Okay, I know it's time to clean my office. I can barely get the doors open. They're beautiful French doors, but unfortunately they don't hide the mess within the walls of my writing space. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure folks think, 'wow, what a pig; why doesn't she do something creative with that room!'
I could blame my untidiness on my family, rather my daughter and her family. They are still living with us, their house coming dangerously close to being complete. A big YA-HOO. It's only been nine months they have been with us. And yes, I do have a cupboard saved just for my granddaughters, I could easily blame them for having boxes of manuscripts on the floor rather behind cupboard doors. But, I had that space saved for them long before they moved in. So I can't point a finger in that direction.
If only I didn't love to collect books, writing magazines, and, and paper! It accumulates in my office at an alarming rate. On this corner of a desk there sits unread books, rather books yet to be read that I gathered from a writing conference nearly two years ago. Another stack from last spring fills a large spot beneath my feet. And the ones I've already read, well lets just say the dozen shelves I have are over-fed and bulging over the edges. Some hang at precarious angles that have on occasion intrigued my cat. And the magazines are simply out of control. Messy doesn't begin to describe this area. Towering, toppling and tipsy, yes, those are good descriptions of my magazine section.
Yes, I've decided to declutter! My husband stopped by my office and groaned when I told him of my plans. His question, and a valid one I might add, was, "where do I have to carry those boxes? There's no room in the basement."
Oh, yes. Hmmm, maybe I can blame my daughter after all. My basement is over-flowing with her household stuff. Not that I'd b l a m e her for my untidiness, just the fact that I have no place to store several neatly packed boxs of books and magazines with wonderful articles on writing that I might need someday.
The truth is, I don't need these books or periodicals at all. I'm a librarian. I can get any book I want at a moment's notice. All I have to do is wander through the stacks til I find what I'm looking for. It sounds so easy. But it's not that simple. I like owning my own books. Why is that? Does anyone else have this problem letting go of well loved books? I know I must keep the resource books, the how-to get it right helpers I've purchased over the years.
Even some of them could go bye-bye. I just glanced at the resource shelf above me, some hidden behind a couple manilla folders. A 2003 Writer's Market, 2003 Writer's Market for novel and short story, 2004 Christian Writer's Market Guide, sit there collecting dust and taking up precious room. Okay, time for action!
I just ran downstairs for an empty box. We have several for packing. That empty box is no longer waiting to be filled. And I have a free corner on my shelf. I didn't even look to see about the markers sticking out from the pages. Those market guides are old, with antique information. They are now one step closer to the door.
Okay, I'm feeling the power, here. I can do this. I also have a box that can hold more. I'm going to be ruthless. Just like at the library; if I haven't read it in the last couple of years, it's going. Yikes. I think I'm hyperventilating. I'm quite attached to many of these books. Maybe I should rethink this. James Patterson, Diana Gabaldon, Jude Deveraux, Janet Evanovich, Nicholas Sparks. Mary Higgons Clark. Jan Karon. J.K. Rowlings!
No, I can't go there. I can't let go of my children's books. I can't, can't can't. I must draw the line somewhere. I'm a children's librarian. How could I be so cruel? Yet, I discard children's books at work on a regular basis. I replace them with newer, brighter books.
I could do that. But what about the decluttering? I need to make space, unclog my office shelves, not buy more to replace the ones gone. The box in the middle of my floor is starting to look pretty lonely with only three old books in it. There must be something else I can throw away.
I look at my wastebasket. It's pretty full. I could save the plastic liner and dump the shredded stuff in the box.
There. I feel so much better. Another corner clean. Progress is sometimes slow. As a writer I understand this. We can't always go rushing into projects without careful thought. Those old market guides are really buried now. My fingers are tapping the keys and I'm wondering, thinking about those markers I had stuck in those books. It could have been something important. Maybe I should take a peek just to be sure it's okay to ...
No. I'm ruthless. I'm a take charge kind of gal. Decluttering is the purpose of this day. The old books will remain in the trash. They'll be fine.
You know, if you dust old books off, they look pretty good. As for the trash, guess I better get that out of here. I've decluttered enough for one day.
Til next time ~
DL Larson
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
CELL PHONES, E-MAIL, TEXTING, LAND LINES - HOW DO YOU COMMUNICATE?
I do lots of walking to and from my day job in Downtown Chicago. I can't help but notice that at least 3 out of 10 people, if not more, are chatting on cell phones, even as they are crossing the street.
Something else I've noticed, which is a dangerous habit, more and more people are using cell phones while driving.
These people on the cell phones for so long--Whatever do they find to talk about?
I love my Iphone, which serves multiple purposes, since it has so many cool features. As far as the phone part of it goes, it's a blessing for long-distance calls, placing carryout orders from the train, getting phone calls from my husband while I'm at work, but not for much else. As far as my land line goes, I rarely use it, more to answer calls than make them, and that's not often.
I've come to the conclusion that I just don't want to make phone calls any more. E-mailing is my major form of communication. I spend countless hours on the computer e-mailing friends, mentioning things I forgot to say when I last saw them, firming up plans. We rarely pick up the telephone and call each other.
Strange, but I've lost the art of communicating for any length of time on a cell phone or land line. I even find it irritating. When forced to do so, I have to think hard to find topics to speak about.
I spend countless hours on social networks, yahoo groups and listservs speaking to people through the Internet without using my voice. I reveal more of myself when I'm online than I would over think of over the phone wires or even in person.
Some people say texting is faster. I don't know. I have 200 units a month I could use, but never do, since e-mailing is my chosen form of communication. When I'm out of range or a storm hits and my modem or Iphone can't pick up my e-mail, I feel lost and vulnerable, wondering if I've missed something important.
E-mail is much more civilized. It doesn't interrupt people when they're doing something and make them wonder whether or not to stop the ringing or let it go to voice mail. I can e-mail any time I want to and my recipient will choose when to open it or not feel pressured to answer right away. Okay, there is one drawback. If I don't answer e-mails, they do tend to pile up like answering machine messages.
Anyway, I wonder if other people are like me and have lost the art of telephone communicating. I'm so curious, I've placed a survey in the righthand column under Debra St. John's new release, This Time For Always, which just came out today in e-book form at The Wild Rose Press.
If you have two seconds, click your answer to the question
What is your favorite form of communication?
Thanks,
Morgan Mandel
www.morganmandel.com
http://blogsthatrule.blogspot.com
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
Something else I've noticed, which is a dangerous habit, more and more people are using cell phones while driving.
These people on the cell phones for so long--Whatever do they find to talk about?
I love my Iphone, which serves multiple purposes, since it has so many cool features. As far as the phone part of it goes, it's a blessing for long-distance calls, placing carryout orders from the train, getting phone calls from my husband while I'm at work, but not for much else. As far as my land line goes, I rarely use it, more to answer calls than make them, and that's not often.
I've come to the conclusion that I just don't want to make phone calls any more. E-mailing is my major form of communication. I spend countless hours on the computer e-mailing friends, mentioning things I forgot to say when I last saw them, firming up plans. We rarely pick up the telephone and call each other.
Strange, but I've lost the art of communicating for any length of time on a cell phone or land line. I even find it irritating. When forced to do so, I have to think hard to find topics to speak about.
I spend countless hours on social networks, yahoo groups and listservs speaking to people through the Internet without using my voice. I reveal more of myself when I'm online than I would over think of over the phone wires or even in person.
Some people say texting is faster. I don't know. I have 200 units a month I could use, but never do, since e-mailing is my chosen form of communication. When I'm out of range or a storm hits and my modem or Iphone can't pick up my e-mail, I feel lost and vulnerable, wondering if I've missed something important.
E-mail is much more civilized. It doesn't interrupt people when they're doing something and make them wonder whether or not to stop the ringing or let it go to voice mail. I can e-mail any time I want to and my recipient will choose when to open it or not feel pressured to answer right away. Okay, there is one drawback. If I don't answer e-mails, they do tend to pile up like answering machine messages.
Anyway, I wonder if other people are like me and have lost the art of telephone communicating. I'm so curious, I've placed a survey in the righthand column under Debra St. John's new release, This Time For Always, which just came out today in e-book form at The Wild Rose Press.
If you have two seconds, click your answer to the question
What is your favorite form of communication?
Thanks,
Morgan Mandel
www.morganmandel.com
http://blogsthatrule.blogspot.com
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Acceptance
I just finished watching Primetime's hour long special about Randy Pausch. I needed to watch this program. I'm going through an unexpected and painful divorce. I had a very intense therapy session last night going back to the trauma of my violent childhood and I'm very, very raw. I knew I had to watch this program. I craved watching this program.
Why?
Because I wanted to be inspired by the incredible strength of this truly genuine human being and his family - people I've never met - but people who truly speak to the human spirit. I wanted to refocus, adjust my attitude and learn to accept and appreciate all over again.
I haven't felt sorry for myself but understandably I've been battling a mild case of depression. Oh, I go to work and enjoy it. I run and go to my yoga classes and write - all these activities bring me great satisfaction and I keep reaching further and further and doing more and more. I have much to be grateful for. Still, it's easy to get bummed when life seems to let you down.
It's easy to slip into a rush of anger at those who have let you down in your life and as a child there really are people that have a responsibility to take care of you. But as adults we need to be careful about how much we expect others to caretake us. So much is truly rooted in our childhoods but I'm at a turning point in not wanting that childhood to control me anymore. I've logically embraced this for many years but I'm just now truly learning how to integrate this into my heart as well. Balance! What a concept.
So, Randy Pausch - a person I've never met but someone who now means so much to so many people who also never met him. He's known for his last lecture - a hit on You Tube and he transitioned out of this life last Friday and Primetime aired a celebration of life in his honor.
His wife, Jai, talked about acceptance and it really touched me. Acceptance! Not to be confused with making excuses for something or someone, not to be used as a means to keep ourselves from griefing and healing. Acceptance - just something that allows us to find peace with ourselves and our lives so we can live each day to the fullest. Sounds easy doesn't it? But so many of us struggle to acknowledge the act of acceptance, let alone accomplish it.
We're all going to die eventually so here's to Randy Pausch for showing us how to live.
Why?
Because I wanted to be inspired by the incredible strength of this truly genuine human being and his family - people I've never met - but people who truly speak to the human spirit. I wanted to refocus, adjust my attitude and learn to accept and appreciate all over again.
I haven't felt sorry for myself but understandably I've been battling a mild case of depression. Oh, I go to work and enjoy it. I run and go to my yoga classes and write - all these activities bring me great satisfaction and I keep reaching further and further and doing more and more. I have much to be grateful for. Still, it's easy to get bummed when life seems to let you down.
It's easy to slip into a rush of anger at those who have let you down in your life and as a child there really are people that have a responsibility to take care of you. But as adults we need to be careful about how much we expect others to caretake us. So much is truly rooted in our childhoods but I'm at a turning point in not wanting that childhood to control me anymore. I've logically embraced this for many years but I'm just now truly learning how to integrate this into my heart as well. Balance! What a concept.
So, Randy Pausch - a person I've never met but someone who now means so much to so many people who also never met him. He's known for his last lecture - a hit on You Tube and he transitioned out of this life last Friday and Primetime aired a celebration of life in his honor.
His wife, Jai, talked about acceptance and it really touched me. Acceptance! Not to be confused with making excuses for something or someone, not to be used as a means to keep ourselves from griefing and healing. Acceptance - just something that allows us to find peace with ourselves and our lives so we can live each day to the fullest. Sounds easy doesn't it? But so many of us struggle to acknowledge the act of acceptance, let alone accomplish it.
We're all going to die eventually so here's to Randy Pausch for showing us how to live.
Monday, July 28, 2008
One More Mile!
On my Myspace ... feels weird to type that ... anyway, there's a 'status/mood' bar where you can type a sentence about what's up ... and pick how you might be feeling (grumpy, hungry, ecstatic, crunchy).
Occasionally, I update mine, sometimes with some glee or glum about writing ... but more often I type in what's happening in my other life, the aquatic one.
A few weeks ago, I typed in "I whacked my heel flip-turning," and my mood was "pissed off."
Um, I never got that phrase either. If you think about it, 'pissed off' doesn't really mean anything. I mean, I get the 'pissed' part ... and I know what 'off means' - (that stuff that you spray on skeeters, right?) ... but these two words put together just don't make sense.
Anyway, some of my 'friends' remarked on my status, and I got a few, "poor baby's" and "ouch" and other little missives.
Last Wednesday, I typed, "swam 3.2 miles" and my mood was 'sore.' Some people commented on this.
So I thought I'd blog on the whole thing and say what's going on with me in the pool.
When I was younger, I was up for playing just about any sport, baseball, basketball, raquetball, tennis, karate, volleyball... and, well, I'm not going to be modest. I got pretty good at most of them. I have my share of track ribbons and medals, softball trophies and a black belt in karate. Though, for the record, I suck at golf, bowling, archery and the pink - Arts Entertainment - topic in Trivia Pursuit.
But as I got closer to fifty ... just four months away now... I had to drop these kind of sports, so I pulled out an old favorite. I started swimming ... a lot. I joined Masters Swimming, and swam my first ever competitive race when I was forty.
I don't swim much compared to, say, a high school varsity swimmer. Those crazy mermen and mermaids swim about ten thousand yards every day. I'm not quite as fast as the varsity, but I can smoke most of the JV. And I can still swim a hundred yards in less than a minute. Not all that shabby for a geezer.
I negotiated three swim days a week with my wife, but make up for the lower number by swimming four thousand yards of interval training. Interval training is when you break up the swim into sets, two hundred yards, one hundred yards, some pull-buoy, some kicks, maybe some synchronized swimming ... heh ...etc.
Now let's talk about what four thousand yards really means. It's a shade under two and a half miles ... or forty football field lengths. Forty!
And I swim it in about an hour and ten minutes.
In a usual month, I might swim twenty to twenty-five miles, and my goal is to hit two hundred fifty miles this year, a nice increase over last year. So about ten days ago I realized that I hadn't missed any nights, and I was going to get pretty close to thirty-one miles in July, which would mean that I averaged a mile a day swimming for the month.
I decided to go for it.
My wife said I could swim an extra day or two, but I decided just to crank up the mileage a bit, hence the 3.2 miles last Wednesday, duplicated two days later. This made up the slack, and all I needed was to do my normal swim today and Wednesday.
I swam my four thousand today, which leaves just one mile to go. I'm actually going to over shoot my goal a bit, but so what? Always better to go too far than not far enough.
And like I said, all this just four months before I turn fifty. Woo-hoo!
So that's what all of the updates and swimming moods are all about.
See ya and stuff,
Norm
www.normcowie.com
The Adventures of Guy ... written by a guy (probably)
The Next Adventures of Guy ... more wackiness
The Heat of the Moment
Fang Face (YA vampire/humor - coming Aug. 09)
Occasionally, I update mine, sometimes with some glee or glum about writing ... but more often I type in what's happening in my other life, the aquatic one.
A few weeks ago, I typed in "I whacked my heel flip-turning," and my mood was "pissed off."
Um, I never got that phrase either. If you think about it, 'pissed off' doesn't really mean anything. I mean, I get the 'pissed' part ... and I know what 'off means' - (that stuff that you spray on skeeters, right?) ... but these two words put together just don't make sense.
Anyway, some of my 'friends' remarked on my status, and I got a few, "poor baby's" and "ouch" and other little missives.
Last Wednesday, I typed, "swam 3.2 miles" and my mood was 'sore.' Some people commented on this.
So I thought I'd blog on the whole thing and say what's going on with me in the pool.
When I was younger, I was up for playing just about any sport, baseball, basketball, raquetball, tennis, karate, volleyball... and, well, I'm not going to be modest. I got pretty good at most of them. I have my share of track ribbons and medals, softball trophies and a black belt in karate. Though, for the record, I suck at golf, bowling, archery and the pink - Arts Entertainment - topic in Trivia Pursuit.
But as I got closer to fifty ... just four months away now... I had to drop these kind of sports, so I pulled out an old favorite. I started swimming ... a lot. I joined Masters Swimming, and swam my first ever competitive race when I was forty.
I don't swim much compared to, say, a high school varsity swimmer. Those crazy mermen and mermaids swim about ten thousand yards every day. I'm not quite as fast as the varsity, but I can smoke most of the JV. And I can still swim a hundred yards in less than a minute. Not all that shabby for a geezer.
I negotiated three swim days a week with my wife, but make up for the lower number by swimming four thousand yards of interval training. Interval training is when you break up the swim into sets, two hundred yards, one hundred yards, some pull-buoy, some kicks, maybe some synchronized swimming ... heh ...etc.
Now let's talk about what four thousand yards really means. It's a shade under two and a half miles ... or forty football field lengths. Forty!
And I swim it in about an hour and ten minutes.
In a usual month, I might swim twenty to twenty-five miles, and my goal is to hit two hundred fifty miles this year, a nice increase over last year. So about ten days ago I realized that I hadn't missed any nights, and I was going to get pretty close to thirty-one miles in July, which would mean that I averaged a mile a day swimming for the month.
I decided to go for it.
My wife said I could swim an extra day or two, but I decided just to crank up the mileage a bit, hence the 3.2 miles last Wednesday, duplicated two days later. This made up the slack, and all I needed was to do my normal swim today and Wednesday.
I swam my four thousand today, which leaves just one mile to go. I'm actually going to over shoot my goal a bit, but so what? Always better to go too far than not far enough.
And like I said, all this just four months before I turn fifty. Woo-hoo!
So that's what all of the updates and swimming moods are all about.
See ya and stuff,
Norm
www.normcowie.com
The Adventures of Guy ... written by a guy (probably)
The Next Adventures of Guy ... more wackiness
The Heat of the Moment
Fang Face (YA vampire/humor - coming Aug. 09)
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Young Adult, not so young anymore
Hello, I'm baaaack. Filling in today for Debra St. John, who I hope is enjoying herself. Thank you again for letting me blog with you!
The young adult genre has changed over time. It’s not the same YA I used to read as a kid. As a matter of fact, I bet if you walked into the YA section of your own local B&N you would be surprised.
The YA of my day, and I swear I’m not THAT old, were generally either for young kids or if they were for older kids, they tried to push some moral beliefs down your throat. (Judy Blume excluded of course!) But oh, that has a changed! Now you can pick up anything from wizards to vampires to rich spoiled kids to historical teens. And yes, some of them actually have (gasp) s-e-x.
Okay, all kidding aside, it’s true. Young Adult is now sort of split up by young adult and Teen fiction. The teen fiction geared more for the older kids, and I’m only talking maybe fifteen and up, and the young adult is geared more toward the tweens, eleven/twelve and up. And you have to include the “and up” because yes there are some adults, yours truly included, that really enjoy reading (and writing) YA.
I personally think YA books speak to young readers today and make them more aware of the world around them. I also think that writers of YA have a certain responsibility, not to preach but to guide readers. Where they lead or the path the reader chooses to go is up to the reader, but the bottom line-- it isn’t a bad place.
My YA is geared toward the 12 and up group and I write mostly to encourage readers to see that we are not all perfect. My first novel takes place in high school, as does my current work in progress. I don’t preach, I just try to let readers know that they are not alone, that what they are feeling is normal and that even the freaks or geeks can turn out just fine, because most of us actually thought that we were freaks and geeks and you know, it turns out, that was only in our heads.
So, take some time and walk over to the YA section or scroll through it on amazon.com or BN.com and see what’s out there. Maybe you’ll even pick up a book or two (Ordinary Me) and just sit back and enjoy.
Have a great week!
June
http://www.junesproat.com/
Author of Ordinary Me, a young adult book.
The young adult genre has changed over time. It’s not the same YA I used to read as a kid. As a matter of fact, I bet if you walked into the YA section of your own local B&N you would be surprised.
The YA of my day, and I swear I’m not THAT old, were generally either for young kids or if they were for older kids, they tried to push some moral beliefs down your throat. (Judy Blume excluded of course!) But oh, that has a changed! Now you can pick up anything from wizards to vampires to rich spoiled kids to historical teens. And yes, some of them actually have (gasp) s-e-x.
Okay, all kidding aside, it’s true. Young Adult is now sort of split up by young adult and Teen fiction. The teen fiction geared more for the older kids, and I’m only talking maybe fifteen and up, and the young adult is geared more toward the tweens, eleven/twelve and up. And you have to include the “and up” because yes there are some adults, yours truly included, that really enjoy reading (and writing) YA.
I personally think YA books speak to young readers today and make them more aware of the world around them. I also think that writers of YA have a certain responsibility, not to preach but to guide readers. Where they lead or the path the reader chooses to go is up to the reader, but the bottom line-- it isn’t a bad place.
My YA is geared toward the 12 and up group and I write mostly to encourage readers to see that we are not all perfect. My first novel takes place in high school, as does my current work in progress. I don’t preach, I just try to let readers know that they are not alone, that what they are feeling is normal and that even the freaks or geeks can turn out just fine, because most of us actually thought that we were freaks and geeks and you know, it turns out, that was only in our heads.
So, take some time and walk over to the YA section or scroll through it on amazon.com or BN.com and see what’s out there. Maybe you’ll even pick up a book or two (Ordinary Me) and just sit back and enjoy.
Have a great week!
June
http://www.junesproat.com/
Author of Ordinary Me, a young adult book.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Architecture of Paris by Margot Justes
You may think I have a theme in mind-in fact I do, it is after all summer and tourist are on the road.
As you can see below, my novel is set in Paris and if you are lucky enough to be going to that spectacular city this summer and happen to love architecture, there is no better place to start than Paris.
Gothic architecture does not come any better than Notre Dame, the flying buttresses abound, and the Sunday peel can be heard for miles. Notre Dame is one of many truly memorable sites, for a stark difference head out to view the Pompidou Center, a contemporary building like none other, and to kill two birds with the proverbial stone stop, delight in and absorb Pei’s pyramid, that wondrous glass structure that serves as an entrance to the glorious Louvre museum.
Where else does the 12th Century blend perfectly with the 21st – why Paris of course.
Till next Saturday,
Margot Justes
A Hotel in Paris
Art brought her to Paris, then a stranger’s death changes her life.
Available on amazon.com
http://www.mjustes.com/
As you can see below, my novel is set in Paris and if you are lucky enough to be going to that spectacular city this summer and happen to love architecture, there is no better place to start than Paris.
Gothic architecture does not come any better than Notre Dame, the flying buttresses abound, and the Sunday peel can be heard for miles. Notre Dame is one of many truly memorable sites, for a stark difference head out to view the Pompidou Center, a contemporary building like none other, and to kill two birds with the proverbial stone stop, delight in and absorb Pei’s pyramid, that wondrous glass structure that serves as an entrance to the glorious Louvre museum.
Where else does the 12th Century blend perfectly with the 21st – why Paris of course.
Till next Saturday,
Margot Justes
A Hotel in Paris
Art brought her to Paris, then a stranger’s death changes her life.
Available on amazon.com
http://www.mjustes.com/
Friday, July 25, 2008
Demystifying THE WHITE BLANKNESS by Robert W. Walker
Demystifying THE WHITE BLANKNESS - BEFORE YOU CAN BEGIN STORYTELLING DESTROY The myth of diagramming sentences By Robert W. Walker
Transforming grammar as this is NOT about your mother’s grammar.
If we could only all go back to Mrs. Carlisle’s 4th grade grammar class now that we are old enough to not only appreciate the old dear’s sincere heart but to understand and know what the hell she was talking about when she was spending all that time with her back toward us while diagramming a sentence.
Diagramming a sentence is DE-constructing it...taking it apart AFTER it has been built. The mind works in lightning fashion (computer fashion) to construct the foundation and the floors of a towering compound complex sentence and Mrs. C comes along and tears it down brick by F@#$%*!@#K!! brick? What’s that? It was and still is believed by many an English professor that DECONSTRUCTING a hairy and compound and complex sentence (created in the mind that way, created to be compound and complex in a heartbeat) is and always will be a worthwhile exercise. But typically the only one getting the thrill of it and the point of it is the single person in the room who understands why do the process of deconstructing at all, and that would be, you guessed it, the instructor.
An audience of one again, but at least she has a “form“ to work with— the shape of the sentence she has chosen to dissect like a lanuage pathologist: “Here lies the spleen of the sentence, swipe, snip, remove to a lower compartment down here. Here is the head, here the heart—subject and verb—while here lies the rump! The end object...object we were going for. To the side, we place the adverbs and adjectives, the kidneys and liver. Once all the vital organs are relegated to these secondary spirals and spin offs, we are left with but three items in the corpse of the sentence on the table: the subject, verb, and object (the kernel sentence). All those eons since Latin scholars first graced us with “how sentencing works” they were tearing down, cutting away, deconstructing in order to SHOW us how the damn thing was built to order by the remarkable language machine we call the mind (at play in the field of words).
Watch any developing child and ask yourself would you go to his little chalkboard and deconstruct the sentence he just came up with? That red rubber ball with the bulls-eye on it is mine, and I want it back now, or I will hit you with a candelabra.
How easily English teachers can wield the knife or red pen, and deftly deconstruct our constructs. How easily this crowd also destroyed any hope of hundreds of thousands in public schools across America of ever really enjoying Shakespeare’s Julius Ceaser or The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, The Faerie Queen or anything Nathanel Hawthorne ever penned because of being forced at a tender age to endure the grim and morbid Scarlet Letter when Twice Told Tales would have been perfect for sophomore or junior year reading!
So how do we understand SENTENCE BUILDING if we don’t take the machine apart and look at all its cogs, wheels, levers, pulleys and the put it back together again? Why not work with the Construction Boss, the brain itself, and teach youth how sentences are built from first brick—subject noun—to next brick—verb (action of subject) –to final brick—object (object of subject, object of action) and then we see the awnings, the grill work, the tapestry, the gargoyles go up on the turrets and spiraling chimneys. The gaudy adjectives that work like pilot fish following a shark, that attach themselves to the subject noun and other nouns (or names in the sentence), the colorful adverbs that attach themselves to the verbs, the prepositional phrases that attach themselves either to the subject or object, or AS THE OBJECT phrase, as in “for all mankind”. Then we begin to SEE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THINGS (the very definition of learning), and we begin to see that sentences don’t get formed by DE-construction but by ADD ONS. So? So rather than doing deconstructive surgery on a sentence, we English professor types ought really to be doing RE-constructive surgeries on sentences, explaining not only HOW the mind imagines and creates a sentence but WHY? What is the need for all these add-ons? These things we call MODIFIERS which, while in the haste of CREATION are sometimes...often actually...misplaced and make for the unintentionally humorous—a the unintended outcome, better known as a dangling modifier.
While this is not a grammar text, I urge anyone who has read this far to look into Transformational Grammar—a sensible and scientific way to look at how sentences are built and created and imagined by the mind.
Until overcoming fear of two elemental items involved in writing, this successful author of over 40 published novels knew only how to write crippled, awkward, halting, hesitant stories filled with boring sentences on crutches.
Stories that felt (to me alone) clear, obvious, exciting, and breathtakingly compelling, while others (bastard editors or teachers in particular) found the same story a mish-mash and a landslide of relentless boredom without the least compelling aspect save perhaps the kernel idea or plot, or a nifty character or two. Something my plumber could do.
This is not a grammar text. However, the elements of style are steeped in and wrapped in the rudiments of our fundamental decisions and choices between adverbs, adjectives, pronouns over nouns or visa-versa, of word choice which creates voice, diction, tone, and eventually builds point of view characters. In the beginning there was the word—the lone single choice of which word is better suited, which choice has the rich nuance required. Most important in that decision is to select a rich verb over an impoverished one, that is a healthy, strong, active verb over an anemic, weak, passive or helping or linking verb (the verb to be). Some movement is afoot to get rid of the verb to be altogether and this may be taking root in Spotsylvania, Louisiana and Paupau, New Guinea, but I’d put money on the verb to be staying put as it is firmly ensconced in our psyches as well as our dictionaries. To be or not to be—to act or not to act—to use the BE verb or to use the ACTIVE counterpart, that is the question. The answer came to me in a vision when I was young and fearful of all things GRAMMATICAL. If the sentence I write sounds right and just and good, and it rings a fine tone, and it makes sense, USE IT. After being “transformed” by a course in college called Transformational Grammar, I added, “If it sounds good and makes good sense, and if it is ACTIVE VOICE then USE IT.
While this blog is not a grammar textbook, I will counsel you often throughout the to race to a good grammar and to make reference there to certain matters of all important item we are discussing as when we discuss the monster in language that eats up meaning and clarity, a monster called “The Qualifier” or qualifying statement, as with pronoun confusions, as with number confusions, as with active over passive verb constructs.
An active construct can be a hammer blow in tone as with any strong two-word sentence: Jesus wept. Requiring only a SUBJECT noun and an active VERB. Notice the object is cut off by the period. It may or may not follow in the next sentence as in: The shepherd and carpenter of Nazareth did so for all mankind.
Biblical writing is filled with active voice constructs, but so too is the writings of such men as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Martin Cruz Smith, and other best-selling authors (although there are just as many best-selling authors who have either forgotten or become lazy over the years whose works are crushingly passive but whose fame has overshadowed any hope of their gaining serious and solid editing).
However, this blog is not a textbook on grammar. It does not aspire to such a lofty goal. Rather I will concern you with the least you need to know about grammar elements that can win you readings or, if ignored, lose the hoped for editor reading and respect.
That said, let us move on to the heart of the matter. As every story begs a beginning and the old saw that says simply “Begin and the beginning.” Easier said than done, but where is the beginning? Get a pocket watch with a chain on it and dangle it before your eyes at your work station, so that you are ever mindful that every successful story has an internal clock ticking, and ask yourself at what TIME in the story should I open with my first salvo, that most compelling of all sentences, the one that makes the reader go on to my second, third, fourth, and so on and on. Draw a line in that imaginary sand of the mind and have it run flat for a while, then arch up and up. This storyline looks flat at the beginning. At the first arch upwards, what is your main character doing? Where is her hands? Is this little girl whose point of view comes clear aged twelve or six or is she a teen, a young woman, and does she have an occupation or career or aspirations, and for God’s sake, what is her name? What is gained by witholding elemental facts that can help us READERS determine who she is and if we should be interested or not? And again, where are her hands, her feet, on what kind of slippery slope is she standing, hanging, or swinging, and is it by a thread? Has she just broken into the local ancient condemned movie theater? If you open with your character in mid-crime, in mid-act, in mid-mistake, wow, one step ahead of the last story the editor rejected already (not that a fast out of the gate alone will sell a story, but it will get a reading).
There’s an old axiom in script writing as well as fiction writing: begin with the backstory firmly in place. That is all that has ALREADY occurred before your story’s first line opens; it should be your research or days or weeks of contemplation on this fully-realized character. If she is an accomplished twelve-year-old burglar coming through a window that is going to change her life forever (due to conflict with someone inside?), then you have to be convinced of it before you can convince me—or any one else for that matter. Suppose Sue Appel goes through that window just for the kicks, or as a dare? Gotta be some trouble in her past that led up to this. Suppose she’s a pro at this age because she’s feeding a drug habit? Or that her parents raised her “in the business.” Suppose she defines herself as a Gypsy? And if it is drugs? It’s one thing if she’s feeding her own habit, another if she’s doing it for her big brother or father or mother.
We’re still not about grammar here but we are. The opening sentence showing Clarice climbing clumsily through the easy mark’s window that looks out on a trash-can- lined alley and a polluted sky blocking out any hope of stars and moon is already MISTAKE-ridden with the single word clumsily. Clumsily is an adverb --that is it only has one job to do and that is ADD-to-the-VERB, thus add-verb. By our choice we have made her clumsy altogether in selecting this word, and yet our backstory idea on her is that this has become routine, simple, easy, and she does it with grace and without a thought to why she does this crime. Clumsy throws us entirely in another direction, making us suspect just the opposite. She is a first timer. It is at instant odds with our plan. Enough such thoughtless choices and our story will work for no one on any level except our blind selves. We become the home movie guy who shoots reels and reels but the only one who enjoys the reels is an audience of one.
I had a student once defend the indefensible in class. He shouted his conviction that a poem could be about anything and take ANY form, finishing with, “The word IT can be a poem, standing alone, just IT. There’s your poem.”
You know he might be right, and some guy somewhere is going to have an Andy Worhal fifteen minutes when he displays his poem in a frame at the Guggenheim or the Art Institute of Chicago with his artistically stylized poem IT in an ornate frame. But I still beg to differ that all lasting, all good art conforms to a form even if it is pushing the envelope of what constitutes form, and a single-word poem is not pushing the envelope, and it has no form. It is like a Piccaso cast off pencil drawing of a single line and will get as much attention as the man‘s preoccupation with a certain female body part in his dotage—seen one, seen all—and I resent having paid for the dubious privilege at the prestigious Chicago Art Institute.
Moral: no matter who calls it art, elephant dung on canvass is still elephant dung, but at least the elephant dung artist plugged into a motif, a form, the pieta—mother and child in one another‘s arms. The single-word poem, however beautiful its frame, has no such “art” in and of itself except perhaps on the cover of a Stephen King novel in which case the publisher‘s art department has to make IT look interesting as a title. Go ahead now, prove me wrong and write the epic poem IT and show me up, but I submit that IT alone is not “epic”. Still, I’d love to see it....
Point being that stories want to “take shape” and have “form” and without this they become formless, miasmas of tone, slices of melancholia, portions of shock, fragmented gems uncut and unset as in a nifty little haunted house story that goes nowhere but darn if that wasn’t a fresh haunting opening sentence, huh?
Beginnings SET the tone. First sentences, fist paragraphs, first pages, first scenes, and first chapters are all important, so it behooves you to REWRITE them over many times, but rewrite SMARTLY, rewrite as an EXORSIST. You alone can exorcise and cast out the demons and gremlins that come about as a result of your own weak, passive, brain-snot as Stephen King calls it. In a grammar text “brain snot” would be called extraneous and confusing and misleading words, and you saw by example that a single adverb can mislead, confuse or befuddle the reader who is an amazingly forgiving cuss for the most part, but who will drop your story like a stone in the nearest toilet if you again and again fall into passive verb voice and or make other elemental errors that deep-six a dramatic moment as in a three paragraph block telling me that one character told another character this, and the second character responded by telling the first that, and so on. Beware the word TOLD. If it was told why isn’t the author allowing the character to speak in his own words? To walk and talk in his role?
Next blog willl be an actual exercise to improve dialogue overnight, a finger exercise you can do repeatedly to remind yourself what is truly dramatic in dramatic writing.
Until then, happy writing . .
Rob Walker
www.robertwalkerbooks.com
www.Fictionwise.com
Knife Editing Service – contact me via www.robertwalkerbooks.com
Transforming grammar as this is NOT about your mother’s grammar.
If we could only all go back to Mrs. Carlisle’s 4th grade grammar class now that we are old enough to not only appreciate the old dear’s sincere heart but to understand and know what the hell she was talking about when she was spending all that time with her back toward us while diagramming a sentence.
Diagramming a sentence is DE-constructing it...taking it apart AFTER it has been built. The mind works in lightning fashion (computer fashion) to construct the foundation and the floors of a towering compound complex sentence and Mrs. C comes along and tears it down brick by F@#$%*!@#K!! brick? What’s that? It was and still is believed by many an English professor that DECONSTRUCTING a hairy and compound and complex sentence (created in the mind that way, created to be compound and complex in a heartbeat) is and always will be a worthwhile exercise. But typically the only one getting the thrill of it and the point of it is the single person in the room who understands why do the process of deconstructing at all, and that would be, you guessed it, the instructor.
An audience of one again, but at least she has a “form“ to work with— the shape of the sentence she has chosen to dissect like a lanuage pathologist: “Here lies the spleen of the sentence, swipe, snip, remove to a lower compartment down here. Here is the head, here the heart—subject and verb—while here lies the rump! The end object...object we were going for. To the side, we place the adverbs and adjectives, the kidneys and liver. Once all the vital organs are relegated to these secondary spirals and spin offs, we are left with but three items in the corpse of the sentence on the table: the subject, verb, and object (the kernel sentence). All those eons since Latin scholars first graced us with “how sentencing works” they were tearing down, cutting away, deconstructing in order to SHOW us how the damn thing was built to order by the remarkable language machine we call the mind (at play in the field of words).
Watch any developing child and ask yourself would you go to his little chalkboard and deconstruct the sentence he just came up with? That red rubber ball with the bulls-eye on it is mine, and I want it back now, or I will hit you with a candelabra.
How easily English teachers can wield the knife or red pen, and deftly deconstruct our constructs. How easily this crowd also destroyed any hope of hundreds of thousands in public schools across America of ever really enjoying Shakespeare’s Julius Ceaser or The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, The Faerie Queen or anything Nathanel Hawthorne ever penned because of being forced at a tender age to endure the grim and morbid Scarlet Letter when Twice Told Tales would have been perfect for sophomore or junior year reading!
So how do we understand SENTENCE BUILDING if we don’t take the machine apart and look at all its cogs, wheels, levers, pulleys and the put it back together again? Why not work with the Construction Boss, the brain itself, and teach youth how sentences are built from first brick—subject noun—to next brick—verb (action of subject) –to final brick—object (object of subject, object of action) and then we see the awnings, the grill work, the tapestry, the gargoyles go up on the turrets and spiraling chimneys. The gaudy adjectives that work like pilot fish following a shark, that attach themselves to the subject noun and other nouns (or names in the sentence), the colorful adverbs that attach themselves to the verbs, the prepositional phrases that attach themselves either to the subject or object, or AS THE OBJECT phrase, as in “for all mankind”. Then we begin to SEE THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THINGS (the very definition of learning), and we begin to see that sentences don’t get formed by DE-construction but by ADD ONS. So? So rather than doing deconstructive surgery on a sentence, we English professor types ought really to be doing RE-constructive surgeries on sentences, explaining not only HOW the mind imagines and creates a sentence but WHY? What is the need for all these add-ons? These things we call MODIFIERS which, while in the haste of CREATION are sometimes...often actually...misplaced and make for the unintentionally humorous—a the unintended outcome, better known as a dangling modifier.
While this is not a grammar text, I urge anyone who has read this far to look into Transformational Grammar—a sensible and scientific way to look at how sentences are built and created and imagined by the mind.
Until overcoming fear of two elemental items involved in writing, this successful author of over 40 published novels knew only how to write crippled, awkward, halting, hesitant stories filled with boring sentences on crutches.
Stories that felt (to me alone) clear, obvious, exciting, and breathtakingly compelling, while others (bastard editors or teachers in particular) found the same story a mish-mash and a landslide of relentless boredom without the least compelling aspect save perhaps the kernel idea or plot, or a nifty character or two. Something my plumber could do.
This is not a grammar text. However, the elements of style are steeped in and wrapped in the rudiments of our fundamental decisions and choices between adverbs, adjectives, pronouns over nouns or visa-versa, of word choice which creates voice, diction, tone, and eventually builds point of view characters. In the beginning there was the word—the lone single choice of which word is better suited, which choice has the rich nuance required. Most important in that decision is to select a rich verb over an impoverished one, that is a healthy, strong, active verb over an anemic, weak, passive or helping or linking verb (the verb to be). Some movement is afoot to get rid of the verb to be altogether and this may be taking root in Spotsylvania, Louisiana and Paupau, New Guinea, but I’d put money on the verb to be staying put as it is firmly ensconced in our psyches as well as our dictionaries. To be or not to be—to act or not to act—to use the BE verb or to use the ACTIVE counterpart, that is the question. The answer came to me in a vision when I was young and fearful of all things GRAMMATICAL. If the sentence I write sounds right and just and good, and it rings a fine tone, and it makes sense, USE IT. After being “transformed” by a course in college called Transformational Grammar, I added, “If it sounds good and makes good sense, and if it is ACTIVE VOICE then USE IT.
While this blog is not a grammar textbook, I will counsel you often throughout the to race to a good grammar and to make reference there to certain matters of all important item we are discussing as when we discuss the monster in language that eats up meaning and clarity, a monster called “The Qualifier” or qualifying statement, as with pronoun confusions, as with number confusions, as with active over passive verb constructs.
An active construct can be a hammer blow in tone as with any strong two-word sentence: Jesus wept. Requiring only a SUBJECT noun and an active VERB. Notice the object is cut off by the period. It may or may not follow in the next sentence as in: The shepherd and carpenter of Nazareth did so for all mankind.
Biblical writing is filled with active voice constructs, but so too is the writings of such men as Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Martin Cruz Smith, and other best-selling authors (although there are just as many best-selling authors who have either forgotten or become lazy over the years whose works are crushingly passive but whose fame has overshadowed any hope of their gaining serious and solid editing).
However, this blog is not a textbook on grammar. It does not aspire to such a lofty goal. Rather I will concern you with the least you need to know about grammar elements that can win you readings or, if ignored, lose the hoped for editor reading and respect.
That said, let us move on to the heart of the matter. As every story begs a beginning and the old saw that says simply “Begin and the beginning.” Easier said than done, but where is the beginning? Get a pocket watch with a chain on it and dangle it before your eyes at your work station, so that you are ever mindful that every successful story has an internal clock ticking, and ask yourself at what TIME in the story should I open with my first salvo, that most compelling of all sentences, the one that makes the reader go on to my second, third, fourth, and so on and on. Draw a line in that imaginary sand of the mind and have it run flat for a while, then arch up and up. This storyline looks flat at the beginning. At the first arch upwards, what is your main character doing? Where is her hands? Is this little girl whose point of view comes clear aged twelve or six or is she a teen, a young woman, and does she have an occupation or career or aspirations, and for God’s sake, what is her name? What is gained by witholding elemental facts that can help us READERS determine who she is and if we should be interested or not? And again, where are her hands, her feet, on what kind of slippery slope is she standing, hanging, or swinging, and is it by a thread? Has she just broken into the local ancient condemned movie theater? If you open with your character in mid-crime, in mid-act, in mid-mistake, wow, one step ahead of the last story the editor rejected already (not that a fast out of the gate alone will sell a story, but it will get a reading).
There’s an old axiom in script writing as well as fiction writing: begin with the backstory firmly in place. That is all that has ALREADY occurred before your story’s first line opens; it should be your research or days or weeks of contemplation on this fully-realized character. If she is an accomplished twelve-year-old burglar coming through a window that is going to change her life forever (due to conflict with someone inside?), then you have to be convinced of it before you can convince me—or any one else for that matter. Suppose Sue Appel goes through that window just for the kicks, or as a dare? Gotta be some trouble in her past that led up to this. Suppose she’s a pro at this age because she’s feeding a drug habit? Or that her parents raised her “in the business.” Suppose she defines herself as a Gypsy? And if it is drugs? It’s one thing if she’s feeding her own habit, another if she’s doing it for her big brother or father or mother.
We’re still not about grammar here but we are. The opening sentence showing Clarice climbing clumsily through the easy mark’s window that looks out on a trash-can- lined alley and a polluted sky blocking out any hope of stars and moon is already MISTAKE-ridden with the single word clumsily. Clumsily is an adverb --that is it only has one job to do and that is ADD-to-the-VERB, thus add-verb. By our choice we have made her clumsy altogether in selecting this word, and yet our backstory idea on her is that this has become routine, simple, easy, and she does it with grace and without a thought to why she does this crime. Clumsy throws us entirely in another direction, making us suspect just the opposite. She is a first timer. It is at instant odds with our plan. Enough such thoughtless choices and our story will work for no one on any level except our blind selves. We become the home movie guy who shoots reels and reels but the only one who enjoys the reels is an audience of one.
I had a student once defend the indefensible in class. He shouted his conviction that a poem could be about anything and take ANY form, finishing with, “The word IT can be a poem, standing alone, just IT. There’s your poem.”
You know he might be right, and some guy somewhere is going to have an Andy Worhal fifteen minutes when he displays his poem in a frame at the Guggenheim or the Art Institute of Chicago with his artistically stylized poem IT in an ornate frame. But I still beg to differ that all lasting, all good art conforms to a form even if it is pushing the envelope of what constitutes form, and a single-word poem is not pushing the envelope, and it has no form. It is like a Piccaso cast off pencil drawing of a single line and will get as much attention as the man‘s preoccupation with a certain female body part in his dotage—seen one, seen all—and I resent having paid for the dubious privilege at the prestigious Chicago Art Institute.
Moral: no matter who calls it art, elephant dung on canvass is still elephant dung, but at least the elephant dung artist plugged into a motif, a form, the pieta—mother and child in one another‘s arms. The single-word poem, however beautiful its frame, has no such “art” in and of itself except perhaps on the cover of a Stephen King novel in which case the publisher‘s art department has to make IT look interesting as a title. Go ahead now, prove me wrong and write the epic poem IT and show me up, but I submit that IT alone is not “epic”. Still, I’d love to see it....
Point being that stories want to “take shape” and have “form” and without this they become formless, miasmas of tone, slices of melancholia, portions of shock, fragmented gems uncut and unset as in a nifty little haunted house story that goes nowhere but darn if that wasn’t a fresh haunting opening sentence, huh?
Beginnings SET the tone. First sentences, fist paragraphs, first pages, first scenes, and first chapters are all important, so it behooves you to REWRITE them over many times, but rewrite SMARTLY, rewrite as an EXORSIST. You alone can exorcise and cast out the demons and gremlins that come about as a result of your own weak, passive, brain-snot as Stephen King calls it. In a grammar text “brain snot” would be called extraneous and confusing and misleading words, and you saw by example that a single adverb can mislead, confuse or befuddle the reader who is an amazingly forgiving cuss for the most part, but who will drop your story like a stone in the nearest toilet if you again and again fall into passive verb voice and or make other elemental errors that deep-six a dramatic moment as in a three paragraph block telling me that one character told another character this, and the second character responded by telling the first that, and so on. Beware the word TOLD. If it was told why isn’t the author allowing the character to speak in his own words? To walk and talk in his role?
Next blog willl be an actual exercise to improve dialogue overnight, a finger exercise you can do repeatedly to remind yourself what is truly dramatic in dramatic writing.
Until then, happy writing . .
Rob Walker
www.robertwalkerbooks.com
www.Fictionwise.com
Knife Editing Service – contact me via www.robertwalkerbooks.com
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