Help for desperate students
Dārgo skolēn! Ja Tu esi iekļuvis šeit, meklējot informāciju par “obligāto” referātu, kas jāraksta par mani, lūdzu, izmanto šo failu.
An update: it seems that the student (with the irrelevant questions) was forced to do the presentation on me as a part of an obligatory assignment. Hence, it’s not her fault, but the fault of Latvian educational system that still forces people to feign interest into authors they don’t care about. Hence a wrote one for them to copy&paste as they’re expected to.
Today, I was an ass, writing a rather short-tempered reply to a student writing on me, a student who apparently hadn’t done her research. So this is an Easter Egg entry for you if you have actually bothered to read my blog as I suggested in the very beginning. Dear Other Readers: you are welcome to take a peek at the questions a writer is commonly asked.
Regarding the themes of my stories: this is a question I don’t answer because, while I have an opinion, it is flawed by my perception. I see in my stories what I want to see, what I meant to write but not necessarily did. My opinion would not be helpful because, in the worst case, you’d just copy it and be done with it, in the best case, you’d feel intimidated by it and avoid forming a different opinion. This is why, when I write book reviews, I don’t ask the author what she meant, I write what I have found in the book. (This presumes you’ve actually read what I’ve written.)
Regarding authors that inspire me: for current inspirations, the “read this blog and see at least five authors I admire” suggestion still stands. For my Latvian-writing period, I’d name Kurt Vonnegut, Lao Tzu, Hans Christian Andersen (for the “Heart of Ice” novelette), Carlos Castaneda (his “Journey to Ixtlan”) and Latvian poet Anna Auziņa (her first book, “Atšķirtie dārzi”).
Regarding funny stuff: actually, you could find some stories if you look for them in this blog, depending on your sense of humor. I was apprehensive because jokes are to be told in one’s own voice. I’d feel uncomfortable telling funny story about somebody, unless I get the essence of the joke very well. If I didn’t feel the joke as “my thing” it would be closer to mocking them. Call me vain, but I wasn’t amused by an idea of a host of students staring blankly as you “tell a funny story” about me.
Regarding “telling something to my readers”, this blog is about things I would tell them. I’ve changed a lot since I wrote in Latvian, I think that anything I would tell now would differ greatly from what I wanted to tell then.
Oh, and two of my short stories will be published in Spring, one in A Cappella Zoo and another in Fusion Fragment. These are not technically “awards” but surely feel like that to me.
Do your homework. Do it to the best of your ability. Don’t waste your (and my) time on trying to find shortcuts.
