A few days in Madrid and Lisbon

Madrid last week was quite warm during the day, around 30C, but the mornings and evenings were a little cooler and pleasant – apparently much more so than in San Diego.  Wednesday afternoon there were very heavy showers, which helped cool things down more.  On Tuesday night a huge fireworks display lit up the skies near Alcobendas.  A neighboring town was having a celebration and was doing fireworks every evening during the week! Spain is one of the best places to indulge in one of the top three existential human experiences – savoring flavorful foods with all your senses.  Very few places compare to the steak eating experience one can enjoy while in Madrid.  A rock-salt seasoned version is served raw with an extremely hot stone plate.  The server prepares the plate by rubbing it – very carefully – with a piece of beef fat, after which you cook the raw slices of the steak on the stone plate.  It is very simple, but oh so delicious!  Of course, nothing beats the seemingly unlimited varieties of Spanish tapas (the extremely tender, sliced octopus with potatoes stands out as it melts in your mouth), except maybe Chinese Dim Sum. Central Madrid is a great place to walk around.  Evening strolls on Paseo de la Catellana, walking towards the Plaza de Cibeles is amazingly relaxing.  Well-dressed couples of all ages walk hand in hand, heading to one of the many museums, or to a small cafe on the cobble stone paths around the Gran Via.  This part of Madrid is quite enjoyable. In Lisbon, a generally laid back atmosphere permeates the air even more so than in Madrid. As you stroll around the small city, two monuments, both inspired by similar structures in other places catch your eye. First is the Cristo Rei (Christ the King) statue, inspired by the Cristo Retendor (Christ the Redeemeer) statue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  The Portuguese statue is at a much lower elevation (341 ft. vs. 2300 ft.), but is much taller (260. ft vs. 98 ft.) than the Brazilian statue.  It is a sight to behold, arms outstretched, overlooking the second memorable structure – a very familiar, red painted suspension bridge that spans over the Tejo River.  No, it is not San Francisco’s famed Golden Gate Bridge.  But if you were just dropped at the southern end of the 7374 ft. long Ponte 25 de Abril (25th of April Bridge) in Almada, you would find yourself disoriented, and reasonably so, wondering where you...

3 Simple Maxims of Writing

In his article in the NY Times http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/should-we-write-what-we-know/, Ben Yagoda reminds us of three maxims of writing. Kill your darlings Show, don’t tell Write what you know All three of these deceptively simple adages are known, maybe even understood, at varying levels by every writer.  But living them is quite another thing. Being ruthless on your own creation is not a skill that comes easily.  Yet it is even more necessary in writing than if you are creating a painting.  You can more easily justify the forms and colors in a painting by telling yourself ‘I am making this for myself.  I don’t care if anyone else likes it or not.’  However, when you put pen to the paper (or fingers to the keyboard), it is rarely for your own gratification.  Whether you admit it to yourself or not, the real desire is to have others read your words and be moved by them.  To do that, you must excise every unnecessary word from your creation.  And if you cannot do it, hire a good developmental editor to do it for you. Making the reader share the image the writer has in his or her mind is even more difficult.  It is easier to describe the scenario is excruciating detail.  But doing it in a way that protects it from becoming a mechanical description is where the art of writing comes into play.  Giving the reader just enough… bringing the reader along to be in the same place, real or conjured, as the writer, while allowing the reader to experience it through their own senses, biases and backgrounds…well, that is the magic. The third one is tricky.  Certainly, while the writing is much more powerful if you intimately know what you are writing about, I do not think it is always necessary to have lived through something to write effectively about it.  I would like to think that meticulous research and an active imagination can come pretty close to living through something.  It is not a substitute for the experience, but it can be pretty close.  What I do agree with is that, however you do it, you must know what you are writing about. Try following these tenets next time you write.  You will see the...