Monthly Archives: November 2011

When I started this blog, I had a very clear direction in my mind: I wanted it to be entirely about writing.

I had always been frustrated when I visited author blogs in the past. I was reading these blogs because I wanted to know more about what it’s like to be a writer. I wanted writing advice, insight, practical help. Instead I got pictures of pets, political rants, and book promotions. Sure, I thought, it’s their prerogative, they can write about whatever they want, but I’m going to be different.

For over six months now, I’ve kept pretty close to my goal. But it’s not as easy as I thought.

I feel like most of my posts these days fall into one of three categories: (1) talking about my own writing, (2) discussion or advice about writing technique, and (3) “inspirational” posts. (“Inspirational” is in quotes to keep me from gagging.)

But here’s the deal. (1) Most of the time, the status of my own writing is “Yep, still working on [insert story name].” (2) I’m just not experienced enough to trust my own writing advice yet. (3) There are only so many ways to say “Ignore your inner demons and keep writing no matter what.”

Of course, I can also talk about things I’ve read, other book-related topics, etc. But the point is, the well is running dry. I still have literally dozens of ideas for posts about writing, but few that I’m excited enough – or have done enough research – to actually create.

I want to be excited about this blog. Otherwise, I’m wasting my time and yours. Besides, I’ve been down that road before, and trust me, it sucks.

So, by executive order, this blog is hereby liberated from the shackles of Writing About Writing. It is now free to cover any topic I’m excited about. BAM, bitches!

Now obviously, “any topic I’m excited about” very much includes writing, so I don’t expect those posts to stop. They just have a little competition now. It’ll be good for ’em. It’ll keep ’em honest.

What say you, citizens? Will you miss the single-minded, borderline-OCD focus on books, or are you glad to read about something new for a change? Are you not entertained?!

Mozambican fishermen. Photo by Steve Evans.

I’ve started a new project, as I frequently do. Every week I’m going to pick a different topic – anything that interests me – and learn about it all that week. Maybe I’ll get tired of it eventually, and if so that’s fine, but it’s a lot of fun for now. I’ve started with Mozambique.

I’ve already learned a lot, both from the Internet, and from a book I found at the library, This is Mozambique by Ian Michler. For instance, I learned that Mozambique was a Portuguese colony until 1975, and also (this shocked me) that Portugal itself was a dictatorship until roughly the same time. The book also has a bunch of great photos, and I do like me some pretty pictures.

However, this is a writing blog, so I have to talk about the writing. I’ve noticed something about the writing style in the book that bothers me. I’ve seen it in a lot of other books too.

This passage is a good example:

The Mozambican people have a wonderful sense of revelry with weekends being a time for song and dance.

When I read sentences like that, something seems wrong, though it isn’t always easy to pinpoint. To bring it into sharper focus, I’ll rewrite it to be about my own home – Ohio, USA.

The Ohio people have a wonderful sense of revelry with weekends being a time for song and dance.

I’d say the sentence is still true. We party on the weekends, no? But when the sentence is about me, it becomes clearer that it’s…condescending, somehow. Like he’s talking about a specimen he discovered. It’s so generic as to be almost meaningless. The feeling is that of an adult praising a child: “Good for you!”

What kind of music do they play? What does it sound like? Is it uniquely Mozambican or is it more widespread? Is it religious or secular?

Or take this passage:

Mozambicans are proud of their roots. The Makonde, who inhabit the far northern regions of the country, still dance in colourful costumes and masks, and carve as they always have, although the traditional art of tattooing the face and body is dying out.

They’re proud of their roots – but what do “colourful costumes and masks” tell us about their roots? What do the costumes signify? Why do they do it? Without that information, it’s just an exotic curiosity, something to smile about. Nobody would ever visit a Catholic church and write that the Catholics “are proud of their roots” and “still perform rituals in elaborate costumes and hats” without mentioning what the point of it all is.

In this case, details aren’t just good writing, they indicate respect. Details mean you care enough about your subject to really get into it, because it isn’t just a curiosity – it actually matters.

Fundamentally, I think the issue is learning about people versus learning from them. This book wants you to learn about Mozambique, which is not in itself a bad thing. But without a real sense of what’s going on – what it all means – it’s difficult to learn from Mozambique.

For instance: after a decade-long war of independence and another decade-long civil war, they’ve still managed to emerge as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. How are they doing it? Is it a model for others to emulate, or is there a dark side to their rapid growth? Etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I give the author tremendous credit for writing the book at all, for taking the time to travel all over the country and take the pictures and make the effort. It’s more than I’ve ever done. I just think the writing style – and possibly the viewpoint – need some work.

What do you think? Do the passages I quoted seem condescending to you? Have you come across writing like that in other places?

Carrot – Long, pointy. Traditionally orange. Good with Ranch dressing.

Caret – A proofreading mark to indicate that something should be inserted into the text. Also used in math as an exponent symbol, for example, e=mc^2.

Carat – A unit of mass for gemstones. One carat = 200 milligrams. “Carat” is one of the “four C’s” in diamond-buying, the other three being cut, clarity, and color.

Karat – A measure of purity for gold alloys. 24-karat gold (written 24K) is pure gold. 18K gold is 18 parts gold for every 24 parts of the alloy, that is, the alloy is 75% gold. Just to be extra confusing, some countries spell this word as “carat” too.

And you thought there/their/they’re was bad. Friggin’ English!

Fun fact #2: this image was not digitally altered.

During a visit to Houston last week, I found the sign above in my hotel shower, and was so enthralled that I took a picture. If you can’t read it, I’ve re-typed the text below.

refresh yourself

restore our world

One of your Heavenly Shower heads has been turned off in an effort to minimize water usage and protect one of our most precious natural resources.

To experience the most out of your Heavenly Shower, you can turn the second shower head on by pushing the small button behind the lower head.

WESTIN HOTELS & RESORTS

I’m imagining the conversation that must have led to this sign being installed. In my head, it goes something like this:

Executive: A lot of hotels are doing green stuff. We need to show customers we’re green, too. Tell them we’re all about saving water.

Writer: Okay.

Executive: Except, we’ve spent a lot of money promoting this feature that uses a ton of water. I mean, we named it after the place you go to spend eternity with God. So we want to keep people excited about that, too.

Writer: Okay. Good. Um. I think they might be mutually exclusive.

Executive: And?

Writer: To be clear, our message is “Please don’t use this amazing service we have, but if you do, it’s oh-my-goodness so amazing.”

Executive: I think “being clear” is something we want to avoid.

Overanalyzing, I know. Rant over. Logical issues aside, it was a very nice hotel!

Writers talk a lot about their Muses. Searching for a Muse, waiting for the Muse to strike, even musing over plot ideas. Yet for as much lip service as these ladies get, I doubt many of their alleged devotees even know their names. Who are we talking about, exactly? What are they up to? Are they friend or foe?

Here’s what we’re dealing with:

1. Calliope. Muse of Epic Poetry. Of all the nine, Calliope (pronounced ka-LIE-ah-pee) has surely been the laziest in the last hundred years or so. There just ain’t a lot of epics anymore, y’know what I’m sayin’? But she redeems herself by lending her name to a totally badass steam-powered musical instrument.

2. Clio. Muse of History. Now we’re talking. This lady’s got her own cable channel. Granted, she might not be thrilled with their “Ooh, shiny!” approach to the subject, but then, a personification of a neurochemical process can’t exactly complain about sensationalism.

3. Erato. Muse of Love Poetry. As long as teenagers exist, she’s not going anywhere.

4. Euterpe. Muse of Song. Like all Muses, she’s the daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory). With a name like “Euterpe,” she might have more need of Mommy’s help than some of her sisters.

5. Melpomene. Muse of Tragedy. Doesn’t get invited to a lot of birthday parties.

6. Polyhymnia. Muse of Hymns. She’s kinda poaching Euterpe’s domain a little, isn’t she? Think they picked their own areas, or just got them assigned?

7. Thalia. Muse of Comedy. Probably the most active in today’s Internet. Inventor of the LOLcat.

8. Terpsichore. Muse of Dance. Man, I could use her help. I’ve always invoked Samuel Adams in the past, but he only makes you think you’re a better dancer. Also, her name is the most fun to say: “terp-SIK-uh-ree!”

9. Urania. Muse of Astronomy. Yeah, astronomy. Don’t get me wrong, I love the subject, but there’s a definite “one of these things is not like the others” vibe going on here. Maybe scientists were just a lot more creative back then?

Anyway, for those keeping score, there’s not a single Muse of the nine devoted to prose. Story-writers and novelists will have to, er, be creative when it comes to invoking their inspiration. Personally, as a sci fi writer, I’m going for Urania.

Which Muse do you choose?

As you can guess from the title, my story was not chosen for the Machine of Death Volume 2 anthology. So it goes. With 30 spots and 2,000 entries, I figured it was a long shot. At least the waiting is over now.

I guess it’s human nature that, while winning makes you excited, losing makes you…philosophical. You get to thinking about how acceptance and rejection are like yin and yang, how each one leads to the other, how neither can exist alone. Hell, we’re writers, after all. Thinking about this crap is pretty much what we do.

You’ve probably heard before about the power of rejection. It sharpens you, keeps you focused, spurs you to improve yourself (if you let it).

The joy of rejection, however, is a strange creature. It isn’t obvious and ecstatic like the joy of acceptance. It’s reclusive, hiding shyly behind disappointment. But it’s there all the same.

Why? How does it survive? What does it feed on?

It’s simple. Rejection means you’re still in the game. It means you’re still trying. It means your writing is still alive. Because, look: the real enemy of a writer isn’t rejection. The real enemy of a writer is – and has always been – giving up.

The joy of rejection is the joy of acceptance.

Blah, blah, blah. So what am I going to do with all this fortune cookie wisdom?

Well, for starters, I’m going to finish revising the story I’m on now. My deadline for that is Thanksgiving, as I mentioned before. Then, I’ve decided, I’m going to write and submit another story every month for the foreseeable future. I had been planning to get back into the novel again, but I think I need to focus on short stories for a while, keep my work out there, improve myself, and try to get a publication credit. Then I’ll be better prepared to return to the novel. Because, let’s face it – until I can get 2,000 words published, what makes me think I can get 100,000 words published?

That’s the plan, anyway.

Tell me, have you been rejected lately?

As I’ve mentioned before, I submitted a story back in July to the Machine of Death Volume 2 anthology. They were planning to get back to everyone by October 31, but due to the sheer volume of submissions (over 2,000!) they pushed the respond-to-everyone date back to Friday, November 4.

For those playing along at home, that’s tomorrow. Which means that sometime in the next 48 hours, after more than three months of waiting, I will get an e-mail that says one of two things: “Congratulations, you’ve won $200 and the first major publication credit of your entire life!“ OR “lol nope.”

Here’s what the two halves of my schizophrenic brain are doing right now.

Okay there are 2,000 entries and they’re going to pick 30. That’s only 1.5%!

Shush, it’s not like they’re using a random number generator. You have much better odds than that. It was a good story.

It was an OKAY story. Here, let me open it up and point out every conceivable flaw in –

That, uh, won’t be necessary. Look, this isn’t Armageddon here. If you get rejected, you just move on to the next story. The important thing is that you tried. You’ll get there sooner or later.

I WANT IT NOW

I couldn’t have guessed.

They’re probably contacting the people they accepted first, in case some of them back out and they have to find backups. They’ll e-mail rejections last. We haven’t heard back yet so that probably means they already rejected us and just haven’t told us yet.

I feel like that line of reasoning might be considered “unproductive.”

WHAT IF THEY REJECT ME OH MY GOODNESS

You know as well as I do that judging a writing contest is extremely subjective. A rejection doesn’t necessarily mean the story was bad. Sometimes it just comes down to the judges’ individual tastes, or even what mood they’re in.

BUT WHAT IF WE GET IN WOULDN’T THAT BE THE GREATEST THING EVER EVER

You keep this up much longer and we’re going to start looking crazy.

Oh please. You want it just as bad as I do.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

It’s cool. I didn’t want to sleep tonight anyway.

I’ll post the results on Monday.