Armless and Legless

Our wonderful interwebs are full of blogs and writing websites that showcase an endless procession of writing advice and tips. We’ve discussed the pros and cons here on Indies Unlimited many times, so I don’t want to go over old ground. While planning the content of this post in the quiet small hours, however, it seemed like a good idea at the time to take a slightly skewed, bizarro-world look at writing tips using our trusty list format. Now, it seems… well, slightly stupid. But since I didn’t have a backup, here it is, anyway: a new kind of list. Twenty Five Writing Tips That Probably Suck. Seriously, though, I’m not wasting anyone’s time: loosely hidden within this apparent drivel are some actual decent tips, once they’re extricated and unpacked. You’ll see.

1. Understatement is absolutely essential. Without it, you’re dead in the water. In fact, there’s no hope whatsoever.

2. Avoid semicolons; they’re just not necessary.

3. The complete avoidance of passive clauses is very much advised by me.

4. Weather ewe think your aloud two ore knot … always rely on you’re spellchecker.

5. Eschew ostentatious verbosity, and exhibit an overall predisposition toward a paucity of embellishment.

6. Eighty-six dialect unless yer lugholes are mint, yo.

7. If you inject opinion, I think you should be struck from the author’s list, skewered on a buck elk’s rack during rutting season, and parboiled in liquefied hamster entrails.

8. Over-explaining can lead to a kind of paralysis on the part of the reader, during which their mental processes become overloaded and, in a classic demonstration of diminishing returns, become less able to absorb the full import of your writing, which behooves you to restrict exposition to a minimum, when all is said and done.

9. Entre nous, while foreign languages are awesome, au courant bon mots may appear excessive if they become de rigeur, and may even invite schadenfreude, so caveat emptor, and try to avoid this type of mea culpa or faux pas, comprende?

10. Omit, pare and cull entirely redundant, superfluous and needless words.

11. Pay great attention, to how you use punctuation.

12. As I once thought-spoke to that gelatinous glob of alien protoplasm from Arcturus over a pint of fermented gerbil spleens, write what you know!

13. Do not use commas, to bracket phrases, that are essential to a sentence’s meaning.

14. Never let someone else edit edit your own work; it’s you’re baby, and besides, you don’t know wear they’ve been.

15. Stop!! Think about the overuse of exclamation points!!

16. Make hay while the iron’s hot and don’t mix your metaphors.

17. My impression is that it’s probably not the best idea to be sort of vague about stuff.

18. Make sure your grammar works good.

19. Always finish what you

20. Do not construct gobsmackingly awkward adverbs.

21. Do not misuse apostrophe’s.

22. In dialogue, be sure the reader knows who’s speaking, said the Dalai Lama.

23. Avoid tired clichés like the plague. When you notice one in your writing, hone in on your target and deep six it with extreme prejudice.

24. A while back, right over there someplace, I was talking to some guy about this one: be specific with details.

25. As Orwell once said, only to immediately break his own rule: “never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” George, dude, you were awesome and stuff, but isn’t “figure of speech” itself a, um, figure of speech?

I kid, of course. Orwell knew what he was talking about. Otherwise, how else would he have teamed up with that Rickenbacker dude to invent popcorn? And now, as a treat for wading through my inanities, here’s another guy who actually knew what he was talking about, so much so that he once said “When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.” Exactly. Now he’s the type of guy you need to listen to. Not me, him. Sadism and cockroaches notwithstanding.

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on June 1st, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Well Defined? Nevermind

Writers. We write. And our tools are words. So, while contemplating this week’s blog post, I had the brilliant idea of writing about words and their definitions, using… words and their definitions. It’s almost perfect. If by “perfect” I mean “utterly confusing and almost entirely pointless.” So, anyway, a couple years ago, The New York Times compiled a list of the 50 words most likely to stump their own readers. Amazingly, “defenestrate” was not among them (if it had been, I would have defined it as “To demonstrate a specialty fencing technique often used to remove the fins of albacore tuna”). Unhelpfully, perhaps, they neglected to include definitions. Which is where I come in. Don’t get me wrong—this being the internet which, like nature, abhors a vacuum—somebody already came along and performed this admirable service, but I’m going to go one better. I will proceed to pick 13 of the 50 words, more or less at random, and provide not one but two definitions, one of which is the correct one and one which I made up out of whole cloth for no other reason than to be extremely annoying. And if you’re just as bored as me (woah, Cobain flash), you can follow along and expose me for the consummate liar I am. And since I’m also most likely stealing this whole idea from a board game or something, I’m a liar and a thief (lookit, another Cobain flash).

1. Nascent.

a) The act of saying no to the wearing of artificial fragrance. Smells like teen spirit? Uh-uh. Not a chance when we’re being all nascent.
b) Just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential.

2. Hubris.

a) Excessive pride.
b) A type of cheese rendered from human fat. Illegal in most countries.

3. Jejune.

a) While reciting the months of the year, “jejune” is the act of stammering inexplicably over the summer months (see also, “Jejuly”).
b) Naïve, simple.

4. Profligacy.

a) Reckless extravagance; wastefulness.
b) The entire body of work left by an academic.

5. Austerity.

a) Sternness or severity of manner or attitude.
b) The quality of an upside down gaze, chiefly Aus. Was coined during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics by tourists attempting to capture the peculiar way Australians stared at them and their touristy Northern Hemisphere ways.

6. Solipsistic.

a) The slightly desperate and certainly reckless act of slipping your own sister a sedative to shut her up after a long day of her pointing out how badly you suck at life.
b) The view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist.

7. Redoubtable.

a) Formidable, esp. as an opponent.
b) Something so ludicrously implausible that you will not only doubt it, but you will return and doubt it again.

8. Obstreperous.

a) Noisy and difficult to control.
b) Behaviour typical of a gynaecologist with a throat infection.

9. Sanguine.

a) A flightless bird from Antarctica that has been officially sanctified by the Vatican.
b) Optimistic or hopeful, especially in a bad situation.

10. Egregious.

a) Outstandingly bad; shocking.
b) An online lobbying group for men named Greg.

11. Polemicist.

a) A drug store employee native to Poland.
b) A person skilled in verbal or written attacks.

12. Hegemony.

a) Leadership or dominance of one country over another.
b) The unit of currency used in small hedgehog economies.

13. Feckless.

a) Lacking initiative or strength of character.
b) The baffling inability to use profanity in the country of Ireland.

I hope this was an enjoyable exercise for you all. Personally, since puns make me physically ill, I found it excruciating, but in the last words of someone who keeps spookily hijacking my post from beyond the grave: peace, love, empathy (the latter meaning “an illness brought on by exposure to the letter ‘m’”).

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on May 25, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

From Minds Profound

"Innocent of what?" © Unforgiven (1992)Previous articles on Indies Unlimited have established that writing rules are far from absolute, that they are best interpreted more as guides than anything binding. But far more effective than a plainly stated rule is the aphorism, that memorable quote that both entertains and teaches… something. I keep a running list of quotes in general, but those pertaining to writing have pride of place, and they can alternately act as impetus or inspiration when you’re flagging, as an alarm bell when you’re off track, as a way to stay humble when you become overinflated, or simply as a way to laugh at yourself when you happen to forget how absurd you are. I present to you my Top Twenty Awesome Writing Quotes, mostly written by other writers, but remember: whatever germ of a lesson they contain, it’s not a rule, okay?

20. “I once asked this literary agent what kind of writing paid the best.  He said, ‘Ransom notes.’” Get Shorty (1995) – Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman)

Money? I vaguely remember that stuff. It’s green, I think. I swear, incidentally, that Gene Hackman gets some of the most gleefully brilliant lines in Hollywood. As Sheriff Daggett in Unforgiven, after being told he’d just beat the daylights out of an innocent man, he got to say this: “Innocent? Innocent of what?” To which there is quite simply no conceivable answer.

19. “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.” – Richard Bach

He wrote about a seagull. He said this. Succinct is this guy’s middle name. Or wait, isn’t it “Livingston”? No. No, that was the seagull.

18. “It is impossible to discourage the real writers – they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write.” – Sinclair Lewis

It’s not a job, it’s a calling. Like the urge to use the bathroom. If you feel that, Lewis is talking about you. The writing thing, not the bathroom thing.

17. “If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start writing something and the ideas will come. You have to turn the faucet on before the water starts to flow.” – Louis L’Amour

What might have been a fairly ordinary, common sense platitude is rescued—like when the guy with the poncho and the sandblown crowsfeet rides into town—by a startlingly apt metaphor.

16. “I’ve been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can’t remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.” – Anton Chekhov

Um, only take the bad reviews to heart? No, that’s not what Chekhov’s saying here at all. I’m not really sure what he’s saying, but it made me laugh anyway. Odd. I don’t remember him being this funny in Star Trek.

15. “You must write your first draft with your heart.  You rewrite with your head.  The first key to writing is to write, not to think!” Finding Forrester (2000) – William Forrester (Sean Connery)

You won’t go too far wrong if you remember this, while simultaneously forgetting Sean Connery ever starred in this clunky embarrassment of a movie.

14. “I’m all in favour of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.” – Frank Lloyd Wright

Okay, it’s dated, but it’s too good to exclude on that basis. If you must, substitute “laptops” for the last word.

13. “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” – Isaac Asimov

He means it, too. You can just tell.

12. “There’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but ­essentially you’re on your own. ­Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.” – Margaret Atwood

Well, that told us. Wait, I didn’t know that about the pension plan…

10. “To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music the words make.” – Truman Capote

Included here because I agree one hundred per cent. You don’t have to, but it’s my list.

9. “If you can’t annoy somebody with what you write, I think there’s little point in writing.” – Kingsley Amis

Put more strongly than I’d put it, but then again, Amis was by all accounts a class one melonfarmer. I’ve always said, however, that you sure can’t worry about offending people when you write. Unless you’re aiming for anodyne, that is.

8. “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning and took out a comma. In the afternoon, I put it back in.” – Oscar Wilde

The sad part is, I get this. I know this. And I’ll bet you do too. I’ll also bet Wilde was tempted to remove that damn comma again by nightfall.

7. “What creates a writer is huge, psychological dysfunction.” – Kathy Lette

Well, we’ve hinted at it here, before. Kathy Lette, however, just comes right out and says it. And it’s kind of a horrible relief. Like when Asimov’s doctor up there delivers the bad news.

6. “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” – Gene Fowler

Easy, you say? Anyone else detect the sarcasm here?

5. “Poets need not go to Niagara to write about the force of falling water.” – Robert Frost

Worth remembering. An antidote to “write what you know”. There’s a reason we have an imagination. But it takes a poet to say it so memorably and so well.

4. “Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett

And you thought Richard Bach was succinct? Also, why isn’t the word “succinct” only one syllable?

3. “The King died and then the Queen died. That is a story. The King died and then the Queen died of grief. That is a plot.” – E M Forster

Brilliant. Since I like this kind of thing so much, I will throw in a bonus 3.b.: “The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.” – John le Carré

2. “Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents and everyone is writing a book.” – Cicero, circa 43 BC

All I know from this is that things don’t change all that much and that Cicero would probably have a catastrophic mental breakdown if he lived today.

1. “Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” – Flannery O’Connor

Ha ha. That one’s a stand alone. Flannery sure doesn’t need me to expand on it. Not that any of them do, really. But I had to write a blog post, so I have. Enjoy.

Or, as Dorothy Parker (who clearly didn’t have Text Edit handy) once said: “I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.”

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on May 18, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Hot And Fresh Out The Kitchen

Editing. Not a concept that fills most writers with joy. For many, it’s the unpleasant yet necessary shadow accompanying the act of writing itself, sort of how a painful rash can follow a good… um, hike through poison ivy. And I see why many of us feel that way, I really do. Or I did. Lately, along with extra wrinkles around my eyes and greyer hair at my temples (okay, not just my temples, but we don’t need to get all TMI, do we?), I’ve begun to appreciate editing for what it is. I’m not talking about the editing I do for others, necessarily, although I could be. No, I’m referring more to my own process in that regard. Something dawned on me: I’m starting to enjoy it. Now, either I am growing more masochistic than I ever believed possible, or my new realisation has actual substance. Again, for TMI-avoidance purposes, let’s go with the latter.

Here, I’ll just say it: editing is an integral part of the creative process and isn’t really qualitatively different from writing. What we tend to call “writing” is in fact “initial drafting” and what we often think of as “editing” is just a deeper form of “writing”. Every bit as creative, and potentially just as satisfying. At its best, it’s the layers of paint over the pencil sketch. I realise there may be folks reading this who are kind of looking askance at me and thinking “no, duh, did you just receive your first clue via a Wells Fargo stagecoach?”, and to those people I hold up my hands, guilty as charged: what others have perhaps known for a goodly while genuinely occurred to me, like, yesterday. Look, I’m a slow learner, okay, but at least I’m a learner.

So, what do I mean? Well, the best way to get something across is to demonstrate it, to literally show and not tell (don’t hurt me, Linton). So, I’ll write a quick draft of a fabricated passage from a non-existent fantasy novel, here:

The men rode up the hill, the army of trolls behind them. They paused at the top and looked across a burning landscape, the distant city sending smoke high in the grey sky. Everything seemed hopeless. Ear’o'korn faced his men. “This is the moment. All paths have led to this. We must defeat our enemy or perish. Prepare the last stand of Condomia!” Stirred, the men renewed their faith and turned toward their pursuers, ready for battle again and prepared to fight to the last man for the Good and the Righteous.

Okay, I wrote that literally without pausing or second-guessing, which is how most of us either write or are told to write. In other words, bring on the heavy editing artillery long after the first draft, never during it. So, imagine I’m done my draft and am now returning to the passage in question for the first time. And I’m so not kidding, this part is fun. Either that, or I’m an incorrigible word nerd. Hmmm. Yeah, probably the latter. Oh, I should point out there is no one perfect way to edit such a passage; in fact, the possibilities are probably close to infinite, so don’t attack my somewhat exaggerated style or you’ll be missing the point (he says, covering his butt far too glibly).

Here’s one way:

The men rode to the summit of the hill… I prefer this as it negates the need for “at the top” in the next sentence …the troll army following. Again, it feels more efficient and works better rhythmically. Pausing amid a cloud of dust… This engages the senses, adds verisimilitude …they looked out across a ravaged landscape, at the burned forests and the columns of smoke rising from the distant city. A little more description, just enough to conjure a scene, but allowing the reader to fill in some of the detail of what a ravaged landscape looks like. Dismay and horror crossed their faces like shadows. This isn’t great, but it’s still better visually than “everything seemed hopeless”. You could probably lose one of “dismay” or “horror” if you wanted it tighter. Raising his voice, Ear’o'korn spoke. “Faced his men” is too Hollywood, too inorganic, he’s in the middle of a disorganized, demoralized party of weary soldiers, after all, not giving a fresh battle speech at the outset of a conflict. “Men, this is our moment to defeat despair. We have arrived here together, having traveled many paths. Two choices now remain: vanquish… we used “defeat” far too recently, and it has a nice balance alongside the upcoming “perish” …our enemy or perish in the attempt. In the name of all that’s good, for the sake of all we hold dear, prepare the last stand of Condomia! Fight as the brothers we are!” Sometimes we add words, sometimes we eliminate them. This is an example in which the passage requires more length, his speech needing to fit the “high speech” mold of epic fantasy, and rather than tell the readers his men were moved by it, we allow the words themselves to do the job, bolstered by a simple description afterward. As he spoke, the soldiers grew taller in the saddle, slowly turning their horses to face their pursuers. Jaws set, weapons raised, they roared in unison, each man welcoming the final charge, the possibility of his own death. Now, again, this isn’t perfect or even great, but you get the idea that each time we lay down another layer or another shade of paint, we hope to improve the bigger picture. Of course, this leads to another huge question outside the purview of this post: when do you stop? If you daub too many layers, you end up with a muddy, sloppy mess of words and a ruined picture. Anyway, for comparison purposes, I’ll paste the edited version here.

The men rode to the summit of the hill, the troll army following. Pausing amid a cloud of dust, they looked out across a ravaged landscape, at the burned forests and the columns of smoke rising from the distant city. Dismay and horror crossed their faces like shadows. Raising his voice, Ear’o'korn spoke. “Men, this is our moment to defeat despair. We have arrived here together, having traveled many paths. Two choices now remain: vanquish our enemy or perish in the attempt. In the name of all that’s good, for the sake of all we hold dear, prepare the last stand of Condomia! Fight as the brothers we are!” As he spoke, the soldiers grew taller in the saddle, slowly turning their horses to face their pursuers. Jaws set, weapons raised, they roared in unison, each man welcoming the final charge, the possibility of his own death.

Yeah, okay, still needs work. I kind of cheated, too, as this type of writing is almost built on cliché, so I didn’t have to worry too much about that aspect, at least. But hopefully you get my bigger point, that this is writing every bit as creative and enjoyable as that first rough sketch, perhaps more so. That it’s all part of the larger process. It’s work, but it’s also play.

Once again, an analogy from my other favourite art form—music—rides in like Ear’o'korn to rescue us at the death. Far from being drudgery, what we term editing is really a re-working, is in fact not so much an edit as a remix. And as such, it can be truly radical. If you’re still skeptical, go track down R. Kelly’s original “Ignition”, then listen to “Ignition: Remix”. Clue: one is possibly the greatest song of the new Millennium, and the other… uh, isn’t.

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A version of this post appeared on Indies Unlimited on May 11, 2012. David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.

Flash Fiction Contest

Should have blogged about this a lot sooner, but last week I won the Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Contest for a second time. The premise was a comic one, involving a caveman named Og and a deer or two, and it was an opportunity to write something very different. So I grasped the deer by both antlers and went for the funny bone. Apparently it was just funny enough to win. The thing is, aside from the feeling of pride you get from winning a fiction contest—itself reward enough—the winning stories will be anthologized at year's end, so it's a worthwhile stab at a form of immortality alongside some other excellent writers. Anyway, without further ado, here's Og's story:

© K.S. BrooksOg Hunts

by David Antrobus

Og lonely. Wish had friend.

Wait. Deer! Og move slow, get close to deer. Drum inside chest pounding. Breathe slow. Jump up and throw rock. Og miss, but deer not run away. No. Deer run toward. Head down. Og surprised. Catches Og’s loincloth with pointy head spears. Tries to shake Og off. Can’t. Og’s teeth and bones hurt. Deer panics, runs into water. Og breathing water. Og scared. Notices log. Tries to grab it. Not log. Log with teeth. Log bites deer on leg and starts to spin. Og spins too. Loincloth rips. Og naked. But Og free. Deer not so lucky. But here come other logs with teeth. Fight over deer. Og doesn’t think. Og wishes Og thinks more. Og grabs bloody part of deer and runs, heads for cave. Thinks tribe will like him again now. Make friends. Piece of deer is almost deer.

Arrive at cave. Tribe home. Og smiles. Tribe look at Og naked and laugh. But then not laugh. Tribe look over Og’s shoulder. Og and bleeding deer gut trail been followed by big cat with mouth spears. Tribe scream. Run. Big cat with mouth spears eat two of tribe, Glug and Grog. Tribe sad.

Next day, Og lonelier. Og hunting far away. Very far. No rocks this time. Sunburn in bad place.

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David Antrobus also writes for Indies Unlimited and BlergPop. Be sure to check out his work there if you like what you read here.