Writing Wednesday: Language and Word Choice

Different words have different weight when they’re used. I can say it was a cold day or I can tell you that my breath hung, frozen in the air. Same thing, different weights, different feels. One is very basic and one brings an image or a remembered feel to mind. When it’s cold enough to see your breath, you know how that feels on your face, as the cold seeps into each layer of your clothing to needle at your skin. The word cold is functional but has no life.

If you write historical fiction, word choice is even more important. Language is a living thing, it evolves and devolves adding words as people create them and, when you’re writing about the 18th century, you shouldn’t use words that didn’t exist until the 20th century. Fortunately, there is an excellent resource right here on the beloved Internet for exactly that kind of research. Etymonline is the best site for figuring out if you can use the word malarkey or not in that 18th-century story – spoiler: don’t do it. Apparently, it’s even a Chrome extension now but I have not tried that service so I can’t speak to it yet.

Another thing to keep in mind is the baggage certain words carry. Some words and phrases have history that can’t quite be avoided but can absolutely be used to your advantage. Cold war calls to mind a very specific political atmosphere that lends well to descriptions of interpersonal relationships as much as politics. Epithets of all stripes carry baggage and while that’s occasionally useful, it should be used sparingly. Prodigal, holocaust, famine, Typhoid Mary, Trojan horse, and the list goes on. They are words with historical reference points that most readers have attached meaning to and you can use it.

Finding the right word for the feeling or imagery that you want to use can be difficult sometimes. The thesaurus is your friend. The Describer’s Dictionary functions similarly to a thesaurus but its format is a little more writer-friendly. If you need to describe a type of jawline and aren’t sure how, that’s the book for you. I have the older version.

There are words you should do your best to avoid – the nothing words. They add nothing to what you’re saying. Very. Just. Only. Really. I disagree about avoiding all -ly words but be judicious about them. If you’re writing an academic paper, by all means, avoid contractions. If you’re writing anything else, it will read strangely automated without contractions. When you think you’re finished writing, I do agree with Mr. King, a 10% word cut will tighten your language and make it so every word matters.

Audio Review: Black Coffee Blues, Henry Rollins

I’ve posted here before about Henry Rollins and my opinion of his art and don’t mistake for a moment, his ramblings are art. A few weeks ago, his website had a clear out sale and I grabbed up a thing I’ve been wanting for a while. There are still interesting things still available there if you’re interested. The journey this took was interesting but it did finally arrive having taken the long way round.

In early, upon seeing the clear out, last chance sale, I order my 2 cd set with the last of this year’s Christmas money as the book I want will still be there on my birthday and this particular CD set won’t be. And I wait. And life happens and the dog is having issues (and having surgery today – think happy thoughts please) and I don’t think much of it until one morning about a week after it should have gotten to my house. I check the tracking and it’s marked delivered. It was not delivered. I go to the post office and I get more information including the fact that it was scanned prior to delivery and the GPS flag is at the neighboring apartments where I never know who is where in the revolving door of neighbors we’ve had. I’m promised that the mail dude will knock on doors. Spoiler: He did not. Not on any of the days he was supposed to. And I watched and called and made a nuisance of myself. Today 22 days after it was marked delivered – my package is in my mailbox, cut open but the CD was still in the plastic. I’m guessing they decided they didn’t want it after all. I expect they had no clue who Henry Rollins is. Most of the people who come and go are pipeline people from Texas who bleed country or college boys with their thumping base rap or house music. Not really Black Flag people let alone spoken word people. I don’t care really, I have my CDs and I’m happy.

Understand, this is a thing that you either like or you don’t. I love it but I get why other people wouldn’t. I can understand why they might find it too dark, too intense. I like understanding how another person understands themselves. Black Coffee Blues is a little less spoken word and little more travel rant stream of consciousness and personal introspection. At times Rollins’ voice has the rhythm of Waits or Kerouac and at times he’s more punk and crude. He drops names we all know and names no one knows and shares adoration and disgust in turns. Disc one has some moments where it’s more crude than elegant but it is visceral and very real. It’s a travel log pumped full of big thoughts and observations. Plus coffee. Which apparently you shouldn’t drink in Budapest. Disc two is more universal. Dealing with the darkness, the violence inside. It pulls strings from a shared experience and tries to make sense of the pattern of fraying.

For me, it’s not Cohen, but it’s beautiful and it’s true and real. It does not pretend to be a butterfly or anything but what it is. If you like the sort of personal anthropology that spoken word poetry can be and should be, you’ll like this set, either in audio or book form.

Book Review: Connections in Death

Connections in Death by JD Robb

The JD Robb In Death series has been my guilty pleasure for years. I think I have very nearly all of the books now – I might be missing one or two of the short stories/novellas in multi-author volumes. There’s a lot of good in the books – compelling characters, a great heroine, fast-paced. They’re enjoyable procedurals. Not every book has to be ground shaking, mind changing work.

After 48 stories, you get to know these people almost as well as your Facebook friends, at least I do. I’ll continue to read the series however long she goes with it and Nora Roberts (who is JD Robb) is a very quick writer. That’s not to say the books don’t have their issues, at least for me, but they’re minor and mostly my own issues. Personally, Eve Dallas’ inability to understand any idiom ever is too much and just pulls me right out of the story now where I roll my eyes and groan because every single book so far seems to have one of these seemingly nonsensical idioms. Eve isn’t stupid and some of the idioms that she’s whining about are starting to really take away from her character at this point.

There are no real surprises in these stories but they are fun. I’m a sucker for a good procedural but sometimes, I want a mystery that I don’t have figured out super quick. I’m told the next book on my to-read list might actually accomplish stumping me but we’ll see. I have some work to do before I sit down with another book and I need a nap today after last night’s ridiculous wind.

For me, this is a strong outing for Dallas and her team – it’s not my favorite (that would be either Naked in Death or Innocent in Death) but it’s definitely not my least favorite either – that’d be Strangers in Death and that’s all because the title pissed me right off – talk about giving everything up. It’s a solid middle of the pack book but I still hope for a little more growth from Dallas’ next case – there wasn’t growth in this one, only a moment of realization of growth that’s been happening in a steady progression from book #1.

Writing Wednesday: The Essay

Again, I’ve picked this week’s topic because it’s been a topic of discussion this week. Discussion and a great deal of thinking on it. I’m finding that some people, namely my oldest child, think an essay is anything remotely like the researched, notated, cited papers your high school English teacher called essays. This is definitely not what I’m talking about when I say essay.

Important background information: I was a weird kid who loved school, loved learning, and picked school type programs for my summer activities as often as I could. I went through several programs and during the summer of ’93 at CTY, I took a class on writing actual essays and while it got me in some trouble in high school, my college professors liked my style.

When I say essay, I’m talking about a short piece of nonfiction, observational prose that reads like some combination of fiction and poetry. Sometimes it’s a soft thing, meant to wrap you up in a cloud of sweet, other times it cuts like a blade over scar tissue, all rough and pointed. It always makes you feel something, sometimes too much of something.

It takes some fortitude to write this sort of nonfiction and as I’ve said before, it’s a bit like therapy and a bit like bleeding. I’ve only scratched the surface. Much to my 18-year-old self’s dismay, I have yet to write an essay worthy of inclusion in a list of good examples, but I will one day. I think I get closer every time I sit down to dissect myself on paper but most of my real introspection has been in my fiction. I think it’s easier to give your truths away in fiction where there is plausible deniability and a safe, comfortable distance between you and the sharp words or dark shadows.

For me, a really good essay teaches the kind of thing you can’t learn from a textbook or a class. It offers a new perspective on an old point. It brings you to your knees with horror or sadness or to your feet with elation. It is not simple. It is not one dimensional. It lives and breathes and becomes so much more with age, perhaps even more relevant than it had been upon its first writing.

Some of my favorite essays:

Zora Neale Hurston’s How it Feels to Be Colored Me – Her use of language in this essay is masterful. She gives a perspective that is sharp, disjointed, and beautiful all at once. I do think it’s something that would be written very differently under a modern lens.

Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal – this is probably the most oft used example of a satirical essay that there is. And it’s still brilliant after all these years. I struggle to think anyone ever took him seriously. The language is a bit antiquated but it was written in 1729 so, you’ll have that.

Jo Ann Beard’s The Fourth State of Mind – this intensely personal bit hits hard and unapologetically and is the sort of thing I aspire to be able to write though I never want to live a week like that.

If you have a favorite essay, I’d love to hear about it.

Same Stuff Different Year

This time last year, I was posting about the upcoming teacher strike in WV. This year, I’m posting about the teacher strike in WV. And, like last year, I am fully in support of those teachers. Go teachers go!

I tend to keep politics out of this blog – I get enough politics everywhere else and honestly, there is too much ugliness in politics now but I make the exception for education. One thing I don’t quite understand about people who complain about public education and paying for it (especially when they don’t have kids in school), do they not understand that the people being educated are the people who are likely going to be staffing their old age home? Future doctors, lawyers, chefs, mechanics. Education is the most important building block of our continued prosperity as a nation and as an inhabitant of this planet and teachers are the cornerstone of it all.

Right now, in my state, the state Senate is attempting to punish the teachers for their strike last year (which needed to happen). They pumped the bill that includes that raise (and somehow still no fixes for their wonky insurance stuff) full of a bunch of terrible things. The state house took out the one most egregious section where a school board could institute a tax levy without a vote but left all the other terrible crap in. So, in order to protect our education and prevent larger class sizes, split classes (which are not as effective), and charter schools (which I’ll get to in a moment), our educators and service personnel are back out on the picket line and people are pissy about it, again.

I understand the appeal of a charter school system from the layman’s perspective. I get it, they think choice is a good thing. Usually, it is but not in this case. The privatization of schools is a slippy slippery slope that leads to terrible things if you think it out in the long term. In this particular case, there is no regulation or requirements for the teachers in these charter schools beyond a GED. I don’t want my kids taught by someone who’s never taken any classes on education or earned their degree in their subject. I have a hard enough time when the people who have all their degrees and experience are teaching wrong facts. Charter schools might have to conform to the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) but they don’t have to accept special needs kids. So the charter schools can cherry-pick the easiest to teach kids with the most agreeable parents AND make them “volunteer” a huge chunk of time to do things said charter school might otherwise have to pay for, and take all that money out of the public schools where the kids who need the most help will get sent and still not have to have teachers who are actually qualified to teach.

I hate the idea of privatizing schools because I have yet to meet a for-profit corporation I would trust to put the kids over that profit margin. I don’t want to go to parent-teacher night and be inundated with artwork for Times Warner or Comcast or Exxon or papers on the benefits of “My Pillow.” And I definitely hate the idea that they would be able to use the kids as their in-house focus groups. I wish I doubted the possibilities of those things but corporations prove over and over again why they should not be involved in public matters.

So my favorite people in my children’s lives are out on the picket lines today and I am all for it. They are doing what I can’t do, being that loud voice the state government will have to listen to and I am beyond grateful for them.

Slipping

With all the everything and life going on, my lose weight journey took a nose dive (much to the annoyance of my rheumatologist…) and I’m right back where I started. Mondays are good days to get back on track so, that’s the plan – starting tomorrow. I’m not talking anything crazy because I honestly can’t do anything crazy but I think my knees would be happier if I lost about 80 pounds. Ok, they’d be happy with 50 but I have a dress that says 80. It’s not going to be easy and I’m going to have to schedule around it and go back to counting all the stupid things I eat again but it’s gotta be done.

The biggest problem I have is that a lot of the activities that are good for losing weight are a bit more than my body is willing to do. I loved my kettlebell but I don’t trust my hands not to actually throw it during a throw. The wii fit is an evil cruel thing who hates me. Pokemon Go crashed my phone and pavement hurts my feet. It’s too cold to go hiking. Zumba is too embarrassing – my mother always said I had the grace of a pregnant cow (and she was being too kind). So, it’s back to MyFitnessPal for me – counting all my calories and what little activity I do manage – thank goodness for stretching and grocery shopping and probably getting back to yoga again (it’s hard with the dog who is in my personal space all the time). I really liked the fitness game on the Xbox but they discontinued it so I ordered a very old fitness game that they can’t just stop and we’ll give that a try, the reviews I watched made it seem like exactly the kind of thing I might actually use so we’ll see.

I struggle with weight for two reasons. The first being that food is my therapy, my best friend, and my favorite hobby and the second being that all the other things I like to do or am good at doing are very stationary and solitary. I work from my home, on my computer or doing artsy sorts of things.  I know it’s better to be lighter for a lot of reasons beyond just my shape – my rheumatoid arthritis makes things hard enough and being lighter will help to slow the progression of the disease and the research all shows that keeping active and moving helps to keep the joint operable longer in the first place. There are a million reasons to work at it and only two reasons not too – laziness and a love of pastries, breads, and gummy bears. I’m not planning on giving up my bread so it’s the laziness that’s going to have to go.

Writing Wednesday: Poetry

I’m focusing on poetry today because of a conversation I had at my IRL writer’s group this month and I’m thinking a lot about it so I’m going to put all of that thinking to good use. I’ve written a lot of poetry in my life and published a chunk of them and read or listened to even more. I love spoken word. I love slam poetry. I love classical poetry, modern poetry, all poetry. I struggle with rhyming poetry sometimes, it can read like a greeting card sometimes, at least when I’m the one writing it, but when it’s done well, it’s a beautiful thing.

First, we’ll look at various resources on types and forms of poetry. The Writer’s Cookbook has a pretty good list of forms and explanations: Poem Forms. The most comprehensive list I’ve found is in The Writer’s Digest. Book Riot has a good beginner’s guide complete with examples also.

When you write stories, you have all this room to convey big thoughts and big emotions. In a poem, you have so little space (unless you’re writing epic poetry but that’s harder to write well and even harder to sell). You can’t afford a wasted word in poetry. There really isn’t room for filler when you’re counting syllables. With poetry, you have to draw on our shared human existence, building on the familiar to give it a different perspective and make you see a theme or a thing differently than you have before. Allegory and metaphor only really work when the audience has some familiarity with the foundation information after all.

If you’re looking to publish poetry, check the market listings at the Submission Grindr as they’re pretty extensive (and free to search). I’m of the opinion that you should get paid for your work and I don’t mean by “exposure” so I do tend to avoid the non-paying markets but that’s a personal choice. If you’re looking to publish a chapbook (a short collection of poetry), there are several presses out there and a million contests. The Poetry Society of America has a lot of great links to various presses and contests and their website is very easy to navigate but some of their older links are not active any longer. The Poetry Foundation is the home of  Poetry Magazine which is, I think, the oldest poetry mag out there and it has a wealth of information and, of course, poems to read or listen to.

No post on poetry would be complete without a few examples of my favorite poems. I have loved Cheryl Boyce Taylor’s Mango Pretty for more than a decade – it’s the kind of poem that sticks to your ribs and stays with you a very long time (side note here – IndieFeed had some great taste in poetry and it’s a shame they’re closed up). Neil Hilborn is everywhere these days because he’s different and quite talented but it is his “The Future” that sticks with me so – “I saw the future. I did, and in it, I was alive.” It’s a powerful statement that means so much to so many.

When I was young, it was Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott that spoke to my heart, then Poe’s The Raven, and Noyes’ The Highwayman (and yes, all three are so much fun to read aloud! Most of my favorite poems are.). As I got older, I read whatever poems I could find that were not in my textbooks (because those poems were never as good as what I found in the photocopied zines tacked up at the weird movie store or the coffee shop). Then I discovered spoken word and Waits, Cohen, and Kerouac. My tastes have evolved as I’ve gotten older but my love of it hasn’t changed at all. There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to read all that I want to read and poetry often gets pushed to the side and I know I should work harder to make room for it. I always learn something about myself from other people’s poems.

Writing Wednesday: To The Pain

For me as a reader, a story means more, resonates better, when it makes me feel big emotions. Personally, a story that makes me weep will stick to my bones better than a story that doesn’t inspire any big, identifiable emotion – glee, sorrow, fear, etc. For me as a writer, a story that makes me feel big emotion while I’m writing it will resonate better with readers (and the editors you have to move to get in front of those readers).

Right now, I’m changing lanes and working on a piece of creative nonfiction and it’s definitely been like bleeding onto the page. This particular piece hurts to write, but it’s also incredibly satisfying and probably a bit restorative but the wounds are still too fresh to see it. I can only hope it translates from me to the work to the reader well enough to leave its mark on them too.

The downside to writing so much of oneself into the pages and paragraphs is that it’s that much worse getting the rejections that are par for the course. Imposter syndrome is a very real and very interesting thing and I never feel it as much as I do when I’m writing nonfiction and sending it to markets. Just because this moment in time made a difference in my life, doesn’t mean anyone else will care about that moment. And then I remind myself that there is always a chance that someone will, that maybe someone else needs to be reminded that they aren’t alone in what they’re going through. The idea that maybe my words could make a difference for someone else someday is one of the things that keeps me on this path despite the struggles and the disappointments that come along between successes.

Don’t be afraid to bleed a little into your stories, metaphorically anyway. If you feel it, your readers will too.

Book Review: The Twenty Days of Turin

The Twenty Days of Turin by Giorgio De Maria

I struggled mightily with this book and that doesn’t happen often. In a lot of ways for me, it was like reading Lovecraft. An amazing story with very interesting elements bogged down by heavy writing and molasses-slow pacing. The story was originally published in 1977 in Italian. If I didn’t know the author was Italian, I would have figured him more for the deep south, given the preference for slow, sweeping pacing that allows for every drawn-out word to get imbued with even more weight than it had before. It’s a humid, thick story with amazing pieces. It’s worth the reading for the premise in the same way that Lovecraft is worth the reading.

I had to read this in small bursts in part because I have other things I’m doing and in part because, unlike most books, it required all of my focus. I know my meds have changed up how my brain functions and I forget things too easily now but I’ve never had this sort of problem except with Lovecraft.

Read it for the ideas and the story, but not the writing. I may try this book again in the future, maybe the second read will feel less like thick word fog.

Waiting for Spring

View from a Scout #3

Photograph by Joe McBride

It is cold and snowing here – the kids haven’t had school in several days and I am feeling the need for spring so I’ve turned again to my dad’s photographs. My dad wasn’t the kind of guy who bought flowers. I don’t think I ever saw a flower in his house that wasn’t grown by or bought by my stepmom. He took a lot of pictures of flowers though. When I was a little girl, we would go to Manito Japanese Gardens in Spokane, Wa and he’d take picture after picture of the flowering trees or we’d go to hiking and go in search of wildflowers. I wasn’t so much for the flowers myself but I liked spending time with my dad and I loved the Japanese Gardens. None of the pictures in this post are from Washington or my own memories at all, I’m still in 1976-1978 in the slides I inherited.

Some of his pictures were a bit more on point than I expected, especially for the current issues. I don’t remember him taking pictures of bees as I always freaked out about bees (slightly allergic) but given the issues now revolving around massive die-offs of pollinators and bee deaths attributed to pesticides and such, these images jumped out at me when I was peering through negatives. Personally, I don’t think it’s a political statement to say that we should be taking better care of the Earth and all of the animals who live here.

I do wish I’d paid more attention to the photography things he tried to teach me – I’d be so much farther along in my own craft – but I can learn a lot now, looking at his work. I don’t think I’ve found his best flower yet but I love the bees pictures. I do wish the one negative hadn’t been so badly scratched but I imagine a little work in an editor should help mitigate that.

Photograph by Joe McBride

Photograph by Joe McBride

Photography by Joe McBride

Photograph by Joe McBride

Photograph by Joe McBride

Photograph by Joe McBride

Photograph by Joe McBride