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The Wilderness Dilemma
Marshes don’t have the grandeur of the mountains or the ocean, the serenity of a lake, or the intrigue of a forest. In fairytales, they are often portrayed as the places where beasts and evil beings creep about—places of decay and death. In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the Dead Marshes are based on Tolkien’s memories of World War II battlefields.
However, in real life, marshes are incredibly important to ecosystems. They clean water and support wildlife and plants. They are also oases for migrating birds, which play a major role in Aldo Leopold’s The Sand County Almanac. Marshes are a good example of something that can appear mundane or undesirable but, upon closer inspection, be brimming with life and beauty.
Wisconisn’s conservationist
Leopold spent much of his life in Wisconsin’s marshland, rivers, and forests. His farm is near where one of my dear friends grew up and where my husband spent many of his teenage years. In fact, one of our often-visited rest stops on the way to visit my in-laws has a large plaque in memory of Leopold.
Although Leopold is primarily known as a conservationist and secondarily as a writer, he is a very good writer. Here’s a gem:
There are two kinds of hunting: ordinary hunting and ruffed-grouse hunting. There are two places to hunt grouse: ordinary places and Adams County. There are two times to hunt in Adams: ordinary times and when the tamaracks are smoky gold. This is written for those luckless ones who have never stood, gun empty and mouth agape, to watch the golden needles come sifting down, while the feathery rocket that knocked them off sails unscathed into the jackpines (p.54).1
Leopold is saying that you are lucky if you missed a shot and saw the beauty of nature instead. I love this quote because it exemplifies what makes Leopold’s writing so compelling—his use of actual names of flora and fauna and his sense of drama. Instead of “trees,” he calls out the tamaracks and jackpines. Can you feel the breeze from the grouse bursting from its hiding place? Beautiful!
How to love wilderness without losing it
“Wilderness” means different things to different people. For some, it may be a patch of forest in a suburban park or an overgrown nature preserve on the outskirts of a city. Others may say it is a national forest with only a handful of human inhabitants, whereas others might say wilderness can only be found in places almost inaccessible to humans, without roads, settlements, and cell phone service.
I think Leopold would call wilderness the latter. Truly balanced ecosystems exist in remote places completely untouched by humanity. Where animals and plants play out the circle of life without outside interference. As you can imagine, there’s not a lot of “wilderness” left.
The juxtaposition of wilderness is that we need it, and the planet needs it. But to fall in love with the wilderness, you have to experience it, and if we all go “experience” it, the wilderness will no longer be wild.
The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish (p.101).1
So what do we do?
Learning the song of the land
I recently watched the “Great Bear Rainforest” film at the science museum with my girls. The story of spirit bears, grizzlies, and brown bears coexisting in a wonderland of mountains, trout streams, and misty meadows is set in the largest patch of temperate rainforest left in the world on Canada’s Pacific coast.
I would have loved to fly to Canada and take a bush plane or drive to these forests and explore them on foot. But I don’t have the money, time, or connections to make that happen.
Instead, I got the next best thing: to sit with hundreds of people in an iMax theater, oohing and aahing over the beautiful bears galavanting about in nature. We got to experience a little bit of that wilderness in a way that is safer for that mystical place than building airports, highways, hotels, restaurants, nature centers, boardwalks, and bear-viewing platforms so the masses could experience it in person.
Leopold would have lost his breakfast over the idea that screens could replace time spent in nature, though. Nature has to be lived in to be understood. Here’s how he describes learning to hear the “song of the land:”
To hear even a few notes of it, you must first live here for a long time, and you must know the speech of hills and rivers. Then, on a still night, when the campfire is low, and the Pleiades have climbed over rimrocks, sit quietly and listen for a wolf to howl, and think hard of everything you have seen and tried to understand. Then you may hear it—a vast pulsing harmony—its score inscribed on a thousand hills, its notes the lives and deaths of plants and animals, its rhythms spanning the seconds and the centuries (p.149).1
Learning the song of the land now, when the earth’s population is over 8 billion people, will likely look different than it did when Leopold penned his book. Most don’t have the opportunity to live on their own farm in the Wisconsin marshland, like Leopold, drinking his coffee and listening to the birds serenade the sunrise. Or spend months exploring the jungle-like Colorado River delta, canoeing, fishing, and watching the stars (Leopold did this before the entire area was drained).
That’s where the documentaries come in handy, as does visiting local natural areas and spending purposeful time outside, noticing the little things—unfurling ferns, budding trees, the way squirrels play and chase each other. And finding ways to get to true wilderness when time and funds allow.
What Leopold is getting at in this book is simple yet incredibly difficult. More humans must understand the value of wilderness to want to preserve it. But getting to know the land en masse can destroy natural areas. It’s a delicate line we’ll have to walk.
1Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. Oxford University Press, 1949.
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Bailey White & Belonging
I used to think writers needed intense life experiences for their work to be valid. Surviving childhood trauma, death of loved ones, grinding poverty, violence, or illness was necessary to produce lasting, meaningful work.
Now I think this is BS. First, sadness and joy come with being human—like fries with a BLT at a roadside diner. Maybe a young widow’s sadness is not on the same level as the sadness of a child who has lost a favorite stuffed animal, but both feel a sense of profound loss at never seeing their special one again.
Second, many impactful writers have not lived particularly eventful lives. Emily Dickinson, for example, lived 57 out of her 58 years in the little town of Amherst, Massachusetts. She never married, never traveled, never even did manual labor. Yet her poems have a deep humanity and beauty that still touch lives today.
Unfamiliar setting, familiar stories
Bailey White is a little like Emily Dickinson. She’s lived most of her life in the same place, a small town on the Georgia–Florida border. For several decades, NPR invited White to read her stories aloud for its Thanksgiving program. I imagine that NPR kept asking her back because readers across the US (from Maine to California) felt a universal fondness for her location-specific stories.
Reading White’s collection of essays, Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living, was both foreign and familiar to me. The descriptions of the boggy southern landscape, with alligators in the backyard ponds and year-round sleeping porches, were unfamiliar. We don’t have alligators in Minnesota unless they are in zoos, and if you have a house, you sleep inside it because the weather is (mostly) freezing.
But the underlying tones in the stories were familiar, like a fondness for quirky family members or feeling awed by nature. Here’s a selection from White’s story “Buzzard,” where she finds a bald eagle on the road:
I turned the car off. I thought about that glare he had given me: What are you doing here? It had said. When I got started again, I drove slower and felt smaller. I think it does us all good to get looked at like that now and then by a wild animal (p.157).1
The appeal of White’s stories is not grand narratives or intricate plots (although quite a few stories have unexpected twists and turns) but that each story touches the common elements that all humans share. White writes small but deep.
Christmas parties and crushes
In “Shining Stocking,” White describes a Christmas party at the school where she teaches first grade. White goes to the party thinking this might be the year she hits it off with her crush, the media teacher, but she doesn’t even get to talk with him. The party is a total snooze because all the teachers and staff are exhausted. Maybe next year, she’ll order those shiny stockings from the magazine and make an impression.
Nothing exciting happens at the party, but that’s the point. Expectations don’t align with reality far too often, something everyone can relate to. And find comfort in the fact that they are not alone.
I found this story so familiar even though I’ve never been a teacher or thought buying new tights would initiate a steamy relationship. When I was in elementary school, I had a long-standing crush. If we were assigned to sit next to each other or put in the same reading group, or (especially) if he picked me for his flag football team, I thought I saw a spark of love in the air.
Because White doesn’t just say, “This guy I liked was there,” but narrows in on the anticipation she felt for the event and the little things that didn’t happen, the story becomes highly relatable. I ended the story not with a sense of being known and heard.
Writing can say, “I see you”
Vibrant life experiences—happy or sad—enrich writing. But what makes writing impactful is the author’s ability to capture intimate truths in words. I keep coming back to James Baldwin in these blogs because his idea of writers being tasked with bringing the dark things of the soul to life got to me. To make a difference, writers must do the hard work of looking inside and capturing the essence of something, even if it is heartbreakingly painful or remarkably uneventful.
Many famous writers, like Ernest Hemingway and Maya Angelou, experienced trauma. But what makes their work excellent isn’t the depth of their experiences but that their words serve as a conduit of those experiences to the reader. Writers observe, think, and synthesize our every day into words.
The world is a better place for all the Ernest Hemingways, Maya Angelous, Emily Dickinsons, and Bailey Whites who write their hearts onto the page so the reader can feel known.
1White, Bailey. Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other Dangers of Southern Living. Addison-Wesley, 1993.
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Remembering Bourdain
When we learned in 2018 that Anthony Bourdain had passed, my husband and I were shocked. We had watched his show, Parts Unknown, for years and felt like he was our good friend.
Maybe he was a bit rough around the edges, but he brought out the best in each area he visited and each person he talked and ate with. After watching one of his shows, we wouldn’t just feel inspired (and hungry) but somehow more human.
It felt so wrong that this man who uncovered life wherever he went would take his own.
Reading Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential was like listening to a ghost, making me miss Bourdain again. Halfway through the book, he writes, “I’m still here. And I’m surprised by that. Every day.”1 We wish you were still here.
In honor of Bourdain, I’m sharing my favorite metaphors from his book. He knows how to encapsulate an idea in a crazy string of words, and these had me reaching for my pen and notebook.
Flying Dutchman
Context: Bourdain has made his big break as a chef and is earning a bunch of money. However, he is working in failing restaurants and chasing away the sense of disappointment with alcohol and drugs.
Quote: “I had to get it together. I’d been the culinary equivalent of the Flying Dutchman too long, living a half-life with no future in mind, just oozing from sensation to sensation (p.152).”1
Unpack: If you’re not into Pirates of the Caribbean or pirate lore, the Flying Dutchman is a ghost ship doomed to sail forever and never touch port. Bourdain sees himself similarly, going from high to high but never really experiencing life.
Drano enema
Context: Bourdain describes a day as head chef at Les Halles, a steakhouse in New York City. We follow him as he adjusts the menu, checks in with his staff, and moves through the complicated minutia of heading a large, fancy restaurant. This quote is from the middle of the dinner rush.
Quote: “We were in the eerie, eye-of-the-hurricane calm. In ten minutes, when the next wave of hungry public had been seated and breaded and watered, there’d be a punishing rush—the slide filling up with orders all at once, the action swinging from station to station, boiling up the line like a Drano enema (p.219).”1
Unpack: I remember the first time I used Drano to unclog a bathtub drain from the build-up of all my curly hair. The resulting smooth flow of water was magical. I also remember my first time helping someone with an enema, but I’ll spare you those details. Combine Drano with enema, and we’ve got a powerful but unsettling visual.
Atomic perfection
Context: This is part of a chapter on another of Bourdain’s colorful, unreliable, but ultimately irreplaceable kitchen characters. This friend may not show up for work but bakes such good bread that the chefs fight over him anyway.
Quote: “His peasant-style boules are the perfect objects, an arrangement of atoms unimprovable by God or man, pleasing to all the senses at once. Cézanne would have wanted to paint them—but might not have considered himself up to the job (p.236).”1
Unpack: I would probably have stopped this quote with ‘Cezanne wouldn’t have done them justice.’ I love that Bourdain goes one step further and says that Cezanne would have considered himself unworthy of capturing the essence of these heavenly loaves. The boules were just that good.
The magic of food & opening up
Almost everyone loves food in some way. I remember sitting next to a notoriously picky eater at a gathering and hearing him yell, “Yum, hotdog!” at his plate. Even if a person’s selection of beloved foods is limited, eating is still a fundamentally satisfying activity that can lift us out of a funk.
Bourdain catches that feeling well in this last quote:
It’s a gaze of wonder: the same look you see on small children’s faces when their fathers take them into deep water at the beach, and it’s always a beautiful thing. For a moment, or a second, the pinched expressions of the cynical, world-weary, throat-cutting, miserable b*stards we’ve all had to become disappears, when we’re confronted with something as simple as a plate of food. When we remember what it was that moved us down this road in the first place (p.298).1
What made Bourdain so special?
I think it was that he talked so openly about his darker side. He owned the fact that he was a miserable b*stard, something many of us never admit to ourselves, much less to the camera or the page. He wasn’t afraid to bring the depths of his soul to light, like author Arthur Baldwin says, which is the hard work we must do to keep light in our lives.
Like sea salt on chocolate ice cream, Bourdain’s dark side made the goodness of his simple love for people that much sweeter. We miss him.
1Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential. Ecco, 2007.
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On Writing (for Kids)
When my oldest son was a toddler, and the Minnesota winters kept us inside, we’d spend hours reading picture books. We’d drive to the library, check out a foot-tall stack of books, and then read through the entire stack multiple times a day until the next library trip.
My husband and I quickly learned which books we preferred to read aloud. Some books got unbearable with each consecutive read, whereas others, like anything by Mo Willems, got better. This man knows how to write for both adults and children, and we spent many happy hours adventuring alongside Elephant Gerald, Piggie, Naked Mole Rat, and Pigeon.
Writing for humans
In On Writing (And Writers), author C.S. Lewis has much to say about writing books for children. If you’re unfamiliar with C.S. Lewis, he wrote the Narnia series and many sci-fi and theological books.
Lewis writes that authors writing for children shouldn’t write what they think children will like. Instead,
The right sort work from the common, universally human, ground they share with the children, and indeed with countless adults.1
Too often, books are written “for children” by people who don’t necessarily understand children. Maybe it’s a unicorn or puppy randomly incorporated into a moral to “keep interest” or dialogue that is needlessly complicated.
The idea is similar to the fumbles adults make writing about each other. Like this satire of men writing about women. The best children’s books aren’t dumbed down or dolled up. They can appeal to adults, too.
Lewis would love the Australian show “Bluey.” It’s intended for small children, but every episode has truths for all ages. In one of my favorites, “Mums and Dads,” the dogs pretend to be parents. But they soon come upon an issue parents face all the time: what to do with your baby when you need to be doing something else, like working or storming the playground castle.
The eternal parenting argument
On Writing (And Writers) is a collection of letters and reviews written by Lewis, published after he died. One of the things he replies to are critiques of his most famous children’s series.
Apparently, mid-century parents were concerned that Lewis’ novels would encourage kids to disengage from reality or scare them with witches, giants, and battles. Lewis replies:
They may mean that we must try to keep out of [the child’s] mind the knowledge that he is born into a world of death, violence, wounds, adventure, heroism and cowardice, good and evil. […] There is something ludicrous in the idea of so educating a generation which is born to the OGPU [Soviet secret police] and the atomic bomb. Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.1
Lewis writes that kids will come across dark things and that his stories allow them to see that good can triumph over evil, even when things seem bleak. This hope is what they need.
I agree with Lewis that fantasy action allows kids to believe in good triumphing over evil. Let them be Harry Potter thrusting a sword into the mouth of the Basilisk or Peter Pevensie leading an entire army of magical creatures against the White Witch. Or Hiccup from How to Train Your Dragon pitting ancient sea dragons against each other to save his Viking tribe.
And let them see themselves in Edmund Pevensie, who was redeemed even after betraying his siblings. Bad things can come from inside, too, as can good.
I’m not saying elementary-school-age kids should watch violent shows like Reacher or The Boys. Hopefully, most kids will never have to shoot their way out of a secret military science compound or watch everyone’s head explode in a room full of diplomats. I’m just saying that fictional conflict and resolution will prepare them to believe solutions are possible in the real world, where they will face real problems.
Reading Lewis’ replies to letters from children and adults alike made me want to write my favorite authors. Maybe, like in the case of Paulette Perhach, they will respond and make a real-life connection.
Check your mailboxes, Neil Gaiman and Jess Walters.
1Lewis, C.S. On Writing (And Writers). C.S. Lewis Ptd. Ltd, 2022.
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Creative Work for the Greater Good
Critique can hurt, especially when it comes to writing. A former client would always reply, “It’s a good start” or “It’s on the right track” to my drafts, no matter how much I applied their comments from earlier pieces to each new one. Even though my successive drafts were so polished that they shone like the sun in the summer sky, there was always something this client saw to change.
Looking back, I see this as a good thing. The client was devoted to the content development process, which meant they responded to emails and invoices, and the work kept coming. Through them, I also learned a lot about the “marketing” part of content marketing.
But at the time, I took all the red ink to mean “You are a bad writer,” not “Here’s what I want to change.”
In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield has a lot to say about ego and writing. Here’s a quote I needed at that time:
The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. Her artistic self contains many works and many performances. Already the next is percolating inside her. The next will be better, and the one after that better still. (p.87)1
Even when I pour myself into my work, it will never contain my whole potential as a creative. That’s why it’s important to use criticism to grow and not take it personally. Criticism as a tool is powerful. Criticism as an indicator of usefulness is crippling.
“Good” writing is subjective
Unlike installing drywall or baking sourdough, “good” writing is often subjective. Take Herman Melville, for example. He’s well-known today as the author of Moby Dick, but in his day, his work wasn’t critically or commercially successful. He died in poverty, and his name was even spelled wrong in his obituary.
Professional writing can drive completely different reactions from the same piece. What one person thinks is “generic,” another says is “clean.” What one person thinks is “unique,” another person calls “flowery.” I’ve heard the same article described by clients within the same organization as “like a TED talk” (fun, smart) and “salesy” (sleazy). How can two people with Master’s degrees and years of work experience see the same article in such a different way?
The subjectivity of writing explains why it’s important that creatives don’t attach their self-worth to their work. Readers should not have the power to make us feel like the onion left rotting in the produce drawer. Even if negative feedback is valid, we can’t let it stop us from creating. Pressfield writes,
The artist must operate territorially. He must do his work for its own sake […] In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can’t look is that place he must: within (p.151).1
Creative work is a gift to others
Finding inspiration from deep inside is difficult but necessary. In Another Country, author James Baldwin talks about the value of bringing that which is hidden deep within us to light:
Perhaps such secrets, the secrets of everyone, were only expressed when the person laboriously dragged them into the light of the world, imposed them on the world, and made them a part of the world’s experience. Without this effort, the secret place was merely a dungeon in which the person perished; without this effort, indeed, the entire world would be an uninhabitable darkness (112).2
Shaping thoughts into words, songs, art, poems, and more isn’t just therapeutic for the artist—it’s good for those who will find relief, hope, joy, humor, or wisdom in what they present.
The fruits of a creative practice can be a gift to others, especially when the work comes from the heart. Pressfield ends his book with these words:
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got (165).1
1Pressfield, Steven. The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle. Black Irish Entertainment, 2002.
2Baldwin, James. Another Country. Dial Press, 1962.
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Earning Our Stories
Angeline Boulley’s Firekeeper’s Daughter is about a young adult navigating her place in an upper-midwest Ojibwe tribe while pursuing justice among its members. The main character, Daunis, is already caught between two worlds before being recruited as an informant for the CIA—her mother is from a rich family with French roots, and her deceased father is from the Ojibwe Sugar Island tribe.
I loved this book because of the unexpected twists, detailed descriptions of time spent enjoying fitness (the author must have been a runner for how she describes running), and insider’s view on tribal traditions.
A fair criticism is that Daunis doesn’t have to experience all of the bad things (specifically a rape scene) for the story to work. I agree, but after reading the author’s afterward, I think Boulley included the scene to make a point about sexual violence being an alarmingly common experience for women with Native American ancestry. The event also allowed Daunis to participate in traditions she had been denied earlier, which ties into the arc of Daunis coming into her identity as a tribe member.
A world of its own
Boulley came up with the idea for Firekeeper’s Daughter when she was in high school. However, she didn’t finish writing the novel until decades later, well into her career and life. The fact that this story marinated for so long before being written explains its well-earned appeal.
I’m simultaneously reading On Writing (and Writers) by C.S. Lewis. His review of J.R.R Tolkien’s The Hobbit had an idea that applied well to this book. He writes that The Hobbit has “a world of its own—a world that seems to have been going on before we stumbled into it but which, once found by the right reader, becomes indispensable to him (p.167).”1
Boulley builds the rich setting for her story on the traditions, people, and memories from her life as a member of an Ojibwe tribe. This is very different than a novel written by an outsider who researched Ojibwe traditions. The fun bits (the action, romance, humor) are there, but the greater truths are much richer. It’s like sipping broth from Tom Kha Gai (Thai coconut chicken soup) vs. instant ramen. Both are soups with flavor, but one has layers of richness the other will never achieve.
My favorite character in this book is not the bad-ass Auntie, loveable Grandma June, or brave Daunis. It’s the Sugar Island Ojibwe tribe. Boulley’s “world” seemed to have been going long before I (the reader) found it, just like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and it feels like it is still going once the final page has been turned.
Wisdom is not bestowed
One of the deeper truths Boulley uncovers with her story is how wisdom develops. While aiding the CIA in investigating a new, highly-addictive kind of meth suspected of being made in her community, Daunis finds out things she’d preferred to have not known. Daunis says:
Nibwaakaawin. Auntie told me the translation, breaking down each part of the word so it made perfect sense: To be wise is to live with an abundance of sight. My whole life I’ve wanted to be like my aunt. The way a person dreams about being a ballerina, but not of broken toes and years of practice. I wanted to be strong and wise Nish kwe, never considering how the abundance of sight would be earned. […] Wisdom is not bestowed. In its raw state, it is the heartbreak of knowing things you wish you didn’t (p.392-393).2
This quote is a great example of how Daunis uses her culture to interpret the world around her. I agree with Daunis. Unfortunately, the difficult parts of life (losses, failures, embarrassments, letdowns) offer so much more to learn than the happy moments. An abundance of sight is earned, and not without scars or pain.
A delicate balance
Boulley’s story celebrates Ojibwe traditions without ignoring the bad stuff happening in tribal areas. Daunis never doubted her connection to her tribe throughout the novel, but her CIA connections don’t understand what the tribe meant to her. Daunis says,
It gnaws at me, the way they want bad stuff without knowing the good stuff too. ‘It’s like…you haven’t earned our stories,’ I say (p.217).2
It’s easy to focus on the romantic version of Native Americans roaming the great plains, weaving baskets along the great lakes or carving cave houses in the southwest. And it’s easy to pivot to the very unromantic story of poverty and addiction resulting from the unfair systems thrust upon them. But there is an in-between where traditions are revered without denying this complicated history. FireKeeper’s Daughter manages the in-between.
1Lewis, C.S. On Writing (and Writers). HarperCollins, 2022.
2Boulley, Angeline. Firekeeper’s Daughter. Henry Holt and Company, 2021.
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Comma Drama
What does the word “craft” bring to mind? A small boat? A potter’s studio? Pom poms and glue sticks?
One of my first memories of watching someone practicing a “craft” was at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival long ago. My family and I joined a crowd under a large white tent. A sweaty man wearing a leather apron stood in the center of the crowd, holding a long metal rod with a small bubble of molten glass at the end.
We oohed and awed as he blew into the rod to expand the bubble, then swung it around until it matched the other ornaments hanging from his nearby stall. He made glass blowing look easy, like making dandelion chains or playdough snowmen.
Mary Norris’ Between You and Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen is not about sweaty men or glass balls. But Norris’ lovely little book describes another craft that can take a lifetime to master: grammar.
Freeing the writer’s voice
Norris has spent decades honing her craft as a copy editor for The New Yorker. She takes us behind the scenes of the production of this iconic magazine. Turns out there is a whole team of people who make sure it looks and reads exactly the same way each publication—from the “makeup men” who style the pages to the many levels of copy-editors, transcriptionists, and editors.
The writer is a small part of the publishing process, yet their name is the only one under the headline. Here’s how Lu, a head editor, describes how the extensive editing process doesn’t interfere with the writing:
First we get the rocks out. Then we get the pebbles out. Then we get the sand out, and the writer’s voice rises. No harm done (p.46).1
As a writer who often edits work, I love this description of editing. The purpose is not to impose correctness onto a piece of writing but to polish away imperfections until the piece shines. Editing should make the author look good, not steamroll their voice.
English is fluid
My high school grammar class revolved around rules. We memorized comma placement, the use of conjunctions, and the anatomy of a sentence. I don’t remember learning the “why” behind the rules—just that some things are okay and some things are not.
That’s why Norris’ approach to grammar was novel to me. She broke down words and grammar rules into the roots of the language and what they were intended to do or prevent. She opened the engine hood and pointed out how it all works instead of just explaining what the dashboard symbols mean.
Why is it important to understand the rules instead of just memorizing them? It’s because the English language is not as static as we think. Norris explains:
Because English has so many words of foreign origin, and words that look the same but mean something different depending on their context, and words that are in flux, opening and closing like flowers in time-lapse photography (p.112-113).1
I love this visual of the English language straight out of a nature documentary. A tropical flower may look still to hikers walking past. But train a camera on it, and you’ll see how the petals open and close, and the stalk shifts slightly to capture sunlight. Grammar is like an amaryllis—its rules are constantly in flux, even though it looks static.
Take commas, for example. Over the years, the “acceptable” use of commas has changed. Norris uses a Herman Melville passage to illustrate this point. First, she points out his curious placement of commas (so many). Then, she shows the grammatically correct version (less commas). Finally, she reveals the contemporary style of the grammatically correct version (two commas left).
The contrast is shocking. Less commas help us read more quickly and force us to write shorter sentences. These are not bad things. But in Melville’s writing, removing the commas is similar to straightening all the lines and blending the colors to make Van Goh’s Starry Night more realistic. Melville’s passage with “correct” comma placement was clearer but lacked rhythm and personality.
Break the rules to stand out
And that takes us to the last point about the importance of grammar. It’s important to know the rules because writers have to start ignoring them to survive in a world where creatives risk being replaced by generative AI.
I’m not recommending littering writing with random commas or sentence fragments, but focusing on impact over correctness. Add that comma for drama. Start a sentence with a conjunction. Make your writing as emotive, specific, and human as possible without jeopardizing clarity.
As Norris says in her book, “The human element is especially important if we are to stay on top of the computers, which, in their determination to do our job for us, make decisions so subversive that even professional wordsmiths are taken by surprise (p.113).”1
She’s referring to spell check, not ChatGPT, but the saying is still valid. We can’t just create easy-to-read pieces anymore that a machine can parrot. We need to create art.
1Norris, Mary. Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen. W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.
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Love is Another Country
James Baldwin has been on my reading list for years. Baldwin is considered one of the most “influential writers of the 20th century;” his name has repeatedly appeared in books I’ve come across on both writing and social justice. However, I’ve avoided reading him because I worried his words would be soul-touching and perspective-changing. His fiction would not be safe, which is good, but also hard.
I assumed (from a quick internet search) that James Baldwin’s Another Country would be about a quirky cast of characters living in the same neighborhood in the 1950s. “A quirky cast of characters” felt safe, so I checked it out. Although the characters’ quirkiness is true, this book is less “Sesame Street” and more “Sex in the City” without the fashion, light-hearted luncheons, or remorseless sex.
Each chapter is about another person in a group of friends based in Greenwich Village, New York City. Baldwin does this cool fade-in/fade-out trick where the focus shifts toward another character near the end of a chapter. The chapter ends, you flip the page, and (bam!) the perspective is from the character you were starting to learn more about.
I didn’t pick up on the central theme until almost three hundred pages in, when the brooding writer Vivaldo realizes that “love was a country he knew nothing about (296).”1 Here are the “countries” (relationships) we visit throughout the book:
Rufus & Leona
Rufus and Leona have drastically different lives before they meet—Rufus is a Black man raised in Harlem who gigs as a drummer. Leona, a white woman from the Deep South fleeing an abusive relationship, is a new arrival in New York City. She’s unemployed and aimless until she watches Rufus do a set. After the show, she approaches him, they hook up, and she follows him around the city like a puppy.
I am not a therapist, counselor, psychologist, or even good at giving relationship advice, but I can tell you that someone running away from a horrible relationship should not jump into a new relationship without a bit of self-reflection or time to heal. Unfortunately, Rufus and Leona’s intense physical attraction for each other is punctuated by violent fights. Rufus takes on the role of the physical abuser, and Leona’s mind breaks completely. She goes home to the South, and he commits suicide. This is not the country I want to visit.
Cass & Richard
Then there is Cass and Richard. Their story is more familiar to me: they married young, had kids, and were the “old people” in their friend group. Their relationship seems solid as a rock until Richard publishes his novel and Cass realizes he’s a sell-out. She doesn’t tell him, but her lost confidence and his inability to ask why she is distant derail their relationship. She starts seeing someone else. He finds out and wants to file for divorce. “Cass and Richard” is also not a country I want to visit.
Vivaldo & Ida
Our third couple is Vivaldo and Ida. Ida is Rufus’ sister, and Vivaldo is Rufus’ best friend. They come together after the tragedy of Rufus’ suicide. Vivaldo and Ida are more like Rufus and Leona than Cass and Richard. They don’t seem compatible, and they fight constantly. But they also love each other passionately. After a particularly rough fight with Ida, Vivaldo says, “How can you live if you can’t love? And how can you live if you do?” (340)1
Vivaldo and Ida choose to make it work. This country is hard but feels more habitable than the others.
Yves & Eric
The final couple doesn’t have an ending. Yves and Eric meet in France, where they enjoy an ideal relationship marked by openness, affection, and romance. One day, Eric gets a dream call: a friend wants him to star in his play back in New York City. Eric is torn between staying with Yves and furthering his acting career. Yves, an optimistic young Frenchman, wants to join him, but Eric worries New York will destroy him.
Baldwin lived for years in France and wrote most of his novels there, so I can see where this sentiment comes from. Eric does end up moving back to New York City, with Yves agreeing to join him in a few months. The book ends with Yves exiting an airplane and Eric waiting for him, smiling. Will their happy relationship continue in its new locale? This “country” is waiting to be explored.
Another Country is a dark book. But the darkness highlights the significance of this ray of sunshine at the end. Baldwin hasn’t given up on love. He doesn’t want us to either.
1Baldwin, James. Another Country. Dial Press, 1962.
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Should Fiction be Safe?
Photo by Chris Long on Unsplash
You’re driving down the interstate when you see a massive plaster sculpture of the Jolly Green Giant, his blocky 1950s grin startlingly white against the green of the pines around him. The kids are restless, and you need a stretch, so you pull into the parking lot, turn off the engine, and release the children. As you approach the sculpture, you see a tall, thin man dressed in black with a mop of curly hair standing there, staring up at it. He turns to look at you—it’s Neil Gaiman.
This is not a real story, but it could be if you live in the Midwest. After all, Gaiman is a transplant from England who now lives in northern Wisconsin. Gaiman has written many books and graphic novels, including some recently adapted into shows: “American Gods,” “Good Omens” (alongside Terry Pratchett), and “The Sandman.”
Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. His writing is funny, irreverent, evocative, and mystical. I have no idea what will happen anytime I open one of his books. He is also a Brit in love with “Americana” culture (think diners, dusty roads through corn fields, and roadside attractions), which I remember fondly from childhood road trips. Gaiman could have lived in New York or LA, but he found his home in the Midwest and respects its land and people in his stories.
In his book of short stories entitled Trigger Warning, Gaiman has fun putting his spin on beloved characters—penning essays on Sherlock Holmes, Snow White (and the several dwarves), and Doctor Who. He also writes incredibly spooky tales, like “Click-Clack, the Rattlebag” and “Feminine Endings.” This last one had me check my house’s dark corners for living statues before turning off the lights.
How to deal with unsettling fiction
However, the intro was the most inspiring part of this book for me. Here Gaiman writes:
We take words, and we give them power, and we look out through others’ eyes, and we see, and experience, what others see. I wonder, Are fictions safe places? And then I ask myself, Should they be safe places? There are still things that profoundly upset me when I encounter them, whether it’s on the Web or the word or in the world. They never get easier, never stop my heart from trip-trapping, never let me escape, this time, unscathed. But they teach me things, and they open my eyes, and if they hurt, they hurt in ways that make me think and grow and change (p.xiii).1
Gaiman brings up an interesting point here. We don’t know exactly what we will find inside when we crack open a novel. Will there be death, sadness, loneliness, betrayal, rape, murder, suicide or addiction waiting in its pages? Will we become invested in a character only to follow them down the dark path of alcoholism, loss, or an abusive relationship?
If you don’t know me well, let me tell you something sad. I promise I won’t go into it in depth. I have three living children, but my first son has passed. He was stillborn (dead at birth). Even though it has been many years since he died, I still struggle to read books about pregnancy loss or babies dying. Before checking out at the library, I always skim books (especially modern fiction) for these triggers.
I like to feel safe and warm, knowing a happy ending will come and beloved characters will overcome their struggles. I know others feel the same way. That’s why cheesy romance novels are so popular.
But reading tough stuff can help us process the pain in our lives, grow in empathy, and learn new things.
Where can we go with this idea? I don’t think the answer is to find books or shows filled with your triggers and force yourself to ingest them. I tried “Call the Midwife” a while ago but couldn’t make it through the first episode without bawling my eyes out.
Maybe the way forward is reading and watching with an open mind—letting fiction challenge and change in addition to entertain. We can grow by wrestling with unsettling plot twists or character reveals instead of disregarding them. And when those big, tear-inducing triggers pop up, it is okay to return the book or find a home repair show to watch instead.
Back to the adventure with Gaiman.
You stand next to him, staring up at the Jolly Green Giant. Now that you’re close to the sculpture, you can see that the paint is chipping, and one hand looks a little loose. Gaiman says, “Let me show you something,” and pushes a bald spot on the sculpture’s kneecap. A door in its leg slowly opens, and you follow Gamain inside, where anything can happen.
1Gaiman, Neil. Trigger Warning, William Morrow, 2015.
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Confounded by the Curse of Knowledge
There are some books you can read in half-light, and then there are those you need to sit with a lamp halfway in your lap to read. You know those books—they can almost fit in one hand, but the size eight font words are spilling over their impossibly narrow margins on the inside.
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is the latter, as is Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series (at least the copies I have in my house). I published a blog about Smith’s book earlier this year, writing about the clever plot and complex characters, and included some favorite quotes.
After I published the blog, I asked my husband what he thought about the quotes.
He said the quotes were okay. Okay?!
When I pressed him about it, he said he didn’t know the characters, so the quotes didn’t mean much to him.
He was right.
Context matters
I had spent hours immersed in that world, listening to the characters talk and watching them grow. I consider the quotes profound because I had been steeped in their context, like a cup of strong tea.
When taken out of the story, however, the quotes fade. It’s like bringing a vase of beautiful poppies to one of those “super blooms” in California. The flowers look elegant, romantic, and expensive on a dining room table and all by themselves. In the wild, among a million other blooms, they are underwhelming.
This is the same reason my husband and I crack up over finding the perfect meme from a favorite show, but others just smile when they see it. Or why inside jokes bring people together or tear friend groups apart. Context is key to landing the punchline.
The Heath brothers explain the curse of knowledge
In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath call this idea the “Curse of Knowledge.” The more knowledgeable someone is about a topic, the more difficult it can be to explain it to others. We explain too much or not enough or don’t get the highlights right because we’re so busy geeking out over how cool it is that we skip right past the fundamentals to understanding what we’re talking about.
The Heath brothers explain this with a story. A group that does duo piano (not dueling pianos, but duo piano) performances is trying to convince the board of a venue that they need to host more duo piano events. They talk on and on before someone on the board raises their hand with a question: “What is duo piano?”
This question causes the group to start their story again, but this time with the basics. They explain that the piano encompasses the entire range of an orchestra. Having two pianists performing simultaneously is like a double orchestra fun party explosion powered by only four hands. Duo piano was also a noble tradition that had been around for several centuries. The board approved hosting more duo piano performances once they understood what it was and why it mattered.
The curse of knowledge is the nemesis of a good story. Knowledge complicates the simple and clouds us from seeing what makes our information profound to outsiders.
The irony of the curse is that it only becomes harder to defeat as we grow older, go deeper into our careers or hobbies, and learn more about life.
The remedy to this curse is not to know less or avoid talking with people who haven’t read the same books, lived a similar life, or are in the same occupation. It’s just to be aware that it is there. So when your listener’s eyes start to glaze over, you know the curse is taking effect, and you can either let the story go or restart at the very beginning.
I’m not deleting my cursed blog. We’ll let that serve as a warning to all those who wander past, confused and left underwhelmed by its quotes.
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