Adventures and Hardship

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.”

-G.K. Chesterton

I didn’t think much about this quote the first time I read it. I thought “well…yeah…I suppose that’s true” but I also rather thought the author was oversimplifying. There seems to be a real distinction between the inconvenient adventure of one’s tire busting on the road, and the more palatable adventure of setting out with a pack on your back to hike a beautiful mountain.

But Chesterton makes a further point in his essay on the importance of the family–for it is a decidedly unchosen adventure and often a very great inconvenience–which drives this point much further home.

“A man has control over many things in his life; he has control over enough things to be the hero of his novel. But if he had control over everything, there would be so much hero that there would be no novel. And the reason why the lives of the rich are at bottom so tame and uneventful is simply that they can choose the events. They are dull because they are omnipotent. They fail to feel adventures because they can make the adventures. The thing which keeps life romantic and full of fiery possibilities is the existence of these great plain limitations which force all of us to meet the things we do not like or do not expect.”

(emphasis added)

These quotes came to mind from a very mundane source. I am spending time with my family and have been traveling a lot lately with my 1 year old and my 24 week pregnant belly, always having to adjust to different environments and then back to home, then to the road, then to a boisterous, crowded house, then to an empty one again. It’s all good stuff, but daunting, because doing things under these circumstances–even the theoretically fun things–is often hard.

What is fun when you’re a singleton, or even married but without children, becomes challenging and even wearisome when you have other lives dependent upon you. It is as if once you were rich in time and freedom of movement and now you are poor in said things, but the poverty of circumstance forces resilience, creativity, and endurance. I learn that I can do what I did not think I could do. I learn that I can make good on inconvenience and discomfort. And THAT, believe it or not, is a real adventure. Not one you would seek, but one that is worth coming through.

The second circumstance that brought this idea to the fore was watching my dad work on some big projects. My dad has worked with his hands for most of his life. His first education was to be a mechanic, but he ended up doing construction for the majority of my childhood. When I was very little he worked two jobs–at a construction company following a 3 am paper route to supplement income (that’s something you have to do when you have six kids!). He is a creative problem-solver type.

So this week he had some new flooring to lay down, as well as a broken dishwasher and a failing oven to replace. While this is his field, there’s always some new aspect to each project. Certain things had to be done to wire/connect the stove for propane instead of gas, as well as doing a tip-preventer thing to keep the oven from being pulled over by a wayward child (say, an exploratory 1 year old…)

All that to say, I always get the impression that my dad views a new and complicated construction or installation project as an adventure, rather than a wearisome prospect. I don’t think he would put it that way, but he attacks it that way, circling the problem for possibilities, and getting right to it. And each time he overcomes the problem, it is a new tool in his belt (sometimes literally and figuratively).

My husband is this way too. He will start a project from scratch, knowing next to nothing about it, and he will work and study and research and figure it out.

Sometimes, on my better days, I can see this clearly and enjoy a daunting project or endeavor, rather than dread it (which is what I all too often do). Once, when my car’s starter went out, I simply refused, as the daughter of a mechanic, to take it to a repair shop. So I bought the part, went to the hobby shop on the Marine Corps base where I lived, and spent my lunch hour(s) fixing my starter with help from my dad and a youtube video. What was a frustrating inconvenience became an adventure, a skill-acquirer, and a point of pride for me.

In the context of fiction, the adventures are always obvious to us and we like to watch them unfold and envision ourselves in such situations. But were the stereotypical adventures of fantasy novels to present themselves to us in real life, they would be viewed as frustrations and inconveniences at the very least. Just think of how you feel when you are stuck in traffic–a very minor inconvenience, but one which often makes us grip our steering wheels and feel like shouting at random strangers. Just think how we feel when weather keeps us from doing an activity we had planned, or slows down progress on a project. Think of how we feel when we crave a certain food, but the takeout place is closed. Think of how we feel when our phone is on the fritz and we cant call people or access e-mail or navigation or whatever it is (I’m still relatively new to smartphones, and I don’t use more than few of the extra million and a half features available).

These are very minor things, and rarely do we take them as adventures (at least, I rarely do). Normally we just get aggravated and wonder why all these little motes of dust are getting in our eyes when we just wanted our day to go along without any interferences!

Interferences are the adventures, if we will rightly consider them. This is what I want to do in life. When things aren’t working out the way I want them to, I want to think of this–think of great characters in stories and great heroes in real life–and attack it like an adventure.

Updates

Long overdue updates, that is.

I just spent the last month solid working on what looks to be the final round of revisions for my agent, which means submission is on the horizon!!!

I pretty much buried myself in the revisions, which were comparatively light, but I wanted them to be VERY GOOD so that this could truly be the final round, so it took that full month of consistent work. This happened to coincide with my husband being out of town a lot, as well as some traveling by myself with pregnant belly, 15 month old, and wolf-dog all in tow. Obviously all that factored in.

Now the work is submitted, I can go back to ye good old checking-my-email-with-absurd-and-unnecessary-frequency-because-I-literally-just-sent-it-yesterday. All good fun.

I have more traveling up ahead–spending time with family–but will have time to jot here much more often, and keep it better updated. My other goal, now that I finished that revision, is to get back to all the half-finished books. I also have a few fun-looking military sci-fi’s that I’m interested in (The Red: First Light by Linda Nagata and Mechanical Failure by Joe Zieja) and hope to get to sometime this summer.

One of the lovely things about this revision was that I still really enjoy my story. I sort of did the revision a wonky way. I took the old document, track-changed the revisions there, so I could do with unchanged, unmarked, clean space. Then I did a readthrough of each individual chapter after it was revised. Then, I painstakingly transferred those changes into the main document which had my agent’s changes/comments in it, to combine the two. THEN I did a final, thorough readthrough from start to finish. This means that I read my own book multiple times in a very short period.

(I had my reasons for doing it this way, but it was very inefficient.)

And, yes, sometimes when I was tired I had a hard time focusing on lines/scenes I’d read again and again, and my eyes would begin to glaze…but then, after a minute, I’d get into it. I’d get excited. I’d enjoy my story, or that scene, or that line ALL OVER AGAIN. I’m always a little worried I’ll be so oversaturated with my own story that I won’t enjoy it. But I really, really do. And that is such a blessing and an encouragement. I take it as a good sign (although, clearly, I’m biased).

For me, this is the real crux of it anyway. I wrote this story because I craved it. I wanted it to exist. To be published and read, sure that’s good too, but mostly to exist, so that I could read it and enjoy it. Pretty selfish motivation, but hopefully it will turn out with good results, and hopefully others will someday be able to enjoy it in their own way, coming to it with their own perspective.

I also had to go through books 2 and 3 so I could write synopses for them and that was fun too! I was a little worried that after the last year of revisions, I might come back to them (because they have not been updated since I revised them for the querying stage) and be disappointed. But I kept looking up at my sister (whom I was visiting) and saying “I REALLY like this scene. This is good!”

Again, biased : ) But it’s nice to come back to something and be proud of it rather than embarrassed.

So. Revision, done. Submission, not far off. It’s pretty exciting.

The Rebels Three

If I were to describe snippets of my childhood to you, you might conclude that I was kind of a rebel or something. I got in trouble and got disciplined more than most of my siblings. I was suspended once, and got detention another time, and have absolutely no excuse for either incident by which I mean I was completely in the wrong both times. I got in a show-down with my Pre-Calc teacher once, made one of my all-time favorite teachers cry and leave the room, set off an alarm at Mount Vernon for sneaking through barred-off areas, got in trouble more times than I can count for refusing to wear shoes, and warred (and won) with my Master Gunnery Sergeant over my pre-deployment training schedule.

This list is in no way exhaustive. I often brought others down in my apparent waywardness, like my cousin who got detention because she did what I did. Or any other friend who joined me in some scheme that ended up with alarms and searches, five-year-olds trying to climb on the roof, or broken ankles.

But here’s the thing. I wasn’t a rebel. Not the kind you’re thinking of, anyway, which is the Classic Rebel, or the Type 1 Rebel. If anything, I was what I am now going to call (I am making these categories up as I go) a Type 2 Rebel, aka the Accidental Rebel, or the Ignorant Rebel. There is also the Type 3 Rebel (the best one, in my humble opinion), the Principled Rebel.

I’m going to go through what I know of these three types and how functional I think each is in the act of actually rebelling against something that deserves to be rebelled against.

The Classic Rebel (Type 1): 

This is the one we think of first when we hear the word “rebel.” It’s the person who, by nature, has to go against the grain. And, yes, I do mean “by nature.” Some of us just have inherently rebellious personalities that have nothing to do with what we are rebelling against and everything to do with the fact that we like to kick against the goads.

This is the one who doesn’t disobey their parents because they forgot, or because they disagreed, or because they came up with a better idea, but just because the idea of having a restriction (even a good one) placed upon them makes their skin crawl.

The thing about the Classic Rebel is that they are like a driving current that can be thrown in any direction simply by telling them to go in the opposite one. Their rebellion is often far more reactive than it is substantive. It can be channeled into acting on values, but that isn’t why it exists. It exists because the Classic Rebel has a vendetta against society, and the sins of society aren’t even the source of the vendetta, just the excuse for it.

I think people often say this proudly–“well I’m a rebel. I don’t listen to anyone“–but I don’t think that’s very helpful in the long run. Besides, it’s like someone taking pride in the color of their hair; it’s just plain nature and if you don’t hone it towards something valuable, it’s not going to do anyone any good.

Let’s use the example of WWII–an extreme one, I know, but it clarifies: Say you have a Classic Rebel living in Vichy France. Their instinct to rebel may well lead them to become a maquisard and fight against the Germans. Germans=authority. Authority=restrictions. The restrictions have got to go. But since the instinct is to rebel against authority, they are just as likely to find the original French government to have been repressive and side with the Germans against them, rebelling against that. Or perhaps, in rebelling against societal norms to which they are accustomed, they adopt the new societal norms that the Germans offered. Or, even beyond that, they may join the resistance, but refuse to listen to their maquis leaders, and may have botched life-saving missions because they have to go against the grain.

Most of us who have this streak in us learn to temper it over time, discerning when to let that rebellious spirit die in the face of good advice or better aims, and when to let it fight for a good cause. But some don’t, and they go on fighting against the grain, even when the grain is very good.

Look, I am as excited as anyone about the new Star Wars: Rogue One movie but my LEAST FAVORITE part of the preview is where our tough heroine hears a litany of her past actions recited to her as a sort of chastisement and she simply responds:

“Well, this is a rebellion isn’t it? That’s what I do. I rebel.”

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I rolled my eyes, honestly. I know it’s a preview, and they wanted her to say something punchy and catchy…I get it. But rebelling for the sake of rebelling doesn’t mean much. If the Empire starts calling themselves rebels, you gonna join them too? Because that could happen.

The Accidental/Ignorant Rebel (type 2):

The Accidental Rebel neither feels the need to conform to society, nor to rebel against it, because the Accidental Rebel is usually oblivious or indifferent to what is going on around them. They just don’t care what people think. They don’t need to be liked.

A lot of people SAY this about themselves, but it is rarely true, and this is evidenced by the fact that we are usually a lot kinder in person than we are on the internet. In person we cultivate community and friendships, and sometimes this involves a low level of conformity (like watching a movie that’s not your thing just to spend time with people you enjoy and admire).

The accidental rebel has a droplet of the sociopath in them, and I DON’T say that to be mean (I’m talking about myself here). The social protocols and interactions that make sense to everyone else elude them.

Are they dressed in that outrageous fashion because they are making a statement? No. They are dressed that way because they don’t understand or care about fashion at all and they get dressed like most people handle playing cards: shuffle, deal, and play with whatever lands in your hand.

[Since I claim myself predominantly type 2, I’ll explain: My husband is not a fashion guy at all, but I have to ask him if things match or look good or are in any way appropriate to the occasion.]

There is good and bad to the accidental rebel. They certainly think for themselves, and are usually obnoxiously independent, but they can lack empathy and hospitality and general awareness of those around them. It’s the trade-off. The part of them that is free from any obligation to conform, is also sometimes free from the humility and compassion associated with learning from others and listening to others and (VERY IMPORTANT) understanding others, especially when their situation ‘doesn’t interest you.’

I was rarely embarrassed or uncomfortable as a child, even when I perhaps should have been. I was always 100% confident in my opinions, even the most absurdly wrong ones. I did not disobey because I felt rebellious, but because I was certain of my course of action, and because I felt conviction. I did what I thought was right–and I desperately wanted to do what was right–and ate the consequences if I turned out to be wrong. My mind was not easily changed and, with rare exception, “what everyone else was doing” had no bearing on my decision, either to either go along or fight against.

The good of this is that I avoided falling into a lot of stupid trends and dangerous traps because I didn’t care what people thought of me (in retrospect I think they thought I was odd and obnoxious but maybe sometimes a bit interesting?)The bad of this is that I wasn’t always very caring or kind as a child…because, again, I didn’t care what people thought.

[Empathy is certainly something I do have, sometimes to a painful degree, but it was not always properly connected to the way I interacted with people. I was SO oblivious to social interaction/protocols/etc.]

This type of rebel is kind of a chaotic neutral. They are not often lowered by societies negative pressures, but neither can they be improved by its positive ones.

In the Vichy France example, what the type 2 rebel does depends almost entirely upon whatever core convictions they have come to hold at the outset, and any basic observation and analysis that follows. If the type 2 reveres power and force, and finds it philosophically potent, they may go to the Germans. If they have convictions towards kindness and justice and freedom or the sovereignty of nations, well, to the resistance instantly. But you won’t be able to convince them of anything with peer pressure, or even threat of death or ostracization. Whether they are dead right or dead wrong, they are going to have to figure that out almost entirely on their own. They can listen to rational arguments, but it may take them a long time (months, years) to process, parse, and internalize it.

The Principled Rebel, AKA the Non-Rebel Rebel (Type 3):

This is the one I would hope to be regardless of personality. I say this because the above two types are about explicitly one’s nature, and this is entirely about one’s choice.

Type 3 might even be just the normal John or Jane Doe. They experience peer pressure, and are sometimes compelled by it. They want to live a normal life, maybe even the most stereotypical domestic life, and they usually want their friends and neighbors to like them. They don’t feel the need to stand out or make a statement, and they are quite aware of their social surroundings and sensitive to them.

They are not sheep or anything, but they do not see themselves as (type 1) fighting against society or (type 2) outside society. It may even be 100% against their nature to make a fuss, or rock the boat. They may be the most acquiescing person you ever meet as regards normal, day-to-day things.

But when it comes to something really, really valuable, they are able to go COMPLETELY against their nature and against their desire for peace or ease or comfort, and rebel against something that’s decidedly wrong but very powerful.

The Classic Rebel may fight against Vichy France because they instinctively like fighting.

The Accidental Rebel may fight against Vichy France because they do not fear death, isolation, or slander.

But the Principled Rebel has nothing in their nature to inspire them to rebel except…principle. Their conviction has to grab their own nature by the shirt collar and force it to do what it doesn’t want to do, just because it’s right.

I like that. That’s a kind of rebellion I admire.

Stories that Stick to the Ribs

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what qualities cause a story to go beyond momentary pleasure, beyond entertainment and enjoyment, to where they become a part of you. I have been running through an account of my favorite books and movies–as well as some of those I scarcely thought of twice afterwards–creating ledger to account for story meaning and value.

This is both for general purposes and curiosity, but also to see if my own stories have the very qualities I seek out in other media. Regardless, I have reached a couple of conclusions on the matter.

It is worth mentioning that these are going to be somewhat subjective because, of course, a story that brings tears to my eyes may not affect the next person at all, and I see people rave and weep over stories that I find dull or weak. Some things really are just personal. But I think at least a couple of these will probably strike a chord across personalities and preferences.

  1. Young Loves:

There are several books that I ADORE and re-read at regular intervals which were cemented in my literary soul at a young age. The Horse and his Boy, The Abolition of Man, The Blue Sword, The Hero and the Crown, and Mara Daughter of the Nile to name the chief ones.

There are also those that I did not re-read, but which needled in and remain with me to this day in spite of that. The Wings of a Falcon by Cynthia Voigt, to be exact. A Day in the life of Ivan Denisovitch, also.

Many of these types of books actually do hold up to the scrutiny of an adult re-read, but the thing is: I’m biased, so I don’t actually know for sure. These are the literary equivalent of a first crush. Even when you get over the crush, the intensity of the experience and the accompanying feelings are not easily forgotten. Even less so are they likely to be replicated as you grow older.

Something about youth is rich, soft soil. Just about anything can grow in it, good or bad. The most trivial story can take root, almost as easily as the fantastic ones.

It actually reminds me of the book The Magician’s Nephew in which Narnia is first created and the soil is so fresh that literally ANYTHING you throw at it will take and grow. Like a lamp post. Or toffee candy. It’s exciting and fantastic. It’s also a bit sobering when you think of that window in a child/teen’s life and how one hopes that the best and richest things are the ones that stick, because they are so very formative.

2. Slowness

This is more for nowadays, as opposed to my younger years.

Now I’m not against a zippy plot, or an action-packed story per se. But I’m going off of plain old stats here. The books that I remember, that I think about, that get into the DNA, those are rarely the ones I read through in a couple of days, or even in a week or so. I have, in fact, noticed a sort of proportional relationship in which the longer it takes me to read a book, the deeper the impact it makes on me. On the surface, I suppose this makes sense.

Examples:

-The Wall, by John Hersey

-The Prophets by Abraham Joshua Heschel

I took quotes from these books, I learned from them, and they took me months to read.

Oh, and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell had two scenes in it so beautiful that I would have read all thousand of those pages just for that.

Conversely, there are several books (and I will not name them) that I positively flew through, but felt almost a contempt for afterwards for how little they left in their wake. Now not all books are meant to be heavy meals. Some are candy and they meant to be candy and that is fine. Candy is delicious. But these ones just left a bad taste in my mouth because I wanted so much more than plottiness and a mini cliff-hangers every single chapter. Characterization and world-building almost always take a back seat to insistent, blurry-eyed, page-turny-ness.

It doesn’t matter how riveted I was while reading, if I’m left with a hollow, frustrated feeling, then–regardless of popularity or intent–at best I’ll remember what I did NOT like, and nothing else.

3. Improves Vastly Upon Acquaintance:

It took me three times of reading The Abolition of Man to truly grasp what was being said there. I had to look up a lot of words and really slow down and process the whole thing. It wasn’t until the third or fourth time reading it that I could do so unencumbered by the mere effort of comprehension. To this day, I sometimes CRAVE this book the way someone with an iron deficiency might suddenly crave steak.

Likewise, I don’t think I deeply grasped the bright, painful paradox of Till We Have Faces until the second read.

Mark, say, the Harry Potter books which I adored, but which sort of…settle after reading such that the flaws begin to surface. (I started re-reading them to my husband recently and while we have enjoyed this, I notice all manner of troubles).

This improvement factor is just as true, if not especially so, for movies.

One of my all-time favorite movies is Monsoon Wedding. It gets more beautiful, more powerful with each viewing, not less. Little things that I could not possibly have noticed the first go round start to surface and enrich the flavor of the whole movie. There are some things that I flatly did not understand until I had seen it a few times. There are themes that flourished best only upon multiple views.

In a more plotty/characterization sense, Lucky Number Slevin is like this as well. The story has more facets once you know the mystery’s end. Gosford Park also, in a lesser way.

I find new things to love even about Disney’s Mulan, which was always my favorite, and becomes more so every time I watch it.

The problem with this is that if they don’t catch you the first time, you’ll never give them that second or third look that they truly, truly deserve. Which is a terrible pity. They may take some patience.

4. Truth or Hope (preferably both)

Stories that don’t give up hope on important things (family, marriage, truth, honesty, purpose, reason, charity, kindness in the face of cruelty, etc.) really resonate with me. That isn’t at all to say that the story can’t be dark, painful, or even utterly devastating in some ways (John Hersey’s The Wall was about the Warsaw Ghetto, and very painful), but there has to be something more than darkness and pain.

I remember a book where rich truths are communicated, not heavy-handedly or preachily, of course, but innately enmeshed in a good story with fantastic characters. If you have the latter two elements, I think the former will usually come of its own accord. It sort of can’t help it.

The trouble here is that we don’t always agree on these things. Someone else might roll their eyes at what I find profound, and I might shake my head at what they view as hopeful. I am not a relativist–I hold my beliefs with conviction–but people absolutely have different worldviews, and that will naturally impact what they find meaningful, or what they view as valid and hopeful…sometimes in ways that matter, and sometimes in ways that really are trivial. Quite apart from this, our personal experiences are going to have a lot to do with what resonates and matters in this arena.

But as long as any given author sticks to their guns and doesn’t bend their characters, purpose and plot against the true grain of the story, I’m pretty sure the truth will out–in one way or another.

A Book Haul of Sorts

I was recently given a (very, very) early birthday present by my husband, who surprised me by getting me not one, not two, but several of the books I’d been hoping to read. He was almost as excited to give them to me as I was to get them. So here they are:

Fiction:

Updraft, by Fran Wilde

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I don’t actually know very much about this book, but I have heard that it has fascinating world-building and explores some interesting themes.

Sorcerer to the Crown, by Zen Cho

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I am so terribly excited about this one (just started it!) I LOVED Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and I love this style of story. I have simply been craving something like this for a long time, something fun and clever. I hope to highly recommend it when I’m done.

Eugenics and Other Evils, by G.K. Chesterton

Ah, Chesterton. He is one of my favorite authors. Alongside C.S. Lewis, he is an author of whom I will read just about anything. I love his essays, I love his Father Brown stories, I find most of his fiction highly odd and random, but I usually end up liking it anyway. This one is…basically what it says on the tin.

What’s Wrong with the World, by G.K. Chesterton

Similar to the above. Chesterton was a critic of many societal trends in his days, and a devout catholic. He was always liable to say things that were going to offend someone from Calvinists to Capitalists, from Protestants to Progressives. The faint of heart and conviction may find him a bit frustrating. He does love his paradoxes.

Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, edited by Benjamin Braude

This is a history which fascinates me. Ever since reading Salonica: City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims, and Jews 1340-1950, I have wanted to read more about the Ottoman Empire, although with a focus on the Arab regions of the Ottoman Empire, and particularly on the religious minorities (Jews and Christians, among others).

Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism, by Ibn Warraq

This is an intriguing one, which I will have to wait on until I obtain a copy of Said’s classic Orientalism, a work that is usually required reading as regards the Middle East, yet somehow I haven’t read it. If I’m going to read the rejoinder, it only seems fitting I should read the original argument, and let the two have a reasonable discussion that I get to listen in on!

Ibn Warraq is a pseudonym, by the way, which is an important note, as the author feared that he, like Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, would be targeted for the critiques of Islam inherent in his work. According to his bio he was born in India and migrated to Pakistan in 1947, and eventually went to school in the UK.

Republic of Fear, by Kanan Makiya

This was ALSO originally published under a pseudonym, but for slightly different reasons. It was published just before the second Gulf war (known in the US as THE Gulf War) while Saddam Hussein was still very much in power. It is essentially a detailed account of how Saddam ran his lethal regime, and very aptly named.

So there you have it. Lots of fun to be had, arguments to be heard, thoughts to be provoked.

Spices, Sauces, and Writing

So first things first, I love to cook. I didn’t really get into it until after I finished my service in the Marine Corps (because there’s not much opportunity to cook in the barracks. Lots of Chinese take-out, Pizza, roach-coach sandwiches, and commissary sushi for me). I had a brief stint of staying with my parents while I waited to hear about my college application, and I started to experiment with cooking. Things like Hamentashen and many sundry fillings thereof.

After many experiments, I prefer the non-parve dough with apricot filling!

When I got accepted to GWU, I moved to D.C. and had six roommates and we decided to cook communally so that we could better share fridge space, and have real meals more often. We each picked a night every week or every other week to cook. And I LOVED it. I looked forward to my cooking night as a stress reliever. I would turn on my music (it was an unspoken rule that it was okay to have your music on out loud if you were doing kitchen work) and make something, sometimes ridiculous meals that took two hours to make.

I love flavors and spices and savory sauces, I love when it all comes together, I love serving it to people, and I love when they enjoy it. When I want to do something for someone, my first instinct is to offer them food. As a side note, I hope that the old traditions do not die: taking food to someone who has just had a baby, or is going through a rough time, or is healing from an injury. These are good traditions.

Anyhow, a few years back, when I was still doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (I would love to do it again, but I do not think that pregnancy and BJJ mix well), I wrote a little essay about how cooking and BJJ were similar in the confluence of rule-following  and instinct and learning along the way.

I have discovered that the same comparison exists for writing.

There are numerous types of foods that you have to make several times, working through trial and error, before you know how to make them well instinctively. It is as follows:

  1. The first time you follow the recipe.
  2. Maybe it turns out, maybe it doesn’t. If it has some merit to it you…
  3. Make it again, with some modifications
  4. Do that again, this time with a better understanding of how the texture/aromatics/simmering/whatever should be like
  5. Make a few more adjustments the next time
  6. Now you almost know it by heart, and what used to intimidate you (like pastry dough, a good korma, or a mock tender roasted exactly to medium) no longer do. You may still bungle them sometimes, but you can usually tell where you went wrong now.

By now the parallel may be obvious, but I’m going to list it anyway. This all came because I was craving food from a bakery in my hometown, and they make these masterful quiches and I wanted to try one. I kept thinking about how, if you’ve done it enough times, you can eventually skip past the more tedious worrying, and just dive in. You’ll know when the texture is right in the dough, not by teaspoons, but by fingertips.

  1. The first time, you write something.
  2. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s not. If there’s some remnant there worth salvaging you…
  3. Try again and see what worked and what didn’t.
  4. You start to get a feel for when something is working and when it isn’t. You know when to add a little, take a little away
  5. Now you’re learning on the fine details. The deeper nuances of characterization, working your plotting and theming muscles as they get stronger.
  6. Now you know your characters, you know the whole thing by heart, so it’s still hard, and you still bungle it, but you have a intuitive plumb-line to which you are working, and you can always work back to it.

But there is a step seven, far more intimidating for writing, I think, than for home cooking (I mean, I’m not a restaurant chef. I don’t have to impress anybody). Step 7 is when you move on to a new story, a new idea, something where you have to start the process all over again, because it’s a totally different texture and flavor, and it uses spices and unusual root vegetables you’ve never used before (or maybe never heard of), and you might mess the whole thing right up. It might not go anywhere.

But (I keep saying you, but I’m kinda talking to myself here too) how am I supposed to know if I don’t try?

Maybe it goes well.

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Maybe I learn a little something.

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So I’m going to try. Eventually, it might taste good.

Ode to the Local Library

I saw a tumblr post (linked here) saying that this is national library week and recommending bloggers to write blog posts to this effect. I decided to do exactly that because I have a lot to say about the local library of my childhood.

I am one of six kids and we were raised to be rather independent. This meant that summers consisted primarily of us roaming our neighborhood…going to the river that cuts through the middle of the city, walking to the gas station to buy stuff from the dime-candy baskets, walking to the McDonalds for the sole purpose of collecting our sundry quarters and dollars in order to acquire the Monopoly game stickers that were on the fries and drinks. (Man, kids spend their money on the silliest things). There was a local public pool that was sometimes open and…

There was the Library. I did not hold this place in quite the reverence that I should I have, but I sure went there a lot. Walked there. Ran there. Biked there.

It was a small library. A more methodical kid than I could have read the place through by the time they graduated from high school. I was haphazard. I would stack my arms high with all kinds of random books, scarcely making determinations between genre.

One time I went, obsessed with researching Native American culture because I was fascinated by/curious about that ancestry on my mom’s side, which (to this day) we know rather little about. I came home with books about Wilma Mankiller and Apache craftsmanship, most of which I scarcely touched in the allotted two weeks.

There was also a shelf that I think would nowadays be dubbed the “YA shelf” but that was before YA was the thing it is now, so its contents were rather different. Books like “Wings of a Falcon” and “Jackaroo” by Cynthia Voigt. Those are the ones I remember most.

I was a much more adventurous reader then. I didn’t worry or wonder about whether I would like a book, or scour goodreads reviews “just to check”. I just grabbed things off the shelves and read them. My mom was generally aware of the sorts of things we brought home, but I can’t remember her ever saying “No! You can’t read that”…I do remember her being exasperated when all my brothers would bring home from the library was piles of Goosebumps and Animorphs. I think it was the Goosebumps that irritated her.

When Harry Potter started becoming a thing, I believe we read the first three with library copies shared between us. There were quite a few people I knew at the time who were not allowed to read Harry Potter “because of witches.” My mom simply picked them up after us and read them too, then said “Yeah, these are good, clean fun. Carry on.”

And so we did, usually sharing 1 or 2 copies between the six of us which was…challenging.

We would sift through each other’s stacks. We would find an author we loved and then scour the library for more of them, or go to the downtown library (a mansion by comparison) and find more.

I have my mom to thank for my love of reading, both my parents to thank for the independence and adventurousness in doing so, and our old local library for being such a childhood joy!

Long Overdue Update

Instead of lamenting for a few paragraphs how horribly long it has been since I have posted, I am going to dive right into updates which will go much farther in the realm of explanation…

  1. I finished my second round of revisions, and sent them in a little less than two weeks ago now. This round required a little more intense work on the front end of the manuscript, so I probably spent the same amount of time on the first third of the book as I did on the last two thirds. This round also went a lot faster overall, but I supposed that was to be expected. But it’s in! And we’ll see what happens!
  2. I had family in town for quite a while. First my in-laws (to include my sister-in-law, which was quite a special treat!) for a weekend, then my niece for a full week right after that. We have a tradition of having one of our nieces or nephews come stay with us for a week each year, and this was number three of seven total. The rest are still a little too young to be away from mom and dad for a full week, which is fine because…
  3. We are expecting baby number 2! I am still in the first trimester and I am exhausted. This has probably been the largest factor in my blogging neglect. Type or collapse on the couch while baby number 1 (the mousekewitz) is down for a nap?  I remember the 1st trimester lays-you-out exhaustion from last time, but I didn’t have a walking, babblingly talkative one-year-old last time. It makes a difference.
  4. I have slowed down on my goodreads reading challenge for much the same reason as I slowed down on blogging, but I’m trying to pick up some steam again. Both the books I am currently reading have been rather slow for me: Ben-Hur and Mistborn. Slow is not always a bad thing, but I’m going to shake myself by the shoulders and finish them, because I have this book on the Ottoman Empire I’m craving to read (Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire by Suraiya Faroqhi) and since I LOVED Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I really want to get Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown. It looks simply fantastic and I’m in the mood for something just like that.

As I look at the above, I think it bears mentioning that these are not written in order of importance by any means. If so, number 3 would be at the top, because that’s a pretty big deal by comparison. I did not approach this post with an entirely organized mind, I’ll admit.

In conclusion, and completely unrelated, I want to leave something as tribute, so I am going to link to a recipe that saved my skin (stomach, rather) during a rather rough patch of 1st trimester ‘nothing-sounds-good-everything-makes-me-a-bit-queasy.’ But I’m sure it tastes just as good if you’re feeling perfectly fine.

It’s hot and sour soup, and it was not very hard to make (I usually have a weakness for complicated 2 and 3 hour recipes, but they are being edged slowly but surely out of the realm of possibility). Ginger is magic, just so you know, and the hard-to-come-by ingredients are replaceable.

http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2016/02/hot-and-sour-soup/

On Styles

I have been discovering over the past few years of writing and revision that the types of literature that most influence my writing sometimes cause difficulties. What I mean is that many of them are not in vogue at all. I sometimes have difficulty dissecting these situations to discover whether I have merely been lazy and written something sloppily, or if I have written under a literary influence that simply does not suit the western literary milieu. I don’t want to be silly and pompous and make that (often hilarious) mistake that many writers are tempted to make of simply saying “Ah! They just don’t understand me and my unique talents!” when in fact, it was not written so as to be well understood and did not display any talents.

So. A conundrum.

I will explain my conundrum by three examples.

First: Anne of Green Gables and (Robin McKinley’s) The Blue Sword. These were my ultimate teenage books. I soaked them in until they inevitably crept into my writing DNA. This cannot be undone, nor would I wish to undo it.

But here’s the “problem” if it is that. Both of those book have that particularly (EXTREMELY UNPOPULAR THESE DAYS) fluid style of 3rd person omniscient, where they can literally jump between POV thoughts within the very same paragraph. In most book reviews I read this is treated as a capital offense, as if the author did it on accident and should have known better. I don’t agree. I don’t understand how there is anything wrong with this style.

(side-note: I started out instinctively using this style many, many drafts ago, and I do agree with the advice of my friend/beta-reader that it wasn’t as good for my story, so I ditched it. But I still defend the option!!!)

Also, both of these books are slower and allow tremendous room for description and introspection. The world of Damar and the world of Avonlea are the richer and more real for it, but I often see this type of slowness and depth of description derided as dull and pointless.

It is a fine line, I suppose, between richness and tediousness, but often it seems there is patience for neither, and this saddens me. At any rate, personally, I love this style, and such books sustained me in my young years.

Second: Chiastic structure and parallelism.

These are literary features are extremely prevalent in the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Old Testament) and require a certain type of repetition. Chiastic structure is as follows: A B C C B A. (It can have as many letters as you like, but the pattern stays)

Thematically it would look like this: (A) A girl is found by her mother after a long search (B) The girl and mother travel a long distance (C) They fight and part ways to find new homes (C) They part ways with those new homes (B) They travel to a new land (A) the girl finds the mother

But this can also work on the prose level, as in a chiasmus: “Ask not what your country (A) can do for you (B), but what you (B) can do for your country (A).”

[I am reminded of a Community episode where Jeff mocks this chiasmus “The people don’t want me to say (A) what I’ll do (B), they want me to do (B) what I’ll say (A)!!”]

I find this (WHEN DONE WELL) falls beautifully on my ears, but perhaps some find it repetitive which brings us to:

Parallelism: Parallelism is repetition but with purpose and nuance. There area lot of different versions of this, but the objective is a sort of symmetry that usually gives a pleasant rhythm in addition to emphasizing the meaning and theme.

I did not realize this until I started looking sites up to give me more insight on these styles, but MLK Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech is an excellent example of parallelism. The same phrase repeated over and over, but each time growing and expanding and adding upon the theme (This one is known as Climactic Parallelism). This means you use a lot of the same words again and again, but none of them are wasted, as the beauty and fame of that speech will attest to.

A classic Hebrew Bible example of the emphatic form:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

Repeating the phrase “with all your” and saying both heart, soul, and might would usually be deemed repetitive, because those are all pretty similar, but each offers an added nuance because they are not exactly the same, and it implies the extreme and holistic nature of the love.

Another is “They word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.” If you think about it, the second part is a literal rephrasing of the first. Lamp=light, feet=path. But the rhythm, poetry, and added nuance (because a lamp is a small man-made thing, and light is a natural thing outside of lamps, etc.) make it worthwhile.

Third: Arabic Literature

Despite Hebrew Literature and Arabic Literature having the same regional origin AND the languages both being Semitic and having extensive similarities, the literary styles are quite different. This has a lot to do with their respective histories. Arabic has been spoken uninterruptedly for so many centuries, whereas Hebrew was solely a literary/prayer languages for many centuries. It was spoken only in very specific contexts. It was mostly dead. Because of this, it did not expand. It’s vocabulary was not forgotten, but it was stagnant until about 150 some years ago when some activists started trying to revive the language. They had a very small, ancient vocabulary to work with, but hey! they were successful in bringing the language back which is a historically incomprehensible feat! Either way, the result is that modern Hebrew literature tends to be simultaneously poetic, from its Biblical roots, and extremely stark, from its modern roots. An odd and fascinating combination.

Arabic on the other hand not only continued to be spoken throughout this time, but it grew and grew and grew. It spread like wildfire throughout the Middle-East, mixing with Persian and Turkic languages, later garnering minor flourishes of English and French. Arabic is considered one of the hardest languages to learn NOT because it’s script is complex, and NOT because the language is confusing (it is not. Semitic languages are beautifully, intelligently structured, making them so, so much more logical than English). It is considered difficult because it’s vocabulary is so ridiculously expansive. Sometimes it feels as though there are a hundred words for absolutely EVERYTHING.

What this means for Arabic literature is that adjectives are everywhere. You know when you look up those “ten ways to improve your writing” and they say “drop all the extra adjectives, keep them to a minimum.”

Well, welcome to a world where supposed “excess” of adjectives is a joy, and to be savored one letter, one dot at a time. Sentences go on for years. The forms of verbs and nouns are played with so that the same root-word is used several times to clever effect. Oh, it is so much fun. Poetry is prose and prose is poetry, and the more sauces and spices your add, the better it becomes.

This went on WAY longer than I meant it to, and it really doesn’t solve my problem at all. I just have to do the best I can with what I have, savor my influences, and wield them wisely.

(Oh look! I think that was almost parallelism)

An Admittedly Silly Post

A slight gap in blogging due to a fun, if exhausting, weekend with family, and another Spartan race that made me sore and bruise-y all over. But I have something I want to write about. Normally I don’t go for screeds–I don’t find them edifying–but this one needed doing. Also, I am very tired, and have little else to offer at the exact moment.

This is very important (no it’s not). A deep (ridiculous) analysis (rant) of things that I see happening every day. What follows is utter nonsense, but also I’m not kidding at all. It actually bothers me.

This is about coffee and food. More particularly, coffee and food in movies, tv, and books.

It is important to state the high value coffee and food have in my life. I have gotten into genuinely irate arguments with people about this stuff. When I was in the Marine Corps, a Navy friend of mine said he didn’t like garlic. This was eight years ago, and I’m still not over it, despite my great respect and appreciation for this person in all subjects except gastronomy!

I am going to start with the top pet peeve, and the top offender thereof.

  1. Movies and TV where people have to-go cups of coffee that are OBVIOUSLY empty. I’m looking at you Gilmore Girls! No one carries a full hot cup of coffee like that.

Indeed Gilmore Girls is the worst offender in all categories.

They pour cups of coffee, but they only put in a few drops, then they take one mere sip and leave! For people that supposedly LOVE coffee, they ditch it all the time. I get that its a prop, but it feels so wasteful, and it’s jarring every time. My love for coffee is great and true, it is a fine morning joy, and the Gilmore Girls only give it lip service. Sit down, for goodness’ sake, drink the coffee, enjoy it. Goodness gracious.

2. When a character talks about how hungry they are, but then never actually eats the food they’ve ordered/come across/asked for/whatever. Again, Gilmore Girls, don’t tell me you’re hungry then only eat one absurdly dainty bite before rushing out the door. I don’t care if you’re late to school, you ordered the food, you should eat it!!!! Take it with you. Eat it on the way. Take decent sized bites.

Harry Potter does this a lot too. He’s so hungry, but then is constantly distracted by various plot-points so he never gets to eat, and then when he finally has a chance to go and eat, he goes “oh I’m so concerned over these plot points, I’m not even hungry anymore.” I do not believe you. If you only have access to the functional equivalent of a chow hall (military dining) three times a day, you ARE going to go get food, because otherwise you will be hungry all night long. I don’t care what Voldemort’s doing. People do not fight evil on an empty stomach if they can help it, and you can help it!

This is particularly offensive to my (absurd, yet genuine) sensibilities when the food offered is very good. The author describes (or the cinematographer examines) a delightful dish of food only to essentially throw it away! I’m not saying you need to spend five paragraphs describing them eating the food, but at least let me know they are not still hungry, that the food did not go to waste, that all the cook’s effort was not in vain!

3. Related to the above: when characters who are in dire physical circumstances and in need of sustenance say “Oh, my woes are too great, my thoughts too complex…I cannot eat” even though food is difficult to come by, and they need it desperately.

Nonsense. If you know you have tasks to do, or you are doing something that requires endurance, and you don’t always have easy access to food, you are going to take it when you can get it.

There are exceptions to this one, however. They are as follows.

  1. Sometimes physical exertions suppresses the appetite in the moment. But if you are very hungry, this will come back, and if you have experienced real hunger before, you don’t mess around with that. My husband often has to remind me to eat and drink before and immediately after an intense run, but even if it tastes awful, I do it because I know I need it.
  2. Extreme heat can suppress hunger by making you nauseated. In this case you may have already bought a ticket to heat exhaustion and heat stroke, and you will definitely need fueling and hydration. But you may not want it in the moment.
  3. Obviously any sort of extreme emotional or physical shock can temporarily suspend your ability to feel hunger, but unless you are in a world/social status where food is always readily available, most people are aware of the fact that food is still a very high priority for survival and getting through whatever has happened. Which leads to…
  4. If the characters are wealthy, or have easy access to food, and no concerns thereof, then they might easily be distracted, because they know they aren’t missing an opportunity.

I guess I just don’t like it when stories and characters take food and drink for granted, because these are both wonderful and essential, and a blessing if you have them readily available.

And that’s all folks!