The School of Life

This is for You: We All Need Words on Dedications and Acknowledgements.

When I was five, I lied.

I told friends at my primary school that an author had dedicated a book to me. In print. And everything.

This white lie got me in a bit of hot water. “Bring it in and show us then”, they said. “OK.”

Except the book didn’t exist. One fib led to another and I decided to write my own dedication in a way that (I thought) looked like type: For Molly Mackey.

(I wrote it in pencil, because I wasn’t old enough to write in pen.)

The book was Terry Jones’s Fairy Tales, which included a story called ‘Brave Molly’, so it made sense to me that it would be dedicated to a real life Molly. I wrote it on the inside page, hoping my friends wouldn’t get to the actual dedication: these stories were written for Sally Jones in the summer of 1978.

I still have the book. And you can see my hand-written ‘dedication’, along with the very faint ‘for’, rubbed out after my super sleuth friends quickly discovered the truth:

It’s a laughable forgery. I think I knew it at the time, but I really, really wanted to have a book dedicated to me. I thought it was the Best. Thing. Ever. That someone could write a book and say, “here, this is for you” blew my mind.

 It still does. The first thing I do when I pick up a book – any book – is look at the dedication in the front and the thanks at the back. If I’m in a bookshop, browsing the three-for-two mounds, I don’t read the blurbs. I head straight for the names, the little bit where the author writes in their own voice.

Sometimes they tell you how they’re connected to that name on the first page (for Kate, my mother). Mostly I have to settle for the bare bones. For… but then my brain goes into overdrive (“must be his partner/wife/sister/mum/best friend”). I swiftly make up my own stories about how the name in print is connected to the name on the front cover.

Sometimes authors give you a little more, like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous Once again to Zelda. In Nicole Krauss’ The History of Love, the dedication reads: for my grandparents, who taught me the opposite of disappearing, next to their four photos, as well as and for Jonathan, my life. You don’t have to be a Nobel prizewinner to know that’s Jonathan Safran Foer. Ahhh. Lovely! Two authors! Together! In love!

All the time I search for scraps of information. Something, anything, about the author. Why? I don’t know for sure, but what I do know is that I spend a lot of time with an author when I read their books. I hear their voice. I’m in their head, and they’re in mine. Even if it’s outlandish fiction, their book becomes like a familiar friend. And as the book goes on I want to know more. So much so that I feel a bit of disorientated when I pick up a book written by someone else. And although it’s exciting to read a new book, I have to get to know the writer’s little wordy eccentricities and foibles all over again. And each new dedication gives me a teeny tiny glimpse into their real life. 

And then there are the acknowledgements. Tucked away at the back, it’s often where you can find out where the author put pen to paper (thanks to such-and-such-research centre, writers’ retreat or Starbucks), who helped them get their facts straight, who edited their book and who they relied on to look after the kids while they wrote it. I love these sneak peeks into an author’s real life. There are books I’m just not interested in reading, but I’ll always have a look at their acknowledgements. Just a few little words, but they’re a story in themselves – admittedly one that’s often made up by me.

Three years after my playground dedication debacle, I finally got what I’d boasted about. My mum’s friend was writing a book and her illustrator needed some children to photograph to help her draw the pictures. If by any (small) chance you have a copy of Rose Impey’s Scare Yourself to Sleep, you’ll see it’s For Tom, Molly and Alice (me, my brother and my best friend). Too late to prove my point to the five-year-olds, but a fib come true all the same.

We All Need Words dedicate this blog post to the people who’ve come to our Words for Life class at The School of Life (there’s another one on 3^rd December).

If you set up a free school, what would yours be like?

One thing's for sure, ours wouldn't be like the West London Free School, the new school run by parents and led by the author and Telegraph columnist Toby Young.

Of course, you might object to the idea of setting up a free school altogether, least of all because many of the first free schools have been set up by parents in well-off areas to start with. But if we sidestep those thorny issues for after class and just look at the style of the West London Free School, it's clear it wishes it was a five-hundred-year-old grammar school. You can see it in the pupils' blue blazers, the headteacher's black gown, traditional subjects and compulsory Latin. It even has its own Latin motto "Sapere Aude" (dare to learn). It's all very Harry Potter. 

So who cares if parents want to make their school feel so old-fashioned? Well, we do. Without getting all debating society about it, it says a lot about the confidence in our children's future to dream up something that so desperately wishes it was in the past. Imagine if The School of Life had the same rigid ideas of right and wrong subjects and rules. That we wouldn't teach you unless you wore the right blazer and you'd polished your shoes. But when a bunch of well-meaning parents in West London were given a blank slate (and chalk) that's the vision they came up with.

One thing that attracted us to The School of Life in the first place (we were students and fans first, weekend teachers second) was that it didn't feel anything like school or a typical evening class. The style of a school matters and has an impact on us in our later lives. We know this because people who come to our writing class at The School of Life tell us. We've seen it on the faces of some of the more nervous writers at the start too, and in their I-didn't-know-I-could-do-it faces when they realise there's been a brilliant writer inside them all along.

If you think of a writing class most people instantly have flashbacks to lessons about grammar, apostrophes and the dreaded red pen. We don't do any of that. Not that a few rules don't matter, they do. It's just that for most people steadfast grammar rules are wrapped up with fears of getting them wrong. So they worry more about the grammar than about what makes writing a bloody great read.

So if you've been thinking about coming to our Words for Life class but you've been worried about whether you're up to it, or if you've been held back by the autumn (shudder) feeling of going back to school, then this is the writing course for you. We won't get out a red pen once. That's our school motto. 

Rob and Molly run We All Need Words, helping companies with words and branding. They're running our Words for Life weekend on the 8th of October and 3rd of December.

Ben Irvine on Working Definitions

“I'm a bit of a perfectionist… See, for me, it's got to be the best, or it's nothing at all. Like, if things get a bit dodgy, I just can’t be bothered.”   Spud, Trainspotting

The Journal of Modern Wisdom, a new volume of essays of which I am editor, is imperfect. And I don’t care. Don’t get me wrong: I care very much about promoting wisdom. The point is: I believe that doing so is important enough that even imperfect wisdom is better for the wellbeing of society than none at all. 

To judge by the irate emails I’ve received from a few philosophers, you’d think I was working for the Thought Police. Apparently “you can’t define wisdom” – or at least not without, bizarrely, recognizing the impossibility first. That’s funny, because contributors Richard Layard, Theodore Dalrymple, Judith Rich Harris, Stephen Bayley and David Cooper, among others (not to mention numerous lexicographers), have all had a good crack at it.  

It’s tempting to dismiss the pedants by pointing out that if you can’t define wisdom you probably can’t define ‘email’ either, so they needn’t have bothered sending me one. But that’d be to fall into the same trap. Sometimes it’s preferable and more progressive to rise above constricting debates. That, indeed, is the key idea behind the journal; along with the contention that the more intellectuals do the same, the more society as a whole will be becalmed.

Those emails remind me of the scene in Trainspotting in which Danny “Spud” Murphy attends a job interview and tries to give the impression that he wants the job (otherwise the DSS will cancel his benefits) but without actually getting it. A delicate balancing act, which he clumsily fails to pull off. “It's got to be the best, or it's nothing at all”: the joke is that Spud’s ‘perfectionism’ is as unlikely to achieve perfection as anything could be. As Winston Churchill pointed out, ‘success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm’.

If, like me, you’re a recovered philosopher, you’ll see what my analogy is getting at. The definition (oops, there I go again) of traditional philosophizing is to demand perfection, whether in knowledge or ethics or wisdom, while doing none of the usual dirty work necessary to achieve these things in the real world. Scientists get nit-picked, psychologists hen-pecked, activists scoffed at, and politicians sneered at. Anyone who rolls up his sleeves and has a go – armed only with a working definition and a working mentality – can find himself the target of cynicism from phoney perfectionists.

So let’s do some more workaday defining. ‘Spud’s law’ states that if you insist on possessing only the perfect definition of an ideal then you are significantly less likely to bring about that ideal in the real world than if you attempt to do so by means of an imperfect working definition. Let that be the rallying cry of the Journal of Modern Wisdom.

Ben Irvine is editor of the new Journal of Modern Wisdom. www.modernwisdom.co.uk

 Image: Spud (Ewen Bremner) from Trainspotting - directed by Danny Boyle

 

 

 

 

 

Fact: Reading Fiction Makes You A Nicer Person

 ...Or at least a more empathetic one, according to studies carried out by Buffalo Univeristy, USA.

The trick seems to lie in reader's absorption into fictional stories, and the tendency for readers to emulate the 'situation' of the characters in their novels, indicating that on some level, they can 'put themselves in their characters' shoes... or, in other words, have some empathy towards that character.

"It is the first empirical finding, so far as I know, to show a clear psychological effect of reading fiction," says Keith Oatley, a professor in the Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the University of Toronto.  
 
"It's a result that shows that reading fiction improves understanding of others, and this has a very basic importance in society, not just in the general way making the world a better place by improving interpersonal understanding, but in specific areas such as politics, business, and education. In an era when high-school and university subjects are evaluated economically, our results do have economic implications."

Read the full article at The Guardian online.

If you're keen to find more great fiction reads, visit our Bibliotherapy page to get some assistance with your book list.

 

Fionnuala Barrett on Goethe and Fashioning Ourselves on What We Love

Goethe said, amongst many other clever things during his lifetime that “we are shaped and fashioned by what we love”.  Like all other statements which reinforce the idea that we are captains of our own destiny, there is an onerous, if not a frightening, edge to this statement: one must take responsibility for one’s own actions.  If you are spending hours of every week in a vegetative state in front of the TV or wasting away hours scrolling through celebrity tweets – well, then that waste of time is no-one’s fault but your own, and is certainly not to be laid at the door of a tawdry, celebrity-obsessed culture or the crippling power of modern media to keep you enslaved.  As I said, Goethe’s statement is onerous, if only because it robs us of such comfortable scapegoats.

Goethe’s point can be mightily empowering, if embraced in the right way.  A prime example of someone latching on to this sentiment is Jay-Z.  In his 2010 memoir Decoded, Jay-Z says of his formative years that he and his fellows “were kids without fathers … so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift.  We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves … Our fathers were gone but we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.”

Thus Goethe’s maxim became for Jay-Z an enormously potent means of overcoming all of sorts of familial and societal narratives which would otherwise keep the nascent rapper down.  He forged his own narrative and, in his own words, inspired the world he was to make for himself through a conscious adoption of that which he would love.  As a strategy for living well, it hasn’t served him so badly.

Fionnuala Barrett is a freelance writer who blogs at http://basilexposition.wordpress.com/

Lizzie Shupack on Anger and Synchronicity

Week 3 of The Artist's Way, is all about emotions.  The chapter starts with Anger.  It continues with further discussion about Synchronicity.  I found the passage about Anger extremely synchronous, given that prior to reading it, I had just had a blow-out argument, centered around my struggle to make decisions about what I want, what I need, and what I am striving for, both in this process and beyond.

Helpfully, Cameron explains that Anger is useful, and is there to be listened to.  That said, she does note that it is "to be acted upon.  It is not meant to be acted out." Oops…  Nonetheless, I am glad that the emotional turbulence that surrounds me, has some context, and I am relieved that I'm not an anomaly in my confusion.  

In my first post, I wrote that one of my motivations for embarking on this process, was to become unselfconsciously creative, and find clarity around what it is in life that makes me fulfilled, makes me feel excited, makes me feel proud of what I do.

It's a big ask to be honest.  Those are big questions.  In my case, they are also complicated by the fact that as I write this, I'm sitting in Kaffe 1668 in New York, which means that in the three weeks since embarking on this course, I've travelled to five cities; cities which are all inspiring, creative and full of people and opportunities which all contribute to my decision-making process.

However, despite all that, the biggest thing that's holding me back, is without doubt, me.  Cameron spends some time talking about Shame, which I think is deeply tied to self-esteem and confidence.  Shame is often what prevents people from pursuing creative projects; "What if my work/my idea isn't any good?", "I can't write about that, it's too embarrassing!", "If I'm not honest, this won't have integrity, and I'm too scared to be honest".  They are all understandable fears, but fears that keep us wedded to analytical work, and logic-based activities, which are all very safe.  And very boring.

Cameron therefore suggests, that you find a couple people who can nurture and protect your early work.  Your prototypes, test-cases, scribbles, stories.  They are probably not the people you go to for constructive criticism - that’s a whole different thing - but instead they are simply proud of you and your aspirations, and have the creative and emotional intelligence to help you along.

Throughout all this, Cameron advises you to be nice to yourself.  To not beat yourself up, and to accept compliments and nice things from people along the way - things like an invitation to dinner, or new socks.  She acknowledges that yes, you will be babying yourself, but that thinking positively, and kindly, will go a lot further towards aiding your productivity; creative or otherwise, than tough-love or deprivation.

Next week, Week 4, is about Integrity.  And it requires a whole week of reading deprivation!!!!!!  A whole week!!  Beyond the books, magazines and newspapers I read, I have at least 50 RSS feeds and hundreds of bookmarked articles that I look through all the time...  Help!

 

'The Artist's Way' is by Julia Cameron and can be found at amazon.com

Lizzie Shupak is a Digital and Brand Strategist.  She is also one half of the international social experience, Wok+Wine.  She is currently on a journey of creative discovery, which may or may not affect her biography, in the weeks and months ahead.

Wok+Wine - The World's Most Delicious Social Network

Global Lifestyle Project - A Global Experiment in Lifestyle Design

Nick Turpin on Photographing the Small Details of Life

What could be more ordinary than a stretch of public pavement? When did you last stand and watch a stretch of public pavement or a street corner?

If you take the time you will see that the street can be a stage for the most amazing dramas, you will see that comedies, tragedies and romances unfold in full public view and that the street is a theatre. This is the world of the Street Photographer where the ordinary and everyday is very often more remarkable than any imagined fiction.

Working with small quiet cameras Street Photographers hover, follow and stake out the actors of this pedestrian play. Waiting with a rectangle and a shutter button to edit the chaos and flux into something beautiful, poignant and ordered that can be held up and studied forever.  

I think of Street Photography as a revelatory act because through the act of photography and in particular photographing the small details of life, the world we live in is revealed to us. The pictures provide a rare mirror in which to see our own society, working, earning, shopping, spending, texting, eating lunch out of a plastic triangle.

I have had a lot of faith in this way of working, even when it was not as popular as it is today. I find these street pictures to be more relevant than the images from any other photographic strategy. They appear simple but I find them harder to make than any of the big commercial or editorial projects I work on. Street Photography is the greatest challenge in photography, there is no equipment to hide behind and no crew to assist you, but it is also the most satisfying experience to pluck a moment of wonder from nowhere.

Watch Nick talking about street photography and his collective ‘In-Public’  www.in-public.com here:

   

 

Nick Turpin is one of London's most acclaimed street photographers and will be leading our weekend of Photographing London on the 10 & 11 September.  Although now sold out, new dates will be announced shortly.