Month: August 2014

{THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS or I BLAME IT ALL ON THAT STUPID BOOK}

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August 27, 2014

9:57 am

1 Comment on {THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS or I BLAME IT ALL ON THAT STUPID BOOK}

Soapbox

WARNING: Rant ahead

Those who have been long-time readers of the blog know how I came absolutely unglued reading The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by Irish novelist John Boyne, for the Cybils Awards in 2006. I thought it was an utter waste of trees, and my friend Leila actually, in sheer desperation, put it down to read about TENNIS, which has to inform readers how bad it was. (Sorry, sports fans, but tennis is ruddy dull to watch, much less read about.) (Leila later voted the book as her most put-downable.) And then, there was the MOVIE.

For me, the whole book – and its celebrants – was almost worse than the existence of Holocaust deniers. Nope, nope, we’re not going to deny it happened. We’re just going to cuten it up! Perk it up! Every genocide needs ruffles! With its simplistic, condescending, patronizing storyline, the novel affirmed that children are so INNOCENT and lisping, pink and cute — so stupid and unobservant — that they’d miss, you know, great atrocity, the smell of death and the fact that their wee bestie was incarcerated and being starved and tortured, prior to being murdered. Also, Boyne wouldn’t mention the lice and the and the bruises and the disappearances going round on his side of the fence. The characters were meant to be nine and twelve, but the baby language of “Out With” instead of Auschwitz and the Fuhrer being called “The Fury” utterly sickened me – what nine-year-old German child would not know the name of his country’s leader in the 1940’s???? In an abusive home, much less an oppressive political regime, children are indoctrinated before they can speak.

Y’know what??? LET’S. NOT. GET. ME. STARTED.

In short, the book showed an appalling lack of respect for its subject matter, for the survivors and the victims of one of modern history’s most egregious and cold-blooded atrocities, and just whistles off, looking at the ceiling, whilst I foam at the mouth because it is truly, madly, deeply inappropriate. OKAY. I get it. John Boyne doesn’t care. But, I swear to you, it’s books and movies like that which give rise to STUPID S$*%*%&# LIKE THIS:

REALLY, ZARA CLOTHING STORE???? Did you sleep through World History? In a company that does business INTERNATIONALLY, was there NO ONE who was at all bothered by a yellow star? No one who thought twice? No one whose job it was to check out stuff like this? I don’t buy that. Maliciously meant or (probably) not — people who don’t do business thoughtfully soon don’t do business.

See, this is a truth:

Truth: human nature is for human beings to have a short attention span.

Truth: we need books that TELL THE TRUE, as Jane Yolen puts it, to remind us of what is real.

Truth: CRAP LIKE THIS is what happens when we lose track of the truth. We grind salt in one another’s wounds. We forget that anyone ever hurt. We walk through life with blinders. We can justify all sorts of things.

Books are weapons in the war of ideas, people.

2014-04-17-jonesread

I’ll leave you with a ZEN Pencils moment, since I’m not feeling all that Zen.

< / rant>

{an exchange on art}

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August 13, 2014

5:51 pm

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Intellectual curiosity, Literary Life Observations, Musings on Extemporanea

JustinChanda-podium-voice-v2flatweb

Photo credit: Debbie Ridpath Ohi, from her blog Inky Girl, ©2014

Today, I sent Debbie’s inspirational photograph to my writing group, and added the following words:

RESIST THE TRENDS. Resist the frigid breath of the publishing industry, breathing down your neck, trying to get you to focus on The Market and What Editors Want. WHO CARES. Write the best story you know how. Write you heart out, all over the page. Look into the convex lens of your imaginary audience and tell the true – the REAL true that makes you dig down and get personal and a little afraid and maybe weep a little. Write what you’re finding a glimmer of, but fear maybe others won’t understand. Write what scares you, what hurts you, what disgusts you, what seduces you.

…and THEN worry about the stupid industry.

As is often the case, the quotation shared started a dialogue with a friend. Her response (appropriately anonymized):

The problem is I did write the story that came to me, and now I’m worrying about the market, because my story won’t sell.

Not to be a naysayer and a downer, but I listened to Justin Chanda, and his speech was inspirational, BUT…

They (and by they, I mean editors and agents and publishers) say to not worry about the market and write your own story, and then in the next breath, they say, “We’re not taking ______, ________, _________, because those trends are over.” Fill in the blanks with your story idea(s).

They want the next big thing, but they also want the current hot trend. He’s right that we cannot predict the trends or write to them, but on the other hand, the trends exist and if you happen to have something that doesn’t match what they’re looking for–even if it’s well written–the answer will still be tough luck, Charlie.

I sat through that conference depressed and disheartened, despite Justin’s smiling face. Many of the agents there were closed to submissions, including conference goers. (I kept wondering, “Then why are you here?”) And all of them were pretty down on YA–especially speculative fiction. The ones who were taking submissions wanted realistic, please, something like John Green, only not a cancer book (aka trend over).

Right.

I walked away with the decision that I’m just going to write for me and not worry about publication or querying. No pressure. No what if. No fear if it’s good enough. No second-guessing the critiques I’ll receive and wondering what everyone won’t like, what I need to fix, etc. Just me and my own joy in making up a story.

…Right now, I just want to finish [my] manuscript and enjoy the ride.

Trying to experience the journey and not worry about the end…

I tried to choose my words carefully – because I know it’s easy for me to say “Oh, don’t give up! Don’t let the market rule you!” when I’ve already been published, and my friend hasn’t yet, but I believe so strongly that she will be that “yet” is the only word I can use. I replied:

And that is what I mean about not worrying about the trend.
I don’t at all belittle what was said at conference, what you heard, or what you found inspirational —
What I have a problem with is PERPETUATING. If we keep writing books that are what people want? We’re keeping the world – this dominant culture, youth worshiping, lucre-loving, hypocritically class conscious, culturally clueless, mean (girl/guy) enabling, tech obsessed – this disappointing, shallow world exactly the way it is.

Okay, so astronauts get to grow up and change the world. People expect that of the hard sciences – they’re researching, they’re making discoveries – right? People don’t expect that from art. We’re just… making pretty pictures. Scribbling words. It’s not like we’re curing cancer. We don’t change the world… or, so you’d think.

ART IS POWERFUL. The act of creation — the experience of seeing yourself reflected in a creation — we can’t possibly ignore that thrill. Art – and our place in it – has the potential to be transformative. We cannot possibly content ourselves with just regurgitating something made up by talking heads in publishing firms whose ego and paycheque is tied to perpetuating the status quo. Another-John-Green-But-Not-Cancer realistic fiction novel – my square backside; we can do better than that. We CAN do better than that. OUR stories are real – for a given value of “real” in fiction – not contrived and cobbled to meet some trend. YES, marketing and money rule supreme in the industry, but the industry doesn’t move without us. I truly believe that the best stories — and a disturbing number of outright craptacular ones and generic “meh” ones — will continue to be told.

You’re right: it’s not important to be THE best in the industry, especially because that is totally subjective. Being your best is what’s going to make creating your stories satisfying – it’s what’s going to make your words fly, and your story arc and your big-picture metaphors sing like the tapped edge of a crystal goblet – that tiny chime that says ‘real.’

Here’s to being the genuine article.
♥

The conversation on literature and breaking into the market isn’t over, of course – this was just a piece of it. There’s a lot of hope, and a lot of despair in publishing; a lot of unrealized dreams and normalizing the status quo, but it’s still my hope that things will change. Here’s to that day.

{a palaver on lingo}

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August 4, 2014

12:24 pm

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General Coolness, Intellectual curiosity, Musings on Extemporanea

The other day, I heard myself say something about a “palaver,” as in, “so we had a palaver about the whole thing,” which, when I used it, meant an annoying, big-fat-hairy-deal conversation. The Scots usage that I echoed means “a big fuss”or “a bother,” and the West African/Portuguese original usage, from whence the word originates (Portuguese palavra or ‘word,’ from Latin parabola or ‘comparison’) in the mid-18th century meant “trader talk,” or the linga franca used by tribal folk and traders. (Is this another example of what Adrienne calls my “weirdly specific knowledge”? Why, yes, I think it is…) Isn’t it interesting that my meaning of the word was halfway between two other meanings? I’m always intrigued by the “separated by a common language” aspect of the English language. I read a lot of books – and see a lot of what I perceive to be as misuses of that language, or, at least, odd uses.

But, perhaps, none so odd as the misused and egregious banged up homophone.

lingo

♦ The suffix, sapient = wise, so homo sapiens are those of the wisdom, or the Latin words for “wise men” – and refers to human beings.

♦ The suffix, geneous (not genous, sorry) = type or kind, thus homogenous, in chemistry, refers to the same type.

♦ The suffix -nym easily gives us its meaning of “name” thus homonyms are words in biology which are namesakes, and in linguistics/English are words which have the same sound, but have different spellings and meanings. See also homophone, (or homographs or heteronyms, which sound different, but are spelled the same, i.e., lead the metal, lead, as in leading the way.)

English, my people. My language is known to be hard to learn, but it sort of galls me when MY PEOPLE don’t know it. How did we all miss the whole idea that “homo” is merely a prefix, and not a bad word? Oh, wait? You’re still operating under that juvenile and egregious means of calling people homos, and meaning, offensively, that you’re accusing them of being gay? Really!??

… may I ask you to GROW UP!?

By now, myriad people the world over have heard of the Provo, Utah based ESL center who fired a blogger because he had the nerve to blog about homophones… and the school feared that people would associate their school with a GLBTQ people, or a “homophonic agenda.” OH, I cringe. I dramatically slap my forehead. I am tempted to dramatically slap their foreheads. But, people are comfortable in their ignorance; even knowing that the word has nothing to do with gay or lesbian people, the Utah language school’s belief is that even writing “homo” is wrong. Homo=gay, because REASONS. Elementary school, immature, confused REASONS.

And so, my fantasy letter begins:

Dear Book and Word World,

I write, because I CARE. I care about how words are used, by people who actually publish things. I care, because… we only have one English language (if you ignore the British Commonwealth) and we need to actually use it properly. To wit:

Cavalry, Calvary and Calgary? Are three vastly different things… The first is a herd on horses, the second is a Hill, and the third is a city in Canada. Listen carefully, pronounce properly, and spell specifically. Please and THANK YOU.

Your and You’re are a tiny bit over the pet-peeve line, much like there and their and they’re — but these can almost be seen as typos, and we ALL do this one sometimes… even people with multiple English degrees. A friend and I laughed just last week over discrete and discreet — it happens. But…

Reign, rein, and rain? Why am I running across this one so frequently? Three separate things, darlings, and the words are in such uncommon usage that this should be one that we catch. Only the first has to do with kings and princes.

I’m pretty sure I’ve fussed before about Peak and Peek and Pique. Only one has elevation – and the one with the q – that you rarely use – is annoyance. The other you know, right?

And if you don’t know the difference between taught and taut, I suggest a return to school. No, really. Even night classes could help.

Lightening? Lightning? Which one relates to weather?

It’s not that I’m trying to call anyone stupid, not at all. But sloppy, hasty, and lacking beta readers? Insisting that words mean what you think they do, instead of looking them up, and understanding that words have meanings that came along before you? Oh, yes, I’m calling you out on that, book people. Loudly. (Additionally, Tech Boy would like you to know that though Adverse and Averse sound alike, they’re not interchangeable.)

Writers, Bloggers and Copy Editors, Unite! Subvert the homophonic agenda. Or, whatever it is.