Real-Life Cinderellas
And so goes the timeless tale of a beautiful and kind girl who fell into the unfortunate hands of her wicked stepmother and equally dumb and narcissistic stepsisters. There are different versions of this classic fairytale. But only one theme is imminent. That one is able to rise from his or her circumstances.
We may not need a Prince, who will whisk us away and bring us to our happily ever after. And we don’t need a glass slipper. (Who in his right mind would wear a glass slipper to a ball, anyway? I am not trying to mock the story, believe me. It’s perfect as it is, in a fantastical way.) We may need a help or two from our fairy godmothers. People who fuel our dreams. People who at one time or another gave support, a few words of wisdom, even just a smile that prodded us to go on… and stand firm and take our place in the scheme of things. Most importantly, we need to have initiative… the will to go and help our own self. To make one’s place and live up to it. We also need a sprinkle of good luck… and prayers. Lots of prayers.
Cinderella is not just a love story. When one rises above his circumstances, it is also one’s own life story. And those who empower others to reach their dreams… are the ones who make fairy tales come true.
Uh-Oh
Some Observations From Both Sides of the Refrigerator Door
by Robert Fulghum
Fulghum’s philosophical views on the dailiness of life never fail to enchant me. I like the way he talks to his reader, on a new light… from both sides of the fridge door.
“I believe in both Show and Tell. My attitude is that I’m always talking to one person, and if I am going to address you in any form, I ought to give you every advantage I can to understand what I have to say.”
Indeed I admire authors who use high-fallutin’ words to convey their preternatural talents. But sometimes, readers don’t get the gist. They get caught up in the barrage of novel vocabulary terminology that their cerebral cortex leaves them in frustration… and utter confusion.
I like simplicity. Of uncomplicating things… and to see them as they are. I emphatically do not mean to disparage one’s intelligence. But in my own opinion, one’s thoughts and ideas are well-remembered when his audience understands him clearly. Then again, these are just my two cents. It may or may not matter to you.
Unusual Vocabulary
This post from Simpson’s Paradox on funny vocab in Chinese-English translations might be a giggle to you bibliophiles. It seems like some obsolete words may be making a comeback!
Not to mention the obscure English vocabulary brought back to life by electronic translators. Stick and I went to see an apartment recently because the landlady promised us a bathroom containing a lavabo and close stool. That’s a sink and a toilet to those of you without SCA membership. I don’t know if ad and pamphet translators agree with my students, and feel that the longest semi-synonym provided by the dictionary is the most impressive, and therefore the best choice. But you can easily imagine the humor of these BabelFish translations.
Character Mortality
After reading a friend’s work recently, I realized something. Killing off the characters in your novel is bad news in a number of different ways. Readers expect you, as the author, to help them build a rapport with the character. They expect you to give them everything they need to know about that character. The investment that a reader then puts in that character is what motivates him/her to finish the book. When that character dies, suddenly, in chapter six, just when the reader is really getting the hang of him/her, it comes as an irritating shock. If your characters must die, then kill them; but, don’t settle for the cop out: “I’m not really sure why I spent so much time on this guy. . . I’ll just kill him.” It may work great for eighteenth-century authors, but readers today aren’t going to stand for it. They’re going to throw down the book and walk away. Maybe, if you’re lucky, they’ll return to after they cool down a little. Most likely, your book’s going to be propping up the broken couch (that is if you can even get such a book published).
Anne McCaffery’s Moreta’s Ride features a heroine who is killed at the end of the novel, but it’s a bittersweet moment in the book that leaves you breathless with admiration for McCaffery’s prose (partly because the death comes at the end of the book).
Another thing you’ve got to take into account in trying to decide if you want to kill off your main character is whether or not you want to write a sequel or a series. Obviously, McCaffery couldn’t write a sequel to Moreta’s Ride using Moreta, because she’s dead. So, if you’re pushing for a series, throw your character a life raft . . . don’t let them drown because of a little writer’s block.
Hybrid Writing
The concept of hybrid writing is something that I’ve been fascinated with for years…and continue to work on being successful at. I was introduced to this when I was getting a degree in Creative Writing from a very…contemporary school.
While I was there, I was introduced to a person named Michelle Ellseworth. (Check her out on the web if you have a chance). Before her, I truly believed that writing was just that… writing. But, she has fallen in a line of a wide variety of other authors and contemporaries who are saying writing can be more than just that.
Hybrid writing is just that. You take different forms of whatever it is you want to do and smash them together…of course with some craft. For those who want to stick in the genre of writing - poetry mixed with prose mixed with essays or screen plays. For those that want to go outside of that - try music mixed with writing mixed with dance mixed with technology or science - mixed with just about anything you want.
My favorite quote by her is paraphrased like this. Writing and art is an entire world. When you are there, you don’t have to stick with just one. You have the ability to explore and play in all of the neighborhoods. Another favorite by her is that for some of us, working in one medium doesn’t allow us to express ourselves enough. It takes more than one expression to truly get across the point we want.
So, the next time you start practicing your ability to write, try a little hybrid. It will open up new worlds and new possibilities to what you are doing.
Getting Past Writers Block
If you are a writer, you’ve experienced it. The infamous writers block… or should it be called writers wall?
There’s nothing worse than staring at a blank page, with a deadline (that you are someone else has made), and having nothing in your head.
Believe it or not, it doesn’t have to just be a blank page. There are plenty of little ways to overcome the block and to get back to the pen.
Typically, writers block isn’t really about being blocked, it’s about needing to gain perspective or change directions - or - just letting things set in for a while until you can process enough to say what you really mean. The number one rule that I always have with writers block is to get past the denial that I’m blocked when I am. Writing isn’t something that is easy or comfortable to do. In fact, it takes great pains - of the back hurting, the fingers being sore, and the un-comfortablenesses of everything being solitaire. Add that onto having to come up with continuous genius ideas, and you have a lot going on. Once you admit that, you’re half way there.
After that point, you can start thinking of ways to remedy yourself. Writers block could be a simple way of saying that you need a break. One of the things about living a writers life is that you are pouring a lot of information onto the page. You need to get it filled back up again. Give yourself permission to do something different, go to a spa, take a nap or go and get the cramps out of your back from sitting for so long. You never know what material you will run into.
If you are really set on writing, try looking at it from a different angle. Give yourself permission to make a complete mess of whatever you are doing. Let go completely of what you are trying to say, and instead, let the writing say what it wants to say. Don’t worry - you can go back and take it out later. One of my best examples of this is when I was stuck a while back. There’s a completely blank page, and on the next one are huge letters. “This really sucks! I can’t think of a damn word to write!” Of course, that cleared it, and the next two pages were filled with things to write about.
The idea is - let yourself go. Let yourself get filled up again and let yourself be where you are in order to write. You can break down the blocks to writing if you allow yourself to fly over them.
A way to get you to write?
I should have mentioned this earlier on, but we’re only on November 4th, so there’s still enough time to go if you happen to be a fast typer and can put your imagination in motion quickly enough.
As every year, November means NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, which is fact much more international than its name suggests). NaNoWriMo’s aim is to push people to write a 50,000 words novel in 30 days, whatever its genre, theme or actual number of chapters–you can even go further than 50,000 words if you wish. There is nothing to win, save for the satisfaction of having written a novel–no prize, no money, not even a chance at getting directly published. However, in my opinion and personal experience, NaNoWriMo has an advantage that can turn out to be a very strong asset: it makes you write, and write a lot.
More than one person, if asked the question, would likely say “yes, sure, someday, I too would like to write a novel and have it published, it would be nice”. But that novel, nobody ever gets to write it. We are busy. Our lives are full. We haven’t enough experience in writing yet. Our writing is too young, too awkward. We have to wait until we’re wiser, have grown up, have more time… And so it goes. And we still don’t start writing that novel, or if we do, we proof-read and polish every sentence so often that three years later, we’re haven’t even reached the half of the story.
With NaNoWriMo, nothing of this is valid. You have 30 days to write, and to reach your goal, it means you have to write a minimum of 1,667 words a day. You won’t have time to edit. You won’t have time to think too much. All you can do is stifle your ‘inner editor’, and write, write, write. When it’s all done and over, then only will it be time to let it out again, and turn your text into something really worth it (or push it in a drawer and never look at it again).
Is this a good method? Would such a novel be a good read, or at least have the potential of becoming a good read? It depends. For some writers, it doesn’t work. For others, it’s an excellent way of start-jumping their production. I’m in the latter case. I also know people who definitely aren’t. Indeed, you probably have to try it once to know if NaNoWriMo is for you, or will prove to be just another catastrophe on an otherwise good journey to writing.
Nevertheless, remember: the first step on the road of publishing is to actually write something. So if it has a chance of helping you, even a slight one, why not jump on this opportunity, and start wielding that pen or keyboard of yours?
Who knows, you may end up with a nice plot, albeit an improvised one, and have fun along the way on top of it.
Unpublished Writers Get Their Chance
The Sobol Award is a new literary prize but only writers who are both unpublished and who do not have an agent can try to get it. The winner will recieve $100,000 and for second and third place, they will recieve $25,000 and $10,000 while 7 others will recieve $1,000 each.
Participants must enter through the Sobol website, where up to 50,000 manuscripts will be accepted, online only and when applying an $85 fee is required.
Top Five Publishers Make $4.8 Billion
The five largest US publishers (aka the “Big Five” — Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin Group, Simon & Schuster and Time Warner Trade Books) raked in $4.8 billion in revenue in 2004.
Random House, of course, was the country’s largest publisher last year, with U.S. sales of about $1.33 billion, roughly flat with 2003. HarperCollins and Penguin usually run neck and neck for the country’s second largest publisher. In 2004, HC, with a big assist from Zondervan and The Purpose-Driven Life, edged ahead of Penguin. HC had North American sales of approximately $965 million last year, with North America accounting for about 73% of HC’s worldwide sales. Penguin, which received a boost of $40 million from its Penguin Press, Gotham and Razorbill imprints in 2004, had estimated sales in the U.S. of $900 million last year.
To compare: 63,000 small publishers (’everyone else,’ I’m guessing) generated revenue of $14 billion.
[Source: Publishers Weekly, via KeepMedia]
Grammar for the Rest of You
I’ll have to admit I’m a bit of a grammar geek. I usually refer to myself as a word nerd. I’m a professional editor as well as being a writer, so words, and the correct usage of words, are my business.
Because I’m more than a little obsessed with all things wordy, I can’t resist reading books about grammar and usage. I came across a fun one yesterday that even those who aren’t word nerds will enjoy: Grammar Snobs are Great Big Meanies by June Casagrande (Penguin, 224 pages, $14).
Casagrande, author of the “A Word, Please” column that appears in several community sections of the Los Angeles Times, offers a guide to usage that’s mostly based on doing what feels (or at least sounds) right. She’s not big on rules, and she is big on cheesy mnemonic devices to help you remember the rules you do need to know.
She hopes that people can learn to strike a balance between being clueless about grammar and being a “grammar snob,” someone who delights in his or her knowledge of grammar and will use that knowledge to humiliate others who do not know as much.
If you haven’t had the pain of running into a grammar snob, Casagrande elaborates:
Unlike normal people who get giddy about things like love, sex, money, free beer, and classic REO Speedwagon, these guys have the hots for things like punctuation marks and syntax rules and the excavation of lost words that were lost for a reason.
Like a lot of ‘happy’ drunks, these people can turn on you in an instant, transforming from Jekyll-like, playful nerds into bloodthristy grammar Hydes.
Some grammar snobs, Casagrande points out, give truth to the adage that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. They think they know the rules, so they think they have license to correct what they see as gaffes in other people’s writing and speaking.
But the truth is, these people often don’t know the rules any better than the average person. Or they know rules that are no longer considered rules, like the “rules” against splitting infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions or starting them with conjunctions, all of which this book trashes, once and for all (we hope).
Casagrande also tackles more ticklish subjects like use of the subjunctive (was vs. were), saying “literally” when you mean “figuratively,” how to punctuate and why, and why rock stars can’t spell and what to do about it.
This entertaining and funny book is also educational if you don’t already know the basics of grammar and usage or are always getting rules confused. If you’re a grammar geek already, you might not learn much from this little book, but you should take it as a warning never to become one of the grammar snobs Casagrande takes to task, even if you think you really do know it all.