Reading, Writing, and Hope

Reading, Writing, and Hope

• I have a reading goal for the year.
• 52 books.
• Just one a week, right?
• Manageable.
• And I was on track, too, if not for those darn kids.
• Kidding.
• I’m currently at 42.
• I think I mentioned I’ve been on a William Gibson trend lately.
• He almost derailed the whole thing.
• I do not dig present-tense narratives … unless I’m reading a movie screenplay.
• This last book of his I read, Pattern Recognition … present tense.
• If it were any other author, I’d have bailed.
• And then … the main character is something of an overthinker/over-analyzer, and I almost couldn’t do it.
• Took me three weeks to read.
• I don’t think it took me three weeks to read any of the books in The Wheel of Time.
• Oof.
• And I liked it, though it’s not my favorite.
• Kinda felt like a narrative version of one of those ARGs I talked about on Monday.
• The more important part …
• Now I have three-and-a-half months to read 11 books.
• Maybe I need to switch to trashy romances or something.
• …
• Maybe one?
• I’m not sure I’ve ever actually read one.
• Not a real one, anyway.
• Closest would be Karma Girl and then this post-apocalyptic sci-fi book about librarians by Kit Rocha.
• I gotta tell you, those books were … spicy educational.
• I remember feeling like the biggest prude in the moment.
• Like, dudes, you have no idea what they are reading.
• Pick up a few, learn some things.
• I can’t get into it any more than that.
• I can’t even get into it as much as I just did.
• But … whoa.
• We’re going to get into craft a little bit today.
• First, because I lost an argument to the Teenager this week about the Bechdel test.
• I won’t make excuses.
• I thought it was simple: in a work of fiction, if two women interact and have a conversation that is not about a man, it passes.
• If not, it does not.
• I am currently working very hard to make sure my novel passes that test.
• Once I heard about it, it has never left my brain.
• However …
• There are, apparently, other conditions of which I was not aware.
• I don’t like to argue, or bet, when I’m not going to win.
• I thought I was winning.
• We argued about it for at least an hour.
• She sent me a screen shot of an explanation of exactly how I was wrong, important bits circled in red.
• She was right.
• I told her so.
• She taunted me.
• My tiny teenage daughter is a social justice warrior and knows a truckload about all the things she’s interested in, or that get her riled up.
• And she will not say what she thinks someone wants to hear if she disagrees with it.
• She suffers no fools, even when those fools are her dad.
• Makes me so proud.
• I haven’t the words, really.
• Change the world, you stubborn young woman.
• (Yes, I’ll let her read this. I almost always let her read the Lists.)
• Okay, let’s have that craft talk.
• I’m not saying any of this to deliberately provoke anyone.
• What is the point of the written word?
• It’s to communicate an idea, a concept, a piece of information.
• (Yes, I am aware of poetry; let’s stick to “communications” and essays.)
• Sometimes things get obscured by habit or ego.
• What good is communicating if you’re not understood?
• Or if your method of communication is so dense, so impenetrable, the audience has trouble understanding it?
• Is that way for you? Do you get points for being highfalutin’?
• Don’t get me wrong, I love a good .25 cent word.
• Somnambulant.
• Ephemeral.
• Petrichor.
• I don’t use them a lot in my writing.
• Papa Hemingway did not recommend.
• And what’s that quote I always see attributed to Einstein?
• If you can’t explain a thing simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
• Paraphrasing. (I’ll have to check the attribution before posting.)
• There are studies about how even smart people prefer to read things written more accessibly.
• Because it makes them feel smarter.
• Studies like this one.
• True story, I tried to write my grad thesis on the ineffectiveness of academic writing.
• Yes, of course they did not let me.
• Punk kid.
• None of this is to say I’m correct.
• The older I get, the less I know and the more I want to listen and understand.
• Assume everyone you work with is a subject matter expert in their thing and give them the respect you hope they give you.
• I think vocabularies were better 100 years ago than they are now, possibly because of all the debris I spewed above.
• Which makes me sad, really.
• I know a lot more words than I can make my brain use when I write, which is kinda frustrating.
• I write like I talk, and I talk to match the vernacular of my audience.
• In fact, if you were to have a conversation with me, it would likely sound exactly like these lists.
• I changed my major in undergrad from pre-med to Journalism (dummy) because I wanted to be Dave Barry or Hunter S. Thompson.
• Or Dave Barry and Hunter S. Thompson.
• As it turns out, I am not them.
• Not as good.
• Not as smart.
• But I understand a few things.
• Gotta give good voice if you want people to read.
• Dialogue.
• After a long time in this business, I like to remind people to always remember your audience and what you’re trying to accomplish by whatever it is you’re writing.
• Remember the W’s (who, what, when, where, why, and sometimes w-how).
• Because writing isn’t about you.
• Ego is the enemy.
• Why am I writing about this?
• Trying to somehow regain self-confidence after my Teenager won a literary concept argument with me.
• Oof.
• Seriously though.
• I lost to my Teenager.
• (Mentally swearing about it again right now.)
• (My dad was blue collar; there was no avoiding the swearing.)
• Let’s end on a high note.
• Yesterday I had one of the best work experiences in my life because of the people I work with.
• I’m not going to get into it because it was kind of our thing, you know?
• But … I have never felt so supported and uplifted at work than yesterday.
• Was amazing.
• I came home and had to tell the Women about it.
• And the Teenager hugged me for a good five minutes.
• I hope to be able to repay it to all involved.
• Remember the Golden Rule, gang.
• That’s the only one you need.