I went to college, but I learned to write by reading and writing.
– Daniel Pinkwater
Month: November 2011
haiku 191
warm November day –
can’t miss
with the flyswatter
Pen to Paper: Apostrophes
We all know what an apostrophe is, but I see them misused daily. Although I don’t imagine that most of my readers need it, here is a basic primer on how to use apostrophes. Send the link to someone you care about who needs it. (Or maybe to someone you despise who needs it.)
Fiction: Exposed
The problem in dealing with scum, Cable thought unhappily, is that they force you down to their nasty level. He looked at the former grocery store where he was to meet the informer. A neon sign announced that he had arrived at the Show-Off Gentleman’s Club.
Now there’s an oxymoron, he groused to himself. No gentleman would get within fifty feet of this place. But I have to go in; it’s my job.
Quotable 79
Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don’t get all writerly: “He opened the door.” There, it’s open.
– Amy Hempel
haiku 190
truck’s bed piled high –
on the ground
pink plush bunny
Pen to Paper: Now, What Shall I Call This?
Titles: either they come to you in a flash or you struggle with them for perhaps longer than it took to write the story.
The title is the first point of contact with a potential reader, which makes it pretty important. It’s got to catch your attention sufficiently that you read the first paragraph. After that, the story has to sell itself.
B.W. Clough and David Steffen offer some helpful hints on giving your story just the right title with examples of things that work and things that don’t.
Even the best writers have title trouble. Some of Shakespeare’s titles wouldn’t leap off the shelf at me: Two Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, All’s Well that Ends Well (why bother, then?), Much Ado About Nothing (ditto). He did much better with The Tempest and The Taming of the Shrew.
Other top writers have also had difficulty creating titles to match their works. Here’s a list, compiled by Emily Temple, of famous books that began life with different names than we know them by. One she missed for Gone With the Wind was Mules in Horses’ Harnesses.
Occupy: A New Purpose for Catsignal
You see the new category here at Catsignal: Occupy.
Since I first relaunched Catsignal as a place to share my writing, I have been almost relentlessly apolitical. By and large, I have restricted my occasional political or social observations to my stories because this is a writing blog, and that is a time-honored method of bringing concerns to people’s attention.
That has changed. The unconscionable attacks against peaceful protestors in the Occupy Movement, the use of riot police, pepper spray, batons, beanbag and rubber projectiles against American citizens who are exercising their First Amendment “right of the people peaceably to assemble, to petition their government for a redress of grievances” cannot be ignored.
Catsignal is not going to become the go-to source for all your Occupy Movement news; this remains, first and foremost, a writing blog. But I will repeat – for the sake of doing what I can from the hinterlands of a red state – word of the outrages so that you, too, may be outraged. That you, too, will speak out. That you, too, will do what you can where you are to make a difference.
“Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you. Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth.”
– Edward Yashinsky
Occupy: More Violence, Wall Street Scheming
More news from the burgeoning police state. (With thanks to the good people at BoingBoing for their coverage.)
The chancellor of the University of California at Davis called on police to remove peaceful protestors – students, faculty, a former poet laureate of the United States – from the campus. The police gleefully did their work with their batons and all the pepper spray they could muster.
Nathan Brown, an assistant professor in the Department of English at UC Davis, has written to the chancellor demanding that she resign. It’s a powerful letter that I’m sure will have no effect on the chancellor’s stunted conscience, but it may well prove to be be a springboard toward her removal. (Update: Here’s the chancellor’s response, to wit: I’m so sorry this terrible thing happened, but it’s their fault for breaking the rules.)
Meanwhile, back on Wall Street, a Washington, DC, lobbying firm sent a memo to one of its clients, the American Banking Association, outlining a plan to discredit the Occupy Movement. The memo clearly demonstrates that the 1% is terrified of Occupy’s political power, which is a pretty impressive admission since the movement is constantly pummeled for “not having a clear agenda.” Story and video here, PDF of the memo here.
And New York’s billionaire mayor, not content with evicting the protestors from the park where they had set up shop, had the OWS library destroyed in the process. I hardly need to add my own outrage here for my fellow word lovers.
The 1% is fighting back with egregious force, and they will continue to do so. Historically, this marks the beginning of the downfall of the dictators. Even those who disagree with the Occupy Movement cannot possibly (I hope) approve of the Nazi-style tactics being used on peaceful citizens. Of course, I could be wrong, and then the Constitution is just words on paper.
“Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete.”
– Rod Serling, “The Obsolete Man,” The Twilight Zone
Fiction: The Last Reunion of the Capper Gang
As the day wore on and the chloroform wore off, Silas Capper regained consciousness. He wanted to rub the bump on his head but found he couldn’t move his hands. He shook his head to clear it and felt something around his neck that brought him fully awake.
He opened his eyes and looked down to see three former associates standing near the horse he sat atop. This forced a great bellow of laughter from Silas.
“Well, now! Haven’t the three of you gone to some kind of trouble for this reunion. I’d been thinking just last month that it’d been too long since I’d seen any of you. And now, here we are, with me on my horse, hands tied behind my back, the guest of honor at a necktie party. You sure gone and arranged quite a meeting, I’ll say!”
Capper’s former associates – Juan, Luther, and Beak – stared up at him silently.
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