Q&A with Josh Lanyon discussion
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What else are you reading? (June 2010 - May 2013) *closed*
Cleon wrote: "Lauraadriana wrote: "Josh wrote: "I'm finding this to be the case with J.D. Robb's In Death series. She's 20-some books in, and sometimes it's tough to keep it going, I think. There have been some ..."
Yeah my endurance with books only last so much...and I think when they go on for SO LONG they inevitably loose something...Now I'm thinking of poor Kit and the weakening intrepidity of Mrs.Butterworth (I mean Butterwith :))
Yeah my endurance with books only last so much...and I think when they go on for SO LONG they inevitably loose something...Now I'm thinking of poor Kit and the weakening intrepidity of Mrs.Butterworth (I mean Butterwith :))
Josh wrote: "I'd just gotten so sick of staring at a computer screen, and going back to handwriting was rather refreshing, I must say.I was thinking about that -- it might be good to try working somewhere e..."
Pen and paper always works for me when I'm stuck.
Cleon wrote: "I'm reading Strange Fortune... the adventure is getting intense now.. and so is the chemistry... This story is so different from other fantasy stories I've read before."
I know. It had a different sense of reality for me. A lot of fantasy has a quality I associate with (here we go again) Tolkien. Strange Fortune didn't have that flavor.
I should probably post this on that thread....
JPerceval wrote: "I think I have one of the angel books by Shinn. Knowing me, it's the first one, so whatever that one's called, it's in my TBR somewhere..."Shinn's books are a series, but she wrote them out of order, and they can be pretty easily read out of order, I felt. Generally, I'm kind of OCD about reading in order.
Lauraadriana wrote: "Now I'm thinking of poor Kit and the weakening intrepidity of Mrs.Butterworth (I mean Butterwith :)"MISS Butterwith ;)
Liade wrote: "Lauraadriana wrote: "Now I'm thinking of poor Kit and the weakening intrepidity of Mrs.Butterworth (I mean Butterwith :)"
MISS Butterwith ;)"
Ooopsss...MS.Butterwith and her sleuthy cat...Thanks Liade!
MISS Butterwith ;)"
Ooopsss...MS.Butterwith and her sleuthy cat...Thanks Liade!
Mod
"Take the 45 seconds to review your sentence and delete all the "And" and "But" droppings, damn it. They contribute NOTHING to your sentence, semantically. Empty calories."
"Why would you start a sentence with AND?"
NK: This is going to sound abstract, but here it goes. I strongly suspect that what these words are adding is rhythm. To achieve her own rhythmic aesthetic regarding the sound of her writing, the author senses that there needs to be a syllable in front of some sentence and ends up using "and" and "but" to keep the rhythm of the sentences in line with that aesthetic. What should probably happen, rather than simply removing the extra words, which would damage the author's rhythmic sense and make the prose seem ugly to her, is to vary the words or try to make better use of dependent clauses, rather than conjunctions to connect the rhythm sentence to sentence. Use of dependent clauses would be harder, because it would be hard to suggest one that fell within the parameters of the author's own sense of linguistic beauty, but are probably the best solution to preserve the rhythm, while varying the prose.
Nicole wrote: "Regarding these two comments:"Take the 45 seconds to review your sentence and delete all the "And" and "But" droppings, damn it. They contribute NOTHING to your sentence, semantically. Empty calo..."
Nicole, you had me right up until 'dependent clauses' then I somehow got lost. I can kind of see what you mean by rhythm, but I tend to think of it more as how thoughts follow one another: First I think/say this. And that makes me think/say this. But maybe next I think/say this.
Anne wrote: "Nicole, you had me right up until 'dependent clauses' then I somehow got lost."I remember when my husband went on his first German course years ago, the first thing the teacher taught the class was English grammar.
Mod
As for rereading books... I keep telling people my brain is swiss cheese. I've reread mysteries only a year after originally reading them and I forgot who did it. It's not because the story sucked, because believe me, it didn't, it's just my brain.
I think I've bought books a second time, but those were older books that I got used, if it ever happened, so I probably just took them back to the bookstore I used to go to and get more credit so I could buy more books. BEST used bookstore I've ever been to. Gosh, I could buy a whole pile of books for under a dollar. It was fantastic! lol. Too bad they couldn't have moved with me.
As for organizing books... I started to do that on my DOS computer when I was in middle school. I had a Word Perfect document (still have it, thank you very much! and still use it too) that listed all of my books in alphabetical order by author's last name, and even had a column for which row of the bookshelf or which crate they were in. When I went off to college this was especially helpful, because I'd call home wanting a book and I could tell them EXACTLY where it was. lol, I amazed my parents with this. It's no wonder I'm a librarian today. hehe. Of course, now that I've moved, gained a ton more books (all of them M/M) I need to revamp that list, and maybe even split things into fiction/nonfic/and M/M lol. My M/M section will be big enough to have its own section. I love that.
Anyway, I'll stop rambling and keep reading the rest of these comments I missed!
Anne wrote: "Generally, I'm kind of OCD about reading in order."Ding! Ding! Ding! Me too! :-)
Mod
Josh wrote: "But why would you start a sentence with And?Let me just interject here that sometimes, if you're deep in POV and your main character's thoughts are imitating the rhythm of his speech (which is ..."
I was kidding. I realize that the things that would bother me immensely reading Dutch, are no problem for me in English. My sense of language in English is underdeveloped, clearly.
Emanuela ~Zstyx~ wrote: "I think. Some people stop to think. And they put. A period. Period.My professor of sociology 1.0.1 wrote like that and it made me crazy. But crazy bad. Not crazy good. This is close to torture ..."
What was the purpose, except maybe drive you crazy?
Mod
It's horrible, but there are so many Americans who don't know how to write or spell English words. (Just like there's probably a ton of Germans who can't spell in German.) And some just don't care. I met a guy online once and he would email me these terrible sentences, I couldn't understand. His excuse was that he was using his phone or something. I told him he had no excuse, that he's talking to a writer, and it bugged the heck out of me the way he wrote and misspelled everything. Oiy. I just think it's worse though, seeing teens who don't know how to write. In the library I get a lot of simple questions about that, and it's so sad. How can they be about to graduate when they don't know the first thing about writing?
Liade wrote: "Anne wrote: "Nicole, you had me right up until 'dependent clauses' then I somehow got lost."I remember when my husband went on his first German course years ago, the first thing the teacher tau..."
I know -- when I took French and Greek, we had to learn English grammar before learning new parts of speech. Yet I still can barely remember anything about it.
My mother would be so ashamed. She's an ESL teacher.
Sylvia wrote: "Josh wrote: "But why would you start a sentence with And?Let me just interject here that sometimes, if you're deep in POV and your main character's thoughts are imitating the rhythm of his speech..."
Actually, I think the majority of readers have become used to it. I think it's even effective sometimes. It's just when it's overused -- this is what "Find and Replace" was invented for, right?
Nicole wrote: "NK: This is going to sound abstract, but here it goes. I strongly suspect that what these words are adding is rhythm. To achieve her own rhythmic aesthetic regarding the sound of her writing, the author senses that there needs to be a syllable in front of some sentence and ends up using "and" and "but" to keep the rhythm of the sentences in line with that aesthetic. What should probably happen, rather than simply removing the extra words, which would damage the author's rhythmic sense and make the prose seem ugly to her, is to vary the words or try to make better use of dependent clauses, rather than conjunctions to connect the rhythm sentence to sentence. Use of dependent clauses would be harder, because it would be hard to suggest one that fell within the parameters of the author's own sense of linguistic beauty, but are probably the best solution to preserve the rhythm, while varying the prose."Sadly, I was going entirely by rhythm and cadence. Believe me, I wasn't pattern matching rules of grammar. My prescription was to observe the rules of grammar because there just isn't a prescription for "you sound all wrong, do it right!"
In every one of those instances, there wasn't the build-up of rhythm and momentum that I was expecting in my brain. There was no melody. It felt cluttered and dissonant.
This is going to be very hard to explain, but for me, this feels literally like suddenly feeling heavy and tripping. Like getting bogged down while running on very dry soft sand. My eyeballs jerk back to the beginning of the sentence and I find myself forced into restarting it over.
I *think* what's happening is that my brain is running ahead in a parallel track telling me what to expect - and that track is about a nanosecond faster than what my eye is taking in and filling in with comprehension. It then fails to meet my expectations and I feel itchy and a bad-scratchy-violin feeling in my brain and eyes.
I don't know if it's similar in its roots to the feeling of deja-vu one gets (one brain process faster than another by a nanosecond or two). Except that this is more "hey, where did it go", rather than seeing it twice. God, I'd love to do some MRI scans and sentence structure exploring. There's a publishable paper here, I just know it :).
I don't know. I certainly don't want to sound like I know what I'm talking about because I most certainly don't, but I do find it fascinating. I digress.
The only rule I consider a rule is "know when it's wrong." And it's never won me an argument or been helpful to anyone, unsurprisingly.
Sorry for the rambling! And (cough) thanks for the detailed explanation!
Josh wrote: "This just totally cracked me up. Clearly you WERE suffering insomnia."
:)
ns wrote: "Josh wrote: "This just totally cracked me up. Clearly you WERE suffering insomnia.
"
:)"
ns...that was some awesome reading you did in April...how was the Kundera book?...The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of my favorite books...I just read Duras' The Ravishing of LOL Stein for the 1001 Books you to read Before you Die group that was quite good...
"
:)"
ns...that was some awesome reading you did in April...how was the Kundera book?...The Unbearable Lightness of Being is one of my favorite books...I just read Duras' The Ravishing of LOL Stein for the 1001 Books you to read Before you Die group that was quite good...
Lauraadriana wrote: "how was the Kundera book?...[book:The Unb..."You know, if there's a man who could give Grahame Greene a contest in my eyes for best writer of the twentieth century it would be Kundera. Close, at least. He's amazing, complicated, exasperating. Immortality might just be his best book.
Impossible to sum it up in the 30 seconds so I'll just type up a taste:
"At best existence after death would resemble the interlude she was now experiencing while reclining in a deck chair: from all sides she would hear the continuous babble of female voices. Eternity as the sound of endless babble: one could of course imagine worse things, but the idea of hearing women's voices forever, continuously, without end, gave her sufficient incentive to cling furiously to life and to do everything in her power to keep death as far away as possible."
I couldn't help laughing and thinking of the best scene in Macbeth (perhaps anywhere) when they hear the babble of women and he gets the news the Queen is dead...
A cry within of women.
What is that noise?
SEYTON:
It is the cry of women, my good lord.
MACBETH:
I have almost forgot the taste of fears
The time has been, my senses would have cool'd
To hear a night-shriek...
Ah, 5 seconds on Duras: you must see the movie. She is austere, poetic, baffling. Very squeezing-of-the-heart things, but I saw the movie at 14 and it really did a number on me. TRoLS will not prepare you for this, trust me. My sis knows a French artist who got to photograph Duras (digital jazz photo) and she is quite the lady.
Mod
Weird. Why? Oh, wait, your husband is British, right? I can see how that would be necessary. I never actually found it necessary to learn English grammar till I studied Japanese. :)
ns wrote: "Lauraadriana wrote: "how was the Kundera book?...[book:The Unb..."
You know, if there's a man who could give Grahame Greene a contest in my eyes for best writer of the twentieth century it would b..."
I do love Duras...L'Amant is one of my favorite books...and Kundera is a magnificent writer...but the best writer of the 20th Century award this Latin lady gives hands down to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
You know, if there's a man who could give Grahame Greene a contest in my eyes for best writer of the twentieth century it would b..."
I do love Duras...L'Amant is one of my favorite books...and Kundera is a magnificent writer...but the best writer of the 20th Century award this Latin lady gives hands down to Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Mod
This is going to be very hard to explain, but for me, this feels literally like suddenly feeling heavy and tripping. Like getting bogged down while running on very dry soft sand. My eyeballs jerk back to the beginning of the sentence and I find myself forced into restarting it over.
I *think* what's happening is that my brain is running ahead in a parallel track telling me what to expect - and that track is about a nanosecond faster than what my eye is taking in and filling in with comprehension. It then fails to meet my expectations and I feel itchy and a bad-scratchy-violin feeling in my brain and eyes. "
That's an interesting description of a reading experience. Very visceral and synesthetic.
Anyway, back to the point. I wasn't talking about the rhythmic experience of a reader here. I was talking about how a writer hears their own words in their own head while writing.
But I think from your reaction you and that particular author have irreconcilable differences in terms of what prose should sound like. I understand. It happens to me all the time. :)
Mod
What I mean is, rather than saying something like:
And I'm not proud of it. But I'm probably not going to stop.
The sentence could read:
Though I'm not proud of using three-letter conjunctions to start sentences, I see no reason to stop.
This takes two short, choppy sentences and turns them into one, more complex sentence that begins with a dependent clause. It's a neat trick that works sometimes.
Though actually, I'm not sure if "Though I'm not proud..." actually counts as a dependent clause because it contains a subject and a verb. You get the point anyway, right? That complexity of writing can be increased by selectively combining short sentences.
I must say, however, as an editor I wouldn't change the sentences in the context where they originally appeared because it would kill the joke.
Mod
No, Ginn tried to convince me to write The Rifter for her every other day for, like, five years. I think it's a pretty common wish. Hey, I know! How about we swap? I'll send you my Irregulars story and you can fill in the three missing scenes in the middle and I'll do whatever it is that isn't done on yours. Our basic prose styles are similar enough that no one will ever know...
Oh, wait.
Okay, no one who isn't reading this particular thread will ever know...
<----------- IDIOT. Nicole wrote: "ns wrote:In every one of those instances, there wasn't the build-up of rhythm and momentum that I was expecting in my brain. There was no melody. It felt cluttered and dissonant.
This is going to ..."
Uh Oh. I just realized who you were. Ah crud. I'm arguing grammar with you?
Mod
Nah, go ahead and argue if you want. It's okay. Everyone has a different experience of words--particularly in an artistic sense. :)
Guys & gals, walk No... RUN to read this marvelous fic: http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2281014...
The story is about Dani (or Daniel) a transgendered high school boy and Kevin, a straight (at least at first) football player, a typical asshole dumb jock at first sight. What developed was a very heart warming stories about two young men learning about themselves & their identity and grew together as a couple and persons. It is also how their relationship with their family developed, even Kevin's homophobic father.
They are just so sweet together, and their soul searching and courage are so astounding.
I can't believe it is not published yet! The voice is spot on for high school boys & girls and the characterization is top notch!
The only thing that bugs me is some POV switches, but nothing major.
Cleon wrote:Cleon Lee (CleonLee) | 214 comments Guys & gals, walk No... RUN to read this marvelous fic:
Cleon!
if one of the BEST things I've read this year...just a beautiful story. I've been shamelessly pimping it for weeks...I love it and wonder why it's not published...anyways I ranted enough in my review :O) I have the PDF if anyone wants it...it's worth the read!
Cleon!
if one of the BEST things I've read this year...just a beautiful story. I've been shamelessly pimping it for weeks...I love it and wonder why it's not published...anyways I ranted enough in my review :O) I have the PDF if anyone wants it...it's worth the read!
Murphy wrote: "I disagee and evidently so do a lot of folks because they keep selling, JD Robb, Sue Grafton, Jonathan Kellerman, John Sandford,etc. The characters become friends and you want to know how they are..."I couldn't agree more. I love Eve Dallas. I love to read those books and even if the plot is a little weak, I find myself grinning when hearing what old friends are up to. I've become so attached to them. I discuss them with my mom as if they're people we really know. At this point I might be more attached to the characters than the stories. And the fact that such a short period of time has passed through 20 books makes a huge difference. There is no need for personality transplants, as often happens with characters over time.
Nicole wrote: "Liade wrote: I remember when my husband went on his first German course years ago, the first thing the teacher taught was English grammar."Weird. Why? Oh, wait, your husband is British, right? I ..."
He is indeed - *g* I should have mentioned this.
Unlike in English speaking countries it's not possible in Germany to go through school without learning the grammar of our own language. One reason for this is (again a difference to English) that German punctuation is in no way optional or a matter of opinion. It's simply black and white, no discussion necessary or even possible, "just" some rules :).
But as the example of my husband illustrates, the fact that German children learn German grammar means there's one less barrier to learning foreign languages, at least Indo-European ones. Japanese would be a different matter altogether...
Liade wrote: "the fact that German children learn German grammar means there's one less barrier to learning foreign languages,"That's an interesting point! I've never thought about it this way. So, it's like we're used to dealing with grammar anyway?
Liade wrote: "One reason for this is (again a difference to English) that German punctuation is in no way optional or a matter of opinion."
I can remember how stupified I was when our English teacher told us that we wouldn't learn how to use commas in English because there were no rules. ;-) I still can't really believe this... :-)
Calathea wrote: "Liade wrote: "the fact that German children learn German grammar means there's one less barrier to learning foreign languages,"That's an interesting point! I've never thought about it this way. So, it's like we're used to dealing with grammar anyway?
Liade wrote: "One reason for this is (again a difference to English) that German punctuation is in no way optional or a matter of opinion."
I can remember how stupified I was when our English teacher told us that we wouldn't learn how to use commas in English because there were no rules. ;-) I still can't really believe this... :-) "
I never realised grammar wasn't taught that extensively in English schools. We are taught Dutch grammer starting at primary school, I thought it would be like that everywhere ... guess I was wrong.
Still, it's a little ironic.
I remember when beta-readers were compulsory for non-native English writers in fandom and it was frowned upon if you didn't have one, when, in essence, I couldn't help but notice non-native English writers were often very conscientious and more conscious of using the correct grammar.
Sentence structure was a different matter, because no matter how good our English was, sometimes we slipped in bits and pieces of the structure ingrained in us :)
Blaine D. wrote: "I remember when beta-readers were compulsory for non-native English writers in fandom and it was frowned upon if you didn't have one, when, in essence, I couldn't help but notice non-native English writers were often very conscientious and more conscious of using the correct grammar.Sentence structure was a different matter, because no matter how good our English was, sometimes we slipped in bits and pieces of the structure ingrained in us :)"
I'm also a qualified translator and a rule for most professional translators is that they will only translate into their own native language, not from their own into a foreign language, for exactly the reasons above.
Blaine D. wrote: "That's an interesting point! I've never thought about it this way. So, it's like we're used to dealing with grammar anyway?"I think certain structures are already familiar to us, yes, like the "dependent clause" Nicole mentioned. At least to Germans (I know very little Dutch) that is a very familiar concept.
When I went to elementary school - age 6/10, like a million years ago - my teacher inflicted grammar upon us constantly, and I am grateful for it, because it helped me with Latin, English, German, Spanish (I'm hopeless with French, though), especially to understand the differences between the languages (I'm Italian). Nowadays grammar is not taught as extensively as it was in my days and it shows in every written communication I receive. Plus, I think texting is making people illiterate, my opinion of course.
Nicole wrote: "Anne wrote: Nicole, you had me right up until 'dependent clauses' then I somehow got lost. What I mean is, rather than saying something like:
And I'm not proud of it. But I'm probably not going ..."
OH! dependent clauses! Yes, of course.
It's weird how I can write it, but not necessarily understand how I constructed it.
I wouldn't change the original, largely for the same reason. I can't see my characters (for the most part) speaking or thinking as in your example, either. OTOH, it may be that I need to vary my characters more.
Cleon wrote: "Guys & gals, walk No... RUN to read this marvelous fic: http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2281014...
The story is about Dani (or Daniel) a transgendered high school boy and Kevin, a ..."
Those are many of my favorite tropes! I'm all over it, Cleon, thanks!
Emanuela ~Zstyx~ wrote: "When I went to elementary school - age 6/10, like a million years ago - my teacher inflicted grammar upon us constantly, and I am grateful for it, because it helped me with Latin, English, German, ..."Grammar and the proper use of language were also very important when I was younger, in Indonesian and in English. Nowadays, grammar is not so important anymore.
My difficulties with English are mostly which tense to use at some times (Most if not all Asian languages don't have tenses) & pronouns. Sentence structure is almost the same in Indonesian as in English so I don't have problem with that. We were taught proper comma usage; it is mostly the same as English.
Since I learn English mostly from writing and reading, I am more in tune with spelling than pronounciation. Misspellings like you're vs your, its vs it's, their vs there, really bugs me when reading.
I have to admit that I mostly write English on instinct. Once I start thinking too hard about it, my writing reflects that ... which is annoying when I'm editing, because I want to make my story better, not look like I tried too hard *sigh*.Oh, and another fandom moment, for those who used to dwell there. Am I the only one who hated fellow non-native English writers who asked to be gentle with them, because they were non-native? I always thought it made it so much harder to be taken seriously as a writer
Liade wrote: "I'm also a qualified translator and a rule for most professional translators is that they will only translate into their own native language, not from their own into a foreign language, for exactly the reasons above."
Interesting point.
When I was in grade school (US), we had to learn some grammar. I didn't retain most of it, because it wasn't reinforced, but I remember learning quite a bit in 2nd through 4th grades. One of the few things I retain, though, is lessons on how to use commas.As far as I can tell, my kids don't learn any at all. In English -- they're both in Mandarin Immersion.
It's very, very hard for me to believe our schools are up to par....
Cleon wrote: "My difficulties with English are mostly which tense to use at some times (Most if not all Asian languages don't have tenses) & pronouns."One of the most difficult tense to master for Italians is the present perfect continuous. The present perfect is difficult too. The duration concept in general is rendered in a whole different way. Also the if-clauses don't correspond. What a nightmare when I was in high school!
Cheryl wrote: "ns, I also tore through the PSycop series this month, and now I'm rereading all of them. Have you read any of the short stories? Striking Sparks is amazing and one of the hottest reads out there."Agreed, and it really illuminates Crash's abilities and attitudes too.
Anne wrote: "I do. And I'm not proud of it. But I probably won't stop. "LOL!
Mod
Ha! This makes me laugh so hard.
Norma, thanks for speaking your support. Sometimes I think I am a little out of it because I love the Eve Dallas stories and several other series!
Murphy wrote: "Norma, thanks for speaking your support. Sometimes I think I am a little out of it because I love the Eve Dallas stories and several other series!"I love Roarke, but I am at book #5 at the moment. Still 15 to go? Yeah me! :)
Emanuela ~Zstyx~ wrote: "Murphy wrote: "Norma, thanks for speaking your support. Sometimes I think I am a little out of it because I love the Eve Dallas stories and several other series!"I love Roarke, but I am at book ..."
To me all of them are wonderful.
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Q&A with Josh Lanyon
Books mentioned in this topic
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Well I dunno I've read some JR Robb and liked them just fine...I just kind of never got to the point to where they were a must read for me...There are series like the AE Mysteries where I think I could read 40 of these...but maybe the reason why I think that is because I can't...