Full-on Star Wars nerdery ahead. Really not relevant to anything else. Enjoy at will.
Like I said earlier this week, I watched the holy trilogy again in mid-December. Jedi has always been my favorite, which I used to hide and no longer care to hide. It's because Jabba fascinated me when I was a little girl, and because Luke's journey (and Hamill's deep grip on the character) has become electrifying, and because the space battle at the end is excellent chaos, and because I love redwood trees. (I don't love the Ewoks, but I'm not offended by them.) Lots of other reasons, too, but I'd essentially be summarizing the highlights of the movie if I went on. Empire is the better film, but I like Jedi best.
We got to the scene when Luke turns himself in to Vader down on Endor - when they have that pivotal conversation about Luke's father, about the Dark Side, about Anakin. I paused it, and I said that I thought this point in the trilogy is where Anakin's characterization in the prequels is at its most threadbare. A conversation followed that lasted half an hour or more, and that made me reverse my opinion altogether. I wish I'd had all my other SW friends in the room, but that's why I'm writing it up here.
Let's, just for the moment, take the position that everything in the prequels is deliberate and makes sense.
I'll give you a minute to get there.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Half the Sons Are Actually Daughters
This may not be new information, but I've been marathoning The X-Files since the end of September. I have a lot to say about the show - I mean, of course I do, because I've spent over 100 hours on it in the last three months - and maybe there'll be a long and semi-ridiculous post about it to come. In the meantime, a three-parter I watched just before Christmas gave me some food for thought about storytelling.
The first two parts were balanced between Mulder and Scully pretty evenly, and were no nuttier than the show's usual fare, but the third part kinda lost me. It portrayed Mulder as a Christ figure. There are a lot of qualifying "not really" details for that comparison, but there's no denying that the comparison is there, and in my opinion its hubris is beyond the pale (especially since Duchovny co-wrote it for himself to act). One of the episode's most prominent motifs was that of fathers and sons. This theme has cropped up in the show from time to time, but never in a way that, er, alienated me so deftly.
There was so much weight on Mulder as son, Mulder as father - weight that I just didn't feel on my shoulders. A lifetime of training in the male gaze made me comprehend that this was going on, but none of it applied to me. I am neither a son nor a prospective father, and I never can be.
Maybe this fathers/sons thing was on my mind anyway because I watched the Star Wars trilogy again mid-December, as break and reward for finishing my horrible, horrible final paper for the Faulkner/Morrison class. One of the things that happens when you watch Star Wars is you think about fathers and sons; a decent amount of the emotional heft in Empire and Jedi depends upon the theme. Thankfully, there's enough broad-stroke hero's journey stuff and enough general entertainment going on in the films that you don't have to be male to let Star Wars sweep you up in its arms, but this time around I did really notice that some of that emotional heft was missing its target in me. What a father means to a son, what he signifies, is not very available to me.
One of the short stories I read last semester was "Boys", by Rick Moody, which I found of interest for quite a lot of reasons. Among its endeavors, the story suggests that a boy does not, metaphorically, become a man until his father dies. I'm not in a position to agree or disagree with this assessment, because it arises wholly outside of my experience, but it's certainly a common one. I could write a lot about the process of going from girl to woman, but pretty much none of it, in my view, has to do with how alive a daughter's parents are.
I have complicated relationships with both of my parents, and art that relies on daughter themes often speaks to me in the way that I think Star Wars and this arc on The X-Files are meant to speak to sons. But it bothers me that daughter themes are often in art that's directed more specifically at women, or at small audiences, while son themes are so often in art with much wider intended audiences. The two sets of issues are just so different from one another.
My quick free-association reports that son themes are about replacement, mortality, and legacy, and daughter themes are about purity, possession, and similarity-anxiety. (Of note: I rattled off three nouns for sons immediately, just thinking about father/son art, but it took much longer to come up with daughter nouns.) (Also of note: in assembling this post I found this series by a German photographer, Julia Fullerton-Batten, who has communicated many of the weird, free-floating feelings I have around daughterhood through surreal posed pictures. The direct link is SFW, but the artist's website is not.) There's more to it than three words apiece, duh, but no matter how vaguely they are summarized, the relationships are distinct. They cannot be swapped out for each other in a story and maintain resonance.
The point of all this is to note, politely, that father/son issues are not as universal as the writers of Star Wars and this arc of The X-Files and Paul Thomas Anderson and John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy and oh, my God, so many other writers and creators would apparently like to think. (In fact, I'd argue that they're approximately 49.2% as universal as those creators would apparently like to think.) And I would appreciate feeling a little more included in this kind of art, or at least a little less disconnected from its emotional texture.
I remember a big crop of mother/daughter books coming into print around 2012, and I was glad for it, but I think I'll be waiting a while before a Star Wars appears that's centered around Leia's journey to cope with her mother's absence. Those stories need writing. They need mainstreaming. So let's get on that, mmkay?
The first two parts were balanced between Mulder and Scully pretty evenly, and were no nuttier than the show's usual fare, but the third part kinda lost me. It portrayed Mulder as a Christ figure. There are a lot of qualifying "not really" details for that comparison, but there's no denying that the comparison is there, and in my opinion its hubris is beyond the pale (especially since Duchovny co-wrote it for himself to act). One of the episode's most prominent motifs was that of fathers and sons. This theme has cropped up in the show from time to time, but never in a way that, er, alienated me so deftly.
There was so much weight on Mulder as son, Mulder as father - weight that I just didn't feel on my shoulders. A lifetime of training in the male gaze made me comprehend that this was going on, but none of it applied to me. I am neither a son nor a prospective father, and I never can be.
Maybe this fathers/sons thing was on my mind anyway because I watched the Star Wars trilogy again mid-December, as break and reward for finishing my horrible, horrible final paper for the Faulkner/Morrison class. One of the things that happens when you watch Star Wars is you think about fathers and sons; a decent amount of the emotional heft in Empire and Jedi depends upon the theme. Thankfully, there's enough broad-stroke hero's journey stuff and enough general entertainment going on in the films that you don't have to be male to let Star Wars sweep you up in its arms, but this time around I did really notice that some of that emotional heft was missing its target in me. What a father means to a son, what he signifies, is not very available to me.
 |
| source: PaulNRoll on DeviantArt |
One of the short stories I read last semester was "Boys", by Rick Moody, which I found of interest for quite a lot of reasons. Among its endeavors, the story suggests that a boy does not, metaphorically, become a man until his father dies. I'm not in a position to agree or disagree with this assessment, because it arises wholly outside of my experience, but it's certainly a common one. I could write a lot about the process of going from girl to woman, but pretty much none of it, in my view, has to do with how alive a daughter's parents are.
I have complicated relationships with both of my parents, and art that relies on daughter themes often speaks to me in the way that I think Star Wars and this arc on The X-Files are meant to speak to sons. But it bothers me that daughter themes are often in art that's directed more specifically at women, or at small audiences, while son themes are so often in art with much wider intended audiences. The two sets of issues are just so different from one another.
My quick free-association reports that son themes are about replacement, mortality, and legacy, and daughter themes are about purity, possession, and similarity-anxiety. (Of note: I rattled off three nouns for sons immediately, just thinking about father/son art, but it took much longer to come up with daughter nouns.) (Also of note: in assembling this post I found this series by a German photographer, Julia Fullerton-Batten, who has communicated many of the weird, free-floating feelings I have around daughterhood through surreal posed pictures. The direct link is SFW, but the artist's website is not.) There's more to it than three words apiece, duh, but no matter how vaguely they are summarized, the relationships are distinct. They cannot be swapped out for each other in a story and maintain resonance.
 |
| I mean, does this happen with fathers and sons? And I want to talk about this. For hours. |
The point of all this is to note, politely, that father/son issues are not as universal as the writers of Star Wars and this arc of The X-Files and Paul Thomas Anderson and John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy and oh, my God, so many other writers and creators would apparently like to think. (In fact, I'd argue that they're approximately 49.2% as universal as those creators would apparently like to think.) And I would appreciate feeling a little more included in this kind of art, or at least a little less disconnected from its emotional texture.
I remember a big crop of mother/daughter books coming into print around 2012, and I was glad for it, but I think I'll be waiting a while before a Star Wars appears that's centered around Leia's journey to cope with her mother's absence. Those stories need writing. They need mainstreaming. So let's get on that, mmkay?
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Resolute, 2014 Edition
If you are a longtime reader of my blog, you know that this post always follows the same format, but this year I want to add a preface.
2005 was the worst year of my life. The. Worst. I would not wish my 2005 on anyone, not child molesters nor dogfight breeders nor E.L. James nor anyone else, ever. Simple math will tell you how many years have passed between then and now; 2015 has special significance to me, because it feels, finally, as if I have well and truly left 2005 behind. Its horribleness still informs how I live, because debt lasts a hell of a lot longer than you think it will and some wounds between people cannot be healed. But I hope a lot of today's informing has to do with wisdom, rather than bitterness or plain old suffering. Few of 2005's shockwaves are still rattling my life, and those noises are small. It is a year that still matters to me, but this year it's closer than ever to mattering in a good way.
So. Let's get down to business.
Every year, I post last year's New Year's resolutions with a short analysis of how well I think I succeeded at them, and then I post this year's. So, here are last year's (in greater detail here):
1. Remember how good accomplishment feels. Pretty significant fail. I still like eating goat cheese out of the wrapper on the couch in front of MST3K. I didn't remember this feeling very well at all. I'm in danger of disciplinary action, honestly.
2. Watch less MST3K. Oh my God, such a fail. I watched more than last year. Matt does not understand this resolution, because he cares less than anyone I've ever met whether his/our habits are "normal." I'm trying to come around, but I think I watch too much MST and that's all there is to it. Oh, well, maybe another year.
3. Fucking revise Highbinder already. Yay, success. But I don't think I really learned the lesson that was in this resolution, i.e. don't procrastinate something for a year just because you're unsure or frustrated. I hope to not do that in the future, but I suspect it'll be case-by-case.
4. Go on at least one adventure. Fail. :( The opportunity didn't present itself. Early in the year, I didn't know anyone I felt comfortable enough to ask to go on an adventure with me; later in the year, the timing never felt right; and money was a big problem this year. I hope I can go on an adventure in 2015, but now that I'm back to office work, outlook not so good.
5. Adjust expectations about writing projects. Success. I was blocked a lot this year, but I learned to avoid meltdowns, relax about being blocked, and know that the work would start again if I did the right things. I also learned to talk less about being blocked, because the more I agonized publicly, the less motivated I felt to get back to work.
6. Balance more toward writing than submitting. Success, I think. I don't have statistics, but it felt like I wrote a fuck of a lot this year and submitted only some.
7. Get better at setting boundaries. Success? I wasn't tested much on boundaries this year, and when I was, I think I did okay. A few times I had the opportunity to put into practice a resolution from 2013 about friendships. I phrased it as "roll with the punches better" and didn't go into much more detail, but in my mind it was about detaching from how people treat me, just being more chill about whether people are as committed to friendships with me as I am to them. It was about behavior (theirs) and disappointment (mine). Is this too vague? The point is, I had a LOT of uncertainty this year about whether other people gave a damn about me, per how they acted (or didn't), and I was able to let go of it pretty well. This issue seems like it's a cousin to boundaries, which is why I'm talking about it at all.
8. Re: school, slow and steady wins the race. Probably the most successful resolution on this list. I could have pushed things a lot harder this fall to get going on a graduate degree, and I didn't, and I'm so grateful I followed this guideline. I'm not sure how it's going to apply in the coming year, as there's a lot of frustration about this specific issue going into the spring semester, but for 2014, it worked out.
2015's resolutions came hard to me. I wanted to give myself a pass this year because of the 2005 thing, i.e. make the single resolution "Enjoy the fact that 2015 is not 2005" and let it go at that. But everyone can use a little improvement, and anyway my resolutions are generally things to think about rather than firm rules for change.
1. Your life is messy. Stop trying to neaten it for explanation or consumption. In general, I like to organize and be organized, but much about the way I live resists organization, so letting the proverbial papers scatter together instead of sitting in neat stacks may help me worry less about who I am and how I come across.
This blog is a great example of this problem. I try hard to make this blog as much about writing as I can, to keep it from sprawling all over like my anonymous blog did. Single-topic blogs get more readers than general-focus blogs unless the person is already famous, and I'm always hoping to add more readers. But the posts that are just about my life are no less popular than the ones specifically about writing (sometimes more so), and I think that means loosening the reins a bit will not hurt me. (My vision for this blog doesn't seem to be coming true, anyway, three years in.)
2. Cut back on complaint by 30%. In my early 20s, I got so sick of hearing myself complain that I stopped cold turkey. Just shut off my mouth when a complaint began to come out of it, even if it weirded people out that I stopped speaking midsentence. I discovered in quitting that constant complaint really is a tiresome way to go through life - I was far better off without it, not to mention more attractive to other humans - but over the past decade it's crept back in, and now I complain on a daily basis. I surround my complaints with apologies, but I still speak them, and I need to take them back a notch.
3. Make a serious start on the wikibook. 20,000 words at least. Preferably a decent draft of the first half, most preferably plotting and character sketches done on the second half.
4. Cook. For stretches of months at a time, since we moved to California, I've just bought pre-prepared meals from Trader Joe's and Fresh & Easy instead of planning a menu and buying groceries. Then I'll stop and actually cook for six months, and then I'll get tired of it and go back to pre-prepared. This sucks. A lot. (Budget-wise, the two options are pretty much the same.) I like cooking, with occasional loving and hating of it, and if I plan well enough, it doesn't have to be a strain on my personal resources, even though it feels like it will be when I'm in a phase of not cooking.
5. Stop constantly reviewing yourself. I spend so much time reading my own blog posts, looking at my own Facebook page, rereading my own critiques on other people's work, etc. So much time. I honestly don't know what I'm hoping to accomplish, but I'm pretty sure it's not just narcissism. I think it has something to do with making sure I come off well, making sure I appear consistent (yeesh, see #1), checking that I didn't miss anything, or looking for stuff I previously said or did that can loop in to whatever I'm saying or doing now - so if I repeat myself, it's intentional. 90% of this is wasted time and effort.
6. Read more poetry. The library doesn't have as ready a selection of poetry as it does fiction, but that's no excuse.
7. Maybe throw a party. I haven't hosted a party...um, ever in my adult life? I think? And in high school I didn't have a single birthday party, because my friends were too scattered in different social groups for me to feel good about inviting them all to a single place. I don't give a damn about that anymore (people will talk to each other if you get them together, I find), and I have a passel of interesting friends in L.A., so I want to have a party, but practical concerns have kept me from having one. I hope that changes this year.
Happy New Year, all. Triumph is ahead, along with tragedy - inevitably - but I hope you have more of the former than the latter. Oh, and remember, this is the year Marty McFly travels into the future/past to save us from Biff Tannen's version of Hill Valley. My advice to Marty for 2015 is not to let greed influence his actions. But I don't think he'll listen.
2005 was the worst year of my life. The. Worst. I would not wish my 2005 on anyone, not child molesters nor dogfight breeders nor E.L. James nor anyone else, ever. Simple math will tell you how many years have passed between then and now; 2015 has special significance to me, because it feels, finally, as if I have well and truly left 2005 behind. Its horribleness still informs how I live, because debt lasts a hell of a lot longer than you think it will and some wounds between people cannot be healed. But I hope a lot of today's informing has to do with wisdom, rather than bitterness or plain old suffering. Few of 2005's shockwaves are still rattling my life, and those noises are small. It is a year that still matters to me, but this year it's closer than ever to mattering in a good way.
So. Let's get down to business.
Every year, I post last year's New Year's resolutions with a short analysis of how well I think I succeeded at them, and then I post this year's. So, here are last year's (in greater detail here):
1. Remember how good accomplishment feels. Pretty significant fail. I still like eating goat cheese out of the wrapper on the couch in front of MST3K. I didn't remember this feeling very well at all. I'm in danger of disciplinary action, honestly.
2. Watch less MST3K. Oh my God, such a fail. I watched more than last year. Matt does not understand this resolution, because he cares less than anyone I've ever met whether his/our habits are "normal." I'm trying to come around, but I think I watch too much MST and that's all there is to it. Oh, well, maybe another year.
3. Fucking revise Highbinder already. Yay, success. But I don't think I really learned the lesson that was in this resolution, i.e. don't procrastinate something for a year just because you're unsure or frustrated. I hope to not do that in the future, but I suspect it'll be case-by-case.
4. Go on at least one adventure. Fail. :( The opportunity didn't present itself. Early in the year, I didn't know anyone I felt comfortable enough to ask to go on an adventure with me; later in the year, the timing never felt right; and money was a big problem this year. I hope I can go on an adventure in 2015, but now that I'm back to office work, outlook not so good.
5. Adjust expectations about writing projects. Success. I was blocked a lot this year, but I learned to avoid meltdowns, relax about being blocked, and know that the work would start again if I did the right things. I also learned to talk less about being blocked, because the more I agonized publicly, the less motivated I felt to get back to work.
6. Balance more toward writing than submitting. Success, I think. I don't have statistics, but it felt like I wrote a fuck of a lot this year and submitted only some.
7. Get better at setting boundaries. Success? I wasn't tested much on boundaries this year, and when I was, I think I did okay. A few times I had the opportunity to put into practice a resolution from 2013 about friendships. I phrased it as "roll with the punches better" and didn't go into much more detail, but in my mind it was about detaching from how people treat me, just being more chill about whether people are as committed to friendships with me as I am to them. It was about behavior (theirs) and disappointment (mine). Is this too vague? The point is, I had a LOT of uncertainty this year about whether other people gave a damn about me, per how they acted (or didn't), and I was able to let go of it pretty well. This issue seems like it's a cousin to boundaries, which is why I'm talking about it at all.
8. Re: school, slow and steady wins the race. Probably the most successful resolution on this list. I could have pushed things a lot harder this fall to get going on a graduate degree, and I didn't, and I'm so grateful I followed this guideline. I'm not sure how it's going to apply in the coming year, as there's a lot of frustration about this specific issue going into the spring semester, but for 2014, it worked out.
2015's resolutions came hard to me. I wanted to give myself a pass this year because of the 2005 thing, i.e. make the single resolution "Enjoy the fact that 2015 is not 2005" and let it go at that. But everyone can use a little improvement, and anyway my resolutions are generally things to think about rather than firm rules for change.
1. Your life is messy. Stop trying to neaten it for explanation or consumption. In general, I like to organize and be organized, but much about the way I live resists organization, so letting the proverbial papers scatter together instead of sitting in neat stacks may help me worry less about who I am and how I come across.
This blog is a great example of this problem. I try hard to make this blog as much about writing as I can, to keep it from sprawling all over like my anonymous blog did. Single-topic blogs get more readers than general-focus blogs unless the person is already famous, and I'm always hoping to add more readers. But the posts that are just about my life are no less popular than the ones specifically about writing (sometimes more so), and I think that means loosening the reins a bit will not hurt me. (My vision for this blog doesn't seem to be coming true, anyway, three years in.)
2. Cut back on complaint by 30%. In my early 20s, I got so sick of hearing myself complain that I stopped cold turkey. Just shut off my mouth when a complaint began to come out of it, even if it weirded people out that I stopped speaking midsentence. I discovered in quitting that constant complaint really is a tiresome way to go through life - I was far better off without it, not to mention more attractive to other humans - but over the past decade it's crept back in, and now I complain on a daily basis. I surround my complaints with apologies, but I still speak them, and I need to take them back a notch.
3. Make a serious start on the wikibook. 20,000 words at least. Preferably a decent draft of the first half, most preferably plotting and character sketches done on the second half.
4. Cook. For stretches of months at a time, since we moved to California, I've just bought pre-prepared meals from Trader Joe's and Fresh & Easy instead of planning a menu and buying groceries. Then I'll stop and actually cook for six months, and then I'll get tired of it and go back to pre-prepared. This sucks. A lot. (Budget-wise, the two options are pretty much the same.) I like cooking, with occasional loving and hating of it, and if I plan well enough, it doesn't have to be a strain on my personal resources, even though it feels like it will be when I'm in a phase of not cooking.
5. Stop constantly reviewing yourself. I spend so much time reading my own blog posts, looking at my own Facebook page, rereading my own critiques on other people's work, etc. So much time. I honestly don't know what I'm hoping to accomplish, but I'm pretty sure it's not just narcissism. I think it has something to do with making sure I come off well, making sure I appear consistent (yeesh, see #1), checking that I didn't miss anything, or looking for stuff I previously said or did that can loop in to whatever I'm saying or doing now - so if I repeat myself, it's intentional. 90% of this is wasted time and effort.
6. Read more poetry. The library doesn't have as ready a selection of poetry as it does fiction, but that's no excuse.
7. Maybe throw a party. I haven't hosted a party...um, ever in my adult life? I think? And in high school I didn't have a single birthday party, because my friends were too scattered in different social groups for me to feel good about inviting them all to a single place. I don't give a damn about that anymore (people will talk to each other if you get them together, I find), and I have a passel of interesting friends in L.A., so I want to have a party, but practical concerns have kept me from having one. I hope that changes this year.
Happy New Year, all. Triumph is ahead, along with tragedy - inevitably - but I hope you have more of the former than the latter. Oh, and remember, this is the year Marty McFly travels into the future/past to save us from Biff Tannen's version of Hill Valley. My advice to Marty for 2015 is not to let greed influence his actions. But I don't think he'll listen.
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
There's Gotta Be a 420 Joke in Here Somewhere
At the end of last week, I drafted 90% of a thoughtful post about a problem with the theme of fathers and sons in narrative art. One of those theoretical, "let's make believe I know what I'm talking about" kinds of posts, which I really like writing but which I have no idea if people like reading, or if they have any basis in actual discourse. By the time I was finished thinking about the theme and revising the post, I sort of hated my opinions about it, along with what I'd written. I think my brain is momentarily tired of being tested against the cruel light of what genuine experts know about these kinds of topics. Perhaps I'll like the post a lot better once the holidays are over, but in the meantime I'm just going to share something else.
The final exercise I did in my workshop class this semester was after a writer named Lou Beach, who wrote a whole book of stories of under 420 characters each. (This used to be the data limit for Facebook posts. Good times, eh?) I wrote several, and I was pretty happy with what I came up with, so here are a few.
--
Naturally these all pale in comparison with Beach's own work and with the greatest and famousest six-word story, but I really had fun writing them. Try a few of your own. 420 characters, not 420 words. MS Word doesn't keep track of characters automatically, but I estimate that 80 words is a good upper limit to keep in mind at first. What can you say in that amount of space?
 |
| Meanwhile just skirting the subject of what's happening this week |
The final exercise I did in my workshop class this semester was after a writer named Lou Beach, who wrote a whole book of stories of under 420 characters each. (This used to be the data limit for Facebook posts. Good times, eh?) I wrote several, and I was pretty happy with what I came up with, so here are a few.
--
Never have I ever, she prompted. Never have I ever. I would have been happy to hear that little loop of R and V and soft H from her mouth for days, but she wanted a new truth from mine. Gossip, maybe. Tim told me last night that he. Did you hear that he. Kissed you, I answered.--
Why is Esther the only thing on my mind at this moment? Not my kids or my husband or my sainted mother, but Esther. Nothing under me but sky and flame, and the debris of 126 other passengers in a screaming lipstick tube. No parachute. No flotation device. My body moves at terminal velocity and my mind hovers on a stupid stuffed horse I bought my sister when we were both eleven.--
The fall made me dizzy, but trying to get up and failing, like a downed drunk, was worse. Engines muttering and a sharp bitter smell around me. Stay still. Keep breathing. I've got a kit for when this happens, even so far from home. It's a seizure, I tell myself, I've been telling myself for several minutes, until I realize it's just that I've fallen in love with the girl at the gas pump next to mine.--
Naturally these all pale in comparison with Beach's own work and with the greatest and famousest six-word story, but I really had fun writing them. Try a few of your own. 420 characters, not 420 words. MS Word doesn't keep track of characters automatically, but I estimate that 80 words is a good upper limit to keep in mind at first. What can you say in that amount of space?
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
English as Acrobat, or the Folly of TOCWTS
Several weeks back, a blogger that I really should have stopped reading by now asked in a post whether the correct styling was As and Bs or A's and B's. This question actually can't be answered, believe it or not, and within it lies an invaluable writing/editing lesson for a certain type of person. If you couldn't care less about punctuation mechanics, this post might run a little dull for you. (And, by the way, if you couldn't care less about punctuation mechanics, what are you doing reading this blog?)
In my view - those three words apply to the rest of this paragraph - apostrophes are only available as punctuation when substituting for other letters in contractions (would not --> wouldn't) or when indicating possession (Krycek's prosthesis). A's and B's is not a possessive construction, it's a plural construction, and apostrophes cannot be used correctly when pluralizing nouns. Even though styling it As and Bs can be a little confusing, because the first item in the list looks like a capitalized version of the word "as", it’s still the mechanically correct style. And anyway so much of English syntax and grammar depends upon context, upon user effort, and As and Bs will only be confusing for as long as it takes the reader to read through the next two words.
I was not the first commenter on the relevant blog post, and one of the earlier commenters laid down that it was definitely A's and B's. I commented and specifically said that I didn't want to get into an argument, but that in my view, apostrophes can't ever be used for possession, etc., basically a short version of the paragraph above. I noted that I had three years of experience as a copy editor. The prior commenter responded pretty rudely, saying that whoever was paying me to be an editor should be made aware that they were paying someone incompetent, and noted that she had many more years of experience editing than I did. I sort of went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on it, and said that my company followed the Chicago style guide fairly closely but that we had our own house guide and that, of course, style guides vary. The commenter responded by quoting a passage from Chicago that kinda proved my point rather than hers, and then closed with something like "the vast majority of writers and editors would prefer A's and B's."
Like I said, I didn't want to get into it. Apostrophes are a sore point with me because they are so often misused out there in the non-grammar-devoted world, and this commenter was unpleasantly aggressive, and that combination meant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ was the way to go. So I didn't respond a second time.
But I knew without a doubt that the commenter was invested in a phenomenon called The One Correct Way To Style. TOCWTS is something that I thought existed in the years before I was a copy editor, but I now know something that, if you are a picky, grouchy grammar fiend like me, take heed, weary one, because this will make your future life a thousand times easier: it does not exist.
There is no one correct way to do certain kinds of punctuation and styling in English. There just isn't. There are different styles, and which one is used in whatever it is you're reading depends on 1) the publication and 2) the context. That's all. No other big rule in the sky; the publication and the context. Some organizations use Chicago, some use AP, some use house rules. If you're the one writing, with no other answerable party, which one is used depends on your preference and potentially on your investment in the rhythm of a sentence. So the rude commenter was right, it's A's and B's, but so was I, it's As and Bs.
In this blog I use the Oxford or serial comma, meaning that in a list of three items, a comma appears before the last item in the list. Mulder, Scully, and Skinner. In quite a lot of style guides, the second comma, after "Scully", is not correct. For me, this is nuts, because it causes unnecessary confusion, but for the Washington Post, it's the law. I also would say (contrary to the style guide of the company where I worked for three years) Jesus's taxes or Texas's fertilizer, rather than Jesus' taxes or Texas' fertilizer. Not because one or the other is correct - neither is correct or incorrect (!!), it depends on the style guide - but because the apostrophe hanging out there looks weird to me on a non-plural noun, different than the friends' convictions or the creatures' fangs, for example. And I would always say As and Bs, because apostrophes matter a hell of a lot to me, but if I worked for a company or a client that insisted on A's and B's, I would cringe and correct for that. Because that's how it's correct in that context. No immutable TOCWTS exists for that phrase. It's all context.
There are rules of English punctuation and style that do not bend. The difference between it's and its is not negotiable. But English is a remarkable acrobat, flexible and strong and death-defying, and there is no one way to be an acrobat. Once I accepted this, the arguments I was willing to have about punctuation and grammar dropped to nearly zero. Because if there's no one correct way to do certain stylings, who's to say that I know the one correct way to use any of the rules I've always considered immutable?
From here, I could ramble awhile about poststructuralism, and how my whole worldview seems to be heading in that direction as I get older and learn more - truth dissociating itself from certainty, and vice versa, and things getting really malleable and interesting and me thinking that yeah, this is how life really is, lived in the liminal spaces between this rule and that reality - or I can give you a concrete example, hastily created in Paint, to sum up.
Neither one is wrong. They are both acceptable. It just depends on where, when, and how you are.
In my view - those three words apply to the rest of this paragraph - apostrophes are only available as punctuation when substituting for other letters in contractions (would not --> wouldn't) or when indicating possession (Krycek's prosthesis). A's and B's is not a possessive construction, it's a plural construction, and apostrophes cannot be used correctly when pluralizing nouns. Even though styling it As and Bs can be a little confusing, because the first item in the list looks like a capitalized version of the word "as", it’s still the mechanically correct style. And anyway so much of English syntax and grammar depends upon context, upon user effort, and As and Bs will only be confusing for as long as it takes the reader to read through the next two words.
I was not the first commenter on the relevant blog post, and one of the earlier commenters laid down that it was definitely A's and B's. I commented and specifically said that I didn't want to get into an argument, but that in my view, apostrophes can't ever be used for possession, etc., basically a short version of the paragraph above. I noted that I had three years of experience as a copy editor. The prior commenter responded pretty rudely, saying that whoever was paying me to be an editor should be made aware that they were paying someone incompetent, and noted that she had many more years of experience editing than I did. I sort of went ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on it, and said that my company followed the Chicago style guide fairly closely but that we had our own house guide and that, of course, style guides vary. The commenter responded by quoting a passage from Chicago that kinda proved my point rather than hers, and then closed with something like "the vast majority of writers and editors would prefer A's and B's."
 |
| A Google Image search of "grammar Nazi" turns up all kinds of delightful stuff, including things I feel really bad laughing at |
Like I said, I didn't want to get into it. Apostrophes are a sore point with me because they are so often misused out there in the non-grammar-devoted world, and this commenter was unpleasantly aggressive, and that combination meant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ was the way to go. So I didn't respond a second time.
But I knew without a doubt that the commenter was invested in a phenomenon called The One Correct Way To Style. TOCWTS is something that I thought existed in the years before I was a copy editor, but I now know something that, if you are a picky, grouchy grammar fiend like me, take heed, weary one, because this will make your future life a thousand times easier: it does not exist.
There is no one correct way to do certain kinds of punctuation and styling in English. There just isn't. There are different styles, and which one is used in whatever it is you're reading depends on 1) the publication and 2) the context. That's all. No other big rule in the sky; the publication and the context. Some organizations use Chicago, some use AP, some use house rules. If you're the one writing, with no other answerable party, which one is used depends on your preference and potentially on your investment in the rhythm of a sentence. So the rude commenter was right, it's A's and B's, but so was I, it's As and Bs.
 |
| (dies laughing) |
In this blog I use the Oxford or serial comma, meaning that in a list of three items, a comma appears before the last item in the list. Mulder, Scully, and Skinner. In quite a lot of style guides, the second comma, after "Scully", is not correct. For me, this is nuts, because it causes unnecessary confusion, but for the Washington Post, it's the law. I also would say (contrary to the style guide of the company where I worked for three years) Jesus's taxes or Texas's fertilizer, rather than Jesus' taxes or Texas' fertilizer. Not because one or the other is correct - neither is correct or incorrect (!!), it depends on the style guide - but because the apostrophe hanging out there looks weird to me on a non-plural noun, different than the friends' convictions or the creatures' fangs, for example. And I would always say As and Bs, because apostrophes matter a hell of a lot to me, but if I worked for a company or a client that insisted on A's and B's, I would cringe and correct for that. Because that's how it's correct in that context. No immutable TOCWTS exists for that phrase. It's all context.
There are rules of English punctuation and style that do not bend. The difference between it's and its is not negotiable. But English is a remarkable acrobat, flexible and strong and death-defying, and there is no one way to be an acrobat. Once I accepted this, the arguments I was willing to have about punctuation and grammar dropped to nearly zero. Because if there's no one correct way to do certain stylings, who's to say that I know the one correct way to use any of the rules I've always considered immutable?
From here, I could ramble awhile about poststructuralism, and how my whole worldview seems to be heading in that direction as I get older and learn more - truth dissociating itself from certainty, and vice versa, and things getting really malleable and interesting and me thinking that yeah, this is how life really is, lived in the liminal spaces between this rule and that reality - or I can give you a concrete example, hastily created in Paint, to sum up.
Neither one is wrong. They are both acceptable. It just depends on where, when, and how you are.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
All Fiction is a Farce
So, remember that required, requisitioned radical revision I did on the Girl Scout story for my workshop class? I'm still kind of eh about what I did with it, but something came out in class that's worth analysis. Here's the beginning:
What do you think? I said.
I don't know! he said. Who is it?
Sharp guy, this student. He's asked questions like this before - questions that imply I have a concrete answer about some aspect of a story I wrote, an answer that he wants. He's quite right about the sentence, but the answer isn't simple, and I doubt it's the one he wants.
The answer is, I wanted the reader to read that sentence and think about the nature of reading stories, of authorship, and of narration. All fiction is a farce, see. There is no Tallulah. I made her up for the purposes of writing the Girl Scout story. Tallulah is narrating to an audience because there is a reader sitting there with the story I wrote in her voice, and for no other reason. The Fresh Prince theme song is really the way I'm starting my story, and it's really the way Tallulah's starting hers. I meant to pull back the curtain on the Great and Powerful Oz: whether you like it or not, reader, all there is is me at my desk. No smoke, no flame, no Tallulah.
I'll grant you that I went about this exposure pretty clumsily/lazily in this story, and that there are only two moments in the 2,500 words that even bother with it. The rest of the story is straightforward and not really all that good. I think the reason I wrote that second sentence into the story at all is that I was harried about having to write it, and I fall back to my Big Writing Concerns when I have to write and I don't know what to write about. (Or when I can't think of a better way to transition from the Fresh Prince theme song into the meat of the story.) BWCs for me are the nature of reading stories, of authorship, and of narration, along with truth and the other stuff I wrote about in this post.
There are authors who dance with these issues gracefully. I am not one of them as yet. John Barth does it in "Lost in the Funhouse" (the story), Wallace does it in "Good Old Neon", and a Canadian writer named Lee Henderson does it in "Attempts at a Great Relationship", which was probably my first exposure to this kind of metafiction.
I copied some aspects of Henderson's story when I wrote "How [Not] to Bake Bread" this spring, a story which I do not claim is any good at all but which felt like my first major foray into the kind of writing I deeply want to do. I haven't managed to write anything like it since, and I don't really know how to go about doing so, but I find that my desire to make readers think about the nature of reading stories, of authorship, and of narration keeps leaking into even the most mundane fiction over the last few months. Especially when I don't have a clear idea of what I'm writing about.
So I get meta when I get stressed. I find myself jabbering about Barthes and Prospero and how bizarre reading actually is - the various levels of delusion that we elevator downward and through when we open the cover of a book. When I sit down to write something I don't know how to write, I dig into the lotto bowl, and I come up with, say, something in pop culture. I use that thing as an entry point, and then I seem to just pass the burden of what I'm doing on to the reader with "Wow, you guys, reading is fucked up, amirite?"
Later on in that revision of the Girl Scout story, this appears:
I wish I was better at that poke. Sometimes I feel it's the only thing I want to write about - that stories and characters are far less crucially the thing that motivates me to put words on the page and that the meta stuff, the stuff that comes out when I'm stressed (like, oh, now) is all that matters to me. Writers can't expose those issues in fiction without coming up with stories and characters, of course, and doing so unconvincingly leads to terrible fiction. Just ask the people who read my revision of the Girl Scout story.
Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down.One of the students who read my revision in class last week pinged the second sentence up there. He said that sentence implies that the narrator is conscious of an audience, although nothing in the rest of the story mentions or clarifies that awareness. Tallulah (the narrating character) appears to be telling this story to someone, per that sentence, but the story doesn't say who that someone is. Who is it? he asked me.
Yes, that's really the way I'm starting this. Because it's hilarious how much my life is a replica of the premise of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
What do you think? I said.
I don't know! he said. Who is it?
Sharp guy, this student. He's asked questions like this before - questions that imply I have a concrete answer about some aspect of a story I wrote, an answer that he wants. He's quite right about the sentence, but the answer isn't simple, and I doubt it's the one he wants.
The answer is, I wanted the reader to read that sentence and think about the nature of reading stories, of authorship, and of narration. All fiction is a farce, see. There is no Tallulah. I made her up for the purposes of writing the Girl Scout story. Tallulah is narrating to an audience because there is a reader sitting there with the story I wrote in her voice, and for no other reason. The Fresh Prince theme song is really the way I'm starting my story, and it's really the way Tallulah's starting hers. I meant to pull back the curtain on the Great and Powerful Oz: whether you like it or not, reader, all there is is me at my desk. No smoke, no flame, no Tallulah.
I'll grant you that I went about this exposure pretty clumsily/lazily in this story, and that there are only two moments in the 2,500 words that even bother with it. The rest of the story is straightforward and not really all that good. I think the reason I wrote that second sentence into the story at all is that I was harried about having to write it, and I fall back to my Big Writing Concerns when I have to write and I don't know what to write about. (Or when I can't think of a better way to transition from the Fresh Prince theme song into the meat of the story.) BWCs for me are the nature of reading stories, of authorship, and of narration, along with truth and the other stuff I wrote about in this post.
There are authors who dance with these issues gracefully. I am not one of them as yet. John Barth does it in "Lost in the Funhouse" (the story), Wallace does it in "Good Old Neon", and a Canadian writer named Lee Henderson does it in "Attempts at a Great Relationship", which was probably my first exposure to this kind of metafiction.
 |
| Although this was likely my real first exposure. There's a reason I loved Harold. |
I copied some aspects of Henderson's story when I wrote "How [Not] to Bake Bread" this spring, a story which I do not claim is any good at all but which felt like my first major foray into the kind of writing I deeply want to do. I haven't managed to write anything like it since, and I don't really know how to go about doing so, but I find that my desire to make readers think about the nature of reading stories, of authorship, and of narration keeps leaking into even the most mundane fiction over the last few months. Especially when I don't have a clear idea of what I'm writing about.
So I get meta when I get stressed. I find myself jabbering about Barthes and Prospero and how bizarre reading actually is - the various levels of delusion that we elevator downward and through when we open the cover of a book. When I sit down to write something I don't know how to write, I dig into the lotto bowl, and I come up with, say, something in pop culture. I use that thing as an entry point, and then I seem to just pass the burden of what I'm doing on to the reader with "Wow, you guys, reading is fucked up, amirite?"
Later on in that revision of the Girl Scout story, this appears:
Hearing [my life history] laid out for Naomee like that changed things, though. The way it came out of me wasn't complex, or lasting - it didn't resonate in my bones, didn't lie on top of my skin like a film of cheap soap. It did sound like a TV movie plot. Was my life so easy to summarize?I'm trying to poke the reader into realizing the sham in which she and I are complicit. Yes of course Tallulah's life is easy to summarize. I MADE IT UP. I made it up and you have read it and that is some crazy shit.
I wish I was better at that poke. Sometimes I feel it's the only thing I want to write about - that stories and characters are far less crucially the thing that motivates me to put words on the page and that the meta stuff, the stuff that comes out when I'm stressed (like, oh, now) is all that matters to me. Writers can't expose those issues in fiction without coming up with stories and characters, of course, and doing so unconvincingly leads to terrible fiction. Just ask the people who read my revision of the Girl Scout story.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Rosanna, or How I Discovered Something Worth Knowing
How do you learn things you're glad to know? For me it usually happens elliptically. Through weird coincidences. Yes, I do have an example, glad you asked.
Years ago, a friend recommended that I listen to a cover of Toto's "Africa" recorded by a Slovenian a capella group, Perpetuum Jazzile. I loved it, so I surfed on and listened to them doing "Rosanna," even though "Rosanna" was never a favorite song of mine. It was too bouncy, maybe a minute too long, with a silly synth bridge and a loud and unnecessary brass line. One of those songs that I heard enough times on my parents' adult contemporary FM station in the car on the way to the grocery store that I never felt the need to listen to it in my adult life.
Until I heard Perpetuum Jazzile do "Rosanna."
Then the song took on something new, a charm it hadn't had before. It felt like an interesting assemblage of elements instead of a mere lump of semiprecious material. After a few listens to the cover, I decided to listen to the real thing, for the first time in years, so I YouTubed actual Toto doing "Rosanna." The first comment under the video (at the time) was something like "Ah, Rosanna. Making drummers cry like children since 1982."
Wow, what?
I had no idea what that was about, and wanted to know, so I looked it up. Turns out that Toto's drummer, Jeff Porcaro, was quite possibly the best pop-music drummer of the 20th century. He was a studio musician on many, many, many recordings, a lot of them very famous indeed, and his playing was effortless, innovative, and precise. He died at 38, weirdly, while mowing his lawn, possibly after taking a leetle too much cocaine, but maybe from something else.
For "Rosanna," Jeff Porcaro wrote what is now known as the Rosanna shuffle (!), and after that my research turned into areas of music knowledge that I could no longer follow - ghost notes and other stuff about drumming that I don't understand. But this shuffle is famously hard. (There's video of Porcaro himself breaking it down. I suspect it resembles Michael Jordan teaching how to dunk.) Tons of videos exist of amateur drummers playing along with the song, concentration and pride sharing facial space. For "Rosanna"! A song that I considered one of the least interesting hits of the 80s until Perpetuum Jazzile came into my life.
I consider this information about Jeff Porcaro and the Rosanna shuffle to be ephemera well worth knowing, whether I ever find practical use for it or not. You never know what's going to be of use inside your head, though. Hell, maybe I'll be across beers from a drummer one day and this will be the only thing I have to say to him. And let's not leave aside the fact that today I got an entire blog post out of it.
In any event, I'm really glad I know this, but the way I got to it is so knotted and forked that it's a wonder I learned it at all. From a friend pointing me to a cover of a song I love, to a cover of a song I was once kind of eh about, to the song itself, to a comment on YouTube (which I suggest has the worst comment threads in the entire universe), to Wikipedia, and thence to new knowledge.
I seriously doubt I would've had occasion to learn Jeff Porcaro's name any other way. This Escheresque path to knowledge is the way I learn lots of things worth knowing, and incidentally, it's also the way I pick up little details that make writing more fun and interesting than it would otherwise be. I like finding a place in story, in character, to put the random stuff I learn. I haven't found a place for "Rosanna" yet, but I suspect I will.
Years ago, a friend recommended that I listen to a cover of Toto's "Africa" recorded by a Slovenian a capella group, Perpetuum Jazzile. I loved it, so I surfed on and listened to them doing "Rosanna," even though "Rosanna" was never a favorite song of mine. It was too bouncy, maybe a minute too long, with a silly synth bridge and a loud and unnecessary brass line. One of those songs that I heard enough times on my parents' adult contemporary FM station in the car on the way to the grocery store that I never felt the need to listen to it in my adult life.
Until I heard Perpetuum Jazzile do "Rosanna."
Then the song took on something new, a charm it hadn't had before. It felt like an interesting assemblage of elements instead of a mere lump of semiprecious material. After a few listens to the cover, I decided to listen to the real thing, for the first time in years, so I YouTubed actual Toto doing "Rosanna." The first comment under the video (at the time) was something like "Ah, Rosanna. Making drummers cry like children since 1982."
Wow, what?
I had no idea what that was about, and wanted to know, so I looked it up. Turns out that Toto's drummer, Jeff Porcaro, was quite possibly the best pop-music drummer of the 20th century. He was a studio musician on many, many, many recordings, a lot of them very famous indeed, and his playing was effortless, innovative, and precise. He died at 38, weirdly, while mowing his lawn, possibly after taking a leetle too much cocaine, but maybe from something else.
For "Rosanna," Jeff Porcaro wrote what is now known as the Rosanna shuffle (!), and after that my research turned into areas of music knowledge that I could no longer follow - ghost notes and other stuff about drumming that I don't understand. But this shuffle is famously hard. (There's video of Porcaro himself breaking it down. I suspect it resembles Michael Jordan teaching how to dunk.) Tons of videos exist of amateur drummers playing along with the song, concentration and pride sharing facial space. For "Rosanna"! A song that I considered one of the least interesting hits of the 80s until Perpetuum Jazzile came into my life.
I consider this information about Jeff Porcaro and the Rosanna shuffle to be ephemera well worth knowing, whether I ever find practical use for it or not. You never know what's going to be of use inside your head, though. Hell, maybe I'll be across beers from a drummer one day and this will be the only thing I have to say to him. And let's not leave aside the fact that today I got an entire blog post out of it.
In any event, I'm really glad I know this, but the way I got to it is so knotted and forked that it's a wonder I learned it at all. From a friend pointing me to a cover of a song I love, to a cover of a song I was once kind of eh about, to the song itself, to a comment on YouTube (which I suggest has the worst comment threads in the entire universe), to Wikipedia, and thence to new knowledge.
 |
| KABLOOEY! NEW KNOWLEDGE! |
I seriously doubt I would've had occasion to learn Jeff Porcaro's name any other way. This Escheresque path to knowledge is the way I learn lots of things worth knowing, and incidentally, it's also the way I pick up little details that make writing more fun and interesting than it would otherwise be. I like finding a place in story, in character, to put the random stuff I learn. I haven't found a place for "Rosanna" yet, but I suspect I will.
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