Different Opinions

Last night, I had 3,500 words (about 15 typewritten pages) of my latest work in progress critiqued.  Eight different writers read my work, and the comments were generally favorable.

The interesting parts were the places where they disagreed.  Not just sections that some readers liked and some readers hated.  No, what's interesting is where readers drew wildly different conclusions from the same paragraph.

For example, in one section, the protagonist (a homeless youth) slips a five-dollar bill out of the wallet of a drunk, hung-over lawyer.  Then he goes and buys donuts and milk and brings them back so both of them can have breakfast.

Some readers didn't like the fact that the protagonist stole money, even though he spent part of it on breakfast for both of them.

Another reader felt that the fact that the protagonist only stole five dollars (when there was more in the wallet) showed the protagonist's depth of character.

But this work takes place in 1963.  Five dollars went a long way back then.  You could buy an entire sit-down meal in 1963 for a dollar, let alone a few donuts and a bottle of milk.

What I'd intended to show was that the protagonist stole enough money that he'd have several dollars left over, even after he purchased breakfast.  He knew he had to deal with this lawyer when the man sobered up, and he didn't want to alienate him by emptying his wallet.

Ah, well.  That reader was too young to have known what prices were like in 1963.  I was a child back then, but I remember getting a five-spot most years for Christmas or my birthday.  When comic books were only 12 cents each, a fiver could buy a lot of comic books!

The Only Writer I Know....

Photo by Liars Club member Don Lafferty

At today's monthly meeting of Philadelphia-area writers - an event known as the Writers Coffeehouse - local writer Jonathan Maberry announced that he and his wife are leaving the area to move to San Diego.

Now Jonathan (in the above photo, he's the big bearded guy sitting underneath the red-and-gray poster of The Sound and the Fury) is the driving force behind the Writers Coffeehouse.  They grew out of meetings he started, and he chairs them better than anyone else.  He's not the only one who does so, of course.  The Writers Coffeehouse meetings are the responsibility of a group of professional writers called the Liars Club of Philadelphia.

But the meetings won't be the same without Jonathan.

And he's an inspiration to the rest of us.  He writes 10,000 words a day.  He comes out with three novels a year.  Most of the professional writes I know need a second income to survive.  But Jonathan is not only a full-time writer, but he the only writer I know who makes a good living at it.

I consider him a mentor.  Earlier today, when I mentioned that I'd been offered the chance to do a movie novelization for $2,000, he told me, "Tony, Tony, Tony.  Don't work for that kind of money.  You can't make a living at it."  He's right.


So we're all going to miss not seeing Jonathan once a month.  Our loss is San Diego's gain.

If you're interested in his work, please visit his website.

Two of his recent books are pictured below.  I've read them both, and they're a lot of fun.

Perks

Almost 30 years ago, I heard someone ask Czeslaw Milosz, "What's the best thing about winning the 1980 Nobel Prize for Literature?"  Milosz, who taught at the University of California at Berkeley, said it was getting his name on a parking space at the university!

Today I listened to the show "Science Friday" on WHYY-FM.  The host, Ira Flatow, asked guest Saul Perlmutter what was the best thing about being co-winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physics.  Perlmutter, who also teaches at UC Berkeley, said essentially the same thing as Czeslaw Milosz: the best thing about being a Nobel Laureate was that he got a personal parking space in the middle of the campus!

Apparently the parking in Berkeley hasn't improved in the past 30 years.

Where There's Smoke....

I'm driving South through Brookhaven, PA.  Suddenly, fire engines and emergency vehicles appear behind me.  I pull over and let them pass.

Traffic is usually two lanes each way on this stretch of Edgemont Avenue - plus a central turning lane.  It was evidently built for just four lanes, so it's very tight.

Evidently, the emergency vehicles are blocking two or three lanes ahead, because traffic is down to a slowly-moving line.  But eventually I get up to where the fire trucks are, at the intersection of Edgemont Avenue and Brookhaven Road.

And the fire...is in...the smoke shop!  The big Rebel Indian Smoke Shop on the corner.

I assume that qualifies as irony.

Be Prepared

It was 89 degrees Fahrenheit in Philadelphia today.  That's 27 degrees above normal, a record. 

So, do you think it's time yet to take the snow shovel out of the trunk of my car?

Opening Day

Our first game of the season: Atlanta Braves 7, Philadelphia Phillies 5. 

One day into the season and we're already in the cellar. 

Sigh.  Yeah, that sounds about right.

My Say

There was an interesting article in the Sunday Review section of today's New York Times.  (At least, it should be interesting to writers and linguists.)

Henry Hitchings wrote the article, titled "Those Irritating Verbs-as-Nouns."  In it, he notes the trend towards using verbs and adjectives in place of nouns.  The term for this is nominalization.

Examples include "I have a solve" in place of "I have a solution," and "That was an epic fail" instead of "They failed to an epic degree."

Of course, this process has been going on as long as the English language has existed.  As Hitchings points out, "ask" has been used as a noun for a thousand years, although we often add a modifier, like "the big ask."  I seem to recall several characters in James Clavell's Noble House (published 1981) referring to "the ask" - in this case, was part of a debt that the founder of the Noble House had incurred over a hundred years previously.

And how many newspaper or magazine columns have you seen titled "My Say" or "Having My Say"?

Just another tool for writers.  If nothing else, you can use it to make one character's speech different from that of another character.