Mina Witteman – author | editor | teacher of creative writing

Amsterdam view: high school research

Posted on October 14, 2010

 

Spud gun

This teacher rocks!


 
It was a almost like a trip down memory lane. I had to report at school, at 12 sharp. High school, that is.
Now I have been at high schools quite a bit these past years. It comes with the territory: children’s book writers go out for reading and signing sessions at schools. It’s fun and it creates an audience, it sells books. I often combine a reading session with a workshop creative writing. It’s amazing how much talent there is out there! After spending a couple of hours with kids I usually head home tired but totally replenished. My inspiration cup filled to the brim with intriguing protagonists and unexpected plot twists, and with the strongest urge to write, write and write.

This time it was different. For my new YA thriller I needed to reacquaint myself with the interaction between student and teacher. It’s been a while since I experienced that myself. I already had contact with this – according to my son and his friends – awesome science teacher. He helped me out before, resurfacing science knowledge that kind of resided in my brain, but seemed somehow beyond recall. I asked him if I could attend one of his lessons and he kindly agreed.
So, yesterday at 12 sharp I reported at school and I was assigned a seat somewhere in the back of the room. It was a lesson about density and it was the most visual lesson I have ever had. I loved every minute of it. The teacher was bright and witty, patient but strict. He had ice sink in ethanol, copper float on quicksilver, and he had his class hang on his every word. His class provided me with the high school lingua franca, with the behavioral ins and outs of present-day students. And it revived my knowledge of science, my favorite subject when I was in high school.

 

Spud gun


 
After class we spent over an hour talking about teaching, about science and literature. We talked about my thriller. He had me think about the feasibility of my protagonist running around with dry ice bombs – not! – to keep the villains of his back, and he showed me his spud gun in stead. He uses it for his lessons velocity, but I saw much more potential.

I couldn’t get home quickly enough and get back to my manuscript. My inspiration cup is, again, filled to the brim. Thanks to him, this thriller will rock, too. I can feel it in my bones. I will not reveal his name, yet: you will all meet him in due time. He secured  himself a strong spot in the book!

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Amsterdam Views, Books, Children's books, The Views, YA books

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Amsterdam view: Amsterdam on fire again?

Posted on October 7, 2010

 

Signs of good luck?

 

Last Friday the Amsterdam sky lit up with protest fires, built on the bridges by outraged squatters, thrill-seeking tourists and hormone-driven adolescents. Last night the skies lit up again.

But this time it wasn’t the anti-riot squad that did the scattering, this time it was the sun. For me it felt like the Sun Spirit was telling me he was keeping his fingers crossed. It felt like he was sending me all the good luck in the world.
I need those good luck wishes! I need them in relation to that wonderful skin-crawling adventure fantasy I wrote and that is on its way to the US: THE SUN SPIRIT! It is the first volume of the Warriors of the Sun tetralogy and you can read a sample if you click right here!

 

THE SUN SPIRIT

 

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Amsterdam Views, Books, The Views, YA books

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Amsterdam view: fighting for a place to live?

Posted on October 3, 2010

The first day of October was an eventful one. It was the day new anti-squat legislation came into force. Squatters all over the country had announced protest marches and, needless to say, the Amsterdam squatters chimed in.
It started peaceful enough, but I thought the group of squatters that lead the way were rather ominously hiding themselves behind black ski masks and scarfs. If you are politically engaged and want to stand on the barricades for better legislation, I wondered, why would you hide your face? Why would you not fight it openly? How will you gain sympathy if nobody is able to recognize your good intentions? It doesn’t feel very need-based or politically motivated what these squatters are doing.

It did get out of hand. Shielded by nightfall protesters flung bricks, chairs and whatever they could get their hands on at the police. The anti-riot squad responded with teargas and water cannons. Mounted police charged into the masses, clubbing down squatters like baby seals. Fires lit up on bridges and in streets. The continuous dark roar of police helicopters added to the warlike sensation. Search lights flooded the streets and the canals, chasing grisly dark figures trying to escape.
The anti-riot squad knocking down the anti-squat riot…

Next day I cycled through my neighborhood. The mayor’s residence was still cordoned off by anti-riot squads. Fires had blackened bridges and some parts of the streets did not have a single clinker left. Unsettling was the news that a 15-year-old friend of my son ended up in prison. Apparently he –or his overly excited hormones– decided to join the party and he got nabbed. He is still in prison, in solitary confinement even, because he’s a juvenile. Very unsettling.

There is plenty of footage of these riots out on the net, like this one from my friends who had front row seats, so I include some pictures of the eviction of the squatters next door to my writer’s residence in the early eighties. For more information you can visit the archives of the Dutch Squat Movement.

Throwing clinkers at the anti-riot squad in the eighties

Squatter chased by the squad, although no one seems interested in him

Hiding from the bricks your pals are throwing down

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Amsterdam Views, The Views

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Amsterdam view: Flow Works

Posted on September 22, 2010

Every writer longs for it: that time that words seemingly effortless find their way from your head to your manuscript and your fingers become instruments creating works of art. It’s the time that sentences build themselves, that the plot moves forward at just the right pace: slow where it needs to ease the reader into your story, fast where it needs the reader to hold his breath and run along with the protagonist through hot and dry deserts and under ominously thundering skies.

A writer's residence under construction

Yes, every writer longs for the FLOW.

I long for that flow, too. Sometimes it’s music that gets me right there. A great song or an album on repeat – Levon Helm’s ‘Ophelia’, Eddie Vedder’s ‘Guaranteed’ or an album like Anouar Brahem’s Le Pas Du Chat Noir – are proven flow finders for me.
An absolute flow chase-off, however, is disturbance, disturbance of any kind and disturbance from builders in particular. That’s why I kept postponing an already long overdue renovation of my writer’s residence for ages and ages, until I couldn’t anymore and had to set out to find a contractor.

Flow Tools

I found the perfect one and it’s the name that gave it away: Flow Works.
Could it be a coincidence?
I didn’t think so and after some good talks I hired them. I took up my desk and my computer, crammed it in my living room upstairs and locked the doors. The builders started a mere two weeks ago. They work like dogs, coming in at 7.30 am, leaving at 7 pm, six days a week.
But, boy, are they flow finders!
Their continuous breaking and hammering and sawing oozes an energy I have never experienced before. They get me in a flow and they do it good! I write about 3,000 to 4,000 words a day. My new YA novel is moving on like crazy and it wouldn’t surprise me if I’d beat those hard-working boys to it and finish my novel before they finish the renovation of my writer’s residence (yeah, I like winning, too ;-)).

A novel under construction

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Amsterdam Views, The Views

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Amsterdam view: raised from the dead

Posted on September 18, 2010

Salvaging the ship

Remember the frat boat I told you about a couple of posts ago? The one that went down in Herengracht? I was sure that its owners would leave it where it was, after rescuing some essentials, but I was wrong. Dead wrong, as it turned out.

A tough little boat

Yesterday they returned, the frat boys, and they didn’t come unprepared. They had hired the Klusjesboot – which is Dutch for The Handyman Boat, I guess – and with that I owe them an apology, as I was convinced they would leave the barge where it went down, floating below the water surface and making it a hazard for everyone cruising by.

The Klusjesboot-man went to work with zeal, attaching bands and ropes and scaffolding-poles and I watched, intrigued for I knew how large that frat boat was: not a match at all for this little Klusjesboot, no matter how tough it looked, no matter how supportive the audience was.

A tough little man

This time I was right. It took him about half a day to admit defeat and call in the troops. An hour or so later a large flatboat arrived. Together they went to work with even more zeal. The flatboat captain had brought junior along, a sturdy little fellow that oozed not only energy but also the confidence that he could raise the frat boat all by himself.

Slowly but surely they raised the barge from the dead. The frat boys were stunned when both the Klusjesboat Man and the flatboat captain and his wee helper diagnosed its wreckage caused by the rain and not some irresponsible drunk captain who’d supposedly hit and sank their ship.
It’s back in all its splendor, waiting for the next glorious day to take the frat boys and their girls out boating. Until that time I hope the everlasting Dutch rain will show mercy.

Frat boat back to glory

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Amsterdam Views, The Views

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Amsterdam View: 1 Terabit per second

Posted on September 15, 2010

Still here, but for how long?

Just outside my writer’s residence stands a mailbox. Like all others in my city it is a crimson one. High on its pillars, its back turned to the canal and slits invitingly opened to us all, this bright red everybody’s friend almost begs you to fill it up with your letters. Evening after evening the mailman comes by, empties it and hurries all letters over to the addressees.
But, happy and helpful as it is, this red mailbox is a dying breed. Every day again less and less letters are deposited in its confidential entrails. The day the postmaster will come by to carry it off it is nearing quickly. One day soon this crimson mailbox will pass into obscurity like a forgotten writer.

Why?
Because we don’t send letters anymore. In stead we blog, we tweet, we mail, we surf, we spend a lifetime in a virtual world. We download music, movies and photo’s and we upload whatever we think other people would like to see or hear. We send emails, long ones to loved ones and short ones if we need to be quick or curt. Our lives are inextricably bound up with each other’s through the fibers of the internet.

How much do we send? As much as those patiently waiting mailboxes can carry?
No! We send way more than that. Yesterday the Amsterdam Internet Exchange – an internet exchange is the place where your service provider hooks up with mine, so you can read this blog post – announced that they broke the magic 1 Terabit per second limit. That means that with all our mailing, our downloading and uploading, our surfing, our blogging we send 1 Terabit of traffic per second through the routers and switches of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange.

One Terabit Per Second, you ask? What is 1 Terabit per second in human speak?
1 Terabit per second equals 125 Gigabytes per sec equals 26 dvd’s per sec equals… no less than 180 cd’s per second!

Literary agent Nathan Bransford asks us if social media does sell books. Considering the amount of traffic that passes through the internet exchanges I ask myself: how can it not?

1 Tb/s, that's how much we push through

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Amsterdam Views, The Views

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Amsterdam View: Where’s my boat?

Posted on September 13, 2010

Where's my boat?

Sometimes nature plays ugly tricks on you. One day you have a boat, the next day… you don’t.

A week or so ago a boat moored right opposite my writer’s residence after what must have been a jolly day on the Amsterdam canals. The boat – more like a giant raft – resembled an open air fraternity house, with comfortable sofa’s, rowdy boys, downy cushions, silly girls, a hefty stereo and beer on tap to boot. They were a happy bunch those boys, but they were clearly in need of some solid ground after a day’s sailing and drinking. So they threw out the fenders, cabled the boat to the railing, neatly covered up the sofa’s, courteously helped the squealing girls out and left.

I haven’t seen them since.

Do we need this?

Today they returned and it must have been a very confusing experience for them. They were sure that they had left their boat here, but you never know with these canals; it’s all water and parked cars and old façades and it all looks the same and, hey, they were kinda plied when they moored and left.
They sauntered up and down a bit, only to draw the conclusion that those two blue bulbs floating near the quay-wall were actually their fenders. Erroneously they figured that another boat must have hit theirs and sank it. But I know who the mischievous trickster was that scuttled their ship: good old Dutch friend The Rain… Last week it came down in buckets and if you don’t bale out this is what it does.

Anyway, they quickly gathered that raising the wreck was impossible, so they sent Green Shorts – he must be the fresher – into the water to rescue whatever there was left to be rescued. He pricked and probed, found the boat and saved some essentials. His two mates studied his endeavors with quiet attention, occasionally lending a hand, and taking pictures for posterity and the rest of the frat house.

You never know when you need this...

Categories: A Bit of Everything, Amsterdam Views, The Views

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