What does every mother want? She wants her child to be safe and happy. This is not a constant desire, every moment of every day, seven days a week, but at least once, between the hour she first knows she’s pregnant and the moment of her last breath, that is what she wants.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
On voice
Voice is an unavoidable component of all forms of writing. To slightly paraphrase Janice Hardy, voice is the sense that there is a person behind the words. That sense of person is how the reader connects with what the writer says. If there is a problem with voice, the connection will be faulty or won’t be made at all.
How can there be a problem with voice? Isn’t the writer always the person behind the words? Well, yes and no. Yes, the writer is always somewhere behind the words, but often the writer wants to communicate or connect through a particular perspective or persona, even in non-fiction. Any time the words don’t clearly convey that perspective or persona, the connection shorts out.
Although this can happen in several ways, inconsistency is the most common problem with voice. It’s like someone changing channels during a broadcast without warning: inconsistent voice makes it hard to follow what’s going on, whether that’s a line of reasoning or a plot line. The simplest way to be consistent is to maintain the same perspective throughout a written piece (much harder than it sounds). This is not to say, however, that shifts in perspective make for poor writing or need to be avoided. When executed properly, they bring a delightful complexity and nuance to writing.
How can changes in perspective, by their very definition, be consistent? They happen in a manner that makes sense, that arises naturally from the plot or argument and advances it. They follow a structural pattern, usually visible, occurring at section or chapter breaks. They take place when a scene changes or when new source material is introduced. Here’s the real kicker: when shifts in perspective add to the plot or line of reasoning without disruption or distraction, they weave together to form a single, rich, complex voice.
The writer’s voice.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged argument, editing, persona, perspective, plot, reading, voice, writing
Weeding
It may sound strange, but I love to weed. As a young person, I spent countless hours pulling weeds in the humongous kitchen garden we planted every year. That kind of experience would traumatize most people and put them off weeding for life, but it instilled in me a profound love.
In part, I love to weed because it takes me back to the cool, dew-drenched mornings and hazy, sun-drenched afternoons of my childhood. It reminds me of long hours spent in companionable silence or lively chatter, working beside a number of family members in various times and places.
But there’s something else about weeding that appeals to me on a deeper level, something in it that soothes my soul. It’s a form of moving meditation: active enough to keep my monkey mind occupied, repetitious and methodical enough to allow me to slip into a sort of trance.
I also find weeding very satisfying, in more than one way. It offers the cathartic effects of physical labor coupled with the psychological pleasure of tangible progress. I feel as ridiculously edified by aching muscles as I do by neat planting beds. And I feel peaceful, on top of the exhaustion and pride. What’s not to like?
Up until this last week, I haven’t been able to weed because it’s been so dry. Where I live, there used to be a foot or so of rich topsoil, an accumulation of thousands of years of decayed plant and animal matter. A couple decades ago, a developer scraped it off, sold it, and built houses and laid sod on the remaining clay subsoil. So my garden beds are built on and out of clay.
When clay gets dry, it becomes the kind of material that people have been building houses out of for millennia. Roots sunk into dry clay cannot be removed by pulling; it is impervious to most hand tools in that state, even my trusty hori-hori.
I feel like a black ops garden commando when I strap this puppy on.
So I am woefully behind on the weeding, and I don’t think the neighbors are happy about it.
I wrote the above paragraphs last week, before we got some much-needed rain. I’m happy to say that I’ve been able to get in a little weeding since, though we were away for three days of prime yard working time over the weekend. I’m still behind, but most of the really big weeds have been removed. Now the yard merely looks unkempt instead of overgrown.
The X factor
It has been a very long time since I studied genetics, and the state of the field is now light-years beyond the things I learned back then. I presume (for no good reason) that some of the rudimentary components remain fairly intact, and the following is based on my recollection of those basics. If I am in error, I welcome gentle correction from the more genetics-savvy.
I spent a lot of time with family this weekend, which got me thinking about how we’re related. X chromosomes popped to mind, partly because it was my mom’s side of the family and partly because you can actually tell, because of their gender and relationship, that certain people have the same X chromosome.
After thinking about it for a bit, though, I realized that the scope of this is fairly limited. It wasn’t possible to tell at all which of us at the gathering this weekend shared an X chromosome from that side of the family. My mother and her brother might have gotten the same X chromosome from their mother, but you can’t tell by looking. It’s possible that my mom in turn passed that same X chromosome to me or one of my two sisters, but there’s no way to tell just by looking.
Because there are three of us, at least two share an X chromosome from Mom, but there’s no outward way of determining who does or doesn’t. In the event that I share that X chromosome with my sister who has a child, it’s also possible that either or both of us passed that same X chromosome along to our children, but again it’s impossible to tell by looking.
Things are a little simpler on the other side of the family, but not by much. It is certain that my sisters and I all share an X chromosome from our father, which he in turn got from his mother. We may or may not share that same chromosome with our aunt or uncles – his siblings – or our only female first cousin. It’s certain we share that X chromosome with other members of our paternal grandmother’s family, but there’s no way to determine that by looking. It is, though, a fact that we don’t share any X chromosomes with members of our paternal grandfather’s family.
I briefly started to calculate the probabilities of these various potential chromosomal overlaps. But then I remembered the two most important things I learned about probability in school: it is always rather more complicated than it first appears, and I wasn’t very good at it. If any math nerds out there would like to tackle these calculations for their amusement, I promise to be inordinately impressed with the results.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged children, family, genetics, math, probability, x chromosomes
Z to A Even Day Challenge
The April A to Z Challenge was a great way to jump-start my writing again, though I found the daily aspect an unwelcome source of added stress. If I had participated from the beginning rather than hopping on near the end as I did, I think I would have been thoroughly burnt out with the whole thing by now.
The upshot is that I’ve decided to attempt a variation on this writing/blogging challenge for the next several weeks. The idea is to post on every even-numbered calendar day, which allows a little more time to think and polish. My hope is to raise the quality of the published writing and reduce the amount of stress associated therewith.
I’ve also decided to work my way backwards through the alphabet, as I found the letter prompts arbitrary enough to inspire creativity but predictable enough get me thinking ahead. I plan to be more subtle with this challenge and abandon the “X is for Y” approach, which becomes tedious after a bit.
If you decide to follow along in your own writing, I’d love to hear about it. Your company on this journey is most welcome, either as a reader or a fellow writer.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged blogging, blogging challenge, company, writing, writing challenge
Z is for zero
…days left in the April A-Z Challenge!
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what I’ll do when the month ends. I’ve posted more consistently (and gotten more traffic) than at any time since I began this blog, and I hate to lose that momentum. On the other hand, I’ve come to see that there is a certain tyranny in the requirement to post daily: the demands can be wearing on readers and blogger alike. I think I’ve seen a certain degree of reader fatigue, and I know that the quality of the posts has not been consistently what I would like it to be.
I’ve been trying to cultivate the habit of daily writing for some time now, but that sort of writing isn’t always fit for publication. I think journals are a good place to do that, and I’ve been making use of mine for that purpose. A fair amount of what I’ve written on a daily basis hasn’t made it to the blog, but it has been good for me to be stretched by the letter prompts and by the need to produce something postable every day. I’m not sure, however, that it’s a sustainable practice for me over the long term.
In the interest of everyone’s sanity, I’ve decided to institute the Z-A Even Day Challenge. I will work my way backwards through the alphabet (since I missed the first two-thirds of it) with the commitment to post on even-numbered calendar days. This will take me through May and well into June, by which time I hope to figure out something else to do to keep myself writing.
I’ll keep you posted, and I’d love to hear any feedback or ideas you might have. Thanks for reading!
Y is for yesterday
…which is when I was supposed to write and publish this post. But yesterday was a Saturday, which days are pretty busy around here. Unlike last Saturday (see S is for Skipping) I got to turn the computer on yesterday to take care of a few pressing items, but I didn’t get to spend more than half an hour.
Yesterday was also end-of-year assessment performances for area high school bands, hosted this year in a neighboring county. This means I spent a good chunk of the day dropping off, picking up, and generally schlepping myself and other people over several dozen square miles of the Bluegrass. I did get to enjoy concert performances by five excellent bands, though, which made it all seem worthwhile.
X is for Xanthippe
…because that name came up in a short story I recently read.* I will let you figure out for yourself how it might relate to this post.
My friend Murphala, over at FlourWaterYeast&Salt is knitting a third fingerless glove because she’s not happy with the color/pattern differences between the first two she made. I made a comment, to which she replied, but when I tried to respond to her response, Picatcha wasn’t working and wouldn’t let me make the comment, so this blog post will be my reply.
I sez: They all look find to me, but then again that sort of thing must not bother me because one of my kids regularly wears non-matching shoes to school.
She sez: Which kid?
So now I sez: The queen bee. It started in preschool, when she began mixing and matching socks. She’s the sort of child who goes barefoot at every opportunity, so I was just thrilled she had socks on at all. I was having coffee with some of the other preschool moms one day when a couple of them started complaining about how their daughters wanted to wear socks that didn’t match. I sheepishly confessed that was because of my daughter, and warned them that the next fashion craze coming their way was mix-n-match pony tails/pig tails. (The queen bee also had issues about brushing her hair.) I wasn’t invited to any more mom brunches.
She started in with the non-matching shoes last summer. The child is incredibly hard on flip-flops for some reason, and within a few weeks of getting a very sturdy and fairly expensive white pair, she had broken one of them. I foolishly bought her another pair (in a different color because they were out of white) which lasted her for about a month. As I lamented the demise of the second pair, she noticed that she had broken a different shoe in each and seized upon the idea of wearing the mismatched pair. The shoes were identical except for the color, so I decided there wasn’t any harm in it. I thought I might get more of my money’s worth out of them that way.
While shopping at the Goodwill this spring, she found two identical pairs of flats, one pink and one green. Seeing as they were only $2 each (significantly cheaper than the &^%$#@ flip-flops) I let her get them. So now she has TWO pairs of mismatched flats to go with the flip-flops.
Of such things are fashion icons made.
* “Seven Wonders,” by R. Garcia y Robertson, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Dec. 1995
W is for work
I need to finish an editing job for a client, so this will be my post for today. It feels a little like cheating, but I will be using the written language portion of my brain, and I will be writing comments and corrections and such. I just won’t be posting them here. Sorry. 😦
V is for vacillate…
…though that is not, strictly speaking, the subject of this post. I discovered a wonderful synonym for the word: tergiversate! (tuh-JIV-uh-sate or TUH-jiv-uh-sate) Not only is it fun to say, it has the most deliciously wicked meaning:
- to change sides or loyalties — become apostate
- to be evasive or ambiguous — to equivocate
Its Latin roots mean to turn back, but to me it calls to mind someone playing both sides against the middle, which seems more sinister than being either a double agent or someone who flip-flops.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use some form of this word in a written piece that does not exceed 300 words. Go!
(This post will self-destruct in 10 seconds.)
The Daily Compost 