L.E. Truscott's Blog, page 24

Book Review: The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

When I read the final page and then closed the back cover of this book, I thought to myself, ‘That was terrible.’ It’s generally not the feeling a reader – or an author – wants to have. And unfortunately, it wasn’t that I just suddenly felt that way. I’d felt that way throughout most of the book. But I wanted to read it all the way to the end and give it the chance that all books deserve. But my feelings didn’t change.

The subject matter of The Almost Moon is not easy. Helen Knightly is an only child and, since her father’s death, the only person willing and able to look after her elderly mother, Clair. Clair is eighty-eight and although Helen describes her as suffering from dementia on the very first page of the book, she has struggled all her life with what a neighbour tells a young Helen is ‘mental illness’. That might be how it started but now she’s also cruel and parasitic and has prevented Helen from really living her own life. Within the first chapter, Clair is dead and Helen is the one who has killed her. But almost as soon as her mother is dead, Helen realises she hasn’t thought her actions through and doesn’t know what to do next.

From start to finish, the book spans just over twenty-four hours. It’s not that much happens in those twenty-four hours. Instead, Helen spends a lot of time reminiscing about growing up, getting married, having children, getting divorced and moving back to her home town to give us the background that perhaps the author thinks makes her actions if not okay, then entirely understandable.

The potential for this story to be heartbreaking and powerful and remembered long after it is finished being read is there. But the execution prevents it from happening. Because The Almost Moon is an almost book with almost characters, an almost plot and no real ending.

Helen is the least interesting character in the book but because she narrates it, she is in every scene. I wanted to hear the perspectives of the other characters – her ex-husband, Jake, who she calls to ask for help almost as soon as her mother is dead; her best friend, Natalie, who is strangely absent for most of the book; Natalie’s son, Hamish, who has sex with Helen after she asks him to ‘lie on top of’ her; Mr Forrest, the neighbour who has lived next door to Clair for fifty years; Emily, the daughter who doesn’t approve of Helen generally; and Sarah, the daughter Helen worries is just a little too much like her.

Alice Sebold’s first book was the celebrated The Lovely Bones, a story about a parent unable to protect his daughter from a killer. There’s a sense of similarity here, a daughter unable to protect her mother from a killer, even though that killer is the daughter herself. The book itself reminds me a lot of a scene in The Lake House (the movie with Keanu Reeves as Alex and Sandra Bullock as Kate). Kate and her mother are sitting in Daley Plaza having lunch and Kate sees a book in her mother’s bag.

Kate: What’s this?

Kate’s mother: That’s nothing. It’s one of your father’s.

Kate: Dostoyevsky?

Kate: Oh, yeah. It’s about a guy who breaks the neck of a poor woman with an axe and, so far, keeps wandering around regretting it.

Of course, the details are different in The Almost Moon but the sentiment is much the same. Helen kills her mother and regrets it, then doesn’t regret it, then regrets it again, then does a bunch of things she would never have done if she hadn’t killed her mother. Perhaps if I was generous, I could say it’s a commentary on life these days, people who act first and only consider their actions later. I’m not going to be that generous because the book doesn’t deserve it.

It’s a genuine shame when an author with such obvious talent produces a work like this because it will taint everything else she does in the future. No matter how many other terrific books she writes, this will always be in her back catalogue spoiling the mix.

2 stars

*First published on Goodreads 16 October 2016

All a Writer Wants for Christmas…

An updated dictionary? A new laptop? A stylish writing desk? A comfy writing chair? A virtual assistant to help keep the virtual scraps of paper under control? If only it was as simple as wishing for our two front teeth. These days, with a quick trip to the dentist, it’s an entirely possible dream. Reference books, computers, furniture and PAs are just as achievable. But a writer’s wish list is a little harder to fulfil.

Time

When you’re working and raising a family and keeping a house clean and maintaining a network of friends and trying to find some you time amongst all that, trying to find some writing time can be near impossible. And if you’re confusing you time for writing time, then you’re doing either yourself or your writing an injustice.

Time is essential to writing and every writer wishes they had more of it.

Money

Money, in and of itself, generally isn’t of interest to writers. It’s what money allows a writer to do, which is work less and write more. It’s also very handy for paying manuscript assessors, editors, book cover designers, printers and marketers in helping your writing get to its end stage.

I suppose the desire to be free from the necessity of work isn’t unique to writers – anyone with a passion that isn’t what they spend their nine to five doing dreams of it. But since I’m a writer, I like to imagine that writers dream of it more.

Inspiration

I think the famous saying is something like 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration but you can’t make inroads on that 99% without first getting the 1% out of the way. You have to have the idea. And although the history of writing is relatively short in comparison to history generally, the longer we write, the more ideas are taken up, usually by someone else.

All writers are looking for that one great idea.

Motivation

Sometimes, even when you have the time, money and inspiration, you just don’t want to write. A lack of motivation doesn’t mean a writer won’t write. It just makes it really hard. It means having to force yourself to sit down, to turn on the computer, to open your manuscript file and to work on your writing when you’d rather be doing just about anything else.

Writing is so much easier when you’re motivated.

Luck

Even with all the time, money, inspiration and motivation in the world, sometimes a writer needs a little luck to take the final step with their writing. Whether it’s knowing the right person, catching the right person’s attention or choosing last year to write about a subject that is this year’s flavour of the month, there is nothing that beats a little bit of luck.

*****

Unsurprisingly, the common theme through all of the items on a writer’s wish list is that, for the most part, they cannot be given to the writer. Only the writer can make them happen, usually through hard work and sacrifice. The harder writers work, the more writers sacrifice, the more time, money, inspiration, motivation and luck they will have.

So if you were hoping to read this and be able to tick the name of the writer in your life off your list of people to buy festive season gifts for, it won’t be happening. At least not in any tangible sense. But I did leave one thing off the list above that every writer appreciates. And that is encouragement.

Writing, regardless of what kind of writing it is, can be a long, hard slog and sometimes the only thing that keeps writers going is some genuine praise here, a pat on the back there and a little bit of support, in whatever form it comes in.

Happy holidays to all writers, readers and the people who keep them going!

Guest Post: Introduction from Paula and Me by John Jeffery

Last year, I was asked by John Jeffery (better known to everyone who knows him as JJ) to help get his autobiography ready for self-publishing. This week, Paula and Me is finally available for purchase and JJ has been good enough to let me post the introduction to his book on my blog.

If you’d like to read the whole book, it’s available for sale as a paperbook or an ebook through the following links on Monday’s book review.

*****

It’s been said that everybody has a book in them and it’s just a matter of sitting down and writing in order to get it out. For me, there was a crucial moment between living the life you’re going to read about in the following pages and writing this book. That moment was an old work colleague and friend suggesting that the action-packed life I had led would be an interesting read for my grandkids.

There was just one problem. I’d never written anything before and I didn’t know if I could write. But there was only one way to find out. I had to give it a go. So in typical JJ style, I started making notes at three o’clock one morning as I lay in bed unable to sleep. Six hours later, I was still typing away on my laptop. Maybe that old work colleague and friend knew what he was talking about, after all.

As more and more family, friends and acquaintances found out I was writing my autobiography, it seemed like everyone wanted to read it. All the people I had met along the way – the ones who were still talking to me, anyway, which was most of them – were curious about the places I’d been and the things I’d done. I reckon a lot of them were also wondering whether they’d be in the book. A few of them are. More than a few.

But, of course, the story of my life is – for the most part – the story of my life with Paula. We were married for forty-two years and together for more than forty-five, since I was nineteen years old. I hope this book will instil in every reader’s mind what a remarkable wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunty, cousin and friend Paula was. I dragged her from Melbourne to Papua New Guinea and back to Melbourne and then on an endless journey around country Victoria, regional Queensland, remote Western Australia and outback Northern Territory. Most women would have waved a white flag and said, ‘Enough is enough! Take me home!’ But she never did.

We were rarely separated during our adventurous, nomadic and fun-filled lifestyle… until we were rocked by the news of her diagnosis with motor neurone disease. Paula had previously battled and beaten breast cancer but this was something different. This was a disease without treatment options, without a cure, without hope. This was a death sentence.

We experienced the peaks of unbelievably happy moments and the troughs of emotionally tough times throughout our journey. And despite the inevitability of a tragic ending, our love and devotion for each other remained as deep at the end of our life together as it was at the beginning.

This book is the most honest account I can give of how we lived our dreams working and travelling throughout some of the wildest parts of the outback and the top end of Australia, even while Paula’s health was slowly deteriorating unbeknown to us. My choice of language may seem a bit crude at times but what else would you expect from a bloke who was rude, obnoxious and full of bad manners until his wife inspired him to become a loving, caring, generous husband and father?

It is also a tribute to our family and the lifelong friends we made along the way. During the times that it seemed like doom and gloom might set in, when we briefly considered simply lying down and surrendering, it was family and friends that gave us the support and strength to keep going, longer than any of the medical experts ever envisaged.

Enjoy the story and prepare for the tales that only I could tell.

Book Review: Paula and Me by John “JJ” Jeffery

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Full disclosure time:

*I was engaged and paid to edit this book (although that means I’ve read it five times so I feel very qualified to review it).

*JJ and my father worked together and played football together during their twenties (about forty years ago and before I was born so JJ and I have never physically met).

*This is the first autobiography/memoir I’ve read in a long time so I have nothing to compare it to. I guess I’ll just have to review it on its own merits.

Told in linear chronology, Paula and Me is the story of John Jeffery’s life. It starts out ordinarily enough, a little boy growing up on the fringes of a big city’s suburbs, riding bikes, kicking a football, spending as much time with his friends as possible, bored by school and dreaming of some kind of adventure. It’s terribly evocative of the innocence of the 1950s and 1960s, of times that now seem alien to us. But it’s also obvious that it is simply building up to something else because, as JJ admits in the introduction, “the story of my life is – for the most part – the story of my life with Paula.”

As soon as they meet, it is clear that they are meant to be together. They try to be apart but it doesn’t work. And so begins a series of adventures that almost every Australian dreams of – the adventure of raising a family, the adventure of working overseas (Papua New Guinea), the adventure of returning home and realising it isn’t home anymore, the adventure of working and travelling in some of the harshest and most remote places in the outback with more red dirt and blue skies than anyone has ever imagined possible. And then one day, it all comes crashing down.

Cancer. Motor neurone disease (MND, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease). Lyme disease. Any one on its own would be more than most people could handle. And yet it all had to be handled. There was no other choice.

I’m on record as decrying the number of “ordinary” people who feel it necessary to write their memoirs and who use their “sob story” as a marketing tool. But after reading this book, I’m ashamed I ever articulated such a view. Because there is no such thing as ordinary. And being president of a country or founder of a religion or winner of a Nobel prize doesn’t make your story any more worthy of being told.

JJ’s distinctive voice and writing style comes across strongly throughout the book, confirming his self-described status as an Australian larrikin. He’s never self-indulgent though, not even when Paula falls ill, although I think we can all agree that if ever there was a time for it, that would be it.

This book is three parts adventure, one part heartache and all heart. It gave me such an insight into the strength of love, of how much can be accomplished when passion and hard work are the building blocks for a life but also how important it is when the unexpected changes your life forever. I wasn’t fortunate enough to meet Paula but seeing her beautiful smiling face and reading her story, told by the man who loved her, it is clear that she was worth knowing. And by reading this book, everyone can carry a piece of her in their hearts forever.

3.5 stars

*First published on Goodreads 12 December 2016

Paula and Me is now available on Amazon (paperback and ebook), CreateSpace (paperback), Kobo (ebook), Apple (ebook), Barnes & Noble (ebook) and Smashwords (ebook).

Writing Worlds – Part 2: Building New Fictional Worlds

On Wednesday, I wrote about reusing existing fictional worlds as the basis for a novel. Today, I’ll explore building new ones from scratch. It’s so much trickier than relying on someone else’s hard work but when you do it yourself and get it right, it can be the basis for a lengthy series of books, especially when readers love the world you’ve created.

Real World

It might sound strange to talk about creating the real world, but it’s the most common world used in fiction and it still requires work. In my debut novel, Enemies Closer, I co-opted the FBI, the CIA, Heckler & Koch (a weapons manufacturer), the US military and a variety of other actual organisations to create a military industrial complex. You can also co-opt people to become characters such as President Clinton (the first or the second), the Queen, Charles Darwin and so many more. The great thing about real worlds is that they feel real – readers don’t need to be convinced, it just happens automatically.

Different World

Different worlds use real concepts with fictional elements. The West Wing did it beautifully – adopting the actual US political system but changing the four year cycle to two years either side of when the real presidential elections are held and electing a man who would never ever be elected president in actuality (and anyone who disagrees only needs to look at the Republican president in office for most of the show’s run and the most recent Republican candidate to be silenced – even Barack Obama can’t compare to Jed Bartlet).

This is a very common type of fictional world as well because it doesn’t take a huge amount of work to make it feel authentic.

Dystopian World

Dystopian worlds are big business these days. Think The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner and so many more. In most dystopian worlds, there has been a war and the characters are living in the disappointing result under varying levels of oppression, whether they realise it or not. The plots invariably involve the main character, usually a teenager, realising everything isn’t as rosy as it might seem and finding a way to change their entire societies.

Unlike real worlds and different worlds, despite the best efforts of the characters, a dystopian world can never be put right. Even when the good guys win and the bad guys get what’s coming to them, it’s still not quite what everyone wishes it would be. That’s life, isn’t it?

Alternative History World

Alternative history worlds are so much fun, thinking about how everything could be different if a key moment in time had gone the other way. In Fatherland by Robert Harris, the Nazis won World War II and the repercussions have been huge. It’s terrifying and wonderful at the same time.

Alternative history worlds require a lot of research because before it is changed, the world as it was needs to be understood in a lot of depth. In 11/22/63 by Stephen King, the main character tries to prevent the assassination of JFK (among other things) when he discovers he can travel back in time. Stephen King admitted he had the idea for the book in the seventies but didn’t write it until thirty years later because he didn’t think he had what it took at the time to do the research necessary.

Alternative Future World

Instead of changing the past, alternative future world changes the years that haven’t arrived yet. It’s essentially the same as taking an educated guess (where a more realistic world is written about) or an outlandish jump (where elements of fantasy, science fiction and the supernatural are thrown in). The danger of alternative future worlds is a completely unrealistic scenario that throws the reader off and prevents them from ever getting back on board.

I once did a manuscript assessment on a novel where North Korea and South Korea had agreed to reunification. I wrote to the author, “The North Korea/South Korea thing rankled the most. This is the most unlikely conflict to ever be resolved. North Korea is run by a dictator, whose father ran the country before him, whose father ran the country before him. The people of North Korea are brainwashed and beaten into submission and believe (or are told to believe) that their “Supreme Leader” has a direct link to God. The idea that the two countries would ever re-unite is frankly ludicrous. They had a war over 60 years ago and not one iota of progress has been made since. Towards the end of the book where the North Koreans renege on their deal to reunite the two countries, all I could think was ‘D’uh!’ Because it made no sense in the first place. Alternative futures are quite common in fiction, but there still has to be a sense of realism, of believability, because readers are smart and need to be convinced if you are proposing an alternate reality that is so very different from the one they currently live in, especially an alternative reality that is based on the current reality. It would be different if your story was about how Earth is now ruled by aliens. But you position it amongst conflicts that have been raging for 60+ years and then just expect the reader to accept the fact that they are suddenly over. Your story needs a metaphorical nuclear weapon dropped on it – in the same way that World War II ended with a life-changing moment. Otherwise readers will dismiss you as someone who hasn’t cared enough to provide a realistic background to the story.”

I wrote that nearly five years ago but it remains as true as ever.

*****

All of my novels to date, published and unpublished, are set in fictional real and different worlds. But my next big idea is for an alternative future world and I can’t wait to immerse myself in it. It’s going to be a challenge though. In addition to the plot, characters and writing – the big three – it adds another element. But if I keep doing the same thing over and over, I run the risk of boring my readers and getting bored myself. It’s a risk worth taking.

So I’ve outlined nine different kinds of fictional worlds and within them are infinite possibilities. Go forth and conquer.

Writing Worlds – Part 1: Using Existing Fictional Worlds

Sometimes there is nothing more wonderful than the blank page when it comes to writing – the potential, the lack of limitations, the fact that we can create anything we want. And sometimes there is nothing more daunting – it can be hard to whittle down an infinite number of worlds and characters and plots to just the right ones.

To save some of this painful effort, writers can choose to use existing worlds. There are a few options, some simpler than others and all easier than going to all that trouble of creating yet another new one.

Your Own

If you’ve written fiction before, then you’ve already created at least one world. No point letting it go to waste. Rather than starting from scratch again, you can use the same world to tell the story of different characters.

Michael Connelly is a great example of this. Harry Bosch, Mickey Haller, Jack McEvoy, Terry McCaleb and Cassie Black have all starred in their own Michael Connelly novels but all exist in the same fictional version of Los Angeles and appear in minor roles or are referenced in other books of which they aren’t the main character. So much simpler than going back to the beginning.

With Permission

It’s a pattern that I hate but it’s occurring so frequently now that I admit there is little I can do about it. And that pattern is established authors partnering with unknown writers who then do all the hard work based on worlds the established author has previously created. Clive Cussler does this. The estate of Virginia Andrews did this.

I imagine there’s good money in it but the unknown writer in this arrangement will almost always lose out in the ownership of their writing. I imagine it’s a little like surrogacy. All that hard work at the end of which you have to give up everything. But at least you know the baby you worked so hard to give life to is out there somewhere.

Fan Fiction

Fan fiction is meant as an expression of devotion to a world that has captured a reader’s imagination. There is a lot of it out there. And, mostly, it remains fan fiction. But it can be a great way to practise and it can also lead further than an amateur might ever have dreamt. Fifty Shades of Grey by EL James was originally conceived as Twilight fan fiction, the feverish, R-rated, ‘what if?’ sexcapades of Bella and Edward. When she realised she was onto something, she changed the names, removed the vampires and tweaked enough of it so that it was barely recognisable from its beginnings. Millions of sales, two sequels and a movie franchise later, who cares that it started out as imitation? EL James certainly doesn’t.

When Copyright Expires

Although copyright laws differ from country to country, in most cases, copyright for fiction expires either fifty or seventy years after the death of the author. After this time, the work enters the public domain and anyone with the inclination to do so can use it as the basis for a new creative work. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is probably the best example of this. From Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith to Death Comes to Pemberley by PD James and Mary Bennet by Jennifer Paynter, there is a veritable industry of writers working to tweak or add to the universe of the Bennets (or the ‘Bennetverse’ if you will).

You don’t have to be as famous as PD James to take advantage of copyright expiration. But you do need to be a little respectful. Certainly, fans of the existing world will not hesitate to let you know if they don’t think you’ve done it justice. And you also need to be familiar with the world. If there are inconsistencies between the world and characters you are using and what happens in your writing, then you may as well have not used it in the first place.

*****

Writing can be a hard enough endeavour. If using an existing fictional world can make it just that much easier, then why not? It doesn’t make you any less of a writer.

But if you’re determined to create your own fictional world, check out this Friday’s blog post for Part 2 of Writing Worlds.

Book Review: The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham

I’d never heard of this book until it was made into a movie but it’s so often the case these days. I haven’t seen the movie, which is the way I like it, so I can do a review rather than a comparison. It’s surprising that I hadn’t heard of it, though, because it was written by my father’s best friend’s daughter’s husband’s aunt. Less than seven degrees of separation and yet…

Perhaps the reason I hadn’t heard of it was because, despite the hype, as a story it’s really nothing exceptional. Pleasant, yes. Unregretted, yes. Exceptional, no.

The Dressmaker is the story of Tilly Dunnage’s return to Dungatar, the small country Australian town where she spent the first of her formative years before being exiled at a young age. In the years since then, Tilly has become an expert dressmaker and despite the fact that most of the townspeople hate her for historical reasons, they can’t resist her dresses.

The portrayal of Dungatar is a caricature but, at the same time, anyone who has ever lived in a small country Australian town will realise Rosalie Ham hasn’t had to reach too far from reality. Full of class divides, unhappy marriages, affairs, sexual assaults, domestic violence, lesbians, a cross-dresser, drugs, mental health issues, child deaths and pasts that infiltrate the present, turmoil is never far from the surface.

The romance between Tilly and Ted McSwiney, a local man from a dirt poor family, tolerated in the town only because he is a football champion, felt forced. He persists and persists and persists and eventually Tilly gives in, despite any sign of true feelings, which is hardly the most romantic of relationships.

The only character I genuinely enjoyed reading about was Sergeant Farrat, the cross-dresser. Even though Tilly was making marvellous dresses for the women of Dungatar, the police officer was the only person in the book who genuinely enjoyed his outfits, rather than what the outfits could achieve (Tilly included). The scene in which he stands behind the police counter taking a complaint from a concerned citizen while ballet slippers are laced right up his calves is exquisite.

The cover says this book is a comedy (a bittersweet comedy but a comedy nonetheless) but there are no laugh out loud, chesty chuckle or even mildly amusing moments. So much about these people and their stories is so thoroughly disturbing that it reminded me a great deal of how glad I was to leave the small town I lived in as a child.

The book isn’t edited particularly well, which if you read a lot of my book reviews you will know is a bugbear of mine. It does well to evoke a particular era and a particular location but the story is just a tad too farcical for me.

I don’t lament the time I spent reading this book but it hasn’t made me want to read any of Rosalie Ham’s other books. When I compare her to Liane Moriarty, who does this genre so well (albeit set in a different time), she comes up wanting, at least based on this effort.

Time to watch the movie now. Maybe it will be what the book should have been.

3 stars

*First published on Goodreads 10 July 2016

Advice to a Young Writer

Five years ago, as a favour, I did a manuscript assessment for a young, first-time writer, someone I had known all his life. I didn’t charge for it and reading it back now I wonder if I went a little harder than I would have had he been a paying customer. Perhaps it was just that I was still in my brutally honest phase. (That’s assuming I’m not still in it – the jury’s out.)

But for any young writers willing to take advice on board, there were a lot of really good ideas on how he could become a better writer. If you’re a young writer or even just a beginner, maybe there’s something in there for you. Hopefully, there’s something in there for all of us.

*****

There is no substitute for just sitting down and writing.

“Anyone who can dedicate the time it takes to write a novel is to be congratulated because for every person out there who actually does it, there are a thousand people who talk about the book they want to write but never actually do it.”

All writers are equal – but some writers are more equal than others.

“Get your hands on as many how-to writing guides as possible and devour them – firstly, I would recommend The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jnr and EB White as an essential book (I have this myself).”

You can’t be a writer if you’re not a reader.

“Read everything – the only reason to be a writer is because you can identify something that isn’t being done and needs someone to do it or something that isn’t being done well and needs someone to prove it can be done better. To identify these things, you need to read a lot. All kinds of genres and literary fiction. And from this reading, you identify the good, the bad, the ugly, you learn, you emulate, you stand on the shoulders of giants and potentially you become a giant yourself.”

Enrol in a writing course.

“Not only will this allow you to practice, practice, practice – since you will have assignments, assignments, assignments and deadlines, deadlines, deadlines – it will also teach you the basics and expose you to people who also want to be writers and are at roughly the same level of development as you are – the best thing for any writer is to be exposed to the work of peers who are also developing their craft.”

A few paragraphs of good writing aren’t enough.

“There were moments throughout reading your manuscript when I noted well-constructed sentences and enjoyable groups of words but these were few and far between. In order for a novel to be considered ‘good’, these moments need to happen a lot more. Pretty much all the time, in fact.”

Really think about the words you choose in your writing.

“There are a lot of instances of the use of not quite right words – lids instead of eyes, mischievously not shyly, chores not tasks, see not perceive, overseen not overlooked, temporary not indefinite, bombarding not hoarding, etc. Stop trying to impress readers with big, fancy words, especially when the word you are replacing the original with isn’t quite the right word – sometimes it just looks like you have used the computer’s thesaurus.”

Know your manuscript better than you know yourself.

“On page 133, you use the sentence ‘The moon shone through an open window, brought forth the bitter wind.’ for the third time. It also appears on page 34 and page 72, the exact same words in the exact same order. The third time I read it, I actually thought to myself, Have I read this page before? It took me a few minutes to realise I hadn’t read the page before, I had just read the same sentence twice before on previous pages.”

Know your clichés so you can avoid them.

“It was a dark and stormy night – you must not be aware of the implications of this phrase but it is generally considered to be the worst opening line to a book of all time. In fact, there is a contest named after the original author of this line aimed at finding the worst opening paragraph to a novel each year. Therefore, to put it into your own novel and to expect people not to laugh at it is just unfathomable.”

Know when to let go.

“Unless you are prepared to devote another year or two to rewriting your first novel, consider this one a practice novel, place it in a bottom desk drawer and move on to your next project. Write a few more practice novels, which once complete are also placed in a bottom desk drawer.”

There is more to writing than just novels.

“Consider focusing equal amounts of time on alternative writing forms such as poetry (which based on your novel I suspect you might be brilliant at), short stories, film and television scripts, blogging, etc.”

*****

I’m not sure if this is the greatest advertisement for my ability to be tactful as a manuscript assessor but I can tell you that the writer did take a lot of my advice, so he was able to get past the brutality part and recognise my feedback was honest and truly meant to help him improve. He enrolled in a two-year degree and focused on writing short stories (which he was brilliant at, by the way) while he developed his skills. If only I’d had someone to be as brutally honest with me at the same age.

How Academia Encourages Bad Writing

It’s been nearly ten years since my last official experience with academia – I graduated with a master’s degree in writing in 2007. But in the past couple of months, I’ve been exposed to it unofficially in a couple of ways. The first was through my second youngest sister, who is in the final stages of completing her PhD and asked me to review her thesis for spelling, grammar, punctuation and readability issues. The second was through my youngest sister, who is in the first year of her undergraduate degree and who I am providing weekly motivation and sounding board sessions to. But both made me realise the same thing: academia encourages bad writing.

Here are two examples:

*In my sister’s PhD thesis, she used the word “purposively”. Do a quick google search and plenty of entries will come up in relation to the differences between “purposely” (meaning deliberately) and “purposefully” (meaning with a specific goal). You’ll need to do a longer google search to find entries about “purposively” but there are a few. Essentially, it means the same thing as “purposefully”. So why did she choose to use it?

*My youngest sister is studying early childhood education and completing a raft of much shorter projects. In the most recent, she asked, “How should I write it?” (She was talking about a particular sentence.) I replied, “Just state it. ‘The standards are…’” “It’s not fancy enough,” she complained. “What about ‘showcased’?” “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Yeah, but it’s impressive.” According to who? I wondered.

The answer to both questions and both scenarios is because the people who judge their academic efforts – tutors, lecturers, professors – think that’s how scholarly writing should sound. And the people who taught those tutors, lecturers and professors thought that’s how scholarly writing should sound. And the people who taught those tutors, lecturers and professors who taught those tutors, lecturers and professors thought that’s how it should sound. And so it went, all the way back to the beginning of academia.

The problem, of course, is that they were wrong. They were wrong back then and they are wrong now. Academic writing is generally stuffy, vague, boring and full of words that bring to mind Joey in Friends using the thesaurus to write the letter to the adoption agency when Monica and Chandler were trying to adopt.

Joey: Hey, finished my recommendation. Here. (He hands it to Chandler.) And I think you’ll be very, very happy. It’s the longest I ever spent on a computer without looking at porn.

Chandler: (reading) I don’t… uh… understand.

Joey: Some of the words are a little too sophisticated for ya?

Monica: (also reading it) It doesn’t make any sense.

Joey: Of course it does! It’s smart! I used the thesaurus!

Chandler: On every word?

Joey: Yep!

Monica: Alright, what was this sentence originally? (She points to it in the recommendation.)

Joey: Oh, “They are warm, nice, people with big hearts.”

Chandler: And that became “They are humid prepossessing homo sapiens with full-sized aortic pumps”?

Joey: Yeah, yeah and hey, I really mean it, dude.

Monica: Hey, Joey, I don’t think we can use this.

Joey: Why not?

Monica: Well, because you signed it “Baby Kangaroo Tribbiani”. Hey, why don’t you stop worrying about sounding smart and just be yourself?

Chandler: You know what? You don’t need a thesaurus, just write from your full-sized aortic pump.

A few years ago, I would have said, “Well, at least they’re writing.” But as the quality of writing slips further and further, as more people write without any intention of ever getting better at it, just with the intention of sounding like they know what they’re talking about even when they don’t (journalists who use the wrong words that sound similar, I’m referring to you), I think I have to – we all have to – start pushing back. Yeah, that makes me one of those pedants, one of those people other people hate. I’m beyond caring.

I think it’s especially important in academia where we really rely on people to get things right. They influence not only generation after generation of students but also the things that make our lives better: advances in technology, in science, in mathematics, in arts and humanities. Why shouldn’t we expect them to influence advances in language as well? We certainly shouldn’t expect or allow them to influence a decline in language.

So I’m calling time. No more bad writing from academia. When your writing is bad, I’m going to tell you. You can argue all you like. But wouldn’t your time be better spent writing your academic information clearly using the correct words for the context and simple words in general? The answer is yes. So get on with it. Stay away from the thesaurus. And write what you actually mean.

Book Review: No Logo by Naomi Klein

On the front cover of Jennifer Government, the book by Max Barry, there is an endorsing quote from Naomi Klein. Now that I’ve read No Logo, I understand why. Because Jennifer Government is the future we can look forward to (with dismay) if the present that Naomi Klein has described so poignantly in No Logo continues on its path.

It’s more than fifteen years since this book was first published but I suspect very little has changed. I read the tenth anniversary edition with the added foreword discussing the marketing brilliance of the first Obama presidential campaign. It’s a collection of anecdotes about marketing, about how the ultimate goal of companies now is to produce nothing but a brand (all manufacturing is outsourced) and how there is very little they won’t do in order to achieve it – except, of course, the right thing. With little regard for human rights or the environment, they do only what is legal without any thought given to whether or not it is ethical. Sometimes they don’t even bother with making sure it’s legal.

All the big brand names come in for a good whacking – McDonald’s, Nike, Pepsi, The Gap, Shell and many more – and based on the anecdotes, it seems deservedly so. From factory workers who are paid as little as eight cents an hour and work 90 hour weeks to land owners murdered by police after being chauffeured to a protest occupation by the multinational they were protesting; from employees fired as full-time workers and rehired as part-time workers putting in exactly the same hours without any of the previous benefits to tax-free manufacturing zones where companies close up shop once they reach the threshold length of time to start paying tax simply to start up another company in the same place or another factory in a different tax-free zone.

The author has done a significant amount of research in order to accomplish writing this book and she bemoans the nature of the brands and the opposing anti-corporate movement that mean she can’t quite keep up. As soon as she writes an update, there’s another one to be written and another. But she has captured a snapshot of a particular time and it’s important. This book has been described as a cultural manifesto but it’s less a guide about what to do than it is information about why something needs to be done. Naomi Klein doesn’t offer any solutions. She’s just making it clear that solutions are needed.

This is a very long book. It took me more than two months to read, nearly three. It’s also a very dense book. I honestly couldn’t tell you what the first half of the book was about because I just wouldn’t have had room for comprehension of the second half of the book in my brain if I had completely retained it. There are so many stories. And the structure is like a very long conversation, jumping from here to there with loose tangents that as you read make sense but when you think back on them you struggle to remember how you got from here to there.

It is the book’s only downfall. Instead of remembering what you have read, you’re instead left with a sense of what the book is about. But that sense is so strong, so impactful, that the reader feels like a different person to who they were when they first opened the cover to begin reading. You understand that the petrol you buy, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the seemingly innocuous brands you support without knowing anything more about them that the shape and colour of their logos are all part of an economic system that is failing. The global economy was supposed to offer opportunities to everyone. Instead, it is oppressing everyone in ways and to extents never thought possible. But it’s okay, supposedly, because the bottom lines have never looked better.

Just this week I saw the autobiography of Phil Knight, Nike co-founder, chairman and former CEO, on the shelf in a book store. (Perhaps it was just coincidental that the cover was all black with white writing and just a red swoosh, which was eerily reminiscent of the cover of No Logo.) The blurb painted his story as one of plucky courage as he sold shoes from the trunk of his car and went on to become a legend. I didn’t buy it and I won’t be reading it. I don’t think I would have been able to stomach his version of the cover-ups. How many of the scandals so eloquently covered in No Logo about Nike would he be addressing? None, I suspect.

This is one of those books that should be required reading for everyone who is high school age or above. This shows where everything we consume comes from and it’s not a nice place. This shows where all the jobs we used to do went. This shows that the decent wages and benefits didn’t go with the jobs. This shows that the only people benefiting from the system are the rich and the powerful who simply keep on getting more rich and more powerful.

If you can make it through the sometimes difficult prose, you’ll be rewarded. It’s an eye-opener. It’s a sucker punch to the guts. It’s a first step. I just wish I knew what all the other steps after this were.

4 stars

*First published on Goodreads 22 June 2016