2014, A Christmas Poem

Season of stars,

diamonds piled up on the doorstep

and frost growing like fur on streetlamps.

Light from the houses around reflects off the snow,

marred only by footprints and the remnants of play.

Christian or no, this is the season of love,

of fireplaces and cookies,

songs and family,

presents and light.

Christmas lights the Earth softly,

spreading to pinch our cheeks pink

and shining from our eyes.

Maybe We Shouldn't Read Poetry

I think we may be approaching this poetry thing all wrong.

Way back in the day, poetry was some blind dude telling you stories (Homer). These days, we think of it as a column of words in a book you read. I'm not talking about content. I couldn't care less whether poets are talking about sunsets, wheelbarrows, people in jail, or whatever else is on their minds.

When Homer was around, people absorbed poetry. It was a primary form of entertainment and history, something that brought people to their feet, cheering (or so I imagine, anyway. I wasn't there). These days, you kind of nod to yourself and turn the page. If you're that girl in a poetry class I took, you make a copy of it and hang it on your wall. I once took someone's magnet words, found on their refrigerator, and rearranged some into the sentence, "My memory walks upon sunsets in wonder." Poetic, no? Some people would argue it doesn't mean anything. I would argue it's pretty.

A poetic sentence on a refrigerator is as useful as the cherry blossom trees on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. I've heard they look beautiful when they bloom, and they are all over the place. They probably make some people stop, take a picture, post it to their Facebook.

But it's only refrigerator poetry.

Those cherry blossom trees don't provide cherries. And they also don't smell. They look pretty, but they don't embrace their potential as cherry trees (I'm ignoring biology, stay with me here). A line of poetry on your refrigerator doesn't change your life. A column of text in a book can, but it's unlikely. That's because you shouldn't read poetry.

Poetry should be listened to.

It should be absorbed through the skin and the ears, you should want to repeat the words to taste them on your mouth. If you go to YouTube, you can see poetry while you hear it, watch images swell beneath the words spoken aloud. I highly recommend this use of YouTube.

Poetry is part music. It is what gave birth to lyrics, and it is a sibling of written prose. We should be able to hear that music--the stressed syllables, the sounds of the letters, the pauses and tempo switches--while we soak in the meaning of the words. That's when you're doing poetry right. If you aren't listening to it, you are getting only half the poem. You're getting a cherry blossom tree instead of a full cherry tree.

I realized this only just the other day, after being told it by nearly all my English professors in college. This video is what brought it to me. Think how weak this poem would be, in comparison, if it were read silently. Perhaps if we were taught in school to listen to poetry, instead of taught to read it, we would enjoy it more. Perhaps things would be just a little bit different.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Joseph Heller

Almost a month since my last post, but here's my excuse: I got engaged! After dating on and off for years, and after Tyler has served a mission for our church, we are finally going to get married. The planning has taken over my life, and what free time I have I give to a manuscript I'm editing.

Tyler and me

I haven't even been able to read. I checked out a book and after renewing it once and still not finding time to read more than the first two or three pages, I decided to return it. The good news is that I have found a venue and a dress, we figured out the menu, and we have a florist, photographer, and my hairdresser all lined up. Things are calming down a little bit, so I have time to write this post.

The other good news is that while I haven't been reading, I still have to commute to work and I was able to listen to Joseph Heller's Catch-22 while I drove. So no, I wasn't completely deprived.

Besides my usual reason of wanting to be well read, I decided to listen to Catch 22 because nothing else at that particular library looked good and because I've never completely understood "Catch-22" as a phrase. It's a phrase used regularly in English, and I only had a hazy idea what it meant. So I guess you could say I listened to this book to improve my English fluency.

Turns out this is what a Catch-22 is.
The world makes sense again.

I was listening to one CD from this book for a while before I looked over at the player and saw that it was set to random and I had been listening to it out of order. That's something you would normally realize straight off, but the fact that it took me so long lets you know just how random this book is. I didn't feel out of the loop, and I had been getting the story out of order. Another time, I thought it must be set on random, because I was a bit confused, but it wasn't. I turned it back a track and kept an eye on it and sure enough, I hadn't missed anything.

For that reason, and because it is written in vignette style--think episodes--I think this may just be a book that is better for listening than reading. I haven't read it, though, so I can't really say. I just know that it was an excellent commuter book because I was getting it in snippets and it was written in snippets.

Catch-22 reminds me of the sitcom M*A*S*H*. In the same way that Hawkeye is the main character of the sitcom, a man named Yossarian is the main character. What I mean by that: While the entire book isn't focused on him, he gets our attention more than the other characters.

It's a book set in WWII, with the regular cast of characters all belonging to an American bombing squadron. There are scenes where the characters are bombing various locations, there are scenes with them in Rome for some R&R, there are scenes in the hospital, and there are scenes out and about the squadron's base. If you like M*A*S*H*, I'd give this book a try. From what I remember, they are similar in content, interpretation of military bureaucracy and personnel, and sense of humor. Also, Yossarian reminds me of Klinger, minus the cross-dressing.

The characters are what stand out the most about this book. They are Dickens-like in that Heller took quirks and blew them up to create entire characters, making them more caricatures than realistic; yet somehow we buy it as being true to the world they exist in. Plus, this is the military and we are given to understand that everyone is a bit crazy. Character example: Colonel Cathcart, whose main attribute is his ambition without self-confidence. He is constantly concerned with whether an idea or event is a "feather in his cap" or a "black eye." Those phrases are used over and over again.

Early on, I could tell this book would have a unique ending. It couldn't be totally happy, because that wouldn't fit the tone of the book, but it couldn't be serious either, for the same reason. It would be a bizarre ending that somehow made sense. I wasn't disappointed, and that's all I'll say on that, because I really do recommend this as a commuter book (but perhaps not with kids in the car, because R&R means a lot of time with prostitutes).

As I said, though, I don't know if I would recommend this for reading. It would probably try your patience and you'd have to read it in short periods instead of sitting down for a good couple hours to read. The style is disjointed and the plot itself isn't clear until near the end.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Laura Esquivel

I found this book because I wanted to read something written by an author whose last name started with the letter "e." I thought it would be nice to have at least one book per letter on my bookshelf, and "e" was the first letter to come up short. So I walked into the library and stood in front of the e's in the fiction section. This is the book that stood out to me -- I don't read much Hispanic fiction (this was in English, a translation, and I tend to think Laura Esquivel wasn't so careful with her wording that I got the short end of the stick because of it), and the title was familiar: Like Water for Chocolate.

This is a strange and seemingly hypocritical post to put up after my post about when and why I stop reading particular books, mainly because there is a ton of sex in this book. I didn't think it was that bad until last night, when I read the ending to my boyfriend and realized that while the sex itself wasn't described minutely, various aspects of sex were mentioned (climax, heat, etc.). This is what I get for reading a modern romance novel.

Like Water for Chocolate is part cookbook, part romance, and part coming of age story. We watch Tita as she grows up cooking and serving her overbearing, constantly dissatisfied mother, who is determined that Tita will never marry because as the youngest daughter, it is her lot to serve and take care of her mother until her mother dies. So when Pedro comes to ask for Tita's hand in marriage, he is instead prodded into marrying Tita's sister.

Esquivel's story reminded me of Chocolat, by Joanne Harris, in that the food Tita makes is mildly magical. If she is feeling sad while she makes it, those who eat it will likewise feel sad. The same thing goes with whatever emotion she is feeling at the time.

What doesn't work for me in this book is how it skips forward in time without notice and sometimes skips key events, instead glossing over them with a sentence or two to tell the reader what happened. I assume that Esquivel had a reason for this decision, but I cannot tell what it is besides possible laziness or a desire to keep the story short.

The writing was good enough that I did not notice it much. I was confused, however, about how there was one recipe per month but the narrative didn't keep to that calendar. At that point, what is the purpose of having a calendar layout? Why title a chapter "January" if it does not all take place in January, and then why skip a couple years between that and February? Formatting. Esquivel needs to explain herself a bit.

Right of the reader: to not have to think or question, to not be drawn out by any flaw or irregularity in the text. If they want to think, they can, but they should be able to understand at least the events of the story without pondering or figuring them out. Esquivel's time habits gave me a little bit of a jerky journey.

When and Why I Put Down a Book

I’ve taken to listening to books on CD while I drive to work lately. The drive home takes 25 or so minutes. On the way to work, though, let’s just say I have to leave 45 minutes early just in case.
It was after I decided to stop listening to one particular book that I thought it might be a good to talk about when and why I make that decision.


Why: It has descriptively sensual material

This is why I stopped reading The Color Purple midway through. I picked it up because it’s a well-known book and a classic. I thought it would be a good idea to read it so I could expand my literary foundation. But when the book began to talk, descriptively, about sex, I decided I needed to put it down. I’m one of those people who closes my eyes during movies because I don’t want to see what is happening on the screen when Character A shoves a pair of tongs through Character B’s eyes. It’s an image I don’t want in my mind, and with movies, I can close my eyes and still know exactly what is going on, so I don’t lose any of the plot. With books, you can’t close your eyes, and when it comes to sex scenes, I as a reader am being forced to conjure up images on my own that I’d rather not be creating or even thinking about. I'm okay if I'm told the characters had sex; just don't describe it. I’m not against sex. Like, at all. I think this particular reason for putting a book down has to do with my relationship with God, and how I believe that He wants my thinking to be virtuous. Getting my brain to conjure up its own porn is not so cool when the people involved aren’t me and my spouse. It does things to the way your mind works and makes sex more about lust than physical intimacy and love.

When: If it is a recurring scene and/or I can’t skip the page/chapter without losing what is happening in the story

I wanted to read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. It sounds like a brilliant concept, and besides that, people say it’s great. But when an entire introductory chapter was a single sex scene (an erotically horrific one, if that interests you), I could tell that things weren’t going to go up from there. So I made the choice to stop reading it. I think I allowed The Color Purple one sex scene but then it kept dwelling on it and returning for more and I was just done with it all.

Why: The ideas are an assault on my religious beliefs

I’m okay if an author has different ideas than me. Really. By the time I was finishing reading Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon, I had a weird sensation that the narrator had been trying to convert me to her religion. On a whim, I looked it up and it turns out Bradley did actually start a religion along the lines of the one found in the book (practiced by the book's Morgan le Fay, by the way). It’s called the Aquarian Order of the Restoration, if you feel like looking it up. This conversion attempt did not make me need or want to put the book down.

A book I did end up putting down was Philip Pullman’s The Amber Spyglass. I adore the first two books in the His Dark Materials trilogy. They are some of my favorite YA novels. But when I got to the third book in this trilogy, the tone of the books turned and I found myself being served some religious theory that said God was a liar. It was as if the fiction was being used to mask a rant about how blind religious people are. Things crossed a line for me when I started wondering if he was right. Go ahead and say I am deliberately blinding myself to reason, but I know there is a God and He is a good person, and I don’t have to sit and quietly accept an attack on that belief. In a lecture or classroom, fine, because I can defend myself. A book isn’t that sort of platform.

When: If I start giving undue credence to the author’s argument

Again, this is an Elizabeth-is-willfully-being-blind moment. I don’t care.

Why: The writing is terrible

I once bought a book at a library book sale that had what I thought was a promising concept. It was a retelling of Jane Eyre from Adele's point of view that claimed Bertha wasn't insane after all and Adele was friends with her and was the reason the house burned down. However intriguing the concept, though, this writing was terribly hard to get through and the story just wasn't worth that much work.

When: If the writing gets in the way of the story

The story is what's important. If I have to trudge through a swamp to get to it, that story better be worth it. I'll put a book down if the writing is so bad it slaughters the story.

Why: The book can't hold my attention

I tried multiple times to listen to Around the World in 80 Days. It isn't that Jules Verne disagrees with me, because I made it through Journey to the Center of the Earth just fine, but for some reason I never could get past the beginning of 80 Days, and I was listening, which is generally easier. I may have to try again sometime soon.

When: If it's due back at the library

If it is due back, or if another book grabs my attention instead, I'll let the book go. Whether or not I renew it and give it more time has to do with how good of a recommendation the book has. After all, it could just have a slow beginning.

Think of it this way: I want a PG-13 at most (I'll give a bit on language and violence, so long as there's a reason for it being there) book that is well directed and has a good script. That's my base standard.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Louise Murphy

So it turns out I lied about finding a happy book to read. I went to the library all set on reading a particular happy book, but then the library didn't have it and the book I wanted to read most instead was set in Nazi-occupied Poland. And the main characters are Jewish children. On the plus side, it did have a happy ending!

Louise Murphy's The True Story of Hansel and Gretel first stood out to me because of the title. I wanted to know what angle Murphy was using to retell this story, so I looked at the book description, where I found out that Murphy's concept was brilliant: "In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed 'Hansel' and 'Gretel.' They wander in the woods until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called 'witch' by the nearby villagers" (from the back cover).

So I had to read the book. I wanted to see how Louise Murphy would pull it off--and it turned out she did so with skill. There is a trail of breadcrumbs, Gretel is placed in a cage at one point, there is food on the outside of Magda's hut, and (I read this bit before, but I can't remember where) Magda ends up in an oven. Nuances of the original story I wasn't even familiar with--the children were carried on a swan? Really?--are included in this adaptation, and the writing was good enough to support it. I was rarely distracted from the story by weird wording or poor storytelling.

I do need to warn you that this book is not for kids, at least not in the G or PG mindset. There are Nazis, and they aren't softened at all. Gretel is raped twice in a row (two men caught her alone in the woods), we watch Jews die in the showers, the language is not always clean, and there is quite a bit of graphic carnage.

To me, it felt like Murphy was just being honest when she included these things. The story would have felt fake without them (which makes me wonder about The Sound of Music and how nothing truly bad happens in it...). However, this is not a story about the war or the Holocaust; that is just the setting Murphy uses. Don't expect a history lesson while reading.

FYI: I gave this book four out of five stars on Goodreads. That's because although it was incredible, I didn't feel like it reached masterpiece level. It is still just a story. For me, 1 = bad book, 2 = okay, 3 = good, 4 = exceptional, 5 = masterpiece.

That said...

The story of Hansel and Gretel may have been first told long before WWII, but this book made it feel like the story was meant to take place in Poland during that time. It was that well done.

Lorenzo

The mind is a muscle, they said, and it needs to be exercised like one. So Lorenzo dutifully went to school every day, where they handed him a packet the moment he walked in the door. He would sit with his back against the wall, pull out his pencil, and do the Sudokus first, because they were his favorite. Then he did the logic puzzles about baseball players and rows of brightly painted houses, but if he got bored doing that he would take a rest and read a couple of the articles that were in the back. You had to read them all and answer the important questions afterward, like “Who was the man who figured out how to fix the computer?” and “Write down the names of all the breeds of trees mentioned above.” When he was through with the packet, he could give it back and go home. If he fell asleep, that just meant he was there for longer, so he always did his best to stay awake, even though it was hard sometimes.

At some point, Lorenzo got bored of the packets. He wanted to read big people things, like the magazines his uncle was always reading. They could probably tell he was bored, because the next week, he was told to go to a different room, where they would have a different packet for him. The new packet had some Sudokus in the front still, probably because they knew he liked them, but also some how-to articles, about fixing cars and putting TVs together. He had to raise his hand to ask for some help understanding some of it, because he had never seen the inside of a TV before, and they stood talking in the corner about it for a minute. During that minute, Lorenzo examined the new room. The walls were all white, with one blue wall that had a clock on it. And there were bean bags with kids sitting in them and a couple red and brown rugs on the floor. It was the first time he couldn’t remember what the first room looked like. He’d never really looked at it. And that was weird. Really weird.

They were taking a long time talking. He looked at the boy on the bean bag nearby and tried to see what he was reading, but the angle wasn’t good. So he stood up and walked behind him to look, but even then he couldn’t read it because the spelling was all messed up.

“What’re you reading?” he asked, still trying to find a word, even just one, that he could read.

The boy looked back at him and said something that he didn’t understand, and he wondered if the boy was one of those people who didn’t exercise their mind enough and so they were having to start over or something. He walked away from the boy.

They were done talking in the corner and were looking at him, so he walked over to where they stood and asked, “Is that boy on the bean bag chair someone who is stupid?”

They shushed him and glanced at the boy in the corner, then put an arm around his shoulder and took him out of that room, even though his pencil was still in there and it was his only pencil. They gave him a screwdriver instead. He knew what they looked like because his uncle had one.

“We’re going to show you the inside of a TV so you can understand what you are reading,” they said.

“Will it take a long time?”

“You can go home once you finish that part of the packet,” they said. “It shouldn’t take too long.”

“Okay.”

That was the day Lorenzo found out the insides of TVs look weird.





Is there a point to this particular longer-than-a-paragraph fiction? Does there need to be a point? I felt like I had a point at the beginning: I was playing around with an educational system and society that does not prize critical thinking -- or knowledge, even. But as it went on, it turned out that Lorenzo was not as interested as I was in making a point. He resisted fighting the system. So I didn't force him to, because it felt wrong.

It is a story. And no, it doesn't really have a point. A lot of people think that stories should have a point. Even more people think that poetry should have a point. I'd like to ask why. Can't it just be a story? Can't I write a poem that is just about how much I love vanilla ice cream, without any sort of agenda? And once it is written, does its value lie in its ability to make a point, its ability to sound profound? I reserve the right to write without trying to inject it with an agenda of any sort. The point is to enjoy it. Find a lesson if you want, but I'm not going to try to teach one.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...George Orwell

Until this month, I had never read George Orwell's 1984. It has been on my to-read list for a long time, mainly because it's one of those books that everyone seems to have been forced to read in high school and therefore can allude to and joke about. The book is a part of America's culture at this point, and I had never read it. So I finally pushed it to the top of my to-read list (meaning it was available at the library and thus I didn't have an excuse to get out of it).

If you haven't listened to any TED talks, you
need to do that ASAP. They are incredible, as a rule.

For the fun of it, here are some things (and people) that were released or born in 1984, for real: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic books, Tetris, The Cosby Show, Mark Zuckerberg, Scarlett Johansson, LeBron James (with whom I share birthdays, it turns out), Mandy Moore, the Mac, TED, Ghostbusters.

It isn't news that the real 1984 was much different from Orwell's. Orwell's 1984 idolizes hatred, violence, and betrayal. War is constant, and sex is frowned upon, love even more so. I was about halfway through the book when I knew for certain that it wasn't going to have a happy ending. I was hoping for bittersweet, but it turns out I didn't get that, either.

I was also about halfway through the book when I decided 1984 was Orwell's way of sneaking an essay on class theory into the fiction section. I'm not exaggerating; there is a good chunk of pages in the middle where the main character is reading what amounts to two essays on class theory, and the reader gets to read along. There is little to no plot or movement going on while these essays are read.

What I mean by "class theory" = how society's high, middle, and low classes interact.

The essays are interesting, and strange as it may sound, the book started being a faster read once I reached them. In my opinion, those essays are the point of the book. The rest of it is supportive material, an illustration of what the essays are talking about so as to drill it into our minds.

When the book described what Big Brother's face looked like,
I felt like it was describing Stalin. So that's who I imagined.

Aside from that, this is an exposition-heavy book. Most of what happens is inside the main character's mind. Besides having a lengthy affair and vowing to undermine the Party (the government, in essence), he does not do much of anything. I suppose this is fine because this book is about an idea, not a story. Be prepared for that if you choose to read it.

Do I think Orwell has a valid point? I think that even if he did, it would take centuries, not decades, to happen.

I also think that even if it were to happen, at some point--and it may well take millenia--the government would grow comfortable and make the smallest of mistakes. That mistake would start a chain reaction that would end in that government being overthrown.

My last thought that I'll share is that the Party would need a leader. It has Big Brother, but Big Brother is a myth, the face of the Party, not an actual leader. The world has the Inner Party, or what would equate to the high class, but as far as the reader knows, that is as high up as it gets. But someone needs to be organizing and overseeing everything if it is to flow smoothly. Left to their own devices, the Inner Party members would start working on conflicting projects that could mean the downfall of the Party. Someone has to be in charge, and that someone--singular, because they would have to be against sharing their power--has to be a psychopath who is absolutely aware of exactly what he or she is doing. Think The Joker.

This all said, I'm going to the library today to pick up a happier book.

Death Rattle Writer's Festival, Dead Geese, and Old People

I attended an Open Mic reading for the Death Rattle Writer’s Festival in Nampa Friday evening just before I went to work, which actually means I only went to part of it. There are some oh-so-glorious parts of working an evening shift (not graveyard; I still sleep at night), and one of those is that people like to schedule fun things in the evenings because they assume that’s when people don’t have work. Oh well.

The Festival was a two-day thing, and while I wish I could have gone to more events, I’ll take what I can get. I also wanted to read some of my paragraph fiction, since it’s like pocket-sized prose, perfect for an Open Mic, but it turns out they had a sign up beforehand. Again, oh well.

So I got to listen to three people read their work, and I was surprised and pleased with the quality (does that mean I’m cynical? Yes). The first was a short story about a widower who has fallen in love with his daughter’s bus driver without knowing her name or ever talking to her. The second person read some poems, one of which was about how she startled a goose and it died by running into a telephone pole or wire, she wasn’t sure which. Her other poems were a bit more nostalgic and thoughtful in content, and she managed to bring that goose around to being philosophical; but it still says something that it’s the goose I remember, not the profundity she was going for (note: create fantastic images in your writing, because that’s what will stick out).

The third reader read a short story about this old woman who has fallen and broken her hip, and she spends the bulk of the story trying to get through to her Alzheimer’s-stricken husband, asking him to bring her the phone so she can call 9-1-1. That last story was the one that captured me the most from the Open Mic. I would have to reread all the pieces to know if the writing had anything to do with it, but I feel like the reason is that it was, to me, a new aspect on a familiar part of life. It was a tragedy, and one that wears normal clothes, making it even more tragic. This could be happening somewhere right now, and the possibility had never crossed my mind until Friday. I hope that story goes somewhere.

Perhaps this idea stuck out because it was so well illustrated by the image assigned to it. The dead goose stuck out because of the imagery alone, but then the poet philosophized and I have forgotten whatever concept she was trying to convey, leaving me with a dead goose and nothing more.

Jacques Derrida: Literary philosopher, deconstructionist.
Fun name to throw out if you feel like being hipster.

The woman with the broken hip, though, naturally portrayed an idea all on her own, so when I remember the image, the idea comes naturally with it. The writer did not have to explicitly state the idea anywhere in the story, and there was absolutely no stretching going on for the sake of making a point. Jacques Derrida once philosophized about how “the center is not the center.” I think this goes in that category. The story was so much about how this is a familiar tragedy that it didn’t have to even acknowledge the dead horse, much less beat it. The audience knew the horse was there just the same.

I wish I could put an excerpt from the story here so you could see what I mean. I’m kind of floundering here trying to explain it.

Lesson from today: A well-told story containing strong imagery can embody an idea that sticks (if the audience is receptive to it). Imagery that merely connects with an idea is a dead goose; if you wanted to eat goose, though, that’s just fine. Sometimes a story can be just that: a story.

I can feel a literary term being born here. “Dead goose”: an image that transcends the idea a writer has tried to attach to it.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Frank Herbert

I didn't hear about Frank Herbert's Dune until I was in college. One of my professors compared society's obsession with Harry Potter to his obsession for Dune years before. I guess that registered as a pretty high recommendation for me, because it's been on my I-should-read-this list ever since.

It has been said that Dune is the greatest science fiction novel ever written. This makes me question the definition of science fiction, since I see it as more of a fantasy novel. I found a website that looks into it, and the website says science fiction has the following characteristics:

Who knew a worm could be
such a fearsome creature? Well done,
Mr. Herbert. Well done.

• human species encounters change
• focuses on ideas, sometimes at the expense of plot or character
• interdisciplinary, involving more than one branch of learning (history and math, for example)
• provides an approach to understanding
• carries experiments through that we wouldn't actually want to perform so the consequences are discovered and examined
• alternative point of view, representing someone or something we are not

All of that said, is Dune science fiction? Human species encounters change -- well, there is a breeding program, I suppose, and they also have to test people to see whether they are human or humanoid. Focuses on ideas -- This is one of the areas where I have a bit of a problem. The book spent much more time building its concept (desert planet) and less time building ideas applicable outside the book. After looking it up, it seems Herbert was addressing superheroes and their effect on society. Paul, the protagonist, begins the story as a young boy who is largely carefree. He ends the book by marrying for political reasons in a bid for the throne, worshiped by those around him and willing to kill for mixed reasons. So yes, there is a downward spiral. I had never considered science fiction as looking at the science of a person's personal growth. It is an intriguing concept.

There is some science, and I liked how Herbert took an idea to an extreme -- lack of water extended to the point that people are literally harvesting dew and draining blood from dead bodies so the water is preserved. It turned from science fiction in that magic was introduced. People take a drug and can then carry the memories of all who came before them. Others are trained to have superhuman analytic abilities. If you use certain tones of voice, you can control other people. All that stuff is not explained scientifically and goes under the "magic" umbrella, for me.

But this is all about the label the book has gained. I have a feeling Herbert was not really concerned about genre while he was writing this book. One thing he was obviously aware of and careful with was his use of foils. This book is full of marvelous parallels that are strong yet do not shout their presence.

A "foil" is an aspect of a story used for the sake of comparison. If everyone can fly around the world so fast the Earth stops spinning, then Superman becomes much less super. His abilities become normal. Every book that features characters with superhuman abilities needs to have characters without those abilities so the reader can have a standard to compare them to. Just because they are special compared to the real world does not immediately make them special in their own, and readers want the characters to be special in their own worlds.

I did not imagine this
character as looking like
Patrick Stewart, FYI.

Paul has many foils, each for another aspect of his existence. Another noble boy his age is used to compare him to his peers. One of his father's trusted officials is used in place of his actual father, showing how he grows away from that standard. The leader of the people who populate the desert planet represents that people and how Paul changes them. It really would make quite the chart if one felt like writing out every foil in the book. Even the desert planet has foils in comparison with the planet they recently left and with the emperor's prison planet. Everything in this book has something to directly compare it with. This allows us to understand more, making each aspect more three-dimensional. It is brilliantly done.

It took me awhile to get used to reading this book, so I was a number of chapters in before I started thinking that I was reading an awesome book. In a way, Herbert has broken literary rules. "Free-indirect discourse" is what it is called when a story is told in the third person but one character's thoughts and experience are focused on. For instance, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice tells most of the story through Elizabeth. Authors tend to choose one point of view for the entire book or else they switch between characters at breaks in the story. Herbert switched points of view every few paragraphs. Sometimes it was nearly every other paragraph, in fact. It took quite some time to get used to, and it was a bit jarring. It also had interesting side effects in that we saw the story through the eyes of the villains and knew just who the traitor was many pages before the others did, because the traitor was thinking about it often. We even got to see a conversation between someone thinking, "This person could never be the traitor" and the traitor thinking, "I wish I wasn't a traitor, but it's the only way." We swapped between the two views multiple times throughout the conversation.

Dune was a good book. Really. It was just a bit different in the style it's written in and the way it is approaching science fiction. The story itself is well done and worth a read.

Paragraph Fiction - Stolen First Lines

Rules: Find a random book, steal the first sentence, and make things up from there.



It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. His father had promised to return before the year was out, but the snows had already begun and nothing stirred outside their small home except the last few leaves that trembled on the trees beside the blank road. The unknown was gnawing at him in the night so that he could not sleep, so Jonas put on his heavy coat and the scarf his grandma had sent and walked outside, where the snow was glowing with moonlight and he could almost hear the stars twinkle. He walked and erased the blank road, driving an uneven line across it until his feet reminded him that he had boots beneath his bed back home, but he had not discovered his father by then and so boots would have to wait until spring, when his father would give him bear hugs every day and remind him to be careful about getting lost in the mountains where he liked to escape.
The Giver, Lois Lowry

This is me when I was 10 years old. I was old and wrinkly. At least, that's what I thought, or else I thought I would skip my prime altogether and enter old age in a month or so. They are one and the same, really; ten was ancient compared to the youthful three or four, at which age you were just beginning your education and discovering how to tie your shoes. But I was beyond learning to make a bow from shoelaces and teaching my hand to shape the letter B. When I looked in the mirror, I saw the wrinkles already growing, crows feet at the edges of my eyes when I smiled just so, my teeth falling out and implying a serious need for dentures, a hair I could have sworn was gray even though Mom assured me it was a light blonde. And so I wrote my will, and bequeathed my Barbie set to my future nieces, who I was sure would come along relatively soon, because my younger brother was seven, after all, and seven isn't so much younger than ten. That done, I visited the cemetery to find a gravestone I thought would suit me, finally selecting one that had a rose and the name Pearl Quinn on it. I took a picture of it and placed it on the refrigerator along with my will so no one would forget.
Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died. If you were blind and could have heard him talking, you would have assumed his deathbed to be surrounded by a family of ducks and twenty-one hamsters, all in deep mourning and doing their best to amuse the poor fellow. When he did finally die, it was while smiling at the antics of a particular hamster that had attempted to ride one of the ducks as it ran, quacking, around the perimeter of the room and out into the hall. The hamster fell off somewhere near the bookcase, where it sighed and brushed itself off, then held out a thumb (which it had been miraculously born with) for a lift back to the right rear bedpost, where his brother had taken up temporary residence for lack of room beneath the bed proper.
Tinkers, Paul Harding

The Story of a Rewrite

You know, "rewrite" was once (is?) an
occupation. Reporters would dictate the facts
and quotes over the phone.

I wrote a story in high school that I thought was kind of amazing. I still think it's a pretty good story, actually, and so do those who have read it. It was nearly self-published, but that fell off the bandwagon.

I'm rather grateful it fell off the bandwagon, though, considering how much my writing has improved since then. Looking back, the story had a lot of good things going for it: Personable characters, believable villains (since it was YA, they were definitely villains, not just the cause of conflict), and an intact and original magic system. Probably some other things, too, but I don't remember them right now.

I do remember the major problem of the piece: It had no middle.

Technically, it had one. I mean, there wasn't a vacuum where pages were supposed to be, but what I did have was a few chapters taking my characters straight from the beginning to the end. Nothing important happened in the middle. They discovered they could use magic, learned how to use that magic, then went on a trip and defeated the villain. The only thing that happened in between was the travel, a little character development, and no big mishaps. Nobody messed up, nobody got seriously hurt, nobody did anything interesting.

Since high school, I have always told myself I would rewrite that story. At first, I was waiting so I wouldn't feel so attached to the first version (note: not “draft.” I had edited the manuscript in high school and had it edited by someone else, too). I didn't want to edit it; I wanted to rewrite it entirely. At some point, I was waiting because I wanted to figure out a middle.

But then I got all excited to write something and figured the time had come to give that story another go.

My first chapter was amazing (in my humble opinion). Here are my first few paragraphs, to give you an idea:

Will was hiding behind a fence, crouched down, straining his neck now and then to peer over the top. He was not, of course, hiding hiding. He was lying in wait, in the midst of a midday stakeout with Alex. They were both armed with PVC pipe marshmallow guns, loaded and ready to go the minute Tristan opened the front door.

The fence smelled funny for some reason Will could not figure out, so he was doing his best to quietly breathe through his mouth. He heard a noise, something like the thumping of someone quickly coming down a flight of stairs inside. Looking at Alex, he squinted his eyes, widened them, squinted again. Alex grinned and nodded, then the two of them readjusted their feet so they were ready to bust out of there.

The door opened, and Tristan came out. The two boys yelled and jumped out from behind the fence, blowing their marshmallows at her and quickly reloading. She took off down the sidewalk. Will and Alex gave chase, whooping and doing their best to reload their guns. They had brought along especially stale marshmallows today, saved for the occasion. The boys—all of the boys, every single one of their comrades in arms—had determined today was the day.

Today, they would crush the enemy.

The enemy? The girls, of course. Sneaking, prissy, lying, cheating, conniving girls.

Encouraged by how well things were going, I dedicated myself to writing a bit every day, pushing the story forward. That was fine and dandy until I realized the story was boring.

The idea, brilliant (if I do say so myself). The writing, on par (can we just assume I am mildly humble and just being blatant about things to make a point?). The story, suffering.

I sent it to a writing friend with the request that she check to see if it had a pulse. Is the story alive, or was I forcing dead story parts together without making a successful monster? I thought it was maybe because I had spent so much time out of the story.

But then I caught myself in the act of destroying the story, and I realized what the problem was. My epiphany happened when I had the thought that things would get interesting if I let the two kids destroy a building. Something needed to go out of control, and it had to be big. But no! I thought to my muse. If I do that, everything will be derailed! They can't destroy something and still be left alone long enough to learn how to use magic like they are supposed to!

Charles Dickens: Died while writing a mystery.
The man had class. This is the one mystery that will
never truly be solved; it has been stopped
forever in the middle.

Do you see what the problem was? It wasn't the exact wording from the original that I needed to divorce myself from; it was the story itself. I was so stuck on the idea that this story ended this way, with events A, B, and C, that I would not allow a middle to affect anything in my original plot.

But every chapter needs to affect every subsequent chapter. As I learned from my Writing Excuses course, I shouldn't be writing a chapter that the reader can skip. I was trying to create a middle for the sake of a middle.

But unless it affects the end, it's a dead middle. And that is what I had on my hands.

I could have realized this and then thrown the original story out the window, but I just can't distance myself that much from the original story. It's like I know that's how it happened, and I can't lie to the reader about it and make something else up. That's my own problem. My own solution: Start on something new. Ditch the story.

I am no longer qualified to write it, at least not now. Maybe in the distant future I can resurrect the characters and concept—but only those, because the story itself was a dud. This, folks, is why we use a (metaphorical, in my case) #2 pencil.

I am not advocating quitting on a manuscript. However, I will say that if you come across a problem because you are rewriting—not editing and not re-storying—it may be time to set the story aside. Make sure your reasoning is sound, and then remember that there are other stories out there.

And my new story? As of right now, I don't know the ending. And that gives me the freedom to write the truth of the story, including a middle that matters.

Books I Would Assign if I Were a 10th Grade English Teacher

I know I'm not qualified to make this list, except in that I have a degree in English (writing, not teaching). I'm doing it anyway.

I feel like many English teachers teach the books they do because they are comfortable with them. They have been taught before; they know what to teach using them because someone taught them what to teach. They do not have to re-analyze the books. I wonder how curriculum would change if this wasn't the case? That's what I was thinking when I put this list together.

We would start off with The Odyssey by Gareth Hinds. Why this version? It's a graphic novel. The story is all there, but there are also pictures to help people clearly understand what is going on. No reason why I should make this harder than it needs to be when we're just looking at the story, in my opinion.

Why start with the story of The Odyssey? Because it perfectly illustrates the hero cycle, which is what I would be teaching, explaining that this is the basic outline for many stories. We would also probably spend some time talking about graphic novels and book layout in general. Then I would pull a fast one and introduce them to the play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot breaks nearly all the rules I would have just taught them; it is essentially a story with no plot. From there, we would have a discussion about what a story needs and why those parts are necessary. First unit's question, in essence: What is a story? I think it's a great place to start.

Fun fact: Shakespeare's name
was spelled in multiple ways
during his lifetime. So no, he didn't know
how to spell his own name.

After that, we would choose another play to read, and yes, I mean "we." It being 10th grade and all, they should probably get a dose of Shakespeare. But I have a hard time deciding on a play of his I would teach, so I think I would give the class sales pitches for a few and let them choose. If one of the plays was being put on nearby, I would probably go with that show and try to go see it with them. The point of this is that everyone is expected to be somewhat familiar with Shakespeare in today's society. What I would focus on with the script would depend on which play they chose. Perhaps we would spend the unit trying to figure out why so many people care about Shakespeare. (And, through that, helping them learn why English students are taught to analyze books in the first place.)

The Cask of Amontillado:
Where someone gets buried
alive behind a brick wall.

By this time, it would be Halloween season, and one of the great things about Language Arts is we can totally celebrate holidays by reading texts that involve them. So on the week of Halloween, we would read (in class, probably) The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving and The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allan Poe. I chose those two because they are short stories, not full-length novels, and because they aren't Poe's The Raven. That is an amazing poem, but I trust other English classes would have introduced it. So for a breath of fresh Halloween air, I chose Sleepy Hollow (an amazing read, quite creepy) and Amontillado (even creepier). I think I would leave it at that, but if I needed to teach something with the stories, I would have the class try to figure out what it is about the stories that make them creepy. Is it just the concept, or is it also the way it is written?

Halloween over, we would start our next unit by reading Markus Zusack's The Book Thief. Aside from loving this book, I am including it because I think WWII is something that is usually studied in the 10th grade, specifically. I remember reading Elie Wiesel, and while that gave me a great picture of the Holocaust, the books were so dark that I had a hard time reading them. I feel like The Book Thief presents the story from another angle and in a way that still lets you know how horrible it was without making you need to put the book down. Some people may say I shouldn't soften the Holocaust. I think I would bridge that with nonfiction accounts of what happened, short memoirs we would read in class and discuss.

After that, Winter Break would be fast approaching and I would have the class read Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's a story they will all already know, but how many of us have read the actual story? It is a great introduction to Charles Dickens, quite accessible with plenty of wit. ... And I can't resist. I'm showing off some Charles Dickens. First two paragraphs of A Christmas Carol:

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

I think it is fun. The book (and it's a short one) would allow us to discuss character. Now, I may analyze books as a writer does, looking at what makes it work, but I think most people should analyze books as readers, looking at the issues being discussed. In this case, though, I would be using the book to introduce a unit where we look at people as individuals with dreams and values. This is a unit that I think would be useful when you're a teenager trying to figure out your own values, dreams, and identity.

Stevenson was also the
guy who wrote Treasure
Island, FYI.

Coming back from break, we would jump into The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, using the book (another short one, aren't I a kind non-teacher?) to discuss societal expectations and how people strive to meet them, sometimes destroying themselves in the process.

Next up would be our one nonfiction book, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride. I considered reading this right after The Book Thief, but Christmas got in the way and I decided to come at it from this angle instead. This is a book where we see someone trying to meet society's expectations and then rejecting them in favor of living the way he wants to. The mother goes through the same process, so the lesson is actually taught twice in the same book. This book would also be an avenue for discussing equality in race and religion (and gender, though that isn't directly discussed, as far as I recall).

From there, we'd hit either The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) or Uglies (Scott Westerfield). These are both dystopian YA books, and we would use them to discuss the question "What is best?" Everyone in this world seems to believe others should live by their system of ethics. I would probably also teach some lessons in propaganda while we were at it, because people believe it and I hate seeing all the propaganda junk that comes up on my Facebook feed (there, of course, because my friends share it). As a class, we would identify which values the higher society idolizes and figure out where things went wrong. We would then apply it to now: Which values do we idolize?

I would then end the year by going through a book chosen by the class. I would have the class choose the book early in the year so I have time to read it and think about it, and then we would discuss the book and the issues the book discusses. I'd end the year like that because I know they would be drowning in projects, and if they can have fun English reading, they may get their homework done. No reason why I should punish them, after all.

Any books I missed or that should not be in this list? Topics I focused on: story, WWII, identity, and society (and whatever the wild card books brought to the table). Along the way, the students would also learn about equality and respect for others' beliefs. Hopefully they would have fun while they were doing it.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Louis L'Amour

I first came across Louis L'Amour in my Grandpa Jack's front room. He has a whole shelf of books written by him, and the books fit the tone of the room -- western, even though he lives in Orange County. So when I think of the western genre, L'Amour is the author who comes to mind.
That us what I thought until I was standing in the library, looking at a row of books written by the man and seeing that almost none of them take place in the old west. Or the modern west, for that matter. Maybe this was just the selection I was looking at, but suddenly my definition of "western" was expanded.

The book I ended up checking out was Last of the Breed, which is set in Soviet Siberia. I picked it because it was not a romance (wasn't in the mood) and the cover said it was his #1 bestseller (that totally got corrected to say "bests elder." What's up with that?).

My reason for reading L'Amour: A desire to be familiar with him because he was and is so well known in that genre. Being an author and not having read some L'Amour, I figured, was like being a children's TV entertainer and not knowing the Looney Toons.

Last of the Breed is a concept story. It asks the question, "What would happen if an American Indian was captured in Siberia and had to make his way out and back to America via the Bering Strait while evading his captors as they did everything they could do to recapture him?"

Brilliant concept, right?

This is a book to read if you love the roughing it in the outdoors. It is an adventure story. Not action, but adventure. While a few people do die, there are no fight scenes (except for when he takes down a helicopter and its three passengers, armed with only a bow and arrow, if you consider that a fight scene). There are definitely cool, adventurous moments and it is clear L'Amour knows exactly what he is talking about. I would not be surprised to hear he went backpacking in Idaho for research purposes (he keeps comparing Siberia to Idaho, and the Cold War was going on while he was writing, so I imagine he couldn't take a jaunt in the Soviet Union proper).

This is not a book to read if you want romance, fights, or a fast-moving story. He keeps circling over the same ideas, meaning this is an exposition-heavy book that is repetitive. To defend L'Amour, though, he was dealing with one man by himself much of the time, and he had to fill in all the silence somehow and keep us emotionally connected. It got a bit old for me by the end, but I would not be against rereading it.

There are multiple subplots, which he uses to keep the audience's attention, to increase tension, and to raise the stakes. Not all of these subplots are, for me, satisfactorily resolved, leaving the book open-ended. One would expect a sequel, but there isn't one.

As a random side note, this book is also extremely clean and family-friendly, minus the fact that people die and we see one couple talking the morning after they were obviously sleeping together.

My final take was that it was a brilliant concept and the right readers will love the book.

A Note About Editors

A while back, I mentioned an editor's bedside manner. I think that would be a good topic to discuss today. Why not, right?

Even though I am a writer by nature, I am an editor by trade. You might think that means my writing is perfect the first time round, but that's not true. Sure, my English is probably fine, but it's hard to see what is wrong with something you wrote. It's your baby; it's perfect! Every story, poem, article, whatever it is you have written, needs another set of eyes on it to make it better. Hopefully that extra set of eyes can see what you can't and can guide you in improving it. (Please have it edited before you submit it to a publisher! You want every advantage you can have.)

Not all editors were created equal. If you can, try to get a sample of the editor's work before you pay them anything. It's my personal practice to send half the manuscript back to the author before I ask for what they owe me, and when I get the payment, I give them the second half. That way, they know they are paying for a quality scrubbing and I can be sure I am getting paid.

This is one of my favorite memes ever.

Getting a manuscript back from an editor can be one of the most discouraging moments ever. You'll suddenly see just how terrible a writer you are and wonder whether the project is even worth it. Okay, you might wonder those things. I'm not you, so I don't really know. I just know that sometimes that moment makes me want to cry.

A good editor will rip your piece apart. That's the truth of it. But they should also mix compliments and jokes in with their critique. This serves to give you some confidence and also makes you feel like the project really isn't a lost cause. Plus, anything that makes you smile in that moment is greatly appreciated.

If the compliments and jokes outnumber the actual edits, you need a better editor, because they aren't doing their job correctly. You are not paying them to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Some sample comments, both edits and not, that I have made before, to give you an idea of what I mean:

I’m going to be blunt and say this sounds stupid. Try to find a different lead-in, maybe consider using an em dash.

Well, that’s a conceited thought.

What is the newbie doing, and was he at last week’s meeting?

Stereotypical

You’ve got romantic undertones going on. FYI.

Well done in showing, not telling, that her existence has been wiped out. It leaves two questions: Why is the stone for her grave still there, and why do the ghosts remember her?

This drops your audience's age from about 6 to about 3

You are making this kid symbolic for every kid; he is not unique in any way. Make him a person with an actual character, even if he only appears here. Characters who are stereotypical are lazy characters.

Oh, please. He knows she’s talking to him. This is just him being rude.

When I edit, I tend to make the following types of comments:
     1. Corrections/edits (all are suggestions; note that everything an editor says is always a suggestion)
     2.  Reactions to the story (so the author can gauge how a reader is responding and adjust if desired)
     3. FYIs (meaning, I tell the writer what they just did in case they didn't realize it and don't want to be doing that)
     4. Questions (meant to urge the author to clarify or add things)
     5. Compliments
     6. Jokes (sometimes because a correction needs to be made that was obvious and funny, sometimes a reaction to what the characters are doing)

I do not always give suggestions for how to fix something. Depending on the writer, that can be appreciated or not. When I don't give a suggestion, it's usually because I believe this is the author's work and my solution would make it sound too much like me instead of them.

This post would be incomplete without me saying that an editor should always treat the work as yours. The writer has the final say, because it is their work and their name is the prominent one on it should it get published. An editor should work with a writer just like a coach works with an athlete. No editor should belittle you or your piece and still get paid the full amount. This is why I suggest getting a sample first, because that should show you what sort of editor the person is. The writer is the athlete, the editor is the coach, and they work together to serve the reader. The reader is the most important part of this equation. Never forget that.

I'll end this post with a plug for myself as an editor. If you want me to edit your piece, leave a comment and I'll get back to you.

May the Force be with you, and happy September!

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Brandon Sanderson (again!)

I've stayed away from writing second reviews about authors up until now mostly by not reading the same author again. But after reading ... I can't even remember what I was reading. Either way, I needed a mental break. And, standing in the library wondering what to do, I realized that when I want a break, I read fantasy. Reading fantasy is, for me, the literary equivalent of coming home. It's what I grew up reading.

I decided to try another Brandon Sanderson because I didn't want to take a chance on an author again (just yet, anyway). Other authors I considered were Robin Hobb and Raymond E. Feist. I'm not sure why I settled on Sanderson, but I ended up checking out The Alloy of Law.

This is the part in this post where I tell you Sanderson didn't live up to expectations.

This book was not as good as Mistborn or Elantris (which was also not as good as Mistborn). The Alloy of Law is (I assume) the first book in a companion series or trilogy to Mistborn. It is set in the same world, a few centuries later. It was fun to see some of the same characters show up, whether it was in their being talked about or with them actually showing up. These Mistborn characters did not factor majorly into the plot, however; The Alloy of Law is its own story.

It is also a western. Okay, not totally, but imagine a western that is also a fantasy and that's what this book is. Sanderson's characters were lawkeepers out in the world's equivalent of the Wild West, and now they have moved into the city and are trying to catch the Wild West-style villains (lawkeeper turned bad; rich guy who is funding things). There is fighting on trains, there are plenty of gun fights, and we even have a sidekick who wants his hat back (Indiana Jones, anyone?). All this is fine and dandy. I'm not against westerns; I just figured I would give you a heads up because Sanderson has somehow fooled the world into thinking this is merely steampunk.

As always, he has a magic system that is innovative--new, with its own new boundaries. He is using the Mistborn magic system, but he's tweaked it (with a suitable explanation for how the changes came about).

The book also made me laugh. He has some wonderful, witty characters in this story.

The thing that made this book clumsy is that it is so blatant. For instance, the characters enter a ballroom and the main character immediately starts musing about how one could use that space in a defensive battle. Then guess what? Battle happens in the ballroom. It was a promise, but it was painfully obvious and that ruined it for me. That sort of thing happens all over the place in the book.

Sanderson also did not take the time he normally would have taken to make this book flow. For instance, I was in the climax when I suddenly realized that this was supposed to be the climax. I was never in a position to forget I was reading a book.

The big question: Was this my reaction to the book because I've been listening to Writing Excuses, or is he really that blatant and clumsy with the narrative? I'd love a second opinion on that.

The Power of a Story

This is my 100th post. No pressure, right? It's a weird anniversary, since it isn't a date-associated one, but rather, content-associated. I had a few ideas about what to write about for this post, but a photo I saw while at work yesterday immediately stood out and superseded them all. This is the picture, along with the cutline (newspaper-speak for caption).

An Indian laborer pulls a cart heavily loaded with goods while others
assist him as they make their way through a crowded street in the old
city area of New Delhi, India, on Aug. 21, 2014. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

It was a "Daily Life" photo, I believe, which means it isn't attached to any particular news item. It is just meant to show how people around the world live. I have no idea what you see when you see this picture. When I saw it, I was reminded immediately of The Elephant: The Life of a Coolie by Aravind Adiga, a story that appeared in The New Yorker. That story made this photo come alive for me. Far more than just an image, this is a visual representation of all the sensations and emotions described in Adiga's story.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but if a picture is supported by a story, the picture is given added power.

Robin Williams' daughter tweeted a quote from The Little Prince following his death:

This is the Little Prince talking, and he is in turn reminding us of a lesson a fox taught him. The fox says that even though the Little Prince is leaving him, their friendship was worth it because now when the fox looks at fields of wheat, the color will remind him of the Little Prince's hair. This adds meaning to the wheat fields. They are no longer simply fields of wheat (which a fox can't eat); they are a symbol of the Little Prince. In this quote, the Little Prince is telling the narrator that he is leaving to live in the stars again, but their friendship was worth it because now the narrator can look up into the stars and remember the Prince; the stars now mean something.

Time spent with stories can help build meaning into the lives we live. I did not have any association with a man in India pulling a cart, but after reading one short story, I connect with that picture. It becomes more than a picture to me.

So read often. The world around you will increase in depth, and the people with whom you associate will become more. Reading builds empathy, because a well-told story allows us to look at the world through another person's eyes. You will then understand the world better, because understanding only comes through having similar experiences. A library can be like a shoe store in that reading allows you to walk in someone else's shoes.

And if you are a parent, please oh please nurture a love for reading in your child. It's important for more than literacy; reading will help them grow into a knowledgeable, caring adult. And besides that, a visit to the library provides free (and quiet) entertainment. Everyone loves stories; they just have to find the right ones for them.

Oh, and did you notice that Robin Williams' daughter reached to a story for comfort? What is around us adds meaning to what we read. That's why we can return to the same stories over and over again and experience something new each time. Our understanding of the world has changed; this, in turn, has changed the story itself.

Writing Excuses notes, Season 8

This was the final season in my self-assigned Writing Excuses course. The podcast is on Season 9 now. I'll talk a little more about it as a whole when I'm done with these notes, at the end of this post. For now:

1. Rogues work because the enemy is even worse, and besides, they're charming.

One of my favorite movies. Haven't seen the new one.
I guess I feel like this is a movie that would transcend a remake.

This was the reason the Writing Excuses people came up with for why we like characters like Flynn Rider, Robin Hood, the three musketeers, Jack Sparrow, (I'm trying to think of a female rogue...) and Irene Adler (does she count? I'm going to say she does). (You know, Tamora Pierce has some female rogues, and so does Brandon Sanderson, now that I think about it.)

We wouldn't like them in real life, but as characters, they are entertaining. They get to have crazy shenanigans, one-liners, and style. They do not have to keep a clean image; we don't care if they dirty it up a bit ... so long as they don't turn downright evil.

Kissin' Kate Barlow. That's another female rogue. Holes, by Louis Sachar.

2. Do not have a resting portion at the end of a chapter.

Yes, there need to be times when your reader can breathe, mainly because if you keep the tension up high the entire time, they'll combust. Okay, they'll just get worn out. Still, not good.

I have a theory that my muse is a cat.
In case you were wondering.

Just don't put these rests at the end of a chapter, because then your reader can put the book down and walk away for a long time. Like, return the book to the library unread, possibly. Hopefully they are more interested than that, of course, but either way, people like to read in sections (I think, but I haven't done a study on it or anything), and chapters are your established sections. You want to carry them into the next one, so give them something that will push them into it.

Don't always end in cliffhangers, though. That gets old. Just keep the plot moving, and don't resolve everything at the end of your chapters (remember that your chapter is supposed to have its own story arc). Leave some questions unanswered, and don't resolve your main conflict until the third act.

3. Do not write a chapter that the reader can skip.

If they can skip it, that means it is taking up space for kicks and giggles and doesn't really need to be there. Quit killing so many trees.

And wasting people's time. Also, if they can skip it, they will get the sense that this story is taking too long to be told. Every chapter should advance your plot.

4. Put description in dialogue in places where there would be a pause.

I thought this was a brilliant idea. Example:

Soda just put his hand on my shoulder. "Easy, Ponyboy. They ain't gonna hurt you no more."

"I know," I said, but the ground began to blur and I felt hot tears running down my cheeks. I brushed them away impatiently. "I'm just a little spooked, that's all." (The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton)

 Wasn't that a perfect pause? Because you know Ponyboy paused between saying "I know" and "I'm just a little...", right? It makes the conversation flow and optimizes the space. It creates a pause, instead of just announcing that there was a pause. This is something I am definitely going to try.

I also like how Hinton only had a small amount of detail. Too much detail, and you forget what was just said. That amount was perfect for how long the pause was supposed to be, I think.

In my notes, I added to this that you should also put in body language where it would be used. People use body language in real life; why not in stories? Mental note to not ignore body language. It can and should be used.


That wraps up my course. My review of the podcast itself? ... Good, but usually what I got out of it the most was from a sentence or two someone happened to say in the episode. You'll notice how few notes I took, and I was listening to ten episodes per season. Maybe this would be a great place to start, though, for someone just beginning to write. That, and if you're getting close to submitting it for publication and want some guidance. Either way, I would give it a try to see what you think. WritingExcuses.com. As for me, I think it was definitely worth my time. Plus, it gave me something to listen to while I was doing my hair and fixing dinner each day, and that's always a plus.