WRiTE CLUB, right? A slush
pile reader’s caution
After a lot of hemming
and hawing, I finally took the plunge – I’m now officially one of the 20
initial judges (aka, slush pile readers) for DL (Don) Hammons beloved readers’
choice contest, WRiTE CLUB. At first, my fear was that I’d never find the time
to read the more than 200 500-word entries he anticipates. As Don pointed out,
the task would be equivalent to reading an entire book.
Scratch that – my real
first fear stemmed from the realization that I couldn’t both be a judge and a
participant in WRiTE CLUB, which I have participated in at least three times,
twice making not only the initial cut but surviving more than one round of
readership votes. But since Don and I are fellow critique group members, how
much new stuff do I have that he (and probably other judges) wouldn’t
recognize? Might as well pay it forward.
So I might as well
warn all readers now furiously polishing their prose of the obstacles you’ll
face. Yes, you will have barely two pages worth of a story. And with those, you
must gain the approval of 20 slush pile readers who will winnow those 200+
entries into an initial 30. Then, still more harrowing, you will face dozens,
perhaps hundreds of readers who will vote for their favorites in the ensuing
one-on-one story bouts. Followed by the final judgment by a panel of publishing
professionals.
But I’m not here to
discourage you, but to offer you a fighting chance.
No, I can’t tell you
how to write an enticing hook or an unforgettable character speaking breathless
dialogue and engaging in heart-stopping action in 500 words. (Seriously, if you
know how to do all that, contact me ASAP with your secrets!)
What I can do is tell
you how to overcome my own final fear as a WRiTE CLUB slush pile reader: check
your spelling, punctuation and grammar. Please. Because my new nightmare is
that entries with all the characteristics of the above paragraph will hit my
dropbox from writers who not only failed to proofread their work, but also
disdained the help of their word processing programs’ suggestions.
Really.
Not that proofreading
and writing programs are foolproof. Yes, I have gnashed my teeth through the
ages over writings of fellow critique members that made me wonder why they
didn’t just spell check. Or what comes to mind more recently – why they didn’t
check punctuation.
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| image: Wikimedia commons |
I mean, theirs vs. there’s? How hard can that be?
At least that’s what I
thought until I ran samples of my own writing through both my Word and
Grammarly programs. (I even popped for Grammarly Premium, which just shows you
how much I’m willing to do for readers of this blog.)
Here’s what happened,
using a song fragment from one of my historical works in progress (misspellings
are my deliberate inventions):
It’s
a long way to Tipperary, a long way to go.
Its
a long way to Tipperary, to the sweetest girl I know.
Whats
the use of worrying, it never was worthwhile.
So,
pack up you’re troubles in your old kit bag and smile, brother, smile!
Easy, peasy, you say? Not. Microsoft Word’s spelling & grammar check caught “Its”, “Whats” and “you’re” correctly, recommending “It’s” (for a contraction), “What’s” (also for a contraction), and “your” for a possessive. However, to my surprise, it was baffled by “know,” recommending “knows” because it apparently took the subject to be that sweetest “girl” instead of the immediately preceding “I”.
Grammarly Premium also correctly caught “Its” and “Whats” and had no problems with “know.” But again to my astonishment, it failed to remark on the “you’re,” which in this case is written incorrectly as a contraction instead of the correct “your” for a possessive.
User beware! But don’t throw the sweetest girl out with your old kit bag. Use whatever software editing program you have. And use your eyes. WRiTE CLUB opens for entries March 18. Keep an eye on DL’s site for specifics.
(Note: this post has been checked multiple times for spelling and grammar correctness. All remaining errors are my own.)
***
Finally, for today, a
reminder that even when we think we have no time to read – we may – in this
post first published January 29:
When there’s no time
to read: four brief reviews
The fallout from the
illness and death of my sister in Mexico which I mentioned in a December 2018
post, still dogs me, cutting into both writing and reading time. After making a
downward adjustment to my annual self-imposed reading challenge at Goodreads,
here’s what I found myself reading this January: one “serious” novel for a
reading group, one audiobook biography, one book of semi-popular science, and a
cozy mystery I found among my late sister’s books while sorting them for
donation to the San Miguel de Allende biblioteca.
Snippets only posted
here – and despite readers’ kindness in asking me to review their books, I must
still decline. My schedule is only getting tighter as more issues about my
sister’s estate crop up.
***
First up: When We Were Orphans, by Kazuo Ishiguro While searching
for a compatible reading group years ago, I came across one in Dallas that
specializes in reading books by non-U.S. authors and non-U.S. cultures. The
reading choices of its members tend to be more high-brow than those I would
pick if left to my own devices, which is not a bad thing. As it happens, I’m a
fan of historical fiction (preferably of the non-bodice ripping kind) and
Ishiguro’s depiction of the inter-war British colony in Shanghai and the
Sino-Japanese war of 1937-1945 is a masterpiece of historical research.
Beginning with the
mysterious disappearance of a British couple in Shanghai, Ishiguro follows the
career of their young son, Christopher Banks, ripped from his life in China and
friendship with the young Japanese boy next door in the insulated international
colony to the care of an elderly aunt in England.
Always the odd one out
in school and society (perhaps like Ishiguro himself, a Japanese national
brought up in
England), Christopher becomes a professional consulting detective, joining the
likes of Hercule Poirot, Lord Peter Whimsey, and a myriad of other heroes from
the golden age of English detective fiction. But despite his fame in England, Christopher’s
guiding ambition is to return to China and solve the mystery of his parents’
disappearance.
I found When We Were Orphans plodding in its early
stages and disliked what seemed to me to be Ishiguro’s tendency to use his
protagonist as a mere way to display the history. However, the story’s intensity
increased with Christopher’s return decades later to Shanghai, where he learns
that things are not – and never were – the way he remembered them from
childhood. Ishiguro’s depiction of Christopher’s journey through a city and its
people on the verge of collapse is almost hallucinatory in its horror and
strangeness. Grade: 4/5.
***
Next: Autumn in Venice: Ernest Hemingway and his
Last Muse, by Andrea di Robilant. I listened
to this on an audio CD, a favorite method of whiling away the tedium of long
drives – in this case, to and from the airport from which I travelled to my
sister’s former home in Mexico. The book traces approximately the last decade
of Hemingway’s life, and his emotional – although possibly Platonic – love
affair with young Adriana Ivancich. When they first met in 1948, following
Hemingway’s off-the-cuff decision to return to scenes of his World War I
service in Italy, he was nearing fifty (and married to his fourth wife, Mary
Welsh). Adriana was only 18, and barely out of convent school.
Hemingway was almost a has-been to American audiences. He had not published a book since For Whom the Bell Tolls, nearly a decade
previously, and by the late 1940’s a new post-war generation of writers were
rising to the top of the best-seller lists. Was it really his infatuation with a
woman young enough to be his daughter (and who he sometimes addressed as
Daughter) that prompted a rebirth of his writing juices – culminating in his
late-period masterpiece, The Old Man and
the Sea (as well as such lesser but still memorable works as Across the River and Into the Trees, Islands in the Stream, and parts of A Moveable Feast)?
In the #metoo era, Hemingway’s relationship with
Adriana looks creepily like the sexual “grooming” of abusers, although in her
memoir published after his death, Adriana insisted they never got beyond kissing and
cuddling. And perhaps my experience with my sister’s descent into alcohol-fueled rages and mental collapse colored my nightmarish impression of Hemingway’s
final, booze-soaked years.
Still, Autumn in Venice is a memorable account
of the last bloom of a literary icon, as well as life with the jet-set of
post-World War II Italian aristocracy. A bonus – the Italian author’s great-uncle
was one of Hemingway’s drinking pals of the era! Grade: 4/5.
***
Next: I, Mammal: The Story of What Makes Us
Mammals, by Liam Drew. This book by British writer (and
former neurobiologist) Liam Drew caught my eye when a local branch of the
Dallas Public Library featured it on its new books shelf. The evolution of the
mammalian scrotum and placenta? How about the evolution of the mammary glands,
the organs which have given their name to the vertebrate order to which Drew, I
and presumably you readers belong?
If this sounds like
heavyweight reading, it’s not. I originally planned to major in biology in college
(before quickly changing to journalism!) but even a high school course in the
science should be enough to carry the average reader through Drew’s
discussions.
Even those who
sometimes feel their minds being stretched by the subject matter – not a bad
thing – will find themselves hooked on the charm of Drew’s writing, with
personal illustrations throughout of the organs that nurtured his daughters
through fetal and early childhood development.
And after all, why
shouldn’t gonads share the “sex appeal” that more common discussions of brains
usually usurp in evolutionary discussion? Try dropping a hint or three into
your next cocktail party conversation and watch what happens. Although, by the
way, how did mammals and birds – that other warm-blooded (oops – endothermic)
vertebrate order with which we mammals share the planet – find different ways
to develop their brainy intellects? Grade: 5/5.
***
Finally, A Murder is Announced, by Agatha Christie.
Yes, it’s just occurring to me as I write that this final read of the month,
like the first, When We Were Orphans,
is a detective story, and one from a writer who might have inspired Ishiguro’s
protagonist. I found it in one of the many cupboards and cabinets where my sister
had stashed her books. The last time I visited her before her cirrhosis-fueled
decline, she had complained that she couldn’t find a book club because of a
shortage of books – presumably English-language books – in San Miguel. So, I
was amazed at the stacks of books – probably numbering in the hundreds – I
found in her house during her days. Among them was this Christie classic, whose
tattered cover I hope was testimony of the solace my sister found in reading
it.
In what must be one of
the most compelling hooks in detective fiction, the inhabitants of the English
village of Chipping Cleghorn find the following announcement in the well-read
“Personals” section of the local newspaper: “A murder is announced, and will
take place Friday, October 29, at Little Paddocks at 6:30 p.m. Friends, accept
this, the only intimation.”
Their amazement is
nothing compared to that of the inhabitants of the house known as Little
Paddocks themselves – retired financial secretary Letitia Blacklock and old
schoolmate, Dora “Bunny” Bunner.
Silly though the
notice seems, Miss Blacklock realizes it will draw all her curious neighbors
and prepares her household, which also includes her two 20-something cousins, a
boarding “lady” gardener, and a flighty refugee who claims her current status
as cook is far beneath her educational and social standing in her (unspecified)
Central European country of origin, for visitors on the announced date and
time.
As a crowd gathers
inside the Little Paddocks drawing room, the lights suddenly go out, a masked
man throws the door open and dazzles the eyes of the company with a flashlight
beam. Shots ring out and the masked man drops to the floor. When the lights are
restored, Miss Blacklock’s ear is bleeding, apparently grazed by a bullet.
However, the only person shot dead is the intruder himself.
But if the would-be
murderer is dead, why do more bodies pile up as the days go by? Luckily,
amateur sleuth Miss Jane Marple is visiting old friends in Chipping Cleghorn
and steps in to aid the baffled local police. But can she find the killer
before the killer finds her?
“Queen of crime”
Christie was still at the top of her game in 1950’s A Murder is Announced, but the solution to this whodunnit involves
too many bizarre coincidences for my taste. On a side note, xenophobia and
disdain for even the most pathetic refugees of the recent war exhibited by the
inhabitants of Chipping Cleghorn
still seems pertinent in 2019. Grade: 4/5.
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