On writing

Ah, Sandi. http://sandyquill.com

Last summer, I was messaging back and forth with author Sandi Layne about the pain of writing, and suddenly realizing that I was turning myself inside out in the story I had just finished, sharing so much of myself I felt quite lost.

She sent me the above message in response. It was my birthday, and what a gift.

Anyone who receives a message like this should feel heartened. Uplifted. Should feel slightly better. Because there is such truth in these few words.

But at the same time, it kind of kills you, because let me tell you, I am not a courageous woman. I have done a gazillion things in my life, mostly because I am stubborn and hardheaded and use sheer force of will to march through obstacles, but doing it just with and by courage?

Never.

Until writing happened.

Writing is probably the most courageous I have ever been, or ever have had to be. Because every time I try to cut corners and write for an audience, it falls flat on its face.

Just as, every time I try to write from the bottom of my heart, something happens and my words get wings. When I write to write.

~~~~

So much courage is needed to spill your heart out onto the blank pages of a piece of paper—or onto the screen of your computer, as it were. Nothing more daunting than that empty word document, cursor blinking in the upper left corner, waiting for you.

Even more courage is needed to later edit the living daylights out of the baby that you have birthed through pain and labor, but also through cackling glee and awesome rush of happiness.

You use your sadness. You write your anxiety. You make the reader live the drama that happened. Your strongest writing comes through, loud and clear, when you describe disaster striking. When a whole life crumbles in the chaos and madness of destruction.

When those things have happened to you, for real and in your life, you can either despair and go under, or you can USE IT in your writing. Or both. There is power in despair, when it most certainly can get no worse, it can only get better.

You have such power in your words. When you tap that specific river of personal knowledge. When you use it, and turn it around from having been something that hurt you (emotionally or physically) into something that whispers to people who are reading your words, whispers, until they themselves scream out loud—

“This is truth—this is real—OMG—I am IN THIS SCENE with the author, feeling her feelings, and seeing what she sees! I am dying, running, screaming, fainting, loving, hating, seeing, feeling utterly lost and blind. Everything. I experience everything.”

That. Is. Powerful. Magic.

There is such enormous power in that kind of writing.

To revisit your demons in writing is cathartic. You get to go there again, but you have the power now, and with millimeter-precision, you can excise the hurt. Turn the whole incident into something that YOU created, that YOU have power over, that YOU can use.

There is true greatness when, in the process, you get to take back your power.

It is how I deal with pain. I use it. Manipulate it. Force it, until it is totally mine and in a place where I can do with it as I please.

Those are powerful feels.

I know you see it. There is power to be had here. I hope you use it.

Because when you tap into that source, my friend, you get handed a pair of huge, huge wings—the kind that make you soar.

You f*cking soar.

Pet peeves of a grammar nerd: Lie/Lay

Ginkgo tree (Ginkgo biloba) 

Hello, fellow grammar nerds!

Today, thought we'd talk about Mr Down, because apparently, a lot of people want to lay him.

No, wait, hear me out!

This is how I make sure I remember how to correctly use the verbs Lie and Lay, respectively.

Here is the deal:

Lie - Lay - Lain - Lying (as in: I lie on the couch now, I lay on the couch yesterday, I have lain on the couch for a week, I am lying on the couch)
and
Lay - Laid - Laid - Laying (as in: I lay the book on the couch now, I laid the book on the couch yesterday, I have laid the book on the couch every day, I am laying the book on the couch)

They are two different words. They mean different things. They act in different ways. They are not interchangeable. One doesn't need an object (the first one), and one absolutely needs an object (the second - the book).

So where does Mr Brown come into this whole mess? Well, when you write "I am going to lay down," it is wrong. Because it makes the word "down" into an object to be laid. What you wanted to say was, "I am going to lie down."

Let's turn down into Mr. Down, to see the error: when writing a sentence with lie/lay, use Mr Down. If it looks like you're having sex, you're using the wrong verb. 

So, every time I see someone writing "I'm going to lay down," I quickly ask myself:

"Who is this Down that everybody wants to lay? And can I have his number?"

The correct way to say it is: "I am going to lie down."

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How about you? Tell me about your pet peeve in the grammar jungle?! 

Pet peeves of a grammar nerd: On to/Onto

From MorgueFile, by Natureworks

Hello, fellow grammar nerds!

Today, I want to talk about On to, and Onto.
Because, you see, they are not the same. The two not interchangeable.
They are two different animals completely, and the jungle needs them both.

To decide which one to use, ask yourself:

AM I actually putting/walking onto something? Like, "I walked onto the terrace." Or, "He threw the book onto the desk." Or, "She stepped onto the stage."

Because, if you can swap it for "upon" you can certainly use "onto."

But if it doesn't mean "upon," then it is because it is not behaving as a true preposition...because "on" is often a particle in a verbal phrase. Yup. It hangs out with verbs. It sticks to the verbs, instead of sticking to its brother "to."

It can be as easy as this: "I hang on to hope," where the verbal phrase is "to hang on (to something)." You don't "hang upon hope," so it's not a preposition.

It's a particle in a verbal phrase. It belongs to the verb. The verb gets upset if it settles with the late-comer "to."


So, rule of thumb: If you can swap it for "upon," then you can use "onto."
If you can't, then use "on to."

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How about you? Tell me about your pet peeve in the grammar jungle?! 

Pet peeves of a language nerd: translation vs. interpretation

From MorgueFiles, by mconnors

Hello, fellow language nerds!

Today, I want to talk about the fact that so many people still think that translation is the same thing as interpretation.

The two skills may seem to be the same, but are, in actuality, two very different ones.

Not only that, but these skills appear in two wildly different kinds of people: an introvert perfectionist thrives as a translator, when an extrovert communicator is the perfect person to become an interpreter.

Let's straighten the concept out a little bit:
Simply put, translations deal with the written word,
whereas interpretation deals with the spoken word.

The translators sit quietly in their offices, translating, using dictionaries and resources at will—it is a perfect job for our introverts. They can sit there for hours, going back and forth, perfecting the phrase and making sure all the technical terms are Just So.

The interpreters are is usually out and about, in settings where their services are needed: in a booth at a conference, with headphones and microphone. Or standing beside the client whispering a rendition of the words being said in the client's ear, called chuchotage.

An immigration officer may call upon an interpreter to have a conversation with a person who might be seeking asylum.
A translator is often called, too, to translate the documents the potential asylum-seekers bring with them.

To interpret, you need to be fast as a flash, have a wild memory for the smallest details, and not be prone to losing your thread. Because if you lose it, in this setting? You lose your job.

To translate, you need to be a perfectionist and a nit-picker, and you will probably work mostly toward your mother-tongue, as it is nigh-on impossible to be an excellent translator in both directions.


So there you go, the difference between Interpretation and Translation.

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How about you? Did you know this?
Tell me about your pet peeve in our language jungle?! 

Book Review – The Prince and the Program, by Aldous Mercer

Mordred Pendragon, the Bastard Prince, has done a Bad Thing-again. Exiled to Canada for seven years, he has to find a job to pay his bills. For reasons he refuses to reveal, Mordred decides "Software Engineer" has a nice ring to it. And though experience with "killing the Once and Future King, my father" and "that time in feudal Japan" makes for a poor resume, he is hired by a small tech startup in Toronto. In the midst of dealing with a crippling caffeine addiction and learning C++, Mordred thinks he has finally found someone to anchor him to the world of the living: Alan, the company's offsite lead developer. Except that Alan might not be a "living" entity at all-he may, in fact, be the world's first strong AI. Or a demon that mistook a Windows install for the highway to Hell. Or, just maybe, the ghost of Alan Turing, currently inhabiting a laptop.

I didn’t read much of the blurb. I never do. But I saw that Mordred was the MC. And that Alan Turing had a big role. That was quite enough for me. Alan has earned some starshine.

So when the author contacted me and asked me if I wanted to read it, I said yes. At once.

What did I think of this book? Well, five stars, for starters. Duh.

Because it is Monty Python meets Douglas Adams chewing coca leaves smoking pot doing shrooms. Then it goes to a whole different level all together. Heh. I am sure I understood exactly nothing of this book, and I know I loved every second of it. Just terribly, terribly brilliant.

The author never tells you too much. At moments, he tells you too little, but he is never there to write stuff on your nose, you either get it or you don’t. (I need to vehemently stress that I mostly did not, in fact, get it. Not that it mattered in the least. Still brilliant). My intelligence was never questioned. (Except for by me myself, but that is a daily thing happening). The author took for granted that I would just strap in and follow.

And by god, I followed. All over the place. Everywhere, even through the moments where I understood nothing.

Brain-melt. That’s what this book is. My brain is now zombiefood, ready for serving.

Here is Mr. Mercer’s recipe: one part Fantasy, one part Legends, one part hot droids, one part running crazy, one part Save the world. Mix well, let simmer for hours, serve steaming hot. Decorate with artificial intelligence, shining metallic robots, androids and the occasional zombie. Add a side dish of a Final Bonus Quest with a thousand dollar reward, dead or alive. I loved it.

Why I loved it? Well, the language, of course. As usual. Seduce me with your English, please.
Here, let me show you a sentence that is nothing short of brilliant:

Instead of hurling a flamebolt at the bitch—a misbegotten chimera hatched in some wunderkind’s garage—I took a deliberate sip of coffee.

Then the author goes on to show me that this is a different and strange place. He doesn’t tell me, he shows me. Here:

It wasn’t until 28:23 that a large middle-aged man entered the room and gripped my hand in a bone-crushing handshake.

Ha, author, I see what you did there. An action sentence shows me that we are in a place where time is counted differently, but you are not writing it on my nose. Cool.

This book gave me many of the same feels I got when reading Douglas Adams for the first time, wide-eyed and smiling, with the occasional wild guffaws, and a lot of headshaking at all the crazy. Like this sentence:

…The owl returned to life and went to sleep.

I mean, seriously? Who writes that?
Oh, I guess the same man who uses Baron Samedi as one of his characters. I haven’t heard of him since 10cc.

Mr Mercer then continues to break me into little pieces with all the talk between Mori and Alan over IRC. I still remember when I got op status, and read ***Mode change “+o AnnaLund” for #Ferrari by ChanServ every time I entered the channel. Glory days. Much as gen-mai, I would proceed to kicking stupid users off my chan, banning half of them to kingdom come. (I connected from Sweden’s Swipnet, so I was holding on to the shit-end of that specific stick more often than not. If you were there, you remember. Oh, the amounts of hackers that connected through them, it was truly glorious).

And herein lies the strength of this story. Mr Mercer just tells it. You have to relate to it.

For me? This was an IRC-nerdgasm, turned to OIRC-gasm in one, small, brilliant sentence. Oh lord. I am sure I missed a plethora of interesting things, stuff that you will note, because it was part of your heritage. As I said, herein lies the strength.

There is even a sentence of redemption for the sadly mauled figure of Morgana, a line where Mordred says “Our mother was a child, caught up and betrayed by men that should have known better.” Oh, author, I do love you for that short phrase.

See? I have now talked and talked about this book, without telling you what it is about. I am very proud of this fact. Read it, and you tell me. What is it about?

I think it is about reparation for Alan Turing and I think it is brilliant. At the same time, I feel it is also a kind of reparation for Mordred himself, who was handed a shitty deal already at birth.

Yes, this is not your normal romance. Who cares? This is a real story. It took me by the hand and ran like the wind. By pure coincidence (there is no such thing) I was in Toronto while reading most of it.

***
I was given a free copy of this book by the author, after he had read one of my reviews. He thought I’d like it. He was right. A review wasn’t promised in return.

***
Addendum to this review:

None of my girlfriends cared for the Arthurian legends. None of them read Tolkien. None of them understood my fascination with science fiction; they were all reading Green Gables or something.

You see, science fiction is my old love, my almost-forgotten love. I grew up with the ABC of Asimov/Bradbury/Clarke, and I was the only girl I knew then who loved them.

This love has been trampled and abused and almost killed during the last decades, as I haven’t found anything to stir my mind for ages.

Then suddenly, this year, 2013, three (3!) different authors suddenly swing by and make everything better. Aldous Mercer is one of them. Lisa Henry is another. And Julio-Alexi Genao is the third. Each one of them with a different angle, one more about science and computers, the second writing a more deep space sci-fi, and the third with a dystopian darkness of a love story.

All three spoke to me. All three handled subjects that I love. Crazy and fun. Distress and fear. Loneliness and love.

So, from the old timers to these three new authors, I’d like to instate the HeGeMe of Henry/Genao/Mercer.

Because M/M tops it now.

Heh.


Find this book at: Dreamspinner Press