Guilie Castillo-Oriard's Blog, page 27

Steinbeck vs. Hemingway on Writing

Steinbeck:


Hemingway:


Perhaps this is nothing but the pantster vs. (sort of) plotter approach, but I think it goes deeper than that. What do you think? How do you do it? Do you start your writing day by "recapping" what you did the day before, or start fresh and unencumbered? Do you revise as you work, or leave it all for the end? What works best for you?

Oh, you grammar Nazis, you...

I'm one. I admit it. I'm even proud of it.

(Yeah, I taught English for ten years.)

I hate it when people misuse punctuation. Misspelled words--the classic affect vs. effect, for example, or confidant instead of confident, and the ever-present confusion of it's and its--make my teeth ache. My nerve endings cringe when I read sentences like, "If I would've seen it..."

And don't get me started on the new-generation text-type spellings of UR and THX and GR8. Hoo-hah, great time savers, those. What do people do with the thousands of hours saved by typing UR instead of you're, I wonder?

When I started submitting my work to a critique group, I knew I needed to work on my writing skills--pace, authorial intrusions, characterizations, descriptions, whatever. But you can imagine I felt so confident (yeah, not confidant) about my grammar.

And then came the critiques.

"You can't start sentences with a conjunction."

"This is passive voice. Change it to active."

"Don't end your sentences with a preposition."

But I love to start sentences with conjunctions (noticed that, have you?). And, as far as I'm concerned, the passive voice was made for using. It's a tool, to be used sparingly, yes, but not one I'm willing to do without (hehe).

So the debates raged--continue to rage. Well, "rage"... We're a decent lot over at the Internet Writing Workshop, and arguments seldom (if ever) heat up enough to warrant an admin intervention. But grammar and its usage is one topic no one can seem to agree on.

And then this article popped up (thanks, Peter Bernhardt), courtesy of Ben Yagoda, author of How Not To Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Errors and the Best Ways to Avoid Them, just published last month. Ah, the beauty of freedom--including the freedom to disagree.

How do you feel about grammar (and spelling and punctuation and etc.)? Does misuse bother you, or are you a grammar free thinker? What impact does this have on your writing?

Magical Realism Meets Disenchanted Science

I'm excited. My writer friend Edith Parzefall just released her second novel, Crumple Zone, a story of psychological suspense published by MuseItUp that has cultural clash--quite literally--at its center. And you know how culture clashes make me all warm and fuzzy inside... 
Oh, and the story was inspired by a real accident--one with Edith in it. I thought you might want to hear it from Edith herself.
~ - ~
Magical Realism Meets Disenchanted Science
My psychological suspense Crumple Zone was inspired by an accident while my partner and I were traveling through Chile. The rented Nissan X-Trail offered just enough crumple zone for us to step out of the wreck uninjured, only bruised and battered.
Of course, I needed to write about the experience and the actual accident offered inspiring symbolic elements: X-Trail, an intersection, two vehicles heading in the same direction, stopped at a crossroads by a liquid gas truck pulling in from the left. A shove in the right direction, one might think, but at first the two drivers were only stalled.
Since the story is set on the continent where magical realism is a literary genre more wide-spread than anywhere else in the world, I wanted to play with two extremes, magical realism represented by my Chilean trucker Enrique and scientific disenchantment embodied by my American workaholic Lara.
While Enrique imagines his wife by his side as he drives his rig along Ruta 5 through the Atacama Desert, Lara just lost her job and flies to Chile to avoid dealing with her personal problems. She studied biology, but like so many ended up working in IT. Nevertheless, what she learned writing her thesis on brain chemistry still determines her outlook on life and love. She thinks of human emotions in terms of neurotransmitters running amok. Still, the flowering desert might be promise of hope for her.

As the story unfolds, Enrique resembles more and more Don Quixote while Lara experiences her temporary exile as a challenge of her convictions. When these two collide, they must risk a glimpse at reality, blinking, peering through half-closed eyes, before they can face life with eyes wide open. The cultural contrasts blur as they lean on each other to emerge from the desert.
~ - ~

When Chilean trucker Enrique bumps into jobless workaholic Lara, he thwarts her flight from life and his escape from reality.


To read the opening, check out Amazon's Look Inside feature or go to the publisher's book pagefor a different excerpt.



Edith studied literature and linguistics in Germany and the U.S.. She worked as a technical writer and editor before moving on to people management at an IT company--the attraction lay in added career challenges and--of course--more traveling opportunities. Today she writes and edits full-time, but somehow manages to keep a respectable amount of traveling in the mix.
For more information about Edith and her novels, check out: Her websiteHer blog
Her Facebook page
For more photos of her Chile trip, go to: Her Flickr archive

Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling

Found this via Janet Reid's blog this morning--thank you, Janet!

Pixar storyboard artist Emma Coates shares tweets on storyteller wisdom at io9.com. Truly, *must* read.

On child marriage--beyond the horror to understanding

The height of mental pleasure: to have my paradigms shifted. To feel the ground shake under my unshakeable convictions of right and wrong. To achieve a measure of empathy. This video did that for me today.

Florence Cassez, Freed

Ms. Florence Cassez, the French girl accused, incarcerated, found guilty, and sentenced to 60 years in prison in Mexico for kidnapping, was freed on Wednesday. Her appeal to the Supreme Court resulted in a three-to-two vote in favor of setting her free. The Supreme Court ruled Cassez's rights had been violated, due process had not been observed, and chére Florence is entitled to a new trial.

And Mexico has gone batshit over this. All over Facebook I see posts to the effect of "Mexican justice makes me sick," or "F*cking murderess, rot in hell," or "Hero welcome in France for a murdering kidnapper--WTF???"

This--this--is the problem with Mexican justice. Perhaps with justice everywhere. In fact, perhaps this is the problem with humankind, period. These people on FB--and elsewhere, I'm sure--want blood. Sure, I agree a kidnapper / murderer is the lowest dung-beetle scum on the planet. I don't agree with the death penalty (subject of another post, perhaps), but seeing as that's not available in Mexico, I agree with a sixty-year sentence for someone found guilty of either or both of these crimes.

Key word: found guilty. Meaning through due process.

Which wasn't the case here.

I've blogged about Ms. Cassez before, if you're interested in the short version of the whys and wherefores of her situation. Suffice it to say here, both her arrest (staged for TV cameras after she was held, without processing and without benefit of counsel and/or consular advice, for over twelve hours) and her trial (whence two "key" witnesses drastically changed their original testimony in order to implicate Ms. Cassez) were tainted.

Guilty or not--and at this point my very point is that no one knows whether she is or isn't--doesn't she deserve a proper judicial procedure?

Don't we all?

And isn't it a huge step forward in Mexican proceedings that, first, Ms. Cassez's appeal actually made it to the Supreme Court, and second, that said appeal was judged to merit a ruling in its favor--on the basis of setting a precedent in favor of human rights?

So why are so many Mexicans so freakin' angry about this? Do we know--beyond the shadow of a doubt--that Ms. Cassez was, in fact, the leader of the Zodiaco kidnapping gang? Beyond those two witnesses, whose testimony is more than suspect, there's no evidence to support that. So why the vitriol?

Here's the thing: in any justice system, there's room for error. Do criminals fall between the cracks? Yes. Do the guilty get away with heinous crimes? Yes. But what then is the alternative? Do away with due process? Incarcerate--lash and quarter, lynch and hang--based on public opinion? On circumstantial "evidence", on suspect testimony? Why do I keep thinking of Minority Report?

What if this was your daughter, your mother? Accused of a crime she did not commit? Wouldn't you clamor for "true" justice then? For due process? Wouldn't you be outraged at police overstepping their bounds, at the public acting like some sort of Stalin-led pogrom mob?

Justice requires due process. Justice is not in the eye of the beholder.

I'm an author! (On Goodreads)

Thanks to Pure Slush and GORGE: A Novel in Stories, I now have an author page on Goodreads.



How cool is that? :D Can't wait for my first fan, haha.

Fail-Safe Cure for Depression

Feeling blue? Find one of these to hug, play with, or even just watch sleep. Guaranteed rise in serotonin levels :)





These puppies are part of the 13 dogs currently living at home with us. They were born here on Nov 5, almost 11 weeks ago (right? my math sucks). Their mom is Romy, a dog we (CARF) rescued in September from the garbage dump (I know, stupid people). I took two of the puppies (neither pictured here) to a wonderful forever home today, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the other five find as good a family to love them and spoil them to bits. Cross your fingers with me?

Copycat

The awesome editor at Pure Slush invited me to be their featured author this January. What does that mean, exactly? Well, I needed to provide four shorts (500 max) to be published in the Pure Slush e-mag, one per week, for their copycat theme.

Whoa. Copycat? Copycat?

The stories could be related, could be stand-alone, could be on anything I wanted... As long as they touched, somehow, on copycat.

Whoa. Yeah, again.

I planned something, started writing back in September--and then, mid-NaNo, one of those characters showed up. You know the kind: they stalk you, they whisper beautiful lines when you're driving or otherwise unable to jot them down, they become more real than the walls around you, the chair you're sitting on.

Randall, he said his name was. And he was most definitely a copycat.

The first installment of Randall's story is available online as of today; come meet him here, and let me know what you think. Also, if you're a writer, Pure Slush's monthly theme for February is the office ; check it out and get your creative juices flowing!

My three copies of GORGE arrived!

I'm in bliss :) Writer heaven. Literary nirvana. 




You can get a copy through Lulu.com: 

"a novel in stories, 33 writers weave stories about a beachside restaurant, its customers and the people who work there, all in one action-packed, hunger-filled, testosterone-fuelled, hormonally crazy afternoon and evening."

54 stories, 33 writers--and one of them is ME!