melinda hagenson

Pot Luck: Gimme a Head with Hair

August 24, 2013

melinda Pot Luck Aging gracefully 6 Comments

I tried a new hair conditioner a week and a half ago that promised to leave my hair smooth and sleek, soft and shiny.

It didn’t.

It left my hair looking like I’d rubbed a couple tablespoons of Crisco into it and left it there. It took me eight days and five kinds of shampoo, plus a sad little session with a bar of Irish Spring, to get it out.

My hair hasn’t been smooth and sleek in a long time. It used to be, but with age, alas, comes a coarser, wirier texture that rarely even looks brushed, much less soft and shiny. Nobody warns you about this, by the way. They warn you about all kinds of things that come with age, but not that one.

So I’m perpetually in search of a product that will give me the hair I used to have. The kind of hair that prompted people to tell me I should be doing hair product commercials on TV. The kind of hair that strangers in the grocery store would reach out and touch.

That hair is long gone. And it seems like the older I get, the more badly I want it back.

Come to think of it, I’d like the body back, too, and the face as well. I don’t feel any different on the inside from the person I was when I was twenty-one, so why should the outside look different? It’s a fresh shock every time I look in a mirror. And photographs are even worse. It was a couple of years ago that I saw a picture of a woman in my house and thought—Who is that lady? I literally had no idea who she was. And then I realized it was me.

That really happened. Terrible picture. And no, you don’t get to see it.

I looked at that picture and thought, Oh crap, I’m old! When did that happen?

(I suspect if you’re older than I am, you’re laughing at me. “Old” is always twenty years older than you currently are. But I know you’ve worn these shoes. You know exactly what I’m talking about here.)

Many of us spend a lot of time lamenting the passing of our “best years” and wishing we still looked like we used to.

But wait.

I am not the person I was when I was twenty-one. My sense of self is no different, which is why I don’t feel any different—but I’m not the same person.

At twenty-one, I hadn’t been to college yet. I certainly hadn’t started teaching yet. I hadn’t even had any kids yet. I was still living in the same house my mother bought when I was six, and I had no idea in the world that I would one day wind up living in Wisconsin or that I’d be so happily married to the man who shares my life today.

I had not, in fact, done or said or thought or seen any of the things I’ve done and said and thought and seen in the past thirty-plus years. I’ve done a lot of living in those years. A lot of laughing, and a lot of crying, too. That’s three-fifths of my life. And I want to erase them?

I had young hair, a young face, and a young body, yes, but also a young heart and a young mind and a young soul. And I don’t mean those last ones in a good way. I mean immature, inexperienced, untested, and at times, downright foolish.

Youth, as they say, is wasted on the young.

And you know what? I don’t want to erase those years. I don’t want to be that person again. So why would I want to look like her?

I don’t. Not really. To try to recapture the girl I was thirty-some years ago would be to try to turn back time. Stop the clock. And if you stop the clock, you don’t move forward—you stand still.

And meanwhile, everyone else is still moving forward, and you’re going to be left behind.

I don’t want to be left behind. I just want to find a good conditioner.

Because even though I now realize that these are the best years, and even though I don’t want to be that girl again, I do still want her hair.

WIP: (Re) Defining Progress

August 21, 2013

melinda WIP Progress, WIP Leave a comment

I apologize for missing Monday’s WIP post. The reason for my failure is pretty simple: WIP stands for Work in Progress, and I was feeling as if I had made so little progress over the course of the week that I just didn’t know what to write.

But really, in looking back at the week, I realize that once again, I was relying on a poorly-conceived definition of progress. If progress is defined only by word count, then it’s true that I made little progress this week. I did get a few new words here and there, but nothing like I’d been hoping to get, so it felt like very little progress.

However, if progress is defined simply as moving forward, then I think I should actually be pretty pleased with myself.

First, I spent some time reconsidering the novel’s arrangement. I’ve decided to go back to my original plan, which was to open with Aniela’s story and close with Josef’s, and in between, present the second- and third-generation stories in birth order. I spent much of this morning moving all of them (in a saved-as document, not an overwrite) and creating a new TOC. This led to some reconceptualizing, which led to a decision to include an additional chapter I hadn’t originally planned.

Then I rewrote the Foreword. I’m not sure at this point whether or not it will appear in the final draft of the novel, but for now, it’s there, and I like it, so for now, it’s staying.

And then I wrote a sort of prequel to Aniela’s story, based on an idea that came unexpectedly out of nowhere. Again, I’m not sure whether or not it will appear in the final version of the book, but it provides me with some interesting options.

I also spent time this week exploring the novel’s themes and making sure each of the stories is sufficiently focused on them. I’m hoping that this mid-course evaluation will put me in a position to write the remaining stories in a way that ties up any loose ends left by the others.

This “new” draft is almost ready to print out as a hard copy. I already know it will be one-sided, three-hole punched, and “bound” in a three-ring binder—no difficult decisions ahead of me this time.

It’s all coming together. I’m getting excited.

But I realize this isn’t the most enlightening of posts, so in an attempt to make up for my own failure, I’m sharing a link to the “For Writers” page on Ronlyn Domingue’s website. (Domingue is the author of The Mapmaker’s War and The Mercy of Thin Air. I haven’t read either one, but I did check out the reviews of Mercy. Wow.)

Anyway I hope you’ll find the “For Writers” page as valuable—that is, as informative and as inspiring—as I do.

Here’s to a great coming week with lots of progress, no matter how you define it!

Pot Luck: Moderating the Hummingbird Wars

August 17, 2013

melinda Pot Luck Bird feeder, Hummingbird, Nectar Leave a comment

I’m given to making the occasional unplanned purchase. You know how it is—you’re walking innocently along, pushing your shopping cart, when some end-cap display catches your eye and you think, “Hey, that’s just what I need!”

This happened to me last summer. It was a display of hummingbird feeders, on sale for five bucks. Such a deal.

So I bought one, along with a big bottle of bright-red specially-formulated commercially-produced hummingbird nectar (five more bucks).

Went home, took the feeder apart, washed it according to the manufacturer’s directions, filled it with the red stuff, hung it on a shepherd’s hook in the front yard, and went in the house to watch the birds flock to the new feeder.

Nobody came. Not one bird. A few days later, my husband found a dead one in the driveway.

I have no idea what happened, but I surmised that perhaps hummingbirds are better off avoiding bright-red specially-formulated commercially-produced hummingbird nectar. I poured it out, discarded the rest of the red stuff, washed the feeder, and found a recipe online for homemade hummingbird nectar.

It’s not hard. Four parts water, one part plain old regular granulated table sugar. Bring to a boil, cool, pour into feeder. No dye necessary.

The birds loved it. I don’t know what variety of hummingbirds they were (one of you can probably tell me based on the picture below), but for the rest of the summer, there were always two or three or even four of them hovering and fluttering around the feeder, politely waiting their turns. I could almost hear them:

“No, really! You go first!”

“After you, Fred.”

“My pleasure, old chap.”

“Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?”

OK, I made up that last part. Oh, wait, I mean, I made it all up.

But seriously, they were polite. They all got along just fine, and there was plenty to go around.

Alas, but that was last summer.

Things were going OK this summer, too, until a few weeks ago when a new hummingbird moved into the neighborhood. At first, I was really pleased—this one is a ruby-throated hummingbird (the only kind I can identify), and he’s breathtakingly beautiful.

Unfortunately, he’s also a selfish, boorish party-pooper, like the kind of neighbor who never bothers calling the cops when you have a party because he’s a vigilante who takes the law into his own hands and scares away all your friends.

Yep. This beautiful, much-revered ruby-throated hummingbird, his greens shining in rainbows like oil on water, sits on a twig near the feeder when he’s not even hungry and chases all the other hummingbirds away.

You can hear him buzzing at them. “MINE,” he’s saying, like the seagulls in Finding Nemo (“Mine! Mine! Mine!”), except they’re funny, and he’s not.

The polite hummingbirds never challenge him, even though they were here first. They just wait and come back when it looks like he’s not around. But even when he’s not sitting guard on his twig, he’s always somewhere nearby. They never get closer than about three feet from the feeder before the ruby-throated vigilante comes swooping in from who-knows-where like an insane dive bomber.

It became apparent that drastic action was necessary, but I didn’t know what to do. You can’t just put a feeder outside and then go running out there yelling, “SHOO!” every time you see the wrong bird. And I didn’t want to just take it down. When a selfish person is hogging all the goods, you don’t remove the goods so nobody else can get any either. You have to have a plan.

So I went out yesterday and bought a second feeder. Set it up clear across the yard from the first one.

I’m waiting to see what’s going to happen. Will the polite birds organize, maybe send a decoy to one feeder while the others feed at the other? Will the vigilante exhaust himself trying to guard both?

I don’t know. Whatever happens, it won’t be long before all the hummingbirds start heading south, and both feeders will go back in the cabinet until next spring. I just hope the polite birds get enough to eat before it’s time for them to leave.

UPDATE: I did a little checking this morning–and guess what? It looks like they’re ALL ruby-throated hummingbirds. The polite ones are female, and the vigilante is a male. If this is the case, I can’t help wondering–What is this dude thinking? That is so not the way to catch women!

Take a look here and see what you think!

GUMP: Demystifying the Semicolon

August 14, 2013

melinda GUMP Complex sentence, Compound sentence, Compound-complex sentence, Dependent clause, Independent clause, Semicolons, Simple sentence 4 Comments

Ah, the mysterious semicolon. I rarely see them in student papers at all, and when I do, alas, they’re rarely used correctly. Students tell me they avoid them because they don’t know how to use them.

So today I’m going to face the mystery head-on.

First, the basics: You need to be able to identify independent and dependent clauses. These are the basic building blocks of all sentences.

What is an independent clause? It’s a group of words that constitute, and can stand alone as, a complete sentence. An independent clause has a subject and a verb, but no internal punctuation. For example:

I like cats.

He is extremely handsome.

The most important thing to remember about being in a relationship is that you have to be friends.

As you can see, the length of the independent clause is irrelevant. (<– This sentence is not an independent clause. Why? Because it contains a comma. As I just said, independent clauses do not contain any internal punctuation.)

OK, then what’s a dependent clause? As you might have guessed, dependent clauses are dependent. Because they lack either a subject or a verb, or both, they are thus known as sentence fragments, and you should generally avoid using them as stand-alone sentences. (There are stylistic exceptions to this rule, but you have to know the rule before you can break it. I break it quite frequently myself. The first sentence of this blog post is a fragment, but that doesn’t mean all fragments work well as sentences.)

Here are some dependent clauses:

In the rain.

Although I wanted to.

The shirt.

Running really fast.

Each of these is missing either a subject or a verb, so none of them is a complete sentence—that is, none of them is independent. Fragments work fine in day-to-day conversation, but in written English, they’re generally regarded as one of the Three Grievous Errors and should therefore be avoided.

OK. As I said above, independent clauses and dependent clauses are the building blocks from which sentences are built. If you can identify what’s dependent and what’s independent, you’ve got the basics of the whole written world at your fingertips.

So into the whole written world we go.

There are four basic types of sentences. Yep, that’s right—only four. Every single grammatically-correct declarative sentence you have ever seen is one of these four basic types.

Here they are:

IC. Simple sentence: one independent clause standing alone; no internal punctuation
IC; IC. Compound sentence: independent clauses separated by semicolons; no dependent clauses, no commas
DC, IC. Complex sentence: any number of dependent clause(s) in any combination with ONE independent clause; uses at least one comma, but no semicolons
IC; DC, IC. Compound-complex sentence: any number and any combination of BOTH dependent and independent clauses, using BOTH comma(s) and semicolon(s)

You will note that although there are only FOUR basic sentence types, TWO of them use semicolons. This means that if you don’t use semicolons, you’re limiting your use of language by roughly 50%.

But if you can identify dependent and independent clauses, then based on this little list, you now know everything you need to know to use semicolons correctly, and you can expand your range to 100%.

You can make any sentence in the world using a combination of ICs and DCs. All you have to remember is a couple of very simple rules:

All grammatically correct sentences must contain at least one IC.
If you have two or more ICs in a sentence, you need to put semicolons in between them.

You can tell me right now whether or not the following sentences are grammatically correct:

IC, IC, DC. Correct? Or not? (Not. I’ve put two ICs together without a semicolon. This is a comma splice, sometimes called a fused sentence, and it’s the second of the Three Grievous Errors. This is never OK.)

DC, DC, IC, DC; DC, IC, DC; IC, DC, DC. Correct? Or not? (Yes! The sentence contains three ICs, but each is separated from the others by semicolons. Semicolons are awesome.)

IC IC. Correct? No. This is a run-on sentence, the third of the Three Grievous Errors, and like the comma splice, it should also always be avoided. In real time, this would read something like this:

I love cats they are so funny.

IC, IC. Correct? No. Two ICs can’t live in the same sentence without a semicolon. What I’ve given you here is another comma splice. In real life, it looks like this:

I love cats, they are so funny.

Here’s a little practice for you. See what you can make with these models:

IC. (Simple)
IC, DC. (Complex)
DC, DC, DC, IC. (Complex)
IC; IC. (Compound)
IC; DC, IC. (Compound-complex)

Here are mine:

IC. My cats make me laugh.
IC, DC. Dogs are great companions, but I can’t live without a cat in the house.
DC, DC, DC, IC. Even when I’m grumpy, sick, or overworked, my cats can always cheer me up.
IC; IC. I’ve had cats all my life; I could never name a favorite.
IC; DC, IC. Every cat has its own personality; contrary to popular opinion, most of them are not remotely aloof.

I should mention that there are other uses of the semicolon as well; for instance, they’re necessary in lists, where commas exist within the list. One super-simple example of such usage would be a sentence like this: “I went to Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California; and Tampa, Florida.”

So now you’ve got all the basics of semicolon use. Aren’t you dying to show off your skills? Go ahead. Give those models a shot. I’d love to see some of your responses in the comments!

WIP: Out of My Mind(s)

August 12, 2013

melinda WIP Creative writing, Imagination, Inner Editor, Muse, Wallace Stevens, WIP, Writers Resources, Writing Leave a comment

I had a professor in college who was amazed that it was possible for Wallace Stevens, arguably one of the best American poets of the twentieth century, to have worked for an insurance company by day. “An insurance company! Probably the most unimaginative, un-poetic career on the planet!”

(We can split hairs here if we choose, since Stevens was actually an attorney who eventually wound up as vice president of The Hartford, but the point is well taken. No offense meant to anyone who actually works for an insurance company, though, since I know firsthand that such jobs can be fascinating.)

Nevertheless.

Regardless of what he did for a living, Wallace Stevens the poet was fascinated with the workings of the imagination. In “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” he writes,

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds. (lines 4-6)

I’m not going to get into an analysis of the poem, but I thought of those lines tonight as I was pondering the differences between academic writing and creative writing, and the two minds that produce them. A fellow writer, to whom I had jotted a note saying her work ethic and word-count successes had inspired me, wrote back and said, “You’re a writing teacher! I bow to you!”

I got a giggle out of that. Please . . please . . don’t bow to me. I don’t deserve it.

I’m not sure what Stevens was actually referring to with his “three minds” –and I’m not going to get into Freudian theory or Taoist possibilities here—but I am going to guess, simply because he was a writer, that I know what two of them were, because writers in general are of two minds: the “Me” and the “Muse.”

That is to say, the mind of the conscious writer (aka one’s “Me,” the Left Brain, the logical side, driven by one’s Inner Editor) and the mind of the subconscious writer (aka one’s Muse, the Right Brain, the creative side, driven—one hopes, anyway—by one’s imagination).

Stevens may have been an insurance agent (or a lawyer or a vice president or whatever) during his working hours, but outside of work, he was a poet. And his fascination with the imagination—where ideas come from—is something that turns up in a lot of his work.

In “Study of Two Pears,” he was frustrated because no matter how he tried to metaphorize them, they stubbornly remained pears:

They are not viols,

Nudes or bottles.

They resemble nothing else. (lines 1-3)

I would argue that when he wrote that poem, his Me was in control. But when he wrote (the much later) “Someone Puts a Pineapple Together,” his Muse could barely be contained:

These lozenges are nailed-up lattices.

The owl sits humped. It has a hundred eyes.

The title tells the story: He didn’t even know who was writing it. That’s how the Muse works.

I understand that.

My “Me” is a well-organized sort of person, at least where her work ethic is concerned. For instance, she likes to have all her ducks neatly in a row before the semester begins. I could tell you, right this second, precisely what my classes will be doing on any random day you pick during the coming fall semester. November 6^th? Yep, it’s already planned.

But that’s work. And it works fine for academic writing as well, where one must be linear and methodical.

In contrast, as a creative writer, I’m a pantser, which means I tend to write by the seat of my pants, i.e. with a minimum of planning. This is because my creative writing—my fiction—is driven by, and on good days is mostly written by, my Muse, and my Muse does. Not. Like. Planning.

Anything.

When I go back and read material I wrote yesterday, I’ll be able to tell you, with no trouble at all, whether my Muse was at work, or my Me. My Me tends to be pedantic and detail-oriented. My Me insists on explaining things, and she’s also overly fond of Telling, rather than Showing. She Tells every single boring detail she can think of. A character pours a cup of coffee, puts the pot back where it belongs, walks to the door, turns the knob, opens it, steps outside, closes it . . . You get the idea.

Yawn.

My Muse, on the other hand, leaps all over the place like a dragonfly or a hummingbird. Zip, zip, zip. When she’s off and running, it’s all my fingers can do to keep up. Stories go in directions I’d never thought of before, much less planned. Characters take on lives of their own.

Trouble is, she isn’t all that reliable at showing up for work.

One of my toughest jobs as a writer is to learn to get in contact with my Muse, to convince her that when I place my fingers on the keyboard, that’s a cue for her to show up and get down to business. But this week, for instance, she’s been off zipping around somewhere else and has barely stopped by even to say hello.

I’ve been told that it’s only after you get the first draft down that you should let your Me step in and do any editing. I’m just now beginning to understand the reasoning behind that rule. There are two very different minds at work. The Muse gets the draft down. It’s spotty and flawed and it makes my Inner Editor cringe. But she’ll get her turn too.

Eventually.

Assuming I don’t lose my mind.

Pot Luck: Stargazing

August 10, 2013

melinda Pot Luck Perseid, Skyline Ranch, Summer Camp 4 Comments

The luckiest kids get to go to a summer camp they love.

I was a lucky kid. My camp? Skyline Ranch Day Camp, in Topanga, CA.

The kids were divided into groups by gender and age, with a counselor for each. Every morning, our counselor would receive the day’s schedule—it changed every day—and we’d be running off to whatever our first activity would be. There was plenty to do: trampoline, archery, BB guns, swimming, horseback riding, arts and crafts, hiking. We’d throw ourselves into each activity for half an hour, then run at top speed to the next one.

Sometimes horseback riding or swimming would go for a full hour. Calloo, callay!

Sometimes there were field trips: Busch Gardens, Disneyland, ice skating, fossil hunts, the beach.

Camp was never boring. Ever.

And once a month, there’d be a weekend overnight event. Bud, the camp’s owner and head honcho, would break out the barbecue (a massive homemade affair fashioned from half a fifty gallon drum with half an acre of diamond-shaped steel mesh grill surface), and cook hamburgers and hot dogs for everyone—everyone consisting of what seemed like a hundred assorted kids and counselors. No idea what else we ate, but man, those burgers were good. The big kids got to sleep on the flat roof of the Arts and Crafts building. You had to be ten, as I recall, to be considered a Big Kid.

The year I was eleven is the one I remember best.

Two of my girlfriends and I, and two boys, twin brothers whose names I don’t recall, arranged our sleeping bags in a circle and lay there on the asphalt shingle looking at the sky. Talked about our lives, where we lived, what our dreams were. And then—

“Look!” said one. “A falling star!”

“Another!”

The sky was alive with meteors. It seemed like hundreds. None of us had ever seen anything like it. Some of us were sure it was the magical quality of that particular night; others thought every summer night was like this, and we had just never noticed before.

It was neither. It was the Perseid meteor shower, an annual event courtesy of the Earth’s passage through the trail of the comet Swift-Tuttle. But we didn’t know any of that. We just knew it was cool. I wish now that our counselors had known, that they had advertised it as a night of stargazing, had grasped a fabulous teaching and learning opportunity. But maybe they just didn’t know.

It was many years before I ever heard the phrase “Perseid meteor shower,” and even more before I connected it to that magical night when I was eleven, when the world was still so wondrous and new.

This weekend is the anniversary of that magical night more than forty years ago, and tonight is the peak viewing night. You can expect in the neighborhood of seventy meteors an hour, all over the sky, best viewed between midnight and dawn.

Honestly, you should go out and take a look. Go someplace dark, away from the lights of the city, and take a sleeping bag. Take people you love to talk to, or go alone.

Talk about your life and your dreams.

If you wish on a falling star, your wish just might come true.

You can click here for more on the Perseids and other meteor showers to watch for this year.

GUMP: LAY vs. LIE

August 7, 2013

melinda GUMP English language, English usage, Grammar, Lay vs. Lie 4 Comments

I did EFFECT vs. AFFECT last week, thinking someone had requested it. I’m sure someone did, though I can’t seem to find any evidence of it. But a reader definitely did ask me to do LAY vs. LIE, so I thought I’d take a shot today at minimizing the confusion about that one.

(Minimize, not eliminate.)

The thing with LAY vs. LIE, as with several of the other “mix-ups” I’ve addressed in the past couple of weeks, is that a great many English speakers don’t have a built-in “that doesn’t feel right” sensor for it, and even those who do often don’t know which one to use. The result is that a whole lot of people just sort of use whichever one pops into their heads.

Don’t do that. You need a system.

As I pointed out last week, the primary source of the confusion with EFFECT and AFFECT is that both words can be used both as nouns and as verbs. So I’ll start with good news: Although LAY and LIE are also used both as nouns and as verbs, the problem exists ONLY in their verb form.

LIE can be a noun, as in, “You’re not telling the truth! That’s a LIE!”

And LAY can be a noun as well, as in, “I’m trying to figure out the LAY of the land.”

Nobody confuses these. Nobody. The problem isn’t with the noun versions. It’s the verbs.

LAY is a transitive verb. What does that mean? It means it takes a direct object. What does that mean? It means you can’t just LAY DOWN when you have a headache. If you do, you’ve chosen the wrong word.

You have to LAY SOMETHING. That is, LAY is a verb you have to do TO something.

(You can snicker all you want, but by definition, a mnemonic is something that helps you remember things. If you can remember that you need to LAY something, it’s working.)

If you have a headache, you can LAY your head on a nice, soft, down pillow, but you can’t just LAY down.

Hey, I didn’t make the rules . . I’m just trying to explain them. Nobody said English was easy.

OK, so that’s LAY.

In contrast, LIE is an intransitive verb, which by definition CANNOT take a direct object.

Example: My dog loves to LIE in the sun. (Not LAY in the sun.)

I like to LIE in the sun myself, when it’s warm enough. People in California are probably LYING in the sun even as I write this. Me, I’m wearing a nice, thick sweatshirt right now.

When it warms up and I go out to LIE in the sun, I will probably LAY a towel on the ground first.

Note the direct object after LAY (the towel).

If you’re thinking you have a pretty good handle on the difference, pat yourself on the back. But don’t get too smug, because I’m not done yet.

Why?

Because that’s all in the present tense. And the past tense of LIE . . is LAY.

Sorry. You can roll your eyes if you want to. I’ll wait.

OK.

The past tense of LIE is LAY, and the past tense of LAY is LAID.

The good news is that the direct object rule still holds.

After I went swimming yesterday, I LAID my towel on the ground and LAY down on it to soak up a little sun.

If you can keep your eye on the direct object, it will all come together.

No lie.

WIP: Working at a Snail’s Pace

August 6, 2013

melinda WIP Holly Lisle, How to Think Sideways, HTTS, Muse, WIP, Writing 4 Comments

This week’s been a bit of a struggle, WIP-wise. I guess that’s what I get for being so smug about last week’s accomplishments.

My deal with myself is supposed to be that I will write every day—write new material without getting lost in revision and without scooting off into Google-land every time I have a question. The deal is supposed to be “No research, no planning, no revision, just writing.”

But I didn’t do so well on that this week. I did a lot of revision. I did a lot of planning. And I spent a heck of a lot of time in Google-land. But actual writing of new material, not so much. Only four days of actual writing for a total of less than 2500 words for the whole week. I console myself with the knowledge that I did work on a different story every day, and that most of that work was actually pretty useful.

Writing-wise, the first draft of Eddie’s story is now finished, and I’m truly happy with it. It was for this story that I spent all that time in Google-land (it’s set in Belgium during WW2), but the time spent was well worth it. The story wound up taking a couple of twists I wasn’t expecting (don’t you love when that happens?), and they set up some great potential for Chatón’s (his daughter’s) story, which up until this week I had barely even begun to think about. Now I can’t wait for her name to come up!

Planning: I did scene cards (a Holly Lisle tactic that my Muse usually balks at) for Emma’s story. Emma’s and Chatón’s stories are the only two I haven’t even begun drafting yet, and this is the second time Emma’s has come up in the past couple of weeks. Last time, I did a lot of character and story development, and now, with the scene cards, I think I’ve reached a point where the next time it comes up, I should be able to pound out a good couple thousand words on it–or maybe even get the whole draft done, who knows? I’m really excited about this one, too.

I also got some revising done on Amelia’s and Tanna’s stories this week, but not as much as I would have liked. Amelia’s in particular needs some serious cutting. So now that my Muse has decided she’s willing to do the scene card thing, I think I’ll go back and re-plot Amelia’s story and see what can come out and what just needs tightening.

And finally, John’s story underwent some serious re-conceptualizing this week based on another of Holly’s methods, the Shadow Room, which provided me with a couple of surprising conflicts I hadn’t originally planned on. Those are going to be fun to write, too.

So all in all, it looks like I’m still on track to have the novel’s entire first draft completed by September 15, as planned. I may be working at a snail’s pace, but slow and steady wins the race.

Looks like it’s been a pretty productive week after all!

Pot Luck: The Weight of the World

August 2, 2013

melinda Pot Luck Discrimination, Obesity, Overweight Leave a comment

A curvy friend shared a meme on Facebook the other day that said, “Curvy girls are just as beautiful as skinny girls. You know what that also means? It means skinny girls are just as beautiful as curvy girls. Don’t bash one to lift the other up.”

My initial response was to agree. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and all that. Our definition of beauty is skewed by the increasingly insidious belief—which has become an expectation—that thinner is better. But there are plenty of very beautiful women who happen to be heavy, just like there are plenty of thin women who happen to be less physically attractive than some of those beautiful curvy ones. Weight should not be the deciding factor when measuring physical beauty. But it too often is.

The weight-challenged have pretty much always been targets. Our society is quick to judge, and these days, it seems judgment is passed even more quickly than it used to be on those of us afflicted, for whatever reason, with overweight issues.

Yes, I said us. I am among those who are classified as obese. I currently weigh close to twice as much as I did when I was twenty-one. Well, OK, not quite, but plenty close enough.

And no, I’m not happy about it.

I’ve done Weight Watchers. Had great success with it. The first time, I lost thirty pounds. The second time, forty-five. But I weigh more now than I did when I started the program either time.

I bought a treadmill. I honestly thought I would use it. I don’t.

Meanwhile, as I avoid fighting the battle that I know must be fought for my health, I also avoid posting recent pictures of myself on Facebook, and when I do post something recent, I make sure my body isn’t visible. (Since I know you’re wondering, I’ll come clean and tell you that the picture on the “About” page on this blog is only fairly recent, having been taken in 2009, which was fifteen or twenty pounds ago.)

Why do I do that? Because being fat is BAD. I’ve internalized the cultural expectation, just the same as almost everyone else has, and I know, or at the very least I fear, that I will be judged. When I see recent pictures of myself, I can’t help using them to judge my value as a human being, and thus I have an unfortunate but not altogether unreasonable concern that others will do the same. A woman’s value as a human being, in today’s culture, is inversely proportional to how much she weighs.

So for all of these reasons, I was initially inclined to agree with the message implied in the meme my friend posted. To cheer, even. Yes! Yes! Fat people are just as valuable as thin people!

Ah . . . but reality intrudes. We aren’t. We should be, yes, certainly–but in general terms, we aren’t. Neither in society’s eyes, nor in our own, specifically because of the way we’re viewed by society. Society has pretty much determined who all the valuable people are, and who is more valuable than whom. Men more than women. Rich more than poor. White more than black. Young more than old. Thin more than fat.

I’m not saying that’s what I personally believe. I’m saying that’s how society is.

And that was when the second part of the meme jumped out at me: “Don’t bash one to lift the other up.”

We don’t just do this where obesity is concerned. We do it all over the place. This need for superiority is the foundation of all prejudice and discrimination. All racism, all sexism, all ageism. All the -isms.

“Don’t bash one to lift the other up.” Thin and fat, white and black, old and young, rich and poor, “legal” and “illegal,” educated and uneducated, gay and straight, blue collar and white collar, Christians and Muslims and Jews and atheists and every other group in between—I’m talking to you.

You’re not superior.

But–and this is a big but, if you’ll forgive the pun–you are also not inferior.

You’re just human.

Is it human nature to want to be better than others? To bring one group down, humiliate them, show their real or imagined deficiencies, in order to raise our own status, both in our own eyes and in others’?

Because that’s what we do. I love ads that show husbands changing diapers and washing dishes and doing other traditionally “female” household jobs, and ads that show both women and men in nontraditional professional settings . . . but all these ads in the past few years that make men out to be fools? Not so much. If one group feels it necessary to humiliate another—for example, if women feel it necessary to bring men’s status down in order to raise their own status up—then the implication is that one group IS beneath the other. The purpose should be to position ourselves BESIDE each other (neither above nor below).

Don’t bash one to lift the other up.

We’re all in this together.

GUMP: Effect and Affect

August 1, 2013

melinda GUMP Effect and Affect, English usage, Grammar, mix-ups Leave a comment

Last week I was sidetracked by the pedagogical uses of my earlier dew point post, but this week I’m back on track with the common mix-ups. A reader asked for a clarification of EFFECT and AFFECT, and I promised to provide one, and I haven’t forgotten. So without more ado, let’s jump into it.

You may have seen the EFFECT/AFFECT problem addressed elsewhere. Or anyway, I’ve seen more than one Facebook meme that does so. These explanations usually oversimplify the issue by simply saying that EFFECT is a noun, and AFFECT is a verb.

This is wrong. If it were this simple, most people wouldn’t struggle with these words. Some still would, of course, but I feel pretty confident in saying that most wouldn’t. I have a suspicion that the people who try to oversimplify it have one of four possible motives. Either

1) They’re lazy, or

2) They’re unaware of the real differences, or

3) They’re not confident in their ability to explain the real differences, or

4) They assume their readers are not bright enough to understand the real differences.

I honestly don’t believe it’s #1 or #2. If it were #1, they wouldn’t bother trying at all. And if it’s #2, they’re in the wrong business. Seriously.

So I figure it’s got to be either #3 or #4. If it’s #3, then again, they shouldn’t be trying at all. IMO, of course. The very least they should do is qualify it and say that MOST of the time, EFFECT is a noun and AFFECT is a verb. At least that would be accurate.

So I’m left with #4. And I find that insulting, and so should you. It’s arrogant. A writer should have confidence in the intelligence of her audience. And a writer should tell the truth.

And the truth is, it CAN be confusing, and it’s NOT that simple.

But I DO have confidence in people’s ability to understand the REAL differences, so without further ado, here they are.

For starters, BOTH words can be (and are used as) both nouns and verbs.

This is why they’re confusing. Period. So let’s try to relieve some of the confusion.

1A. EFFECT is most often used as a noun. Examples:

What is the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds?
In many parts of the San Fernando Valley, the physical and psychological effects of the 1994 Northridge earthquake are still evident.
One effect of the earthquake was a pervading feeling of terror among local residents.

In all of these cases, EFFECT is a noun. It means RESULT. You can try substituting RESULT (or RESULTS), and you should be good to go. One RESULT of the earthquake was . . . . (See? It makes sense!)

Another test is to try inserting an article in front of the word. If you can say THE EFFECT or AN EFFECT, you’re on the right track. You can’t add an article to a verb; if you do, you’ve turned it into a noun (in “the RUN for the presidency,” RUN is a noun, not a verb).

1B. EFFECT is also often used as a verb, and this is where a lot of the confusion arises. As a verb, it means to bring about. Examples:

The chairperson was hoping her new team would be able to effect a change in protocol.
One of the foundation’s primary goals is to effect a better understanding of male and female behavior.

TESTS: I can think of three ways to check for correct usage of EFFECT as a verb:

You’ll notice that in both of the above examples, EFFECT is preceded by TO. This is because EFFECT, when used as a verb, is often used in its infinitive form. You can try inserting the infinitive (TO EFFECT) and see if it makes sense in your sentence.
Try substituting TO BRING ABOUT. (The chairperson was hoping her new team would be able to bring about a change in protocol.)
EFFECT can also be tested by adding ING, which creates a gerund (ex. “Effecting change is one of the candidate’s primary purposes in seeking political office”). You cannot add ING to a noun.

2A. AFFECT is most often used as a verb, and it can be used two ways. Again, this causes confusion.

First, it means to have an influence on. Examples:

The gloomy weather negatively affects (has a negative influence on) my mood.
A teacher’s demeanor in the classroom can often affect student success rates. (It can also HAVE AN EFFECT ON student success rates. Do you see the difference? The first example (can affect) is a verb. The second one (has an effect on) is a noun.)

Second, it means to adopt. Example:

In order to impress people at the party with her sophistication, she affected a British accent.

2B. AFFECT is rarely used as a noun, at least not in day-to-day conversation. My thesaurus doesn’t even offer suggestions for AFFECT as a noun, but it basically means attitude or appearance. It’s also sometimes used in psychology to indicate an emotional state, but honestly, this usage (as a noun) is very probably not where you’re experiencing your confusion.

Example: I had a heck of a time coming up with any. Let’s go with this one:

The patient’s affect was one of anxiety and exhaustion.

FYI: When AFFECT is used as a noun, the stress is on the first syllable (AF-fect). Hear the pronunciation here: http://www.merriam-webster.com/audio.php?file=affect01&word=affect&text=%5C%3Cspan%20class%3D%22unicode%22%3E%CB%88%3C%2Fspan%3Ea-%3Cspan%20class%3D%22unicode%22%3E%CB%8C%3C%2Fspan%3Efekt%5C

I’m going to close this post with a little quiz so you can test yourself:

1. I wasn’t sure how my new medication was going to (effect, affect) me.

2. I was worried about the potentially negative (effects, affects) of my new medication.

3. I hope this post helps to (effect, affect) a better understanding of the uses of EFFECT and AFFECT.

Wait for it . . .

Oh, you want the answers?

Waaaaait for it . . . . . .

Ah, here they are.

Answers: 1. Affect. 2. Effects. 3. Effect.

How did you do?

melinda hagenson

Pot Luck: Gimme a Head with Hair

WIP: (Re) Defining Progress

Pot Luck: Moderating the Hummingbird Wars

GUMP: Demystifying the Semicolon

WIP: Out of My Mind(s)

Pot Luck: Stargazing

GUMP: LAY vs. LIE

WIP: Working at a Snail’s Pace

Pot Luck: The Weight of the World

GUMP: Effect and Affect

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