Monthly Archives: April 2017

From the Archives: When Good Words Go Bad

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Note to Readers – Every now and then, I will re-post a blog entry that has withstood the test of time. Whether you missed it the first time ‘round or read it years ago, I feel it’s worth sharing again. I chose When Good Words Go Bad from July 20, 2014 because people are loudly debating the difference between what people are saying and what they really mean. The English language has always been fluid. We know what that is doing to political and public discourse today. Rules are different for authors. Here’s what they need to keep in mind with their writing.

William Shakespeare is considered by most literary historians and critics to be the best writer ever in the English language. The fact that his work has endured for four centuries supports the point. Yet Shakespeare is shunned by many readers once they graduate from school. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales? Beowulf (author unknown)? Fuggedaboutit! Some of the greatest literature of the English language seems written in a foreign language, with the same effect on readers that garlic breath has on lovers.

Readers don’t like to be stopped midsentence by a word so archaic that a trip to the dictionary becomes necessary. Even trickier is when a word is recognized but misinterpreted and one is left to question the author’s objective. You’ll find an example in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the troubled prince tells Ophelia, “Get thee to a nunnery!” Most readers interpret “nunnery” as a convent. In Elizabethan parlance, however, “nunnery” could also mean brothel. Shakespeare seems to leave it to the reader to decide Hamlet’s intention.

In today’s vernacular, we find words taking on opposite meanings from their original definitions. One example is “sick”, used to mean “awesome” (“bad” was the stand-in for “awesome” in the ‘80s, but “bad” is now back to being … bad). “The bomb” can be a disaster or a triumph. “Catfish” is something you would rather eat than have one eat you. Hurling “you bitch” is quite different from yelling “you’re my bitch”, although you probably don’t want to be at the receiving end of either phrase, unless you really are a female canine.

You can find more words that have taken on the opposite meaning of their original definition at Mental Floss.

Just as old words change over time, new words are invented every year that may send you to your cyber-dictionary if you haven’t kept up with cultural trends. Have you considered buying a “turducken” with a “bitcoin” lately? Using Twitter to Tweet no longer makes you a twit; now you are a “tweep”. Somehow, “fracking” sounds like an appropriate word for what we are doing to our planet to extract its petroleum resources.

English is an ever-evolving language. That’s its beauty and its challenge, both for authors and for readers. Like interior decorating or clothing fashion, what trends today in language may be outdated or obsolete by next year. Using trendy words to set a period piece is smart. Using trendy words in a timeless piece could end up smarting.

There’s no such thing as bad words; only bad writers (oh, what did she mean by that?).

For an entertaining take on our abuse of the English language, visit Weird Al Yankovich’s YouTube video.

From the Archives: Amusing Muses & Pet Projects

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Note to Readers – Every now and then, I will re-post a blog entry that has withstood the test of time. Whether you missed it the first time ‘round or read it years ago, I feel it’s worth sharing again. I chose to combine Amusing Muses from April 14, 2013 and Pet Projects from March 22, 2015 because social media is increasingly sharing the close relationships people have with their pets. These days, it seems we humans are getting along better with our pets than with people. This combined post is dedicated to that special bond.

Until one has loved an animal a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.— Anatole France

My daughter, Kenna, suggested I write about writers’ pets. The menagerie in our home has included Katje (my calico cat), Oliver (dwarf hotot rabbit), Tidus (betta fish), Arrow (English Pointer), Dusty (mini-lop), Mucki and Rosette (guinea pigs), Sunset and Triangle (goldfish). All have been amusing, but only one has been a muse for me, resulting in my prose poem, Katje Must Be Fed. My niece, Leisa, also has a variety of pets but it was her first pug that inspired her to write the children’s picture book, Pugsley’s Imagination.

Today, only Katje remains. Each pet’s loss was heartbreaking. The hardest were the euthanizations. I wish I could use the euphemism “put to sleep” but there is no awakening and the loss is permanent. Mercifully, holes in the heart eventually fill with memories. This post is dedicated to all our beloved animal companions, the lovely creatures that are the golden threads in the tapestry of our lives.

One is lucky to love an animal. One is lucky also to have limitless access to animals through great literature. We grow up on fairy tales populated by animals and continue to find them in some of the most enduring literature throughout our lives. Among the best and brightest stories involving animals are:

Fiction for All Ages
Black Beauty – Anna Sewell
Where the Red Fern Grows – Wilson Rawls
The Call of the Wild – Jack London
The Black Stallion – Walter Farley

Fiction for Adults
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Animal Farm – George Orwell
The Art of Racing in the Rain – Garth Stein

Non-Fiction
Marley and Me – John Grogan
All Creatures Great & Small – James Herriot
Seabiscuit: An American Legend – Laura Hillenbrand
Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds – Joy Adamson
Never Cry Wolf – Farley Mowat
The Eighty Dollar Champion – Elizabeth Letts
Last Chance Mustang – Mitchell Bornstein

Written For Young Children, Loved By Adults
Charlotte’s Webb – E.B. White
The Velveteen Rabbit – Margery Williams
The Tale of Peter Rabbit – Beatrix Potter
The Secret of NIMH – Seymour Reit
The Story of Ferdinand – Munro Leaf
Stellaluna – Janell Cannon
Make Way for Ducklings – Robert McCloskey

It’s not surprising that authors are inspired to write about animals. Most of them have had pets. Dogs have been favored by the likes of Steinbeck, Cheever, Doctorow, Vonnegut, Sendak, Wharton, Dorothy Parker, Stephen King, Virginia Wolf and Robert Penn Warren (who saluted Tolkien by naming his dog Frodo). Cats were companions to such literary luminaries as Twain, Dumas, Beckett, Huxley, Kerouac, Collette, Eliot, Plath, Sartre (his cat was Nothing) and Raymond Chandler (whose Persian purred while perched on his manuscripts as Chandler edited). Polar opposites Hemmingway and Capote owned both cats and dogs (the progeny of Hemingway’s famous six-toed cats still roam the Hemingway House & Museum in Key West, FL).

As far as I can tell, authors choose cats more often than dogs to share their lives. This may not be a matter of personalities (authors’ or species’) as much as it is a result of lifestyle. An author living in the countryside might like to take thoughtful walks with a canine companion while a city-dwelling author might view dog walking as stealing writing time. Cats tend to be more independent — or less needy — than dogs, depending on how you feel about felines vs. canines.

Then again, look at which authors have chosen dogs and which have chosen cats. Do you see any trends? And what can we imagine about writers with more “exotic” tastes in pets? Those would include some obvious ones such as Beatrix Potter (rabbit) and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (raccoon). But how do you explain Flannery O’Connor (peacocks) or Lord Byron (peacocks, crocodile, crow, heron, fox and bear — oh my!)?

To see photos of some famous writers with their pets, visit Photos of Famous Writers with their Pets.

I think I could always live with animals. The more you’re around people, the more you love animals. — Walt Whitman

The Write Path

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An Associated Press headline earlier this month caught my eye. It said, “Demand booming on college campuses for creative writing.” Reporter Michael Melia noted that while courses in the humanities have steadily lost students to science and technology, creative writing courses have seen a major jump at colleges across our country.

According to the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, an industry group based at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, only three schools offered bachelor’s degrees in creative writing in 1975; today, you can earn this degree at any one of 733 colleges. Between 2008 and 2013, the number of creative writing bachelor’s programs has grown steadily, but spiked from 161 to 592.

Why? Melia’s article offered a few possible explanations. They include a growing need among students for self-expression, both psychological and also cultural. David Galef, director of the creative writing program at Montclair State University in New Jersey, said “They’re interested in doing something they feel is creative.” Yale’s creative writing director, Richard Deming, credited social media which contributing to the interest, saying, “This act of expressing one’s voice in a public way — some people feel that they want to add craft, they want to hone those skills and take it to a place of more intensity.”

Of course, some students enrolled in creative writing courses want to become professional writers – in advertising, public relations or some other career that requires excellent writing skills. Other students view writing as a means for introspection and personal enrichment.

What concerns some professors is that the increase in creative writing programs is diluting what is offered while creating stiffer competition for those who want serious literature-based writing classes in order to further a career in the literary world. Melia stated, “In some English departments, the boom has created tension between creative writing and those who emphasize instruction of literature.”

English Professor Leslie Brisman, who has taught at Yale for nearly five decades, said “All over the country students are more interested in writing about themselves than they are in reading other people. We are in favor of creativity. We are not in favor of ignorance.” Unlike most colleges, Yale’s writing program requires that all courses include reading in contemporary work of the chosen genre. Despite this unusual requirement, the number of course offerings in creative writing has roughly doubled over the last five years at Yale to meet student demand.

Writing and reading are two sides of the same coin. Interest in one is usually echoed by appreciation of the other. Anything that leads people to expand awareness and understanding through literature is a very good thing. Regardless of what motivates students to enroll in creative writing classes and programs, it is encouraging to see an enthusiastic interest in learning to communicate more effectively… because, as becomes more evident daily, words do matter.

From the Archives: Taxing Times

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Note to Readers – Every now and then, I will re-post a blog entry that has withstood the test of time. Whether you missed it the first time ‘round or read it years ago, I feel it’s worth sharing again. I chose Taxing Times and Footnotes from April 12, 2015 because it’s nearly tax time and the ranks of self-published authors continues to swell. Here’s what you need to know.

Shakespeare had it wrong. Instead of “Beware the Ides of March,” it should be “Beware the Ides of April.” April showers may bring May flowers but April 15th brings tax time; that dreaded date when fear grips our emotions as Uncle Sam grips our wallets.

If you’re a self-published author, or are considering becoming one, you may be wondering what impact your literary endeavors may have on your income tax liability. Or maybe you haven’t even considered the impact. An oversight could cost you, whether you make money or not with your book.

I am not a tax advisor nor do I pretend to be. Tax laws leave me loopy. But there are some basic tax facts every author should be aware of. The first is that even disappointing sales of self-published writing can mean money in your pocket, instead of Uncle Sam’s, come tax time. That’s because the IRS has shifted its view of what constitutes a business versus just a hobby.

The IRS used to consider income-producing activity as a hobby unless it showed a net profit in three of the five most recent reporting years. Now, it wants you to succeed so it can tax your income later. The U.S. tax code permits entrepreneurs to offset the losses of one business from another income as a way to encourage new business.

As a self-published author, you may pay considerable money to editors, designers, printers, publicists and other services to publish and promote your book. Let’s say you spend $6,000 for those services and earn $2,500 in sales. In addition to offsetting your book income tax by $2,500 worth of your expenses, you could also reduce your other income tax by deducting the remaining $3,500 of expenses against your other job income.

The key is to demonstrate a serious intent to operate the new business at a profit; otherwise, it is a hobby. Steps to establish your business intent include setting up a website, printing business cards and promotional materials as well as marketing yourself and your book through social media. Consider establishing a business name and attending conferences. Learn the basic tax rules and follow them, keep your business records separate from your personal records, and don’t hesitate to hire experts for help; these are also legitimate tax deductions.

Depending on where you file your taxes and how you plan to sell your books, other steps you may decide to take include getting a local business license and applying for a resale certificate. You don’t necessarily need to incorporate but you will want to consult a tax accountant to see if you should establish a sole proprietorship business and obtain a Federal Employer Identification Number.

You don’t have to rush into any of these steps and may choose not to unless you see that your book finances reach $5,000 or more. But knowledge is power and could mean more money in your pocket to continue pursuing your literary dreams.

Your best resource to learn about the tax implications of your self-published book is a tax accountant but other resources include:

Book: Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook: The Step-by-Step Guide to the Legal Issues of Self-Publishing – Helen Sedwick
Blog article: Self-Published Author — Bowker
Setting up a DBA name.
Establishing a Federal Employer Identification Number.

When Fool’s Gold is Real

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What do Shakespeare and Disney have in common? Okay, all you pranksters, April Fool’s Day has passed. But it’s true that nearly every work by Shakespeare and Disney features a fool as an important character. Why?

In history, court jesters were recruited because of their witty foolishness. In literature, the fool became an archetypal character. The fool may be the wisest person in the room. It got me thinking how important fools are to great literature.

Although the fool injects levity into a situation, he or she (in Disney tales, the fool can even be an “it”, like a fish or a carpet) is often the truth teller. Presenting a ridiculous wardrobe and irreverent garbling – sometimes intentional, sometimes not — the fool can often say what others dare not. The fool may appear to be ridiculous or an idiot but represents liberation from the shackles of cultural rules and expectations.

French Renaissance writer François Rabelais’s description of Panurge, a recurring main character in several of his novels, encompasses many of a jester’s characteristics: “Irreverent, libertine, self-indulgent, witty, clever, roguish, he is the fool as court jester, the fool as companion, the fool as goad to the wise and challenge to the virtuous, the fool as critic of the world.”

Shakespeare populated even his heavy dramas, with fools. As Isaac Asimov comments in his Guide to Shakespeare, “That, of course, is the great secret of the successful fool – that he is no fool at all.” Some of Shakespeare’s fools include: Feste (Twelfth Night, or What You Will); Touchstone (As You Like It); The Gravediggers (Hamlet); Nick Bottom (who becomes an actual ass in A Midsummer Night’s Dream); The Fool (King Lear); Trinculo (The Tempest); and Falstaff (The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV).

The fool, in one form or another, has existed throughout the history of global literature. The Bible had its Wise Fool. Literature from Ancient Rome and China had their court jesters. Russia’s Leo Tolstoy wrote a short story titled Ivan the Fool.

In contemporary literature, the fool often has a mental or emotional condition that sets him or her apart from the norm but those differences make them endearing as well as honest. Familiar examples include: John Steinbeck’s Lenny (Of Mice and Men); Jerzy Kosinski’s Chance, the gardener (Being There); Winston Groom’s title character in Forrest Gump; and J.K. Rowling’s Luna Lovegood (the Harry Potter series).

In early literature, the fool always played a supporting role. In contemporary literature, the fool is often elevated to a main character. Either way, the fool is a ubiquitous presence in both classic and contemporary storytelling. The fool possesses some characteristic that evokes laughter, even as he (or she) enlightens. As Oscar Wilde said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

Ah, if only the fools we meet in real life would be more like the fools we meet in literature!