Indefensible English – Can You Spell “Cat”?
Posted on | December 28, 2010 | 6 Comments
Image by Scorpions and Centaurs via Flickr
People who know me (and, I suspect, many who don’t) know that I am a terrible speller. I used to say I could have the word “cat” three times in a sentence and it wouldn’t look the same twice. An exaggeration, to be sure, but it makes the point. My mother used to tell me “just sound it out”. This resulted in some very interesting words appearing on my pages. (Did you know that the word you speak as “vittles” is actually spelled, “victuals”? How the hell did that happen?)
I remember in college a meeting with my English professor, Sister Jean Concannon, talking about one of the short stories I’d submitted. She mentioned the spelling. (Remember, this was sometime during the Lincoln administration. Personal computers hadn’t been invented, yet, thus, no spell check.) She told me I that, if I should need to know how to spell a word, I should simply look it up in the dictionary. Then she noticed the conflicted look on my face, laughed and told me of a former student to whom she had suggested the same thing, who had teared up and asked, “How can I look it up if I don’t know how to spell it?” At that moment, I felt understood.
I can type a word in such a convoluted way that I totally flummox spell-check. I can sit for long stretches, trying different permutations until I can find something that the poor program can at least recognize as an English word so that it can give me some idea of how to proceed. (It would probably help if I didn’t insist on using words like “permutations”. However, 1. I find I can spell those words much more easily than more simple ones, and 2. I like those words.)
Lately, I’ve found that Google has become quite a good spell-checker. If my handy, tried and true WordPerfect can’t parse a word for me, other than to indicate with a squiggly red line that it is unrecognizable, typing my unrecognizable word into Google will often lead me to the correct (or at least A correct) spelling.
Another teacher that I studied with in my late forties said, “English is indefensible.” He was teaching us a technique for remembering the correct spelling of words, using (I now go to Google for a moment) Albuquerque as an example. It was a plausible technique, but one I have yet to master. That you can’t defend English, however, was a revelation. I finally relaxed as I saw just how true this is. When Steve and I are writing, I’m usually the one at the keyboard, and when I type a word incorrectly, it prickles Steve’s sense of decorum and he will let me know that the word should be corrected before we can move on. Lately, I’ve been asking him, “why is it spelled that way?” Usually, he comes back with a shy smile and a shrug and some variation of “English is indefensible.”
It isn’t only the spelling, either. Our language is rich and varied, one of the reasons I love playing in it so much. This richness, this lush expanse of vernacular possibilities, comes in part because we’ve borrowed words, thoughts and meanings from so many different sources. How else could you explain the conflict between the meanings of “salt of the earth” and “salting the earth”. One is a very good thing, the other is decidedly not, yet the actual phrases only exchange an “i-n-g” with a “space-o-f”.
Because we’ve taken so much from so many sources, sometimes adjusting it to match our “rules”, sometimes not, our language can be very confusing. I have, however, realized I quite like the confusion of it, from chaos comes creativity, and find I have no need whatsoever to defend it.
And the more at peace I become with the fact that “that’s just the way it is”, the better my spelling is becoming.
The Myth of the Fragile Muse
Posted on | December 17, 2010 | 2 Comments
The Muse (Image via Wikipedia)
In college, my major course of study was acting. The theatre department was run, at that small school, like a professional acting company, and we produced a minimum of five plays a year. Everyone in the department was expected to do every job in the theatre at least once, and everyone was expected to be in the plays, on the stage, in front of an audience. It was heaven, if you can imagine four years of 14 hour days being anything like heaven.
There were people on the campus who weren’t part of the department but wanted to participate. Of course they were welcome, there was always a lot to do. The professors used to caution them, however, to be very careful and respectful of the actors during rehearsal and performance nights because creativity was so fragile and so easily shut down.
I believed that wholeheartedly and to my core. I believed it partly because it put the actors a bit on a pedestal, but mostly because it fostered the notion that creativity was somehow special and unique to a particular breed of person and that not anyone could access that power. The fragility of that was a very romantic notion, a very seductive one. If I can hold something this fragile, nurture it, care for it gently, grow it into a willowy, wisp-like entity that needed constant care, I am, indeed, a very rare and talented person deserving of special consideration and special treatment. Pampering, by God!
Balderdash. I wonder why anyone suffered my presence.
Because I believed it about acting, I translated it into my writing and was very, very careful of my “muse”. I never forced myself to write if I just didn’t feel like it. I feared chasing her away if I did. I feared that the willowy, wisp-like entity would blow away like smoke on a breeze and I’d be left without my soul.
Then I found myself in a situation where I had to write, I had a commitment and a time limit. Steve and I were writing for an on-going stage production and the scripts had to come out in a very specific time-frame. “I don’t wanna” wouldn’t work, we had to produce scripts. Without even thinking about it, we simply sat down and did it.
I found myself in more and more similar situations as the years went by and it caused me to reexamine this belief I took on so heartily in my heady youth. If I could force myself to sit down and create something, even something worthy of putting in front of an audience, no matter what mood I was in or what willful resistance I was experiencing, perhaps that elusive muse wasn’t so fragile after all. Or so elusive. Damn it. Another excuse torn asunder.
When you get into the habit of writing every day, your muse (if you want to call it that, I have a whole series of posts about what I consider inspiration to really be) will become robust. She will put her head high, puff out her ample bosom, put on boxing gloves and soundly knock any impediment to getting ideas into your grey matter out of her way, then dance around punching the inside of your head until you pay attention to her. The more you write, the more power and vitality she will have. Think Brunhilda with spear, shield and horned hat. Not someone who could be blown away by a mere breeze. Metaphor aside, the more you write, the more power and vitality you will have.
Yes, sometimes the best way to write is to push away from the keyboard and take a walk. This is sound advice for anyone who is creative. But there is a big difference between stepping away to let the juices flow and stepping away to indulge in a bit of “I don’t wanna.”
If you don’t want to, and are afraid you’ll damage your creative flow by forcing it, get over your little self, sit down and start typing. You’re muse will thank you for it.
Our Yearly Assault On Everything You Hold Dear
Posted on | December 9, 2010 | 1 Comment
It’s December again. What does that mean, boys and girls? It means sparkly decorations. It means ribbons. It means garish inflatable Santas waving their arms like banshees. It means that people will be decrying the war being waged on Christmas.
Well, our Christmas tradition is to be the ones actually waging that war.
Disclaimer: This site, video and all the contents therein are purely for entertainment purposes. We are in no way affiliated with the actual Christmas, actual war, punditry, the extreme left, the extreme right, the extreme middle or any other group with any agenda other than humor. We did not set out to offend anyone, but sometimes, feelings get hurt. We hope it’s not yours, but if it is, we take absolutely no personal responsibility for your level of outrage.
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Have a wonderful Chris… Holid… um… Have some gum!
Thanksgiving – Use Everything as an Excuse to Write
Posted on | November 25, 2010 | 4 Comments
Image via Wikipedia
It is the eve of Thanksgiving in the United States of America, a time when some minds turn towards gluttonous indulgences. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for gluttonous indulgences. I am also grateful for living somewhere where I can indulge in them.
Before this gets entirely too maudlin and trite, let me say that, for a writer, everything is an excuse to write, giving thanks doubly so. What are you grateful for? What do you most appreciate in your life? I am firmly convinced that, if we were all to spend five minutes every morning reminding ourselves of what we had to be grateful for, our lives would transform. Couple that with spending five to ten minutes writing stream of consciousness (see here, here, here and here) and you have the possibility of creating the true life of a writer.
So, what am I grateful for? The list is very long, but I’ll try to do it justice.
- Los Angeles – I have the privilege of living in a city whose very reason to be is creativity.
- My poor old cat – she is annoying and senile and I do love her very much. Her name is Cat.
- My days – I work 12 to 15 hours every day, but I do that for myself and there’s no greater bounty.
- Steve – I have said it often, but what we create together is miraculous, mercurial and unpredictable and far beyond what either of us could do on our own.
- My family – My brothers and sister, David, Liam and Rachel, and their children and (gasp) grandchildren, my father and his wife, their children, Ann, Paul and Natalie and their children and (double gasp) grandchildren – I have somehow been attached to an extended family with more talent, love and creativity than most whole cities possess. I must have done something nice in a past life.
- Computers – without them, I probably would be a very different person living a very different life.
- Movies – the lights dim, the ads and previews run and my heart starts to beat faster. Then it goes black and the first sound or image assaults or massages me and I willingly leave this existence and enter a completely new one with infinite possibilities.
- Friends – If I named any I would feel bad for not naming them all.
- Mentors – I have to list two that have been and are very powerful forces in my life right now, Pat O’Bryan and Connie Ragen Green. They have both shown me more of what I was capable than I knew.
- My little apartment and my landlord – It is warm and safe here and I’m surrounded by people who look after each other.
- Imagination – who and where would I be without it? I can’t imagine.
- Good food and drink – being able to put fresh garlic, sage, salt, pepper and a touch of oregano into a mortar and grind them all with a pestle, add olive oil and a touch of vinegar, coat a pork roast with the mixture and bake until it’s become a crust, then take the pan juices, add corn starch and make a gravy, is part of what makes life worth living. Well, eating the resulting feast is pretty good, too.
- Books – Like movies, but they last longer and I go deeper.
- Being a best-selling author.
- Being a teacher – here, it is appropriate to mention that what I am most grateful for is the trust and faith that the people who choose to learn from me provide, and how much I learn and grow from their questions, understanding, disagreements and growth.
- Silliness – without that I wouldn’t be a best-selling author.
There is more. I am grateful that you read this. I would be grateful if you shared some of what you see around you.
Happy Thanksgiving.
There is Always Something to Write – A Writing Exercise
Posted on | November 21, 2010 | 4 Comments
Autumn Stream by digitalART2 via Flickr
When you find you have nothing to write, or think you have nothing to write, focus in on some one sense. For today, simply let the feel of the air suggest something. First experience it. What exactly does it feel like? Then let your imagination wander. What does it suggest? Again, with all writing exercises, you may or may not use this in any actual piece, but the act of writing begets the act of writing. The act of imagining begets the act of imagining. And if you let it, you will find something beautiful on your page that you may just want to use, as is or adjusted, in your next story.
I call this exercise “Observe, then Imagine”.
Here is mine:
There is a chill in the air in Los Angeles that reminds me pleasantly of autumns from my childhood. The trees are rustling provocatively, as if they are anticipating something big and want to be prepared for it. The rustling comes in waves, each with its own small crescendo, and, like waves in a restless sea, some are stronger, more sustained than others, and the stillness between them more filled with that anticipation.
I imagine a fireplace waiting for me somewhere, perhaps a dog lying on a rug by the door with his head on his paws. He is old enough to be settled, but young enough to sill want to play on occasion, big and friendly and just seeing him makes you want to thump his side. I imagine an old, comfortable couch with an old, hand-made afghan thrown haphazardly over the back, ready to be pulled around my shoulders as I settle in with a leather-bound book, the dog curling up beside me to nap as I read.
I imagine the smells of winter cooking riding out of a kitchen on heavy air, thick with moisture from the boiling sauces. (Actually, it’s not hard at all to imagine that; there is a nice, thick red sauce simmering in the other room, lush with bobbing, home-made meatballs.)
I imagine the house is in a clearing in the woods, made of stone and wood, and the rustling trees outside foretell a winter storm that will overnight cover the house and grounds in a deep, white coat of snow that will insulate me from the rest of the world and will necessitate building a blazing fire in the fireplace.
I imagine that fire, the pungent, comforting and comfortable spicy smell of burning oak, the noise the air makes as it rushes up the chimney, layered with arrhythmic crackles and pops.
What did you feel? And what did that suggest for you?
This Post Is Not Really About Sex
Posted on | October 30, 2010 | No Comments
Image via Wikipedia
I keep being pulled away from what I want to do (write, act, direct, create ephemera that is lasting) and into what I need to do (make a living, pay bills, fulfill commitments, be a friend.) The dream is to mesh the two into one glorious existence, but I haven’t yet found the wit or endurance to make that work entirely. There are bleak moments when I think that will never happen. Then I’ll sit down and write something that astonishes me and remember why I am trying to make a living, pay bills, fulfill commitments and be a friend. It is to be able to exist in a world where I can write, act, direct and create ephemera that is lasting.
And somehow, I’m sure, all this has something to do with sex, although that is only a vague notion brought on by the vague awareness of sex at the edges of my consciousness most moments I’m awake. Of course, there is also a vague awareness of death that lingers nearby, so it may also have something to do with that. Most of what I create has one or both of those hovering about the edges, so I’ll assume for the moment everything does.
I wrote a short story, dark and surreal with odd and oddly obvious symbolism, several years ago after a cross country road trip, about a man who wakes up in a nondescript, slightly decrepit motel room who doesn’t know who he is, where he has come from or where he is headed. He only knows what he can see and sense around him, the cigarettes, his wallet, his dirty fingernails, the musty smell in the room, and from these concludes that he’s traveling. By the end, he isn’t even astonished to find himself fading into the mattress. Most people would find this story bleak. I haven’t shown it to many people and the ones I do find reading it very uncomfortable. I have a very different relationship to it, however. I find it having been an empowering exercise to write and a rewarding one to read. I am delighted to have created (or transcribed, it doesn’t matter which) that bleak moment.
When I start feeling like the direction of my life has been diverted by dams, culverts, flumes and groynes I remember a poem that delighted me in childhood or I read about a young writer that is taking the world by the short and curlies or I remember one of my own stories that delighted me in the telling and I know that, no mater what direction the river is flowing, what is slowing it or changing its course, it always ends up at the sea and it makes my heart sing and my body want to sit down and write something.
For those who like to see behind the curtain, today the remembered poem was Eletelephony by Laura Richards, the young writer is Christopher Stoddard
What Do You Mean, You’re Not Writing?
Posted on | September 26, 2010 | 2 Comments
I love being creative. That’s not much of a surprise for anyone who knows me, but I do. When I really start creating, when I really start listening to those voices who are giving me the ideas to write down, I start feeling a mixture of a deep satisfaction, slightly embarrassing pride, a vague but exciting antsy anticipation in my stomach, right next to that ball of warmth. And I can’t wait to share what I’m creating.
There are different kinds and levels of creativity. I have spent the last several days creating a new training course with a book, worksheets and video instruction, all the while thinking, “As soon as I’m done, here, I can go be creative.” But a funny thing happened. Today I suddenly noticed that mixed up feeling. Where did that come from? Oh, yeah. Creating that course. I needed to pull from my experience, delve into my knowledge. I had to imagine what the student would need, put myself there. Instinctively (translated: from deep habit) I used my senses to do so.
Athena from Zues' Forhead (Image via Wikipedia)
I posed circumstance and questions that I trusted my subconscious would provide the answers to and lived through the struggles of my imagined students. Then I waited a little while as it percolated (and, as is also my habit, a little while as I procrastinated) then jumped in and followed the story that had been born, almost fully formed like Athena who leapt fully formed from Zeus’ forehead. (He must have been imagining her for a very long time! Well, maybe it was Metis who did the imagining. Look it up.) It all sounds sort of like what I go through when I’m writing a story. It almost sounds like creativity. No wonder I’m feeling so smug!
In any case, once the product is done and out, I can get back to the novel, but I’m already being creative, so my soul seems content.
When Your Characters Speak to You
Posted on | August 15, 2010 | 2 Comments
This week, I’ve done very little writing. Well, that’s not exactly true, I’ve written sales pages, emails, comments, tweets, posts and the like, but not done a lot of creative writing. This is my first blog post on any of my many blogs in quite a while, and, besides notes, I’ve not move far forward with the novel. It happens sometimes. Is it writer’s block? No. Absolutely not. Besides the fact that I have said many times I don’t think there really is such a thing, my mind has been swirling with ideas the whole time. Sometimes it’s best to let them swirl (as long as you’re not using that as another excuse not to get stuff done) until they coalesce into a form that’s manageable.
So what are the ideas I’ve been riding along, Dorothy-like, in the storm of my mind? Well, let me tell you. I suspected the novel would be dark, but one of the characters just decided to have an affair with someone very inappropriate and two others are going to die quite unexpectedly, all in delightfully dark and twisted ways. I hadn’t expected a lot of death in this novel, and now there will be at least two bodies. You will grieve for at least one of them.
Writers often talk about the point where the characters start telling you what they are doing, what they want, start moving in directions seemingly completely outside your plans for them. It’s an exciting point to get to and I say 1) it is predictable and you can cause it to happen, and 2) they really aren’t outside of you moving your pen at all. Both of these things are caused by what I have been saying all along about the process of writing:
If you imagine the circumstances of the people, places and events, using all five of your senses, and dream yourself through the story, you will be feeding your subconscious mind with information and with a command to be creative. Your subconscious loves this particular command and will bubble what you’ve fed to it, churn it, cook it and feed it back to you in ways that will surprise you. It will really seem as if the characters are talking to you, telling you that what you planned won’t work, giving you suggestions or demands. Your subconscious has created these people to the point where it can’t tell they are fiction. Your subconscious doesn’t know what fiction is. To it, they really are real, perceived beings and circumstances and anything that don’t make sense, the things you planned that aren’t logical within the world you’ve created, won’t be tolerated by the reality you have allowed your inner mind to grow and experience.
So I’ve been being very productive. I just haven’t been writing. That will come again very soon. I can already hear Kyle’s mother telling me to stop judging her.
[Remember, for all the posts that deal with my new novel, click on the tag Old Magic.]
Getting Started
Posted on | August 4, 2010 | 2 Comments
Image via Wikipedia
I have a habit, bad or good, I’ve no idea, where, once I’ve written something, I read over it several times, almost obsessively, trying to imagine what some other reader would think of it. I’m not sure why I do this, and I’ve always felt at least a little silly about it, but there it is.
Last night I finished the first draft of the prologue of my novel. It’s not long as prologues go, and from experience the chance that it will end up exactly the way it is in the final product are slim, but after I’d written the last moment, which I had been quite excited to get to, I immediately started reading it from the top. Each time I went through it I tweaked a bit, changing a description, adding detail, correcting a word or a spelling, but the tweaking wasn’t why I reread it.
As I said, I had been very excited to get to that last moment while writing it out and I think I wanted to assure myself that I had led up to it properly, that it was sufficiently startling. Getting to that moment was why I’d actually started writing at all. I’ve been doing a lot of background work for the novel, imagining people and places, deciding on conflicts, living through the cycles and thrusts of the story, both viscerally and philosophically, but the starting off point, the thing that propelled the story into motion had been missing. Last night I realized that I had it, that it had been there for a few days without my knowing it, so I sat down and wrote what lead up to that moment. In the process, my two main characters started breathing a bit more.
As I write, when I write like that, when the story is becoming complete somewhere in my subconscious, I know where it’s headed (of course I do) but on some odd level I experience the writing as if I were reading someone else’s story for the first time and I want to see how it turns out. That’s not completely accurate, but I’m not sure I can describe it exactly. I can say that, when I’ve done good preliminary groundwork building, writing it down is, or at least can be, a thrilling experience. Perhaps one of the reasons I reread a piece so often right after I’ve finished it is to keep that feeling alive longer before it inevitably fades.
In any case, as I reread it, I decided that I liked it. That it is a fine beginning, as far as it goes. That it nicely sets things up, but in a way that isn’t obvious. I don’t think that moment, the one I was so keen to get to, is nearly as startling as I’d thought it would be, but I also now think it needn’t be.
Now I need to complete the groundwork for the next bit, which is rapidly getting to the point in my head where it must also be put down.
(To see all the posts dealing with the novel Old Magic, click here: http://www.tipsonwriting.net/blog/tag/old-magic/ )
What I’m Reading – American Gods
Posted on | July 30, 2010 | No Comments
A video review of the book American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
Read more books. Tell people about the books you’ve reading. Talk about them. It’s good for your heart. It’s good for your soul. It’s just good.
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