Feb. 13, from Introduction to Dialogue

• she likes to talk about the negative stuff and all of her annoying bad author friends

• we should do more short assignments, that is a good idea

  • “‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’” Mentioned in the book, quote from E. L. Doctorow

• perfectionism chapter:

  • “Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it is going to get” - example for why first drafts should be very drafty, otherwise we think we don’t have to edit

• they wrote so much about school lunches! (in the school lunches chapter)

  • but that would be a fun project, we should try it

• the characters chapter would be a good one to re-read

  • it mentioned how you can base characters on people you know, or yourself, like what we were talking about with Max

  • it’s good to think about characters as people not just pawns to fulfill the plot (Ella quote)

  • give characters a thing to identify them - “give him a cigar, give her piggy little alcoholic eyes”

  • don’t make your characters fake

• in the plot chapter, it was talking about just writing about your characters and letting them tell you the plot

• Ella is good at making drafty drafts, Mayla is not

Feb 24, Dialogue to Broccoli

• read your dialogue out loud, make sure its good dialogue

• set design: imagine a scene in your story as a set for a play or movie, ask others for help designing your sets if they know what something looks like and you don’t, seek others who know what you’re writing about and have experienced it, to get help if you haven’t experienced what you’re writing about

• sometimes stories go in a different direction than you originally expected, but that's okay and it ultimately helps you discover more about the characters and the story

• plot treatment: sometimes you have to change around the order of events in your plot, you have to workshop it if you don't like it, also sometimes it is helpful to write an outline of what happens in each chapter of the story, to outline the plot

• you know when you're done when you’re done :)

• looking around: pay attention!

• the moral point of view: you write about what you care about, so you have to care about what you write about

Feb 17, Broccoli to Calling Around

• Broccoli:

  • listen to your inner broccoli, it will tell you what to do

  • Ella says that broccoli isn’t good steamed, so she is calling her intuition cauliflower (which isn’t good steamed either, but it's good baked) (the book says that broccoli is is your intuition)

  • “Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.” -page 114

• Radio Station KFKD

  • turn off the radio station noise in your head so that you can actually write

  • the author’s suggestions for how to do that: prayer, small-animal sacrifice, breathing (Ella will choose to sacrifice a ladybug or a tick, Mayla would sacrifice a mosquito)

• Jealousy

  • Ella is jealous a lot and that helps her write!

  • you should laugh about your jealousy

  • everyone is jealous, unless they have no aspirations and no friends (Ella quote)

  • Anne Lammott must have no friends, especially after the publishing of this book - she’s always insulting them and talking about how horrible they are

  • “the only things to help ease or transform it (jealousy) are (a) getting older, (b) talking about it until the fever breaks, and (c) using it as material.” - page 124

• Index Cards:

  • We forgot what we were going to discuss about this chapter, we should have written it down on index cards (the chapter was about writing stuff down on index cards so you don’t forget it)

  • It mentioned time passing - that is a good writing skill that we need to work on

  • Ella writes index cards about random thoughts, lyrics for songs, and ideas for art - most of which happens late at night

March 24, Calling Around to Writing a Present

• Calling Around:

  • if you don’t know about something, call someone who actually knows about it

  • Ella observed that she doesn’t write about something if she doesn’t know about it, that is why Calling Around is helpful

  • this is why Mayla has not written about water pollution in her story yet, because she doesn’t know about it and she doesn’t want to research :)

• Writing Groups:

  • writing groups are good for getting feedback on your work

  • also they help to pressure you to actually write!

  • we have a writing group but we don’t meet very often

• Someone to Read Your Drafts:

  • get someone to read your drafts who can give you real honest feedback (so like not your parents)

  • “writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water - just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.” - page 170 - 171

  • it is good to get someone to read your work to see what makes sense and what doesn’t and what parts are good and what parts are shitty

  • criticism is hard but helpful

• Letters:

  • if you write in the form of a letter sometimes that helps you start writing without trying to be so perfect

  • especially a letter to someone you love or one of the characters in your writing

  • “The letter’s informality just might free you from the tyranny of perfectionism.” - page 172

  • Anne Lamott was saying that she wrote a lot by starting the writing as a letter

  • we should write some stuff in letter format!

• Writer’s Block:

  • thinking of writer’s block as BLOCK makes you get writer’s block

  • just accept that you are struggling to find inspiration in this moment, and go and get inspired

  • if you don’t know what to write just set a word-count goal and once you achieve that goal, take a break

• Writing a Present

  • this chapter was about how your writing can be a present for someone you love

  • all of Anne Lamott’s examples of when she did this was for dying people, but you can also just write something as a gift for someone even if they’re not dying

  • Ella has been thinking about writing a short story as a Christmas present for someone

  • Mayla once tried to write a short story as a Christmas present for someone, but then she never finished it

  • another way that your writing can be a present for someone is if you are writing about your memories with them

April 5, Finding Your Voice through The Last Class

• Finding Your Voice

  • write about the bad stuff that other people don’t talk about

  • don’t try to write like someone else, just try to write like yourself

  • 
    

• Giving

  • if you write like you only have a certain amount of writing and inspiration supply, then you won’t be able to write anything good

  • instead, you need to write like you have an endless supply of inspiration

  • give all that you can to your writing

• Publication

  • don’t be like Ella and think that publication is the best part of writing

  • it is about the experience of telling stories

  • and if you let your publishedness get to your ego that’s bad

  • but publishing can also be cool sometimes because you get to share your story with more people

• The Last Class

  • write about real people (especially ones you don’t like), but disguise them so you don’t get sued (Anne Lamott says the trick is to give them small penises)

  • use real experiences from your life, that makes the writing more real

  • write about what you know about with real emotion

  • “writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation.” (page 237)

  • “we are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again” (page 237)

Questions for The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

 The old sexist society was said to reduce women to mere physical objects. Has this changed? 

Perhaps they are seen less as sexual objects, but they are still seen as objects nonetheless. They are things to cook and clean, or to have children, or to play the role of a docile happy wife. The handmaid’s are not thought of as people with real emotions or feelings or past lives. Their whole being is judged on whether they can become pregnant. 

Why does she lie about her reaction when the Commander asks her to kiss him? 

Offered shows herself rebellious, thinking about a way to use the commander's desire against him, maybe she wishes she were strong enough to actually kill him. Then she shows herself as passive but still strong in herself, defiant, she doesn’t kiss the commander “As if you mean it”. Maybe she really did something she is not proud of and ashamed to tell. 

What power does Offred have over men, powerless as she is? 

“As we walk away I know they’re watching, these two men who aren't yet permitted to touch women. They touch me with their eyes instead and I move my hips a little, feeling the full red skirtsway around me.” - page 22 

She teases the men. With little media, those guardians rarely see other women. Offred tortures them in her own little way. She finds the small scraps of power and holds onto them.  

Has the elimination of pornography stopped women from being regarded as sex objects? 

Theoretically, it would help, but pornography isn’t the only way to make a woman a sex object. And there are still places like Jezebel’s, they are still sex objects, it is just kept quiet. 

How are the Japanese women different from the women of Gilead? Is Atwood idealizing them? What do you think the point of the contrast is? 

They wear “short” skirts, which aren’t even very short, nail polish and high heels. They are not treated as only things to cook or have babies. Their presence captures just how controlled the women of Gilead are, but it also highlights that not everywhere is like it. In other countries women have much more freedom. Other countries also know what’s happening and they haven’t seemed to do anything about it. 

They are somewhat idealized, but I think this makes sense. They are seen and described from the perspective of Offred who has none of what they have, but remembers having such freedoms once. 

What is the function of the Wall? 

The Wall is used as something to invoke fear. It shows the people of Gilead what will happen if they misbehave. It’s a sort of grimm warning, like a gruesome bedtime story for children to get them to behave. 

“They have committed atrocities and must be made into examples for the rest.”- page 33 

Offred uses it as a way to have some knowledge of her loved ones. She checks to make sure Luke is not on the Wall and is revived, for a moment at least, that he could still be alive. 

 Why does Offred envy Rita her access to the knife? 

Any weapon to hurt oneself or others is power. In her room anything that could be used to commit suicide has been removed. Even if Offred didn’t plan on hurting herself, the possession of a knife, the knowledge that she could if she wished, that would be power for her. 

What hope keeps Offred alive?

“I also believe that they didn’t catch him or catch up with him after all, that he made it,” - page 105

Offred believes many things about Luke, she believes that he is dead, or captured, but she also still hopes that maybe he is alive somewhere and he will send her a message or rescue her and their daughter, and in some far off someday they could be a happy family again.

Thoughts on the ending: 

Offred's story ends with the unknown. She is taken away in a van with unfamiliar people. She doesn't know if they are enemies or friends. So maybe she will be punished or maybe she will be rescued. This seems like a fitting ending for her story, throughout the whole book she has not been rebellious or stronger or luckier than the other handmaids, so why would she have a miraculous happy ending? Although it very well could be, it is not the kind of book with a big revolution, an uprising of the oppressed, a hero. It is just the story of one person living in that time. There is not much of a climax, or a build up, so I think it is the most satisfying ending that it is left to the unknown. 

In the “historical notes'' the reader is given a new perspective on Offred and her time period. It is framed as a professor giving a talk about her story. It was found in a foot locker, her story hidden in cassette tapes. This suggests that she survived at least long enough to write and hide her tale, but it leaves me wondering whether she actually escaped, if she ever found her family, how did her story end. I think this ending also works well with the story. The whole world has been made to seem somewhat plausible, and the historical note makes it feel even more so. It implies that she could’ve made it out of Gilead, but it still leaves me with questions.