Kenn Amdahl

I always ached to belong to a club. The block where my house stood featured only one other house and few children populated the neighborhood. Without the built in neighborhood gang, I had to seek elsewhere for companionship. Like so many other young boys, I demanded an enlistment in the Cub Scouts. My Dad was too busy, so my mother assumed the awesome responsibilities of Den Mother and I donned the yellow kerchief and funny hat, lasting about a year before the forced camaraderie and endless list of tasks wore me down. At about the same time I abandoned the life of a Scout, I read my first adult novel, Robinson Crusoe, and found admission into a club that would sustain me for the rest of my life. Reading about Crusoe's haunted and solitary existence on a deserted, tropical island freed my mind and stimulated by imagination in ways I never thought possible. He lived in my mind as a friend, a person whose story was a part of my own. Treasure Island and some of the Tarzan stories from Edgar Rice Burroughs followed and I was hooked for life, save for a short period in high school and college where the forced reading demanded by domineering English professors weakened the addiction. I was content for a long time only to offer club membership to the characters on the pages I read, with the occasional honorary membership to other readers whose habits matched my own. It didn't occur to me until very recently, though, that the founding and controlling members of my special club are the people who create the characters and write the stories I read.

Kenn Amdahl's Joy Writing gives voice to that revelation, encouraging me, and others like me, to upgrade our membership in this select community. Amdahl writes, “there is honor in being an attentive listener or an avid reader but sometimes we need to speak back. So we write.” Joy Writing is no Writing for Dummies book, laying out checklists and tricks of the trade to follow at every turn while you compose the Great American Novel. And Amdahl is no literary genius, holding forth on the elements of great literature which must be included in any respectable attempt at writing. Rather, Amdahl’s sassy little book is more akin to the Nike “Just Do It” commercials. Equating his own inner muse to Bart Simpson slinging mud around the room, Amdahl encourages aspiring writers to write badly for the sake of writing. Get your thoughts, emotions, and ideas down on paper, no matter how ugly they might first appear, he says. Only then should you permit your inner editor, he calls his Colonel Klink, to take over. And allow your reading life to inform your writing life, closely reading your favorite authors and books to identify techniques on which you can rely and, eventually, expand. Throughout Joy Writing, Amdahl provides simple, down to earth suggestions on writing style, character, story, vocabulary, and so on. Never preachy, Amdahl constantly encourages, insisting that you write what and how you want, aiming only to improve your work and never to alter it.

Amdahl’s primary message is to write simply for the joy of writing. Don’t think about publication; don’t think about what your friends or family will say; and don’t even think about you own inner critic. When you sit down at a computer or with a pen and paper, use the opportunity to claim membership in that unique community, communicating in that special way that exists only on the written page. Make your goal to write and only to write. I don’t know if I’ll ever publish a book or even submit a book to a publisher for consideration. But, in a small way, I have already started to exercise the full benefits of my membership in this club. And I intend to write.

This book is highly recommended for the reader and the writer alike.… (lisätietoja)

I actually *am* a math person, so while not actually the audience of this book, I wanted to read it before I recommended it to anyone. And overall, it looks like it might be useful for people. The premise is cute, and despite the occasional caveats the authors threw out, only one page of the book actually caused me pain. [Was it really necessary to go there with .999... = 1? That is an argument I am *so* tired of having.] There's plenty in here that I do when I teach, but it called a thing or two to my attention that had never occurred to me [over the course of a calculus course, we do use the word "limit" to mean two entirely different things, without so much as a mention].

This is definitely meant to be a companion to a standard course or calculus text, and probably won't hurt anyone who's dreading that particular math course. I'm even reasonably convinced that it might help.… (lisätietoja)