[stylist] CNF/blindness prompt (Aine)

[Donna Hill]

Aine,
Now that I know you're from New Zealand and you haven't heard of it, I'm
wondering if the elephant thing is an Americanism.

It also occured to me that you might have been writing for an audience of
musicians. We tend to think other people know what we know. That was why I
suggested more of an emphasis on the flute. I'm a musician, so I know that a
strings teacher is working with folks who play violin, cello, viola, bass,
but others who aren't familiar, even if they know on some level, may be
confused. 

I hope you will post this again when you're done editing -- not sure about
you, but I'm never done editing. I simply can't read anything I've written
without wanting to change this or that.
Donna

-----Original Message-----From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org]
On Behalf Of Aine Kelly-Costello
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2013 4:04 PM
To: Writer's Division Mailing List
Subject: Re: [stylist] CNF/blindness prompt (Aine)

Hi Donna,

Thank you very much for going through this in such detail, and for your
other e-mail also.  Incidentally, the double spaces between sentences are
solely there because I didn't change my BrailleNote's default braille to
text "translation option which puts them in automatically.  But I can easily
fix that with changing that setting (thanks for pointing that out).

Yes you probably were writing your novel then; I don't remember you posting
anything to the list when I joined.

I'm currently in Spain studying Translation.  I have one more week here
before I return to New Zealand which is where I live.

Sure, that's a good point about the flute.  Maybe I need to put a brief
sentence in about packing my bag then (seeing as what actually comes to a
rehearsal besides my cane is my BrailleNote, hard-copy Music, my flute or
piccolo (or both), a water bottle and probably a small snack).  Thankfully I
don't need to carry a music stand as well!

I do understand that those parts you mentioned like "Nor, I doubted, was
rushing.", are not actual sentences.  In the case of that one, I agree (now
you point it out) that the clause alone doesn't work so well.  I suppose
what I wanted to do was juxtapose the too extremes.  The "doubted" was only
there as I vaguely thought maybe there'd be a fractionally higher chance of
finding someone more quickly if I ran.  But the sentence would probably sit
better without it anyway.  In the case of the next non-sentence you
mentioned "Now, only silence." I wanted to just leave the key words behind
as to demonstrate the effect of "silence" if you know what I mean ...  I
don't know what the "rules" per se of CNF writing are at all, but I know I
have definitely seen sentences along the lines of that one in fictive novels
aimed at children and young adults.  I'll go through the piece again though
and try to remove all the unnecessary non-sentences as I'd definitely agree
there are too many.  
Regarding needing "neither" to use "nor", in my opinion the piece is
sufficiently "informal" (for want of a better word) that breaking that rule
would be okay, but obviously I'm no grammar teacher or anything so if you
don't think that's the case, please let me know and I'll change it

To be honest I had absolutely know idea about the saying with the elephant.
I might just change the animal in that case! And yes, I will clarify that
those were my thoughts, directed at the teacher.  I'm not sure about that
passage either, but I think I'll tidy it up and leave it in for now.
Regarding the 4-year-old blindy thing, yeah-you're right I didn't make that
very clear.  The case was in fact that this string teacher taught primarily
young children so I will mention that somewhere in the previous sentence.

I'll edit the piece tomorrow (going to bed now).  Do you want to see the
next draft once it's finished?


Thanks again for your comments, they are most helpful :)

Aine

----- Original Message -----
From: "Donna Hill" <penatwork at epix.net
To: "'Writer's Division Mailing List'" <stylist at nfbnet.org
Date sent: Sat, 2 Feb 2013 15:22:48 -0500
Subject: Re: [stylist] CNF/blindness prompt (Aine)

Hi Aine,
Thanks for sharing this; it is a very interesting look into the 
life of a
young blind classical musician.  I like the detail you put into 
your problem
of finding the way out.  I believe you came to the list while I 
was away
working on my novel, and I haven't gleened much about you since 
I've
returned.  Most noteably, I don't know if you are still a student 
and why you
are abroad -- that does sound nice though.  I hope you will take 
my comments
in the spirit in which they are given.  There are a few things I 
want to
point out.

I had no idea you were a floutist till you sit down next to your 
fellow
floutist.  Didn't you have the flute with you on your journey to 
rehearsal?
You could pick up your cane and your flute.  Otherwise, the flute 
comes out
of nowhere, and I think the reader needs to think about you and 
the flute
from the beginning.  It would help later in the story when you're 
venting
about the elephant description.

In this passage ...
Block quote
If you are me, and happen to possess the locating skills of a 
chick who
hasn't quite learned that crashing into transparent solid objects 
hurts,...
Block quote end

"If you are me" is incorrect grammatically.  With "if" in these 
hypothetical
situations which can't possibly exist, you use "were." If you are 
interested
in a conversational tone, I'd fudge it with "If you're me."

Block quote
  Anyway, delaying was not going to be the solution.  Nor, I 
doubted, was
rushing.
I grabbed my cane and casually wandered in the direction of the 
exit.  I
passed through the lounge, which, at any non-rehearsal time would 
have
contained an almost suffocating mass of musicians magically 
transformed into
sports fans, gamers and people like me wishing they could relax.  
But right
now, only silence.  Either someone was sitting in a corner 
eyeballing their
smartphone and ignoring me, or the room was empty.  I decided on 
the latter
after a 30 second circuit, and passed into ...
Block quote end

First, I love the concept at the beginning that shows your 
maturity in
realizing that neither delaying nor rushing were viable options.  
It does
show up, however, a tendency that I noticed several times.  You 
have a
sentence that isn't a sentence.  "Nor, I doubted, was rushing." 
This is a
clause in which the predicate is assumed to correspond to that of 
the
previous sentence, "was not going to be the solution." You could 
add the
thought to the previous sentence --"and I doubted that rushing 
would be."
or you could make a complete sentence.  Also, the use of "nor" 
without
initially using "neither" is something that they maintained was 
incorrect
grammar when I was in school (many moons ago).  If you want a 
separate
sentence here, try something like "I also doubted that rushing 
would help ."


There is something else in this that I find troubling.  Your 
first sentence
is a strong affirmation of your conviction that delaying was not 
going to be
the solution.  The use of "doubted" in the second sentence (or, 
as part of an
additional phrase in the first one) feels like backpedaling on 
this
affirmation a bit, taking away some of the strength of it.  I 
guess the
question is whether you are deliberately trying to differentiate 
between the
level of certainty you felt about the two non-solutions.  If you 
had less
conviction about the value of rushing, then I would suggest a 
strong second
sentence to that effect.  If not, but you wanted to introduce the 
concept of
doubting for other reasons, how about including it in the first 
sentence?

Here is another nonsentence -- "But right now, only silence." You 
could fix
this by inserting "there was." Also, I think you could sustain 
the action by
putting the phrase "after a thirty second circuit" to the 
beginning of its
sentence.,

Moving along, I am confused by the following:

Block quote
Just one slight problem with that, miss.  I wonder whether you'd 
take the
time to invent a new strategy if you were teaching someone 
without sight.
Because your average four-year-old blindy, probably has zilch 
conceptual
understanding of the layout of this monster's facial structure.  
It's not
like your going to find one loose in the zoo and idly wander up 
to it to
give it a hands on facial exam, is it.
Block quote end

I'm not sure why this passage is included.  If it's just to vent 
or show wit,
I think it could be made clearer.  First, you go from talking to 
the reader
to talking to the teacher (allbeit inside your own head) with no 
transition.
You could say, "I wanted to say ..."

Also, the reference to any blind person's understanding of an 
elephant
conjures up for many people the old saying about several blind 
people
touching various sections of an elephant and coming up with 
vastly different
understandings of what it was.  That saying is born of the 
world's prejudice
toward blind people, not leaving any room for any of us to have 
already
figured out that we hadn't been examining the whole thing and 
doing
something about it.  Since the elephant thing was brought up by 
the teacher,
using it may take more care than had they compared the finger 
position to a
rino.  Also, the passage  threw me because it seems at first like 
you were
talking about yourself as the blind person whom this teacher 
might be trying
to explain finger position.  Then, you introduce being four years 
old.  That
caused me to wonder if you meant fourteen.

If you aren't trying to make your reader work, you might add a 
casual
reference in the preceding paragraph to your being a flute 
player; you could
say something to the effect that being a flute player, you dozed 
in and out
of the strings teacher's  explanations ...  But you managed to 
hear ...

Anyway, those are my thoughts.
Donna

-----Original Message-----
From: stylist [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of 
Aine
Kelly-Costello
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2013 11:23 AM
To: stylist at nfbnet.org
Subject: [stylist] CNF/blindness prompt (Aine)

Hi everyone,

Sorry for my absence of late from the list.  I only now bothered 
to take the
5 minutes required to change my subscription address so that I 
can send
e-mails to it (my other one decided that while I am overseas, I 
can receive
e-mails but not send).  I've thoroughly enjoyed reading all of 
the CNF
blindness prompts and can of course relate to many of the 
experiences.  It's
nice being able to share them with each other.  I've attempted a 
prompt of
my own (below and attached).  Feedback is most welcome :)

Also, if I ever wanted to try and get it published, does anyone 
have any
suggestions of places I could submit it to, or any things that 
would
definitely need improving on before it goes anywhere?

Thank you :)


Aine



A DAY IN THE LIFE


  The end of one more jam-packed day of music-making was 
approaching.  It
had started off rather well, as I munched on the daily two pieces 
of toast
with peanut butter and honey (my favourite), and partook in the 
daily
morning chitchat.  This naturally progressed to that 
tooth-brushing,
hair-brushing and generally tidying up stage normally encountered 
before the
day's first commitment.  All was coming along just as it should 
until I
realized I was the only person left in our accommodation 
building.  I should
also mention here that I'm totally blind.
Now, the isolation wouldn't be a problem if I had spent a large 
amount of
time at this complex.  However, I was in fact attending a short 
summer
course based at one of the largest private schools in the city.  
This, quite
frankly, is somewhere you do not want to get lost, not least 
because
practically all of the buildings minus the one you want to enter 
will be
locked for the holiday period.  And there are A LOT of these 
buildings.
  Anyway, delaying was not going to be the solution.  Nor, I 
doubted, was
rushing.  I grabbed my cane and casually wandered in the 
direction of the
exit.  I passed through the lounge, which, at any non-rehearsal 
time would
have contained an almost suffocating mass of musicians magically 
transformed
into sports fans, gamers and people like me wishing they could 
relax.  But
right now, only silence.  Either someone was sitting in a corner 
eyeballing
their smartphone and ignoring me, or the room was empty.  I 
decided on the
latter after a 30 second circuit, and passed into the entrance 
way.  More
silence.  That sort of eerie, echoey air of solitude which has 
you know in
know uncertain terms you are the only sole alive in the vicinity.
  There arose a further difficulty here, though.  I had always 
left the
building with the throng up until now, and typically hadn't paid 
the
slightest scrap of attention as to where exactly I was going.  So 
once in
this glaringly bright glass dome of an entranceway, it was 
necessary to
uncover the mystery as to which of these identical-looking pieces 
of glass
was in fact a closed door.  If you are me, and happen to possess 
the
locating skills of a chick who hasn't quite learned that crashing 
into
transparent solid objects hurts, this is an extremely 
time-consuming job.
If there was a security camera right there and someone was 
watching it, I'm
sure they would let you know my sanity was highly questionable.  
On my fifth
circuit of the entrance way, I thankfully managed to locate a 
functioning
door, and stepped out into the humidity.  Just as I was making up 
my mind as
to which direction I would tackle first, I heard the most 
beautiful sound in
the world.  Plod, plod, plod ...
  "Excuse me!" I cried.  My saviour was still too far away to 
hear my plea.
"Excuse me!" I cleared my throat and tried again.
This time, I got a response.  Not only a response, but a willing 
guide to
the rehearsal.  Tardy students sure have their uses.
  An orchestral rehearsal is not somewhere where turning up late 
is taken
lightly, though.  Especially not when you have to traverse the 
maze of not
only music stands and instruments, but also chairs with humans on
them-humans with appendices sticking out in all directions 
supporting their
fifteen thousand-dollar babies.  When I finally took my seat 
beside my
co-principal flautist, I almost relaxed.  Maybe we hadn't 
rehearsed this
piece before, and maybe I wasn't quite sure of all my cues (it 
was a world
premiere-so recordings were non-existent), but at least there 
were two of us
on my part.  If the sound energy emanating from my flute and the 
score
sitting on my lap had a disagreement, it probably wouldn't be too 
obvious.
  Said security evaporated as quickly as it had arrived, however, 
when my
partner suddenly, mysteriously was felt ill, promptly vacated his 
chair and
melted into the back recesses of the cathedral.  The orchestra 
never
stopped.  We had just gone back to the beginning, and I had been 
blending in
rather nicely with my fellow wind players.  However, this 
particular piece
had a very relaxed beat.  So relaxed, in fact, that counting bars 
of rest
turned from a mathematical chore into a guessing game.  I had 
barely played
two notes of a flute solo succeeding a 14 bar rest when I 
realized the
orchestra was being stopped.  "Flute, one bar too early." (Why 
did it have
to be me? Everyone had already stared at me when I walked in 
late).  "Sorry,
sir," I mumbled, while my face dutifully aimed to break a redness 
record.
"Oh, don't worry, I see we have no first flute." Huh? It took me 
a second to
realize he must have thought I was a second player, sight-reading 
the unwell
first boy's music, never mind that my eyes didn't work.  I was 
rather
relieved at his forgetfulness but still felt slightly ashamed.
  I was pleased when lunch time eventually arrived.  The world is 
a much
less stressful place when you are sitting around a table with 
friends - and
food, of course.  The respite was not allowed to last long, 
however.  A ream
of chamber music for this evening's rehearsal was awaiting 
memorization, and
if I didn't do it now, then it would be sort of like a class 
trying to tell
the story of cinderella without mentioning the ugly sisters.  I 
can think of
easier tasks.
  After a dutiful stab at the memorization, it was time for a 
workshop on
Music pedagogy.  This, apart from the stuffiness which tends to 
send one to
sleep (and actually caused one poor girl to almost faint), passed 
without
any great event.
Sometimes, normalcy is the best.  I did however manage to note, 
despite my
semi-asleep state, that the suggestion the string teacher offered 
for
teaching bow-holding involved something about positioning the 
hand in such a
way that the fingers represent parts of an elephant - his trunk 
and ears, if
I recall correctly.
Just one slight problem with that, miss.  I wonder whether you'd 
take the
time to invent a new strategy if you were teaching someone 
without sight.
Because your average four-year-old blindy, probably has zilch 
conceptual
understanding of the layout of this monster's facial structure.  
It's not
like your going to find one loose in the zoo and idly wander up 
to it to
give it a hands on facial exam, is it.
  Our mid-afternoon snack was more short-lived than expected, 
interrupted by
an announcement that we were not, in fact, really supposed to 
have had a
break at all and should currently be in the court-yard, listening 
to some
philharmonia players tell us their life stories.  Okay, it wasn't 
that bad.
I actually found it quite interesting, as, just like all the 
other students
there, I longed to experience the thrill of belonging to an 
orchestra like
that one day.  But the downside was that 15 minutes into the 
hour, I had a
strong urge to go to the bathroom.  There was no getting out of 
there,
though.  You would have had to be incredibly crafty to pull it 
off if you
happened to be sitting at the back and sighted.  So what were my 
chances, in
the middle of the crossed-legged mass on the floor, and blind.
  The hour of bladderly torture ended eventually, to be replaced 
with the
aforementioned evening chamber rehearsal.  I genuinely enjoyed 
the first 20
minutes.  We were going over a movement we'd started work on 
yesterday, a
quirky, not altogether predictable tune that none the less had a 
sort of
charm to it.  Then we came to one of the movement's I'd learnt 
two hours
ago.  If you are one of the few who are blind and also have the 
misfortune
of being required to memorize large quantities of music on a 
regular basis,
you will know that rehearsing something newly memorized before 
you have the
chance to sleep on it is extremely dangerous.
But if you are sighted, and a highly-esteemed professional 
clarinetist, the
fact that the late handing out of the chamber music might cause 
the blindy
problems may well have never occurred to you.  Such was the case 
now.  Those
momentary pauses where I had to stop to recall my part were 
consistently
enough to mess up our trio, and send us back to the beginning of 
the
section.  And our coach, nice as he was, was in no mood to 
appreciate that
my lack of rhythmic correctness had nothing to do with a lack of 
effort.  It
in fact had everything to do with being overworked, and, quite 
frankly,
rather fed up.
  I really put my foot in it when we went on to what what had to 
be the
simplest movement of all.  My part went "da-da-daaaaah, 
dee-dee-deeeee" 11
times.  Then 3 bars of dah, dah, dah, dah, dah , dah ...  Before 
ending once
more with it's repetitive refrain.
Now, for the choice of a piece of music needing to be memorized 
and
rehearsed there and then, that had to be a dream come true.
But to my dismay, I soon discovered I seemed to have newly 
acquired a mental
condition in which my brain couldn't quite manage to distinguish 
between the
numbers 8 and 9.  Of course the harder it tried, the more it 
switched off.
Obviously counting to eleven, was out of the question.  I'm 
normally a top
math student, and I could count well past eleven at the age of 
two, so I
knew explaining my current ineptitude to my coach and fellow 
players was a
lost cause.  By this point, I was also faint from the lack of 
food.  All I
wanted to do was curl up in a nice me-shaped hole, and hibernate.
  Over dinner, my mood improved fractionally (the knowledge that 
you no
longer feel like keeling over tends to have a positive effect on 
general
well-being), but I still couldn't wait to be alone in my room.  
No such luck
yet, however.  One practice remained, and that was Sight-Reading.  
It's all
in the name, really.  But whoever said blind people can't 
sight-read and
play an instrument with two hands at the same time!
  This was our third sight-reading practice on the course, and by 
now, I had
my technique down pat.  First, what you did was you insisted they 
tell you
the names of the ten odd pieces beforehand.  You went on to 
youtube and
listened to them all on several consecutive days.  By this time, 
according
to my tried and tested theory, some of there notes would have 
subconsciously
seeped into your brain sells.
  This day, we unfortunately ended up beginning with something 
you weren't
going to find on youtube, seeing as the composer in question was 
also the
conductor and had only put the final touches on the score that 
morning.
Well, that was when stage two of my theory went into practice:
  * Ask adjacent player for the starting number of bars rest and 
first note,
before beginning
* Pay attention to when they put their flute up (usually given 
away by a
sticky key or shirt-sleeve rustle) and copy
* Use perfect pitch to finger along as they play, 0.1 seconds 
behind them
* Be brave enough to play in repetitive parts, but always with 
great
caution.
(A dodgy plan perhaps, but to this day, it has never failed).
  Near the end of the practice, during Beethoven's Pastoral 
Symphony, I was
happy to have the chance to put into practice both stages of my 
secret
method.  I found it a nice catchy tune, and I'd done the 
youtubing homework.
We were going along very nicely.  I was even able to play several 
forte bits
at volume, and enjoy listening to the orchestra delight in the 
myriad of
tone colours the music evoked.  The melody was being passed from 
the violin,
to the oboe, to the clarinet, to the cello, and I was pretty sure 
our turn
came next.  Up went my flute.  But at the moment of truth, my 
fellow first
flautist did nothing.  Okay, I don't know if he did nothing, 
exactly, but
what he definitely did not do was play.  I turned to him with a
question-mark on my face, hoping he'd get the message.  He did, 
in fact, but
not in time.  Never mind, there would be plenty more 
opportunities to play
that soaring line in such a famous piece.
  I was actually enjoying myself so much that when the time came 
to pack up,
I was sorry.  The adrenaline must have kicked in by then.  I 
laughed and
deplored over the oh-so-strenuous life of a high-school musician 
with my
friends.  It didn't matter any more that I turned up to the 
morning
rehearsal late or had to take time from lunch to memorize or that 
I almost
cried at the chamber rehearsal.
  "You know that entry in the Pastoral," my co-principal flute 
buddy was
laughing with his best friend.  "She knew where it was and I 
missed it!"
  In the momentary gap between dreamland and my head hitting the 
pillow,
there was just enough time to reflect that maybe being a blind 
kid in a
sighted world of musos wasn't so bad after all.


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