Writing in the Voice of Me

Guest post from Tilia Klebenov Jacobs 

“My book is about, um, me.  Is that okay?”

This is the question I get most often when I teach novel-writing classes.  And I say go for it, because every novelist is a memoirist and every memoirist is a novelist.  Even the most earnest nonfiction writer must of necessity apply a little fiction here and there, if only because she probably wasn’t taking notes on that watershed conversation thirty years ago.  By contrast, the novelist can create a completely fictional character, but as often as not writes about himself.  Far from being a cop-out, this can add richness to one’s prose.

Consider this experiment.  Think of three novels you have enjoyed.  Now compare the protagonist with the author.

Suzanne Vale, the main character of Postcards From the Edge, is a movie star with substance abuse issues.  Big ones.  Much like those of the author, Carrie Fisher.  When Fisher discovered she was bipolar, she wrote a sequel, The Best Awful There Is, in which we find Vale struggling with bipolar disorder.  By this time Vale has a daughter and an ex-husband.  Like Fisher.

A.A. Milne, who wrote the Winnie the Pooh stories, is not a stuffed bear; but his son Christopher Robin had a bear named Edward, which he renamed “Winnie-the-Pooh” after a bear in the London Zoo.  He also had Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, and Kanga.  The original toys are on display at the New York Public Library.  When Christopher Robin was a boy, the Milne family used to vacation at the Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest, which served as the inspiration for the illustrations for the books.

Valid reasons exist for making your main character an awful lot like you.  The first is believability:  You already know how this person walks and talks, and the fact that she is allergic to Belgian endive.  This puts you a hundred yards down the track when the starting gun goes off, because it means your main character is already a flesh-and-blood person, not a cardboard cutout.

Furthermore, writing about you helps with job- or avocation-related authenticity.  If you are a wedding photographer and so is your book’s hero, you can include all sorts of little details to impress your readers.  Of course, you can do that with research, too, and research is a mighty fine thing.  But there is no substitute for the depth of knowledge that comes from personal experience.

Finally, starting with yourself is a good way to avoid clichés and plot pitfalls.  I remember being in a workshop and critiquing a manuscript whose main character had just done something so catatonically stupid that it wasn’t believable.  The leader, a very successful writer and teacher, made this suggestion:  If you find you’ve written yourself into a corner, ask yourself, “What would I do?” Then have your character do it.  So if you personally would never run back into that zombie-racked mansion that happens to be on fire at the moment, let your character run like hell.  It will spare your readers untold eye-roll moments.

I am happy to admit that the protagonist of Wrong Place, Wrong Time looks and acts an awful lot like me.  She’s married and has the same number of kids that I do.  She’s smart and funny, and she knows how to fight.  I can imagine her living next door to me.  Or in the same house.  My goal was to write a thriller with a familiar, believable heroine at its heart, an ordinary person struggling in an extraordinary situation.  Thinking about myself in the story helped a lot.

So you want to write about you?  Go for it!  Embrace the familiar.  You’ll be glad you did.

About the Author

Writer Tilia Klebenov Jacobs has won numerous awards for her fiction and nonfiction work. Her writing has appeared in The Jewish Magazine and anthologies including Phoenix Rising: Collected Papers on Harry Potter (2008, Narrate Conferences Inc.) and The Chalk Circle (Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, 2012), a collection of intercultural essays. Her latest release, Wrong Place, Wrong Time was designated IndieReader Approved and the book won honorable mention for the 2010 Joanna Catherine Scott Novel Excerpt Prize.

For the past 12 years, Jacobs has lived in near Boston, Mass. with her husband, two children and their two standard poodles. In addition to teaching writing at several state prisons in Massachusetts, she has been a guest blogger for Jungle Red Writers, Femmes Fatales and author Terri Giuliano Long’s website. Tilia is a judge in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition and will be in San Francisco for the awards ceremony March 30.

5 Staggering Love Poems to Inspire

We can thank poets for transferring love from heart to pen to paper. Romantic poetry resurfaces during engagements, weddings, and Valentine’s Day, when we’re prompted to ponder what love is, how we value it, and how we express it. Is our love best expressed by candy, cards, and flowers? These poets seem to think not. Turn to the experts for inspiration from these five staggering love poems that tap into the heart of true romance; there’s a poem for the lonely hearts this Valentine’s Day, too. Read on to sate your craving for sweetness without the candy.

“i carry your heart with me (i carry it in)” by e. e. cummings

With this poem, Cummings captures the all-encompassing feeling of being in love. It’s the kind of love that follows you everywhere and exists deep within. This is what true romantics yearn for.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart) i am never without it(anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)

“It Is Here” by Harold Pinter

This brief but nonetheless staggering love poem by Pinter has the effect of taking the reader’s breath away in the last three lines. We rise in anticipation of what the writer is asking about and delight in the beautifully written moment of a shared breath upon first meeting. Ah, love.

What sound was that? I turn away, into the shaking room. What was that sound that came on in the dark? What is this maze of life it leaves us in? What is this stance we take, to turn away, and then turn back? What did we hear? It was the breath we took when we first met. Listen. It is here.

“Annabel Lee” by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe’s poem is uber-romantic because of when it was written—it was his last poem before he died and is purportedly about his wife Virginia. Their love was stronger than the power of heaven and hell, which is saying a lot.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we— Of many far wiser than we— And neither the angels in Heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee

“Touch” by Thom Gunn

Gunn beautifully illustrates the intimacy of touch in the domestic setting of being in bed with someone (with a cat there, too). The word love isn’t mentioned, but warmth and closeness can be felt from the words. The relatability of this is due, in part, to the anonymity of the subject of the poem. Is it a woman, a man? It doesn’t matter.

Meanwhile and slowly I feel a is it my own warmth surfacing or the ferment of your whole body that in darkness beneath the cover is stealing bit by bit to break down that chill.

“Love After Love” by Derek Walcott

If you’re mending a broken heart this Valentine’s Day, take refuge in Walcott’s poem “Love After Love.” It’s about loving oneself again by turning inward and reflecting.

You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.”

Concluding our ode to romantic poetry is a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke about what it really means to love:

To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

Perhaps this is why these poets dedicated their work to the subject, proving love is worth more than candy, cards, and flowers.

Now that you’re feeling inspired about love, what are your favorite lines of romantic poetry?

Gist or Jist?

• Gist means “essence” or “the main point.”
• In a legal context, gist is the grounds of a legal action.
• Jist is a common misspelling of gist.

---

If you’ve only heard the word gist aloud, you might not know how to spell it. Both gist and jist might seem like good choices, but one of them is not.

Definition of Gist

When we say we want to get the gist of something, we’re talking about its essence or main point:

We got the gist of his argument in the first two minutes, but then we had to listen while he droned on for another half hour.

You can spare me the details and just give me the gist of the conversation.

In legal contexts, gist refers to the grounds on which a legal action rests. This meaning is closer to the origin of the word gist. It was borrowed from Anglo-French in the early eighteenth century. The phrase it was commonly used in was cest action gist, which means “this action lies.”

Gist or Jist: Which is Correct?

The only correct way of spelling gist is with a g. It’s not uncommon to see it misspelled with a j, but no matter how often jist might pop up, it is not the correct way to spell gist.

Examples

These results were partially linked to sensation seeking, but more fully explained by Fuzzy Trace Theory — the notion that people process information in both a verbatim (quantitative) and gist (qualitative) fashion.

Science Daily

He advised his fans to read “good books” and keep the gist of wisdom of the book they read.

Gulf Today

What Is a Collective Noun?

A collective noun is a word or phrase that refers to a group of people or things as one entity. One common error that arises from using collective nouns is subject-verb disagreement: writers often become confused about whether to treat a collective noun as singular or plural. While collective nouns are mostly treated as singular, there are exceptions.

Collective nouns represent more than one person or thing in a class. It isn’t possible to have just one lion in a pride, and a single flower does not make a bouquet. Thus, a collective noun always describes a plurality of one kind or another.

This mental image of “multiple” sometimes causes us to choose the wrong verb tense with a collective noun.

The choir are singing to a sold-out hall for the third time in a row. They are performing A German Requiem by Brahms tonight.

The choir is singing to a sold-out hall for the third time in a row. It is performing A German Requiem by Brahms tonight.

From the example above, we can see that the choir, though composed of many people, is a singular unit. One can assume that they will perform the Brahms requiem as one. It is possible that each singer will start the piece and proceed according to his or her own speed, resulting in a cacophony. But that would be unlikely. That is why our choir uses the singular verb is rather than the plural verb are. It is also why the choir takes the pronoun it rather than they.

The past tense affords a wonderful respite from this subject-verb agreement problem. We get this break because in the past tense, first-person and third-person verb forms are the same.

The singer was singing to a sold-out hall for the third time in a row.

The choir was singing to a sold-out hall for the third time in a row.

Are Collective Nouns Singular or Plural?

The team is or are? The audience is or are? There are times when we use collective nouns that would normally require a singular verb, but because of the context in which they are used, a plural verb fits better. This happens when members of the group stop acting as a cohesive unit and begin acting as individuals.

Today, the committee decides the fate of John’s proposal.

In this example, the collective noun “committee” is a group that has a unified purpose today: deciding the fate of John’s proposal.

John’s proposal is so unusual that the committee are scratching their heads and furtively glancing at each other in surprise.

In this example, the committee are acting as individuals; it is extremely unlikely that they are scratching their heads and glancing at each other in unison, like an odd game of Simon Says. Therefore, the committee now gets the plural verb “are.”

Similar decisions must be made when we write about animals.

The herd is grazing quietly in the meadow.

Now that they have seen the wolf, the herd are bolting off in all directions.

The act that is performed as a unit gets a singular verb, while the other gets a plural one.

It is interesting to note that when a decision needs to be made about whether a collective noun is singular or plural and the answer is ambiguous, American English will almost always default to a singular verb, while British English writers will often choose a plural. At the top of the list of contentious collective nouns is family.

My family is predominantly blond-haired.

(American English)

My family are predominantly blond-haired.

(British English)

Some Collective Nouns That Are Always Singular or Plural

Everyone, everybody, no one, and nobody are always singular.

Everyone are entitled to an opinion.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion.

No one want to hear John’s crazy ideas for waste recycling.

No one wants to hear John’s crazy ideas for waste recycling.

For reasons that can only be explained by tradition, “police,” when used as a collective noun, is always plural in both American and British English.

Police are investigating a suspicious death on Reaper Street.

The Grammar Police plan to arrest three individuals involved in a subject-verb disagreement.

However illogical it may seem, “police force” is singular—again, traditionally speaking.

The Toronto police force is exquisitely disciplined.

Collective Nouns for People and Animals

Collective nouns for groups of people, fish, and other animals are diverse and numerous, and each term comes with its own fascinating history. Many terms for groups of animals were first recorded in The Book of St. Albans, published in 1486, and their use flourished among hunters. The terms for groups of people are equally interesting. For instance, did you know that according to Merriam-Webster, the term “a panel of experts” evolved from pannelus, a diminutive Latin word for a piece of cloth, and that this term was once used to describe pieces of parchment on which jury lists were written?

Such collective nouns have such individual origins that there is no way to learn them all except to look them up. Three cheers for the internet!

How Language Represents Color

Every language represents colors with different words. Linguists have found some interesting patterns in how colors are represented in language. Let’s look at some of their most intriguing findings.

Predictable Sets of Colors

All languages distinguish colors. However, some languages represent colors in only two basic groups. Linguists found that all languages that have only two color distinctions base them on black (or dark) and white (or light). If a language has a third color family, it is almost always based on red. Languages with four color groups label either yellow or green as the fourth. Next come blue, brown, and so on. Interestingly, how languages identify color doesn’t seem to be random. There’s no language that only recognizes orange and pink, for example. English is a language with one of the largest numbers of basic colors. It has eleven. Can you name them all?

Once a Color, Always a Color

Brent Berlin and Paul Kay are anthropological linguists, which means they study the relationship between language, culture, and biology. Their research suggested that languages don’t lose color distinctions once they are made. For example, if a language has distinguished pink from red, it won’t ever go back to grouping them as the same color. Why is this notable? Well, other words are much more likely to come and go or change meaning over time. Snoutfair is extinct already, and many people think whom is in danger of falling completely out of fashion. Colors, on the other hand, hold remarkably steady. That is, until some recent research shook the hypothesis a bit!

New Theories about Color Words

Linguistics professor Claire Bowern and her colleague, Hannah Haynie, studied the evolution of some Australian languages. They found that Australian languages have “lost color terms, as well as gained them.” Perhaps color words aren’t as unchangeable as previously thought! They also found that Australian languages, like many other languages, base language words on the environment. For example, the Yandruwandha word for black is related to a word for ashes.

Would you like to learn more about colors and language? For example, why are there two spellings—gray and grey—for one color? The answer may surprise you!

7 Awesome and Underused Scrabble Words

If a perfect game for competitive wordsmiths exists, Scrabble is it. Not only does the game allow you to flex your vocabulary muscles, it also encourages you to use key strategies to increase your score. When you play these seven underused words, you’ll have a winning chance at an all-time Scrabble high score.

Maximize 

One of the easiest ways to score big with Scrabble is to use one or more of the highest-ranked letter tiles. Playing the X tile will earn you an easy eight points, and this seven-letter word gives you an opportunity to maximize your score, or make it as great as possible. Using all seven of the letter tiles on your rack at once, or scoring a “bingo,” grants you 50 bonus points.

Quixotic

This word includes two of the rarest letter tiles, Q and X. Though you’ll have to be quite quixotic, or extremely idealistic, to think you’ll have the chance to play this word, it’s certainly possible. Since rare letter tiles lead to high scores, this word will impress your opponents and increase your numbers at the same time.

Quickly

Playing common words can be a great Scrabble strategy, since they are easy to remember and implement. Look for a high-scoring location on the game board, and watch for one of the rare Q tiles to appear on your rack. Once you visualize your move, seize the opportunity and play this word as quickly, or speedily, as you can.

Whizbang

Adding on to letters that already appear on the Scrabble board is a great way to play longer words. Since this word includes eight letters, instead of the standard seven stored on your rack, you’ll need to set up this play or build on one by an opponent.  For a whizbang, or a resounding success, of a game, simply add “whiz” to an already played “bang,” and watch your score jump.

Quizzify

This is a tricky play, but one that pays off in a big way. If you get lucky and draw the only Q and Z tiles in the game, throw in a blank tile to stand in for the second Z in this word. If you’re really strategic, you can even play this word on top of triple word and double letter squares. Don’t worry if your opponents quizzify, or question, you for this move. You’ll be the one celebrating your massive score.

Chutzpah

You may need to have to have real chutzpah, or supreme self-confidence, to play this word, since it’s not in everyone’s vocabulary. Scrabble rules prohibit brand names and words that are always capitalized, but this is a common and acceptable Yiddish term and an official Scrabble word. Play the Z tile on a triple letter square, and you’ll really score big.

Jumbles

Sometimes making a clever move on top of an opponent’s smart play is the best strategy. This is an excellent example of a word that can earn you more points with the simple addition of an S tile. Straighten out the jumbles, or disordered mixes, on your rack by playing a quick one-letter extension, otherwise known as a hook. This has served as the winning word for more than one Scrabble tournament, and it can do wonders for your game, too.

If you want to be a Scrabble champion, it helps to have an extensive vocabulary. But if you don’t have time to read through the dictionary, there are other ways to score. To make big plays, memorize these key words and place them strategically.

April 13 is Scrabble Day. What’s the highest scoring Scrabble word you’ve ever played?

 

The Editing Process: How to Get Started

by Georganna Hancock, M.S. editor at A Writer’s Edge, and special guest in this week’s #GrammarlyChat

When we speak of “editing” a manuscript, people generally have in mind copy or line editing. That concerns a variety of elements frequently labeled “grammar,” but in fact includes punctuation, capitalization, syntax and style matters.

Large publishers offer several other types of editing but independent editors also provide them on a freelance basis. At The Bay Area Editors’ Forum, you can learn about the different types of editing and what each entails with definitions of various editorial services.

To get an idea of what some of these editing services cost, consult the Editorial Freelancers Association and its rates. However, charges can vary considerably depending on the job and the editor, location, special needs and the timeline for the work.

A good description of copyediting is Scott Berkun’s “What copyeditors do.” Take time to read through the comments and Berkun’s responses at the end.

If an author decides that professional services are beyond the budget, maybe you can swap editing work with another writer. Getting a different pair of eyes to review your writing is important. When you read what you’ve written, you know what it means. Unfortunately, your meaning may not be evident to others who aren’t privy to the inner workings of your mind.

Any list of writing mistakes is endless. Some, like typos, spelling errors, repeated words, and missing punctuation marks are mechanical. Others can be grammar goofs like mismatched subjects and verbs. Most vexing are the logical issues involving homonyms (disk/disc, you’re/your) and words you may have heard but not seen spelled. Deeper mistakes include point of view (head hopping), timelines, characterization, pacing, internal consistency in story and similar analytic matters.

What to work on first is a personal choice. I suggest you start with the deeper problems (they may require a rewrite), then tackle the common mistakes we all make. Some writers and editors use electronic tools like MS Word’s grammar and spell check or Grammarly’s automated proofreader, which checks for over 250 kinds of grammatical errors. Even Google can help check individual words (although at a terribly slow pace). Professional editors invest in programs that comb an entire manuscript electronically to find errors and make corrections.

Most people would call my final pass through a manuscript (there may be up to five!) “proofreading.” This is when I do the final polishing of the prose, checking little details according to whichever style guide applies to that type of writing. The more well known ones include Chicago, Modern Language Association, New York Times, Associated Press, American Psychological Association and American Medical Association. Find more information on style at the venerable Purdue OWL.

No matter how you go about the editing process, make sure you’re consistent and thorough. No one’s writing is perfect the first time, so edit carefully!

As a #GrammarlyChat bonus, for the rest of this week my Kindle ePub “Editing Your Writing” is reduced to 99 cents. Find it on my Amazon Author Page or directly here.

---

About the author Georganna Hancock finds joy in helping other writers along the path to success. She’s a prolific tweeter @GLHancock who blogged for years and offers editorial services at A Writer’s Edge. She reviews books for writers at Blogcritics and publishes on Amazon.