The Editor’s Annex

(A rather more inelegant grammatic interruption of Alissa B’s “On Writing” series:)

There was a rule floating around when I was in seventh grade language arts class, one of the few things I remember about seventh grade. My teacher, Mrs. Loschen, told us that commas always preceded conjunctions. (Or at least, that’s what I remember. I also have a childhood memory of petting a two-headed llama at a county fair, so I’m not completely sure the fault lies with Mrs. Loschen.) Regardless, this misleading notion remained with me for years.

Here’s one common point of confusion:

Commas are NOT needed between dependent and independent clauses joined by a conjunction.

For example: My son and daughter are building a tree house and carefully using hammers and nails.

Here, “My son and daughter are building a tree house” is a dependent clause: it has a subject and predicate, or verb phrase. “Carefully using hammers and nails,” however, does not stand on its own; it lacks a subject and is thus dependent on the preceding clause. A comma is NOT needed in this case.

In the case of two dependent clauses, however, a comma is necessary.

For example: My son and daughter are building a tree house, and they’re carefully using hammers and nails.

Here, “My son and daughter are building a tree house” AND “they’re using hammers and nails” are both independent clauses. They both have subjects and predicates. Thus, a comma is needed before the conjunction of “and.”

Víspera.

A Spanish word I didn’t learn until I arrived home and got a hold of some music by Silvio Rodríguez, a Cuban musician and poet I fell in love with one breezy night at his concert in a soccer stadium in the capital. As I listened to the album back in the states, I tried to follow my new plan to expand my mediocre vocabulary and look up each unfamiliar word as soon as it played. One of the first new Spanish words I learned this way was víspera. Although in its simplest form it essentially means “eve” (much like the archaic definition given for the English “vespers” in Merriam-Webster), my Spanish dictionary also gave a distinct definition for víspera as the time “just before a journey.”

Students of Shakespeare often learn that the bard was a prolific inventor of words; as far as I can tell, no literary figure since has stepped in to pick up the slack. Most English speakers have no doubt experienced the special quality of those days or moments before we set out on a journey, but we don’t yet have a single word like víspera elegant enough to encompass it. As writers, we know it is our job to render experiences more tangible through words, to underscore the hidden significance of events, and to endow the mundane and the daily with the reach of the universal. As an editor, I look forward to reading bold writers with a flair for invention who are inspired to create words, combinations of words—indeed, entire works—that create a home in English language and literature for those experiences, both familiar and extraordinary, which merit but have so far eluded precise expression. My favorite writing showcases the writer’s understanding of those important lived moments that deserve a new place in our evolving lexicon. If foreign languages aren’t inspiration enough, we can take our cue from academia, high-tech, the medical and social sciences, and those lovable generalist hyphen-slingers who continue to bring us new words.

Mighty Pen editors wish everyone a joyous holiday season!

We’re blessed to spend the holidays with our family and friends, and we hope you are, too.

We’ll return to the editing discussion on Monday!

By Alissa Bohling

4.

As my first weeks in Guatemala wore on, I waited impatiently to reach that mythic benchmark for language acquisition, when the new language gets deep enough into the unconscious to penetrate the dream-world.  The first time I dreamt in Spanish, I was sleeping in a windowless cement room—all I could afford on my NGO worker’s stipend—which adjoined the open roof of the pensión where I stayed.  I kept the door ajar for fresh air and, like a paranoid foreigner out of her element, slept with my bone-handled knife at my side.  In my dream, Christina, the housekeeper, entered my room and demanded:  “Déme tu cuchillo.”  Give me your knife.

In real life, Christina, fifteen years old, had recently come to the city from her family’s rural home to the north.  Although she was quiet and my Spanish was still erratic, we fell into the habit of talking in the kitchen when no one else was around.  Her father worked on a banana plantation far from her mother and siblings, but he still managed to ensure she was pulled out of school once she reached the sixth grade.  Now she confided to me shyly that her arms ached from twelve-hour days spent washing clothes by hand.  She would continue her long hours—the family that ran the boarding house would not pay her until she completed a month’s work, and she had no money of her own.  One Sunday she got permission to take the night off to attend Mass and invited me along.  As we headed for the door, the señora, apparently forgetting their agreement, barked a reminder to buy bread before the bakery closed in fifteen minutes, right as Mass would be starting.  Needless to say, we didn’t make it to the church.

Before I came to Guatemala, I was an off-and-on contributor to an online magazine devoted to empowering women in developing nations.  I left the states propelled partly by my curiosity to see how the heroines who starred in my research were faring in real life.  In many ways, Christina embodied one of these women, and, in my admittedly out-of-context Northern feminist’s opinion, she was not doing well.  And now here she was in my dream, speaking in a strong voice that belied the acquiescent tones she spoke in waking life:  “Give me your knife.”

I am not an expert in dreams, but I usually understand my own:  she was asking me for my power, for the safety I enjoyed as a foreigner, as an adult, as an educated and relatively wealthy woman.  The relationship between women and power has fascinated me since before I can remember, and now here I was, dreaming about it in a language I was still fighting to master.  Why?  Each time I remember that dream now, I become more convinced that my mind admitted Spanish into its unconscious at that moment because I had landed on a subject I cared about deeply.  That almost visceral connection to one of my core interests crowded out my beginner’s self-doubt and my attachment to English as the most effortless mode of expression.

This insight into my first dream in Spanish urges me to ask now, as I write and edit in English:  does the writer’s passion, her investment in the topic, summon the language, or is it the other way around? Where are the places the writer might be digging, contriving, merely practicing at communication with the reader the way I used to practice bargaining in Guatemalan markets?  How can I, as an editor, encourage that passion back around and rejuvenate the writing?  As I edit, one of my primary goals is to fully understand the emotional (or intellectual) thrust behind the words I’m working with and respect its primacy.  Even as I alter or carve out elements that weaken a piece of writing,
I remain committed to maintaining the underlying shape of a work, the conceptual shape that precedes language and serves as the impetus for the words on the page.  Just like a traveler living abroad in a new culture, I try to cultivate a respect that listens and watches to the “culture” inside the piece (a culture which, in addition to containing this conceptual impetus, is also composed of the writer’s voice), before determining the proper time and place to step in.

By Nancy D’Inzillo

Everyone is talking about the importance of being frugal with the U.S. economy at its worst in years, but excessive spending should not only be applied to one’s finances. No writer should ever forget the importance of the economy of words. We all have been guilty of it at one point or another: overly flowery descriptions, excessive use of adverbs, run-on sentences, and long-winded ways of saying something we could say with far fewer words. I myself have committed these crimes often enough, probably even in this blog, but let’s see what paring down our language can achieve.

She wistfully wondered what he thought of her as her dew-misted, gracious green eyes hungrily grazed the glory of the garden, searching fervently for some sign from God that he truly loved her with all his heart.

Ick, right? First off, I can pare down the description.

She wistfully wondered what he thought of her as her eyes hungrily grazed the garden, searching fervently for some sign from God that he truly loved her.

Still a little overwrought though. Let’s see if I can’t take out some of those adverbs.

She wistfully wondered what he thought of her as her eyes grazed the garden, searching for some sign from God that he loved her.

Again, better, but let’s break it up.

She wistfully wondered what he thought of her. Her eyes grazed the garden, searching for some sign from God that he loved her.

Now, the real trick. Could this be stated more clearly?

She wistfully wondered what he thought of her. She searched the garden for some sign from God that he loved her.

And don’t forget: sometimes the best pacing is created by varying sentence length, so even if you love spending your vocabulary excessively, a frugally phrased statement can be just the sort of pause your text needs.

What did he think of her? She searched the garden for some sign from God to tell her he loved her.

Depending on your preference, you might have liked one (or none) of these better than the rest. Creating an economy of words is not an exact science, but it’s something you should always try to do. While you may end up deciding that adverb was essential or that the run-on sentence structure was appropriate for the tone of your work, being aware of how you can manipulate the language is key. If nothing else, see how you could pare your writing down, and then decide whether or not the longer version better fits the work.

By Alissa Bohling

Of course it’s never long before the Writer fights back, and not always to the detriment of the work.  This impulse is probably a survival instinct—it’s a rare writer who doesn’t want to get her point across and make a stylistic impression in the bargain.  

After a morning chained to the dictionary doing translations, or forging sloppily ahead in awkward conversations with advertisers whose payments were sometimes months in arrears, I would sit down to work on an article in English and something wonderful would happen.  The surplus energy I’d spent to keep my head above water in Spanish was siphoned away by a thousand ready outlets, chiefly, in my case, by an urge to experiment—perhaps not always with a zany plotline or quirky journalistic angle, but with longer or shorter sentences, sparer vocab here, an invented word there, a rebellious sentence structure daring to hold together a string of wildly asymmetrical paragraphs.  It was as if Spanish were a placid pool I treaded in and English the limitless ocean—I was moving about my own language with an exhilarating new sense of agency.  I soon learned to count on this feeling of expansiveness every time I made the switch:  instead of studiously avoiding errors in Spanish (even as a running tally of my missteps scrolled away in my brain’s subconscious ticker), I wrote in English with defiant abandon, confident in my skill to make expressive, inventive “mistakes,” those departures from convention that make our writing our own. 

I welcome this approach from writers I’m editing, too.  I may not embody the archetypal, chain-smoking, frizzy-haired waif recently imagined aloud by a crime writer whose manuscripts come back to him as soaked in red as one of his bloodied characters, but I do enjoy a juicy edit.  As productive writers embrace the abandon they need to become prolific writers, that second pair of eyes scouring their work can become even more important.  I enjoy being inside a mind that creates with a sense of freedom.  I like an edit that brings a sense of balance to a manuscript that has embraced the rewards of risk.

by Alissa Bohling

In the beginning, each time I finished a thought or a sentence in Spanish, I was truly on the edge of my seat; the seconds between when I paused and my listener began to speak stretched to unbearable lengths.  I always expected to hear, “¿Perdón? ¿Que manda?”  Life became a colorful but unrelenting literary reading where I was always at the podium, listening for murmurs from the audience not to see if I had made worthy art, but to see if I had made, well. . .any sense at all!  The suspense that clung to even my most mundane interactions reminded me that navigating the transaction of expression itself must take precedence over flair, must even precede grammatical correctness—so far, of course, as the language can bend without breaking meaning.

Often what frustrated me most (what still frustrates me as I continue to vie for more vocabulary, a better accent, a more fully bilingual self), was the weighted, impatient silence I perceived in my listeners’ eyes, in their body language—a sparkle of amusement, a nod that betrayed a studied courtesy—as I muddled through my sentences, or, later on, as I more or less glided along.  At my first Guatemalan party, I blurted rather than spoke, attempting what I hoped were coherent summaries of my careening thoughts.  Each reply that corresponded to what I had meant to say felt nothing short of miraculous.  The relief I felt soon turned to an appreciation bordering on awe:  even the most rudimentary language proved to be a superefficient vehicle capable of shuttling the cargo of thought from one mind to another almost instantaneously.

Back at my desk in the office on Monday, a half-formed theory that had loitered at the periphery of my awareness became a full-blown conviction—great writing succeeds because it embraces the essence of language as a tool as precious and common as a hammer; artful writing must first be rooted in a reverence for language’s sheer utility, even as it strives to transcend its “baser” functions.  Sitting at my computer, I seized the cursor teetering at the edge of the page and wrote faster than usual, with a sense of purpose that had less to do with being A Writer and more to do with getting my point across.

Our “On Language” series is written by Mighty Pen editor Alissa Bohling, based the travel journals from her six months as a magazine editor in Guatamala.

Earlier this year, I spent six months in Guatemala editing a bilingual magazine. Last week I was floored when I realized I have been home nearly as long as I was away. In an effort to slow the retreat of my memories toward that distant, ethereal stasis all travelers dread, I spent a few evenings scouring through months of journal entries in my old libretas.

Before I settled on the words, I had to notice the notebooks themselves—they are filled with paper from a prominent U.S. supplier; I bought them at Pais, a formerly Guatemalan-owned grocery chain that now swells the coffers of a transnational superstore—and I remembered how the Spanish language had sometimes felt like my only refuge from the long arm of the North. I relied on the new language to render my travels more authentic, and for the most part, it worked. Looking through my notebooks, though, I found passage after passage that suggested I reaped another, less obvious benefit: a revealing shift in my sensibility around language, and, as a result, in my approach to writing and editing. This series is informed by those entries.

I had studied Spanish extensively in college and could get along, I thought, but the concentration it required to actually live in Spanish was all-consuming. It was also a welcome distraction from my writer’s stylistic self-consciousness about how I express myself in English: Am I articulate? Engaging? Brilliant? These preoccupations were replaced with an entirely different struggle. . .

Happy Thanksgiving to all our lovely blog readers. I hope you had a great Turkey day, whether or not you believe in the controversial meaning of the holiday itself.

In a recent blog post, literary agent Rachelle Gardner mentions the importance for writers of having a “Holiday Plan.” How are you going to squeeze in time to write when, most likely, you’re working from home? Now is the time to formulate a game plan. I highly suggest checking out her post.

In addition to her valuable advice, I would add: include time to decompress. Too many of us that work from home (be it writing or another profession), entirely forget to schedule time to relax. The holidays, even when happy, tend to be stressful times for all of us, but that’s why it’s even more important to include some time to relax in your plan.

Writing, like all creative professions, takes mental energy. And it’s much harder to have mental energy when your mind and body are exhausted with stress and the list of things you need to get done for work and for home. The process of decompressing can look different for everyone, but it’s important to make sure you do it.

So when you’re thinking about that Holiday Plan, schedule some time for yourself in whatever form that takes. If walking the dog relaxes you, do that. If it means opting out of yet one more holiday party, give yourself permission.

Being realistic not only means recognizing your own physical and mental limitations, but helping to waylay them.

What’s in your Holiday Plan to keep writing this year?

by Nancy D’Inzillo

The advent of the “either/and” world is upon us. But what the heck is that supposed to mean, right?

Three of our editors attended PubWest this past weekend, and the keynote speaker the first morning was John Ingram of Ingram Book Group talking about just that topic. There’s a lot of discussion going around the Internet and the publishing world about the impact of E-publishing on the publishing industry. Will all books eventually be digital? Is the print book old hat? Will it be either one or the other?

The “either/and” world of the future John was talking about was not, in fact, that Epublishing will eliminate print, but that there will be a significant need to have print books and either ebooks through the Kindle, downloadable pdfs on the website, or any of the other formats a digital book can take (or all of the above). The growing paradigm in the industry seems to be not to eliminate the print book entirely, but to expand the number of formats in which publishers get their books into the hands of readers.

This remains an imprecise science particularly in the issue of pricing. Most publishers are still unsure how to make money on their books online that would reasonably contribute to their profit margin. That said, with the Google Book Search Settlement Agreement and the growing popularity of devices like the Amazon Kindle and the Sony EReader, it’s becoming evident that publishers are going to adapt.

What do you think? Have you ever read an ebook on your computer or one of the digital readers? Would you if you could afford the equipment to do so? If you did, would that decrease the amount of printed books you would buy?

It’s a fascinating time in the publishing industry. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see how the industry will adapt.