interview, three ways

chatting with Mark and Bryn

Today I’m getting interviewed, after a fashion, by my friends Mark and Bryn. Mark proposed we do a collaboration, I was game, so here we are. Each of us devised five questions to ask the others. Mark’s responses are here, and while you’re checking them out, read the rest of his great newsletter. Bryn’s will be coming later this week, and I’ll update this when hers are posted. And while you’re waiting for those, check out her great newsletter too!

As for me…

Mark’s questions

1. Pen and paper or digital?

Pen and paper, even though my handwriting is basically unreadable. I take better notes on paper and I remember more, I don’t get as distracted - and in a charmingly dated way, even at the time, most of my professors in my undergrad banned laptops from the classroom, so I spent most of the most note-intensive period of my life scribbling notes on looseleaf. I don’t feel like I’m taking “real notes” unless it’s on paper. And if you come to my office and watch me take a webinar or attend a meeting, you’ll see me pull out my trusty notebook to jot down key thoughts. I have an online calendar, but I use a paper one because I remember things much more once I’ve added them to my paper one, instead of simply clicking accept on my screen.

2. Do you find writing easy or difficult? Why?

Well.

That depends. What’s the day been like, or the week. Did I get enough sleep last night? Has my life been monotonous? How’s my mental health doing? Is there, say, a global pandemic happening?

Sometimes my ideas flow, sometimes I’m starting blankly, wanting to write, trapped by writer’s block. It’s been a lot more of the latter in recent years, and part of why I started this Substack: to get over myself and just write.

After I finished my degrees, I didn’t want to write for a while. I took an arts degree, followed by my master’s in library studies, and those are incredibly writing-heavy degrees. And frankly, much like they made it hard to want to read for a while, they made it hard to want to write for a while too. And not doing those things became a habit after a while. I’ve solved my reading problem. Now, to get back to writing, whether it’s easy or difficult.

3. What's the 1 thing you would do to "fix" Twitter?

Get rid of retweets/quote tweets. Were those a good idea, or do they just allow people to spiral out of control on a platform showing us the direct thoughts of more people than we’d ever know in a lifetime, pre-internet? I’m skeptical that we’ve done the right thing, developing tools and access we don’t really have the capability to handle or understand. The retweets/quote tweets allow for the pile on of the main character of the day, which whether or not they deserve it, amplifies the bad takes. There’s so much I’ve learned against my will with these functions and while I’d miss them (and do remember Twitter before them), we’d probably be better off.

4. What new thing has you most interested or excited lately?

There was a new festival in Miramichi over the weekend, the Miramichi International Chalk Festival. I had my doubts as whether or not Miramichi needed another summer festival, since there are. so. many. and I’m constantly stumbling into them all summer, but this one piqued my interest from the moment it was announced. Art? I love art! It was low key and different enough to hold my attention, and so, despite working in Moncton on Friday, I elected to return to Miramichi for the weekend instead of my usual journey onto Halifax or sticking around Moncton.

It was so cool! The pieces were incredible, and it was really nice to see the downtown so alive. I was in love with the festival the second I stepped foot onto Water Street and it was also really inspiring - definitely studying the chalk and the techniques the artists used.

5. Pretend you wake up one morning and the Internet has been destroyed. What's the first thing that you do?

Cheer!

Maybe not. It would be complicated: my livelihood comes from being really good at searching the internet, and it’s been a long time since I was taught to use a card catalogue (grade 2, thank you very much). A lot of information would be lost, and my information-loving soul would struggle with that a lot. I’d have a lot of work to do to figure out how to replace the sources of information we rely on at work, and I’d also have some things to handle in my life.

I also think I’d feel a lot of peace. The internet is a dangerous, maddening place, and one in which most of real life takes place now. I’d likely try to figure out if it was real, and then maybe spend my time on the non-internet things I’ve always enjoyed.

A fun side note: my parents didn’t get internet in our house until 2006. I was 14 and in high school, so I remember a life, at home, at least, where the internet and I were not so close as we are now. It really was simpler.

Bryn’s questions

1. What is the one writing prop/tool you can’t live without and why?

The perfect pen. What I think is the perfect pen has changed over time: there is always a better pen out there! But for the last few years, it’s been a TWSBI Eco fountain pen, with a fine nib. Ink choice has varied over time, but I do love the ability to wash out the pen and refill my pen with a new one. It feels a little snotty to be stuck on a fountain pen for all of my writing these days, but that’s how it is. I need my fountain pen to do my best writing.

2. If you were given the chance to meet any fictional character, who would it be and why?

Aunt Sarah from Derry Girls. She’s so comically dim, and accidentally hilarious all of the time, and while I could think of lots of characters I would enjoy learning from, I could also use a laugh, and I know Sarah would deliver.

3. What’s something everyone else finds overrated that you secretly love?

I’m pretty open in my love of overrated things, or everyone’s once-favourite insult, basic things. Autumn is great. I love Taylor Swift’s music. I like fancy drinks from coffee shops (admittedly not coffee-based ones). Wearing lots of plaid is great, I love a weighted blanket, I’m a millennial white woman whose favourite TV show for most of the last 15 years has been Gilmore Girls. I liked yoga pants well before I ever did yoga.

Conversely, I also like being stubborn and contrary. I don’t have Spotify because I’m suspicious of streaming but also because everyone else has it. I have refused to watch TV shows or movies because they’re popular - still haven’t seen James Cameron’s Avatar! Is there an overrated thing I secretly love? I don’t really think so. The Spice Girls rock. And an expensive scented candle is a true treat.

4. Cursive writing - important skill to learn or dead art?

I grew up in the 90s, so I existed in the period where I was constantly and earnestly told that I must learn how to use cursive writing because I would have to use it in high school and university.

Yeah.

That didn’t happen. The last time I consistently took notes in cursive was in grade 5, and my teacher (older, on the brink of retirement) gave extra points for using cursive. Since then, my handwriting has deteriorated, mostly because I spend so much of my time typing, and I haven’t been in school since 2015. And it hasn’t been full cursive in the twenty years since I finished grade 5.

I’m mixed. Is there a purpose to cursive? Is it actually faster? (For me, it never was.) Does it matter when in reality, most students today will cease writing on paper in meaningful amounts a lot earlier than I did? Do these things matter at all when there’s also an aesthetic side to cursive? Is it a good use of time to make 8 year olds fill out pages and pages of cursive writing sheets? I don’t have sufficient evidence to answer any of these, but honestly…I think we can pass on teaching it, at least in the way I was taught: a relic of a world that was quickly disappearing. Knowing how to do proper cursive hasn’t changed my regular terrible penmanship, it hasn’t made me smarter or better in anyway. It sits inside my head. And sure, I think being able to read cursive is marginally helpful, but not overly so. It might not be dead yet, but its long, limping death is one that I won’t be sorry to see end.

5. What does your ideal writing/reading nook look like?

I’ve always been enchanted by the idea of a window seat. I have several pictures of window seat/bookshelf combos saved on my Instagram, and I’ve never been great at writing at a desk - or reading at one, for that matter. I need to be excessively cozy to do my best reading and writing, and so I’ve got it into my head that a window seat is the answer to all of my problems. It probably isn’t, but I’ve never had a window seat, so how can I be sure? Exactly.