Author: Ann Aubrey Hanson

The Dark Ages: Before Google

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / Leave a comment

What did writers (and editors) do before Google? I am constantly looking up information on Google as I edit academic books, verifying the spelling of names, dates, events, and any number of items which I, as editor, must ascertain are correct.

And I can do so by simply typing in the Google search box. Question on the Kosovo conflict? Thousands of hits at my fingertips. Uncertain about how Kafka viewed the unconscious, more hits. Need the names of the Secretaries-General of the United Nations? Voilá. And what is the difference between a barque and a junk? No problem, and here are photos to clarify further.

How did editors do this before now? Did they spend all of their time in academic libraries, scanning volumes and journals? I simply don’t know. Perhaps there were fact verifiers in addition to copyeditors, whose job it was to check this sort of information. I’ll have to ask someone who’s been in this business longer than I have. Meanwhile, it falls to me to check, and so I do. With gusto, and with the sense that I learn something with every mini-hunt I pursue. With each search, I push my own personal Dark Ages a bit further behind me, opening the doors to Enlightenment.

I feel my knowledge increasing on a daily basis, as I learn multitudes of new facts while scanning the Internet. As a friend said, I’m pursuing a PhD in Everythingology in my current career. And it’s all free (barring the Internet fee I pay to my provider). May it ever remain so!

Living Language

/ Ann Aubrey Hanson / Leave a comment

Can anyone doubt today that language is a living entity, one that changes and morphs with the times? How quickly new words are incorporated into national languages, as well as the world vocabulary: internet, DVD, CD, bits, bytes, the Cloud, PCs, Macs, iPods, iPads, android, etc.

I’m currently reading Bill Bryson’s book The Mother Tongue, a thus-far fascinating look at how the English language came to be. In the fourth chapter, Bryson writes about how some of the words in the English language got there by mistake.

Take, for example, the word “dord,” which appeared in the 1934 Merriam-Webster International Dictionary, as another word for destiny. Turns out, this was simply based on the misreading of a typesetter’s note, which read “D or d,” meaning the word could be capitalized or not. When the error was discovered, the M-W folks removed the word, but not before it had found its way into other dictionaries.

Bryson writes that according to the First Supplement of the OED (Oxford English Dictionary), there are at least 350 words in English dictionaries that owe their existence to typographical errors, misrenderings, or mishearings. The word “buttonhole” was once “buttonhold.” “Asparagus” was for 200 years known as “sparrow-grass” and “shamefaced” was originally “shamefast” (fast here having the sense of lodged firmly, as in “stuck fast.”)

The process can still be seen today, for example in the tendency among people to turn “catercorner” into “catty-corner” and “chaise longue” into “chaise lounge.”

One of my favorite examples is the word “pea.” Originally, the word was “pease,” as in the nursery rhyme “pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold…” but this was mistakenly thought to signify a plural and the word “pea” was back-formed to denote singularity.

And the words “grovel” and “sidle” similarly came into English because the original adverbs “groveling” and “sidling” were assumed to contain the -ing suffix, as in walking and seeing. In fact, it was the -ling suffix, but that didn’t stop people from adding a pair of useful words to the language. Other back-formations are “laze” (from “lazy”), “greed” (from “greedy”), “beg” (from “beggar”), and “difficult” (from “difficulty”).

What does this mean to writers? There is no reason to despair about our language. A compilation of several other languages, it will continue to grow and be enriched, as it always has been, by the addition of new vocabulary.  Perhaps the skill of oratory is one the wane for the moment, but don’t despair. We’ll, like, have, like, lots more words when, like, the people want to, like, express themselves again!

Use the Story Elements

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Yesterday, while in the mood for mindless entertainment, I watched a movie called Ice Road Terror, about two ice road truckers (and the obligatory female scientist who is riding with them) who are terrorized by a giant lizard-like creature who had been released from the bowels of the earth by demolition at a diamond mine. The two truckers have been sent to take more explosives to the diamond mine. (Apparently, it takes two trucks to take one load, but I won’t quibble.) As the truckers are en route, the monster (who is a creature from Inuit mythology) has begun feasting on the workers at the diamond mine. When the truckers and scientist arrive, the creature turns to them for a new taste treat. They run away, in the trucks, but are pursued by the creature, who can travel underground and through ice at 45 mph.

At the moment we see them being pursued, we already know the following: at least one of the trucks is filled with explosives. The ice roads have started to melt. There is a truck stop not too far away.

Back to the story. Turns out the monster has hitched a ride on top of one of the trucks. The driver skids and tosses the monster to the side of the road. Meanwhile, the explosives (which were never tied down properly in the truck) have shifted and somehow ignited, and a fire has begun in the back of a truck. The driver and the passenger hop into the other truck, and we never see what happens to the truck on fire.

The monster then pursues the second truck, turns chicken when it drives straight at it and the hole in the road, and then attacks when the drivers try to detach the trailer (killing the foreman of the mine, who had escaped from the camp with them). Now they have to hike through miles of snow to get to the truck stop, where we see the owners trying to free their SUV from the snow. Ultimately, there is more carnage (they’ve been unable to radio for help because the Aurora Borealis is interfering with the signal) and the survivors decide to lure the monster into the house, which they intend to have set on fire, creating heat and smoke (the creature sees in thermal light and they plan to blind it with smoke). It’s a good plan: the creature will be stuck in the burning house and they can escape in the stuck SUV. The owners of the truck stop had been killed, and before she died, the wife asked that their house be made their coffin.

Next scene, two people are feeding tiny pieces of kindling into a Franklin stove; I guess that was the fire they had planned to set. Apparently, the monster thought they were ready for it, and came crashing into the building, where there was no major conflagration, or smoke, and kills one of the drivers (poor Neal). The two remaining survivors try to escape in the still-stuck SUV, then run down the road, chased by the lizard. Fortunately, there is a fuel pump directly in front of them, and the scientist just happens to be carrying a flint, and they light the gasoline while spraying it on the creature, who stands there and lets them ignite it. Creature dies, the new couple embrace, and a helicopter flies to the rescue. (And the house is still standing…will it be their coffin, or not?)

Dynamic story, right? But oh so wrong from a writing standpoint. There were some great elements in the story: the explosives, the melting ice road, a scientist along for the ride, Inuits and mythology, and a log cabin that could hold the monster while it burned around the creature. And yet, none of those elements were used to any purpose in the story. What a waste. Instead, the characters “happen” to see a generator on the porch, “happen” to have a handy fuel pump and flint…and where did the helicopter come from, if the radio hadn’t worked?

As a writer, if you are going to put elements into your story, you must use them. And you must have those elements in place before they are needed. Rather than just have the fuel pump have appeared out of nowhere, it would have been better to have had the couple filling their SUV when the monster attacked. At least then, the pump would be in our minds. Same with the flint. We never saw it before the scientist suddenly had it in her pocket. And, my goodness, what about the explosives? How much better to have blown up the creature! And what about the melting ice roads? They were a problem on the way to the camp, but not during the chase with the lizard?

Granted, I watched the movie to the finish…even knowing how it would end and who would survive, but it was more because I couldn’t believe they weren’t using their fabulous elements than because I wanted to see how it was resolved. Ultimately, I simply shook my head. Such a waste. Someone simply didn’t know the basics of storytelling.

Put Away the Phone and People Watch

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I’m headed for the airport in a couple of hours and am looking forward to the wait for my plane. Well, okay, that’s a bit of a stretch. Let’s just say that I will put that time to good use, by people watching.

As a writer, you must make time to people watch, to observe the pantheon of characters within your orbit, wherever you are. Keep a notebook handy and jot down little notes about the folks who drift past you on the tide of humanity. (If you don’t write these down, at least store them in your long-term memory until you have the chance to record them.)

Note clothing, postures, relationships, unspoken communication, facial expressions, accents, attitudes — all of which are elements to put into your characterization tool box. How do young lovers stand, walk, or sit by each other? How do middle-aged couples do the same? And the elderly? What do you see in the elderly that is also in the young couple in love? Why might those elements have lasted into old age? What do they tell you about the people, the relationships, the quality of love?

How do you get a sense of personality or mood from a person’s posture or gait? What assessment do you make of a woman who wears a lot of makeup? of a woman who wears little or none? Of a man who plucks his eyebrows? Now, think. WHY do you make those assessments? Write down your answer.

Listen for accents or turns of phrase, but be aware that writing in an accent is a challenge, both to the writer and to the reader. What you want is a “taste” of the accent, a saying or phrase that gives you the sense of “Other,” of foreignness or dialect.

My favorite are the eyes. I like to watch how people use their eyes, and what their eyes say about them. Wide open, half-cocked, drowsy, side-darting — all of these can say something about the person, beyond just physiognomy.

So, put away your phone, your iPad, and your other electronic devices and people watch. It’s what will make your fiction come alive!

Hold At All Costs

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In discussion about a possible editing gig,  Glenn Palmedo-Smith told me about a film of his that was shown on PBS on or around Memorial Day 2011. The film is called Hold At All Costs and is about the battle for Outpost Harry during the Korean War. Palmedo-Smith sent me a link to the film’s trailer, which has certainly intrigued me. Having seen the entire film now, I can recommend it wholeheartedly. It is informative, gripping, and touching in the most unexpected ways.

A brief history of the battle for Outpost Harry. During the eight-day battle, five United Nations Command companies, four U.S. and one Greek, defended the hill in the Iron Triangle near Seoul from the attack of some 13,000 Chinese soldiers, under orders to “hold at all costs,” not knowing that the Chinese soldiers had been told to take the hill “at all costs.” And thus, eight days of hell ensued, with most of the fighting taking place at night. In the film, survivors from both sides of the conflict talk about the horrors of the week and reflect upon its meaning. The film ends with images of South Korean today, a land the UN had estimated it would take 100 years to rebuild. The closing credits include the names of those killed in the battle for Outpost Harry. The American list is long, the Greek list short, the South Korean list longer, and the list of Chinese names grows as the credits advance, until ten columns of names in tiny Chinese script fill the screen. Horrifying.

This is an excellent film about a war that was forgotten or ignored for too long by a country whose leaders called its young men to give their lives on that foreign soil. I highly recommend it if you can find it on television (PBS showed it over the Memorial Day weekend).

The interesting thing about all of this is that I doubt that I would ever have encountered this film had it not been for my initial contact with Palmedo-Smith concerning editing on a different project, completely separate from the film. Again, I am delighted and amazed by the connections I make through my job, by the new horizons that open to me.

Providence? I’m thinking, yes.

One thing leads to another when you are a writer with curiosity about and interest in the world around you. To all writers out there, I say keep your eyes and ears open. You never know from where your next gem of inspiration might arise.

“Snaders” and Times Past

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Today, while editing a book on the dance and music of the 1950s, I came across a term I’d never heard before, “Snaders.” Snaders were 3-minute films made in the 1950s to be shown on television, documenting live musical performances by classical and popular artists.

As I usually do when I encounter something new, I immediately looked up “Snaders” on the internet and found several of the films (also known as “Soundies”) on YouTube, such as the one here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5DzXKXNauM&feature=related. And yes, I did have work to do, but I found myself browsing through the different films and looking up some of the performers. Finally, I knew I had to get back to editing, but I’d learned a great deal in the meantime.

That is one of the tremendous benefits of this job of book editing. I encounter so many people, events, ideas, and creations that I have never heard of before. When I take the time, I learn so much! even more than just what I’m reading and editing.

Do you know what The Madison is? It’s a dance from the 1950s, made popular again by the play “Hairspray.” But it was created in 1957 in Detroit and swept the nation. A completely new dance, providing a change from the Lindy-inspired Jitterbug. Or what about the Hand Jive. Do you know how to do it? It was revivified by the film “Grease,” but I could never learn it by watching alone. Found a website featuring instructions on how to do it today. Now I know how.

In the same book, I read a reference to Rosa Parks. While I know her story in broad strokes, I took the time today to do more in-depth reading about her. I think she was a lovely lady, well educated, soft spoken, and innately dignified. No wonder she was the poster child for Civil Rights. She hadn’t planned to make trouble, but at age 42, she’d had enough. So she held her legal ground. And opened up American society by that quiet, dignified action.

No matter what you are writing about, no matter what your job, I can’t encourage you enough to take the time and browse the internet. Any time you run across a term, event, person, or phrase you don’t recognize, look it up. You’ll be amazed by how vast and varied our world is. Here, I’ll start you off. Look up the word “quire” and read about how it came to be and what it means. Enjoy!

Lazy Days of Summer

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Today’s memoir writing class focused on life before electronics, before we spent our evenings posted in front of the television set or game consoles. What did we DO before electronics? What were our summers like?

I had an unusual childhood, in that I never really watched television until 1965, having lived in France prior to that. My childhood evenings were spent playing games with my brothers, listening to classical music or show tunes on my parents’ “hi fi” stereo console, or reading. How we read! And that’s only after I was forced to come inside. I much preferred to be outside at the playground, riding my bike, rollerskating, or playing baseball or games of pretend with my friends.

Today we recalled what it was like to drift through the lazy days of summer. In my childhood, we’d get up early on a summer morning, shovel some cereal into our mouths, and take off for the unfenced outdoors, where groups of kids congealed and then launched into play for the day. At some point in the midday, we’d break off our games, holler to each other to “be back in 15” and dash off to get lunch, each at our separate homes, since we were typically too big a group to eat at one house. Then, it would be more play until dinner time, half an hour for dinner, and then back outside until it got too dark to see. On special nights, we were allowed to stay out after dark. That’s when the real fun began, especially Hide and Seek. Who can forget the primal fear of being hunted in the dark, and then dashing madly for the “base,” typically somewhere in a circle of light. Tag! No, free! I tagged you! Did not! FREE!

Our days were unscheduled, except for baseball or softball practice or games. There were no camps for us, no schedules to meet. We were told to stay out of trouble (which we managed to do for the most part) and set free. No one was bored. In fact, for me, there never seemed to be enough time to do everything I wanted to do. Well, pick-up baseball games could last an entire day, for one thing, and some of our world series lasted for a week or so.

For me, visions of heaven include the smell of freshly mowed lawns and summer evening barbecues. Images of heaven include my bare feet stained green by those mowed lawns, and my Dad standing at the barbecue, flipping burgers and hot dogs, Mom sitting nearby, relieved of kitchen duty and enjoying the company of Dad and friends. The best of times included evenings when our friends would come to eat and we’d stay in the backyard after dark. A community in the summer heat. Heaven.

What will my children remember of summer? I very much doubt that they’ll have the same sense of freedom, or of time standing still, of long, endless days of summer. In their lifetimes, summer was abridged to seven or eight weeks, not the three months we enjoyed. (And that was only because we didn’t make them go to summer school or camps, as some parents did.) As a consequence, I think the summers felt rushed. I wish I could have given them my summers, my moments of heaven. Perhaps they had their own moments. I’ll have to ask them.