Thank you, Lasesana, for offering this great introduction to Spanish in 15 easy lessons.
http://lasesana.wordpress.com/learn-spanish/
Writers, pay attention. This is the place to grab a little Spanish to spice up your dialogue in your manuscript. Poets, use the language of passion to punch up that poetry.
Moore’s Law says that computing power doubles every two years.
That premise has led to an explosion of technological advances to bring simplicity and convenience to our lives. In the old days when Radio Shack sold it’s first personal computers, the device was boxy and cumbersome. Cell phones were non-existent. One used a land line or payphone. Cameras used film, and sharing pictures with family required an envelope and postage stamps. To keep from getting lost, one went to AAA for a trip planner or carried maps in the car. When away from home, travel guide books explained what sights to see and what restaurants were good and cheap. All this stuff took up storage space.
Now I am amazed: a smart phone, the size of a deck of cards, handles all of those tasks via the Internet, GPS, and any number of applications.
I hear that the next big thing will be a device combining the word processing and spreadsheet capabilities of the laptop computer with the operations of the smart phone. Likely that device will also have an application to monitor my blood pressure, heartbeat and blood sugar levels, too.
Right now my husband’s pacemaker stores what’s happening in his chest in a microchip until, in the middle of the night, his telemetry unit remotely downloads the data from his pacemaker, connects to the land line and sends the information off to a medical office for interpretation. As advanced as that system is, it relies on my husband sleeping in his own bed AND having a land line telephone. In the future, my husband’s smart phone will house the ability to read and send his medical information to his doctor, allowing his condition to be monitored wherever he is, even afloat in the Chesapeake Bay.
How is this relevent to an author? I’ll explain.
On my radio, I enjoy listening to one of my favorite singers Adam Levine of Maroon 5. However, the lyrics of the recent Maroon 5 hit “Payphone” made me laugh out loud when I first heard it.
Payphone, I thought. When was the last time I saw one of those? Come on, Adam. Payphone?
Okay, okay. I realize the song is about an egomaniac loser oblivious to his useless state; the irony of his having to use a payphone is lost on his grey matter. In the song, the device of the payphone serves a purpose.
But as a writer, be aware the reader will also laugh out loud AT YOU if you use old technology, old-style language or anything else that is out-of-date in the story; UNLESS, as in “Payphone,” the “old” serves a purpose.
One helpful technique to spare yourself embarrassment: have a twenty-something read your manuscript and point out its flaws. Correct them before sending the work off to the editor.
Not long ago, I visited http://idlelore.com/2012/09/10/stories-need-to-mean-something/. While there, I read a paragraph that resonated with me.
“It isn’t about just saying something interesting, or telling a story, it’s about involving the reader in some way. Not necessarily breaking the fourth wall, but in just speaking of something in a way that is universal—an emotional reaction to a situation; a common, every day event that we’ve all experienced; something personal or intimate. But make it real, make it hit home.”
On this blog, I have often said my writing aspiration is humble: write simple stories that others will enjoy reading and buy.
Often, I spend hours writing, editing, re-writing on a story of less than 1,000 words. My husband marvels at the time I expend, scratching his head, wondering what takes so long. He doesn’t understand that I am distilling. I am struggling to find the right words to make it easy for my reader to “see” the environment or situation as the character sees it. I am crafting a connection, using words, between the reader and the character. I wrestle with how to hook the reader’s emotions so that the reader cares about what happens. Time will tell whether I am succeeding.
Likewise, if you are an aspiring author, then I urge you to give some thought to the premise of involving your reader in your tale. Ask yourself what techniques you use, what effort you make, to integrate your reader into your story.
Some authors have questions about how to effectively use quotations of others’ material when writing. The first lesson is identify the source when you use a quote. Make it plain to the reader of the material who is the rightful author/owner of the quotation.
Do not imply or suggest the words you quote are your own. You can mislead by omitting to name a source. Without a source reference, the implication is that the written words are your own.
The following selection from zerohedge.com, authored by George Washington (pen name) and published on July 26, 2012, gives a good illustration of using quotations in an article. Ignore the politics of the article. Study it for quotation usage skills:
Economist James K. Galbraith wrote in the introduction to his father, John Kenneth Galbraith’s, definitive study of the Great Depression, The Great Crash, 1929:
The main relevance of The Great Crash, 1929 to the great crisis of 2008 is surely here. In both cases, the government knew what it should do. Both times, it declined to do it. In the summer of 1929 a few stern words from on high, a rise in the discount rate, a tough investigation into the pyramid schemes of the day, and the house of cards on Wall Street would have tumbled before its fall destroyed the whole economy. In 2004, the FBI warned publicly of “an epidemic of mortgage fraud.” But the government did nothing, and less than nothing, delivering instead low interest rates, deregulation and clear signals that laws would not be enforced. The signals were not subtle: on one occasion the director of the Office of Thrift Supervision came to a conference with copies of the Federal Register and a chainsaw. There followed every manner of scheme to fleece the unsuspecting ….
This was fraud, perpetrated in the first instance by the government on the population, and by the rich on the poor.
***
The government that permits this to happen is complicit in a vast crime.
In other words, the fraud started at the very top with Greenspan, Bush, Paulson, Negraponte, Bernanke, Geithner, Rubin, Summers and all of the rest of the boys.
As William Black told me today:
In criminology jargon: they created an intensely criminogenic environment.
The government’s special inspector general in charge of oversight of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (the “TARP” bank bailouts) – Neil M. Barofsky – said today:
It was a “message to the banks ‘if we commit fraud, we break the rules, don’t worry, we’re too big — they’ll never bring the appropriate steps against us,’” Barofsky says in an interview with The Daily Ticker. “And that is why we’ve had scandal after scandal after scandal.”
This was a “global conspiracy to fix one of the most important interest rates in the world,” Barofsky continues. “[Geithner] heard this information and looked the other way. Geithner and other regulators should be held accountable, they should be fired across the board. If they knew about an ongoing fraud, and they didn’t do anything about it, they don’t deserve to have their jobs. I hope we see people in handcuffs.“
Government regulators have become so corrupted and “captured” by those they regulate that Americans know that the cop is on the take. (Even top justice officials are incredibly cozy with Wall Street fraudsters.)
Institutional corruption is killing people’s trust in our government and our institutions, which is one of the reasons the economy is faltering again.
Indeed, polls show that very few Americans believe that the U.S. government has the “consent of the governed”, a higher percentage of Americans liked King George during the Revolutionary War than like Congress today, and people are publicly discussing whether it’s a good or bad idea to “hang bankers”.
YouTube channel EmpoweringWriters has several videos instructing children in the basic elements of writing. Below is an example of the videos. The one below is less than ten minutes long. It’s about building suspense. (If you home school, this YouTube channel may give you ideas for lesson plans on writing.)
Summary: Use language to cue the reader that something is going to happen. The teacher calls the device “red flag words.”
Recently, one of the local writers group members read one of my sudden fiction pieces. He highlighted the word “obscure” and suggested I use the word “hide” in its place. He had reasons for his suggested word change.
For one thing, he felt the word was too elevated for the genre. For another, he felt many readers wouldn’t know the word. It wasn’t a conversational word, he said.
I argued to keep the word. I felt the meaning of the word obscure more aptly described what was happening in the story. To “hide” something implies intent. One can “obscure” something without intending to hide it. In the story, a face is obscured, not purposefully hidden.
His comments about usage raised points to consider.
Is there language that is suitable or unsuitable for a specific genre? Sudden fiction may be considered “low brow” compared to the novel, or even the 3,000 word short story. Obviously, that opinion is subject to debate.
How does one balance vocabulary usage with one’s readership?
Some argue that today’s society needs the stimulation of mental challenge. Others say that today’s society doesn’t have time to stop and look up words every few minutes when reading.
As a writer, I thanked my friend for his input. His remarks were helpful.
I haven’t settled on an answer to the questions his remarks generated. I’d love to hear what you think about using big words in short, short stories.
Strong vs Weak Words – Part 8.
Are you a writer? Go to the link above for a whole series on improving your word usage. The author helps us learn by examining her own mistakes.
Fay Moore: I Want To Be a Writer 