Bethany Brengan

[Everything in italics will disappear the next time there's a post from Bethany.]

Since Bethany has written a couple of posts for us here at Writing About Writing (and has promised that she's got at least a few more on the way), it's about time we got her her own menu for The Reliquary.  

Bethany F. Brengan is a freelance writer and editor. She lives on the Olympic Peninsula and enjoys medium-long walks, tea, and overanalyzing comic books. Before going freelance, Bethany worked for the lovely people at Bluegrass Publishing in Mayfield, Kentucky. Her writing has appeared in The 2015 Poet’s Market, Poetry Quarterly, The Crucible, The Upper Room, Cicada, Scrapbook Business Magazine, etc. She is a contributing writer to Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman (McFarland Books). 

Information about her editing business—Bethany Brengan, Editing Services—can be found at www.brenganedits.com. 

Her personal blog is www.readingwritingraptures.blogspot.com.

Dick Grayson, Boy Wonder: Scholars and Creators on 75 Years of Robin, Nightwing and Batman can be purchased through both McFarland and Amazon.

Should I hire an Editor?

Your Novel is Boring (Here's Why And How to Fix It)
The Top 5 Mistakes Made By Self Published Authors
In Praise of Libraries
Four Things Your Editor May Not Tell You (But You Should Know)
Where to Submit Your Short Pieces and (Hopefully, Eventually) Get Published  Part 2

But It's Just WORDS.

Today's post is a mostly-rant to the folks over on my Facebook page who decided to participate in an event called "The Triggering" and pretty much dared me to do anything about it.

My banhammer arm is getting quite the workout today over on Writing About Writing's Facebook page. Apparently I'm a target for having the temerity to tell the fine folks who follow me there to let me know if they see anything particularly awful going on. Because today is a day of particularly awful behavior from a certain slimy corner of the troll incubation chambers. (Full grown trolls are much more sophisticated.) These particular troll babies call themselves, apparently with either prescient self awareness or an attempt at irony that they don't realize is a double scoop, the Shitlords.

The Shitlords have, of course, attempted to elevate their churlish campaign of bullying abuse into something noble and cast themselves as the victims of unfair persecution. Because running around spewing hate speech is something that everyone should have to tolerate from them all the time...in every space.  Also because that's what bullies have done since time immemorial to avoid facing the fact that they are getting off from hurting those over whom they have power.

"Here are people on a page about writing, trying to tell a writer (among a group of other writers) that words have no real power."

In this case though, they chose a particularly ill conceived rallying cry: that words can't cause any real harm.

Honestly this is the basis of their entire philosophy and their actions are some kind of reactionary swing against the liberal and "SJW" (which they still seem to think is an insult) spaces for violating their free speech and kicking them out. "How fragile you must be that my mere WORDS can cause you harm!" they say.

I mean sure they've got this whole other facet of their rallying cry about doing it for "freeze peach!" and fighting censorship and shit, but honestly it is so facile that it's not even worth mentioning. If you can't tell the difference between being banned from a Facebook page and government agents silencing you, you don't belong in the big kid pool in the first place.

But really is their other argument any less jejune? They seem to have latched on to the idea that if the sound waves themselves aren't ripping flesh from bone like some X-man's mutant power, that a word has absolutely no power to do anything but offend someone and that offense is just an emotion that people need to get over. Here are people on a page about writing, trying to tell a writer (among a group of other writers) that words have no real power.

Because here's the problem: most shitlords have demonstrated pretty spectacularly that they actually don't intellectually grasp the difference between "offense" and "harm." Dead baby jokes are offensive. Telling them at a wake for an infant causes harm. The idea that no "mere" words can cause anyone harm is spectacularly ignorant of how words work.

As I banned one after another for transmisogyny, racism, sexism, and generally mocking people's ability to handle their bullying (in that textbook way that bullies, when called on being bullies claim they were just playing around and the other person is just too sensitive), I noticed something. Of course I was only looking at user icons, so I don't know for sure what these people looked like, but I noticed that they were ALL young, white men. And I'm talking about banning about forty to fifty people at the time of this writing who were ALL young white men.  (Well except for the Bill Cosby icon whose user sent me a rape fantasy–but I have my reasons for thinking that one might have been a young white man too.) And given how many seemed to have nothing to say other than the fact that there are only two genders, I suspect that they are all CISHET white men as well.

Of course this doesn't surprise me.

I'm sure the Shitlord movement isn't exclusively white or exclusively male or exclusively any demographic but it trends like that (probably upwards of about 90+%) for the same reason Gamergate did or the wankers who were harassing people about Shirtstorm did. Because those who are marginalized tend to understand how words actually work and how slurs strip them of their humanity and make more egregious life-altering discrimination more socially acceptable. They know that there is a direct Rube Goldberg-like chain between dehumanizing slurs and sentiments and the discrimination or even violence that becomes daily events in the lives of those with less social power. Those who understand how this works often even have the empathy to extend this understanding to those slurs that don't target them directly. Not that there's never been a bigot among the marginalized, but at least they seem to have given up on the idea that a word can never really be harmful.

The reason young white men think that words can't harm people is because there are far fewer words that can harm them. No words we have harken them back to generations of racial violence or erase their identity or question their body autonomy. And in an act of narcissistic indifference to the words of others, they assume that their experience as young white men is universal, and anyone who tells them otherwise must be lying. They can't tell the difference between a word that offends them and a word that contributes to their institutional and systematic harm because they have only ever experienced the former, and the intellectual rigor with which to grasp the latter would take at least a few hours and an open mind. So they go right on demonstrating that they don't even actually comprehend what a trigger is or how a slur harms people and mocking anyone who does. If words had no power, the world would have no emotional abuse.

But they go right on suggesting that words have no power.

Ironically these will be the same young white men who go gooey in their hearts and hope to throw knives and karate chop evil oppressors when they see a comic book hero talk about the power of words to start revolutions and unlock perspectives, but let's not be too hard on them. Those fight scenes were awesome.

Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation,
words will always retain their power.
Words offer the means to meaning,
and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth.
Uh.....
Except slurs.
Those words have no power, and people are wrong to ever ask you to stop using them.
And um.......er.....
Fuck it. Imma just throw a knife at your face.

Words shape people's world views. They form the basis of prejudice good and bad. They are so intractably connected to how we think that as humans we literally cannot grasp concepts if we don't first have the vocabulary to do so. They are the building blocks of the stories we use to explain literally everything we see and experience. They let us evolve beyond other primates. They shape our loves and hates and root into reactions so knee-jerk that those reactions occur in our brains before our conscious mind has fully registered what it's even perceiving. They form the internal story we keep to describe who is good and who is bad–who is persecuted, and who is oppressive. Words are so fundamental to human experience and perceptions that those few truly without them are the subjects of study.

If we thought for even a moment that slurs had no ability to do harm, we would look around a world and see no correlation between the number of slurs and the social hierarchy or between the prevalence of particular slurs and the violence enacted upon the targets of those slurs. The opposite is true.

The opposite is ALWAYS true. 

There's a goddamn fucking reason that FREE speech was such a revolutionary concept. And those rights are still enshrined even if every damned corner of the internet hasn't provided space and a podium for every last repugnant thought. If speech had no power, people wouldn't be crawling over themselves to defend their rights to use it. But they know it has power and have, with resplendent sophistry conflated their every loss of venue with censorship.  But if the words you are saying are so revolting that the best thing that can be said about them is that they are not technically illegal, and they are doing harm to the other guests, don't be surprised if many whose hospitality you are enjoying show you the door. 

Every genocide, every war, every apartheid, every codified discrimination, every civil rights movement, every marvel of human engineering, every thing we have done as unified front of people...in all the world....in all of history....began with words.

To say that words, any words, are "just words" is to display only the most breathtaking ignorance about human's relationship to language. 

Now if you'll excuse me. I gotta go ban some people.

2016's Best By Month

[Everything in italics will disappear when I come back here in April to add March's best.]

In all the hullabaloo, I forgot to put up January's best post. And now it's time to do February's. So lets do both and get the 2016 Best-By-Month post going for the new year.

Plus I'm way way way overdue (because I keep doing things like "sleeping" and "enjoying a moment to myself" on weekends) getting the new 2015 top ten post up and updating the 2015 by month posts. The top 10 posts have been added to the "Best Of" page, but the job of going through each month and finding the 4th place post to put into the THIRD place slot because one of the top three posts got promoted to the YEAR'S ten best is something of a time sink.

So today will be a bit of housekeeping.  


January
Why I Literally Can't Even Turns out my girlfriend has cancer.
Through: The Only Way Out  For some of us, troubled times are when we write harder.
It's Later Than You Think There's one thing you won't always have more of when it comes to finally getting to your writing. And that is tomorrows. 

February
Your Novel is Boring (Here’s Why and How to Fix It) By Bethany Brengan Our best this month from a guest blogger. Congrats Bethany!!
How Do I Write a First Sentence? (Mailbox) Starting can be tough.
One Last Generous Donation of 2015 In which I admit that those thank you notes are a bit too much with everything else going on.

Once More Unto The Brink (Personal Update)

This is my "Fuck curveballs!" face. 

So believe it or not, my life is experiencing another major curveball.

Can't you just feel my wellspring of happiness gushing up from the center of me over the fact that right when I almost had this cancer shit under control, and was getting my writing back to a steady pace–even around the non-trivial difficulties of chemo, I'm now looking down the barrel of something else. Can you feel it? Can you?

I can. It feels like I just barefoot stepped into cat mess and I'm about to turn the light on and figure out which end of the cat the mess came from. Except, you know, metaphorically.

I'm not going to go into a lot of details right now. Everything is too in flux and whatever I said could be wrong by 5pm. But it's big and it's bad and it will probably change my life.

The good news: when this is all said and done, I'll probably have more time for writing. In fact, that will almost certainly be the case even if one of those fluxed up versions of the whole thing goes down.

The bad news: it's going to happen pretty much right after the last cancer treatment. Like that is currently its precise scheduled date of arrival. So...fuck that.

However, as with every one of those fucking curveballs that doesn't incapacitate me with illness or injury, I'm going to keep on writing. I might lose a day or three along the way, but I do (at least) take my own advice. So apologies for the slow down this weekend. Hopefully our shit will have been gotten into the "together" position now that the initial bump is past.

And sometime in early summer I apologize for what will likely be a bit of a mess (but at least then you'll know what is going on). And between now and then I imagine there might be a few lost posts along the way...due to this or cancer or a two year old with child care that sometimes falls through.

But by god writers keep writing.

And so I shall.

Indulge a Little Fetish (Claire Youmans)

There are those who prefer, sometimes to the point of fetishism, physical books. They argue that e-format books are somehow lesser because they do not incorporate the physical properties of a physical book. Taken to extremes, as it often is, I think this is an elitist view that fails to reflect the needs of actual readers, but writers are known to fall for this. It’s not “real” unless it’s on paper.= They won’t buy it unless it’s available in hard copy. If you publish in e-format, you must be publishing unedited drafts not worthy of being called “writing”. Nonsense. But they do like their physical books, and they do read.

A physical book can be beautiful, a work of visual and tactile art complementing the words, and I do my best to make sure my physical books are lovely to look at, delightful to hold, gloriously illustrated, in readable typefaces and all. I am very careful to transfer all of that when the books go into e-format, so those good things aren’t lost. The act of making a hand-bound book is without question art.

However, I just had to buy a physical book, a 6 x 9 1329 page anthology of Meiji-Taisho era fiction, because it doesn't come in e-format.  I was hoping to read this while in Japan, but I can barely lift the thing.  It would take up inordinate space in my carry-on, and there is no way it would fit in even a brief-case style purse.  It’s impossible to lug around.  I can't read it in bed, either.  Too huge to lift and manage.  It weighs, I think, five or six pounds.  To read this book, I will have to sit in a chair and specifically set aside time to read it piecemeal.  I have done this with a couple of Marly Youmans' wonderful books (a distant cousin I am proud to claim and a fabulous writer who turns literary on its head) that don't come in e-format either.  I did like, kind of, reading that way, an hour or two of an evening, enjoying both great content and beautiful products I didn't want to damage or soil, but that meant I couldn’t drink or nibble or tend the fire while reading, either.  I find I need an e-book to read at the same time, for when I can't read in the exact way the physical book demands.  Mostly, I read for content.  I find I only need a physical book when I can’t get e-format.  The very physicality of this anthology limits its use to me.  Right now, I have several hundred other books in my Kindle that I can read on the terribly long flights and while traveling, but I wanted this one.  Because it’s not an e-book, I can’t have it, and I’m sad.

I’m not the only reader who likes her e-books best. People who travel, read. People who travel love their e-readers. The affordability (changing as the Big Five make e-book prices the same as paperback, which is shameless profiteering) and convenience of e-readers benefits many other people, too. An e-reader’s a lightweight library at your fingertips, attached to a bookstore. Who could want more?

Both these groups are readers, so ignore their quibbling and publish both ways. Pay attention to both readers. I like producing beautiful physical books, of course. I think they suit some of my readers much better. I also make sure I publish in e-format, because I know that’s what I prefer. Rather than argue over who is better, rise above the fray and  accommodate both. You’ll have more readers to thank you for it.

Also check out Claire's blog and FB page and available books here:
http://claireyoumansauthor.blogspot.com
www.tokigirlandsparrowboy.com
Facebook:  The Toki-Girl and the Sparrow-Boy
Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/The-Toki-Girl-Sparrow-Boy-Claire-Youmans/dp/0990323404/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

If you would like to guest blog for Writing About Writing we would love to have an excuse to take a day off a wonderful diaspora of voices. Take a look at our guest post guidelines, and drop me a line at chris.brecheen@gmail.com.

Poll: Best Single Story Arc Series

What is the best single story arc series?  

Our March poll is live!

We do a lot of "Best Series" polls here at Writing About Writing, but March's poll is about a very specific kind of series. Many "series" tell several stories in a single world. Series like Dresden or Discworld have multiple discrete stories. But some series are really a single story spanning multiple books.

While one or all of the books (especially the first one in many cases) might stand alone, the series itself is really a single work.

Everyone will get four votes (4). Before you simply vote for your favorite four, consider that, as there is no ranking of those four votes; each vote beyond one dilutes the power of your choices a little more. So if you have a genuine favorite–or pair of favorites–it's better to use as few votes as possible.

The poll itself is on the left side, at the bottom of the side menus.

Why is Old Time Writing so Pompous? (Mailbox)

You just Googled "Pompous Mailbox" didn't you?

Why does old time writing sound pompous? 

[Remember, keep sending in your questions to chris.brecheen@gmail.com with the subject line "W.A.W. Mailbox" and I will answer a couple each week. I have a LOT of backlogged questions right now, but I will try to eventually get to all of them.  I will use your first name ONLY unless you tell me explicitly that you'd like me to use your full name or you would prefer to remain anonymous.  My comment policy also may mean one of your comments ends up in the mailbox. Don't be afraid to get me to answer what is clearly your homework because by the time I answer it, you'll have graduated.]  

Anonymous writes:

(this question is approximately 25% trolling, and 75% sincere curiosity.  and anonymous because I don't want to admit I don't already know.)

writing prompt - re-word the following quote into modern American English, and then explain what the hell it means (just in case it doesn't make sense in plain English)... and then if you want, talk about why old-timey writing always sounds so pompous.

"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed."
-- Herman Melville

Signed,
feeling dumb 

My reply:

I'll answer this, but if we end up together as the Doctor's companions, and go back in time, remind me to explain to you about the moving target of social conventions and the beauty industry of the 20th century before you go popping off about some aristocrat's body odor or some baroness's body hair or something.

Cause....AWKWARD.

"Old timey" writing didn't sound pompous when it was being written. It had a continuum of formal or informal the same way modern writing does. A style as vocabulous and thick as Melville's, at the time, would probably read like Danielewski, Eco, or Marquez does to us today: lush and rotten with big words but hardly indecipherable. It just sounds a little bit pompous to us here in the 21st century because we have a century and a half of linguistic drift. Language changes and evolves, so you're kind of reading something that's about 15-20% of the way to needing a translation the way Chaucer does today.

Let's be clear, Melville was definitely on the wordy side, even for the 19th century Thesaurus Rex writers of the time. He also tried hard to be baroque, modeling himself quite deliberately after the Bible (which even when it updates, always goes with the most anachronistic English that is still readable in order to get that "Ye Olde Verily" feel going on) as well as Shakespeare and Milton. (That's the prose, I'm guessing, not the dick and fart jokes.) However, Melville was also incredibly unconventional and used so many unorthodox compound adjectives and so much onomatopoeia that many of his contemporaries and critics thought he was insane. (And I don't mean "Oh that craaaaaaazy Herm! He's a wild one!" insane.)

The reason old timey writing SOUNDS pompous today is because of who's still talking and writing that way, and even more who's running around trying to make sure everyone else sounds that way. Usually pompous people. Language shifts over time as new words are adopted, old words become archaic, and even grammar rules change, and the people who have a stick up their ass about that fact are (usually) stuck about a hundred years in the past when it comes to how they think English ought to look and sound.

And I mean I love me some Shakespeare, but he did the same shit. All that thee and thou shit that drove you bonkers in high school was pretty much on the way out by the time he was writing, but he was interested in writing upper class snobs as upper-class sounding, and during the 13th century all the aristocrats liked the French influence of a formal and informal "you."

There was also a pretty profound shift in literature in the thirties, forties, and fifties. It would take at least an hour of lecture to get into all the specifics of how and why, but the short version is that Hemingway was probably a bigger deal than you've been told. In the same way that the minimalism of the late 20th century can be largely attributed to Raymond Carver (who, by the way, was working off of Hemingway), the influence even today of the powerful "short declarative sentence" came largely from Hemingway and it was a huge shift away from the popularity of the more languid prose of prior.

Let's look at your quote though. "Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed."

Or in other words:

"Of all the shit beliefs people have about other people nothing is more shitacular than some rich asshole telling a poor person what they're doing wrong in life."

You know how rich people tell poor people they should just go to school or get a job and they sort of don't realize that the poor person does have a job but it doesn't pay the bills or that they can't just go to school because they need to work 60 hours a week because the first job doesn't pay the bills. Or the rich people criticize that the poor haven't invested well in a retirement portfolio so they could stop working eventually and the poor person is making choices like Pay Rent vs. Eat Food for the month. Or they give some fuckass bullshit advice like "Don't take that crap from your boss! Stand up to them!" without realizing that losing a job to a capricious boss can put someone out of food or a home.

My personal favorite (and I'm using that word with sneering sarcasm if it isn't oozing off the page): If I Were Poor Black Kid. Which, quite appropriately got its ass completely handed to it, often by actual poor Black kids. (Why yes. Each one of those words IS its own response article.)

Probably the worst criticism rich people give to poor people is about risk assessment. Telling poor folks that their problem is that they don't take chances. It's fine and well to take chances when you have a safety net (be it money in the bank, parents who won't let you starve, or just some Tony Jacklin golf clubs you can sell in a pinch). However, to tell someone who is trying to figure out which bill it'll be okay to not pay this month that the reason they're poor is because they haven't just quit their job to go into alpaca farming is particularly lacking in decency, empathy, and compassion.

That's probably more answer than you were hoping for Anon, but I got your back. Even if it takes me like three months to get around to it.