Jim Ingraham - Jim's Blog

I have just spent three hours finding the right words for a paragraph in a novel I have been working on for years. In those three hours I typed probably five hundred words and kept thirty-six. I hear about writers turning out 500 words a day. I don't envy them. I'd love to find that many right words in a day's working session, but I never do. Sometimes I grind out as many as fifty. Sometimes I delete a week's worth of words I was once content with.

No editor will care how diligently I grind out what I accept. No reader will care whether I used this phrase or another. But I care.

Writing is a challenge. Accepting that challenge every day for three hours is the joy of my life. Nothing, except sharing my life with my family, gives me greater pleasure than finding the right words to express a good idea.

I want other people to mirror my pleasure, but I don't expect them to. I write because I love writing, not because I want to please anyone but myself.

It is said that the writing life is lonely, and in some ways it is: you're working by yourself -- no one there to talk to, no one to share what's going on. But when you're actually writing, you're in your own world, oblivious to whatever surrounds you, and you don't feel alone. Your characters are your friends and you're fully engaged with them. Nevertheless, published or unpublished, you hunger for sympathetic companionship. You can join writers' groups or spend a lot of money going to conferences, not necessarily to sell or advertise your work, but to mingle with writers and, incidentally, to network.

Or you can, as suggested by Martha Grimes, read biographies and autobiographies of writers, not necessarily to learn from their experiences (although you will), but for companionship. You enter the world of a writer and become a part of that world. You're a writer and s/he's a writer and you're together while you're reading about her or his life. It's an illusion and probably a little crazy, but so what? Eliminate the madness from your life and what do you have? Tedium or worse.

Have you read Martha Grimes's FOUL MATTER? It's a funny novel about writing and the publishing business by a first-rate writer. Try David Morrell's LESSONS FROM A LIFETIME OF WRITING. It's informative as well as fun to read. One of the best by one of the best is Annie Dillard's THE WRITING LIFE. If you want to go out west with a writer, try Tony Hillerman's and Ernie Bulow's TALKING MYSTERIES. And for a gathering of pieces by writers about writing, try JUST OPEN A VEIN, edited by William Brohaugh. Tons of books about the writing life are out there. Curl up on the sofa with one.

First Blog Entry

Why do certain four-letter words offend? Why is it thought improper to use the word shit in polite conversation? Feces might be acceptable but not shit. The dictionary refers to the word as "vulgar." And what is "vulgar?" According to the dictionary, it is behavior characterized by a lack of 'good breeding.' What does 'breeding' have to do with word usage? If you do not have acceptable parentage, are you crude and unrefined?

Shit comes from an Old English word "shite" meaning dung, a perfectly acceptable word to the people of old England. It became "vulgar" when England was taken over by the Romans and later by the French. The conquerors became the upper class. Their language became the language of "good breeding." Lower class people spoke English. To this day words from romanic origins are deemed more acceptable in "polite society" than some words of English origin.

Have you ever wondered why we call meat "beef" at the table but "cow" in the field? "Mutton" at the table, but "sheep" in the field? "Sheep" is from Old English; "mutton" is from Old French.

Many, if not all, of the shunned four-letter words, deemed vulgar, are simply words used by people who did not speak the language of William the Conqueror. Englishmen seeking social recognition adopted French. Working class English did not. To the ear of the ruling class, common English words became "vulgar" and remained so even after the conquerors left. Many people in our time think using the word shit is immoral. Without realizing it, if we reproach Tony Soprano for using the "F" word, we are simply being snobs.

12.19.2007

8.21.2007

6.23.2007

First Blog Entry