Over the Edge ° September 7 features NFINISHED WORKS PAUL STRICKLAND CONTRIBUTOR The phrase “unfinished works” as- sociates closely in my mind with “un- finished work’, such as many books I have read up to, say, page 80 and then put aside and forgot about, or reviews that writer friends have asked me to do and I haven’t gotten around to yet. As a full-time journalist up until about two-and-a-half years ago, often working more than full time in prac- tice, I had an excuse for not having finished those books or those reviews. Now, as a freelance writer setting my own schedule, I no longer have that excuse. People who lend me books get annoyed with me. Sometimes I return books to friends before having finished them, and then I try to get them in through inter-library loan and hope I can finish them during the al- lotted two to four weeks. When I was in my teens and twen- ties, close relatives sometimes told me I read too slowly to succeed in graduate school. I did finish graduate school, but it took about three years for me to earn my Master’s degree in English and the same length of time to finish my Master of Arts in History. It is supposed, at least in university course catalogues, that a Master’s de- gree program can be finished in a year and a summer. Concerning the first Master’s de- gree, from UBC, I have the excuse I had graduate assistantship in my second year, and a markership and then a full teaching assistantship in my third year. It seemed that prep- aration for teaching a class took up four-fifths of my time, leaving little extra time for research toward my Master’s thesis. Also, my thesis ad- viser seemed to regard a Master’s thesis to be equivalent to a doctoral dissertation, and required numerous revisions and checks for the eventu- ally 160-page document, although I’m reasonably satisfied with the re- sult. In addition, at UBC the reading list for Master’s degree program in English was hundreds of titles long — very intimidating -- and I admit to having read through only a fraction of the suggested books. As to the second Master’s degree program, in History, I had a teach- ing assistantship during the first two years, although I had learned a little about more expeditious class-prepar- ation techniques by then. However, I took a course in Classical Greek that, in the view of my department, was not directly related to my graduate stud- ies, and I also got involved in civic politics. At first, the liberal majority of professors approved that, but when my political activities drew nega- tive attention to the university during budget time in the Nevada state legis- lature, they were no longer so approv- ing. Also, seeing what job prospects actually were for teaching history at community colleges during the first wave of austerity in the financing of post-secondary education, I started writing columns for the university paper and taking the occasional jour- nalism course, which again was not directly related to my graduate studies in History. Moreover, during the third and last year of my Master’s program, I was going broke and had to take a full-time museum job. And so, once again, it took a full three years to earn the M.A. My slow reading pace cer- tainly had some role in this delay, but I think it was a minor role. It’s true I don’t finish books as fast as many other people I know, particu- larly those in the academic commun- ity. My mother told me my Grade 1 teacher didn’t use the right technique in reading instruction. I think another factor was my Protestant upbring- ing. On one hand, officially, children were encouraged to read. On the other hand, in practice, it was a sign of laziness for children, especially boys, to sit down to read. If one got com- fortable with a book, it was quickly pointed out one should be “up and do- ing something useful” or should “get busy and accomplish something.” An uncle would come up to me when I was reading and, concerning an activ- ity my cousins were involved in, com- mand, “Go and participate!” I think this has contributed to my feeling guilty about sitting down to read, be- cause there is always something that needs to be done. I inevitably think about what should be done and get up from my chair to attend to that chore or task of record-keeping, etc., before I can sit down again and try to relax with the book I’m interested in. However, I am digressing. My focus should be “unfinished works” “unfinished work” in general. In high school, I got in literature, and not about seventeen pages into a novel about high school life written in the difficult style of the American novel- ist Henry James. It’s bad, although, if one ignores the inappropriate style, it has some verisimilitude. I wrote a couple of plays that worked, includ- ing one entitled “Nude Nights” that was quite popular among the Grade 11 students I circulated it among. It stands up even today, I think. It was inspired in part by Aubrey Beardsley, Oscar Wilde, and a popular movie at the time, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” In my first couple of years of graduate school I got perhaps sixty pages into a novel that purported to lampoon James Bond spy fiction by putting a Bond-like hero into absurd situations in a Western Nevada set- ting. It’s embarrassingly bad. If I find the manuscript, I’1l test my new docu- ment shredder with it. You have my commitment... to work with the Student Council moving your issues forward. Your Voice Counts! rank Everitt for City Council During my full-time journalistic career I only reached four or five pages of any attempted novel. Dur- ing a novel-writing competition, Na- No-Wri-Mo, about three years ago, I completed about five pages before giving up. I have the excuse of be- ing distracted by estate disputes at the time, which required lots of legal cor- respondence. My main problem in chess is hav- ing little or no strategy for the end game. I might start out reasonably well and maybe take a few key men from my opponent, but I don’t see enough moves ahead to effect check- mate. Similarly, in novel writing, I don’t have a strategy for creating suspense that builds up over scores of pages toward a climax according to a riveting plot. If I’m to write a novel, I have to learn to set aside at least a couple of hours every day to write — anything — perhaps in a note- book dedicated to the purpose, and have a more episodic plot as in many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century novels. In those novels, in each chap- ter the roguish main character gets into a series of scrapes from which he escapes through convenient co- incidences and then moves on to test his luck in the next town or province. Maybe the strongest influence on my writing will turn out to be Cervantes’ Don Quixote.