Years ago when I’d written only one (largely unpublishable) novel and had yet to submit any longer piece of writing to any house (and my total submission of short stories were under a dozen) I spotted a huge error in a best selling book.
I did what many of my fans do and sat down to pen a letter to the author explaining why this was wrong. And then realized that while I might not be the only one of his readers to spot it, I would almost certainly be the only one to care.
You see, the error I’d spotted could only be spotted by a native Portuguese speaker. At that, it could only be spotted by a native Portuguese speaker who’d lived to maturity in Portugal. And it might not matter to anyone else, because the society was not our own, and was in the future, so nine out of (the minuscule number of) fans in my situation they’d go “Oh. It’s a different world.” Besides, with that self-saving instinct that sometimes, rarely, comes out of nowhere to prevent my making an ass out of myself, I realized that – after all – this man was a best selling author (and spoke Portuguese, albeit not natively) and probably wouldn’t enjoy a letter from newby telling him “that is wrong because the language doesn’t allow you to think that way. That is NOT funny in Portuguese, it’s only funny to speakers of Portuguese as a second language.”
I still don’t know the gentleman, but we have mutual friends, and I suspect if I ever met him, I could tell him that story and he would chuckle, or – because he’s an intelligent and curious man – go “Oh, why not? What is the thought process that makes that impossible?” Which could lead to a fascinating discussion on culture.
But here’s the thing, okay: You can’t research enough. You just can’t. I don’t wish to revive the argument with the non-fiction writer that sent a tenacious troll to my blog, but SERIOUSLY, you can’t research enough.
That book that popped me out of the page on two incidental lines was EXQUISITELY researched. The author had lived in a Portuguese culture. He spoke Portuguese. He still had made several minor boners, and one major one. Should he have researched more?
Oh, heck no. The question you have to ask yourself is: how many people does the error affect? For that one book, if I wasn’t the only one, I must have been close, because think on it: readers of Portuguese birth AND upbringing, who learned English well enough as a second language to read the untranslated book, (I don’t know how it’s now, but in my day when reading a translated book, any non-sequitor was glossed over and assumed to be a translation error. For years I was puzzled by the construction “So and so said, and he was hot.” The “hot” used was temperature, not attractiveness, but it still puzzled heck out of me. I’d look at it and go “uh. What the heck does temperature have to do with this?” and sometimes “Aren’t they in the middle of a snow storm?” Turned out what they were trying to translate was “heatedly” which has no immediate correspondence in Portuguese and which, I guess, some translation technique class somewhere decided was an American quirk, “And sometimes they talk about how hot they are. Just translate it and go on with life.” So the errors I noted in that book would have been glossed over in Portuguese with the usual mumble of “dumb*ss translator” which I said so often my parents thought it was some kind of incantation.) That group then gets thinned further to “number of people raised in Portugal who speaks native Portuguese and who is reading in English, and who likes science fiction and fantasy.” (Now, note that we readers of sf/f are supposedly a tiny minority.) Then add to that the filter of “And studied linguistics, and know that Portuguese doesn’t BEND that way, and know it well enough to be bothered.” I think by that point you’re down to myself and some other girl I never met or heard of.
Note too that other than that major issue and a dozen ones too tiny to mention, I still loved the book.
Should the author have spent his entire life researching for this book to please me and Maria something or other up in Maine? Well, let me see, first, he would have disappointed the hundreds of readers whom it didn’t bother by never writing that book, or any other. Second, his family would have starved. Third… Yeah, no he shouldn’t.
There is another problem, too – the more you research, the more errors you’re going to make. No? Yeah. Look, the more you research after that 99% needed for reasonable accuracy (I’m not suggesting you do TV show work – do you know how many times I have heard Portuguese referred to as speaking Spanish? I have) the more you’ll get cocky and think you know stuff that just ain’t so. (More on that later.)
So, to an extent the Lords of Political correctness are right, sitting in their NYC strongholds and saying that straight women can’t write gay men because they’re opaque to us; men can’t write women; white people can’t write black people (dooming my husband’s Ninth Euclid to the unpublished drawer – and yes, he will self-publish as soon as he can get time to do the rewrite necessary now it’s been nine years since he first wrote it. Author’s pride and all that.); cats can’t write dogs, etc.
Why? Because no matter how much you research, and how much you study, and how much you read, and how many friends of that persuasion/color/gender you have, you are not them. (And let me tell you, guys, getting friends who lived in other centuries is a right b*tch. The ouija keeps breaking.)
Like the author who knew Portuguese and Portuguese speakers really well, there will be one or two of those who will read your book and go “oh, heck no. No, no, no, no, no.” from their own experience. And sometimes they will even be right. (I know at least one well researched non-fic book that is completely wrong according to my family history. BUT my experience and my family’s is regional, quirky and suis generis, and even if the author knew about us, putting in “except the Silva family from Saint Gemil” is just over the top, no? Besides, my grandfather would have got VERY upset.)
What the Lords of Political Correctness and Not A Sparrow Shall Take Offense fail to do is take that far enough. They’re thinking in terms of people-who-matter-not-being-offended, i.e. people who can call on organizations and groups who will make the publisher’s life living hell if there’s an error. Hence “no man can write a woman convincingly” bs.
It they had the honesty of their convictions, though, they’d say “you can only write what you are. EVER.”
Which would lead of course, to the world’s most boring books. You can only write what you are and what you know. Because the past is another country and you really can’t study enough to know more than people who spend their lives studying one family over a fifteen year period – yes, they exist – and who know the napkin is folded wrong in your ballroom scene, you can’t write that.
So, we’d have ALL autobiographies. And because most of those, to be interesting, are heavily fictionalized, we’d have BORING biographies. Like… “The last ten days and what I had for breakfast, by Sarah A. Hoyt.” (While some of you might be crazy enough to read it, and my life might be crazy enough to make it fun – just tell me you wouldn’t prefer to read the next one of Shifters. [It’s in progress. If you’re VERY good, I’ll give you little bits…] And at the end of it, because if you write what happened ten years ago it’s not the same person you’d end up with the parody book that Bucky, the cat from Get Fuzzy wrote “Chapter ten, in which I shift my butt.”
We ALL live in secret worlds. Think about it. How many times have I posted something here about “it’s how accountants do it,” only to have RES pop up like an actuarial accountantly (geesh) jack in box and go “Actually Sarah, that’s not precisely true.” (Yes, RES knows about Area 51 and how to find it. Fact. And if you don’t get this joke, go watch Independence day.) How many times have I put in a throw away line about “pioneer life” and had Celia come in to confirm or deny?
WE ALL, in our highly wealthy and specialized world know things that very few other people know. If you want to write about anyone at all, you’re going to have to take a risk that a few people will know where you bsed to bridge over an awkward spot or information you simply couldn’t find.
I’m not suggesting that you should – because of that – go around writing only about what you know. For one, how many of you are interested in how my office chair feels right now? (Crappy. I must buy another one soon. The other day the left arm fell off and I had to screw it back on. BUT that’s time to shop which I don’t have. Also, we need to buy a new stove.) And I’m not suggesting you travel to the exotic location you want to write about, because if you’re going traditional you’ll NEVER make more than the price of tickets. And if you’re going indie, you won’t make the tickets back for years. And, of course, if you have a time machine and can travel to the time of your civil war novel, first… WHY AREN’T YOU SHARING and second, are you insane? Because, you know, they had diseases we don’t even have NAMES for.
And I’m certainly not suggesting you disguise as another race or gender, though people have done it to write books. But even that doesn’t work, unless you’re writing about someone DISGUISING as another gender or race. Because you can never, ever, ever have the experience of growing up as someone else, of being socialized as someone else, and of BEING someone else.
But that’s where the LOPC (Lords of Political Correctness) get it wrong too. Because it’s not just that writers like to write about people not like them, they can come damn close to the feel. Also, they can allow the reader to experience being someone else. Because, you know, the people writing it from their experience, know their secret world, but they might not know how to cue people who are NOT in their secret world. For instance, I couldn’t write Portugal when I started out, because I didn’t know what Americans thought they knew about it. So…
So – assume – know that you’ll violate some secret world when you write. Can’t be helped. Then write what you want.
A few hints, to avoid getting TOO MANY angry letters:
1 – Research initially. Enough to familiarize you with the time or the character or the science or all three (I have books like that.)
2 – Write the book. You’ll never know all the details you need – like how someone does laundry! – until you write the book. When you’re done print the manuscript and:
3- Read it over, flagging all the places you fudged or deduced from other similar cultures.
4- Research those specific details.
5- Find someone who knows the secret world. Usually you can find someone no more than six degrees of separation or, if you’re me, you know ten people who can help you. Have them read it. Pay attention when they tell you “Sarah, it’s not this way.” Or even “this scene sounds weird, I can’t tell you why.” (And only ask them why they’re calling you Sarah AFTER you take notes.) But what if it completely messes up your book if you change it? Then think about it. If your source who knows the secret world and who will probably get it goes “um, it’s probably me and two people…” then leave it in.
Secret worlds are meant to be exposed. Books are the only way most of us can truly be someone else. (Movies don’t allow that. They allow you to see someone else.) Go and pull back the curtains.
According To Hoyt 
‘It they had the honesty of their convictions, though, they’d say “you can only write what you are. EVER.” ‘ — Ain’t this the truth. Atheist spinster lesbian black female can write Christian married-with-kids white hetero male (villain, natch) and no one ever says ‘you can’t do that, you couldn’t possibly understand them’… you try it the other way around – especially your atheist etc is the villain. Sauce for the goose must also be good for ganders.
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Great post, Sarah! And, Dave, you are *so* right!
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Amen Dr. Monkey
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I can;t say enough about Rule 5. When I had all of the Adelsverein Trilogy in manuscript, I lucked into getting put in touch with a local historian who was practically a walking encyclopedia on the 19th century German settlements in the Hill Country. He consented to read the whole thing as a kind of grim duty; and a kindness on his part, because it was nearly 450,000 words total. And I was really nervous about the center section, which was about what went on there during the Civil War … which was so horrendous that people who survivied it just didn’t want to talk OR write about it afterwards. (Founding of the settlements, there were memoirs and monograms and family histories galore – I believe they documented every time someone belched heavily. About the start-up of the post-war cattle ranches and long-trail drives – likewise, sources galore. But for the CW? County-wide clam-up and very little to work with.)
He found only a couple of misspellings of German words, and wound up loving it, which for me was fantastic, because of his influence among the historical societies. He is still one of my biggest fans.
On the other hand, consistent small goofs can totally ruin a book. I’m about to give up on reading any more of a historical mystery/thriller I was sent for review, about an Anglo-American woman working as a secretary for Winston Churchill in 1940. Noticed first a casual reference to the uniforms of the WRNS (Women’s Royal Naval Service) being khaki or brown. (Nope – dark blue). In the latest chapter I’ve gotten to a mention of the German army in brown uniforms … sigh. Again, nope:variants of ‘feldgrau’ (field grey, a sort of drab dark greenish grey). In the secret world of a retired military NCO, getting the colors of service uniforms all wrong is a major boo-boo, even if they are in another country and another time.
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In the secret world of a retired military NCO, getting the colors of service uniforms all wrong is a major boo-boo, even if they are in another country and another time.
And that world is shared by various re-enactors who can be some of the most particular people when it comes to detail.
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Absolutely – (about the secret world of NCOs) Nothing bothers us (my hubby and I) more than to watch a movie where the senior officer is wearing enlisted ribbons. AND YUCK.
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My wife refuses tob watch movies with heavy military in them because I’m always pointing out why certain things are wrong or would never happen. Yes, I can be quite a pain in the ass. :-D
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I ALMOST got escorted out of Shakespeare in Love. It was the snorting. I managed to stop making comments, but the snorting was uncontrollable.
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That’s why you only go to those types of movies with friends that comment like you do. Movies are better enjoyed when you can whisper hushed criticisms with each other.
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My favorite was the movie Basic with Travolta and Sammy L. The one where Jackson, an alleged Ranger Master Sergeant (pay grade E-8) is wearing his (black) beret with specialist (pay grade E-4) rank insignia in the field acceroized by his poncho being worn as a cape. I won’t even get into the actual plot. It was so terrible I actually did enjoy it.
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well, okay. I’ve yet to find an historical that does that to me — so bad it’s good — but it PROBABLY exists.
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That is a “just don’t give a d***n” error. They could have paid a retired NCO $500 consulting fees to eyeball and correct, but that would have required giving a …
I mean, it isn’t like the stars or director would have ever even had to be on the lot and risk meeting that NCO. But they can’t even care enough to visit an online database to look (I presume there are such dbs – and if not i see a monetary opportunity.)
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Absolutely, Celia. That’s like my comment here a few days ago about NRO. Totally different meaning for me than for the rest of the group – and fairly unique. I read a recent novel that talked about spy satellites, tasking, and a few other things. Because of my background, I saw HUGE problems with it. I doubt that more than a dozen other people would have noticed. Sometimes, you just can’t research enough. At other times, a little knowledge could be a dangerous thing.
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Agree, Dr. Monkey
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So, what was wrong in Speaker for the Dead?
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Hah! My thought as well. Please tell!
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See where I pleaded the fifth.
18 year old single malt by preference.
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I plead the fifth.
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I apologize if I’m preaching to the choir, but once you’ve done your initial research, a local university library, or any university library with a catalog accessible via the ‘Net can be your friend. They are frequently quite tolerant of people (neatly dressed and quiet) coming in and doing research, so long as you follow their rules. Academic library catalogs are also very good places to look for specialized books and journal articles that you can later inter-library loan via a public library.
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Also a lot of professors will help you. I have got help in foreign languages I don’t speak over the net from experts — like for A Death In Gascony I got help with the bits of local language.
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Linguists (the people studying linguistics) can be useful, too, I’d imagine. In my home town, some of the folks at the local CSU are studying Hittite, for example, as well as a number of local languages from the various tribes that live here.
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About a decade ago, I finally just couldn’t stand it, and wrote a letter like that to James Hogan. I tried to minimize it by saying “I wonder how many others over the years have asked you la la la la la.” He very politely replied “None, and I hope it didn’t prevent your enjoying the book.” When I finally met him at a con in Tulsa, I mentioned it and he laughed, and said that the count was still “one.”
You’re dead right. You -can not- research enough.
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Just because I like to quibble (and am self-aware enough to recognise and admit that fact) I will point out that you can’t even write about yourself because, you know, in the famous phrase of Gregory House: “Everybody lies.” First and foremost to themselves.
As you commented in another thread, “there’s also what people say they want and what they really want…” There is also what they really want and what they think they really want. We all know of folks whose lives seem to careen between one disastrous relationship and another — surely that person is not deliberately seeking out exploitative and manipulative life partners. More probably they are looking for “somebody who will care for me and protect me and support me” but their markers for that are such that they inevitably pick somebody exploitative and manipulative. What they are seeking and what they think they are seeking are not the same.
Years ago, in one of his Dress For Success books, John T. Malloy relayed the tale of an experiment they had done on dressing men for “success with the ladies.” Interviews and analysis revealed that women wanted a man who is “self-confident” so Malloy’s team of crack sociologists instructed the actors to behave self-confidently — with little success. When the actors were instead instructed to behave arrogantly they were found much more attractive by the ladies. Meaning that a) most women don’t know what they want in a man b) most women lie to themselves about what they want in a man c) Malloy and his team of crack sociologists were cracked d) all of the above.
The point is, most of us lie even (especially) to ourselves. So we cannot write honestly about ourselves unless we first acknowledge our mendacity, our superficiality, our limits. And even then the limits on what we can know prevent our knowing “The Truth”. We are all blind men groping elephants and trying to express what we experience in terms of what we have already experienced. Because we are human we are limited in our experience, because we are human we are limited in what we can experience. (I sometimes consider that dogs, with their ability to smell every chemical exuded, are completely baffled by human behaviour: “Can’t she smell he lusts for her?” “Can’t he smell she’s not interested?” “Can’t either of them smell they are both lying — the adrenaline stench is awful!” “He smells like his blood glucose is low — why doesn’t he eat something?” “Dang – those two have had sex with three other people in the last two weeks, and one of them was carrying an STD which is now being transmitted – are they blind?”)
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LOL on the dogs. I don’t usually write aliens, but you just gave me a wonderful idea for aliens who think humans are plain, rock bottom DUMB.
And yeah, particularly with stuff we do for fun, like reading, there’s a yawning gap between “I say I like this” and “I like this.”
The other part of it is that writing is interactive. I write FOR the reader. So unless I have a good idea of what’s in the majority of the readers’ heads, I can’t reach them. In the end of the LOPC’s fantasies are people ONLY writing for people EXACTLY like themselves. An audience of one.
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I love the dog bit, and the idea of forming aliens on that premise. Some of my aliens see humans as extremely dumb, and are also baffled by the fact that humans take photographs of each other. “Can’t they remember each other’s faces?” :P
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I don’t suppose I should go all didact on you and point out that you mean “career,” not “careen,” and delineate the differences. (GD&R)
BSN: I think you’re right that we cannot write honestly about ourselves unless we write HONESTLY about ourselves. However, I was always under the impression that that was the “opening a vein” part in Harlan Ellison’s description of the craft.
M
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Happy Birthday Mark.
My contention is that we don’t know all the lies we tell ourselves.
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Yep, we can see ourselves better than we are and worse than we are (at the same time).
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In the musical Man of La Mancha is a song in which the
Any sentence that uses careen is a good sentence to me. ;-)
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Mmm, in this case I definitely meant careen:
Although, as you note, career also applies “To move or run at full speed; rush” aptly, it carries overtones of its primary definition which while drolly appropriate might tend to confuse.
Of course, life has long since taught me that what I mean to communicate and what I actually succeed in communicating often … vary.
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RES, “careen” can also mean to tip a boat to expose its bottom for scraping away barnacles and seaweed. Your meaning was perfectly obvious to me… 8^)
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On the matter of language and thought, keep in mind that, umm, there are regional variations. What the English mean by a turn of phrase is not necessarily what an American or a Canadian or Aussie might mean, and there are sub-regions of each to further complicate matters — what a Yankee means by “barbecue” is not what an Eastern North Carolinian means, which is not what a Western North Carolinian means, which is not what a Tennessean means, which is not what a Texan means (although what they pass off as BBQ in Texas is too horrible for words.)
Nor is what I call hot likely to coincide with any other person’s concept of hot, whether speaking culinarily or environmentally. We are all idiosyncratic and it is miraculous we can communicate at all.
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Well, and that’s what I figured, since the variant was not mine and while I was still sure that particular sentence would ONLY be funny to someone who spoke Portuguese as second language, who knows in the future, right?
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I was very pleased when I ran into an old friend who is back in the states to take the next step to her Doctorate and visit her children who are in college here. She grew up multi-lingual: Canadian English, Angolan Portuguese and some native. She teaches nursing in Angola now. On her way to the States she had stopped for some reason in Brazil. I asked her if she spoke Brazilian Portuguese as well. She said no, that she speaks Angolan, and muddles through. There was something about her facial expression that conveyed that muddle was quite the operative word.
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I actually am/was semi-fluent in Brazilian Portuguese since most of my grandfather’s family lived there, and they visited all the time I was growing up. Also, a lot of my reading was in Brazilian Portuguese. Angolan is very different (My SIL is Mozambican of birth, Angolan of upbringing — or the other way around, I never remember) but Brazilian is to continental as American is to British. Different, but not… that bad.
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Hey, hey now, you are starting to talk religion, RES. Just because some people drown perfectly good other-white-meat in vinegar and/or mustard is no cause to be criticizing that most blessed of beasts, the properly smoked and sauced Texas brisket. :)
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Please, this is hot territory. There are ‘Bama white and Maryland chickin’ BBQs, the Mutton Q from Eastern Kentuck’, Memphis with its thick sweet and smokey, the kinds are numerous and the fans of each loyal. Let us agree to disagree.
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mutton Q? sounds wonderful. do I have to go to Kentucky to try it?
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Unless I we can find a recipe for you, probably. Americans, as a whole are mutton-phobic.
Also my bad it is Western Kentucky, from Owensboro Mutton Barbecue – Barbecues & Grilling – About.com:
I also forgot the goat BBQ of the southwest.
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Don’t forget chicken BBQ which was a staple of my youth – Northeast Utah
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Pooh. Barbacoa is the original of the term — and it’s roasted goat. Next time you’re in Texas, seek some.
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I MUST.
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CACS – there are three recipes linked to at the bottom of that About.com page; Mutton Rub, Mutton Mop, and Mutton Barbecue Sauce.
Of course, you can cook the meat however you want, but also in that article:
“As for the method it’s a pretty basic barbecue procedure. Get your smoker ready for a long smoke at about 220 degrees F. (105 degrees C.). Place the prepared piece of mutton (or lamb) fat side up in the smoker. Plan on smoking for about 1 1/2 hours per pound. Mop every hour and remove when the meat is around 170 degrees internally. Mutton barbecue is typically served sliced on buns with a table sauce. See the recipes on the top right hand side of this page for specific suggestions. ”
Sounds GOOD, and next time I see leg of lamb on sale, I’m going to try it.
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Wayne, here come the horrible admission. I am a foodie. I read about all sorts of food. For some unknown reason the powers that be, with their twisted sense of humor, have decided to cause a breakdown in my digestion so that I cannot, in spite of the desire to do so, guarantee that I will be able to digest any food that could have once looked me in the eye.
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My husband’s best childhood friend has a similar problem; he can handle sushi-roll amounts of fish, and chicken as it shows up in things like chicken Alfredo, but anything else and he’s out. Since I’m from a beef raising family, this was an issue. ^.^
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Ah, sorry to hear that. I was just responding to your response to Sarah, that unless we could find a recipe for her, she would have to visit Kentucky to try it. Much as I would like to meet her in person, I’m all about helping people do things easier (because I do everything the hard way).
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Well, this year I’m doing Liberty Con and Fencon. Next year, maybe there will be money for some Kentucky-con. Who knows? I would like someday to make Con Carolina, because Charlotte is my hometown. I was naturalized there.
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Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
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REAL meat is red. Only Barbarians ruin a perfectly good barbeque by using white meat! (Although pork or cougar will do in a pinch, if no real meat is available)
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So, to an extent the Lords of Political correctness are right, sitting in their NYC strongholds and saying that straight women can’t write gay men because they’re opaque to us; men can’t write women; white people can’t write black people…
And yet gay, black and women characters are all demanded of an author — whoever they may be.
The introduction that Ray Bradbury wrote for the restored Farenheit 451 mentions requests he had received from his fans that he rewrite works to include more whatever. Discussions in prior blogs here have touched on the point that publishers want diversity represented. What do the publisher’s want? NO don’t tell me, books written by committee…and we all know what most committees produce.
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well… if you’re writing minorities of any kind, race, gender, etc, they have to be angels and not humans.
Yes, I’m waving my finger New York-ward. HOW did you know? And sorry to my friends in NYC. I ONLY mean the publishing district.
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*Hem, hem*
I am an accountant. Actuaries do something else entirely. Not quite the difference between a physician and a physicist, but …
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yes, sir. (Hangs head in shame.) Before I use a word starting with act again, I shall ask you. (meekly.)
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sigh. Accountant does not start with act. Accuracy does not start with act. Act is not always apt, even in art, as is known even to the ant. Clearly you do want for an ass’t.
You write like English is a second language or something. ;-)
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Okay, okay, okay. starting with Ac…
No, it’s actually a lack of coffee. SERIOUS lack of coffee. I’ve remedied it by making my kid make me some.
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Just take care your coffee is not overly acidic, lest accidents actuate.
A vocabulary is a terrible thing to waste.
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Sarah, if you two are ever in the same room together, please get pictures (or, better yet, video) of you slapping RES.
What? So I’m a barbarian. What’s wrong with that?
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Never slap a person who wears glasses – you could cut your hand. That’s why we have cudgels.
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UM, I am the designated slapper — but with this man it may well take a cudgel.
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My impression of him is it would take a rocket to the forehead and I’ve grown weirdly fond of him. I wouldn’t want to damage him permanently. I’ll just withhold his virtual cookies.
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Chuckle – language in different places :-) -Slapper where I grew up – an offensive term for a woman who is considered sexually promiscuous or vulgar (slang)
[Late 18th century. Formed from slap in an obsolete dialectal sense. Originally used for ‘overweight person (usually a woman)’.]
Which I have a feeling is not quite what you meant. :-)
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No, I think not. Not at all.
I had considered that, aside from the put down of a cad or a possible challenge to duel, it could be taken to be a form of billy club or part of a detonator. But I had never heard that one before. Live and learn.
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But do you know what’s in Area 51? That’s the important question here. :-)
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He does. He’s not telling.
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There’s nothing in Area 51. It’s just the place set up so people look there not for the place that alien tech is really kept. [Evil Grin]
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I know this makes me sound like an incredible dork, but I’ve thought about this for years. If I was the government, I would put a super secret alien project somewhere underground in a place like Wyoming or Idaho, but I’d leak stuff out about this other place, maybe in the desert, and draw the focus there so no one would look to what I was really doing elsewhere.
Sound like a dork? Who am I kidding? I AM a dork.
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If it walks like a dork, sounds like a dork, looks like a dork, it must be a dork.
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Sooo, that’s what they are really storing in the nuclear waste storage sites.
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Of course I don’t. Would I lie about a thing like that?
And for the record, you do not find Area 51, Area 51 finds you.
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we’d have BORING biographies.
Ah, we have them today in a near real time — thanks to Twitter. One friend has complained about a mutual acquaintance who would post the most amazingly inane minutia. (There is a bug on the sidewalk.) It is things like that make me glad I have sworn off most social media.
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The “you can’t write X because you are non-X” seems a) to fly in the face of experience and b) somewhat racist/sexist/whateverist.
A) because 1) literary history abounds with persuasive characters written by authors not particularly like them. Is Lady Macbeth unconvincing because her author was male? Are Goneril, Regan, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia and Ophelia equally unconvincing? Are Mssrs Darcy, Collins and Wickham unconvincing because Austen was a Jane, not a James? Does Huck Finn‘s Jim fail because Twain was neither Black nor slave? Stephen Crane never fought in the War of Southern Secession, so The Red Badge of Courage falls to the wayside, and I guess Orwell’s Animal Farm falls, too. Okay, maybe Catcher In The Rye passes muster, but … And then we get codswallop like I, Rigobertu Menchu …
A) 2) Rumour has it there was once this thing called jour-nal-ism, supposedly practiced in major metropolitan areas across this world, in which people would travel to various locales near and far and report their observations. This peculiar trade enabled writers to observe people and events and write up those observations for others to read. I understand that Tom Wolfe has practiced it recently and that Hunter S. Thompson engaged in something similar? Perhaps it is no longer practiced? If so, tis a pity; it was quite the rage at one time; it was in all the papers.
B) because if, on the basis of not having been one no man can write a woman character, no woman can write a man, no straight person can write gaily and no gay can write straight, then by extension: if only a member of sub-group (as defined by race, sex, region of origin) X can write a character of that sub-group, then aren’t all members of X essentially the same? That or you end up defining the sub-group down to a single person.
Ultimately this *Rule* of authenticity is, like the complaint of “Derivative” merely a reason to turn down a book for somebody who already desires to turn down that book. It is the publishing equivalent of “I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.”
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Civil War soldiers had diseases we don’t have names for? We don’t have Latin names for them, or a program for treatment. The troops called them something. When Tom Wolfe was writing about the hippies during the Sixties, he noted that the kids in Haight-Ashbury etc. were getting hygiene-related illnesses that had been gone from Western civilization for so long they were only known by folk names, the scruff, the grunge, no doctor had ever stuck a Latin name on them and treatment was usually futile because it had to begin with the suggestion, “hey kid, take a bath!” A brave researcher could interview volunteer doctors at the Occupy sites.
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Yes, but WE don’t have names for. Of course they did. :)
Agree on the occupy camps.
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Momma’s Father was a doctor. He said that posibily the single greatest advance in human health was indoor plumbing.
Indoor plumbing — use it, it not just there so that greedy home and apartment builders can charge you more.
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Pay attention when they tell you “Sarah, it’s not this way.” Or even “this scene sounds weird, I can’t tell you why.” (And only ask them why they’re calling you Sarah AFTER you take notes.)
Heh. I miss out on making SO many jokes because I auto-translate lines like that one into the way it was meant.
On the subject at hand, though, I hardly ever think about pigeon-hole errors like you described. I’ve gotten used to glossing over them as a defense mechanism. I usually just want to offer my services to some of the goofballs out there as a science consultant. Not for the fantastic extrapolations, but for the mundane stuff.
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When I was in Germany and knew a little of the language I was very amused by how they told jokes. They would start with “this is a joke,” then they would tell the joke, and end with “this was a joke.” After the last line the Germans would appropriately laugh (ho, ho, ho). You know the polite laugh.
We knew a young man who was half American and half German raised in Germany society with both languages. He still couldn’t understand American humor. We had a sign that said “Sheize passiert.” His voice would raise “what do you mean Shit Happens?” We tried to tell him what it meant, but he would say that shit always follows a good meal. So I have found it funny how two different cultures can clash.
As for writing what you don’t know, according to Freud and Jung we are many different people in our heads. lol So we can write what we know. It is how we present it, I think is the problem.
Besides I still hate the “PC crowd.” They have slashed some perfectly good words that were not “–ist” in any way on the grounds of “hurt feelings.” It has in my humble opinion made the language more banal.
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*laughs* Odd you should mention “The Secret World“– there’s a rather cool MMO coming out by that name. (they have pre-launch puzzles, too)
I would’ve stuck with privately chuckling about it, but the idea that secret worlds are made to be exposed was just too awesome a chance to plug a video game folks might enjoy. If nothing else, the puzzles are grand.
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I wonder if the “only [characteristic or group] can write about [characteristic or group]” began in non-fiction at the same time as in fiction, or if it led? The first bubbles of it appeared in academia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, about the time that “area studies” appeared. And it appears increasingly, well, boxed in if not bankrupt, in both sides of writing.
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Yes. Part of it, again, is that you have to have some idea how the OTHER side of the writing thing thinks. I.e. you have to play to the reader to an extent. When I said I couldn’t write about Portugal until I’d LEARNED HOW to write, period, I meant it. And learning how to write included learning how to communicate with Americans who THOUGHT they knew about foreign countries. Like, signaling early on Portugal wasn’t in South America helped. (Yale graduate thought so, swear!) Then there was signaling culture differences broadly enough. I will never forget the rejection I got on a story, calling me a xenophobic pain in the *ss… for my depiction of Portugal. What was the big deal? I described the lack of refrigeration which was common twenty years ago in food establishments. Note, I didn’t say they were wrong. The climate is NOT the SE USA, and heck, even there, Americans are refrigeration-crazy more than any other culture or region. BUT the person reading it interpreted it as “primitive.” (Rolls eyes.)
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“Area Studies”… Now there’s another area where my particular military specialty recognizes one definition while the rest of the world applies another. In the intelligence business, “area studies” means becoming as familiar as possible with a given area, from its language and culture to its industry and art, so that it’s easier to interpret the words, deeds, and activities one sees. I was an Eastern European area specialist, concentrating on the East Germany-Poland-Czechoslovakia area. I knew every major military installation, airfield, and training site in those three countries, who they belonged to, what was normally assigned there, and so on and so forth. It had NOTHING to do with how one particular subset of the human race was “different” from everyone else, which is what “area studies” in academia boils down to.
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thumbs up Mike – I think of “Area Studies” in the same way as you am pretty bewildered about the academia definition. It is so limiting. ;-)
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Cyn, it is insultingly limiting. But I didn’t say that out loud.
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so true TX – but I do say it out loud… ;-)
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It is an important part of communication to know what the jargon means where. It can be a more important part of human obfuscation to make sure no one else really knows what your jargon really means.
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It is a way of class – and warfare – and looking smarter than anyone else. Yep… if you want to become a doctor, scientist, even a mechanic – learn the language of that profession first.
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I generally try not to care too much, and finding errors just makes me feel clever.
But once… the most important clue in the book was a shed scale from a boa constrictor. The boa constrictor, once identified by the scale, proved who the voodoo villain was.
I didn’t feel clever for knowing better. I just couldn’t imagine how the author imagined she could write a snake as the pivotal element of a story and not go handle one or find out what the shed scales looked like. She may have felt foolish asking a big snake owner to show her a snake scale, but it would have been a *private* shame.
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/laughs unbelievingly/ Actually I can believe it, I’ve read worse. I’ve never written a letter to an author, most mistakes I see are simple, more typos than anything. The most common being the wrong name being used for the wrong person; but if I find many ‘boa scale’ mistakes we are likely to have a book-wall collision. One I saw a while back was when an author stated that a 50 BMG was a popular deer rifle for hunting in the timber of Western Oregon, there are so many things wrong with that ignorant statement I don’t even know where to begin.
My thoughts was always that if an author didn’t care enough to fact check commonly known facts, they probably didn’t care enough to pay attention to any letter I might write them.
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I’ve always been amazed at how much research I have to do when I’m making stuff up(ie – writing fiction).
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