An aside . . . on finding the right word

Allow me to digress for this post, and write about writing.

For about 7 months I have been reading TransAtlantic, by Colum McCann. Or rather, I've been picking it up and putting it back down.  McCann mixes historical and fictional characters, in Ireland and America, from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s.  So far, so good. I'm enraptured by some of his writing, and aggravated by other passages.  We encounter Frederick Douglass giving a book tour in Ireland, and Brown and Alcock, the first two men to cross the Atlantic in an airplane. There are no chapter headings, and little guidance for the reader, other than dates when the action moves from one time period to another, either backwards or forwards.

I tell my students that they need to demonstrate they know the standard conventions of writing; then they can break the rules.  McCann is a luminous writer. . . and he likes to break the rules.  He breaks one rule frequently. Fragment sentences.  It's hard for me to even write one!  Here is an example, taken from near the end of Brown and Alcock's trans-Atlantic flight:
        It is close to sunrise--not far from Ireland--when they hit a cloud they can't escape.  No line of sight.
        No horizon.  A fierce gray.  Almost four thousand feet above the Atlantic.  Darkness still, no moon, no
       sight of sea.  They descend.  The snow has relented but they enter a huge bank of white.  Look at this
       one, Jackie.  Look at her coming.  Immense.  Unavoidable.  Above and below.

http://www.judydouglass.com/2013

But then,  just when I get frustrated and want to put the book down, McCann pens a paragraph like this one:

       Stories began, for her, as a lump in the throat.  She sometimes found it hard to speak.  A true
       understanding lay just beneath the surface.  She felt a sort of homesickness whenever she sat down at a
       sheet of paper.  Her imagination pushed back against the pressures of what lay around her. . . The best
       moments were when her mind seemed to implode.  It made a shambles of time.  All the light
       disappeared. The infinity of her ink well.  A quiver of dark at the end of the pen. . . The elaborate search
       for a word, like the turning of a chain handle on a well.  Dropping the bucket down the mineshaft of the
       mind.  Taking up empty bucket after empty bucket until, finally, at an unexpected moment, it caught  
       hard and had a sudden weight and she raised the word, then delved down into the emptiness once
       more.

Brilliant!
   

Traveling through World Literature . . . Join me

This is our second snow day . . . this week!  So, as I'm housebound, I thought I'd begin a new weekly blog series.

I'm teaching a new class this semester - World Literature 2!  I've been teaching World Literature 1 for six years, and we cover texts from the beginnings of known literature - Gilgamesh - to Shakespeare.  World Literature 2 picks up in the 17th century and moves through the centuries to the present day.  How does one choose literature over such a vast period of time and covering the entire world.  I don't!  The editors who put together World Literature anthologies have that daunting task.  All I need to do is choose which of the offerings in the textbook to include in the class.

Our class began last week, so for the next 14 weeks, take a trip with me.  I'll share each week what text we covered in class, how the students responded to it, and even share links to the text - when available - if you have the time and inclination to read it yourself.

Last week we read "A Modest Proposal" out loud in class.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the essay by Jonathan Swift, in it he proposes a drastic solution to the problem of poverty and starvation in Ireland in the early 1700s.  The Irish women should sell their 1-year-old children to British aristocracy, who may then eat them for dinner.  This will solve the problem by not saddling the women with babies they can't feed, and provide much-needed income.

The tone throughout Swift's essay is one of reasonable thoughtfulness.  A few of my students -- I hadn't warned them in advance -- actually thought Swift was serious.  Of course they "googled" and found out it was satire. According to John Simon in a book review he wrote about Jonathan Swift, His Life and His World, by Leo Damrosch, Swift wrote "what is the greatest satire in English (and perhaps any language), "A modest Proposal," which proves by careful arguments -- satistical, mathematical and social -- that the solution to impoverished Ireland's problems is the eating of babies and the selling of their carcasses."

So we began the semester with a little "shock and awe."  After discussing what satire and irony are, and the conditions in Ireland at the time the essay was written, my students understood and even enjoyed the text.  Here is a link so you can read the short essay for yourself.  Let me know what you think.

 https://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/modest.html

What our speech reveals about us - use of pronouns

Happy New Year!  One of my goals is to write more consistently on this blog - so check back weekly to see what I'm thinking/writing about.

Several years ago my boss said something I still often think about:  our use of pronouns reveals a lot about us.  Do we say "I" or "we," "my" or "our."  When I hear someone talking about his or her job, or church, or even family, I'm tuned in to the use of pronouns.  So if someone says "at my job they . . ." it tells me the person doesn't really feel a part of the company.  They don't feel a sense of belonging.  Whereas, saying "at my company we . . ." shows the person does feel a part of the company. How do you talk about your place of employment?

For couples, some always say "we" and some always say "I."  This can be confusing either way, because then I'm never sure if the spouse is referring to just him/herself, or to both of them.  I invited a friend to a baby shower, and she replied "we will be there."  Hmmm - I didn't invite any men so I had to clarify her "we."  It turns out she always says "we."  This is lovely and shows a real sense of togetherness in the marriage, as opposed to married couples who always use "I."  

As parents we sometimes refer to "your" child, when obviously the child is "ours."  We usually use "your" when we want to distance ourselves from the child's behavior.   "Your son didn't take out the garbage."  The implication is that my son would have done it--strangely enough he is the same person!

Think about it.  And tune in to speech, your own and others' speech.

What do you think?

What do you do while awaiting a publisher?

I am now in an unenviable position -- waiting.  Waiting is not something we humans enjoy.  In fact, we hate waiting.  We don't like to wait in line; wait for a check; wait for a date; wait for a job; wait for news from the doctor; wait for our child's report card; wait for our birthday.  We encourage our kids to be patient, but we are often poor examples of patience.

So now that I have an agent (hooray) I am once again waiting.  The book itself took over six years to write.  So I should have learned patience by now, one would think!  I'm still learning, and not very well.  I read a very insightful blog the other day, and have taken that advice to heart.  Actually, the advice was about what to do if you queries are being rejected, which isn't my situation at the moment.  But the advice was this:  keep querying; self publish; write another book (Rachelle Gardner, Books and Such).

I don't need to keep querying, as my agent is working on finding a publisher.  I don't want to self-publish.  So, I'm starting my next book.  And I'm getting excited about it already.  I'll carry over some of the characters, and actually both story-lines.  But the bulk of the action will be in the U.S., and the setting is the War of 1812.

So today I picked up several books in my campus library.  I'll spend the next 6-12 months reading and researching, and then begin what I may call . . . Legacy.

Any other ideas about what to do while waiting for a publisher??

Stay tuned.

Words and short phrases students love . . . and professors loathe

Those of us who grade essays see similar words and phrases repeated in many of our students' papers.  We have grown to groan when we see these phrases littering our students' essays.  I will begin the list below, but please add a comment with your least favorite phrases!

"Nowadays" - it might not be so bad if they spelled the word right -- actually, it would still be bad.  It adds no meaning to a sentence.  I've seen such creative spellings nowadays as "now in days," "now and days," and "now a days."

"In which" - another often unnecessary short phrase.  Often it makes no sense in the context of the sentence in which it is written.

"That" - this is just one of my pet peeves.  I tell my students half the time they use it incorrectly, to refer to a person, and the other half of the time it's unnecessary.  This is only a slight exaggeration.  I encourage them to avoid using 'that' in their writing.

"Back in the day(s)" - wow, this is pretty useless.  One of my colleagues, who teaches history, tells his students to avoid "Star Wars" phrases like "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."

"Being that" - another phrase I dislike.  I cross it out and write 'as.'

Please add a comment and add your least favorite student-favored words!

What is fiction?

When teaching Composition 1, most of the texts we read are essays taken from an anthology.  But every semester I teach "The Lottery."  In case you're not familiar with it, I'll give you the basic plot.  A small town in New England holds a lottery every year, at the end of June.  Every family member must pick a slip of paper from a black box, one of which has a black dot on it.  The 'winning' family then returns to the box, and every member picks a slip of paper.  The 'winning' person, at the end of the story, gets stoned to death.  This is the most anthologized short story, and while dark, it is a great read and unleashes great discussions in class.  Shirley Jackson wrote it in 1948, with the recent Holocaust and her own negative small-town experiences forefront in her mind. 

Before we discuss "The Lottery," I ask the class -- what is fiction?  Invariably, the first responses include "not real," "not true," "made up," and "fantasy."  These responses really bother me!  Why?

To me, fiction is very real.  It rings true.  A character may be based on a historical ("real") person or not, but his or her ethos reflects reality.  In the best fiction, the characters are so lifelike, you feel like they could be a neighbor.  For me, I feel like I could sit down with them over a cup of tea.  While the events and the people inhabiting a novel may not be real, they are lifelike, and their lives resonate with truth.

What is fiction to you?

Don't give up!

After a hiatus of almost a year, I'm back to this blog.  Thanks for reading.

If you've read my blog before, you know I've been working on a historical novel since 2006 about the daughter and sister of Olaudah Equiano.  Equiano was kidnapped from Africa at the age of 11, enslaved, and after he purchased his freedom, he settled in England and wrote his memoir, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano.  While researching my thesis I came upon his memoir, and promptly fell in love with Equiano.

After finishing my thesis, I thought, what a great basis for a book.  I started with his daughter, Joanna, attracted to the themes of race, abolition, alienation, and to the setting of London.  After doing some research, and wanting more depth and conflict in the book, I added Equiano's sister, about whom almost nothing is known.  The two storylines developed, and after seven years of research and writing the book, Remnant, was complete.

But as all you writers know, writing is never finished.  One can always improve prose by adding a passage, or changing a word, or lengthening a description, or even by deleting a scene.

For one year I have sought an agent, and I'm happy to report, I have finally found one!  I am thrilled to have found a Christian agent.  Just as God's hand is evident throughout Remnant, His hand is also evident throughout my life, and I'm excited about this next step on the road to publication.

Keep checking this blog for updates on the pursuit of a publisher.  And for your own long-held dreams and goals, keep striving.  Don't give up.