Posted by mofembot
Sun, 23 Nov 2008 18:09:00 GMT
Oh good grief, another vanity blog. And a late-entry one at that. I am years behind.
As things have transpired, nonlynnear’s main function (its “principal” function, if you will), for the moment, is to be the repository for draft chapters of my book, which for brevity’s sake I am calling Dying School. The “real” working title is Death of an American School in France, although I imagine I might need to come up with something more catchy. — And more accurate, since the real school isn’t dead (yet). Anyway, this book is a fictionalized but true account of my three years as principal of a tiny, private-but-partly-publicly-financed American secondary school housed in a French public secondary school. I think only the notion that I really could end up writing a book about my experiences helped me survive as long as I did. Enduring yet another ridiculous, hideous experience? — “Another chapter for the book!”
In addition to Dying School, nonlynnear is also supposed to be the gateway to All Things Pertaining to One Particular Lynn and her several alter-egos. So nonlynnear (such a clever name, don’t you think?) will include a fair number of miscellaneous writings, personal history, artwork, and another huge book-length project or two.
As I wrote in my First Post on mofembot.com, I’d been a very active participant on several electronic mailing lists, nearly all of which had something to do with (brace yourself) Mormon feminist theology. Even though my interests have evolved in the 10+ years I’ve been mostly off the internet, some of what I wrote then deserves some renewed attention, I think — especially since the current crop of as-yet-still idealistic Mormon feminists are making, or trying to make, the very same arguments I made back in the day. Strange to see things come around again and again; and irritating, just a little bit, not to be referenced!! This all said, Things Mormon (mostly of a feminist nature), and my political writings, will be found on a different website entirely — mofembot.com. I used to use the mofembot moniker in several LDS-related venues back in the day, and for the past several months I’ve been contributing diaries and comments and bits & pieces on DailyKos and responses to editorials in the NY Times and Salt Lake Tribune (the latter attesting to my seeming neverending ties to Mormonism). Given how appalled I’ve been at what’s been going on in America, and given the upcoming elections… well. I’d rather that nonlynnear remain a haven for all the non-political and more-or-less non-religious stuff.
Finally, there’s yet another website under my control (bwah-ha-ha) — délynnéat.com. This is my professional site: I am the owner and operator of a single-person business entity registered in France through which I do English-language creative and technical writing and editing for U.S.-based and European companies. (I am on the lookout for new clients large and small, by the way.) Although for the first little while I will have only static content on the délynnéat site, I also have a fair bit to say about France in general — specifically the ins and outs of running a business in France, and I think this will be the place I will ultimately do so. (There are so many things I like about France, but its bureaucracy is not among them; and while bureaucracy is a universal horror, in some ways it seems to be a national sport among French paper-pushers. But more on this in délynnéat at a future time.)
I’m still thinking about issues of feedback, moderation, and so on, and will Let It Be Known what I decide as soon as I come to some kind of conclusion about how much I can deal with along those lines.
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Posted by mofembot
Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:43:00 GMT
Now that I’ve added a link to this site through my “mofembot” DailyKos signature line, I hope that I will get some feedback about the draft chapters I’ve been putting up (see the “Pages” header in the sidebar). Although blog posts are set up for comments, however, static pages are not, so readers willing to chime in will need to send me email at olivia {at} nonlynnear {dot} com. (Yes, all mail will go to and be answered by “Olivia Kallner.”) I wish there were an easy way to simply click on some sort of link, but then again, the last thing I need is more spam invading my email account!
Anyway, thanks for reading my chapters and thanks for any feedback.
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Posted by mofembot
Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:56:00 GMT
Over the years I’ve read a number of books about the process of writing (two of my favorites are Flannery O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners and The Habit of Being: Letters – highly recommended). It seems that one problem writers frequently encounter is having a great overarching idea, but then running out of ways or material with which to “flesh out” the narrative.
My problem is a bit different. I am overwhelmed with material collected and generated and compiled over the three-plus years I was principal of the L. M. Montgomery American Academy (okay, three years when I was officially principal, but there’s another year or so when I was closely affiliated with the school and a roughly four-to-six-month period when I was the unofficial – and unpaid – co-principal). I have a filing cabinet full of circulars that I have yet to translate, a couple thousand email messages that I sent out during my tenure… and somewhere amidst the techno-clutter, there’s at least one hard drive with copies of relevant correspondence I sent out before my official installation.
Figuring out what to include is as problematic to me as facing a blank screen is to those without a “reference pile.” I am doing a little bit better about stepping back and trying to see the material in terms of what prospective readers would find interesting. (To me, pretty much everything is interesting. And pretty much ever damned scrap of paper has an “interesting” – to me – story behind it that to my mind deserves to be told.)
The Complete Record would require a four-volume set (as in The Hobbit plus the Lord of the Rings trilogy): the prologue (The Accidental Principal), and then a volume each for Year One, Year Two, and Year Three. While I think the whole shebang in all its details and glory would make a fine read, seems like one volume would be more marketable. And perhaps it is telling that Bel Kaufman never wrote a sequel to her best-selling Up the Down Staircase. Hmm. (She did, however, help write the screenplay. Bigger hmm.)
So I whittle away and try to write bridging and explanatory narrative and try to figure out how to organize the stuff I feel I really must include. It’s a long process. I could use a hefty advance from a publisher so as not to take time off to, you know, earn a living. (Well, at least earn enough to be able to pay my French social charges, my accountant, and so on.)
It has helped to have feedback on some of the draft chapters I’ve already posted, so go ahead and take a look, and let me know what you think. Thanks.
Posted in Dying School | no comments
Posted by mofembot
Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:07:00 GMT
I first read Bel Kaufman’s brilliant Up the Down Staircase when I was in junior high school in the late 1960s, having purchased a hardcover copy at my old elementary school’s Halloween White Elephant Sale for a quarter. I read it dozens of times. Some 30-plus years later, I found myself in a setting that reminded me strongly–yet weirdly–of Bel Kaufman’s book: an urban secondary school fraught with challenges, including more than one “Admiral Ass” who showed up in several layers of educational bureaucracy both within the school and higher up. This time, however, everything was in French.
I wasn’t a young, idealistic teacher. (For one thing, I looked nothing like Sandy Dennis–“Sylvia Barrett” in the movie.) I was a middle-aged, freckled, slightly overweight ex-pat who was desperate to work. And while my French contract said I was a teacher, I was, in fact, the nominal head and general administrator of the Lucy Maud Montgomery American Academy, a private school housed in a French public school. I was both subject to Admiral Ass and in some ways a mini-Admiral Ass myself, supervising a small team of teachers, dealing with students and parents, and occasionally executing policies with which I didn’t always agree, and often did not understand.
Posted in Dying School, Life in France | Tags French education, Up the Down Staircase | no comments
Posted by mofembot
Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:10:00 GMT
One of my major projects — the one I hope will make me Rich and Famous — is the book I’m writing about my 3+ years as director of a private American school housed in a French public school. My working title for the moment is Death of an American School in France, although (a) the title is a bit unwieldy, (b) it kind of gives away the ending, and (c) the school — the real school — isn’t dead (yet). And with any luck (and a huge amount of work by my successor), it might not die.
I have various concerns about preserving certain people’s privacy, and (as I have explained in the preface) I have taken some pains to change names, locations, and various other details. Call me paranoid, but I would rather reduce the possibility of getting sued. (Unfortunately, there are a couple of people who will probably sue no matter what changes I make.) And call me paranoid with a capital P, but I also want to avoid being kicked out of France. So it is that for the moment, I am writing this under the pen name of “Olivia Kallner” — both the name and surname can be found on the paternal side of my family.
My technical advisors (okay, members of my family) think I’m being silly. OTOH, it’s kind of cool to have a pen name with the initials “OK.” I will be putting extracts on this website as time and the universe permit.
Posted in Dying School, Life in France | Tags American, Education, Nationale, school | no comments
Posted by mofembot
Mon, 07 Jan 2008 20:35:00 GMT
The template program I’m using, “Typo,” used “Hello World!” as the official placeholder for this opening post. Addressing the world seems a bit grandiose, considering that I’m returning to the internet after a roughly ten-year hiatus. Once a hyperactive participant and even high-volume listowner, from the mid-90s onward, the exigencies of life and the universe kept my writing to a minimum.
For the past few months I have been dipping my toes into the web-water using the moniker “mofembot,” posting sporadic diaries and even more sporadic comments at DailyKos , with occasional forays into the comments sections of the New York Times and the Salt Lake Tribune and other venues. Plus I’m getting very close to having enough of my book written so as to want and need feedback from People Who Do Not Know Me. (And, too, I confess, so as to generate some attention from publishers. Hellooooo out there.)
I’ve decided that nonlynnear will be home to draft chapters of my book. The “official” (as in “inside my head”) working title is Death of an American School in France, but for brevity’s sake (and in tacit acknowledgment that the real school is not dead yet), the working title here will be Dying School. I acknowledge the lack of cheeriness of either title.
Nonlynnear will also be home to other large writing projects. By contrast, my mofembot.com site will be the home for most of my political writing and probably my archived Mormon feminist writings as well.
I frankly did not expect to have a blog, but I have been persuaded by my live-in technical consultant to cease clinging to my Luddite desires for a static site to circulate things I’ve written or display art I’ve created. So here I am.
I have not yet decided how to deal with feedback, so I may simply turn off that feature until such time as I devise a way to avoid getting sucked into the black hole of moderation and/or the compulsive need to respond to sincere comments and questions. But as feedback on the things I hope to get published in more traditional venues and media is one of the raisons d’être for getting this thing going in the first place, I’m sure I’ll figure out what to do… soon. Bonne lecture!
Posted in General | no comments