A “must read” article for 2012: Author Piper Bayard has a hilarious article on her blog about saving the whale. She suggests renaming the Muskrat “Imperial Dwarf Deer” and declaring it an endangered species. How would this help save the whale? Read it here.
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The Japanese tsunami – what is it with ghost stories?
The newspapers report this week that the Japanese city of Ishinomaki, which took the brunt of the tsunami in March last year is awash with ghost stories. This one city accounted for a fifth of all the tsunami deaths. One supermarket stands half rebuilt because workers on the project were getting sick and blaming it on ghosts. One taxi driver won’t pick up fares in certain parts of the city for fear the passenger might be a ghost. Anthropologist Takeo Funabiki says people find it hard to accept death, so ghost stories abound.
This makes me stop and ask: why do ghost sties persist in literature, and why do some people believe in ghosts. Famous writer C.S. Lewis (The Narnia Tales) was a Christian lay theologian who said he didn’t believe in ghosts, even though he’d seen one. He was in bed one night (reading, as best I can recall,) when a recently deceased friend appeared at the end of his bed. The ghost said, “It’s not so hard as you think, you know,” apparently referring to death, and then disappeared. (He tells the story in the book A Grief Observed, which is about the death of his wife.) The last ghost book I read was “A Manhattan Ghost Story” by T.M. Wright, about a photographer who turns up to his friends apartment to find his friend gone, and an attractive young woman living there. She turns out to be … you guessed it. And who can forget Haley Joel Osment’s famous line: “I see dead people… Walking around like regular people. They don’t know they’re dead.”
The Japan Today site below has a debate between people who believe in Ghosts and those who don’t with many of the pro camp claiming to have seen ghosts or experienced them. Me? I’m a sceptic. My attitude is “show me the evidence.” But anyone reading this: do any of you believe in ghosts? How do you account for the persistence of ghost stories across time and across so many cultures? Please: fell free to post a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/one-year-on-ghosts-stalk-tsunami-hit-ishinomaki
http://www.nodeju.com/19225/japanese-tsunami-town-inhabited-by-ghosts.html
Describing setting in novels.
I’ve been thinking lately about setting: that is, how we describe the place where the action in our novel is happening. Think of the things your character can observe about a place.
Interiors
What color are the walls? What color is the furniture? Is it old or new, does to belong to a certain period? Has the place been recently renovated? What are the floor coverings? Are they new, worn, threadbare, or old fashioned? Are there any bench tops? What surface do they have – Formica, wooden, aluminium, granite? Is the place clean, dusty, dirty, disorganized, or neat? What are the light fittings like? Remember, when describing something visual, it’s not just colors; it’s also shiny or dull, rough or smooth.
Are there any smells? Of food? Of cleaning products?
What does your character feel about this place? Does it bring back memories of some pleasant or unpleasant experience? Name three feelings that things in this place might evoke.
Exteriors
If you’re in a back yard or front yard, is it neat or unkempt, are the plants healthy or dehydrated, are there weeds? What season is it and is your description consistent with that? Does the ground slope, and what’s the texture underfoot as your character walks? Smooth, sloping, uneven, sand, concrete, gravel?
In public places, how many people are there? Are there shops you wouldn’t expect there? Have they changed since the last time your character was there? What can our character hear? Is it pleasant or unpleasant? What can they smell? Petrol fumes? Cooking from a food outlet?
What does your character fell about this place? Irritation about the noise or the smells? Do they feel safe here? Name three feelings that things in this place might evoke in your character.
If anyone has more things they include please leave a comment.
A great article on describing watery scenes by Sharla Rae is at http://writersinthestorm.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/place-descriptions-part-two-waterways/#comments
For those new to this Blog, my email is snowinmelbourne@hotmail.com and on twitter I’m @Richard_A_Snow. Best wishes. Richard Snow
I don’t speak to ordinary people unless there’s an election going on, says politician
Yesterday I went into the city to see the stage play “Yes Minister”, based on the British Political comedy series of the same name. To my surprise I discovered the Greeks were having a street festival in Lonsdale Street. There were stalls selling Greek Yogurt, all the Greek restaurants were doing a brisk trade, and a large stage had been erected with guys playing bouzouki etc. So, a Greek lunch then off to the theater.
The Play involves a British PM, his Principle Private Secretary, his head of Civil Service, a political advisor and the ambassador for Kumranistan, an mythical country which is prepared to loan Britain 10 trillion pounds so it can buy oil from Kumranistan. Unfortunately, the Kumranistan PM wants a school girl to have sex with that night or he won’t sign the deal. The characters twist themselves into knots trying to work out how they could do this without breaking any laws.
The play had brilliant one-liners in it.
“I don’t speak to ordinary people, unless there’s an election going on.” – Jim Hacker, the Prime Minister.
“Memoirs are not the truth, they’re the case for the defence” – Claire Sutton, the PM’s political advisor.
About environmentalism: “The Germans have a big Green Movement. ” Response: “You make it sound like dysentery.” (I didn’t get down which two characters said that.)
About ethics in politics: “You’ve been sliding down a slippery slope since you were elected. It’s the price of power.” – the Kumranisatan Ambassador.
When the Kumranistan Foreign Minister wants a school girl for the night the actors discuss how they could make it sound good if it ever leaked to the press. “We have to make it sound good, like the yanks did with torture. Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”
It’s got some good lines. I’d give it four out of five stars.
Article on setting in fiction writing on Melissa Donovan’s blog
Melissa Donovan has an excellent piece on writing setting in fiction. You need a couple of sentences at the start of each scene to tell the reader where we are. (I made this mistake numerous times in the first draft of my book. The reviewer kept writing, “Yes, but where are we?”)
Melissa’s blog is called “writingforward” and the article I’m referring to is at
Jesus on Mars: what I’m reading this week.
Jesus on Mars, by Philip Jose Farmer, has an astonishing plot premise. What if humans landed on Mars, and, in a hollowed-out mountain, found a human community who followed orthodox Jewish teaching? The humans were picked by up a space ship in AD 50, which rescued them from some dangerous situation. (We don’t get to learn much about the situation.). The space ship in which they landed on Mars is just near the hollowed-out mountain. Along with the Jews, they picked up the resurrected Jesus.
Although this book was written in 1979 there is nothing that “jars the reader” because Farmer tried to predict the future and got it wrong. The four earth crew who land on Mars include one Baptist, a Muslim, a lapsed Jew, and a woman who has been an atheist for many years.
They undergo a lot of internal conflict as they try to come to terms with Jesus’ apparent miraculous powers: making things levitate, having the head cut off a ram and then restoring the head to the animal, after which it walks off quite happily.
The Jesus announces that he will be coming to earth in the space ship that has been lying outside the mountain . This is broadcast directly to earth TV stations. That’s when the fun starts, but I won’t give away any more of the plot.
Science fiction is sometimes divided into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. Hard scifi gets all the technical and scientific details right, in great detail. ‘Soft’ scifi is mostly about the characters and their relationships, like ‘soapies’, Star Trek Voyager’ and ‘Star Trek the Next Generation’ were soft scifi. I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes “soft” science fiction. Some copies are available on Amazon.
Passing as another race – what I’m reading this week
Passing as another race: what I’m reading this week.
The book-reading group I belong to is going to be talking about Philip Roth’s “The Human Stain” next month. This deals with a topic I’ve only seen mentioned in one other book: people of African American decent “passing” as white. I’ve been vaguely aware that this exists in America, but it’s never been something I’ve had any reason to think about or discuss with any of my American friends. So, first a summary and then a few questions.
Roth’s book revolves around Coleman Silk, a college professor who is incorrectly accused of racism because one day, as he’s marking the attendance roll, he refers to two students who have never shown up for class by saying “Does anyone know these people? Do they exist or are they spooks?” I’ve never heard the word used in this sense, but apparently “spooks” is one term for African Americans. I’ve always thought a spook was either a ghost or a spy. In fact the two students are black, and lodge a complaint against Silk, which ends with him leaving his college. In fact Silk is actually a green-eyed, white-skinned African American who enrolled in the Navy in WWII passing as white. When he left the navy he got a scholarship to university as a white. For 50 years he has pretended to be white, in fact, to be Jewish. It is not until after Silks death that the narrator of the book meets Silk’s sister, at his funeral, and she tells the narrator of Silk’s history. Silk has just been buried as a Jew. He has, intentionally, married a woman with crinkly hair in case any of his children were born with crinkly hair. Silk’s only communication with his family has only been telephone calls between him and the sister, since he could never allow the two worlds to meet.
When he decided, 50 years ago what he was going to do, he told his mother and she said she realised his (future) children would never know her as their grandmother.
The book is set in 1989, during the time of the Monika Lewinsky scandal, i.e., it’s fairly recent in historical terms.
In Australia, the opposite issue to “passing” has arisen recently in a court case involving journalist Andrew Bolt, who suggested in a newspaper article that some fair skinned people of mixed descent identify as aboriginal in order to get art prizes and jobs reserved for aboriginals. But these people acknowledge their Austrian or English ancestry is not a secret – they couldn’t really hide it even if they wanted to) so the issue is not quite the same as in Roth’s book. (There’s a Wikipedia article on Bolt with links to his articles.)
It set me wondering: do light skinned African Americans today feel a need / or see a benefit from “passing” as white? How often on forms do people have to state their race? (I can’t recall any internet forms asking me my race (even just for ‘statistical purposes). Is it regarded as treachery to one’s group? Anybody got any thoughts? Anybody want to enlighten me?
Kristen Lamb’s Blog contains good articles.
Today I’m not going to say anything about economics or politics. Promise. Kristen Lamb’s blog (http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com) has an excellent article headed “Taking Your Novel From Good to Great” which contains a guest blog by Danielle Poiesz about the website “bookcountry.com”. Book country is a site where authors can upload books (or drafts) and get comments and feedback from other writers or readers. There are sections related to specific genres, articles about the business side of writing, and articles of advice by authors. One, by Jamie Freveletti, has “Ten Tips I Received… and sometimes Ignored.” It opens with the quote “Persistence is the only thing that has the ability to move you closer to being published. The first tip is “write every day.” She doesn’t, she admits: how could you raise kids, work as a lawyer, and write every day? But she says even under those conditions she managed to write every other day. Boy! That’s a mighty feat. It reminds me of a quote attributed to American President Calvin Coolidge about persistence and determination alone being omnipotent. One of the reassuring things in Freveletti’s article is that her first book didn’t get published, and that’s not uncommon. Well, I guess this entry ended up being more about book country than Kristen Lamb. But check out Kristen Lamb’s site. Apart from her own articles, she has lots of useful links to other sites and blogs. Best wishes.
Politics, Money and Personal Abuse.
My last post on “Why aren’t more Americans more visibly angry?” drew a few responses.
Tameri says “I am totally pissed at where our country is right now … (but I) desperately want to believe that (politicians) genuinely have our best interests in mind when making decisions.” She concludes with “I’m pissed, but feel impotent to change anything. What would you suggest we do?”
Rissa points out that no one forced people to take out mortgages they couldn’t afford and then draw down equity to buy “a boat or some other expensive plaything… Where is the outrage at their part in crashing the economy?”
Valerie (garagesalefinder) posted a fairly punchy reply. She says “I believe quite the opposite of Tameri about our elected officials. I don’t believe most of the politicians have our best interests at heart. I believe they have their own self-interest in mind with the decisions they make.” She is upset at the influence of lobbyists and says about politicians, “for the most part, if you have enough money behind you, you can spend your way into office. That tends to make them susceptible to influence by rich lobbyists.” She adds, “I find it fascinating that nobody is protesting in Hollywood outside the studios where top actors make tens of millions of dollars for a few months of work. Or protesting outside stadiums where athletes are paid millions of dollars for playing games.”
Cheryl says, “Since the protesters [the occupy Wall Street groups] are standing up against the very corporations who have bought and paid for both sides of the government, through lobbying and political donations, they’re not likely to find much sympathy with the politically motivated media.” And she wants lobbyists and corporate funding of politicians outlawed.
Andrew asks why he should care about the distribution of wealth. “If you redistribute that wealth, what do we get?” (The figure of 1.5 trillion – Forbes estimate of the wealth of the top 400 in the US – were spread over 150 million people would be $10,000 per person. Not that such a redistribution is politically possible, even if a society could actually reach agreement on such a thing.
Where should a discussion like this go?
Let’s look at two problems my writers have identified.
It seems odd that Americans who are left-leaning believe the media are controlled by large companies (and hey, they don’t get any bigger than News Corporation) while those who are right-leaning believe that the ‘liberal media’ distort the news leftward. On the face of it it’s hard to imagine the media as a whole being left leaning. After all, if newspapers and television stations aren’t owned by large corporations, who are they owned by?
I lament the fact that what should be intelligent coverage and debate over national issues is trivialised and turned into entertainment, where professionally indignant shock jocks simply make provocative statements and then insult and talk over the top of listeners or viewers who disagree with them . The level of debate in politics in Australia is lamentable. Ten second sloganistic sound bites rule the media. And I don’t see much higher level of debate in Britain or the US. Sorry to anyone who feels offended at that.
If there is to be intelligent debate about issues, I suspect it has to take place on the internet, free from the domination of corporations that own the TV stations and newspapers. BUT, on the internet too much discussion about political issues just turns into personal abuse, with posters on many forums giving no sources for their alleged facts. Too many posts in blogs and websites turn into ‘you’re a socialist liberal communist / right wing repiglican asshole’ (or insert whatever insult the writer feels happy with.)
Somehow, some of us have to make a conscious effort to engage in debate without descending into personal abuse, and start to cite sources for our facts, and concede that there might be possible arguments against our own positions.
We need to recapture the notion that political debate is something more than name calling.
Perhaps the replies that resonate the most with me are Valerie’s and Cherly’s comments on lobbyists and money in politics. It seems that to make it thru a primary election season in the US a politician has to be independently wealthy, or get a lot of donations from large corporations. Five of Obama’s top 20 campaign donors in 2008 were Wall Street banks. (I didn’t know this until last month, but the information is easy to find once you google it. Look for the “opensecrets.org” website and the Centre for Responsive Politics” ) Somehow, those of us in democratic countries need to be pushing for laws that aren’t in the interests of the people who would need to enact them. That’s a tough ask.
But somehow a groundswell of public opinion needs to be created that says ‘NO, it is NOT OK for Goldman Sachs to donate $1 million to a political candidate.”
Any thoughts on how this can be done?
The friendliness of strangers.
I was at university today, sitting on one of the benches outside the library, just in front of the window of a café that’s in the library. I had a notepad out and was working on a stats problem.
A young guy and girl approached me and said “Excuse me sir, can we get you coffee?” (Who calls strangers “sir” in Australia? America, yes. But here?) I thought they must be… from the café trying to drum up business, so I asked. “No, we just noticed you working here and we wanted to buy you a coffee.” I was a bit perplexed. I wondered if I looked like I couldn’t afford a coffee. (I was wearing a pair of jeans that are a bit faded and had ink stains where a biro leaked in the right side pocket. Maybe I’m dressing too down-at-heel.)
There had been a TV show here in Australia recently that said the way to happiness included practicing random acts of kindness. I asked, “Are you doing random acts of kindness?” “We just want to buy you a coffee. What do you have?” I figured “What the hell – why not?” and said, “A latte.” They disappear. I wonder if once they get the coffee they’ll want to start talking about Jesus and I’ll be captive because I’ve accepted the coffee. They come back with a latte. Then we start talking. He looked vaguely familiar. It turns out she’s in the same calculus lectures as me, and he sits in just to be with her. She’s Ermina and he’s Tom. We start talking. They don’t want to talk about Jesus.
She tells me she’s born in Bosnia and her family fled to Germany when Yugoslavia disintegrated. We talk about her family’s life there and here. Her dad’s doing an economics degree at the same uni. Her family were Muslim, but she doesn’t wear the garb.
She tells me how after she was born, her mother tried to register her birth. The fighting had just started. For seven days, the officials at the registry office wouldn’t register her birth because they couldn’t agree on what to put on the heading of the certificate. Yugoslavia? The Republic of Bosnia? Or is it Bosnia and Herzegovina? But without a birth certificate the mother can’t get the daughter added to her passport, and they can’t get the child out to Germany.
Finally someone makes a decision on what the letterhead should read. Her birth certificate is now stored somewhere safe. If she loses it she may not get another. They’re just two likable twenty-somethings who were happy to have a conversation with a fifty-something. The world feels nicer today. After the next lecture, I must buy them a coffee.
Richard Snow Writer 