Want to write? Read. So says Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Skube, in an editorial written for the L.A. Times.  

Skube is somewhat critical of most creative writing programs, suggesting “The aim is not competency in the plain carpentry of prose but self-expression and creativity. It is the Little League of Art. Nothing wrong with self-expression. But it’s worth asking when self-expression devolves into self-spelunking and the preening narcissism evident everywhere on the Internet.” 

Those of us who want to become great writers, Skube says, need to expose ourselves to “highly accomplished writing” and then emulate it. As example, he offers up one of the most elegant pieces of writing I’ve ever read — an elegy composed by E. B. White for his wife.

“Armed with a diagram and a clipboard, Katharine would get into a shabby old Brooks raincoat much too long for her, put on a little round wool hat, pull on a pair of overshoes, and proceed to the director’s chair — a folding canvas thing — that had been placed for her at the edge of the plot. There she would sit, hour after hour, in the wind and the weather, while Henry Allen produced dozens of brown paper packages of new bulbs and a basketful of old ones, ready for the intricate interment. As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance — the small, hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.”  

I wish I had a list of the books E. B. White read while learning to writing this well.

Just finished a phone interview with Sports Illustrated. It seems a reporter’s been tracking my piece of legislation and, after seeing the article in the L.A. Times this morning, he wants to do a story for their magazine. 

OMG, what an unlikely connection: I don’t enjoy spectator sports (please pass the remote), and I’ve never even read a sports magazine! But hey, it’s all good, as long as the bill’s underlying issue gets the attention it deserves.

(Credits: The title’s a riff on a line in Legally Blonde.)

Today’s Los Angeles Times includes a story about violence and student athletes, with reference to California Assembly Bill 2165.  In my view, author Paul Pringle frames the issue a bit too narrowly, focusing most of his lengthy article on two-year college athletic programs, and only those within the state of California. Nevertheless, it’s another bright spotlight shining down on a serious problem that’s been allowed to flourished under cover of darkness for far too long. 

Here are two brief excerpts: 

“Over the last half-dozen years, athletes at California’s two-year colleges — the nation’s largest higher-education system — have been arrested on suspicion of murder, rape, felony assault and burglary, among other offenses.

You can read the entire article here.

Maya Angelou once noted, “We are more alike than we are unalike.” Her words are a ray of hope in these troubled times. So over coffee this morning, I challenged myself to find similarities with leaders from across the political aisle. 

When I kept my focus on writing-related connections, I discovered two examples fairly quickly, despite an incomplete dose of caffeine.

1) President Bush’s press conference notes look a lot like my own draft outlines — absolutely unintelligible to anyone but me.

2) Secretary Rumsfeld’s verbal gymnastics bear striking similarities to the mental twists and turns I take while forming chapters from my notes:

“As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know, but there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”  Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Yes, I know my reach across the aisle was a stretch. Regardless, I’m going to keep my emphasis on the positive today, looking for examples that support Maya Angelou’s encouraging words. First, I’ll pour myself another mug of coffee. I’m hoping that’ll help. 

When I was a little girl, my mother gave me her own version of the lemming speech. (You know the one: “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you follow them?” ) Except hers was more a challenge than a question. “If you don’t stand for something,” she warned, “you’ll fall for everything.”

This watercolor and poem hangs on my wall, a symbolic representation of that axiom. Unfortunately, the colors are muddied in this image, but the poem’s message is clear:

During this morning’s press conference, President Bush sent me running for my Webster’s.

A reporter tried to follow up on a question the president was circumventing. “Don’t interrupt me,” Bush chided, “I’m perorating.” He chuckled to himself and then added, “Look it up in your dictionary.”

And so I did.

Perorating. v. 1. To conclude a speech with a formal recapitulation. 2. To speak at great length, often in a grandiloquent* manner.

*Grandiloquent. adj. Pompous or bombastic speech or expression.

Ah, yup. That sums things up rather nicely.

Finally, the finish line of AB 2165’s legislative marathon is just around the corner.  And if yesterday’s vote is any indication, it seems (dare I say it?) justice will soon be taking a victory lap. 

Here are the final mileposts to passage:

August 16 (yesterday):  The California Senate passed unanimously California Assembly Bill 2165!  

On or after August 18 (likely, next Monday):  The California Assembly will conduct a floor vote, to indicate the Assembly’s concurrence with the Senate. (It’s likely a pro forma vote, but please keep this in your thoughts.)

Within 12 days of the Assembly vote, Governor Schwarzenneger must sign or veto the bill.

The L.A .Times has been holding its story on the bill pending the Senate vote, but the reporter told me it should be in print any day now. And USA Today promises a follow-up to their initial article once the bill’s on the way to the Governor.

Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, now an MSNBC commentator, posed this provocative question: Is Bush an “Idiot”?  

(YouTube video, MSNBC transcript, and  Scarborough’s follow-up editorial)

I found the clips and editorial comments fascinating, in a gallows-humor sense of the word. Mostly, though, I was embarrassed for our President and, yes, for our country. I cringed while listening to his verbal inelegance  — cacaphonous evidence to my ear (and increasingly, to those of former syncophants) that Mr. Bush isn’t suited for the presidency, a job that demands the utmost degree of mental acuity and rhetorical skill. 

This isn’t comedy. It’s a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions.