Family, work, and feminism

I recently finished reading Anna Quindlen's Lots of Candles and Plenty of Cake. It's, you guessed it, another book from the biography section. Except this book is more of a reflection on her generation, particularly its women.

Anna Quindlen is a baby boomer and a writer who was able to manage both a successful career and motherhood (she has three children, all now grown).

That said, something she put in there struck me:

All the times I've been asked on college campuses about balancing work and family, I've never been asked the question by a young man. Young women, even with their own mothers' successes, wonder how they will manage job and kids; young men still figure they'll manage it by marrying.

It's so true, isn't it? I've been thinking about it all week.

One reason I like the business I am starting, Stories from the Hearth, is that it will someday allow me to be a mother while also working at something I enjoy. It is a work-from-home job; when I need to interview people, I can foreseeably bring children with me. It will be hard, but it seems possible.

My husband has a goal of owning his own research and development company someday. He has never mentioned how he will be a father at the same time.

So I asked him about what he thought of this quote from the book, and he said he thinks it's because women think about being mothers someday, and men don't think about being fathers. While many girls are excitedly planning their weddings years in advance, the expectation for men is that they'll just show up and it will be grand. Those same girls have also been playing with dolls and playing house since they were tiny. Generally speaking, they have always been thinking about someday being mothers. Men, not so much.

A good friend of mine directed me to read this article by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Slaughter discusses work-life balance for successful women in government, particularly, and notes that men do not have the same problems with it. While women are more likely to quit their jobs to spend more time with children they think could benefit from their time, she says, men are likely to look at their jobs as a way of supporting their family, and thus think the best thing they could possibly do is work harder.

I was reminded of another book, one my in-laws read and told me about. It's called Outliers: The Story of Success, and it's by Malcolm Gladwell. Gladwell talks about the reasons why certain people are successful and others aren't. Apparently, one key to success is that someone else has sacrificed so you have the time or skills to succeed. Someone takes on all the necessary tasks so that the other person can chase their dreams and do amazing things.

Case in point, the woman raises the children and takes care of the home so that the man can have a rewarding career. In Slaughter's case, though, it was the other way around. Her husband held down the fort so she could work as the director of the federal government's policy planning department for two years.

I am the current breadwinner of my two-person family. My husband is still attending school and has a back injury he is trying to heal from. He was working this summer, but as time wore on he was in too much pain to continue. Now he is working from home as much as he can.

This means I wake up, go for a run (hopefully), get ready for my day, go to work, work, get home, make dinner, do laundry (not every day), massage my poor husband and work on one of my numerous side jobs: starting my business, writing this blog, teaching my sister to play the piano, writing a column for the Idaho Press-Tribune. Hopefully I get to relax sometime.

I am sincerely hoping this is not an eternal situation ... and that I'm not setting a trend for me doing all the work and my husband sitting around for life. That would not be okay. If I'm going to be doing the lion's share of the work at home, he better be out there being amazing.

For me, then, I suppose this issue is less your typical feminist problem and more of a marriage problem: How do you balance all the tasks associated with home and family? This, of course, is solved differently in each marriage.

In marriage and home, it should all be equal, with any superiority thrown out the door. That was another quote in Quindlen's book that I liked:

True friendship assumes a level playing field -- no one is up, no one is down, no one the queen bee or the drone.

Replace "friendship" with "marriage," and I think that about sums it up.

Pride: An Investigation

I recently completed a weeks-long reflection on pride. I've always considered one of my greatest flaws to be my pride, and I'm too scared to ask God to help me solve it. I mean, that's just a bad idea. The last time I said a "Please help me overcome my pride" prayer to God was in middle school, and I didn't get a part in the school play that week. When you ask God to humble you, He humbles you. It's not fun.

So instead I got smart. I'm going to ask to understand my pride, I said. If I understood it, perhaps I could conquer it myself, like I've been trying to do all along.

It turns out a prayer to understand pride is synonymous with, "Please give me a chance to examine my pride," which is synonymous with, "Hurt it, please."

After living successfully on my own, supporting first myself and then a spouse at a job that used my English degree in the Boise area of Idaho, I have moved back to Utah, the Mormon homeland, to live in my in-laws' basement. That's another post altogether, and I'll probably get to it. But to make it short for now, this circumstance hurts my pride.

Oh, and on top of that, I'm working at a job that does not use my degree (something I'd been proud of) or my natural talents (something else I'm proud of), and my in-laws are my bosses (...yep).

My pride is pretty shot right now. Thanks, God.

Pride is a pretty big topic, and unlike many people when they tackle something of that size, I didn't start by looking it up. That came somewhere in the middle. Instead, my thoughts turned to observing when my pride was hurt and why. I also thought about it while I read from the scriptures each day (a breakfast ritual).

Most of the time, when we think of pride in the negative sense, we mean someone who is full of themselves and self-centered. There is a quote I love, and it's by C.S. Lewis (a man I definitely would have invited to dinner had he lived in the neighborhood and still been alive):

Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less.

This feels true to me, and it implies that you do not have to sacrifice self-esteem for the sake of humility. So here's my first truth: Thinking well of myself does not mean I am prideful.

In the scriptures, pride is usually mentioned when an individual or group is unwilling to obey or turn to God for help. "Stiff-necked," they're called, a metaphor that refers to an inability to bow down before someone. But no one wakes up one morning deciding to be stiff-necked. I'll address the obedience part later, but for now, why do people refuse to turn to God for help?

Lack of faith. Lack of hope. Thinking you don't need God. Most important for my pride investigation: Putting others' opinions before God's.

I have a hard time of this. I care way too much about what others think of me. In college, I once caught myself walking down the street, taking home a pizza, and thinking that the people driving past me thought I must be a really poor person, to not afford a car.

What they were actually probably thinking: Pedestrian, stop sign, right turn signal. I am quite sure that none of them cared about me as much as I cared what they thought of me. And who cares what they thought of me, anyway?

This fear, the fear of what people think of me, leads to me to putting their opinion before God's sometimes. That means I do stupid things. For instance, in the LDS religion, a person is only supposed to take part in the sacrament (similar to communion) if one is worthy. I wasn't, but did anyway. Later, I admired those people brave enough to not take part.

Perhaps this is what the scriptures mean when they tell us to fear God? Second truth: I indulge in pride when I won't humble myself before others and I put their opinion before God's.

My thoughts, over the course of weeks, next went to honor, I believe. Honor is some mythical thing, something men used to have that caused them to be brave. What does it mean, really? Do we still have honor today? Is honor the same as pride?

I looked honor up and found a website that described honor as having two types: horizontal and vertical. Horizontal honor is when those around you respect you because you deserve respect, as a human being. Everyone has that. Vertical honor is when you deserve that respect based on special recognition you have received, such as having a high rank, a lofty award, or a blog everyone reads and loves. When it comes to honor, I find it is closer to one's right to respect than to pride, the one being from an outside source and the other coming from inside.

Do we have honor today, then? Yes, but we've obviously assigned it a new name, and people bestow it based on varying criteria. Everyone wants to be respected, and with horizontal honor in mind, honor is a basic human right. Gaining more of it is good; it goes along with being a good person and working hard so that you'll be successful and well liked.

Third truth: Honor is worth striving for. Caring about the opinion of others is not inherently bad.

Now is the time when I finally got around to looking up pride in the dictionary (a bit late, I know). Definitions:

1. A feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

2. The consciousness of one's own dignity (akin to the honor thing I mentioned earlier)

3. The quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's own importance (synonym: conceit)

4. A feeling that you respect yourself and deserve to be respected by other people.

5. A feeling that you are more important than other people.

Etymology: Old English word for excessive self-esteem (pryde) 

I think it is #5 that I have the toughest time with. I have a pretty high sense of my own accomplishments and abilities that I constantly try to tone down.

It was soon after looking up definitions that I made my final breakthrough. Perhaps I should have looked them up at the beginning, but maybe I wasn't ready for them. I am a believer that experience teaches the best lessons, and a person only truly learns after experiencing a thing. That's part of why I'm drawing this out so much, so you can see behind the piece of wisdom I discovered and hopefully understand it all.

 I'll deliver my conclusion as it is written in my phone:

Pride has its basis in comparison. So why do we compare? We want to improve ourselves, we want what others have, we want to feel loved. Perhaps if we gave love, we would not feel such a need to compare. We see their good points, and because we feel loved in return, we see our own good points?

This bit about love didn't go many places, but I still think it's a nice thought. By loving others, we feel loved in return and learn to love ourselves.

Being proud of myself for an accomplishment is wonderful. I should feel that happiness in myself.

Someone who just got their degree should celebrate. They did it! Someone who just scaled a mountain should be in the same boat, as should someone who flew a plane for the first time, finished a hard project for work or finished reading Anna Karenina, because that book is a beast.

Good pride = happiness in myself?

That, ladies and gentlemen, was my breakthrough. I was proud when I got up my first day wakeboarding = I was happy that I managed to get up so fast. I hadn't thought I'd be able to do something like that.

This idea of pride pairs with the notion that good pride is happiness in others. I'm proud of my sister for doing so well in her piano lessons = it makes me happy to see how well she is doing.

This fourth truth is something I suspected but didn't dare hope for: Pride is not inherently bad. It is, at its root, happiness--in yourself and others.

But then, why do we look down on pride so much, and why does God strip people of pride so often? Next phone note:

God humbles people who are so happy, too happy, with what they are becoming and that something is not closer to God. He is setting them back on the right path. The other possibility is with thinking others are lesser and correcting that. The sin with the former is that they don't want to be like God. They want something else and think that is happiness.

Because if you like yourself as A, but God is like B, then that means you don't want to be like God. I do hope that makes sense.

My last two truths come from that final realization.

Fifth truth: Pride becomes an issue when we think of other people as being less than ourselves. It is good and possible to be proud of yourself/others without looking down on someone while doing it. (This plays in with the fifth definition. Coincidence, I assure you.)

Sixth truth: God wants us to be like Him. Therefore, He sets course corrections that we don't enjoy--a humbling experience.

Why keep taking language arts classes once you're literate?

My brother found a summer job with the company I am working for, and we live in the same city, so we carpool to and from work each day. It's been great for sibling bonding time -- we've talked TV shows, meditation, politics, you name it. On one day this week, the topic became language arts classes. His question: Why does the school system ask students to continue in language arts after they already know how to read and write?

I thought it was worth discussing here, too, so here are my thoughts.

My brother. Except he isn't Leo, obviously.

In elementary school, people are taught the basics of how to read and form letters. By the fifth grade, I was being taught how to write essays. In middle school, classes read books together and learn more about literary devices such as similes, alliteration and rhyming. I was also introduced to reading and writing poetry in middle school. By high school, students are focusing on essay writing and book analyzation (I wrote another post about analyzing books a while back. Read it here). We are told that writing essays teaches us how to form arguments. It is also an avenue for teachers to help improve writing skills -- grammar, sentence fluency, that sort of thing.

Along the way, teachers select books for their students to read. Sometimes, these books are part of a bigger, government-dictated curriculum. Other times, teachers choose books they think will interest their students or help them through a particular stage in life. This is why so many middle schoolers find themselves reading coming of age books like Bridge to Terabithia or The Outsiders. Some teachers will also select books they loved themselves and want to share with the students, since the books are age appropriate (if your child's teacher has them reading Harry Potter, this is what happened). The other three factors I can think of that would affect book selection would be current or recent events, genre introduction and cultural aptitude (this is the main reason for all the Shakespeare, I'm sure of it).

Teachers guide youths' reading up until they are set free by the school system and either re-enter by going to college or go off on their merry way into the work force. Recreational reading outside of the assigned books is encouraged, of course, but you have to admit that teachers do a lot of book introducing for youth.

As for college, those language arts classes teach specific aspects of the language or writing in it. After all, even though you know how to read and write, you can still improve. This is why we continue taking language arts classes.

Note: Philosophy can be taught using
literature and film, too.

However, language arts classes should also teach more forms of writing than essays. Philosophy classes (in high school) can take over on the essay front, since one major purpose of the discipline is argument formation and presentation. A philosophy class, or at least a language arts class with a strong philosophy component, would produce deeper thinkers and people who can express themselves well.

As for what else people would be writing in those language arts classes, the only times in real life when essays are used are in the justice system, book introductions and academics, so far as I can tell. Adults write in other formats: blog posts, articles, press releases, business correspondence, letters (cover letters, query letters, others), creative writing, memoirs, reports (which aren't written in MLA format!), speeches, contracts, and more things I can't think of right now. Imagine how much better these communications would be if we had classes in how to write them well!

The main problem with this is we don't have teachers trained to teach all these various forms of writing.

But alas, I am not a teacher and would be scolded for telling other people how to do their jobs. So I'll step off my soapbox with one last sentence: Brother, language arts classes should continue, but with a stronger philosophy component and varied writing instruction.

Doubting my story beginning

The following is the beginning of the first chapter of the novel I have been working on for some time now (think years; I'm a slow writer).

Elke had never liked porridge, but his dislike for the bland mush that filled his wooden bowl this morning was dwarfed by his dislike for the look on his mother’s face. He had seen it way too many times this past week, and he knew his best bet was to quietly force himself to swallow his breakfast and disappear for a few hours—but not so far that he couldn’t hear her call his name.

He averted his eyes from hers, sure that her uncanny ability to read them would only spell more trouble for him, and then he wouldn’t be allowed to disappear but instead would be stuck chopping wood, even though winter was a long ways off. He stared at a knot in the table instead and did his best to eat quietly.

Mother was sitting in a chair near the open front door, hand over her eyes and head tilted back against the frame. She usually would have been sitting across from Elke, swatting at his hand if he held the spoon incorrectly, but the head pains always rendered her more quiet and still, and she craved the fresh air without the sounds of Nostos. She looked up now and then to see if he was eating, but that was all.

When he was finished, he did his best to quietly stand up. He winced when his chair squeaked and mother flinched, then carefully rinsed out the bowl using the bucket of water mother kept for that purpose. He kissed her cheek on his way out the door, whispered that he would be back to check on her, then crept away from the house, breaking into a run once he was out of earshot.

“Arato! Get up, you slug! Can’t let Sakuunu see you in bed at this hour!” He slapped on the wood wall of his friend’s home, aiming for the spot where his bed met the wall. Elke paused to listen, then slapped the wooden planks a couple more times for good measure, moving to the front door when he was sure he heard Arato get up.

He bounced a little in his deer-hide shoes while he waited, then opened the door to peek inside just as Arato came scrambling out. “Welcome to the morning, brother!”

“Oh, go eat a pine cone,” Arato said, still adjusting his apprentice necklace, a leather strap ornamented with a metal hoop similar to those that held barrels together.

“I’d rather not be seen eating the ancestors, thanks,” Elke said. He instinctively checked to make sure he hadn’t forgotten to wear his own apprentice necklace with its accompanying miniature cloth stachel, meant to represent the full-sized ones carrying seed. He, however, was carrying a couple coins in his -- something his mother would kill him for if she were to find out.

“So do it at night, when the sane people of this world are asleep.”

“I sleep!”

They had been walking, but at this, Arato stopped and turned toward him, an incredulous look on his face.

“Most of the time,” Elke said, grabbing his friend’s arm to get him going again. “We’re going to miss it. Come on.”

They had just managed to climb into one of the trees when the first girl walked through the meadow. This one was Pylliah, who was too young to have a woman’s figure but too old to bathe with the children. She had carefully wrapped herself in her towel but was walking with a slight cower just the same, hiding herself from the world at large until she could put on her proper clothing. Elke and Arato didn’t waste more than a glance in her direction, instead fixing their gaze on the path to the river, waiting for the next female to emerge.

It turned out Arato’s early wakeup had paid off, because Sakuunu was in the small group of women who followed Pylliah out from the bathing place. Elke had little interest in her, though he could appreciate how her long black hair waved slightly as she walked and the way her towel hung from her figure to reveal its perfection. He knew her to be a tad self-centered and she had mocked him one too many times to earn his desire. Arato was another story; he had been smitten since the day he had first seen her ride one of the village’s horses through the street. Arato had walked into Elke’s home with a glazed look on his face and had stayed that way until Elke had thrown a handful of fish guts at him.

Sakuunu was one of the few to wear her apprentice necklace, ornamented with a miniature horse, to the bathing place. Some of the women were too old to have them and instead wore the armband of their trade, and others, like Pylliah, were as yet too young. Elke and Arato had only received theirs the month before, and Elke was still having a hard time remembering to wear it some days.

Arato scooted forward on the branch he was lying down on, legs holding it tightly beneath him and arms propping his shoulders and head up slightly. The movement caused the tree to shake a little, but it seemed none of the women noticed. There were four of them in Sakuunu’s group, one of whom was her mother. All were wrapped in their towels, feet clad in wooden bathing shoes. They were laughing about something.

Arato scooted forward again, bringing himself to the edge of the leaves, where even one more inch would expose their hiding place. Elke was tempted to either push him off or haul him back in, but indecision about which would be better kept him from doing anything. Besides, there were more women bathing and one may bring him to the edge of his branch, too. He didn’t have his eye on anyone, but he knew that could change any day.

Sakuunu paused before leaving the clearing, gesturing her companions onward and turning back.So she had noticed, then. This ended Elke’s moment of indecision and he leaned forward, shoving Arato to the side. His friend had been too entranced to hold on properly, and the shove sent him crashing to the ground at Sakuunu’s feet.

I like this beginning, because I think it is fun and well-written. It introduces some of my main characters in a personable way and gives each a foundation to stand on. My problem with my beginning (it is longer than this) is that it doesn't really take the story anywhere.

So this week, I had the thought to open it in a very dramatic way: a self-defense killing. I wrote it the next day, about 380 words, and am not as impressed with it as with my original beginning. Perhaps I stick my self-defense killing elsewhere in the story?

Truth be told, my main problem is I want to get the story moving but don't feel like a good enough writer to do it justice. I have a basic outline for it in my head and love it, but I feel like except for a few bright spots, like this scene, it's not all that great yet.

Maybe this post is a pep talk, a reminder that I can write well and all writers start somewhere. I defer to Ira Glass to make the motivational point:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Dictating - what a concept

If I were an English teacher, I would allow people to turn in audio essays.

Now, I understand that English teachers are supposed to teach proper punctuation and spelling, but everything else they are teaching by assigning written essays -- grammar, sentence fluency, argument structure, different poetic tools, etc. -- can just as easily be worked on in a verbal form as in a written one.

It may make it tricky to grade or to give feedback on, so here's how it would go: Students would record an audio essay, then follow-up with an assignment to write it out and critique it.

My reasoning is that there are many people who have trouble writing. They have thoughts they can voice aloud, but confronted with a page, everything goes haywire. The dictation method bypasses this issue and allows a person to simply voice their thoughts aloud.

I searched "dictation" on Freepik.com and got this.
No idea why.

Typing it out forces a person to look at how they sound (an excellent tool if you're trying to become a better speaker). Past the umms and pauses, they should receive a confidence boost in their ability to write an essay. They just dictated one, after all, and that's no different from writing.

Maybe, just maybe, this would allow someone to learn how to write. They could then learn to speak with their hands instead of their mouths, because that's all writing is. Perhaps it would help them get past the page barrier.

All of this said, it's time to give a life update. I'm leaving my job at the Idaho Press-Tribune in a few weeks. I'm moving to Utah, then starting a business helping seniors write their memoirs through dictation. The memoirs will be collected into a book and printed for their family members.

So I'm not an English teacher, but I'm going to try my hand at turning this audio essay idea into a business. Wish me luck -- I'm sure you'll be hearing about it.

I've been thinking about musicals

I've been thinking about musicals lately and how they work. Most importantly, is there a written equivalent to a "show tune" in prose?

I did some research and found this great essay by Dr. Larry A. Brown of Lipscomb University (I think). He identified the key characteristics of songs in a musical. My thinking is that maybe if prose writers incorporate these characteristics, they have given their work the equivalent of a song. Maybe? Let's look into it.

"My Fair Lady" - my favorite musical.

1. Story has priority. Dr. Brown suggests that songs are not there to usurp the plot, but to hold it up. In prose writing, or in poetry, you could equate this to not letting your writing get in the way of the story. Flowery writing does this just as much as awkward or confusing writing.

2. Opening numbers establish mood and setting. This translates into "Use your beginning to evoke an atmosphere for your book/poem." There is always a lot of focus on the first sentence, but perhaps we should expand that to the first paragraph, or even the first couple sentences.

3. Collaborators work to achieve smooth transitions from script to music. A lot of the time, it grows naturally from the dialogue that is already there. So in writing, allow emotion to expand dialogue. This can be more than just choosing the words that fit the situation; make the words sound like the emotion. Put assonance and alliteration to work. I'm thinking of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven." Read this aloud and see if you can hear the raven:

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

The consonants give us a hard sound that almost literally taps in "tapping," "rapping" and "muttered." Notice that the last line in this quote has no hard sounds. It sounds sleepy in comparison. Tricks like this can be used in prose just as well as poetry.

This is another favorite of mine.

4. Songs should express the deepest thoughts and feelings of the characters at that moment, using the character's vernacular. Read: Express your characters' deep selves, but in a way they would say it. One of the joys of reading is being able to see the world from another's point of view and to see into that person. Note: Minimalists will say not to be obvious with this like musicals are. Maximalists would argue for drawn-out soliloquies about just how each character is feeling. Find the best middle ground for you.

5. The style of music relates closely to the specific lyrics. I could see this playing into setting--have your description of the setting match the mood you are trying to convey. Don't have it rain because your character is crying, unless they have some sort of weather magic or something, though. That's cheap. Instead, if your character is crying, bring out the grays and blues, focus on the sad memories associated with the props around them, or find some other way to describe things sadly. Give them some sad background music of words. If you want to read a brilliant setting description with emotion in it, read the short story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

6. Reprises are often used to show development of character. So put in a reprise. The usual approach to this in stories is to bring the character into the same situation all over again and see how they respond differently. You could also reprise an argument, put in a flashback that shows a difference in perspective, or bring your character into the same setting, one you've largely abandoned (then describe it a bit differently to show the character development).

7. Rather than choreography for its own sake, song and dance should tell a story through music and movement. In essence, make movement count. Why is your character moving? Does it advance the plot? The scene? Their development?

One other thing from Dr. Brown's essay I should mention is that "The addition of music to a standard play heightens emotion, reinforces dramatic action, evokes atmosphere and mood in ways that words alone cannot." Perhaps you should look at your current draft as the play and focus on these functions during a revision, making your next draft the musical version? Just an idea. Either way, try to prove him wrong about the words thing.

For more on musical analysis, if you're interested, check out this website.

The Haiku Turn

I am finally getting around to discussing my notes from Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools. It's sure taken me long enough, hasn't it?

The book is an odd mix of advice for news reporting and storytelling, with most advice applying in both fields but some only mattering in one or the other.

There were also some great jokes and anecdotes. My new favorite English joke: "I dropped the toothpaste," he said, crestfallen.

An anecdote I loved told about a fellow reading through old stories from children, then thinking to himself that one of the kids sounded like E.B. White. He looks, and it totally was. True voice, that; no pretending or following trends.

One piece of advice that stood out to me in particular was to create paragraph turns, similar to those in a haiku.

Haikus are some of the funniest poems out there. In ancient times, poets would get together, get drunk and make a game out of writing haikus. Here are some I love. The first three are by Yosa Buson, who was brilliant with imagery, and the second three are by Matsuo Basho, whose bluntness and imagination I adore. The final three (I was restraining myself, okay?) are by Kobayashi Issa, who wrote well about how he viewed the world, placing himself into all the poems, it feels like:

Morning breeze
riffling
the caterpillar's hair.

The old man
cutting barley -
bent like a sickle

A tethered horse,
snow
in both stirrups.

Still alive
and frozen in one lump -
the sea slugs.

What fish feel,
birds feel, I don't know -
the year ending.

Don't imitate me;
it's as boring
as the two halves of a melon.

I'm going to roll over,
so please move,
cricket.

Washing the saucepans -
the moon glows on her hands
in the shallow river.

In this world
we walk on the roof of hell,
gazing at flowers.

Now that you have enjoyed some haikus, my point: Haikus have surprise endings. Whether the surprise starts on the second line or the first, it is not what was expected, yet it somehow fits. Paragraphs can and should be written similarly, when possible, particularly in academic or media writing.

The first sentence of a paragraph is supposed to introduce the concept of the paragraph. Then you have support and a conclusion. Make sure your conclusion is not the same as your first sentence. You ought to have given new material that affects what you are saying and advances it. The more interesting, the more your reader will like it. Surprise them.

I don't know how this would hold in fiction or storytelling, except on the chapter level. Insert a plot twist in every chapter. Characters should not do the expected, and they should never face the expected (unless it is the dreaded, of course). This keeps the story interesting.

Let's call this tool the haiku turn: the moment when you turn from the expected.

How to Write a Letter

The day I tried to Google "average length of a letter" and found only results related to cover letters and font sizes, I realized people don't write letters anymore. I knew it was rare, but this was something else.

So let me tell you about letter writing and maybe you'll give it a try. Everyone loves receiving letters in the mail.

Some logistics:

• Putting an address on the letter itself is optional.
• Putting the date on the letter itself is also optional.
• Salutations (e.g. Dear ___,) can be anything you want, or even skipped altogether.
• Sign it at the bottom ... but make sure it's legible, or else the envelope makes it clear the letter came from you. Signing it tells the person who you are and that you are finished.
• P.S., or post script, was created back in the days before erasers or the delete key. They were used if you had forgotten something but had already added your signature at the bottom. Not really needed anymore unless you are joking around or it's some stylistic choice.
• As far as I can tell, there is no average letter length. Write until you finish up. When my husband was serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I tended to write him ten-page letters. I've also written my share of one-page letters.
• Use paragraphs. It makes reading easier.
• Doodling in the margins is fine, depending on who the recipient is.
• Letters can be sent through the mail, email, Facebook, or any other way you feel like.

With those things out of the way, how do you decide what to put in your letter? Some ideas:

• Is there a purpose to the letter? Make sure to include it. Sometimes it's easy to forget.
• What have you been filling your life with lately? Hobbies, work, family, vacations, etc.
• Tell some stories about what you've been experiencing. Include a funny one if possible.
• Think aloud: Write about what's been on your mind, ideas-wise or worries-wise.
• Ask questions. No letter is complete without them, and it makes a reply easier. Reply to any questions they asked you, if their letter came before yours.
• What would your recipient in particular like to hear about? Satiate their curiosity.
• Anything else you feel like talking about.

Writing letters really isn't much trouble, it just takes a bit of time and thought. Here is an example of a letter (abridged) I wrote to a missionary friend of mine while I was in college a few years ago:

December 11, 2012

My Dearest Sister Rachel,

I figured that if I write this now, it might just reach you before Christmas. So merry Christmas, Rachel! I hope you are keeping warm and doing well. When you get a chance, you should let me know how Russia, the mission, your companion, and everything else is going.

I looked, and last time I wrote you was about a month ago. Thankfully (or not?) nothing incredibly important has occurred since then. Nothing to beat Shelby coming home, anyway. My last update from her (a week ago?) was that she is doing well. She is happy to be with family, that’s for sure. Other news…my roommate, Sarah, has had a series of surgeries and still isn’t done with doctors, but she dropped out this semester, so she doesn’t have to worry about schoolwork. She is in good spirits, and it amazes me. I think I would be a nervous wreck if my body was as messed up as hers is. ...

It’s Finals Week right now. I only have one real final; the others are just the last test of the class and the last is reciting a poem in French. That last one is what I get to do tomorrow morning. In my poetry (English; I took two poetry classes this semester) class, we had our biggest project around Thanksgiving. We put together portfolios of our best poetry and wrote an essay about three of our own poems and three of someone else’s. ...

Everyone keeps asking me if I have any big papers to write, but this semester has actually been pretty tame when it comes to papers. The most intense paper I had to write was actually for Honors credit in my Human Development course. My sister ... gave me access to some of her teenage journal entries and I compared them with a sample of my own, to see how we compared while in that phase of development. To be more precise, I was paying attention to how we started to develop a vocational identity – how we made money, how/if we balanced employment with school, and how we worked toward a future career. There is some debate amongst developmentalists right now about whether or not teenagers should be employed while attending high school. Some say it is good for them, because it expands their social circle and gives them professional/workforce experience. Others say employment inhibits their ability to perform to their full potential in school. ... When I finished, the paper was 20 pages long, including the title page, abstract, and reference page. I wrote an abstract simply because the paper was getting to be so long. Honestly, I enjoyed writing it. I think I even forgot about the time and stayed up until 2 a.m. working on it. I think that’s a sign that I have chosen to do the right thing with my life. If you forget time because you are doing what you love, then you are in the right spot. It wasn’t that I was enjoying the subject; I was just enjoying writing. ...

I’m going to go to bed now, and will write more tomorrow, I hope. Love you!

Love, Elizabeth

A study in conflict

I've read a couple essays/articles about conflict today, and here is what I gained:

Conflict is about character.

I always put it in its own category, but maybe it is just a facet of a character. C.S. Lakin, an author who also wrote this essay on conflict, says conflict is shaped by the things a character values. Take that thing away or endanger it, then build a story as the character struggles to regain it.

Examples:

Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat: Little boy wanted house to be clean and chores done before Mom gets home. This is challenged by the appearance of the cat, who proceeds to ruin everything.

Crisis moment.

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: Lady wants to be righteous and have worth. This is almost fulfilled by a man who falls in love with her ... except he's already married. Also challenged by the perception of her aunt.

Roald Dahl's The BFG: Giant runt doesn't believe in eating humans. This is challenged every day as he watches the other giants go out to eat them.

Point made? As I said, I had always thought of conflict as separate from character. It turns out that you grow a character, and then a conflict comes from/in relation to the character.

So what did my Settled character value? ... It seems he valued his marriage, and he enjoys normalcy instead of lunacy. Apparently, then, the conflict should have been something threatening his marriage. The lunacy thing was a bit of a sideshow, really.

The next question on my mind was when to introduce conflict. Lakin said to do it as soon as possible ... unless you are laying a foundation for the conflict to stand on. I once wrote a short story where the entire introduction was focused on solidifying the relationship between the main character and her younger sister. Then I killed off the younger sister and made my main character deal with it (she didn't do so well).

So note to self: Unless I am purposefully setting up the conflict, it needs to be introduced as soon as possible. There needs to be something to carry the reader through the story.

And a P.S. to that note: Remember to at least have two levels of conflict: Outward and inward. This adds depth to both the conflict and the storyline.

I also thought this was worth noting:

Certain genres and age groups will limit or restrict the type and depth of conflict the writer can explore. Special interest publications allow the writer to target a more specific conflict. YA novels and stories will limit the degree to which you can explore sexual conflicts and physical violence, but will heighten the importance of emotional conflict. A primarily male or female audience will vary in the type and style of conflict. A Christian publisher is more likely to focus on internal conflicts, rather than physical or sexual conflicts. (http://www.fictionfactor.com/articles/conflict.html)

Death Rattle Writers Festival and the State of Writing

The Death Rattle Writers Festival, based in Nampa, ID, was this weekend. I asked my husband to go to the short story event with me, and he said a writers festival sounds like it's a bunch of people sitting around, reading to each other.

Well, he's right. The event looked like this.

There were other events we didn't go to, though. The festival had a premier screening of the film "Smoke," with one of its creators there to talk about it, and there was also Art of Verse, a hip-hop artist, I believe, who draws inspiration from spoken word poetry. They had a poetry lecture and reading, a flash fiction event and a dramatic reading session of one-act plays, as well as other events.

The main thing I pulled from the short story reading (please note that I wasn't there for all of it) was a reminder of how contemporary literary (not genre) writers seem to strive for a jaded tone.

Remember Mary Robison? She's got the tone down pat.

I'm at Rhythm & Blues and their parents at an eatery called The Half Moon. Have been for every bit of an itchy hour. We're still expecting Petal. Saunders sits across from me, tearing a crescent roll into many parts. Adam's queasy and may be forced to bolt when they bring the food. He has his eyes squeezed shut, his face wrinkled in a look of rejection. I'm in attendance but feeling as if I were sketched into the scene, and maybe with an old pencil. The parents sit across the table. I haven't looked up at them. Nor will I, unless they call on me.

Do you hear it? Not the story, but the tone.

My husband said the writers sounded monotone. I think that is a good way to put it. The life is faded.

Perhaps it's the current -ism. Romanticism, feminism, Orientalism, jadism. If so, count me out. I want to sound like me when I write, or like my characters (who are all reflections of me to some extent): sassy, smart, silly, sarcastic, blunt, poetic, logical, me. That is the most unique and best voice I will ever find, and that voice will lead me to the best stories.

I did a little research into this to see if anyone else has noticed, and found that they have.

This essay, found on an website associated with the College of DuPage, notes that contemporary writers believe we live in a fallen world with no God to save us (note that this is a generalization). They are looking at the world as being without hope.

Read this one, too. It is longer, FYI, and takes in the entire art scene, not just writing. Some of my favorite bits, the parts that rang true to what I've been noticing, include the idea that contemporary art makes fun of sincerity, its tone is a defense against sounding simple and naive, and it gives a disconnected view of the world.

Thoughts? Had you noticed the trend?

The second essay I linked to said sentimentalism is probably next, with its strong convictions. Not sure if I agree with that or not, I don't know enough, but I would like the next movement to be honest.  Let's paint the world as we truly see it, individually. Honesty and truth are always the characteristics of a masterpiece.

Analysis of Reading Author Experiment

Charles Dickens

Douglas Adams

I let you down by not analyzing my author experiment last week. I forgot and wanted to talk about the picture book. I will analyze now instead.

First. Who knew Douglas Adams and Charles Dickens were such similar writers?! I picked those two because I figured they were so different from each other the difference in my writing would be stark. While it modernized itself a bit, I couldn't help but notice the similar sense of humor while doing the two different readings. Dickens loves to be literal and honest, to point out the silliness inherent in humans, and to present jokes with a straight face. Adams is blunt, uses silliness to great effect, and acts as if his constant joking were totally serious. The only real differences are genre and time period. I swear these two would have been friends.

Mary Robison

What it means is from what I can tell, my writing modernized between the first and second segments, but the sense of humor - they had reminded me how funny silliness with a straight face can be - remained largely the same.

Things changed more when I added Mary Robison. The book of hers I was reading from, One D.O.A. One on the Way, is minimalist to an extreme. That was reflected in my shorter sentences. Also courtesy of Robison was my turn from being silly to being cynical.

Was this on purpose? I honestly am not sure. Human error is a large factor in this experiment that could only be done away with if I hadn't known my hypothesis and purpose. Basically, if I had done this on accident or asked an unknowing person to act as test subject, it would have worked better.

Harper Lee

I do not think it was completely on purpose, though I was definitely aware it was happening. I think what happens, subconsciously, is that when reading a talented author's work, I admire it and notice the aspects I particularly enjoy. I remember how fun the silliness is, how gritty and true minimalism can sound, and I want to bring it into my writing. It also puts me into a mood that fits that author's tone.

This experiment was tiring. Writing can be tiring when it isn't flowing right (power through anyway!), but this was draining in its own right. I was getting breaks, so the writing shouldn't have gotten me down, but the constant switching from style to style wore me out. That is why the Juliet Marillier section is so short. My story wasn't pushing itself forward and I was continually disorienting myself.

Juliet Marillier

I read it to my husband, and he said it didn't sound like me. It was terse and flippant, were his exact words, which is something I am going to blame on Mary Robison. It took a while to get her tone out of my system, and by the end, it still wasn't quite gone. I think it is because her style is so domineering, whereas the styles of Harper Lee and Juliet Marillier are softer, more mellow. Maybe I needed more time reading from them to soak up their respective tones and phraseology, whereas Mary Robison's prose comes in swinging.

I had never thought about people's writing styles being strong like a personality can be strong, but I suppose it is true. There's a lesson I wasn't looking for.

Have any added observations? Let me know. I'm interested.

Annotations

One of the best things to happen to me in high school was the English assignment to annotate the books we read. Annotate, as in take notes about the book in the book. At first, my notes weren't super intelligent. No, they were not stupid, they just weren't particularly insightful.

Example, from the first chapter of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: "Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered." Next to this, I wrote "forced to be happy? Loving life a ton?" in the margin. Fairly obvious observation and question, younger Elizabeth. Not helpful for much of anything.

Current me thought about the word "ever," and how juvenile it sounds, by the way. Giving the author the benefit of purpose, we see he wants us to see the narrator as young and naive.

But even though they were obvious, those early annotations were helpful -- they were practice. They taught me how to read. And that taught me how to write.

Most of the insights you read on this blog are courtesy of that skill. I began with simple annotations like the one above, marking questions, things I liked, insights into symbols and imagery, and progressed to over-annotating. That wasn't strictly useful except as practice, either.

Do me a favor and rewind memory lane to this post. Look at the pictures I posted; that is what I mean by over-annotating. While this was for a college course, it was a skill I learned toward the end of high school. It is less useful, academically, than it may look, because it is hard to find much of anything. Close reading, interpreting a passage, doing a character analysis, sure. But doing a whole book like this (I didn't go that far, thankfully) would make you lose everything. Plus, when you go back to reread, you won't want to read all those notes, too.

Over-annotating taught me to edit. My husband once looked at a query letter I was editing for someone and was amazed at how much I had written in comments. It may have been longer than the letter itself -- and all I did was annotate. Over-annotating taught me to look at individual words and phrases. It focused on the language itself, while my early attempts focused on story and character.

My current style of annotating incorporates both. I take notes on the side for the general things and write in the book itself for the specifics. I am more interested in how things work than on character or plot analysis -- notice I looked at why Bradbury used "ever" instead of commenting on the subject of the sentence, the smile. I also noticed that the muscles were gripping it -- concrete words with a connotation of force, perhaps even fear. But one value of the first style of annotations is it captures the impressions of a first read. Writers need that info from editors.

If you want to be an editor, learn to annotate. Buy books and read them with pen in hand. Or skip books -- read magazines, newspaper articles, blog posts, speeches, anything you can get your hands on, and annotate it. How could it possibly be improved? Read and reread the same stuff over and over until you have an idea. Then get your hands on more stuff to read and annotate.

The same thing goes for writers. If you want to write, learn to annotate. Buy books (or anything with words) and read them with a pen in hand. It doesn't matter if you read the notes later -- it is about the process of actively thinking about what you read, of learning how to write from an author while they write.

This is note-taking for the sake of note-taking. Think you can handle that? I promise practice will beget mad skills.

Heroes: Taking It to a Personal Level

I was doing my hair sometime this week, listening to music, when I had a small epiphany. Small because I've halfway had it before, I just hadn't thought it through.

The song I was listening to was "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" from Frozen (Disney songs were the order of the day). That song is my favorite from the film, and I remembered while listening to it how Anna was best friends with her older sister, but then her older sister as good as abandoned her, avoiding her for years.

She could have taken that as betrayal. She could have become mean and self-centered, but instead she continued to reach out to her sister. Anna even went so far as to give her life for this sister, someone who many people would have advised she give up on.

Listening to the song made me realize Anna is a hero of mine. I admire how she loves despite how hurt she feels.

I asked my husband who his fictional hero is, and he said it was probably William Thatcher from A Knight's Tale. The reason: Even though life has been unfair to him, he didn't give up his dreams and did everything in his power to achieve them.

By then I had a theory, which I'll tell you about in a minute. Here are three other heroes, from my brother and two friends of mine, respectfully:

~ Cimorene from Dealing With Dragons, because "she doesn't care about following the norms and does what she wants. She's able to defeat the wizards and live with dragons and avoid unwanted princes. She's just really independent and a problem solver."

~ Eowyn from Lord of the Rings and Ellie Sattler from Jurassic Park. "Why is because they are feminist bad a**es."

~ Po from Kung Fu Panda, because even though he feels awkward and unable, he dreams big, stays optimistic as best he can and fights to believe in himself.

Notice any trends? Here is one I see.

As everyone knows, we root for the underdog. I think we cheer even louder, though, if it isn't just any underdog and we can relate. Let's go backward with this:

~ The friend of mine who said Po struggles with bipolar disorder and an addiction to pain medication, courtesy of years spent playing sports. She has worked hard to overcome that addiction and the deep depression she falls into sometimes, and she continues to fight and stay positive.

~ The friend who loves the feminist characters is, obviously, a feminist. She will fight for what she believes in, no matter what, and has had to fight her share of battles to protect those she loves and those she thinks need more respect.

~ My brother is quiet around our family, though not so much around his friends, from what I've gathered. He's a teenager, so you can guess that while our parents are trying to push him a bit, he's also pushing back. Perhaps it is most telling to say that this brother loves Frozen and the Let It Go song.

~ My husband has great dreams of earning a Ph.D. in physics, but he always feels like the world is against him. Lack of money, dyslexia and a few other things land him squarely in the "I need to change my stars" camp.

~ As for me, I had a bit of an abusive relationship with my sister while we were growing up. We still argue if we spend too much time together, but I have put a lot of conscious effort into loving her. She could see it from the other perspective, too; there were a number of times growing up when I would play in our closet and not let her in.

My theory is that our heroes are our heroes because we so closely identify with them. We see their struggles as a form of the struggles we are going or have gone through.

How to apply that to writing? When you are constructing your heroes, give them human struggles. They aren't just fighting a dragon; they are fighting a dragon and trying to overcome personal trials, as well. There should always be a fight below the surface as well as one above.

Ask around your friends and family for their heroes and let me know if I'm right. Then figure out who your heroes are and, if you want a splash of authenticity in your writing, place your own struggles and those of people you love inside of it. Feed your muse your doubts, fears, trials, and other meat from the dragons you have had to fight. Your story will be alive because of it.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Randy King

This week, I reviewed a cookbook. Yeah, it was a first.

Randy King lives in my area, and he put together a cookbook called "Chef in the Wild." I already wrote a review for the Idaho Press-Tribune, which you can find here, so I'm not going to re-review it. Suffice it to say he goes through how to hunt, butcher, and cook a variety of animals.

Now for a couple thoughts.

First off: I don't think the quality of writing in a cookbook matters. I mean, the point is not to create great prose, to engage both your intellect and your imagination. The point is to tell you how to cook something. The end. Does this book do that well? I'd say it does, though I haven't cooked anything from it. I don't have wild meat on hand.

But I was never confused, and hunting tips and butchering instructions were given in prose format, before the recipe. There are pictures throughout the book, not for instructional purposes so much as to break up the mass of words. Perhaps they could have included pictures meant to illustrate butchering instructions. That would be my only request to better this book.

My other thought is that food blogging may have changed the format of a cookbook. In older cookbooks, you have the recipes and that is it. But if you go online, recipes are usually introduced with a personal anecdote and/or a walk-through of the recipe, giving detailed instructions and tips for how to do what the recipe requires.

The comments section below allows other cooks to weigh in on the recipe, giving alternative instructions to improve it, so the recipe-searcher can look through those and the original recipe to decide how to make the dish best. It has given light to the subjectivity of cooking. I once saw someone who said a brownie recipe was terrible because it was too soft and cake-like. They wanted brownies that were hard and chewy. I happen to think this person's mother didn't know how to make good brownies, but hey, it told me something valuable about the recipe: It made soft brownies.

While I have yet to see a published cookbook with a comments section, where other chefs weigh in on the recipe, "Chef in the Wild" did imitate a food blog in the story-before-recipe way. It wasn't just recipe after recipe. I consider this an improvement; I do so much better, personally, with recipes that have additional instructions in prose. They are the next-best thing to having the cook in the kitchen with me.

Basically, I highly approve of this evolution in cookbook-dom. I also highly recommend this cookbook to any hunters out there.

The Racial Identity Movement

If you've been following the news at all, this face -- there's just one -- will look familiar. For those unfamiliar with this woman, her name is Rachel Dolezal, and she is white but, as she puts it, "identifies" as black.

She's gotten a lot of flack over that, the most serious being her life falling apart. She's lost her NAACP position and her job, and her old university is questioning whether she misled them back in the day about her race.

This may seem odd to say, but I think she looks better as a black woman. It suits her. But then the question comes up, "Can you just become a different race?"

I'm sure that's what part of this is about. Someone lying about her race would only merit one or two headlines, but public outcry can merit so many more. It's the public's anger and incredulity that has made this a bigger story. So I can only assume the underlying anger is black people thinking she doesn't deserve to be black, she didn't earn it, and white people thinking she's a big fat liar who put on a new face because she thought it'd be cool and she'd go further.

I know these are just assumptions, but they lead to my point, which is this: If we live in a society that allows one to choose their style of dress, lifestyle, religion and even gender, why can someone not also choose their race?

I see this as possibly the next stage of the human rights movement. After the gay marriage and gay rights movement dies down a bit, we'll turn to allowing people to choose their own race, which is indeed part of their identity. After all, how silly is the phrase, "I identify as black," after Bruce Jenner told the world, "I identify as a woman," and the world cheered him on (at least, the loudest people seem to)? It is not that big of a logical leap. It's little more than a baby step.

I don't know whether I see a problem with deciding one's own race or not. It could be looked at as embracing your true self or as turning your back on your ancestors and choosing someone else's.

Perhaps someone will pull the racist card and say we're all racist for making fun of a woman who wants to be a different race (blacks are racist because she's white and not one of them, whites are racist because she's decided to be black).

Perhaps someone will say we're pigeon-holing her, taking away her right to be who and what she wants to be.

I'm putting this on a reading and writing blog for a number of reasons. 1) It's my blog, I can do what I want with it. 2) It's my blog, I don't have another to use. 3) If you want to write science fiction, or contemporary fiction, you have to pay attention to stuff like this.

Science fiction is about looking at the world as it is and applying a slippery slope. The essential question is "What if?" My husband pointed out that the Rachel Dolezal thing could lead to a science fiction novel where everyone can change their skin color just like we do with hair now. Race and identity become a giant gray area and ...

The technology is there if we cared enough to make it happen, after all.

Critically think about the news and you will find story ideas. Critically think about the news, and you may discover you're a psychic. I think we'll have a race movement in a decade or so. Prediction made.

The Quiet of Me

At the time of dreams,
I empty my mind,
Sweep it clean of the debris of the day,
Allow the stress to stream from my fingertips
And sink through the mattress --
Away,
Away
From my hunched shoulders
And embryonic crows feet.

I let the debris, the stress, the to-do lists
Fill my dustpan and pour out
Into the night, creating
stars outside the window
of my soul,
Separate,
Separate
From my whited canvas
And ujjayi breath.

I sit in an empty mind
Brilliant as the clouds
And spinning as a comet through space
The space filled with stars that were
Mine,
Mine
As a secret place in the forest
And an heirloom skeleton key.

Perhaps
Perhaps
This is the space where space
Meets soul and dreams
Trip lightly

Behind --
But away, separate.
Mine, perhaps.

What's Elizabeth Reading? ...S.L. Farrell

S.L. Farrell's A Magic of Twilight is all about comparisons. Every character, every group, every place, every weapon, has a partner.

One obvious moment in the story where this happened was when Guy In Charge replaces Head Underling, a scene that happened twice, with different characters each time. Both underlings were replaced for not performing well - Underling 1 failed to notify Guy 1 of magic being performed when it shouldn't have been, and Underling 2 did not follow orders with exactness. Guy 1 looks at random underling who happens to be nearby, promotes him on the spot, and throws previous head underling in jail. Guy 2 also looks at random underling and gives him an immediate promotion, but then he orders previous head underling executed. Direct parallel, and guess who our bad guy is. Oh, and both Guy 1 and 2 used the previous head underling as an example, making sure new Head Underling saw the consequences of being a slacker.

Foils, or characters built for the sake of illuminating particular characteristics, are handy when done well. Actually, I can't imagine them being done badly, unless they were too similar. Lesson: use them in your fiction. Other parallels you may not have noticed before but are probably more familiar with:
Harry Potter: orphan who discovers he is magical, searches for family
Voldemort: orphan who discovers he is magical, searches for power
Eponine: Raised by parents who are cons, shuns their ethics, falls in love with Marius, dies
Cosette: Raised by foster parents who are cons, shuns their ethics and starts new life, falls in love with Marius, marries him
Megamind: Alien with supernatural abilities, raised on Earth, tries to reach potential and realizes it isn't all that great, changes his life
Metro Man: Alien with supernatural abilities, raised on Earth, tries to reach potential and realizes it isn't all that great, changes his life
In case you didn't follow that, the first example is from the Harry Potter series, the second is from Les Mis and the third is from Megamind.

Sometimes authors use the opposite of parallels - I'd call them perpendiculars, but that sounds weird - to much the same effect: It still gives something to compare the character with and measure growth. Also, using parallels and perpendiculars is an easy way to build multiple character arcs that fit well together. A famous perpendicular (I've resigned myself to using the term for now):
Cinderella: Has a terrible stepmother who makes her work like a slave, has to go to ball undercover, has a sweet personality, marries prince
Stepsisters: Mother still alive who treats them well, get to flounce off to ball in grand style, have terrible personalities, then end up with their feelings and pride hurt (or live with their feet all carved up, your choice of ending).

Back to Farrell's book. If you want to study parallels, this is a good one to look at. Be aware that it has a sharp, and I mean sharp, learning curve that may make you want to put the book down. It is a fantasy novel set in another world, and the author has chosen to rename nearly everything. The king isn't a king, he's a kraljiki; mothers aren't mothers, they are matarhs; a guard is a garda; and it goes on and on. Many of the new words have roots in real languages (the castle is the palais, for example), so that may give you a leg up.

Something else I wanted to talk about a bit was the commander of the "good guys." Neither side is all that good or bad. Either way, we are introduced to this character when he tortures someone and we watch him splat someone's hand with a brass hammer of sorts. It was shudder-worthy. Sergei is also dehumanized slightly by his lack of a regular nose; his is a metal one that is silver. With that setup, I was all ready to hate the character. By the end of the book, though, I was looking for ways to defend him. How did the author manage that? I have never seen that done before without the character themselves changing or without being won over by charm and wit. Sergei is not at all a rogue. He reminds me more of Inspector Javere, to bring up Les Mis again. I think we come to excuse Sergei for two reasons: we never watch him torture someone again, though we know he does it, and we come to understand his version of patriotism. My husband says he is in the extreme order quadrant of evil, but I don't think it can to easily be simplified. Keep an eye on Sergei if you read A Magic of Twilight, and keep this in mind when you are building your own casts of characters. Could someone be excusably evil?

This is a book with an innovative magic system, which I always appreciate, and good characters. The possibly unnecessarily thorough world-building (I haven't decided whether it was justified or not, because it does make it feel like a different culture even though it is all familiar) could be a deal-breaker for some, but other than that, I'd recommend it.

Headline Troubles?

I recently wrote a 2C Blog post for the newspaper I work for. It doesn't actually get posted on a blog, so I have no idea why it's called that, but "2C" comes from Canyon County, our coverage area. The reporters and some editors at the paper rotate who writes the 2C Blog post each week, and they write about whatever they feel like. Usually that means they complain about something they see happening among our readers or they tell the story behind an article. Me, I like to talk a bit about my life. The point is so our readers will get to know the people working at the paper.

Back to my latest 2C post. You can read it here.

Please excuse the headline.

I so didn't want it called "Blame renewed interest in gold prospecting on the sluice box." When I first read that, it went in one ear and out the other. I had to reread slowly to understand what the person who wrote it was trying to say. The headline I had asked for was "I blame it on the sluice box," which is shorter and easier to understand, plus a bit fun considering how I end the article. Also, I do explain what a sluice box is in the article, so the only mildly confusing bit (which wasn't fixed in the new-and-not-improved headline, may I add) was taken care of.

Rant over. I'm going to write a real blog post to give headline and title advice, partially to vent and partially because some people do have troubles with it.

Option 1: Informational

You have multiple options for the type of headline or title you pick. First, as a friend of mine recently reminded me while searching for a title for her book, is that the title tell the reader something about what they are about to read. It needs to be informational. Examples from published books: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The Three Musketeers. Memoirs of a Geisha. Little House on the Prairie.

They don't give away the entire plot, but they give you an idea of what their subject material is. Harry Potter's story is going to involve a mythical stone said to bring immortal youth. There are three people working as musketeers. Someone is a geisha and is going to talk about it. There is a little house in the prairie, which means it's a rural story of some sort.

If you don't want to go informational, go for intriguing. You need to hook a potential consumer's interest somehow, and if you want to hint at your concept instead of your plot, this is a good option. Examples from ... movies this time. Why not. Inception. The Imitation Game. Lucy. Citizenfour. (I honestly don't know what those last two are about).

Option 2: Intriguing

Again, this format usually hints at the concept used to form the central conflict. We get a definition for "inception" early on in that movie, making it make perfect sense (and turning the title into an informational one). As for Imitation Game, (spoiler alert) we find out that there is a bunch of imitation going on: main guy is imitating a straight people, main woman is imitating the men in her life, and they break a coded message by imitating what they already know about the code and expanding that knowledge. The other two, as I said, I have no idea. I'd have to watch to find out, which is the point.

When you want to write a headline for a newspaper, you have to go informative. But you can also go for fun or funny. Today is Idaho Gives day, and I suggested at a staff meeting that we use the hammer (half headline, the big words that jump at you on the front page) "Idaho gave." The reason for the suggestion is the twist on words. Journalists love to do that, and the same concept can be used in blog posts, content articles, magazine articles, poetry titles and probably even longer works. Examples from newspapers, because they're easier to hunt down than blog post titles:

 

Each of these gets the information across (if someone is already familiar with the situation), making them good informational headlines without making them boring. That draws in a reader if you can't come up with an informative headline that is interesting.

Interest is, after all, the point of a title or headline. It is used to make people want to read about it, whether that means you entice them with subject matter, with curiosity or with a joke.

Sidenote: Sometimes a poem's title can be used as the first line, so the poem actually starts at the title and the first stanza is actually the second. Just mentioning that in case you felt like experimenting a bit. Put that in the poetry-breaks-rules filing cabinet in your mind.

Allow Me to Explain Why You Should Learn the Rules of Grammar

My current reading book is Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog. In it, a student asks the language teacher why people learn grammar:

"You ought to know by now," replied Madame Never-mind-that-I-am-paid-to-teach-you. "Well I don't," replied Achille, sincerely for once, "no one ever bothered to explain it to us." Madame Fine let out a long sigh, of the "do I really have to put up with such stupid questions" variety, and said, "The point is to make us speak and write well."

 I thought I would have a heart attack there and then. I have never heard anything so grossly inept. And by that, I don't mean it's wrong, just that it is grossly inept. (under the section called " Profound Thought No. 10")

I'd like to take a moment to explain why we learn, or should learn, grammar.

Read this:

It is from Joshua Marie Wilkinson's Selenography, and it is actually just a snippet of a many-pages-long poem.

One reason to learn grammar is so you can mold language in ways you otherwise could not.

Most obvious: "Static" is not a verb, so per grammar, this is ridiculous. But instead, it makes total sense and the strangeness of it makes us pause to soak it in, whether we want to pause or not. Actually, each line break is strange enough to cause the reader to trip, making this difficult to get through ... on purpose. Wilkinson is ripping apart phrases, causing what journalists call "split" lines. By all rights, it should be

storm-heavy planks & storms enough
to call you on the telephone
& static your pause.
I know...

But it doesn't, and that forces you to conjure these images, tripping every time a sudden change forces a new one, paying total attention whether you like it or not. Both the line breaks and the incorrect word choice does this.

Why learn grammar? To gain control of your own words, to make them do what you want instead of the other way around.

Another example of tight control, this time following all the rules:

Jose Pina Castro, an Ontario, Oregon, man who pleaded guilty to mayhem for biting off part of a woman’s ear in Caldwell, will spend 10 years in prison with five years fixed, 3rd District Judge Christopher S. Nye ruled Wednesday.

This is what journalists call a "lede," which is a fancy word for the point of the story, almost always the first sentence. Ledes, when done correctly, are chock-full of information, and it would be difficult to understand it all without grammar's help. Things we learned from that one sentence:

1. Who? Jose Pina Castro. He is from Ontario, Oregon.
2. What'd he do? He bit off a woman's ear; but more recently, he pleaded guilty to doing so. Turns out "mayhem" is a word that means you got rid of someone's body part.
3. Woman? Yeah, she's from Caldwell (Idaho).
4. What now? He's going to be in prison for at least five years, probably 10.
5. Says who? Christopher S. Nye, who is a judge in the 3rd district.
6. When did he rule that? Wednesday.

All that info (minus the "mayhem" definition, that was thrown in as a fun fact from me), in one sentence. One! It was not in the least bit confusing or exhausting to read. This can be attributed to smart grammar.

Another reason for grammar is so we can be precise and not confuse anyone.







Point made.

Quick recap: Three reasons to learn grammar (umbrella reasons, but I didn't want to lecture for too long). First, so you can break the rules of grammar on purpose and make your language work for you. Second, so you can be a language master and do things like squash tons of info into itty bitty spaces. Third, so you don't confuse anyone.

That last reason is the primary one. Grammar is there so no one gets confused. If you're a writer, however, consider those first two reasons. Control is the reason for grammar. It allows you to say what you want to say in whatever way you want. If you know the reason for a rule, you know when to break it and how to do so in a way that won't confuse people. Poetry is the main opportunity to ignore grammar. Dialogue is another invitation for purposeful grammar neglect. There is not always a need to break the grammar rules, though; usually, you can practice correct grammar and, using the second reason, create beautiful and efficient works of written art.

Does that answer your question, Achille?