I did a guest post today over at change it up editing, a fine editing-themed blog that I know many of you already follow. If you haven’t been there before, and you have designs on self-publishing or small-press publishing, it’s a blog worth reading. My post today discusses how an intelligent editor respects the author’s voice.
Please check it out by clicking on this slightly discolored word. Be sure to leave a comment for Candace telling her she was nuts to let me sully her reputation by writing such drivel on her fine site.
I’ll be back here soon with my unregularly unscheduled nonsense!
Ciao,
Eric
Just waitin’ for Disney to come and tell me I gotta take this picture down.
You’d think a gory-horror-movie loving, rock-n-roll heathen like me would be opposed to censorship.
Normally you’d be right, but when it comes to protecting America’s collective intelligence from inane, trendy words and phrases that spread through the world of online journalism like an Old Testament-grade cockroach infestation, the oppressive dictator in me comes out.
That’s right. I’m calling for a ban. A burning even. I’m saying, “Let’s go Fahrenheit 451 on its ass.” If you’ve been anywhere near an entertainment page recently, you know the term I’m talking about: baby bump.
Please, gossip scribes of the world, I implore you for the sake of substantive writing everywhere… stop saying “baby bump.” Every time I see it, I feel as if a rabid goat is chewing on my last nerve. Outside of my general compassion toward all humans, I really don’t care about Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy. I wish her and Kanye a healthy, happy child, but you really don’t need to tell me every time her “baby bump” makes a public appearance. Women have been giving birth for at least 70 or 80 years (as far as I know; it could be longer), but we haven’t had to hear about baby bumps until about 2 years ago. Do we have nothing better to talk about?
And while you are in the process of learning how to make better choices, entertainment writers, can you also rethink the wisdom of “Sideboob”? You know, like when an actress shows up on the red carpet wearing a top that exposes her flanks and you seem to think it warrants an article with a sideboob declaration in the headline. Amanda Seyfried’s sideboob! Scarlett Johansson’s sideboob! Louie Anderson’s sideboob! Holy crap, three-dimensional objects can also be seen from the side! Why didn’t Stephen Hawking tell us?
Where are all the frontboob stories, by the way? I think every time a female celebrity steps outside and isn’t wearing a deep-sea-diving suit or some other encumbrance that obscures the existence of her breasts, we should get an article about it. Newsflash: Anne Hathaway’s frontboobs arrive at a given destination .05 seconds before the rest of her body!
Perhaps calling for an outright ban is a little too Kim Jong Un for a patriotic blog like this one. I know entertainment writers are under a lot of pressure to generate material in the internet age. How about I just foster the notion that self-respect and dignity are, in the end, at least as worthwhile as a few clicks.
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There are certainly plenty of songs with “baby” in the title for me to choose from. Here’s a pretty good one by The Supremes. Note: My apologies to anyone who is offended by the gratuitous frontboob taking place in this video It’s hard for them to sing in deep sea diving suits, I’m told.
After a delay of about three months (for a variety of silly and not-so-silly reasons), the first song from my forthcoming album, Cacophony of Weirdos, has finally been released!
Given all my blogging about language construction over the past year, you might be tempted to needle me for the grammatical wackiness of the song title “She is Happy Only When She’s Feeling Miserable.” I evoke the Mick Jagger clause: Rock and roll don’t need no grammar.
So here is my YouTube promotional video, the first such thing I’ve ever made, in all its cheesy glory. The song itself turned out great, which is why I’m providing convenient links to iTunes and Amazon for those of you who feel the same way I do and want to add it to your iPod playlist or other mp3 device.
My marketing plan is entirely grassroots, so, if you like it, please share on Facebook, Twitter, or your favorite social media site!
For the curious, I played drums and guitar and Tony played bass and did the vocals. There are no drums machines or notes played by computers in this or any of our songs.
I intend to put out a physical CD of the full album on Amazon but am having a hard time finding an inexpensive graphic designer with experience in CD jacket layout. Click my contact page and reach out if that’s you! I already have the mock up and simply need it realized in the proper format, pixels, and so on. I’m willing to trade fiction or non-fiction editing for your design skills, or we can talk dollars.
Do you remember early in Jurassic Park when we learn that Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) can make an electronic device fail just by looking at it? This is a foreshadowing of later events in the film when a storm causes the high-tech dino-security system to break down, and it’s also a metaphor for what happens when man tries to clone flesh-eating monsters: Something will go wrong. Mother Nature is not impressed by our silly inventions!
I’ve got the same problems as Dr. Grant, minus the T-Rex running around, which is why they won’t make a movie about me. Anyway, nothing that plugs in ever works the way it’s supposed to for me, and none of the latest features or applications is remotely interested in my clicking and screen-touching.
Let’s clear one thing up right away: I am not a dope. I graduated from my university with highest honors. I learn complex concepts pretty quickly, and I can hold my own in lofty discussions about philosophy, art, and Godzilla movies. To the point, I use computers all day at work and manage to get stuff done. But at work, I have access to a kick-butt IT team. When I have a problem, they have a solution, usually within three minutes. Unfortunately, we part ways at 5 p.m., and suddenly I’m in shark-infested waters with a bucket of chum and no lifeguard around for miles.
For starters, my house phone doesn’t work. The unit itself turns on and all the features operate, so I replaced the phone jack and the wire. The modem/router is distributing the signal, and the maintenance guys in my complex confirmed that the juice is flowing as it should. Nevertheless, no dial tone.
My wireless network doesn’t work, either. Again, I have a new modem/router that is confirmed operational. It’s sending a signal to my laptop, my printer, and my wife’s laptop. All those devices acknowledge the network. Nevertheless, no internet without wires. That’s a problem in a three-level apartment.
My new printer stopped working, though I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve rarely had to change ink, because none of my printers has ever lasted long enough to run out. If I were Jacob Marley, I wouldn’t be dragging chains and locks behind me; I’d have a mile of broken printers. All these devices do is sit there on a desk. Why do they keep breaking?
You’ll just have to take my word for it that I can play this guitar.
It’s not just hardware, either. Today I planned to release the first single from my album through a music distribution site. For 10 bucks, they will put it on iTunes, Amazon, et al, with 100% of royalties going to me. Good deal. That is, if I could get the damned song to upload! I downloaded the latest iTunes player, formatted the bits, bytes, wavs, and whatever other technonsense they told me to format, and clicked the pretty ‘upload’ icon. For an hour.
File nowhere to be found. Somehow, I don’t think Lady Gaga has these problems.
I hate technology.
If I had an iPhone, it wouldn’t ring. If I had iTunes, they wouldn’t sing. I don’t know what an iPad does, but if I had one, it wouldn’t do it. Sure, my stuff is wireless. Why plug things in that don’t work?
My files don’t attach. My pixels don’t match. My blue tooth is red. My blu-ray is dead.
My high definition is low. My DVR records no show. The stream of my video went dry. My HDMI cables curled up and died.
I guess I’m just an analog kid living on a digital planet.
How about you? Are you living la vida gadget, or do you want to help me look for a cave?
Different people have different talents. Michelangelo chiseled marble better than just about anybody. Lennon and McCartney were geniuses at composing hit songs. I am good at coming up with grossly misleading blog-post titles.
I discovered I would never be an NBA star in ninth-grade gym class. A several boys, including me, were given basketballs and told to practice jump shots and lay-ups. A few shots went in, some bounced off the rim, and most rebounded off the backboard. Except mine. Mine were off by 10 feet. I was throwing ‘em over the backboard, under the backboard, into the bleachers… everything but net. There was something about the timing of jumping and throwing that I couldn’t quite get.
After about three minutes of this mayhem, the gym teacher (a barrel-chested little bulldog of a man whose name I can’t recall) pulled me aside to have a chat.
“Eric,” he said. “I want to get you some help. I know it’s tough being a kid these days with all the temptations and everything. But we’re going to get you cleaned up.”
I stared at him, baffled. What the hell was he talking about?
He went on. “It’ll just be between you, me, the school nurse, and the guidance counselor. So what are you on? Quaaludes? Percocet? Meth?”
My face expression must have been like that of a nun being asked her favorite sexual position. “But I don’t take–”
“Now, don’t worry. We aren’t going to tell your parents. We just want to get you some help.”
“I don’t take drugs!” I said. I’d never even smoked a cigarette.
“Look, son, no one can be that bad at basketball naturally.”
I had two choices at this point. I could quit basketball, or I could practice my butt off, every day after school, to prove to that gym teacher and the world that I wasn’t the world’s worst basketball player, sober or otherwise. What do you think I did?
I certainly didn’t stay after school to practice basketball, that’s for sure. I suck at it. Why should I torture myself just so I can move up a notch or two on the spazmo scale and force some other poor shmuck to be the worst? I’d rather spend that time doing something I’m good at, like writing.
The moral of my story is that showing determination is great, but not if my reason for doing so is because I’m comparing myself to someone else. Had I loved basketball but been bad at it, I might have stuck with it. Eventually I would have been OK. But I really don’t care if I suck at that sport. Let someone else be good.
Writing, on the other hand, I love. I want to keep improving so I can tell better stories that are more exciting and emotionally powerful for my readers. I’m probably a more skilled writer than any of those kids in my ninth-grade gym class turned out to be, considering the time and effort I’ve put into the craft. But who cares if I’m not? I can only be the best I can be.
So the moral of the moral of this story is, “Comparing yourself against the achievements of others will only make you irritable and more likely to eat too many potato chips.”
Tell me if this is weird: As a writer of fiction, I never think about character point-of-view. My process is
1) Get a story idea
2) Start typing
Now that I’ve been poking around WordPress for a year, I realize I have a choice! I can be the main character. You can be the main character (don’t worry; I won’t do that to you). I can report on my main character. I can report on everybody. Or I can pick a different character altogether and start over. Who knew?
Yes, I’m being silly. I just think it’s boring to drag out English-teacher phrases like “Third Person Omniscient” right away. Yawn. But I’m serious that I never think about POV. So far, the POV demons have made the correct choices for me.
[For the unsure, there are no such things as POV gods, because gods are busier with more important things like cake and sports. I tried to hire POV angels, but they were like, “Yeah, right.”]
What about you? Do you have a hard time deciding between first and third person? Are you ever uncertain about which of your characters should be the reader surrogate? Here are some choices I’ve made and why:
1. I play the main character
I often use first-person narration for shorter pieces because it gives me a chance to play with different writing voices, like “crazy” or “evil,” that might become annoying in a longer work. I typically combine first person with present tense, which lends immediacy.
First person is also useful for studying someone else’s character arc. Few of us walk around in life saying, “And that’s how I learned that relationships are more important than money!” If the first-person narrator learns something in such a telegraphed manner, the story is going to seem like an after-school special. If you have been reading this blog recently, you know I’ve been tossing around the idea of self-publishing a short-story collection. In the micro-novel I intend as the lead tale, the primary arc belongs to my narrator’s counterpart. He grows as a person as well, but he doesn’t notice, because it would be hokey if he did.
The pitfall of first person is you have to be in every scene, potentially limiting the scope the story… unless the whole novel is letters from different people or newspaper clippings or whatever, but that’s a tough sell. Also, with a novel-length work in first person, the reader is eventually going to ask, “Now when did this vampire sit down to write a 317-page novel?”
2. I am in my main character’s head… or at least hanging from his uvula
Perhaps I want to do an action-oriented piece, a character observation, or something heavily metaphorical, and I can’t imagine a scenario by which the main character could have taken time or had the inclination to write it down. Also, this approach lets me describe events on a scope that is beyond the character’s perception or awareness. It allows the reader to be intimate with the character yet not be trapped in her head.
Unless one is incredibly insightful, this narrative option might be useful when writing a character who is a different gender or ethnicity or is dramatically distant in age from the writer. Such a thing can be done in first person, but it can be done quite poorly.
I probably use this method to please readers and rule makers rather than myself, and I’ll elaborate in a minute. The pitfall for limited third-person POV is the same as that of first person. Your main character has to be in every scene, so you’re out of luck for simultaneous narratives you intend to unify later.
3. I am God, and you will do my bidding!
If you have several story threads going at once and a lot of characters, you kinda have to go with third-person omniscient. You know more than your characters know, because you are everywhere. You report the best bits to us.
I like this approach for writing novels. Especially the one I’m working on (cough cough). I have four story threads, each one told in third-person limited, but at some point they will all come together, and I can’t abandon three of the main characters for one, can I?
So this is what I was talking about a minute ago when I said I use third-person limited to please readers and rule makers: I know I am in an extreme minority here, but I think it is absolutely possible, as a narrator, to be a brain jumper. My pal Jodi at My Literary Quest, whose recent post inspired this one, disagrees with me adamantly. But I believe it’s only a problem when it’s done poorly. When it’s done right, you don’t notice.
The great mystery writer Agatha Christie was a genius at brain jumping. Read “And Then There Were None,” or any of the early ones not narrated by Captain Hastings. She jumps from person to person multiple times within one scene, and it works. My first full-length manuscript, written in 2008-09, wasn’t good, but one thing I did well was get into the heads of my two lovers and show them learning about each other as they fumbled along. Well, until the murders started, that is. Do I look like Nicholas Sparks to you?
I’m discovering something interesting about the so-called omniscience in my WIP: My characters are all under 15, so, though the narration is TPO, I’m omitting observations and awareness I feel are excusive to mature, adult thinking. This particular god, though able to create a universe, in only as clever and dimensional as the young characters he placed in it.
Your thoughts, ideas, arguments?
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Here’s “Taking in the View” by Kansas, a beautiful, unjustly forgotten song. Worth three minutes of your time!
