Thinking About Language

Last night, as I began to think about what I’d write here today, the last day of 2011, I heard a news report on TV about “banned words.”  Banned?  Why banned?  Eeeeerrrrrgh!  Not in America, I hope.  Although we do have our struggles with extreme right wing conservatives, especially of the religious right, who want to ban certain books they have not read.  The news report had ended by the time I made it to the television.

No problem!  I just looked it up on the internet today.  We can all rest easy, folks!  The banned words referred to the annual list that those playful people at Lake Superior State University publish each year at this time.  The words in this Michigan college’s list come from nominations by people all over the world to ban a word or phrase from “the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.”  Awesome.  Here’s the list followed by my comments:

• Amazing — I am in total agreement.  This word received the most nominations this year.  I’m surprised that “awesome” wasn’t a close second.
• Baby Bump – use of the word “pregnant” is precise and clear.  Strive for clarity!  This sounds like the baby is hurt.
• Shared Sacrifice – not so much the words that need to be banned but the idea behind them, i.e. propose to share in sacrifice in order not to have to sacrifice.  Politicians and corporate senior management need to stop saying this!
• Occupy – I think this one is definitely due to overuse.  Apparently people have been dropping it in front of all sorts of nouns including named holidays.
• Blowback – I’ve understood this term to actually refer to fire and as something fire fighters need to watch for as they enter a burning building.  I guess I was wrong.  In this reference, it means “reaction,” a perfectly good, clear and precise word to use instead.
• Man Cave — apparently the other 49% of the American population feels this is a discriminatory term.  The “cave” implication is truly not nice and should be replaced with “den.”
• The New Normal – this term assumes that normal has been defined and then changed to something new.  I’m pleased to say “normal” has not been defined adequately in a general way, so to call something “the new normal” is highly misleading and probably used by corporate senior management to deflect comment about a change.
• Pet Parent — I’d not heard this term before and had to read the description.  It’s another term for pet owner.  Now, what I have heard before is a human being referred to as the pet of his or her pet.  Anyway, “parent” has a reproductive meaning most of the time and really is wrong usage here no matter how cute.
• Win the Future – I have a feeling we will not hear the end of this particular phrase, a favorite of politicians who think in sound bytes.  A clearer, more precise phrase might be “win the office I’m running for.”
• Trickeration – what?  I’ve never heard this term before.  After reading the description, my reaction is, “Ah, football analysts use this term.  No wonder I hadn’t heard it before.”  This word is supposed to refer to a trick play.  So what’s wrong with “trick play”?
• Ginormous – the combination of “gigantic” and “enormous,” either word being adequate to describe something really big.  But I kinda like this word because it combines two words and reminds me of how kids talk.
• Thank you in advance – Just as you would not pay someone the full amount in advance, do not thank someone in advance.  This is the only phrase on this list that truly makes my skin crawl.

Whether or not these words and phrases now disappear from use, perhaps Lake Superior State University has prodded us into thinking about language and how we use words.  English is a living language and evolves with use.  I’m relieved that the list truly was not a serious attempt at censorship….

Reading as a Writer: “Six Moon Dance”

In August 2010, I wrote about Sheri S. Tepper’s novel Grass and the haunting effect it had on me.  For over a year, that novel haunted every other book I read, but I feared returning to Tepper’s work…until now.  At a big end-of-year sale at Uncle Hugo’s Bookstore in Minneapolis, I picked up a used copy of Tepper’s novel Six Moon Dance.  The title struck me as being as alien as the cover artwork, which took reading the novel to understand.  Not really the way to entice readers to a story full of daring speculations about life, sexuality, social constructs and a living planet.

As in Grass, Tepper’s use of language can be lyrical as well as challenging.  Her “voice” tends toward the impersonal because she rarely takes the reader closer to a character by inhabiting his or her point of view.  The impersonal voice and the distance serve her purposes of creating a sense of a historical document or report that goes well beyond something official.

Although the story opens with a young boy named Mouche, he is not the protagonist.  Tepper pursues an ensemble story in this novel, moving from Mouche to the Questioner to a group of early settlers and to others.  By giving the reader many different perspectives on the same thing, she broadens the story but sacrifices any kind of reader identification or relationship with one character.  I actually enjoyed the Questioner’s sections the most because this character has an unusual make-up that reminded me a bit of the Borg without the drive to assimilate in the “Star Trek” universe.  She is also one of the best developed characters.   Another aspect of the story, Haraldson’s Edicts that the Questioner enforces, reminded me strongly of “Star Trek’s” Prime Directive.

I loved the setting of this novel.  A planet, Newholme, that has been sparsely developed my humans who live in a quasi-medieval-wild-west kind of society, upside-down from modern civilization on earth.  This planet, however, is not as colorful or distinctive in its landscape as the planet Grass was, but geologically, it’s far more interesting.  Earthquakes tremble the world so often that the people have begun to worry about it.  The nearby volcanoes have also awakened, several erupting and destroying their surrounding valleys, including all the residents.  These geological symptoms have a cause that could destroy the planet and everything on it if not stopped, and eventually all the characters in the story play a role in that endeavor.  The flora and fauna, however, haven’t the prominent role Tepper gave them in Grass.  Geology and the planet’s six moons, yes, six, propel this story.

Secrets also drive the story.  Newholme’s religion rules life and the clerics have one BIG secret they are trying to keep from the Questioner when she finally arrives.  That secret turns out to also have a relationship to the geological aspects of the story in a wonderfully satisfying way, making the multiple ethical dilemmas that arise enough to twist any mind into a pretzel of thoughts.  Then there are the more mundane secrets of familial relationships…and lies, of course.  Tepper juggles many story threads in this novel and does it effortlessly.

One thing about this novel I didn’t like was the character names, including some titles.  For example, the Hagion refers to the gallery of female saints and goddesses of the religion.  The clerics are called “Hags.”  I wondered if Tepper was having some fun with this at first, but after awhile, this title only irritated me as did the acronym for the Council of Worlds: COW.  I saw the humor in some of the names, but I found myself often wishing Tepper had followed a more mundane path in naming her characters.  She does supply a cast of characters list at the beginning which was extremely helpful at times.

One of the interesting questions for me concerned who the antagonist(s) was (were).  One woman, Marool Mantelby, by her evil nature provides some obstacles and conflicts, but her reign is far too short and over the top.  Several other characters behave badly in the way of villains, but Tepper identifies no one antagonist which leaves that question open for the ethical dilemmas.

Another question for me concerned the dramatic momentum.  Usually a protagonist drives a story through his or her desire to achieve a goal or solve a problem.  In Six Moon Dance, Tepper spends almost the entire first half establishing her ensemble cast, building the world in the reader’s mind, and establishing the “threat” the Questioner presents to Newholme and its residents.  Tepper uses some characters to do all this, but also spends whole chapters laying out Haraldson’s edicts and where Newholme and its history fit into the history of the Council of Worlds.  This made for slow reading at times.  But this information is also important to understanding the action in the last half of the novel.

I can’t say I’m as enthusiastic about this novel as I was about Grass.  Would I recommend it?  Yes.  Tepper’s writing is well worth the effort, and she raises interesting questions and dilemmas in this novel worth contemplation.  I look forward to reading more of Tepper’s work….

DONE!

Yes, finally, finally.  I completed the revision of Perceval’s Secret this past Thursday, right on deadline.  I’d hoped to cut the word count as much as possible, but during the assessment reading I realized that for the sake of clarity and suspense, I needed to add some things.  After that, my goal was to NOT add any words to the word count.  So, I was pleased to see, after my calculations, that I’d cut 259 words.  I’d also cut a chapter by combining two chapters and cutting pages.

I feel especially good about this revision.  Evan’s voice is much stronger.  My word choices gave me a challenge but I fixed those that created ambiguity where it wasn’t desired or were just wrong.  I’m much clearer on certain aspects of Evan’s character that, going forward, will continue to influence his actions in both negative and positive ways.

What’s next?  I’ve submitted Perceval’s Secret for a writing prize that called for unpublished manuscripts.  Notification won’t occur until Fall 2012.  I’ve already begun writing notes for the second draft of Perceval’s Shadow (second novel), things that need to not disappear after I established them in the first novel.  A plan has begun to take shape in my mind to work on Perceval’s Shadow the first 6 months of 2012 and finish the third novel the second 6 months.

Also in the works is an essay project.  I plan to work on this project under a pen name that I’m still figuring out.

I’m tired but less irritated by the holidays than I usually am.  It feels good to finish a big project like a novel, on time, and to get it out of the house….

Sex … or ?

This morning while washing up, I began thinking of the second novel in the Perceval series, Perceval’s Shadow.  The first draft is done.  With my success in the revision of Perceval’s Secret, I’ve been thinking of plunging right into the next novel and revising the first draft.  It surprised and dismayed me that the first challenge (or problem, depending on your point of view) that would pop into my mind would be the one sex scene in the book.

The first draft of this scene sketches out the who, what, where and how, and the conflict of the scene.  I chose to do that rather than taking a stab at writing it out.  I had no idea how to write it.  At least, not at that time.  I hoped that by the time I sat down to revise it, I’d know how to write it.  And that’s what came to me this morning in one of those lightning bolts of ideas that usually makes me wonder if I’ve just had a seizure.  Especially when the body tingles of rightness follow….

Sex scenes, by their very intimate and private nature, are difficult to write.  If you focus on the physical action, it can come off as mechanical or worse, like porn.  I’ve considered reading a lot of romance fiction to get an idea of how other writers step up to the challenge.  Ugh, too much time for that!  Instead, I decided to let the characters tell me what to write.  And that’s what hit me this morning — how Evan wanted me to write the scene.

Suddenly, the whole scene was right there in my mind, playing out like a scene in a movie.  The solution to what I thought was a problem turned out to be so simple I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before.  Ahem, Evan hadn’t told me before.  But I guess I wasn’t open to it before.

Fear had kept all the doors and windows locked on that scene.  First, I dreaded writing a sex scene.  Then, I feared I wouldn’t be able to do it.  Then, I feared what I wrote wouldn’t be true to the characters.  And I wanted to focus, too, on the emotion in the scene — not love, in this scene, but affection — and Evan’s fears.  A lot of fear going around this scene!

This morning I felt great about the revision of Perceval’s Secret.  I felt ready to tackle the next novel in the series.  I felt that I knew Evan better, also.  And now I know better why the first novel ends the way it does, which affects the next novel.  And wow, that sex scene just popped into my head and played, showing me what I needed to write to make Evan real and happy with me.

Whether writing a first draft or working on a revision, writing — creating — is a process.  Our thoughts and emotions affect our individual creative process, whether those thoughts are the detritus of a busy day out in the world or fear of screwing up a scene that’s important to the main character and the novel.

Now, I know what to do.  I’ll write notes for that scene so when I get to it during the revision process, I’ll be ready to sail through it with Evan at the wheel….