What If You Could Not Fail

Slang in Your Writing, or Do You Think You’re All Bad?

Last week I was working on a short story in which I refer to a character as “going commando.” In case you are not familiar with the term, it refers to someone not wearing any underwear. They are going commando (the things you learn reading this blog).

Although I am guilty of using slang or colloquialisms in my writing, but I always question it. What if one of my novels or short stories becomes standard reading in high school in a hundred years? Are people going to understand “going commando?”

Using slang can get you into trouble in other ways. The term “hook-up” has different meanings in different contexts. You can say, “I got the hook-ups at Home Depot.” This means you know how to get a deal on something. You can also say, “I hooked up with her,” which means you had sex. In junior high school, however, it might mean that you kissed a girl and perhaps copped a feel (more slang). It’s all in the context.

In an article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal entitled Mastering the Finer Points of American Slang, I was enlightened even more about slang. A doctor in Chicago, a recent transplant from her native Saudi Arabia, says that she and her husband find that the television show Family Guy is required viewing for its use of slang and popular terms. The Intensive English Program at Kennesaw State University in Georgia doesn’t teach slang expressions unless they have been in use for more than a generation. The term “home run” applies in this application, as in, “He hit a home run with the client in that presentation.”

Mrs. WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com and I have raised a gaggle of kids. When they were younger we would quickly adapt their slang. Some of the terms and phrases died off in two weeks, but thirty years later we still use them. A popular term they used was, “He thinks he’s all bad.” This meant that someone fostered a rather high opinion of themselves. We use it all the time—still.

The style and subject of your writing will dictate whether you use slang and how you use it. If you’re writing for a younger audience then you are more apt to employ slang, especially if you are talking about specific groups or subcultures.

Then again, you might be worried about who will be reading your words in a hundred years. It could happen. Dude!

See ya’ later.

 

Happy Anniversary to Mrs. WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.Com

Thirty-two years ago today I married Leslie Dee Sunderland, my darling wife. Life together has been wonderful, scary, agonizing, frightening, up, down, sideways. We've had amazing highs, amazing lows, and lots of drama--but it has never been boring. 

The Work Spouse as a Character

In my novel Rules for Giving my protagonist, Gavin Oliver, has a work spouse. This is the person at your office of place of employment, usually of the opposite sex, who fills the role of spouse in the workplace. There is typically no sex involved, but everything else is there—emotional support, a sympathetic ear, grooming tips—all the things a spouse would do if they were there.

It’s a good idea not to mention to your married spouse that you have a work spouse. When this came up in my story, a woman in my critique group bristled. Seems she became aware that her husband has one. She wasn’t happy about it.

According to Wikipedia, the concept of a work spouse has been around since the 1930s. I first became familiar with it in 1987, when The Atlantic Monthly printed an article that came to be considered one of the definitive pieces on a work spouse. I can’t find a copy of it, but I recall that the piece was primarily aimed at male readers, so excuse the sexism.

These are some of the signs that you have a work spouse:

• You get to work early or stay late to talk to this person.
• Before you go into a meeting, you ask this person for an inspection of your dress and appearance.
• This person knows at least one thing about your personal life that would make your married spouse upset.
• When work spouses meet for lunch, if one person gets there first, they know what to order for the other person.
• Likewise, they know how you like your coffee.
• You give each other neck rubs.
• When your work spouse goes on vacation, you really miss them.

Work spouses serve no literary value, other than they make interesting fodder for stories. I am self-employed now, so I have no work spouse. Kind of a bummer. Work spouses can be a shoulder to cry on when you and the married spouse are having a spat. You can also have a spat with your work spouse, but since most married couples fight over sex, money or the kids, there is considerably less to fight about.

The last time I worked for someone else in an office was nine years ago. I had a work spouse there. We still have lunch about twice a year. In fact, it’s about time I call her. No she proofreads a lot of my stories.

See ya’ later.  

 

If You Must Have a Day Job,

Writing seldom pays the bills. Having worked at a regular job most of my adult life, I know that balancing a full-time occupation with a writing career is difficult. I have been self-employed for the last nine years, but even then, it is no easy feat. Clients pay the bills and they come first. Here are my rules for balancing writing and employment and life in general.  

• Become a morning person. I’m up at 4:00 each morning. I write until it’s time for the wife to get up. I’m sharper early in the morning, and there are fewer distractions.
• Learn the art of the nap. I’m one of those people who can nap virtually anyplace, so I try to catch 20 or 30 minutes at lunch, or more preferably in the late afternoon. I set my nights aside for family time.
• Coffee, by the way, is your friend.
• Don’t fall into the trap of looking for a no-brain-drain job. My experience is that those jobs end up being mind-numbing. Ends up defeating the purpose. Get a job that keeps the juices flowing.
• Probably not a good idea to go public with your hidden career. Don’t go out of your way to hide it, but if there comes a question of how hard you are working, the boss might think your writing career comes first. Besides, my experience is that all your co-workers think you are writing about them. You don’t want to create angst in the workplace. If one of your co-workers sees you at your critique group at the local bookstore or library, just acknowledge it and, “Yes, I do a little writing.”
• Keep your writing career off of the company computers. That stuff gets found, usually at the worst time. Same goes for email. Set up an account with Google or Yahoo or Hotmail. Your employer can access that stuff in they really want to, but chances are they won’t go that far.
• Keep a notebook and write down ideas if they happen to come to you during the day. At lunch maybe you can go to the park and expand on them.
• Make time to exercise. When you are in shape, you sleep better, and your burn calories more efficiently. You are also sharper when the blood is flowing to all the nooks and crannies.

So those are my tips. It is by far not a definitive list. What are your secrets to balancing work and writing?

See ya’ later. 

 

What Authors of the Classics are Thinking of Technology

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com. 

In Anticipation of Dad's Day

A letter to my progeny:

Father’s Day is in a couple of weeks. In case any of my kids are reading this, I understand if you can’t afford a gift. The economy is a bastard. A phone call is enough.

But if you find yourself a few bucks in the plus column and you want to buy the old man a gift on his day, exercise the wisdom of past years—gift cards from Barnes & Noble and Amazon are always welcome. Costco works, too. I’ve been putting off the purchase of a few novels, anticipating that some of that plastic money might find its way into a greeting card or two.

That being said, I was browsing through the blog Brain Pickings this afternoon and came across a New Years Resolution Reading List: 9 Books on Reading and Writing. Take a look, because these titles will be among the ones I will be reading.

Think of it as multi-tasking—gift cards mean I will be purchasing new books, so not only are you making me happy, but you are supporting the industry that one day might provide me with your inheritance.

Love,

Dad

P.S.: If you’ve already purchased something, and it has anything to do with golf, no problem. 

 

What's Lost in Translation?

A few years ago I read Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Not an easy read, but a good one. I came across a word never encountered before—climacteric. Looking at the word in context, it was easy enough to figure out that it meant menopause. But I found it to be an odd usage.

A month or so later I was attending a panel discussion at the Los Angeles Times Review of Books. The three writers on the panel, all women, were authors of novels that had been translated into different languages. I asked them if, in a translation, they find that the translator often takes editorial license (I do not remember who any of these ladies were). The moderator, also a woman, quickly told me, and the audience, that this was not a problem. One of the writers quickly contradicted her, saying, yes, it was often a problem.

The Word Craft column in the Weekend Wall Street Journal is by Bruce Benderson, a novelist and translator. After reading this column, I would say that quite often the writer, along with the editor and the publisher, change things in a translation.

Benderson writes:

“Our language [English] relies mostly on syntax, or word order, to create meaning and uses a lot of one-syllable action verbs. French is full of prepositions and word endings because of its syntactical nature. Its utterances are longer but often more precise.”

Benderson also talked about the problem of conveying in a translation the values that are unreal in our culture, like how a three-hour workday lunch is customary in France. There is also the challenge of the pun, which is individual to each language.  

A few years ago Mignon Fogarty, The Grammar Girl, had a podcast about swearing. One of the things she addressed was language differences in swearing. There are some words that are taboo in English, but their translation is acceptable, or at least not as bad, when spoken or read in Spanish or French.

In a similar situation, I once worked with a lady who was born in Iran. She taught me how to swear in Farsi, but admonished me that these words were far more terrible in her native language than they were in English. “Whatever you do,” she said, “don’t ever tell my mother that I taught you these words.”

In a scene near the end of the Tom Clancy novel  Red Storm Rising, an American general tells his Russian counterpart that he learned Russian because his became interested in the plays of Chekhov, and, “You can really understand a play only in its original language.” After reading this column in the Wall Street Journal, I agree.

See ya’ later.

 

I'm Enjoying Laguna Beach

I am celebrating thirty-two years of marriage to Mrs. WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com. Posts will resume tomorrow ... maybe. 

Writing Advice from The Force

Do or do not. There is no try--Yoda

First, let me say I am not a huge Star Wars fan, or a trekkie. But this quote stuck in my head, especially as I have been editing Rules for Giving.

One of my bad habits is slipping into the passive voice. This morning I came across this sentence as I was editing:

"I managed to make it to the office by 8:30."

It would be more direct, and take fewer words, if I wrote:

"I got the office at 8:30."

In consulted Andrew Turner, a member of my critique group and author of the blog Writerly Words, on this issue. "'I got the to office...' is still passive," Andrew replied in an email. "'I walked into my office...'" is more active and easier to visualize.'"

Slipping into passive mode. I catch myself doing this over and over. I am getting better at it. Now I catch myself doing it as I write it. I backspace and make the correction before I finish writing the sentence.  

Although managed to is one of passive indicators I most like to abuse, I also like tried to, seemed to, turned to--there are a bunch of them. They make the verb weaker, the writing weaker, and it adds more words to the word count.

What's your favorite writer's sin. Let's make a list.

See ya' later. 

 

What was Learned?

I’ve been reading around the blogosphere, on various writing sites, about voice and tone. As writers we can never know too much about these issues. But I keep coming back to another topic—growth and change in the protagonist. At the end of the novel, when the dust has settled, what did the protagonist learn, and how is it conveyed to the reader?

This is true especially for my genre and style. I write mainstream fiction, depicting everyday people caught in extraordinary situations. In my novel Rules for Giving the protagonist, Gavin Oliver, is in his first day as owner of the business after a fierce partnership battle. That’s a daunting enough challenge, compounded when he is confronted by the daughter of a long-ago girlfriend who is looking to uncover her mother’s demons. Gavin is her link.

When Gavin emerges from the other side, how has the experience changed him? Is he a better person?

In my weekly critique group, one of the members shared with us a delightful piece of flash fiction. In the end, however, the exposition got preachy. One of the other members pointed out this problem. A case of show, don’t tell. Rather than a paragraph telling the moral of the story, illustrate it with dialogue.

I do this in Rules for Giving, allowing Gavin to have a conversation with another character. It could be better, which is why I am glad that I’m still editing the story.  

We learn from every experience. Sometimes we acknowledge the lesson, other times it is more subtle. It becomes part of us. In fiction, however, the task is to let the reader discover what was learned in a way that is organic and natural.  The last thing you want, as a friend of mine points out, is to make your writing sound as if you are saying, “Hey, did you get the point? Here, let me tell you.”

See ya’ later.