Posted on 06/05/2012 8:46:29 PM PDT by Revolting cat!
Will ya?
For the past six months or so I have been meeting each week with a young Chinese economics scholar from mainland China, discussing life in the United States, and helping him with his English which is excellent as far as vocabulary and grammar, but rather dismal in the pronunciation department. This is my volunteer work contribution to the betterment of mankind, as I tend to avoid those typical volunteering activities such as "teaching children of prisoners to read", preferring instead, as has been my habit in other areas, to try to subvert the dominant paradigm. (Today, seeing a help wanted advertisment placed for some odd reason, perhaps desperation in the local weekly neoCommunist rag by my former hi-tech company which had laid me and eight others off in a clear case of age discrimination, I thought of replying with a resume just to stir things up over there.)
Anyway, in our conversations we've covered all kinds of topics, and he's no Communist, of course, even saying as much that China in the current stage of development is no longer a strictly Communist country, which is true enough. (There is no welfare state there such as we have here, either. In China, you're on your own, buster!)
The man is as curious as he's uninformed about the United States, and this is quite typical of the Chinese, even those well educated, he tells me. Hence his idea that I write a book about life in the United States which would be intended as a textbook for Chinese students at university English departments. The book would be published in China, or else we'd produce an e-book edition. It would contain all the topics we have discussed, from history to politics, state birds, minorities, recall elections, freeways and bus lines, government, religion and charity, job market, healthcare, shopping, NBA, investments, environment, leisure time, corruption and carpooling, among other things. Today he handed me his proposed table of contents and we shook things out while discussing Clinton's impeachment and today's election in Wisconsin, all of it fascinating to him while quite commonplace ordinary to you and me.
I've written articles about rock and roll (what else is there to write about?!), edited somebody's memoir, in addition to writing pages upon pages of technical documentation which no one bothered to read when it was easier to pick up the phone and dial the cat with a stupid question or shoot it an all lowercase e-mail in pidgin English. And now a 200-300 page book? Am I kidding me? Who's zooming who?
I can talk about each of these subjects in two or three sentences off the top of my head, just as I've talked to this young fellow, but can't we all? I need whole paragraphs, complete thoughts, background information, and not too many statistics.
What to do? I am seeking suggestions of books already published or websites out there that I can use to inspire my typing fingers if nothing else. I won't plagiarize if I can help it, just borrow ("Amateurs borrow, professionals steal," said Pablo Picasso.) I don't expect to get rich from this project, but I have heard from usually reliable sources that chicks do dig writers.
So, will ya?!
Maybe your problem is one of motivation. A trip to the mountains can do wonders to clear the head...
I wrote the first page and a half today. Progress.
Take my word for it on this one: If you do decide to take that trip to the mountains, whatever you do, do NOT go into room 217...
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