Everyone's A Critic Part 02: Get Over Yourself...

In a previous blog entry, I pledged to criticize the things I did wrong in my id blog on Yola. And since grammar and punctuation are the easiest ways to attack any writer, I'd like to start with those. But before I do, I need to point out the way I've been pasting sample text into entries on Wix. Here's an example...

I increase the font size, then embolden and italicize the text to make it stand out.

I don't know if that's the right way, but I do know that there are so many errors in the way I wrote on my id blog that were I to increase the font size, then embolden and italicize sample text here, it'd actually disguise them. So in this instance, I'm just going to share a screen shot of a typically error-filled paragraph, selected at random...

And here's the most obvious problem: the word Seattle is emboldened and italicized, as are the words U District, The Monarch, Jake Uitti, and The Monarch Review. I don't remember how or why I started doing that, but I do remember realizing that it was a mistake and then deciding to keep doing it because I thought that it was the kind of mistake someone writing from the perspective of the non-self-conscious id might make. So I hope you're reading this before the id blog otherwise you'd be constantly scratching your head trying to figure out why I emboldened and italicized all my namey-sounding nouns.

The next mistake is a legitimate typo, i.e., I forgot to type the word in between the words living and the. I make actual mistakes like that all the time, as I'm sure a lot of writers do, because even when we read and reread our prose (over and over again), it's still easier to remember and listen to our own internal monologues than it is to see the words in front of us.

I guess the next issue is that I used a comma after the word Seattle. And I write I guess because the truth is that I don't actually know if that's a mistake or not. But I do know that because proper punctuation is something I constantly struggle with, I've recently decided to try running text through an online proofreading program called QuillBot. And, according to QuillBot, the next mistake in the sample paragraph is that I should've used a hyphen between the words beat and up.

QuillBot is great because I really do waste a lot of time worrying about typos, punctuation, and grammar. So knowing that I can easily check those things afterwards lets me focus on meaning. But even QuillBot is far from perfect, because, according to it, my next mistake is that I should've written U.S. instead of U District.

For the record, U District is short for The University District. And I don't know if the abbreviation should have a period in it, be hyphenated, or what. But nobody who lives in Seattle would ever say, "The University District." And when I looked up U District, I found a credible webpage that spells it the same way.

QuillBot also suggested that I remove the word harry before the word young in my description of Jake. I couldn't understand why until I looked the word up and found out that there's a difference between the words harry and hairy. For the sake of transparency, I'm going to leave the word harry in my original entry, but for the record, Jake was (and still is) VERY hairy.

The next suggestion QuillBot makes is that I change the slash between the words bartender and writer to the word and. However, since one of my favorite writers (Hunter S. Thompson) used slashes all the time, I'm going to ignore that suggestion and continue using as many slashes as I like. But QuillBot's final suggestion is that instead of using an ellipsis after the word basement, I use a comma, and although I'm going to ignore that suggestion in my id blog, I'm not going to ignore it in my future writing.

Why? Because if I have any confidence in my understanding of punctuation at all, it's that I know I've been using the ellipsis incorrectly.

I use it in emails, chats, and text messages all the time, but only when I don't know what else to do. I'm sure that most people use it in the same way, so I don't think it's a big deal, but there's definitely a right way and wrong, so when QuillBot tells me to get rid of all my dot-dot-dots, I do... except in that instance right there... and at the end of paragraphs that introduce pictures, sample text, or videos... and when I want to preface certain questions like... is it ellipsis or ellipses?

I'm pretty sure it's ellipsis, but in either case, I'm equally sure that if I make most of the changes QuillBot suggests, the sample paragraph pictured above would still convey my intent. Like this...

I was still living in the great city of Seattle and had recently moved into a beat-up old building across the street from a community center in the U District. The building was called The Monarch, and it was home to a number of musicians, artists, and other drunks, including a hairy young bartender and writer named Jake Uitti who lived in the building's basement, which was the official office of an online arts and literary magazine that he named The Monarch Review.

See? The words are still mine, and I can still hear my internal monologue when I read them. So there's no reason for me to fight with future A.I. programs (or editors) over minutia like ellipsis versus commas, because, regardless of whether proper punctuation increases understanding or detracts from style, I want my writing to be tolerated by as many people as possible, including those rare and skulking left-brained freaks who actually know how to use a semicolon.

Of course, the other side of the proverbial coin is that if you're a left-brained freak, you could be missing out on some great writing by placing perfect grammar and/or proper punctuation on too high a pedestal. So, before you do, you might want to watch the following video, highlighting the musings of Mr. Stephen Fry...

Or you can watch the short version if you're in a hurry. In the meantime, since I'm also sure that a complete critique of my writing's spelling and punctuational errors would fill a book, I'd like to move on to something more important. So here's another sample paragraph from my id blog...

And, setting all the obvious mistakes aside, here's my problem with it: I wanted to better illustrate what the he said/she said parallax is by including pictures, but I didn't, because I was in a hurry.

It has a dumb name, but I think I can give it a better explanation by asking you to imagine yourself as a character named Dick McManly, who inexplicably finds himself in a vast, gray room, occupied by three androgynous/non-binary characters, all of whom speak with the same androgynous/non-binary voice...

Now imagine someone switching the light off...

Now imagine that one of those characters is afraid of the dark. So, in an androgynous/non-binary voice, that character screams...

Which character was it? Let's turn the light back on to find out...

That's how reading works. It's not like watching TV, where the viewer can either see the characters or, in the case of total darkness, deduce which character is screaming by the sound of their voice, because the characters and voices only exist in the reader's mind.

Granted, they may have existed in the mind of the author, who, at the time of writing, could both see and hear the characters in their own head. But, when an author converts that vision into text, they remove all but the most essential visual and auditory clues in surrender to their future-reader's imagination.

In turn, the future reader surrenders their imagination to the author. And the terms of that mutual surrender are that the author must provide visual and auditory clues, in the form of text, in a way that makes sense as a written scenario unfolds.

I used pictures to illustrate my point, but to drive the above point home, let's examine the same scenario without them, i.e., by using text only...

Once upon a time, Dick McManly inexplicably found himself in a vast, gray room, lit by a diffused, gray light. The room had no furniture but was otherwise occupied by three androgynous/non-binary characters: Ardhanarishvara, an alchemical rebis, and The Gender Unicorn, all of whom spoke with the same androgynous/non-binary voice.

Then the light switched off, changing the diffused gray into pitch black. "We're all going to die!!!" said The Gender Unicorn.

See? As long as the proverbial light is out, the reader doesn't have the necessary clues to imagine which character said what until after the author provides them. So when I write, my strong preference is to keep the light of imagination on by providing clues before dialogue, like this...

Once upon a time, Dick McManly inexplicably found himself in a vast, gray room, lit by a diffused, gray light. The room had no furniture but was otherwise occupied by three androgynous/non-binary characters: Ardhanarishvara, an alchemical rebis, and The Gender Unicorn, all of whom spoke with the same androgynous/non-binary voice.

Then the light switched off, changing the diffused gray into pitch black, and, afraid for their androgynous/non-binary life, the Gender Unicorn screamed, "We're all going to die!!!"

In other words...

See? Now the reader knows exactly which character is saying what, as it's being said. So, even in the dark, the reader can still see and hear The Gender Unicorn in their mind.

And to put the argument into yet another frame of mind, imagine reading a different scenario, written with magic words, that somehow put the sound of the various characters' distinctive voices into your head. Or, better yet, click on the picture below to listen to a reading of H. G. Wells' short story, The Flowering Of The Strange Orchid, performed by the good people of Jabberwocky Audio Theater...

The story is read word for word, as it was originally written. But it's not a traditional audiobook-style reading in that, instead of there being just one narrator who reads everything, there are different actors lending their distinctive voices to different characters.

At about two minutes and fifty-five seconds in, after the primary narrator introduces the main character, Mr. Winter Wedderburn, the actor reading Wedderburn's part says, "I have a fancy." And since all the actors are reading Wells' original text, the narrator then says, "He said over his coffee." Followed again by the actor playing Wedderburn, who says, "That something is going to happen to me today." Followed again by the narrator, who says, "He spoke as he moved and thought slowly."

Jabberwocky Audio Theater is fantastic. But the poorly-named he said/she said parallax really stands out when you can actually hear the difference between the characters' voices, because it becomes completely unnecessary to answer the question of who said what when differing voices prevent the question from being asked. Granted, I don't think that Wells could actually predict the future, but I do think that he could've written the exact same dialogue as follows...

Moving slowly as he drank his coffee, Winter Wedderburn thought out loud, "I have a fancy that something is going to happen to me today."

And that having been said (or, in this case, written), I have a fancy that now would be a great time to move on to my next criticism, which has nothing to do with who said what but has everything to do with tone.

The id blog's tone was meant to be self-centered and unashamed. And although I declared as much in the blog's first entry, I could've done a better job of supporting that declaration in the entries that followed.

Entries were written achronologically, and I started somewhere in the middle. So those first (middle) entries have more of the guts and tone necessary to support the premise. But the second-to-last entry, i.e., the one that appears second when reading from top to bottom, apologizes for being both offensive and for my early mistakes as an amateur graphic designer. That apology is off-premise, which makes me as a reader second-guess my ability as a writer to stick to the original declarative statement.

The problem was that even though I'd stated the premise in the blog's first entry, I still knew that I was writing nonfiction. And as I wrote, I began to doubt my future-readers' ability to separate nonfiction from perspective.

What's the difference?

non·​fic·​tion (nän-ˈfik-shən) noun. 1. All those things actually happened.

per·spec·tive (pərˈspektiv) noun. 1. It's not what I write, but the way I write it, i.e., I could've written about those things in an angry way, a happy way, or another way.

The only way I was supposed to write about them was from the perspective of clueless infallibility. But I let my self-consciousness get the better of me, imagining that I had to apologize to readers who might think less of me for my clueless hatred of the people I've had to deal with when designing and/or writing.

The irony is that, as a reader, I find unapologetic writing infinitely more entertaining, which is why I make no apology for the following statement: I HATE CRITICS!

Again, the right kind of criticism can be helpful... but what does the right kind of criticism sound or look like?

Here's an example of something that I think promotes the wrong kind of criticism...

Remember my last post, when I used the term on-trend to describe narwhals? I only know that term because I've had the lamentable experience of being exposed to the above story, a picture book (by Rosie Greening) entitled Just Narwhal. Here's a sample...

And here's another...

Poor Narwhal. She has a problem to overcome. She doesn't think that she has any talent. So when the mermaids need someone to judge their painting contest, Narwhal gains confidence by learning to be judgmental.

Good criticism isn't about making yourself feel better by judging others. It's about helping others to improve. And the best way to do that is to set your personal judgments aside.

When my Australian pen pal wrote to tell me that she noticed a misspelling in my last book, she didn't say, "I'm right and you're wrong." She approached the observation as though she could've been wrong, writing, "Not sure if it was deliberate, but it doesn’t seem to have relevance to the story." And by doing so, she made it crystal clear to me that she had in fact read the story, considered her observation, and wondered whether I had a different perspective. Of course, my perspective turned out to be completely wrong. But it meant a lot to me to know that I wasn't being spoken down to and that my Australian friend didn't think less of me for my mistake.

It's unfortunate that there aren't more critics like her, because I think that the wrong kind of criticism can be infectious. And if you think that I'm wrong, you might want to check out the following video, based on a short story by Dr. Warren H. Schmidt...

Schmidt penned the original version of his story in 1969, when counterculture was butting heads with the establishment and the convictions of both sides threatened to tear society apart. The film takes more than seven minutes to watch, but the short version is that it feels good to be right, and that in any case, clinging to your convictions can (again) prevent you from understanding and appreciating great ideas, be they presented in the form of writing, visual art, or even the political, philosophical, and/or religious beliefs of others.

I know that my own previous convictions have prevented me from appreciating too many of life's fitting pleasures. But I also know that I'm willing to get over myself in order to learn and begin enjoying future possibilities.

So I'll think twice before giving up on a book the next time I read, said The Gender Unicorn, or when some rare and skulking left-brained freak tells me to use a semicolon instead of an ellipsis. And I hope you'll think twice before jumping to conclusions the next time your convictions are tested by something that seems more critical than comical...