would shut myself in the basement and write. (I’m no longer so tough. Now I can’t write in the basement!) The discipline was great.

Of course, seeing children grow up, experiencing all the incredible highs and lows with them has given me a lot of material for characters, for plot elements, for themes and for dialogue. To some extent, you re-experience your own childhood when you are playing with your children or getting them ready for bed, or nursing them through an illness. You are comparing your experiences with theirs. I can get into the mind of a child easily.

Tell me about how you came up with your new character, Amelia E. Hart. You’ve said she is “a great girl to balance out the Riot Brothers.”

Amelia E. Hart is the adventurous and funny cousin who comes to stay with Orville and Wilbur in book IV. The book will be out this spring, and I’m excited because she is such a strong girl character. Even though the Riot Brothers would seem to attract boy fans, I do have a lot of girl fans out there. I know they’re going to like her. The idea for Amelia actually came from a family who wrote me a fan letter. The letter was so great we ended up corresponding. In a follow-up letter, they suggested the idea of a girl cousin coming to visit. I had such fun developing the character and dreaming up surprising ways she could contribute to the Riot Brother world.

How much do you write every week? Do you have a daily schedule, or is it flexible, depending on what other things you have to do that day?

I write Monday-Friday from about 7:45 or so until 3:00 or so. I get grumpy if I don’t write everyday. I do take breaks to exercise, to cook, to do errands, etc.

What’s the best thing about being a children’s book author?

I love the letters I get from kids. They talk about the characters and the stories as if there is no question that they are all real.

One letter in particular was very touching. A teacher had asked her students to do book reports on a favorite book and to make sure and answer the question: What would you change if you could change one thing in the book? A girl wrote to me that she had chosen my book The Naked Mole-Rat Letters because it was her favorite book. This book is about a girl named Frankie who is struggling with her widowed father’s newfound romantic interest in another woman. My fan wrote that the only thing she would have changed in the book would have been to make sure that Frankie’s mother hadn’t ever died. Of course, if Frankie’s mother had never died, there would be no story. That told me that my reader was responding to Frankie’s life as if it were a real life. What a compliment to me, and a reminder of the wonder and power of story.

Where have all the newspaper pages gone?

I went back to North Carolina for the holidays and was saddened when I picked up a copy of the Winston-Salem Journal; it has continued to shrink over the years since I worked there as a reporter but now it's downright puny.

I've looked at the paper's web site, JournalNow, in recent years, but the web site seems cushioned from the stark, skeletal reality of what is now its paper edition. The Local section? It had been merged that day into the last two or three pages of the National section, signified only by a red box at the top that says "Local." Other sections were likewise combined, like Business/Sports. I think the Style section was part of B/S, as well. 

Some of the reporters who remain there seem to be filing two articles a day. And the paper's weekly "Relish" entertainment section seemed to be written entirely by its entertainment reporter, Ed Bumgardner, with the rest of its space filled in by AP/wire stories.

The paper's managing editor, Ken Otterbourg, wrote about some of the earlier job cuts in a November 14, 2006 post on his blog. Gone, at that point, were the movie critic, the NFL sports writer, the outdoor writer, cuts he took pains to justify. (Who has gone since then? And how was it decided who remains? The youngest/cheapest? The irreplaceable/local beats?)

Yes, yes, everything is available on the Internet now; movie reviews can be had on imdb.com and Netflix as well as national newspapers; sports news can be gotten on the wire and reprinted. And who goes outdoors anymore, anyway, what with Rock Band, the Internet and all those charming reality shows to watch on TV?

Maybe it's only nostalgia on my part, but I'm already missing the idea of the local, daily newspaper as the voice of the community. It was never the whole voice, never offered the cacophony of voices that blogs and other electronic mediums have made suddenly, universally available. 

Perhaps that's what I'm missing—its non-universalness, how the community newspaper used to be anchored in one place and time, and wasn't just a compilation of wire stories filled in here and there with local stories filed by harried writers; and how reporters had the opportunity to take all that could be written about a place and filter it through their experience and expertise, so that the most important and newsworthy were sure to be documented.  

The best thing about an active, well-staffed newspaper is that most stories are not filed entirely from a solo perspective (as so much Internet writing is, including this blog), but present an educated, group perspective. Layers of editors there read through and discuss/edit the stories, adding additional perspective and content along the way, and other reporters have the time to discuss their stories and share information and contacts.

I'm not sure this is happening anymore or is going to happen for much longer. We'll have to rely upon thousands of voices of citizen reporters, preoccupied with documenting their own lives, or the few remaining reporters who have only the thinnest layer of expertise guiding them when they cover multiple beats, and write only about the most obvious or the most easily found. 

What's the difference between art and just a good idea?

In my last post, I described some of the ideas/projects that I came up with this year, which I've since had to abandon due to lack of time (or a lack of intense interest on my part). [Since then, I've imported an essay into this blog that I originally wrote for my now-defunct essay-blog, Electronic Closet, which describes another one of the ideas I've had this year that didn't get very far.]

I've been thinking a lot lately about what the difference is between art and just a good idea (or bad idea, for that matter), especially since going down to the Hirshhorn Museum in D.C. a few weeks ago. One of the exhibits that sparked this internal discourse was Yoko Ono's Wish Tree. There, in the museum's sculpture garden, near Rodin's exquisite "Burghers of Calais," is a tree that has been planted ("installed"), to which people attach little notes describing what they wish for. A tree. That has been "installed." Which has tiny slips of paper all over its branches.

Still, I can't begrudge the fact that at least it's a tree, which is beneficial for the environment. And that wishes in and of themselves are not a bad thing. It may qualify as a piece of art, even within my own exacting perspective, since one of my definitions of art is something that people respond to. My daughter ran from the museum, across the street and back to the tree, when I told her she could post a wish if she wanted.

Harder for me, in trying to acknowledge what is art, is the museum's interior Panza Collection exhibit. This includes a whole wall of nothing but "REDUCED" painted on it and a large room in which a rectangular slab of white broken rocks is set out (the rocks are called"Carrara Line"—from 1985; I wonder how they manage to set it up exactly the same way each time since the rocks all look almost the same). It would all have an Emperor's New Clothes feeling to it except that I stood there in the large room and wondered how many homeless people could be sleeping in the space at night. It could have easily have held 20 or more cots, which would have been a worthier use of the space, in my opinion. All that heat and space and light for a bunch of rocks in the floor.

I really don't know why it is there. I'm sure an art expert could justify it to me and I might be, eventually, convinced that it is worthy of the space. But that would be after days and nights of talking on their part, given little sleep and little food, worn down finally by such an argument. Otherwise, I think I would remain pretty resistant and unswayed. Especially when I think of artists more deserving of the space, who aren't there only because they aren't known.

I don't think there's any way that Yoko Ono's Wish Tree would be standing in the garden if she hadn't married John Lennon. I know she was somewhat well known before she hooked up with John, but I'm thinking maybe she would have receded into some kind of thankful obscurity by now, save for her marriage to a famous man.

So how does a piece of writing or art become visible? Is it the loudest artist whose work gets known, and survives? Or, is it the artist who can hone his work down to one clear idea/theme/object, or who is best at self-promotion or has the most connections?

I am trying to hone down what it is that I do and want to do, but ideas keep popping up in my head and sometimes I let myself pursue them just a little; I abandon them only when reality calls me back—dirty dishes, things I do to make money, children who need attention. If I were Yoko Ono, I'm wondering if my collaborative blog on places people have lived would be thriving by now. Or Ullysses as a Seinfeld episode would have been produced by an experimental theatre.

As a joke, a long time ago, I created a character in my little magazine named Margarene Crisco. I described her hanging up laundry on a clothesline in cities all over the country as a feminist statement about women's oppression, which of course was also a rip-off of the more famous Christo hangings in wide-open spaces. Since then, I've read of several such clothesline art projects (to broadcast renewable energy, exhibit unmentionables, showcase the clothesline itself, etc.). Was my idea also "art," though it wasn't tactile, just a description?

I have a lot of writing in notebooks and on scraps of paper, tucked into boxes and file cabinets. I'm not sure, sometimes, what to bring out and put on display, what to spend my time on developing. Perhaps the successful artist also knows how to select and hone, how to find and concentrate on a few things, and has the assurance that this is what the world has been waiting for.

Call Outs called off—Culling the unnecessary in order to write

In another of what is proving to be my continuing series of learning to let go of things I don't really need to do, I'm calling off my blog feature, "Call Outs," in which I asked writers to weigh in on various topics like rejection, tracking submissions,  etc.

I liked the idea of reaching out to other writers through this blog, but in order to get people to respond, I had to solicit in places beyond it (e.g., writers' networks), and then weigh the responses and choose the best. And that was with just a few responses. If the feature (and response rate) had grown, I fear I would have found myself in the same situation I found myself in as a little magazine publisher years ago—using my free time to read submissions from other people and, conversely, not having as much time to submit my own things elsewhere.

But it's not just the time factor. Since a blog is essentially a vanity publication, I realized that it's OK if most of the material comes from me. After I posted the Call Out topic on how writers make a living, I also realized I've been waiting to write something about this for years, having collected information on the occupations of well-known writers (which I'll share later).

So far this year I've started three blogs that I've since shut down or put into hiatus:

• The Electronic Closet of Beth Blevins' Overactive Mind, a blog composed strictly of short essays on any topic that popped in my head, which I shut down after I recognized that some of those posts might actually work as the basis for longer/better essays;
  
• Cooking for Four, the food/cooking blog that was supposed to make me money; and
  
• Places I Have Lived, which was supposed to be a collaborative blog in which I invited friends and writers to reflect on places they'd lived in the past, but to which no one had the time to respond. (I had envisioned this blog as an updated/electronic version of my earlier zine, particularly its "Neighborhood" issue, in which I asked readers to describe their current living situations.)

I've also started three web sites this year—two as companions to my blogs (cooking and places), and one, How Do Women Write?, which was never quite finished, but which became the impetus for my still-current Quotes About Creative Women blog. 

If these had been started on paper, no one would ever know about them, or find them, and my negligence to them would never have been known. The Internet makes my failings all the more visible.

Yet, I'm not sure it is a failing to stop something that I can't do well, or to learn to set more realistic goals for myself. I am trying to hone down all that I do creatively into activities that will strengthen my writing and my avocation as a writer. If this were a true publication and not just a self-produced blog, of course I would be soliciting ideas and stories from other writers. Or, if I were a well-known writer, I suppose that my ideas might carry enough weight that I could get other people to carry them out for me (Jeff Koons-style).

I wish had enough energy and time to pursue all the ideas I have. I'm hoping that the ideas that I make the time to pursue will prove worthy of their selection.

In the meantime, I intend to continue my Writer Profile feature, since I consider it an apprenticeship, of sorts, which is allowing me to learn from other writers who come from a diversity of genres and fields. I hope to publish at least 10 more writer interviews in the next year. Stay tuned.

Why a raconteur should never fear consulting a dictionary

As a child, I never heard anyone pronounce the word “ennui.” The rural Southern people I grew up with were too busy to be bored and the moments that might have been dull, they sat and talked. So, from the first time I encountered “ennui” in a book until, years later, when my (sometimes French-speaking) spouse gently corrected me, I pronounced it “N-U.”

Maybe I had looked up “ennui” in a dictionary at one point, but somehow my mind could not grasp how anything with two Ns could not have a strong “n” sound in the middle. And though that dictionary might have told me that “ennui” meant weariness and boredom, in my mind “ennui” sounded like sadness. I’m sure I said more than once in college, “I’m feeling a little ‘N-U’ today” and no one corrected me—perhaps they thought I was speaking of some condition or university they had never heard of.

A similar thing happened with “poignant.” Though I correctly understood its meaning, I pronounced it like someone’s poor attempt at saying “pregnant” with a Jersey accent. This, too, my husband corrected me on, not so gently this time. After years of hearing me mispronouncing it he finally shouted “It’s ‘poi-nyent’ not ‘poigg-nannt’!” Incredulous, I had to have him pronounce it several times before I believed him.

I consider myself somewhat of an autodidact, notwithstanding the efforts of several of my high school teachers who attempted to bring me viewpoints and correct pronunciations from their educated perspectives. But I have been a lazy autodidact because, too often, I forget to consult a dictionary when encountering new words, taking their meaning from their current contexts only.

Consequently, when I arrived at a writing workshop given by my friend, Kim Dana Kupperman, a couple of months ago, I did not heed her advice when she set out a dictionary at the start of a writing exercise and suggested we consult it if we needed clarity on any of the terms she was going to give us. She asked us to write a short description of our first kiss then passed around a paper bag filled with little slips of folded paper and told us to randomly choose a new persona from which to rewrite our descriptions. I pulled out “raconteur.”

“‘Raconteur’ is akin to ‘rake’ and thus is a bawdy retelling of a story,” I told myself, realizing it was another word that I had simply breezed through while reading, on the assumption that I already knew its meaning. But I didn’t want to get up in front of the class and look it up since Kim had introduced me to the class as one of her old college buddies, which in my mind, was someone who should have known what ‘raconteur’ meant. Thus, my innocent and somewhat accidental first kiss became a tale of conquest and bragging.

Kim had us read our revised passages aloud and have the rest of the class guess our persona. “This one will be easy,” I promised my classmates, but no one could guess it and Kim looked puzzled since it didn’t seem to be a persona she had put in the bag. I leaned over and pointed it out on the list of personas on her desk. “It’s that one,” I whispered, thinking she would understand and be able to enlighten the class; when she still looked puzzled, I knew I was in trouble.

In retrospect, it was one of those a-ha moments that everyone needs, both humbling and clarifying. I now intend to consult a dictionary more frequently, especially anytime one is offered to me, and I hope I will not be too arrogant to use it.

Still, I have to admit, I blushed a bit that day, and blush a little now, thinking back to that moment. It all makes me a little poignant with N-U.