Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground

NEW FICTION . . . I have a new story up at Staccato Fiction. Title: "The Accident." Theme: The unreliability of childhood memories.

In trying to make this story as unpretentious as possible, I believe I failed to follow many of the rules I recently set down for myself in another recently-published story, "How to Write Damn Good Flash Fiction." This one appeared in Right Hand Pointing's 2010 Humor Issue. 

Please take note: the humor issue. In reality, I have no idea how to write damn good flash fiction. All I can do is try my best.

WHY JOHNNY CAN'T CAMP . . . Earlier this week, in a column titled "What I've learned as an Eagle Scout," writer David Anderson urged parents to get their boys involved in Scouting: "it will get them away from the video games and TV." But not so fast! Today, from Engadget, there's this: "Boy Scouts introduce videogame badge." Now, at last, scouting really will be fun.

STEVE ALMOND, INTERVIEWED . . . at Smokelong Quarterly about his new book, This Won't Take But a Minute, Honey --

Q: Your new book is two books in one, like a reversible rain coat! is small, light, slips in a pocket, is very fun to hold and read. How did the idea for this come about?    

A: So the first thing: I'm addicted to writing shorts. They offer alyric intensity that I'm always jonesing for, those sudden bursts of empathy. I wrote shitty poetry for years, and some of my shorts are actually the rescued remains of shitty poems. So I knew I wanted to gather those into a book someday. I also knew I wanted to write about what it's actually like to try to write, the psychological and emotional issues that people smack into. And I know about these because I've smacked into them over and over. The essays are basically intended to save other writers at the beginning of their careers from making the mistakes I did, over and over, for like ten years. I wanted them mashed together because I figured, hey, if I'm going to sit there and lecture people like I'm Mr. Know-It-All, I might as well put my own prose on the chopping block.

There's much more about Almond and his work in the full interview, conducted by Meg Pokrass and Tara Laskowski.

The Weekly Law School Roundup #222

Here's your weekly list (a long one this week) of good posts by law students, some current or almost current, some recently-graduated--

Speech Facebook: groups and counter-groups. [Virgin in the Volcano]

Blogs When you don't need fact-checkers. [My Legal Fiction]

Less How to retain your humanity in law school. [Moonshine Project]

Ploy Why law school blog rankings are a scam. [Dennis Jansen]

LST Criticisms of the Law School Transparency project. [Legally Questionable Content]

Photos Yes, noted. [J.D.? ... Maybe]

Numbers Law school, employment, and options. [(In)Sanity Souffle]

Beginnings What's sad about graduating from law school. [Thanks, But No Thanks]

Finals A card table and a closed room. [HATE is easy . . . love takes COURAGE]

Writing A lesson learned. [law:/dev/null]

Facebook Is anyone reading your updates? [The Corner In The Middle]

End Law school in retrospect. [Legally numb]

Priests Report on a conversation. [The Reasonably Prudent Law Student]

Done Finished with law school, the good feelings boil over. [That's Relevant!]

Roundup Moms in the Legal Profession #146. [PT-LawMom]

Look for next week's roundup at Thanks, But No Thanks then it's back here the week after that. You can find some other recent roundups in the "At the Law Schools 2" category, as well as sixty or so older roundups from 2004-2005 here. Finally, if you want to know how I choose posts to highlight, see "How I Write the Weekly Law School Roundup." (If you have a law-student weblog that I don't seem to know about or that isn't in my blogroll, please send me an email.)

WEEKEND READING . . . Two humorous blog posts--

"iPhone Applications I'd Actually Pay For," by Michael J. Solender at not from here, are you?--

4.Wal-Merica - A sophisticated GPS mapping tool that provides directions only in relationship to the Wal-Mart. Note : This application only available south of the Mason/Dixon line. Works especially well in smaller towns that have the old Wal-Mart, the new Wal-Mart and the Super Wal-Mart. *Does not provide cross streets but will also tell you where the nearest Biscuitville is and their operating hours.

"Op Ed on Eds," by Jimmy Chen at HTML Giant--

Editor at large – (Sorry again, I keep on imagining men.) This guy is “at large,” the way criminals are “at large,” like he’s on the streets with his blackberry or iPhone rejecting people and having lunch with the graphic designer (somebody with a drug problem and dyed hair). This guy basically does everything and wants to kill the editor.

WRITING CLINIC: STYLE . . .    Here's Updike's definition of a writer's style--

Style as I understand it is nothing less than the writer's habits of mind--it is not a kind of paint applied afterwards, but the very germ of the thing. One has certain models of excellence, certain standards of prose evolved with the hope sometimes of teachers and editors, and certain readerly expectations that one hopes, as a writer, to satisfy. Just as one's handwriting tends to come out the same every time, with certain quirks of emphasis and flow, so does one's writing, with its recurrent pet vocabulary and concerns.

As quoted in The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing, by Ben Yagoda.

MARK TWAIN, RIP . . . Maud Newton reminds us today of "a hundred years without Mark Twain"--

My beloved Mark Twain, who died a hundred years ago today, entered the world and left with Halley’s Comet. His essays have a permanent place on my bedside table; I read them whenever my own writing stalls. Those perfect verbs, those unexpected, hilarious, and accurate nouns, that brilliant sense of the absurd and limitless ability to evoke it…

I concur. Take a minute to read Newton's full post.

Related posts: I've mentioned Twain a number of times on this weblog. Some of these past posts--

• "Weekly Report #23: Keep Your Mouth Shut, Fool" (reporting on a drive in 2004 to a town near Hannibal, Missouri)

• "Favorite Things: Drinking, Smoking & Screwing" (self-explanatory?)

• "Somewhat Famous Law Clerks in History #1" (a anecdote about Twain's brother Orion)

THE WEEKLY LAW SCHOOL ROUNDUP . . . It's the Weekly Law School Roundup #221 from Thanks, But No Thanks. The next installment will appear here soon.

DOES WIKIPEDIA SUCK? . . . Says the author of this article, "Instead of telling my students that Wikipedia is not always an appropriate source, I let them discover it for themselves by integrating a simple exercise into a writing seminar."

Apparently, the exercise has interesting results.

REVOLUTION . . . Malcolm Gladwell has cut himself off from the blogosphere--

I’d like to think that on balance any innovation, at the end of the day, is usually a net good. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t significant and sometimes adverse consequences that we need to find another way to deal with. While we’re in the midst of the revolution, we need to stop and talk about its broader consequences.

He explains himself in an interview at the Globe and Mail.