Sucks My Grammar....

This kinda sums me up

I don't get my writing.

Sometimes words I don't even think I know find their way into my writing vocabulary, and I am puzzled as to how they got there. When I'm in doubt as to their source I find my dictionary and marvel that I actually knew the word I had to look up. I give myself a self-congratulatory nod and thank the literary Gods for throwing me a bone, giving me the fleeting feeling that I am a writer.

Then I am reminded of my core belief that big words are for people who really, really, really know how to write. Only those who have mastered the art of sentence construction have the right to play canonical games with their intellectual brethren--of choosing those hard to pronounce words used to puzzle their "known" readers for whom they show their prowess.  I stand aside for those writers, and let them pass. It's taken me most of my life to realize that, even to me, English is my second language, though it is my one and only native one, too.

As a Black American with no known contemporary cultural ties with my ancestors in Africa, or Native-Americans, or other non-English speaking Europeans in my bloodline--I've only had occasion to learn English.  That was until I became fascinated with the languages of other people, and started learning "theirs." As a child, I could not fathom why I didn't have a separate language to speak with my parents, like my Japanese, Mexican, Samoan, German, and Portuguese childhood playmates, whose parents spoke in either broken English or with a heavy accent. Their languages fascinated me. I even made up my own to speak with my sister, a gobbledegook of gibberish interspersed with English words that allowed us to actually understand each other (Example: "kudosudomapalogo-go-to-the-store?").

When I had the opportunity to learn Spanish in junior high school, I jumped at it, and found an ease of learning languages that has informed my career choices and my general interests as a human being. I speak a modicum of French and can wind my way around Italian and Portuguese, falteringly. However, two of the languages I actually learned to speak, Cambodian and Cebuano, do not rely on the same sentence structure as English, which made them much easier for me to learn. All I had to do was figure out the meaning of the words, and somehow, string them together, and I could get the message across.  But I can't say that knowing more languages has helped my writing.


Even before my travels, my shortcomings had been pointed out to me by two professors:  one who admonished me that my ideas were brilliant, but not capable of comprehension; the other who scolded me about using words I didn't understand (I used "blitzerig" for blitzkrieg in a term paper :P).


Another problem for me is that I hear words like I hear music, and I get into a rhythm of writing where sounds are more important than content, at times. Don't ask me where this comes from--although I have romanticized that it is remnants of my forgotten African ancestral language, somehow laying dormant in my DNA that has surfaced to destroy my ability to convey English appropriately.  It has taken me over ten years of writing my novel to realize that I never learned how to write, and I recognize that writing well will be my cudgel to bear for the rest of my life.

What has helped me throughout my life in my travels has hurt me immeasurably as a writer, but my deficiencies really hit home after years of working on my novel with my mother, my unofficial editor. I wish everyone had a mother as intelligent as mine, and who has the patience to explain over and over and over and over again why my sentence structure was less than desirable. My grammar has improved, but, I guarantee you, it will likely never meet my mother's standards.  She is a much more voracious reader than I'll ever be (thank you, law school). Also, she is a classically trained pianist with an ability to break music down to its core elements.  She was also trained to speak and read in German, a necessary linguistic skill when analyzing classical music, particularly, Beethoven, the King of classical music. English being a [half] Germanic language, the strict rules of German grammar have rooted themselves into our English language, but without true understanding by many of us, educated or not. 

I recommend that every writer should find someone in their eighties to edit his or her work.  Someone in that age range likely has a better understanding of grammar, frequented libraries (instead of malls) when younger, and whose education predated the ascendancy of movies and its obliteration of our English language.  Most likely, someone in their eighties and nineties also understands how to diagram a sentence.  My grandmother, who did not attend college, but who did graduate from high school, used to sit down with us and show us how to diagram sentences. When I complained about my difficulties writing, my mother reminded me about diagramming sentences, and to my amazement, I came across a diagram sentence website: Grammar Revolution.

I cannot speak more highly about Grammar-Revolution, and I encourage people to support the website by purchasing materials and spreading the site's gospel. So much of the site has free information to which one can return often, but please consider supporting the site by purchasing, at a minimum, the $19 Diagramming Reference Manual. I think Elizabeth O'Brien has done such a brilliant job of trying to save the English language, at least here, in the USA.  Everyone should spread the word about this website and every writer should be referring to it to assist his or her writing endeavor.  Note that I have never spoken to Ms. O'Brien, and at least as of this writing, she has never heard of me (I'll diagram the whole blog and make corrections before she gets word of me - LOL).  Watch the trailer of their 80-minute film, independently produced and directed by Elizabeth and company: http://www.grammarrevolutionmovie.com/

My quest for improvement, introspection, and perseverance is ongoing.  That's what my writing journey has been about, all along, I believe.  By sharing this blog with you and giving you information to help you along your journey, as readers of my upcoming novel (and present, past and future writers) I hope you are able to take the short-cuts I couldn't take because, I didn't take the time to learn that I knew so little about my native language.

Big words are merely big words. Conveying ideas is what writing is all about. When my novel does surface, you'll see the pains I went through to say what I wanted to say. Thanks to my mother and hired editor, it should all make sense.

Well, hope springs eternal. Whatever that means.

P.S.  Here are some other grammar-related websites and blogs:
http://blogs.kansas.com/grammar/  also known as @GrammarMonkeys
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl also known as @GrammarGirl
http://www.grammarly.com

Fiction is Fictional.

I'm always amused when a fiction writer is chastised by critics and other readers that his or her book is inaccurate. Can we, the readers, know as much as the writer about his or her fiction book?  Is there a communal consciousness where we all go and experience the same thing or event, then judge whether the writer properly tapped into it? Is there a continuum by which we can somehow experience "fiction" as it unfolds, thereafter turning it into non-fiction, when it is written, for readers to dissect and digest as a part of their reality? Certainly, this has been pondered before, but my experiences have made me question the zeitgeist of fiction writing and whether the concept of fiction really exists.

The background of my novel is loosely based upon lots of Internet research about contemporary Louisiana, and three visits to the state.  My first visit was to Baton Rouge, in 2002, at about the same time that the Beltway snipers were terrorizing America, playing target practice with innocent American travelers who would randomly fall victim to their sick game.  The killers were loose and on the run.  I was traveling to do research for my novel when someone had only recently been murdered in Baton Rouge, and there was a law enforcement belief that the killer was still roaming around there (there was no inkling that there were two killers working in tandem). By the time of my visit, I had decided upon which cities where my killer was going to be wreak havoc, namely, Washington, D.C., Baton Rouge, and New Hampshire. Considering my plot about a serial killer on the loose, and given the nation's terror, I was not immune to being spooked at the prospect that I could become a victim while traveling alone.

It was almost closing time when I visited the barbecue place that was to be an important location in the novel, at least at that iteration of my plot. I was ordering take-out, like my character was supposed to do, in my novel.  I sat next to a Black man, who, at the time, could have fit the description of the Baton Rouge murder suspect, who was deemed to be brown-skinned, medium frame, with short-cropped hair.  My suspect was by himself, too. I have to admit that, for the first time in my life, I was terrified of a black man: I was alone in a strange city, staying in a hotel, traveling by car--where cross-hairs could easily have been pointed at me.  Thankfully, once we started talking, I warmed up to him, and he to me.  Our orders arrived at about the same time. When I was walking out of the restaurant, he told me to be careful, warning me about the killer on the loose. I was scared when he said it.  Did I just get a pass, where he was allowing me to live, or was he as fearful as I was, too? It would turn out to be the latter.

Africa House, Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches,

After a friend suggested that my location be changed to Cane River country, in the northwestern part of the state, I finally did decide to focus my novel on a fictional town near Natchitoches, Louisiana (pronounced, "Nagadish,"), where historic plantations that once housed slave captives for manual labor still stood. While there, in 2005, I was analyzing the quaint historical parish, through the eyes of my protagonist, a black female forensic anthropologist, a transplant from California.  I arrived at the real plantation near closing time. When I told the U.S. Park Ranger my purpose in scouting a location where forensic anthropologists might work, the Ranger told me to wait around as there was someone to whom I could speak.  I was gobsmacked when she told me that there was a female forensic anthropologist that was in the field that day, doing research--doing exactly what my character was supposed to be doing.  And imagine my shock to see that she was Black. Considering the hour, as it was dusk and she was finishing for the day, she was very friendly and informative. She showed me the tools of her trade and took me to the site of her research.  She pointed out to me the grounds where she was conducting her studies: a grassy area where slaves were believed to have been unceremoniously buried, without headstones, in a field abutting the Cane River.  In fact, the forensic anthropologist had just made a real find:  coffins jutting out into the river bank where soil erosion and excessive moisture were causing the ground to literally fall into the river, exposing the coffins of the captives.  She also told me that she hailed from California.  Like my character, Lula. 

Uncle Jack, the good 'ol Darky

Lula's field work does not figure prominently in the novel. Her presence in Louisiana was a pretext for her to be in the state during its heralded Mardi Gras celebration, around which time the mystery unfolds.  I could have just as easily not  visited those places, Baton Rouge and Natchitoches, because I decided to create a fictional town called Nakadee, an amalgamation of some of the true places I had witnessed in my travels throughout the state. There is one true-life reference in my novel, to a hat-tipping "darky" statue, Uncle Jack, in the real parish of Natchitoches that still stands, an intransigent reminder and remainder of the good old days. 

Will I be chastised for misrepresenting facts about my fictitious parish? I know my topographical descriptions are hued from real study of the land I traversed, in criss-crossing the state, and looking exhaustively at aerial maps.  Other parts are mere imagination, added from another place to add context to my non-fiction origins.  I will be ready when people criticize me for not "getting" something right, or misrepresenting an area that has some basis in reality. I guess I should care, but I don't. The story is my fiction, born of my real imagination--that turned into part-premonition of real experience, that I re-fictionalized for the reader.  

So, Perhaps there really is no such thing as fiction, after all.  

Here's a historical perspective on the Uncle Jack controversy, which has only scant mention in my novel, but which speaks volumes about its time and place in our nation's history and present state of affairs.