Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 90

Is There a Cure for Groper’s Disease?

Al Franken, Harvey Weinstein, Roy Moore, Kevin Spacey, John Conyers, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Bill O’Reilly, and (gasp!) Garrison Keillor.

What do all of these men have in common?

Yes, we know they are accused gropers, sexual predators, harassers, etc. Well, maybe not so much Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon. He apparently made the mistake of putting his hand on the bare back of a woman he had been trying to console, and when she recoiled, he apologized.

[image error]Bill and Monica

But things have changed today. Suddenly, behavior that has been tolerated and often protected for eons is no longer acceptable.

Is this the human race suddenly acknowledging an age-old problem?

Or is it just a quick fix designed to quarantine Groper’s Disease?

Time will tell, if hundreds, if not thousands of women, don’t.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journalistic Method Part 3: Test Your Powers of Observation

When I was teaching journalism at the University of Illinois, I often gave my students a test designed to see just how observant they were.

Observation, as I have pointed out in previous posts, is a critical skill writers need to master IF they are to provide clear and vivid descriptions in their stories or novels.

There are 25 questions on the quiz. The average number of questions students were able to answer correctly was 8.

Many of you reading my blog are writers, so I am confident you can beat that score, right?

Let’s see how you do. Write down your answers as you go. Check your answers at the end AFTER completing all the questions.

REMEMBER — NO CHEATING!!! BE HONEST!!! That means no looking at your I-phone, your computer, your I-pad or any reference books on your desk.

LET’S JUST SEE HOW OBSERVANT YOU ARE.

Here we go!

1. On a standard traffic light, is the green on the top or bottom?

2. How many states are there in the USA? (Don’t laugh, some people don’t know)

3. In which hand is the Statue of Liberty’s torch?

4. What six colors are on the classic Campbell’s soup label?

5. What two numbers on the telephone dial don’t have letters by them?

6. When you walk does your left arm swing with your right or left leg? (Don’t you dare get up to see!)

7. How many matches are in a standard pack?

8. On the United State s flag is the top stripe red or white?

9. What is the lowest number on a U.S. FM radio Dial?

10. Which way does water go down the drain, counter or clockwise?

11. Which way does a “no smoking” sign’s slash run?

12.  Coca-Cola.  Read the text in the small poster below. Do you notice something strange?

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13 On which side of a women’s blouse are the buttons?

14. Which way do fans rotate?

15 How many sides does a stop sign have?

16. Do books have even-numbered pages on the right or left side?

17 How many lug nuts are on a standard car wheel?

18. How many sides are there on a standard pencil?

19. Sleepy, Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey, Doc. Who’s missing?

20. How many hot dog buns are in a standard package?

21 On which playing card is the card maker’s trademark?

22 On which side of a Venetian blind is the cord that adjusts the opening between the slats?

23. There are 12 buttons on a touch-tone phone. What two symbols bear no digits?

24. How many curves are there in the standard paper clip?

25. Does a merry-go-round turn counter or clockwise?

26. (BONUS QUESTION)  Carefully read the article below and detect any incongruity!

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SCROLL DOWN FOR THE ANSWERS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ANSWERS

1. On a standard traffic light, is the green on the top or bottom? BOTTOM

2. How many states are there in the USA? (Don’t laugh, some people don’t know) 50

3. In which hand is the Statue of Liberty’s torch? RIGHT

4. What six colors are on the classic Campbell ‘s soup label? BLUE, RED, WHITE, YELLOW, BLACK & GOLD.

5. What two numbers on the telephone dial don’t have letters by them? 1, 0

6. When you walk does your left arm swing with your right or left leg? RIGHT

7. How many matches are in a standard pack? 20

8. On the United State s flag is the top stripe red or white? RED

9. What is the lowest number on the FM dial? 88

10. Which way does water go down the drain, counter or clockwise?   CLOCKWISE (NORTH OF THE EQUATOR)

11. Which way does a “no smoking” sign’s slash run?

TOWARDS BOTTOM RIGHT

12. Are you a fan of Coca-Cola? Then it is time to check out this new brand of Coca-Coda

13 On which side of a women’s blouse are the buttons? LEFT

14. Which way do fans rotate? CLOCKWISE AS YOU LOOK AT IT

15 How many sides does a stop sign have? 8

16. Do books have even-numbered pages on the right or left side? LEFT

17 How many lug nuts are on a standard car wheel? 5

18. How many sides are there on a standard pencil? 6

19. Sleepy, Happy, Sneezy, Grumpy, Dopey, Doc. Who’s missing? BASHFUL

20. How many hot dog buns are in a standard package? 8

21 On which playing card is the card maker’s trademark? ACE OF SPADES

22 On which side of a Venetian blind is the cord that adjusts the opening between the slats? LEFT

23. There are 12 buttons on a touch-tone phone. What two symbols bear no digits? * , #

24. How many curves are there in the standard d paper clip? 3

25. Does a merry-go-round turn counter or clockwise? COUNTER

26. If the Mulan disappeared and there were no survivors to tell what happened, how could the journalist who wrote this report what the captain and crew did the night before?

Now send it to some of your friends or colleagues and put your score in the subject box!!!

 

Journalistic Method for Authors (Part 2)

[This is a re-post of a post I published a while back. I am posting it again because of questions I have received asking me to discuss how authors can use the skills practiced in professional journalism]

How can the methods of reporting and writing practiced by professional journalists possibly benefit those who write fiction? After all, the rules of journalism demand that you shape your writing to your material, not the other way around.

The answer can be found in the fundamentals of the writer’s craft: Observation and Research. In journalism, research is called reporting but learning how to “see” what is going on around you is the same for both the novelist and the journalist.

It’s called observation.

For the journalist, precise observation is one of the keys to accurate reporting. For the writer of fiction seeing the world accurately not only allows you to create vivid descriptions that readers can believe, but it can also spur the imagination.

For the journalist, the most severe obstacles to accurate observation lie in the mental baggage we all carry—the preconception, the stereotype, the prejudice.

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It’s the same for the novelist. The preconceived belief, the stereotype, and the prejudgment distort our vision, leading us to see only what we expected to find, instead of what may be in front of us. No human being can exorcise them, but all writers must learn to identify their mental baggage and check it at the door.

Unlike the journalist, however, authors of fiction can allow their biases to be expressed through the characters they create. The journalist must boil down an anecdote to its essentials, even if some participants or some quotes must be left out. It is dishonest to distort a scene or change quotes to make the anecdote funnier or more pertinent.

In fiction, that is not a problem. However, experienced writers will carefully observe and mentally record a scene so they can incorporate it their narrative. They may alter the scene or the quote or the anecdote to fit the story they are telling, but if they have been keen observers the scene they are modifying will have a firm basis in reality and it will ring true with readers.

Most writers and journalists begin their research and reporting with at least some idea of what they will find—or what they think they should find. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. In scientific research, the same sort of presumption is called a hypothesis.

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It is accepted as the essential starting point for any research project. The scientific method demands that the scientist, in testing the hypothesis, look for evidence to disprove it. That high standard of detachment is not always met, even in science.

But it is the standard that every writer should apply to his or her work.

Its okay to begin with an idea of your likely conclusion, so long as you keep your eyes and your mind open to evidence that may suggest a different outcome. Careful observation will turn up the evidence; an open mind will accept it.

Scientists have another tool that more reporters and writers would do well to borrow. In science, it’s called reviewing the literature.

 What do I mean by that? No reputable researcher launches a study without carefully combing the journals of the discipline to learn everything possible about the research already done; the questions left unanswered, the methods others have found useful.

An hour spent on The Internet, a computer database, or down at the public library often will net you reams of invaluable information. In reviewing the literature, writers, like scientists, often can improve their ideas about what questions to ask and where to look for the answers.

The best novelists write from experience–predominantly their own. They do this, not by relying only on their memories, but by recording events, incidents, encounters, people, etc. in notebooks.

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I have dozens of old reporter’s notebooks that are filled with descriptions of people, places, and events I covered during a 27 year career as a reporter and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. (By the way, Tribune lawyers HATED that. They counseled us to get rid of our notebooks so they could never be used as evidence in a libel trial).

I kept my notebooks because when it comes to recreating scenes or experiences, those notebooks are worth their weight in platinum. And the descriptions are not just visual. They also include the other four senses: sound and smell; and in some cases, taste and touch.

Those notebooks are a critical form of observation. Without them, my view of the past would be shadowy and indistinct, but most of all the descriptions I create in my novels would lack that critical precision, and veracity readers need to “see” what you are writing.

[TOMORROW: PART 3]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journalistic Method: A Technique for Authors (Part 1)

[This is a re-post of a post I published a while back. I am posting it again because of questions I have received asking me to discuss how authors can use the skills practiced in professional journalism]

Without a doubt, one of the best places to learn the craft of writing is in the professional newsroom.

The number of successful authors of fiction and non-fiction books, who began their careers as journalists, is remarkable. Here is a list of 10 (It could be 50 or 100):

Charles Dickens
Samuel Clements (Mark Twain)
Ken Follett
Thomas Thompson
Ernest Hemingway
Edna Buchanan
George Orwell
Graham Greene
PG Wodehouse
Tom Wolfe

[image error] Ernest Hemingway

Someone once asked Ernest Hemingway where he learned to write. His answer: working as a general assignment reporter for the Kansas City Star from 1917 to 1918.

“Everything I needed to know about writing I learned from the Kansas City Star style sheet,” Hemingway once said.

The first paragraph of that stylesheet reflects Hemingway’s writing style. It begins: “Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not negative.”

 The advice may seem simplistic, but it is far from it. One of the first things I learned as a young journalist (coincidentally, at the Kansas City Star) was how to write succinctly and clearly and how to gather information accurately.

Hemingway did all of those things–and he did them well, both as a journalist and later as a Nobel Prize-winning novelist.

Not far behind those skills is something called Journalistic Method. That is a fancy phrase for how a journalist works.

That is what I want to talk about today. In parts 2 and 3 of my blog on Journalistic Method, I will get into some of the other skill sets such as the aforementioned ability to write succinctly and clearly, how to gather information accurately, and how to organize it and present it compellingly. Those who write novels can learn a lot from the skills required to produce excellent journalism.

Journalism is an empirical discipline. What do I mean by that?

It means, like science, it is a search for truth. It means you use trial and error, observation and analysis to find the truth.

The Dictionary defines empiricism it this way: Relying on or derived from observation or experiment: empirical results that supported the hypothesis. b. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment: empirical laws. Guided by practical experience and not theory.

 It’s also how journalists go about finding stories.

For the scientist, empiricism means arriving at a truth via observation and experimentation. For the journalist, the empirical tools are: Observation and Interviewing.

 The best writers, whether they are journalists, novelists or authors of non-fiction books, are the best observers.

Observation is the basis of everything.

Take this story from Asia about a Buddhist sage walking with two students through the forest. He stops suddenly and looks up at a tree.

“What do you observe in the tree?” He asks the first student. The first student’s eyes lock on the tree. Suddenly his face lights up.

“I see a bird in the tree, master,” he says, sure his powers of observation in finding the small bird in the tree’s thick green foliage will please his religious teacher.

“What do you see?” the aged priest asks the other student.

The second student pauses, his eyes fixed on the tree for several moments.

Finally, the second student speaks: “I see a bird with red, yellow and black feathers sitting on a dead limb. A green tree snake is crawling on a limb just behind the bird.”

That is observation. Observation is an active, not a passive process.

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Legend has it that the ancient Druids forced candidates for the priesthood to study an oak tree and capture its every feature. Then the candidate would be questioned about the tree. If the candidate failed to describe the tree accurately, he would be nailed to it.

Druidic discipline is not practiced in newsrooms, but the precision of observation it was intended to encourage should. Not every good reporter is a good writer, but every good writer is a good reporter. Reporting IS observation.

Of the qualities that distinguish good from poor writing, three depend directly on observation. They are clarity, precision, and appeal to the senses. The others—pacing and transition—lend grace and power to the expression of what you have observed.

Clarity, precision, and appeal to the senses seldom are achieved just by looking or listening. You usually have to seek out information that is not readily apparent.

The reporter’s primary research tool is interviewing. All reporters interview; but few interview as well as they might. Fewer still get beyond the interview to other sources of information and understanding.

Documents, the records of business, government and personal life, can be invaluable in answering questions and providing detail. Even the methods of social science offer help for the writer who would be a better observer.

A keen observer understands the importance of detail and texture, as well as the use of precise language. That means fewer adjectives, but heavy on action verbs—fueled by detailed observation.

My advice: To write well, first see well.

Good observation depends on two things: concentration and analysis. As a writer, you must be an observer by occupation. That means you’re always on the job. Everything you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch is potentially material you can use in a story.

Flies take off backward. So to swat one, you must strike slightly behind it. That’s a detail a writer should be able to see. Other people see flies; a writer sees how they move.

No two people, no two situations, no two oak trees are identical. Your job is to sort out the essential differences. You must get in the habit of concentrating on what is going on around you. It is hard work. How do you do it?

Look for the significant detail.
 Look for the revealing anecdote.
 Look with your mind, as well as your eyes, open.
  Prepare before you start to look.

Henry James once said: “Be one on whom nothing is lost.”

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 Listen to people talk. Listen to what they say and how they say it. Most of us don’t listen. Most of us are busy thinking about what WE want to say while someone else is talking. As a result, we misunderstand, misinterpret and worse, misquote.

 Note things that others take for granted. For example, the excessive neatness of a bureaucrat’s desk may reveal not efficiency, but the fact that he or she has nothing to do! A pretentious private library may contain books with uncut pages!

So what’s the difference between a novelist and a reporter?  Besides the fact that one writes fiction and the other doesn’t (or shouldn’t), their goals are similar: to create compelling stories that people will want to read, learn from or be entertained by.

You must describe! You cannot rely on imagination to give you the crusty feel of crisp frozen ground underfoot or the razor-drag of chill air across your face. You must see these things; know them, before you can communicate them.

Writers are verbal creatures. But they must observe vividly. Good writers write after the fact, not from inspiration. They write what they have seen—and what they have seen well!

[TOMORROW: PART 2]

 

 

 

Journalism vs. Fiction: What’s the Difference?

Hundreds, if not thousands of authors of fiction and non-fiction books were once journalists. I am one of them. I spent 27 years as a national and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune. I consider it the best training ground for my entry into writing Historical Fiction, which is what my Finding Billy Battles trilogy is.

However, the leap from journalism to fiction is not always an easy one. Sure, journalists have learned the fundamentals of communicating via the written word. They understand description, pacing, transition, even character development, but most appreciate that those critical elements of writing are a bit different when it comes to producing fiction. 

It is a pleasure today to share this blog post from Marylee MacDonald who is not only an excellent writer but a wonderful teacher and mentor for aspiring authors. Please enjoy this excellent essay on the differences between journalism and fiction.

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By Marylee MacDonald, November 17, 2017, in For Writers Ready to Publish, For Writers Who Need Readers

What’s the difference between journalism and fiction, and why should you care? Well, if you’re a writer in this day and age, you’re likely to do more than one kind of writing. Long-form journalism often pays. Fiction rarely does. Or, at least, it can take time for people to find you and buy your books. That’s why fiction writers today pen articles for online magazines.

Some magazines expect you to write for free. Others pay for your guest post. The pay is good, but there’s another reason you might want to think about going back and forth between fiction and journalism. An insightful essay can boost a writer’s visibility. It can drive readers to your blog, and wouldn’t it be amazing if your essay went viral? In this post, I’m going to discuss the differences between the two kinds of writing. [image error]

    Journalism vs. Fiction

Let’s start with a quick compare-and-contrast of the two forms.

Journalism
Fiction and Creative Nonfiction


Focus on a single story
Multiple, interwoven stories


Begins with a “lede” summarizing the most important aspects of the story
The ends of paragraphs or scenes are where you’ll find summary information.


Objective-reportorial, with a voice that strives to remove the reporter’s “take on things” from that story
Subjective-attempt to render the subjective quality of an experience


Quotes to corroborate facts or present two sides of an issue
Dialogue used to place the reader in the scene, not for presenting alternate viewpoints or arguments


Voice-journalistic, “how to,” factual
Voice-quirky, individualistic


Outside the head-can only write about what the reporter observes
Inside the thoughts; unique to fiction and some forms of subjective journalism such as the so-called “gonzo journalism” of Hunter Thompson


Facts must be verifiable with more than one source
Writers free to invent, even when writing about real people, such as T.C. Boyle’s novel about Frank Lloyd Wright, The Women. Rather than sticking with the facts, Boyle combined women, knowing he’d have a better story.


Claim to fact-based “truth”
No claim to truth; unreliable narrators; exaggeration


Editorial viewpoint—opinion pages based on reasoned argument; logic
No soapboxes allowed


Linear, logical, and told in chronological time sequence
Okay to jump around in time, start and stop the story, or tell from different points-of-view


All narration apart from quotes from multiple sources
Stories told in scene and summary. In scenes, the story slows down, and readers can judge for themselves, based on observing characters’ behavior.


Sentences written to newspaper’s style sheet and literacy level of readership; brevity; lack of subordinate clauses
Sentences must advance the plot, provide imagery, reveal character, and provide back-story. Complex sentences don’t have to target readers with a 10th-grade reading level.

 

Journalism and Its Uses

Here’s when you might want to think journalistically:

When presenting newsworthy information (scientific breakthroughs or archaeological discoveries)
When writing about historical events (perfect for writers of historical fiction)
When pitching a guest blog to a national, online newspaper
When you have multiple sources whose perspectives enlighten and inform
When you want to get paid for your writing
When writing a newsy press release
When providing copy for a local paper featuring your book

Sites that welcome the kinds of articles fiction writers would be likely to write include Slate, Salon, The Atlantic, Vox, New Republic, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, FiveThirtyEight, Grantland, Medium, Aeon Magazine, and Huffington Post. If they like your idea, make sure they’ll link to your blog.

Why Should You Explore Opportunities in Journalism?

Let me state the obvious. Writing a novel takes quite a while. If you can begin developing a following by writing articles for online magazines, that will help you develop a platform and get your name out there. At the Pima Writers’ Conference two years ago, agent Michael Carr (of Veritas Literary in San Francisco) told me that he sits up and takes notice when a writer has published in Slate or Salon. (For more on agents and publishing, read this article.)

Many journalists write fiction. One of them is Ronald E. Yates, former Dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Here’s a blog post about how he used his skills as a journalist when writing historical fiction. He’s written two books in his Billy Battles’ series, and third is about to come out.[image error]

While I’ve known many journalists who’ve made the leap into fiction, I know only a couple of fiction writers who’ve gone in the other direction. In case you decide to try your hand at nonfiction, here are a couple of things you should know.

Stylesheets for Journalism

One of the main differences between journalism and fiction/creative nonfiction may seem trivial to those who’ve never gone through an editorial vetting of your words. Journalists typically use the AP Stylebook, updated yearly and available online. For a quick overview, take a look at this page from the Purdue Online Writing Lab.

In contrast, literary writing takes its cues from the Chicago Manual of Style, otherwise known as CMOS. I like the online version because of its search capability.

If you’re into the fine points of writing, take a look at the stylesheet used by The Kansas City Star. Hemingway wrote police and emergency-room articles for the Star and commented that the stylesheet provided “the best rules I ever learned in the business of writing.”

Straight Journalism

In straight journalism, you must check your facts and confirm them with input from multiple, credible sources. Your sources must be willing to “go on the record,” meaning allow you to quote them. If they demur, then you’d better have other sources that can confirm. Such are the ethics of journalism: straight journalism. Your name will be mud, and you will never get a job at a reputable paper if you fail to adhere to these guidelines.

Not everyone does. Rick Bragg and Jayson Blair were two New York Times’ reporters who bit the dust after they filed false stories.  These two writers alleged that they were reporting factual information. More recently, three members of a CNN investigative team were let go when the network discovered they’d only used a single source and had not “followed procedures.”

Subjective Journalism

Hunter Thompson, on the other hand, spent much of his life reporting stories, but they were stories in which he was personally involved. To get a sense of his style and viewpoint, read this article from The Paris Review.

Similarly, two other Western writers, Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner, moved back and forth between writing fiction and writing for magazines. Here’s Abbey’s essay “Cowburnt,” published in Harper’s.

Wallace Stegner–Stanford professor, author of Angle of Repose, a novel, and Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, a biography of John Wesley Powell, the one-armed former general who was the first to risk a watery ride through the Grand Canyon–used the power of the pen to advocate for environmental causes. Here’s one of Stegner’s essays: “The Sense of Place.”

In my spreadsheet above, I noted that fiction is not the place to advocate for a cause. That’s why Stegner leaped from fiction to journalism. He wanted to “say his piece” about preserving Western lands.

[image error] Baldwin &. Marlon Brando

James Baldwin, of course, wrote amazing essays about race, culture, and the craft of writing. However, in his fiction, such as the emotionally evocative Another Country, he allowed the characters to live their lives. Readers could draw their own conclusions. For many years, Baldwin lived as an ex-pat in Paris. He came home to see his family and friends and write about race, culture, and politics. One of his best-known books was THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X.

More recently, Roxane Gay, feminist and culture critic, has swung back and forth between fiction and essays. Like Stegner, she, too, teaches Creative Writing.

In Sum

Each kind of writing has pros and cons. For me, fiction is all about placing the reader in a situation and letting the reader experience how it is to stand in that character’s shoes and live the character’s life. It’s a way to try to get at a truth even I may not be able to explain fully.

And journalism? The kind of journalism I did for many years falls into the category of “how to” writing. That training comes in handy when I’m writing blog posts.

Possibly, I’m a little afraid of the effort it would take to pitch one of the magazines above. I’d need sources. I’d need to fact-check. It would take time.

I actually have an essay on my hard drive. Maybe I should give it a second look.

Where are YOU in all of this? Do you have journalistic skills that might come in handy?

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do you like about Historical Fiction?

Historical fiction is one of the most popular forms of fiction being written today–along with young adult, zombies, romance novels, and sci-fi.

I am interested in learning why people like historical fiction books. I have a few theories, but I would like to know what others think.

I enjoyed writing the Finding Billy Battles trilogy that begins in the Old West of Kansas, moves to the colonial Far East in the late 19th Century, and then to early 20th Century Mexico during its revolution and finally, back to the United States.

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As a reader (or writer) what is it that draws you to this kind of fiction?

I take pleasure in doing the research necessary to create an accurate portrayal of the people, places, and events of other eras, such as the 19th Century. I especially like “slowing” down the pace of life.

What I find appealing about the past is that people were not overwhelmed and seduced by the high-tech gadgets and social media that dominate our waking moments today—smart phones, I-pads, texting, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

BSM (Before Social Media) you had time to THINK rather than merely react. The art of conversation was alive and well—not the 140-character verbal blitzes or the shorthand texts that pass for it today.

When I worked as a foreign correspondent, I can recall telling my office (via telex) when I was covering Vietnam, Cambodia, El Salvador, etc. in the 70s & 80s that I would be out of touch for several days. Then I would go to some remote area and spend time talking with people, analyzing what I was hearing, and what I was seeing. Then I would return to write a story that wasn’t filled with “instant wisdom” as we so often see today from uninformed reporters who “parachute” in to cover a story.

Writing about the 19th Century, as I did in my trilogy, allowed me to slow the pace down, provide historical context, and give my characters time to think.

Today, we are all in such a hurry to do things, to pack in as much as we can in a single day. When I think about my characters in Finding Billy Battles, I envy the fact that they were not sped up by “galloping technology” as we are so often today.

What do you think? Do you like reading books where the pace of life is slower, where technology is not sovereign, where civility and propriety (usually) reigned?

Let me know what you think. I would like to take those thoughts and comments and use them in another post on this topic.

 

Happy Veterans Day to my Fellow Vets

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. Given that only 1 percent of the people of this nation ever put on a uniform, I am not sure Americans have any idea just why Veterans Day is a holiday.

Yes, it means schools and most government offices are closed. But it means a lot more to the men and women who served this country.

Veterans Day gives Americans the opportunity to celebrate the bravery and sacrifice of all U.S. veterans. However, most Americans confuse this holiday with Memorial Day, reports the Department of Veterans Affairs.

[image error] Ron Yates in Uniform

Memorial Day honors service members who died in service to their country or as a result of injuries incurred during battle. Deceased veterans are also remembered on Veterans Day but the day is really set aside to thank and honor living veterans who served honorably in the military – in wartime or peacetime.

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Someone, I don’t know who, once defined a veteran this way: “A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to “The United States of America,” for an amount of “up to, and including his or her life.”

That is honor. It’s a concept that those who have never worn the uniform will ever fully comprehend or appreciate.

There are too many people in this country today who no longer understand what honor and sacrifice are.

Today, when athletes feel entitled to kneel during the playing of the National Anthem, or when our nation’s flag is burned or disrespected, it’s a slap in the face to all veterans.

Yes, it is a First Amendment right to display that contempt and to disparage those who served. The great irony is that those who do are permitted to enjoy the advantages and freedom veterans have won for them just the same.

I joined the U.S. Army in the 1960s and spent almost four years on active duty with the Army Security Agency (ASA). It was probably the best thing I ever did. It taught me about leadership, self-discipline, and working as part of a team. It taught me to be dependable and trustworthy. And it showed me the importance of serving something more important than yourself—the country that you were fortunate enough to be a citizen of.

[image error] U.S. Army Security Agency Shoulder Patch

Let me end with a few facts about the nation’s veterans.

There are 18.5 million veterans living in the United States as of 2016, according to the Census Bureau. Of these, 1.6 million veterans are women.
A large proportion of the veteran population, 9.2 million, are aged 65 and older, while 1.6 million are younger than 35.
The American labor force has 7.2 million veterans ages 18 to 65. Of these, 6.8 million are employed. Male and female veterans’ annual median incomes are both higher than their nonveteran counterparts.

So, this is just a quick shout out to all of my fellow veterans who put on the uniform of this country and served:

HOO-RAH! HOOYAH! OOH-RAH! (Take your pick)

 

 

An Uncommon Love of Words & Writing

A while back a friend sent me an excellent column about a professor at my alma mater: the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas.

The professor’s name was John Bremner, a native of Australia and ordained Catholic priest who left the priesthood to become a journalist. (“Proof that purgatory exists,” he once told me.)

While I never had the late Professor Bremner (he died in 1987) for a class, he made his presence known in the newsroom of the University Daily Kansan where I was the editor-in-chief. He often would stick his head in the door of my office and say something like: “Good paper today, Ron.”

Those were the days I liked. But all too often I heard things like:

“The lead story on page one makes about as much sense as a wallaby giving a sermon,” which was Prof. Bremner’s way of saying it made no sense at all!

Professor Bremner was a stickler for the proper use of the English language. He could get especially cranky when people who make their livings using it every day, such as journalists, misused the lingua franca.

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In the introduction of his seminal book “Words on Words,” published in 1980, John Bremner had this to say about language:

“Words are my professional life. It was nurtured by the study of classical and modern languages, which was part of the characteristic education of my generation, at least in my native Australia. Unfortunately, such education has become uncharacteristic, especially in the United States. I have witnessed the steady growth of literary ignorance during a career of more than a third of a century as a professional journalist, a professor of journalism and a newspaper consultant.”

He goes on to say: “Many of my students arrive in my writing and editing classes…with an almost total ignorance of English grammar and usage and only a smattering of any foreign language.”

 Those words were probably written in the late 1970s. Believe me, as someone who was until recently a professor at a major university; things have not gotten any better. If anything, they have gotten worse. Sadly, many of my students at the University of Illinois between 1997 and 2010 wrote the English language with the adroitness of a heavy truncheon rather than with the precision of a sharp pen.

During a 1984 seminar for newspaper editors, Bremner told the crowd:

”Jesus Christ once said, ‘Where two or three are gathered together. .’.But he couldn’t have said precisely that. He didn’t speak English. And why would he have said ‘gathered together’? When you have ‘gathered,’ you don’t need ‘together.’ ”

 Not even the Bible was safe from Professor Bremner’s reproach.

In 1952 Bremner earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York. When his Columbia class was honored by the journalism school’s alumni association in 1987 for having endowed a scholarship, Professor Bremner was chosen to accept the award. In his acceptance speech, he pointed out all the errors in spelling, syntax, and grammar in the class newsletter. Classic Bremner.

To say John Bremner was an academic legend during his tenure at the University of Kansas is to do him a great disservice. He was an etymological doyen; a philological force; a grammatical guru.

He would have hated that description because he always cautioned me to avoid alliteration whenever possible. “It’s sophomoric,” he once told me. “Unless it is used by a connoisseur.”

Here is the column mentioned above published by Steve Wilson, Executive Editor, of The Paducah (KY) Sun. I hope you will enjoy it, but most of all, be prepared to learn something about words and writing.

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An uncommon love of words

By Steve Wilson

Executive Editor, the Paducah Sun

On a local TV newscast a few days ago, the sports anchor said St. Louis Cardinals’ catcher Yadier Molina had received “the lion’s share of votes” and would be a starter in this summer’s all-star game.

His use of “lion’s share” seemed dubious and sent me back to a favorite book called Words on Words. It’s written by the late John Bremner, an exuberant college professor who was obsessed with the proper use of the English language.

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As expected, he had an entry for “lion’s share” that didn’t square with the usage on TV.

“If you use this cliche, know its proper meaning. In one version of the fable, Aesop’s lion got all the meat except a few scraps snatched by the fox. In the other versions, the lion got it all. Properly, the lion’s share means all or almost all of something, not merely a majority.”

Bremner was a charismatic figure – 6-foot-5, 260-pounds, white-bearded, a native Australian who spent the biggest part of his career teaching journalism at the University of Kansas. He also put on seminars for newspaper editors around the country, which is how we met and became friends.

He was an animated instructor, pacing the room, digressing to tell a story about British history one moment, then raging about the confusion caused by a misplaced comma the next. More than once he had thrown open a window in his classroom, waved his white handkerchief and shouted, “Help, I’m being held captive by a roomful of idiots.”

Such theatrics, he said, were less about ego than connecting with the audience.

“You don’t hold students and professionals by simply filling them with facts and snippets of knowledge. You have to keep them interested, keep them alert.”

He enjoyed pointing out the illogic of many word usages.

“You want the word couple to be singular?” he asked. “All right, the couple was married yesterday. It went to Florida on its honeymoon. OK so far. But it had an argument. So it decided to get a divorce. And it went its separate ways.”

His book is a pleasure to peruse:

Advance planning – Have you planned backward lately?

At the present time – Now.

At this point in time – Now.

Better part of – “She stayed for the better part of an hour” means she stayed for more than a half-hour. Why better? Are the first 30 minutes better than the last 30? Make it “most of the hour.”

Chair – Keep it a noun. What’s wrong with “Smith presided at the meeting” or “Smith was the chairman”? Pretty soon we’ll be saying Smith “podiumed the orchestra” or “pulpited the church.” Some fingers need to be kept in the verbal dikes.

Facilitate – A windy word for “make easier, aid, assist, help.”

Goes without saying – So why say it?

Irregardless – Regardless of the school of “a word is a word if people utilize it,” there is no such word as irregardless.

Precipitate/Precipitous – Though both adjectives derive from the same root (Latin praeceps, headlong), precipitate means excessively hasty and refers to actions, whereas precipitous means extremely steep and refers to physical objects. The bishop who counseled against “precipitous marriage” either was ignorant of the distinction or was jumping to the conclusion that rash decisions lead to rocky adventure.

Split infinitive – Splitting an infinitive means inserting one or more words between the to and the verb, as in “to thoroughly appreciate.” Banning the split infinitive is ridiculous. The so-called rule has no foundation in logic, rhetoric or common sense. Go ahead and split. Let euphony be your guide. Never to split is to seriously stifle.

Toward/Towards – Most authorities consider toward American and towards British. But a case can be made for towards in American usage when the following word begins with a vowel sound. There is sibilant smoothness in “towards evening.”

Ugly scar – Don’t say, “He has an ugly scar on his face.” Drop ugly. Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. Don’t force the reader to subscribe to your sensitivities.

For all his wit and wisdom about editing, one of the most memorable moments of our seminar came at the end when Bremner said he wanted to share a poem by John Ciardi.

He first explained that a widgeon is a duck, a wicopy is a tree and widgeons do not roost in trees. When the editors gave him quizzical looks, he smiled and proceeded to recite the lines from memory:

A widgeon in a wicopy

In which no widgeon ought to be,

A widowed widgeon was.

While in a willow wickiup

A Wichita sat down to sup

With other Wichitas,

And what they whittled as they ate

Included what had been of late

A widgeon’s wing.

‘Twas thus

The widgeon in the wicopy,

In which no widgeon ought to be,

A widowed widgeon was.

When he finished, he told the group in a soft-spoken voice, “If you don’t like that, get out of this business.”

Bremner devoted his life to the best use of words. A tender, alliterative arrangement could make his day.

Are Terrorists Winning the War on Terror?

Within hours of the attack in New York in which an Islamic terrorist used a truck to mow down and kill eight people on a bicycle path, public officials were out in front of the cameras telling the public to go on with their lives because: “we can’t let the terrorists win.”

In fact, I would argue the terrorists have already won. During the past couple of decades, they have achieved what they set out to achieve. They have dramatically altered the way we live our lives, the way we travel, the way we perceive the world.

They have made terrorism a miserable fact of our lives.

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For those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 60s, these changes are especially striking and disheartening.

I remember when you could walk onto airplanes without even passing through a metal detector, let alone long lines for multiple security checks during which you must remove your shoes and submit to invasive electronic body searches.

I remember when you could go to a baseball or football game with a cooler and a backpack.

I remember when schools didn’t have metal detectors or armed guards standing guard or roaming the halls.

I remember when the only violence you occasionally encountered in a bar was between a couple of drunks throwing wild punches at one another. Not once did an Islamic terrorist walk into a crowded nightclub, shout “Allahu Akbar,” and start mowing down patrons with a semi-automatic weapon.

“We can’t let the terrorists win,” declare our public officials and media pundits.

But the awful reality is, terrorist cells are already plotting more attacks all across the globe. No country or city will ever be truly safe from terrorism again but that, sadly, is the era we live in now.

In George Orwell’s seminal book, “1984” a character says: “The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now, do you begin to understand me?”

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For all of our surveillance and intelligence gathering, terrorists are free, and we’re not. So who’s really winning the war on terror?

Unlike conventional wars between nation states in which there were clear-cut victors and vanquished, in this war, there is no end in sight, no light at the end of the tunnel.

Following the New York attack, I heard one public official state: “I believe we owe it to the victims of this act not to let the terrorist win by being terrorized. That’s exactly the response they are hoping for. Sure, it’s natural for our emotions to get the best of us. But, especially given the impact of sensational media coverage, we need to respond intelligently and rationally.”

“Sensational media coverage?” I wonder to what he was referring. The fact that the story of eight innocent people being crushed under the wheels of a truck driven by a deranged Muslim screaming “Allahu Akbar” was covered coast to coast? Why wouldn’t the media cover the first terrorist attack in New York since September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers were brought down by Islamic terrorists?

The Daily Mail in London wrote: “The proper response to sickening crimes like these is not to apportion blame but to present a show of unity and defiance. We must let the terrorists know that we stand together against them and that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. If we allow the terrorists to divide us – setting one racial group against another – they have won.”

Such platitudes may sound reasonable, but they are misleading and dishonest.

On the one hand, they say “don’t let the terrorists win” while on the other they say that living in a world brimming with terrorism and ruled by multifaceted security checks is the “new normal.”

If this is the new normal, then I reiterate: The terrorists have already won because they have forced us to live in an abnormal world.

 

 

Dealing With the Dreaded Rejection Letter

If there is one thing most authors have in common, besides the shear agony that sometimes accompanies the writing process, it is the dreaded Rejection Letter from an agent or publisher.

I don’t know who got this one from Harlequin, but it had to be devastating to the person receiving it.

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I have received a few rejection letters–though none like the one from Harlequin.

Most authors–even wildly successful authors–have also received their share of rejection missives.

Don’t believe me?

Just take a look at this list of rejection letters that were sent by publishers and agents to world-renowned, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winning authors. It is simply part of the creative process and you need to keep moving ahead–just as these authors did.

—“The American public is not interested in China,” a publisher wrote Pearl S. Buck. Her book The Good Earth becomes the best-selling US novel two years running in 1931/32, and wins The Pulitzer Prize in the process.

—Alex Haley writes for eight years and receives 200 consecutive rejections from publishers and agents. His novel Roots becomes a publishing sensation, selling 1.5 million copies in its first seven months of release, and going on to sell 8 million.

—“He hasn’t got a future as a writer,” a publisher opines. Yet, publication of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold leads to its author, John le Carré, having one of the most distinguished careers in literary history.

—“Hopelessly bogged down and unreadable,” a publisher tells Ursula K. Le Guin in a 1968 rejection letter. She was not deterred and her book The Left Hand of Darkness goes on to become just the first of her many best-sellers, and is now regularly voted as the second best fantasy novel of all time, next to The Lord of the Rings.

—The Christopher Little Literary Agency receives 12 publishing rejections in a row for their new client, until the eight-year-old daughter of a Bloomsbury editor demands to read the rest of the book. The editor agrees to publish but advises the writer to get a day job since she has little chance of making money in children’s books. Yet Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling spawns a series where the last four novels consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history, on both sides of the Atlantic, with combined sales of 450 million.

—“It is so badly written,” a publisher tells this author. Dan Brown is not discouraged, however, and tries Doubleday where his book makes an impression. The Da Vinci Code eventually sells 80 million copies.

—“Too different from other juvenile (books) on the market to warrant its selling,” says a rejection letter sent to Dr Seuss. His books have racked up $300 million in sales and he is now the 9th best-selling fiction author of all time.

See what I mean?

Editors, agents, first readers who dig through the publisher’s slush pile–all are quite capable of making bone-headed decisions about other people’s work. And they do it all the time.

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So if you have a stack of rejection letters sitting on your desk or stuffed into a file cabinet, don’t despair. You are not alone.

What you should do, instead of becoming despondent and inconsolable, is read those rejection letters carefully and look for the constructive criticism in them.

In most cases you will find some–though as one publisher told an author many years ago: “This manuscript should be buried under a pile of rocks and forgotten for the next thousand years.”  (That book went to become a bestseller and was even made into a movie. It’s name: Lolita.)

 Phrases like that can be a bit disheartening–even to the most thick-skinned scribbler.  So far I have not received anything quite so venomous…though I have had my go-rounds with a few agents and editors who couldn’t see the value of what I was working on.

Now that I am writing fiction rather than nonfiction, I am finding that I no longer really care what an agent or publisher may think of my work. I find that especially satisfying when I am able to see that customers on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Goodreads like my book and are giving it mostly 5-stars with a handful of 4-star ratings.

That tells me that I must be doing something right.

The key is believing in yourself and the story you are telling. You will NEVER please everybody. There will always be those who don’t understand or simply don’t like your book or books. That’s life.

But it is critical that you DO NOT stop believing in what you are writing. Does that mean you should ignore valid and constructive criticism?

No, it does not. If somebody has taken the time to tell you what is wrong with your book or why he or she didn’t like it, you should also take the time to consider that criticism and learn from it.

It doesn’t mean you should simply give up, stop writing and walk away from your computer. Writing is a skill that cannot be taught–at least not in the same way one learns calculus or biology.

It must be learned. And we learn to recognize good writing by reading.

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Then we learn how to write by by writing, writing, writing–even if the writing we do is terrible, with way too many adjectives in place of strong action verbs or way too many compound-complex sentences that give readers migraines as they slog through page-long paragraphs.

Reading should be fun–not a chore. And only you, the writer, can dictate that.

So if a rejection letter says your prose is ponderous and pretentious, or your story is tedious and byzantine you might want to take a hard, critical look at what you have written.

And after doing that if you still disagree with the author of that rejection letter, then by all means, plow ahead. You may be right and that agent or editor may be wide of the mark.

Time and book sales will tell.