The Story of English
Doobster418 at http://mindfuldigressions.com/ asked a good question about my earlier post about how crazy English can be. It reminded me that there was a great PBS series years ago based on a book by the same name, called “The Story of English. Still in print, if you’re interested.
There are short clips on YouTube, too. Here’s a sample.
My ‘inner ferret*’
*Author Dan Morrell coined the term, ‘inner ferret’, to describe how he couldn’t write
unless he had something inside gnawing at him.
I’m sitting down to get 500 words into the book today; it might be more, but not less.
To warm up, my habit has been to read someone I admire, to quiet and focus the Tower of Babel in my head. Today I picked up James Scott Bell’s “The Art of War for Writers” again. The page fell open to a chapter on working with passion and purpose — to believe in something, and to let that show on the page.
“I like to see a writer’s heart on the page,” Bell says.
So do I. And so do you.
From the short-lived TV show “Nurse Jackie,” this exchange:
Zoey Barkow: I put a film critic in a coma. You know when I wake up, the first thing I think is, I hope I don’t kill anyone today.
Thor Lundgren: It’s good to have goals.
Zoey Barkow: The only thing I want to do besides help people, is *not* kill them.
My goal is 500 words a day. And I hope I don’t kill anyone (in the book) unless they really had it coming.
Here’s my inner ferret, summarized.
- I want whatever I write to be about something
- I want to believe in what I’m writing
- I care about my craft
That’s it. I and others would probably be interested in hearing what your ‘inner ferret’ is, in the comments section.
Writer’s Almanac
I’m a subscriber to “The Writer’s Almanac,” a daily digest of book links, poems and historical tidbits compiled by Garrison Keillor. If you want to check it out, go to
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org
To subscribe: http://info.americanpublicmediagroup.org/LP=56
From today’s email:
“It’s the birthday of lexicographer Henry Watson Fowler (books by this author), born in Tonbridge, Kent, England (1858). He studied at Oxford and taught Latin, Greek, and English at a boys’ school in northwest England for 17 years, then resigned and moved to the island of Guernsey in the English Channel, built himself a one-room cottage, and began living like a hermit.
Though he spent all his time writing essays and produced enough to fill two book-length manuscripts, he could not succeed in getting them published. He then came up with the idea to write “a sort of English composition manual, from the negative point of view, for journalists & amateur writers.” Collaborating with his brother on the work for Oxford University Press, he wrote The King’s English (1906), which begins:
“Anyone who wishes to become a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and lucid.”
To Be or not
Diving into a difficult part of Running Girl this morning, and as I sometimes do, I get warmed up by reading better writers. This is one of those, and it fits the tone of today’s chapter. Hamlet is musing about why we put up with all of life’s pains and disappointments, if not simply for the fear of what we’ll face on the other side of life, in that great “undiscovered country” from which no one ever returns.
To be, or not to be, that is the question—
Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer
The Slings and Arrows of outrageous Fortune,
Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep—
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time,
The Oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s Contumely,
The pangs of despised Love, the Law’s delay,
The insolence of Office, and the Spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his Quietus make
With a bare Bodkin? Who would Fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered Country, from whose bourn
No Traveler returns, Puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus Conscience does make Cowards of us all,
And thus the Native hue of Resolution
Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment,
With this regard their Currents turn awry,
And lose the name of Action. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia? Nymph, in thy Orisons
Be all my sins remembered
House of Cards Isn’t The West Wing’s Polar Opposite — It’s Its Younger Cousin
Watching it right now, as a matter of fact. I liked West Wing, and like HoC, although the darker, cynical spirit of it does go make me want to get a drink.
Been working on this Think Piece-y essay for awhile. I got a late start watching Season 2 of House of Cards, but after watching it and mulling it over, I think the similarities with West Wing are more striking than many people realize.
Also, thanks to the Twitter-er who pointed out that this needs a SPOILER ALERT for HoC.
___________________________________
House of Cards has already earned its place in history. Even if the series itself were an artistic disaster, the fact that it’s Netflix’s first original series, available for streaming and binging on the viewer’s own terms, signals an important shift in the way we watch and analyze TV. But what’s not new about the show is the way it creates a hermetically sealed D.C. Fantasyland for viewers to lose themselves in. Everything about the show furthers the impression that you’ve stepped into a different universe. The show is heavily…
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On Faith
by Cecilia Woloch
How do people stay true to each other?
When I think of my parents all those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever
longing for anything else—or: no, they must
have longed; there must have been flickerings,
stray desires, nights she turned from him,
sleepless, and wept, nights he rose silently,
smoked in the dark, nights that nest of breath
and tangled limbs must have seemed
not enough. But it was. Or they just
held on. A gift, perhaps, I’ve tossed out,
having been always too willing to fly
to the next love, the next and the next, certain
nothing was really mine, certain nothing
would ever last. So faith hits me late, if at all;
faith that this latest love won’t end, or ends
in the shapeless sleep of death. But faith is hard.
When he turns his back to me now, I think:
disappear. I think: not what I want. I think
of my mother lying awake in those arms
that could crush her. That could have. Did not.“On Faith” by Cecilia Woloch, from Late. © BOA Editions, 2003.
Balancing Writing & Life—The World Rewards Finishers NOT Perfection
Original image via Lucy Downey from Flickr Creative Commons
The world around us is always pushing this notion of “perfection” and, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I wonder what “reality” looks like. All the models are tall and thin and young with poofy lips (and men have their own variety of the super model stereotype). They have fabulous clothes and new cars and go on expensive vacations.
Even our homes! When I look around my house that’s littered with toys, my sink full of dishes and two baskets full of laundry (even though I just DID laundry) I wonder what a real home is supposed to look like? Where do I fit? Sure NOT on Pinterest.
Granted, there are areas I KNOW I am slacking (*cough* Christmas tree is STILL standing) and let’s not talk about the state of my drawers and closets. But, I generally (when the…
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If
(Reposted.) Ol’ Rudyard’s ghost has his imperialist legacy, but this advice seems valid still for sons–but daughters, as well.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
We are such stuff as dreams are made on…
Time to wrap for the day. Saw this earlier in some notes, and it seems a good way to wish all a good night:
Our revels now are ended.
These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
— “The Tempest”, Shakespeare
Delicious slice of evil
Found this quote on the blog EsoterX, and it struck me as a central truth. The tracing of evil in otherwise good people is a delicious line that runs through the heart of mystery and crime fiction. It’s easy to paint a villain as totally despicable, but much more difficult — and more true to life — to deal with someone who is a 49-51 mix of good and depravity.
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Sure, Sometimes
‘The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…’
— Jack Kerouac
Six-word short story
It’s not known for sure if Ernest Hemingway once won a bet that he could write a short story of under 10 words, but a sort of urban legend has grown up about it. It may have come from playwright John deGroot’s 1996 play about Hemingway, “Papa”. In either case, it’s still the gold standard for brevity:
“For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”
Another Year Has Passed and You Still Look Like This
When you died on 11 February 1963, my mom was nine years old. My grandmother was your age: thirty. She’s eighty-one now, but to all of the world you still look like this:
Sylvia Plath.
How sad.
“The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”-Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Top 10 Clichés: How Not to Write
It’ll be a dark and stormy night before I wean myself from cliches, but that’s one of my New Year’s Resolutions. Damn. There’s another one.
Fail better.
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better”
–Samual Beckett, “Worstward Ho”
As true for writing as it is in business, once you refuse to stay down if you fail you are free to try again. And again. And again. The fear of failure is worse than the failure itself.
Nothing is lost
by Noel Coward
Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.
“Nothing is Lost” by Noel Coward from Collected Verse. © Graywolf Press, 2007.
Truman Capote Quote
A Poem For Saturday
“To a Butterfly” by William Wordsworth (1770-1850):
I’ve watched you now a full half hour,
Self-poised upon that yellow flower;
And, little Butterfly! indeed
I know not if you sleep, or feed.
How motionless! not frozen seas
More motionless! and then
What joy awaits you, when the breeze
Hath found you out among the trees,
And calls you forth again!This plot of Orchard-ground is ours;
My trees they are, my Sister’s flowers;
Stop here whenever you are weary,
And rest as in a sanctuary!
Come often to us, fear no wrong;
Sit near us on the bough!
We’ll talk of sunshine and of song;
And summer days, when we were young,
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now!
(Photo by Dwight Sipler)
The Versatile Blogger Award
As some comedian once said, “Well, ain’t this a kick in the pants?”
Someone who’s a lot better at this than I, the sexy young thing who writes “The Migrane Chronicles,” just nominated this blog for the “Versatile Blogger” award. That is really gratifying. You should read her poems, you’ll see what I mean. Ripping good stuff. I think she may have a thing for older men, though. I know I have a thing for her. 🙂
I hate false modesty and humble bragging, so let me express how I feel this way:
Rules of the award: I will tell you seven things about me, and nominate 15 others.
1. I’ve thought I was a writer since I wrote a fire safety play that was performed in front of the whole school in the third grade. It was mostly “adapted” from a book my teacher gave me, but I did try to make the dialogue edgy. I added a scene about a fireman saving a puppy, which I was real proud of.
2. I sent some jokes and a short story in to the Readers Digest back in my distant childhood, and they published them. I got a check for $10. I don’t remember the jokes, but the story was about my grandfather who kept bees and chewed tobacco. Once, he forgot to tie the mask around his neck, some bees got up inside and he got a bit agitated and spewed tobacco juice all over the inside of the mesh. I thought it was funny when I was 8. Still do; that should tell you about my maturity level at age 64.
3. Oh, yeah, I’m in my sixth decade. I embrace it, but gently. I just took one of those Facebook quizzes that said my emotional age was 25. So. There. Bite me, Grim Reaper.
4. I lived overseas in high school. Two years in Karachi, Pakistan. Best experience an Ohio farm boy ever had. I visited places that were old when Europe was just coming out of the Dark Ages, saw a skeleton of a soldier that had died in an attack on Mohen Jodaro 1500 years ago, and stood in the Taj Mahal. I went to high school with the greatest kids I’ve ever known. We world travelers like to hang out, you know?
5. Our flight to Pakistan was supposed to leave on Nov. 23, 1963. We got as far a Washington, DC, but stayed on for two weeks because the country was shut down following the assassination.
6. While I was staying there with my sister in Alexandria, I spent a day on my own down around the Mall. I saw men with submachine guns and shotguns lining the street. They all had skinny ties and dark suits on. Then motorcycles and a big black limo roared by at 70 mph. It was Lyndon Johnson on the way to Capitol Hill a week after the JFK killing. Later on that day I met Jimmy Stewart’s grandson and did stuff boys do. We climbed the steps of the Washington Monument. (You could do that then, especially if you were 14.)
7. I am a student of the human experience, despite having a mixed record at being human myself. I love wine and women, not necessarily in that order. I love the very idea of them, even though I’m married 43 years. (Hey, I’m married, not dead!). But everything we people do seems fascinating. I am afraid I’ll run out of time to tell all the stories I see all around me. I wonder about what it would be like to fall in love again, one more time, too. I think that’s when we feel most alive.
But the love of my life would probably kill me, which would make the experience rather brief. Still…. :-).
Nominations for other really good blogs
- Rambling Rowes
- Mike Steeden
- Must be this tall to Ride
- Blue Venice: Lost in the Midlands
- The Trouble with Kids Today
- Carrying the Gun
- Is This Gentleman Bothering You?
- Plan-B_each
- Lightning Droplets
- The Wandering Poet
- A House of Pommegranates
- The Ancient Eavesdropper
- Beautiful Chaos
- The Prodigal Londoner
- The Public Blogger
There is a reason for the lies
“It is not true that people have nothing to fear if they speak the truth. They have everything to fear. That is the reason for falsehood. And, familiarity breeds contempt, and ought to breed it. It is through familiarity that we get to know each other.” ( Ivy Compton-Burnett, British novelist, 1884-1969)
The biggest challenge for me right now is conjuring up characters with the right mix of good and evil. Any of us is both, depending on the circumstances. But the darker impulses are always there. I want to believe the best of people, but have learned the better angels of their nature might hide a devil or two. How do you all approach this when you’re working in fiction?
As Stephen King said: “Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.” So, lies are also the reason for fiction, and fiction is one of the best ways to expose them.
Tempis Fugit
That light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming locomotive?
Well. That changes things, doesn’t it?
I spent a lot of years making a living, making excuses. Now I feel like I’m trying to beat the train to the railroad crossing.
“Sometimes people say to me, “I want to write, but I have five kids, a full-time job, a wife who beats me, a tremendous debt to my parents,” and so on.
I say to them, “There is no excuse. If you want to write, write. This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don’t wait. Make the time now, even if it is ten minutes once a week.”
NATALIE GOLDBERG
No One Sees Your First Draft
For me, it’s always been a process of trying to convince myself that what I’m doing in a first draft isn’t important. One way you get through the wall is by convincing yourself that it doesn’t matter. No one is ever going to see your first draft. Nobody cares about your first draft. And that’s the thing that you may be agonizing over, but honestly, whatever you’re doing can be fixed.
NEIL GAIMAN
HemmingPlay 
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