"An author is a fool who, not content with boring those he lives with, insists on boring future generations." - Charles de Montesquieu
So, I haven't blogged in a week. Has it really been that long? Yes, I guess it has. Geez.
Sorry, folks. Been busy, though. I'm quite nearly done with my dissertation, and that "quite nearly" is a real bitch to say. It's somewhere in between "I'm working on my dissertation," which isn't bad 'cause it tells people you're a cool scholarly sort of dude and nearly always results in "what is it on?" which is a polite way of saying "please, make me eat my own wrist out of boredom" that's almost always followed by "wow, look at the time," and "I'm done with my dissertation," which is a nice way of saying "dammit, my student loans will come due quite soon now." But being quite nearly done is like being at a busy bar when the bartender is quite nearly close enough to take your drink request but insists instead on talking with the pretty girl a few seats down. It's a matter of being oh, so close you can taste it, but you still have to stay up till God Himself is already in bed laughing at your sorry hardworking tush, your fingers banging out the most boring adjective- and adverb-less verbiage--no one with sense would call it "prose"--that can possibly be created in our language. Or, for that matter, any language that I know of.
Okay, since you didn't ask but I'm going to pretend you did, I'm studying career college faculty's propensity to participate in shared governance. In other words, college is one of the few places where the inmates are fully expected to get to run the asylum, unless they're career colleges that are run like businesses where faculty are the assembly line workers. So I'm doing a "descriptive quantitative study" in which I posted a survey online and asked all the career college faculty I could find 36 questions. Well, technically, the survey had 36 statements which faculty would respond to according to a Likert scale: "Strongly Agree," "Agree," "Neutral," "Disagree," "BiteMyAss," "IHateSurveys," and "Strongly Disagree." Except that a couple of those I just made up. I'll let you guess which ones.
The trick, then, was for me to "numericize" the responses--in other words, turn every "Strongly Agree" into a 5, every "Agree" into a 4, every "BiteMyAss" into a deletion, etc.--and then run "central tendencies" (e.g., mean and standard deviation). I also asked the "members of the population" things like what type of faculty they were (adjunct versus full-time) and what kind of institution they worked at and for how long, etc. I calculated those all to hell, too. Then I've spent the past several weeks going through compiling the numbers and trying to say stuff that sounds smart, things like "Respondents agreed (M = 3.33, SD = 1.017) with the second item, 'Faculty committees have
sufficient involvement with administration.'"
I know, I actually used three adjectives in that bit, but even those were boring.
Sorry if I seem hostile, but after writing three works of fiction, scholarly writing nearly puts me to sleep. When I'm writing it, that is. Even after 3--no, three, per the APA--pots of coffee.
But I'm quite nearly done, which means I'm working on the very last chapter in which I explain what all I learned and what I suggest for future study. Except that now my mentor says that I need to do more numbers. It's not, she explained, a "real" quantitative dissertation unless I do more than just means and variances; I should consider doing ANOVA and/or regression analysis.
Eek. I couldn't recall what the hell ANOVA stood for, much less how to do one. Or it. Or some. Or--whatever.
That's okay, though. What has been learned once can be learned again, and I found a wonderful site (http://www.halsnarr.com/snarrinstitute.htm) with videos not only on how to workie the magic in Excel, but that also actually explains what everything is. Variances? No prob. Residuals? Got 'em. No, I'm serious; watch the videos and you won't ever have to tell someone "but I don't know what kurtosis and skew are" again. At least not till the information leaks out, as all statistical knowledge seems to for me.
So back my nose goes to the ole' grindstone. I'll get back to fiction, I promise, but first I must work some freakin' ANOVA magic.
And no, contrary to popular rumor, I'm not really going to write "I checked for homoscedasticity because my mentor told me I needed more fucking numbers" anywhere in it. I promise.
-TOSK
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Like what?
"In argument similes are like songs in love; they describe much, but prove nothing." - Frank Kafka
I think I do some of my best thinking while reading other peoples' blogs. A couple of days ago I was defending Indies over at RG's place and, as a result, picked a book back up that I'd set down several weeks before in disgust. See, it's a "normal" book, one that's written by a guy who's earned a "#1 NYT Bestselling Author" on the cover, a book that has on its spine the G/C insignia of an imprint of the Hachette Group, a Big 6 publisher.
I'm on page 44 of the book; I've smacked it down once already due to a crappy premise and underdeveloped, stupid characters. But my reading pile was low, and I was curious to remind myself how bad the "good" side of writing can be, so I gave it another try. Thus, on page 44, I began again: "Between the two chairs and [the other one] was a three-foot-wide wall of four-inch polycarbonate glass that ran from floor to ceiling."
Whoa. How in the heck do you get a three-foot-wide wall made of glass that's four inches thick? Okay, sure, you can laminate nine panes together, but that makes it tough to conduct an interview through. And why would you do that to polycarbonate glass, anyway?
Was the editor paying attention? I suspect, not.
Then: "He was six foot eight and extremely lean, like a giant number two pencil." Oh, come on! *sound of book slamming shut* That's a simile I'd expect to read in a spoof, not a real story.
I like similes, generally. A well-done simile caresses the page like a silken sheet over a lover's body--revealing just enough, but not too much. And smooth, always smooth.
"Like a giant number two pencil" ain't smooth. And neither is the brandest-newest hardback-sized divot on the surface of my wall.
That got me to thinking, though, about some of the good, and the bad, similes of our time. Stuff like:
"A day without sunshine is, like, you know, night." - Steve Martin
"A book without words is like love without a kiss; it's empty." - Andrew Wolfe (which brings to question the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" when considering that the only books I've ever seen without words are picture books--are they really empty, or worth a thousand words per picture?)
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain
"The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't." - Anonymous, but brilliant, in a very, very un-smooth sort of way. I'd never put that in a serious work of prose, certainly, but it's fun to read on Facebook.
So, anyway, what's your favorite simile or metaphor?
-TOSK
I think I do some of my best thinking while reading other peoples' blogs. A couple of days ago I was defending Indies over at RG's place and, as a result, picked a book back up that I'd set down several weeks before in disgust. See, it's a "normal" book, one that's written by a guy who's earned a "#1 NYT Bestselling Author" on the cover, a book that has on its spine the G/C insignia of an imprint of the Hachette Group, a Big 6 publisher.
I'm on page 44 of the book; I've smacked it down once already due to a crappy premise and underdeveloped, stupid characters. But my reading pile was low, and I was curious to remind myself how bad the "good" side of writing can be, so I gave it another try. Thus, on page 44, I began again: "Between the two chairs and [the other one] was a three-foot-wide wall of four-inch polycarbonate glass that ran from floor to ceiling."
Whoa. How in the heck do you get a three-foot-wide wall made of glass that's four inches thick? Okay, sure, you can laminate nine panes together, but that makes it tough to conduct an interview through. And why would you do that to polycarbonate glass, anyway?
Was the editor paying attention? I suspect, not.
Then: "He was six foot eight and extremely lean, like a giant number two pencil." Oh, come on! *sound of book slamming shut* That's a simile I'd expect to read in a spoof, not a real story.
I like similes, generally. A well-done simile caresses the page like a silken sheet over a lover's body--revealing just enough, but not too much. And smooth, always smooth.
"Like a giant number two pencil" ain't smooth. And neither is the brandest-newest hardback-sized divot on the surface of my wall.
That got me to thinking, though, about some of the good, and the bad, similes of our time. Stuff like:
"A day without sunshine is, like, you know, night." - Steve Martin
"A book without words is like love without a kiss; it's empty." - Andrew Wolfe (which brings to question the adage "a picture is worth a thousand words" when considering that the only books I've ever seen without words are picture books--are they really empty, or worth a thousand words per picture?)
"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" - Mark Twain
"The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't." - Anonymous, but brilliant, in a very, very un-smooth sort of way. I'd never put that in a serious work of prose, certainly, but it's fun to read on Facebook.
So, anyway, what's your favorite simile or metaphor?
-TOSK
Friday, May 4, 2012
The not-sleep study
"Language is the source of misunderstandings." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood." - William Penn
"Speak, Friend, and enter." - from Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
So I've wondered for years why driveways were where we parked while parkways are built to be driven upon. Haven't you? Bill Bryson cleared that up for me, at least the last part, in his book A Walk in the Woods. Turns out that some of the earliest highways were intended to pass through scenic natural parkland in a manner which would engage the driver and passengers in a stately motoring experience, viewing the grandeur of the American wilderness. In other words, roadways that pass through parkland. Thus, parkways. Get it?
Granted, that makes me giggle now whenever I think of the "Garden State Parkway" through New Jersey. But at least I know now what the word is supposed to mean.
That then brings me around to the topic for today: the "sleep study." Yes, I've been going through trying to finally nail down these health issues I've been having. One of the suggestions has been sleep apnea, a condition in which the body has trouble breathing when it sleeps. It seems that the lack of breathing can cause a myriad of health issues, some of which I'm personally investigating. Who knew? So my doc referred me to a pulmonologist (a doctor who specializes in studying pulmo, which is the Latin word for lungs and doesn't seem to exist in any other language, a sad fact I learned as I spun through Google's Translate feature searching unsuccessfully for a funny quip) who in turn referred me to the sleep lab. I skipped right up and scheduled the test for--well, for what ended up being last night.
Now, it's called a sleep study. Was I really that stupid for assuming I'd get some sleep?
I tromped in at the time we'd arranged, carrying my laptop (because I still had plenty of time for writing between then and when I normally go to sleep) and my work clothes for today. The tech looked at my clothes and asked, "So, you're going to work tomorrow?"
"Sure," I said.
She smiled and nodded in a manner that reminded me of my own expression when new students at orientation tell me they're going to get straight A's in every class even though they've never been to college before.
Hmm.
To my credit, I did try to write once I got hooked up to the matrix. It's tough to rock the prose, though, when you have a sensor on your temple recording every time you blink, another behind your ear recording every time you move your head, a full EEG hooked up to your head to record brain waves (so what does an author's brain waves look like when he's writing, you ask? I have no idea--the tech said they were magnificent, but I bet she says that to all the authors), straps around your chest and stomach to record breathing attempts and heart beat and other stuff, and even sensors on your legs (in spots that, in my case, are now memorialized by a thorough lack of hair).
It's even harder to sleep. Once the lights are out, there's this red glowing circle up high on the opposite wall, clearly pointing out the camera that is recording your every moment and movement on the bed.
To her credit, the tech who came in several times to rouse me out of what slumber I could find to try out different masks and stuff was super-sweet and really quite personable. Overall, it wasn't all that unpleasant of an experience. It just wasn't--sleep. The only place you find sleep in a sleep study, then, is in the name.
Gotta love the mother tongue, eh?
-TOSK
"Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood." - William Penn
"Speak, Friend, and enter." - from Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
So I've wondered for years why driveways were where we parked while parkways are built to be driven upon. Haven't you? Bill Bryson cleared that up for me, at least the last part, in his book A Walk in the Woods. Turns out that some of the earliest highways were intended to pass through scenic natural parkland in a manner which would engage the driver and passengers in a stately motoring experience, viewing the grandeur of the American wilderness. In other words, roadways that pass through parkland. Thus, parkways. Get it?
Granted, that makes me giggle now whenever I think of the "Garden State Parkway" through New Jersey. But at least I know now what the word is supposed to mean.
That then brings me around to the topic for today: the "sleep study." Yes, I've been going through trying to finally nail down these health issues I've been having. One of the suggestions has been sleep apnea, a condition in which the body has trouble breathing when it sleeps. It seems that the lack of breathing can cause a myriad of health issues, some of which I'm personally investigating. Who knew? So my doc referred me to a pulmonologist (a doctor who specializes in studying pulmo, which is the Latin word for lungs and doesn't seem to exist in any other language, a sad fact I learned as I spun through Google's Translate feature searching unsuccessfully for a funny quip) who in turn referred me to the sleep lab. I skipped right up and scheduled the test for--well, for what ended up being last night.
Now, it's called a sleep study. Was I really that stupid for assuming I'd get some sleep?
I tromped in at the time we'd arranged, carrying my laptop (because I still had plenty of time for writing between then and when I normally go to sleep) and my work clothes for today. The tech looked at my clothes and asked, "So, you're going to work tomorrow?"
"Sure," I said.
She smiled and nodded in a manner that reminded me of my own expression when new students at orientation tell me they're going to get straight A's in every class even though they've never been to college before.
Hmm.
To my credit, I did try to write once I got hooked up to the matrix. It's tough to rock the prose, though, when you have a sensor on your temple recording every time you blink, another behind your ear recording every time you move your head, a full EEG hooked up to your head to record brain waves (so what does an author's brain waves look like when he's writing, you ask? I have no idea--the tech said they were magnificent, but I bet she says that to all the authors), straps around your chest and stomach to record breathing attempts and heart beat and other stuff, and even sensors on your legs (in spots that, in my case, are now memorialized by a thorough lack of hair).
It's even harder to sleep. Once the lights are out, there's this red glowing circle up high on the opposite wall, clearly pointing out the camera that is recording your every moment and movement on the bed.
To her credit, the tech who came in several times to rouse me out of what slumber I could find to try out different masks and stuff was super-sweet and really quite personable. Overall, it wasn't all that unpleasant of an experience. It just wasn't--sleep. The only place you find sleep in a sleep study, then, is in the name.
Gotta love the mother tongue, eh?
-TOSK
Monday, April 30, 2012
Losing Weight
"Don't dig your grave with your own knife and fork." ~English Proverb
"Inside some of us is a thin person struggling to get out, but they can usually be sedated with a few pieces of chocolate cake." ~Author Unknown
"The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat are really good friends." ~Author Unknown
Let's face it--writing isn't exactly the most active of professions. Neither is running a college, for that matter. Thus, over the past few years I've added some pounds to my frame. Not a HUGE amount, mind you, but--oh, hell, it is a huge amount. I'm over 100 pounds heavier than I was when I ran the Marine Corps Marathon, if that tells you anything. And it should.
Put another way--I got a kick out of the scene on the last episode of The Amazing Race, where the Pulikali Tiger Dancers were shown and the guys from Kentucky had to paint one of their bellies. The dancers all had about the same physique as me, which makes the tiger's face kinda stand out (in more ways than one). I thought briefly about using something like that next time I go to the swimming pool, but realized all it would do is cause the kids to say "look at that fat man with the picture painted on his stomach" instead of just "look at that fat man."
*sigh* I need to lose weight. So my doc says, and so it shall be.
Ah, yes--my doc. Last Wednesday my wife and daughter went to his office for an appointment, and he explained to my daughter how hard it can be to curb the appetite when we're under stress because stress causes some something somewhat hormone to be somethinged and it somehow triggers appetite. So I get there on Friday and nod and tell him that yes, I have stress, and I'm having trouble controlling my appetite.
Bummer, he says.
Due to a lack of good ideas from the doc, when I went to the pharmacy (to get a prescription filled, of course) I looked around. Man, they have a lot of weight loss products there. Have you ever seen that section? I know, most people only glance sideways at it if they allow their eyes to be diverted at all. "Nope, can't have people thinking I need a weight loss pill," we all say. It's as bad, I think, as the porn section at the video store or gas station. "Oh, look magaz--er, hey, look at those chips over there."
But I stopped. And looked. At the weight loss products, not the porn--I heard you thinkin' it. Hell, I need something to curb my appetite; otherwise I end up at about 3:00 pm every day getting up to "take a walk" that ends at the vending machine. It's not pretty what happens there, I tell you what.
Anyway, there are a lot of choices at the pharmacy, all claiming to be "the ONLY dietary supplement that's clinically proven to ____." Sheesh.
Finally the medicine I'd come for was ready, so I decided to brave a question of the pharmacist. NOT, not, not not not, and certainly not the old "What weight loss product would you recommend?" question, mind you. Nope, no way would I ask that. I think pharmacists take an Expressions 101 class in their pharmacy school. I can just imagine the lesson on "weight loss product questions": "Okay, now imagine that your neighbor has just asked for your camera to take a picture of a UFO. That's close. Now, he says they're purple and furry. Closer. Now, he says they want to marry your daughter. Right! That's the correct expression to use when a customer asks about weight loss products."
Nope, I asked about products to curb my appetite, which sort of the same thing but a skosh smarter. At least, it doesn't generate the "You must be nuts" look, so it must be smarter. Anyway, he said something interesting:
Metamucil.
Huh?
I'm serious. Apparently the dietary fiber curbs appetite. Not wanting to argue with the guy for fear that such activity would then cause the "You must be nuts" look to come forth, I went and purchased a canister of the orangey stuff. Got home and unpacked the groceries and got a funky look from the teenagers: "Metamucil? Aww, dad...."
"No, it's not for, um, down there. It's appetite suppressant. Really."
Seems to be working, at any rate. After drinking it I feel like I've eaten a softball. One thing I've learned, though: mix it with cold water and drink it immediately. Immediately, I say, right after removing the spoon you used to stir it in. Otherwise, if you give it time to set, it goes down like partially-firm jello. Mixed with sand. Ugh. Ptooey.
Anyway--probably best now to head off to happier topics. Y'all have a great week!
- TOSK
"Inside some of us is a thin person struggling to get out, but they can usually be sedated with a few pieces of chocolate cake." ~Author Unknown
"The older you get, the tougher it is to lose weight, because by then your body and your fat are really good friends." ~Author Unknown
Let's face it--writing isn't exactly the most active of professions. Neither is running a college, for that matter. Thus, over the past few years I've added some pounds to my frame. Not a HUGE amount, mind you, but--oh, hell, it is a huge amount. I'm over 100 pounds heavier than I was when I ran the Marine Corps Marathon, if that tells you anything. And it should.
Put another way--I got a kick out of the scene on the last episode of The Amazing Race, where the Pulikali Tiger Dancers were shown and the guys from Kentucky had to paint one of their bellies. The dancers all had about the same physique as me, which makes the tiger's face kinda stand out (in more ways than one). I thought briefly about using something like that next time I go to the swimming pool, but realized all it would do is cause the kids to say "look at that fat man with the picture painted on his stomach" instead of just "look at that fat man."
*sigh* I need to lose weight. So my doc says, and so it shall be.
Ah, yes--my doc. Last Wednesday my wife and daughter went to his office for an appointment, and he explained to my daughter how hard it can be to curb the appetite when we're under stress because stress causes some something somewhat hormone to be somethinged and it somehow triggers appetite. So I get there on Friday and nod and tell him that yes, I have stress, and I'm having trouble controlling my appetite.
Bummer, he says.
Due to a lack of good ideas from the doc, when I went to the pharmacy (to get a prescription filled, of course) I looked around. Man, they have a lot of weight loss products there. Have you ever seen that section? I know, most people only glance sideways at it if they allow their eyes to be diverted at all. "Nope, can't have people thinking I need a weight loss pill," we all say. It's as bad, I think, as the porn section at the video store or gas station. "Oh, look magaz--er, hey, look at those chips over there."
But I stopped. And looked. At the weight loss products, not the porn--I heard you thinkin' it. Hell, I need something to curb my appetite; otherwise I end up at about 3:00 pm every day getting up to "take a walk" that ends at the vending machine. It's not pretty what happens there, I tell you what.
Anyway, there are a lot of choices at the pharmacy, all claiming to be "the ONLY dietary supplement that's clinically proven to ____." Sheesh.
Finally the medicine I'd come for was ready, so I decided to brave a question of the pharmacist. NOT, not, not not not, and certainly not the old "What weight loss product would you recommend?" question, mind you. Nope, no way would I ask that. I think pharmacists take an Expressions 101 class in their pharmacy school. I can just imagine the lesson on "weight loss product questions": "Okay, now imagine that your neighbor has just asked for your camera to take a picture of a UFO. That's close. Now, he says they're purple and furry. Closer. Now, he says they want to marry your daughter. Right! That's the correct expression to use when a customer asks about weight loss products."
Nope, I asked about products to curb my appetite, which sort of the same thing but a skosh smarter. At least, it doesn't generate the "You must be nuts" look, so it must be smarter. Anyway, he said something interesting:
Metamucil.
Huh?
I'm serious. Apparently the dietary fiber curbs appetite. Not wanting to argue with the guy for fear that such activity would then cause the "You must be nuts" look to come forth, I went and purchased a canister of the orangey stuff. Got home and unpacked the groceries and got a funky look from the teenagers: "Metamucil? Aww, dad...."
"No, it's not for, um, down there. It's appetite suppressant. Really."
Seems to be working, at any rate. After drinking it I feel like I've eaten a softball. One thing I've learned, though: mix it with cold water and drink it immediately. Immediately, I say, right after removing the spoon you used to stir it in. Otherwise, if you give it time to set, it goes down like partially-firm jello. Mixed with sand. Ugh. Ptooey.
Anyway--probably best now to head off to happier topics. Y'all have a great week!
- TOSK
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Punctuation and Writing Voice
"When I hear the hypercritical quarreling about grammar and style, the
position of the particles, etc., etc., stretching or contracting every
speaker to certain rules of theirs. I see that they forget that the
first requisite and rule is that expression shall be vital and natural,
as much as the voice of a brute or an interjection: first of all, mother
tongue; and last of all, artificial or father tongue. Essentially your
truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat." - Henry David Thoreau
"You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life." - George Bernard Shaw
It's been suggested--strongly, at times--that I overuse the em dash in my writing. For those unfamiliar with the fancy terms born in the typesetting era, the em dash is the longer version, the very biggest brother, of the hyphen. It's actually fairly straightforward. We use the hyphen all the time to join two words together in a willy-nillly fashion. There's a slightly larger version called the en dash that's used to join two similarly-weighted concepts/words together; for example, you might use one to replace the word "to" in "The West Point football team beat Notre Dame 28 to 14" (hey, I can dream). Meanwhile, the biggest dash--the em dash--is used to indicate a significant break in thought when a simple period won't cut it.
Me, I have lots of significant breaks in thought. And I don't like periods much. Thus, the em dash has always been my friend, even before I knew what it was called.
But it's bad, right? Good, published, experienced authors rarely if ever use it, right?
Not necessarily. It actually comes down to voice, or the way we want our prose to "sound" to the mind's ear when the reader is--well, reading, which is for the most part what readers do. But check it out yourself. Go snag a couple of books from your bookshelf and read prose from two different authors, just a few paragraphs, right now. Trust me, I'll wait.
Did you "hear" a difference? Yes? Maybe not. For many of us, including me a year ago, the voice of an author is something we pick up on intuitively in a passive manner, coming out as an "I like the way he writes." Actually describing the voice in a cognitive fashion, though, is something that requires training and practice to accomplish. I think. Anyway, I'm better at it now than I used to be.
So what's my voice? Do I want to "sound" more like Stephen King (the other one), or like Douglas Adams, or like Robert Jordan? Well, frankly, I've always enjoyed the writing styles that tend toward sub-comedic, the ones that tell a story and occasionally--every couple of pages or so--have you chortling softly, and occasionally even guffawing loudly. The ones that, if you notice, tend to be a bit choppy and hurky-jerky at times, because that's what comes across as funny.
Writers like Bill Bryson, ferinstance. I recently picked his book "A Walk in the Woods" back up. It's out of my genre, true, but it's an interestingly-told tale of Bryson's hike along the Appalachian Trail. In it he offends the hell out of us Southern boys, but that's not the point (besides, he does it in a humorous way, so it's all good).
Point is, I picked it up this morning to read a little from where I'd left off last. I got to the second page of my current chapter--Chapter 14--and noticed for the first time that Bryson uses the hell out of my buddy, the em dash. On that page, in fact, I counted nine of them. There's even a sentence that uses not only three em dashes but also a colon to really break the hell out of the line of thought: "The six sheets--maps is really much too strong a word for them--produced for Pennsylvania by a body called the Keystone Trails Association are small, monochrome, appallingly printed, inadequately keyed, and astoundingly vague--in short, useless: comically useless, heartbreakingly useless, dangerously useless."
How's that for choppy? Oh, and he used six adverbs in one sentence there too. Take that, Stephen King!
Point is, the punctuation used by a writer is what sets the pace and the meter of the writing. It's what makes a writer like Bryson sound brisk and bouncy while other writers lull you into the lullaby of their smoothly-flowing prose. It's the punctuation, then, that sets off one writer's voice from another.
It's also, then, a matter of concern for editors (and for writers revising our own work). It's pretty easy to go back over somebody else's writing, or our own from days or weeks ago, armed with a set of normally-useful rules like "em dashes are bad" and "adverbs should be minimized" and "coffee must be consumed black" and squish a writer's voice in the process. Sometimes a passage sounds choppy, and that's a good thing because it was meant to sound choppy.
So on that note--have a great Wednesday!
-TOSK
"You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced by camp life." - George Bernard Shaw
It's been suggested--strongly, at times--that I overuse the em dash in my writing. For those unfamiliar with the fancy terms born in the typesetting era, the em dash is the longer version, the very biggest brother, of the hyphen. It's actually fairly straightforward. We use the hyphen all the time to join two words together in a willy-nillly fashion. There's a slightly larger version called the en dash that's used to join two similarly-weighted concepts/words together; for example, you might use one to replace the word "to" in "The West Point football team beat Notre Dame 28 to 14" (hey, I can dream). Meanwhile, the biggest dash--the em dash--is used to indicate a significant break in thought when a simple period won't cut it.
Me, I have lots of significant breaks in thought. And I don't like periods much. Thus, the em dash has always been my friend, even before I knew what it was called.
But it's bad, right? Good, published, experienced authors rarely if ever use it, right?
Not necessarily. It actually comes down to voice, or the way we want our prose to "sound" to the mind's ear when the reader is--well, reading, which is for the most part what readers do. But check it out yourself. Go snag a couple of books from your bookshelf and read prose from two different authors, just a few paragraphs, right now. Trust me, I'll wait.
Did you "hear" a difference? Yes? Maybe not. For many of us, including me a year ago, the voice of an author is something we pick up on intuitively in a passive manner, coming out as an "I like the way he writes." Actually describing the voice in a cognitive fashion, though, is something that requires training and practice to accomplish. I think. Anyway, I'm better at it now than I used to be.
So what's my voice? Do I want to "sound" more like Stephen King (the other one), or like Douglas Adams, or like Robert Jordan? Well, frankly, I've always enjoyed the writing styles that tend toward sub-comedic, the ones that tell a story and occasionally--every couple of pages or so--have you chortling softly, and occasionally even guffawing loudly. The ones that, if you notice, tend to be a bit choppy and hurky-jerky at times, because that's what comes across as funny.
Writers like Bill Bryson, ferinstance. I recently picked his book "A Walk in the Woods" back up. It's out of my genre, true, but it's an interestingly-told tale of Bryson's hike along the Appalachian Trail. In it he offends the hell out of us Southern boys, but that's not the point (besides, he does it in a humorous way, so it's all good).
Point is, I picked it up this morning to read a little from where I'd left off last. I got to the second page of my current chapter--Chapter 14--and noticed for the first time that Bryson uses the hell out of my buddy, the em dash. On that page, in fact, I counted nine of them. There's even a sentence that uses not only three em dashes but also a colon to really break the hell out of the line of thought: "The six sheets--maps is really much too strong a word for them--produced for Pennsylvania by a body called the Keystone Trails Association are small, monochrome, appallingly printed, inadequately keyed, and astoundingly vague--in short, useless: comically useless, heartbreakingly useless, dangerously useless."
How's that for choppy? Oh, and he used six adverbs in one sentence there too. Take that, Stephen King!
Point is, the punctuation used by a writer is what sets the pace and the meter of the writing. It's what makes a writer like Bryson sound brisk and bouncy while other writers lull you into the lullaby of their smoothly-flowing prose. It's the punctuation, then, that sets off one writer's voice from another.
It's also, then, a matter of concern for editors (and for writers revising our own work). It's pretty easy to go back over somebody else's writing, or our own from days or weeks ago, armed with a set of normally-useful rules like "em dashes are bad" and "adverbs should be minimized" and "coffee must be consumed black" and squish a writer's voice in the process. Sometimes a passage sounds choppy, and that's a good thing because it was meant to sound choppy.
So on that note--have a great Wednesday!
-TOSK
Monday, April 23, 2012
Writing isn't hard, unless it is
And now for my last (hopefully) discussion about frequency of posts....
I'm still goin', folks. I like to post something to my blog at least every other day; it keeps my writing muscles energized. Can't always do that, though. I'm no longer nearly as sick as I was in the first quarter of the year, so that's a good thing. But now I've set my own internal deadline of finishing my dissertation by July, and I'm still behind the 8 ball at work thanks to the limited efforts I was able to expend earlier in the year (again, thank you, lung ailment from hell). Oh, and I'm still a publishing fool in regards to my fiction writing (published the novella yesterday, in fact).
The post I finally sent flyin' yesterday, I started early last week. I got to a certain point, though--and most writers, I understand, know this point well--where I realized that what I was writing sucked. I'd started along a path that sounded great but I'd run out of steam. As the prose wound on painfully, it bored me to write it, and I'm sure it would have bored you to read what I had done to that point. It's like driving with a flat tire--have you ever done that? I mean, we all know academically that you shouldn't drive on a flat because it'll ruin the tire and rip the car out of alignment and all sorts of other bad stuff, but even if it weren't dangerous at all it'd still be annoying as hell. Ka-lump. Ka-lump. Ka-lump. Okay, pick up a little speed--ka-lump ka-lump ka-lump lump ka-lump. That's what writing boring crap feels like, honestly. It hurts to write boring crap slowly and hurts even worse to write it quickly. But instead of backing up and fixing it as I finally got around to yesterday, I only had the energy through the week to open the software and look at the boring-as-hell prose: "Yep, it's still flat." I did, in my defense, have a major revision on Chapter 4 of my dissertation to do, and I was having about the same reaction to that revision as well.
Then again, dissertation writing is supposed to be boring as hell. Yes, I'm going to publish that one when it's done; I have to. In fact, I have to pay to publish it, of all things. No, you don't want to read it. Trust me.
Writing isn't hard. I love writing.
Writing what I don't want to write, when I don't feel like writing, though, is tough. It's like swimming upstream in a river of mud. Not that I've ever done that, but....
Well, you get the idea.
And for now, with promises to continue putting out what I hope are great blog posts and either maintain or increase the frequency, I say Happy Monday!
-TOSK
I'm still goin', folks. I like to post something to my blog at least every other day; it keeps my writing muscles energized. Can't always do that, though. I'm no longer nearly as sick as I was in the first quarter of the year, so that's a good thing. But now I've set my own internal deadline of finishing my dissertation by July, and I'm still behind the 8 ball at work thanks to the limited efforts I was able to expend earlier in the year (again, thank you, lung ailment from hell). Oh, and I'm still a publishing fool in regards to my fiction writing (published the novella yesterday, in fact).
The post I finally sent flyin' yesterday, I started early last week. I got to a certain point, though--and most writers, I understand, know this point well--where I realized that what I was writing sucked. I'd started along a path that sounded great but I'd run out of steam. As the prose wound on painfully, it bored me to write it, and I'm sure it would have bored you to read what I had done to that point. It's like driving with a flat tire--have you ever done that? I mean, we all know academically that you shouldn't drive on a flat because it'll ruin the tire and rip the car out of alignment and all sorts of other bad stuff, but even if it weren't dangerous at all it'd still be annoying as hell. Ka-lump. Ka-lump. Ka-lump. Okay, pick up a little speed--ka-lump ka-lump ka-lump lump ka-lump. That's what writing boring crap feels like, honestly. It hurts to write boring crap slowly and hurts even worse to write it quickly. But instead of backing up and fixing it as I finally got around to yesterday, I only had the energy through the week to open the software and look at the boring-as-hell prose: "Yep, it's still flat." I did, in my defense, have a major revision on Chapter 4 of my dissertation to do, and I was having about the same reaction to that revision as well.
Then again, dissertation writing is supposed to be boring as hell. Yes, I'm going to publish that one when it's done; I have to. In fact, I have to pay to publish it, of all things. No, you don't want to read it. Trust me.
Writing isn't hard. I love writing.
Writing what I don't want to write, when I don't feel like writing, though, is tough. It's like swimming upstream in a river of mud. Not that I've ever done that, but....
Well, you get the idea.
And for now, with promises to continue putting out what I hope are great blog posts and either maintain or increase the frequency, I say Happy Monday!
-TOSK
Sunday, April 22, 2012
It's all about the people
"When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature." - Ernest Hemingway
Saturday morning at RavenCon found the fam--well, most of us--up bright and early at 8:00 am (thus proving I can be up and out of the house by that time on a weekend without a fishing pole in my hand!) at the hotel helping to set up for what promised to be a great day. It wasn't hard; as I've said before, the RavenCon staff is quite a good team so the setup went both quickly and painlessly. That left me standing at a few minutes after 9:00 with some time on my hands.
What to do? Attend a session, of course. There was one I'd been curious about, and it was right down the hall from the Con Suite. The title: "What Harry Potter Did Right." Now, hey, what author who aspires to compose the next Harry Potter could pass that one up?
The fifty-minute discussion can pretty easily be summed up in one word: characters. What JK Rowling did expertly was craft characters that were disappointingly human and remarkably memorable and lovable at the same time. A great deal of discussion went into the growth and development of the main and supporting cast of the book.
Take, ferinstance, the main trio: Harry, Ron, and Hermione. People have criticized the first couple of books for being written at a low level, but as Gail Martin pointed out the POV in all the books was Harry, who in the beginning was only 10 or 11. How much inter-faculty rivalry would a boy that age pick up on? At the same time, though, in the first and other early books you saw a great amount of lovable character come out of the three, despite and at times because of their young ages.
All the characters in HP had a significant amount of depth to them. Then again, Rowling had seven books to develop and present that depth. Martin pointed to Mrs. Weasley as an example: all along we see a solid wife and homemaker, and at the end we find out that she actually packs some power in her wand (or as Gail Martin said, "we find out why she was admitted to the Order of the Phoenix").
An interesting discussion came out of how much of a book should be devoted to characterization. One of the panelists (I think it was Michael Ventrella; sadly, I went there with no note-taking capability) brought up the Slitherins and the rest of the Houses. In the Four Houses, of course, Rowling characterized the greatest aspects of mankind. The Slitherins, Ventrella pointed out (I think) were among the least developed, though, often just appearing as evil villains rather than the personification of cunning and intellect that they were supposed to represent. But the question came quickly: how much should an author devote to such characterizations? As it was, Rowling wrote four relatively short books and three long ones. She could easily have added another several tens of thousands of words discussing the Houses, but--would it really have moved the story forward?
As it is, Martin pointed out, there are many scenes in many books where not much action happens. The dance scene in HP, for instance, doesn't have a ton of action in it. On the other hand, in that scene you get to see some of the characteristics of the main trio as you've never seen them before, especially highlighted under the lamp of their growth. They are, after all, children who are trying to grow into themselves at the same time they're fighting off giant spiders, whomping trees, and evil wizards.
Bottom line of the session was really that a writer to succeed--well, of course you have to have a plot, and you have to have conflict, and you have to have all the other parts of storytelling they tell us about in Writing Fiction 101. But if you don't have characters the readers will connect with and want to learn more about, then all you'll have is a Fiction 101 book.
-TOSK
Saturday morning at RavenCon found the fam--well, most of us--up bright and early at 8:00 am (thus proving I can be up and out of the house by that time on a weekend without a fishing pole in my hand!) at the hotel helping to set up for what promised to be a great day. It wasn't hard; as I've said before, the RavenCon staff is quite a good team so the setup went both quickly and painlessly. That left me standing at a few minutes after 9:00 with some time on my hands.
What to do? Attend a session, of course. There was one I'd been curious about, and it was right down the hall from the Con Suite. The title: "What Harry Potter Did Right." Now, hey, what author who aspires to compose the next Harry Potter could pass that one up?
The fifty-minute discussion can pretty easily be summed up in one word: characters. What JK Rowling did expertly was craft characters that were disappointingly human and remarkably memorable and lovable at the same time. A great deal of discussion went into the growth and development of the main and supporting cast of the book.
Take, ferinstance, the main trio: Harry, Ron, and Hermione. People have criticized the first couple of books for being written at a low level, but as Gail Martin pointed out the POV in all the books was Harry, who in the beginning was only 10 or 11. How much inter-faculty rivalry would a boy that age pick up on? At the same time, though, in the first and other early books you saw a great amount of lovable character come out of the three, despite and at times because of their young ages.
All the characters in HP had a significant amount of depth to them. Then again, Rowling had seven books to develop and present that depth. Martin pointed to Mrs. Weasley as an example: all along we see a solid wife and homemaker, and at the end we find out that she actually packs some power in her wand (or as Gail Martin said, "we find out why she was admitted to the Order of the Phoenix").
An interesting discussion came out of how much of a book should be devoted to characterization. One of the panelists (I think it was Michael Ventrella; sadly, I went there with no note-taking capability) brought up the Slitherins and the rest of the Houses. In the Four Houses, of course, Rowling characterized the greatest aspects of mankind. The Slitherins, Ventrella pointed out (I think) were among the least developed, though, often just appearing as evil villains rather than the personification of cunning and intellect that they were supposed to represent. But the question came quickly: how much should an author devote to such characterizations? As it was, Rowling wrote four relatively short books and three long ones. She could easily have added another several tens of thousands of words discussing the Houses, but--would it really have moved the story forward?
As it is, Martin pointed out, there are many scenes in many books where not much action happens. The dance scene in HP, for instance, doesn't have a ton of action in it. On the other hand, in that scene you get to see some of the characteristics of the main trio as you've never seen them before, especially highlighted under the lamp of their growth. They are, after all, children who are trying to grow into themselves at the same time they're fighting off giant spiders, whomping trees, and evil wizards.
Bottom line of the session was really that a writer to succeed--well, of course you have to have a plot, and you have to have conflict, and you have to have all the other parts of storytelling they tell us about in Writing Fiction 101. But if you don't have characters the readers will connect with and want to learn more about, then all you'll have is a Fiction 101 book.
-TOSK
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