Window Watching

I'm standing in the kitchen, gazing out the window at the activity diagonally across the street. People are loading furniture into a rented moving van. "Hmm," I think. A few days ago I watched men load furniture from the same house into a Salvation Army truck. I realized that furniture must have been left over from last Saturday's garage sale, which I had watched from the living room window. Slamming car doors woke me at 7 a.m., and I'd taken a cup of coffee to the window to see what the noise was all about. I noticed a young couple arranging items in their car port, and potential buyers already circling in the alley.

As I watched the work today, I remembered when the young couple moved in. It was less than a year ago. Previously, an ill, elderly woman lived there with a companion who helped her into and out of a car. She probably passed on, but the house never sported a "For Sale" sign. So, the young people were probably renters. Given the amount of furniture they donated to charity, I suspect they are breaking up housekeeping and wonder what happened?

See, just idly watching out the window, story ideas float into a fertile mind.

Professional, Amateur, or Other?

A beginning writer recently expressed concern about his status. I call him a "beginner" because he does write. He's produced several stories and essays. He will always have amateur status until someone actually pays him money for a piece of writing. I have to say "pays money" because some publishers consider publishing a work as payment, and some offer copies as pay.

Writers are different from, say, athletes, because they have another type of status: published or unpublished. Prior to Tim Berners-Lee's inventions of the World Wide Web in 1989 and the first graphical user interface (GUI browser) in 1990, there were only two states being published: by a publisher or by yourself (vanity or self-publishing). Paying for your work to be printed as a book or booklet counts as self-publishing. In that case, you are your own publisher. Now you can publish yourself in a blog, on your own website, or on websites that publish (for free or fee).

Computers further muddy publishing status with the "publish-on-demand" or "print-on-demand" printers and publishers. For a price they set up an electronic version of your work and print (and sometimes distribute and sell) as few as one copy. Having your first published work "accepted" by a demand publisher seems to me to be a spurious status change. I have investigated and considered it for other reasons, but I'm already a published writer.

The murky waters were cleared, somewhat, by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, which legitimized electronic publishing by the back door method of extending the copyright protection to works that are pirated in electronic form.

Why the concern about the publishing status? It's all about clippings and contests. Before you scoff and huff away, know that some contests pay $5,000, even $10,000 or more to the winner. The catch comes in when the writer has to be "unpublished". For nonfiction writers, especially, the ability to produce clippings of previously published work is often the entry to paid publishing. Is a piece published on the Internet really "published"? Will editors accept an electronic file (which can be easily faked) as a clipping?

Writer's Block

What exactly is "writer's block"? Dictionary.com defines it as a "usually temporary psychological inability to begin or continue work on a piece of writing." It must be big business, too, as a Google search results in 159,000 returns, many for incantations, tools, courses, and questionable paraphernalia you can purchase to rid yourself of this curse.

Personally, I've never experienced this condition. No, really! I've met a few people who said they had it, however they didn't come under my definition of a writer (see the first entry in this blog). It's a convenient excuse for not writing, like pencil sharpening and walking down to the lane to the mail box once were. Those activities have morphed into cleaning up a directory and reading email. Now an aggregator provides additional opportunity for distraction. It chimes when a news story or blog entry is fed into my computer from the Internet. Communication rules!

I may live to consume my virtual verbiage because I'm beginning a novel. Perhaps writer's block will strike me in the struggle with fiction. It seems improbable to suffer from this malady in the nonfiction world where stories abound, and all you have to do is gather the facts and string them together in a cute, coherent manner. I once likened the plethora of topics for feature articles to a pack of puppies, yipping all around me, tugging at my hem and nipping my ankles.

After I finished the entry on Hemingway's brick, and while thinking about writer's block, I realized Hemingway's brick is my writer's block.

Ernest Hemingway's Brick

A visit to Ernest Hemingway's home in Key West, Florida, was an insightful and entertaining travel experience. The house and grounds were crawling with cats and kittens, descendents (so they said) from Papa's polydactyl pets. They scampered and draped themselves about, kings and queens of the compound. Hemingway's high desk, where he used to write, standing, made me wonder if the upright position improved his thinking, serving as a counter to the alcohol.

The historical society administering the property at the time (early 1970's) sold bricks that had actually surrounded Hemingway's swimming pool. I bought a good one, engraved on one side with the words "Baltimore Block" and bearing remains of the mortar that had once held it in place.  This was early in my writing career. The then-husband asked me why I wanted a brick. "For inspiration!" I enthused. Hemingway was one of my favorite writers then.

"What're you going to do, sit on it?"

Occasionally the brick has served as a doorstop, but its usual spot is under my feet, helping to balance me as I perch on the steno chair I use when computing, keeping me in an ergonomically proper posture to prevent "cumulative trauma disorder" as the physical medicine people call it. The brick is much too heavy to be a paperweight, and I've never imagined any other use. I feel it keeps me grounded as well as balanced. There's little Hemingway in my writing, and I could not have lived the life he did, but I enjoy having a little Hemingway in my life. It inspires me.

Grammar for Dummies

Although I haven't read it yet, The Grammar Bible by Michael Strumpf and Auriel Douglas sounds like my kind of book. It even contains a section on modal auxiliary verbs, those bugaboos of English learners. A quick study of the first 20 or so returns from Google reveals the most-used resources for modal auxiliary verbs are academic and often United Kingdom universities. Hmm. I consulted a more global and understandable source Wikipedia.

"The Wik" says:  Auxiliary verbs are, loosely, verbs that specify more about the main verb that follows. For English auxiliary verbs, the specified 'more' alters the basic form of the main verb to have one or more of the following functions: Passive, Progressive, Perfective, Modal, and Dummy.
 
Leaving the Dummy function to those who write books "for Dummies", I scrolled down to read:

There are nine modal verbs: can/could, may/might, shall/should, will/would and must. They differ from the other auxiliaries both in that they are defective verbs, and in that they can never function as main verbs. They express the speaker's (or listener's) judgement or opinion at the moment of speaking. Some of the modal verbs have been seen as a conditional tense form in English.
 
As The Grammar Bible authors put it, how to use modal auxiliaries is "confusing". I would write more on this if I could, but I might make a mistake. I must end it here. I shall.

Allconsuming Passion

Woo hoo! I finally activated my account with Erik Benson's Allconsuming, an interesting website for book lovers, reviewers, and writers. If you view this blog at the Writer's Edge website, you'll see the left column padded out (sometimes) with advertising placed by Google and uncontrolled by me. Above or below the ads is the image of Sue Monk Kidd's book, The Secret Life of Bees. That information and blurb comes from my very own database on Erik Benson's amazing website. Eventually, if I understand it correctly, my mentions of books will be available to anyone who has an account with Allconsuming.

The website is a little draggy, even in DSL, so a donation to increase the website's bandwidth might speed up the action. This is an utterly unsolicited solicitation on my part. I don't have anything to do with Allconsuming (other than enjoying it), and I've never even exchanged words with Erik (yet). When I checked out his own blog, it appears he's traveling abroad right now.

Same-Sex Marriage

Just to be certain, I looked up marriage in my venerable Webster's and at the online dictionary.com to find, as I suspected, even dictionaries define it as being a condition involving opposite sexes. I wondered how many dictionaries exist. An Amazon search restricted just to English dictionaries yielded 15,248 entries! I know there are multiple editions from the same companies, but still that's a great amount of publishing to change if American law changes the definition to include same-sex unions. Foreign publishers of their language-to-English would have to change entries. It would be easier, and less expensive, to just change our minds!

Tools of the Trade, Art, or Sullen Craft

Non-writers are often interested in the actual physical tools writers use. While attending a country school with two grades to a room, I had to use an ink bottle and a pen with a replaceable nib. No kidding! Fountain pens were common, but we had an old-fashioned teacher. When my byline began to appear the question was "Do you use a pencil or a pen?" or "notebook or pad?" Then it morphed (I know, it's not a verb in my dictionary either) into "by hand or on a typewriter?", "typewriter or word processor?", and finally "Why are you still using a typewriter?" I skipped the word processor phase and went directly from my father's ancient and battered Olivetti to an IBM clone and a wide-carriage dot matrix printer. My writing habits have been mostly electronic since 1984. 

Oh, what do I use to write? Whatever is literally at hand. I have laptop lust right now. When my eyes can't take the monitor or my back and neck start to cramp, I abandon the PC for my recliner and the TV. Inevitably that's where the best ideas occur. If I had a laptop and a wireless network, I could just type in the precious gems and send them to the proper PC file or even upload them to the Internet.

For the record: if not composing at the keyboard, I write mostly with a microfine point roller ball pen, often on a legal pad on a clipboard that I keep on the floor beside the La-Z-Boy. I have filled in crossword puzzles with pens for decades. I've always written poetry with pens, fiction with pencils. Journalistic pieces usually start with pencil jots (my own shorthand) on a steno pad, which are translated at the keyboard. Poetry tends to accumulate in notebooks, spiral-bound or three-ring binders (still!) What difference does it make? Writers are often quirky, like pitchers who wear the same pair of "lucky" socks, or batters who kiss their medals. It just doesn't feel "right" to me to write a poem with a pencil.

Girlie-Men

Don't you just love Arnold Schwarzenegger? He provided so much fodder for comedians, even before he was elected California's governor. First, it was his accent. Now he's borrowing from his parodists. It's irony to the nth. At least he pronounces nuclear more correctly than some U.S. presidents have.

Rich, Lush Writing

Christopher Rice follows in his mother's manner of lush descriptions of New Orleans. I've just begun reading Density of Souls. I've never had the good fortune to visit the Big Easy on the bayou, but I know it well, especially the Garden District. In my imagination I've nibbled beignets on lacy iron balconies, enjoying the soft air of early morning before the day becomes stifling hot. I've pranced up and down Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, and I've drowned my sorrows in little jazz clubs all over the French Quarter. I've ridden the streetcar without desire back home to stagger through lush flowers surrounding my mansion's sun porch, fumbling for the door.

Language in Jeopardy

My extensive pre-polyester education about sewing and materials adds to my enjoyment in reading novels written by authors with a similar knowledge. (My sewing machine, on the other hand, has not been used since the last century). When I read for enjoyment, fiction with much detailed description pleases me. I know other readers who only want the plot to move along, climax, and resolve. I like to dally along the way, taking in the views, examining the tweed and the twill of a character's outfit. Rich writing will become a dying art as succeeding generations' education dumbs down even farther (or further).

Running With Scissors

All members of my book club agreed that Augusten Burroughs is a good writer, but reading Running With Scissors was difficult.  Some descriptive adverbs used included:  unpleasant, disgusting, and painful.  One member offered analytic praise, citing the use of themes and other literary devices, but questioned the authenticity of the experiences the author described. 
 
"He must have exaggerated quite a bit," another suggested.  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Email as Art?

Daniel Henninger comments on the NEA report in his Wonder Land column in today's Wall Street Journal, blaming the decline in reading literature on the Internet!  It's true that, counterintuitively, the research revealed that lit readers watch as much or even more TV than nonreaders, but I found no support for the notion that being online reduces reading paper products. 
 
He credits the 'net with reviving communication among friends, however, I cannot support email as literary contribution. If anything, email only accelerates the rate of communication at the cost of quality and quantity.  Even if you lump together all the emails to a friend in a given period of time, the result is not a coherent communication.  It's more like choppy conversation.
 
I find it difficult to connect Internet use with the decline in reading hard copy, because I print out much of what I run across online. Onscreen reading is terribly hard on the eyes. Mine blur and burn after only a couple of hours.  Any article more than a page in length is printed out for me to peruse in the pleasure of my lounge chair -- while the TV blares away in the background.  Admittedly this leads to my brain sometimes receiving mixed messages.  Lounging in front of the TV is also one of my two favorite places to read books.  The TV doesn't even have to be turned on, but it usually is.

Blogs R Writing!

It's my contention that blogs are a form of writing.  (It's my intention to exploit this form of writing for fun and profit, if possible.)  What I don't ascribe to is the apparent notion by many other bloggers that spelling and punctuation are unimportant in this format.  Admittedly, I know of no other blogger who is as antique as I, however, that's no excuse for not even using a spell checking program or feature on entries.  I feel certain it would catch "ever" spelled "evar" and the confabulation of "purpose" and "proposing" into "purposing".  Why do these people expect to be taken seriously?  How do they expect to find employment?  Am I seriously out of touch with the real world? I might add that I have a thirty-something daughter who emails me frequently.  She is neither a writer, nor even a college graduate.  Nonetheless, I don't recall a misspelled word in her messages.  She seldom writes incomplete sentences, and she has never appended "I'm just saying" to any comment.  I'm just saying this is a complete mystery to me. Illuminate me, please.

Going for the Burnout?

"Why don't you blog daily?" an acquaintance complained. I could say I was impressed with Wired News: Bloggers Suffer Burnout, but the truth is that I go for quality, not quantity. It's sort of a Zen thing, or a Metaphysics of Quality as Robert Pirsig writes about. While researching Pirsig, I discovered he's written a new book, Lila's Baby, and a website devoted to MOQ. According to a FAQ at MOQ, Pirsig lives in Portsmouth, NH, where I spent three long years in the 60's. My best production at that time was a beautiful baby girl, scoring a perfect 10 on her Apgar.

Not My Imagination

Research by the National Endowment for the Arts confirms my rant about the decline of reading literature, especially among the young. Get the 60 page .pdf report. It also offers more global support for reversing the trend. Reading literature is directly correlated with education levels and community participation [attending all kinds of performing arts events (even sports), volunteering, visiting various museums]. Disclaimer: correlation does not necessarily imply causation.

Metadata

Writing blog entries is fun. Setting up a blog is fun and a little challenging. Tinkering with the template is challenging and a little fun when it works. Today I am trying to set up an RSS version with Feedster. I've been struggling with this process for at least an hour, hampered by gremlins in Internet Explorer, my own PC, perhaps, and maybe the Feedster website. Feedster must be emulating Google's Spartan design which often lacks intuitive directions and obvious assistance. So, Writer's Edge may currently have an RSS feed and be in the Feedster database. If it worked, the feed URL is writersedge. If anyone successfully subscribes, for pity's sake, please let me know!

Freedom From Bad Writing!

I thought the currently popular book Eats, Shoots and Leaves was another fad diet, especially because the last person to mention it to me is rather chubby. Today I saw a reference to it with its subtitle in Biz Stone's June 30 blog entry. I'd found Stone's blog in a listing in the blog at blogads.com. I recognized the name from his writings in the Blogger News column at the Google-owned blogger.com. Whew! It's a small world in here.

Anyway, the subtitle is: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. I love it already! If I'd seen the title printed, I'd probably have guessed the book's subject. I've collected moronic headlines since my days on The Fort Pierce News Tribune (FL). Our favorite crime joke there was the story that ended with "and the bullet's in her yet!"

Available at Amazon, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation just moved to the top of my wish list.