A genial hello to you all (as opposed to the general one that Autocorrect prefers):
Here we are again, hoping to have a single moment of clarity in this crazy messed-up moment in history.
Like we do every week.
Increasingly, autocorrect has been messing up multisyllabic words, words in other languages, and my exceedingly clever coinages—hey, I made them up, I get to also choose the adjective to describe them—so frequently that it feels like it may be intentionally dumbing down language. How many times do you give up and use a dull phrase or ordinary word because you’re sick of fighting autocorrect?
Exactly.
The dumbing-down of our language might be initially seen as a positive, because “straight-talking” allows for better comprehension from more people, but in using only these anti-pedantic words, you simultaneously lose the delight of wallowing in a preposterous phrase or indulging in a rarely-used term (watch this extraordinary Stephen Fry keynote if you love intricate language as much as I do).
I’ve been thinking a great deal about messages and how they get tangled up in their delivery methods. On this platform, for example, I have found that I tend do go on longer and longer each week (I’m so sorry, and I really am striving for brevity!)
To put it succinctly: is it better to have many people read to the end of a very short message and maybe miss the point entirely, or to have only a few people read to the end of a longer one that would give them clearer comprehension, if they had made it to the end?
How should someone best spread a message that is interesting but not urgent?
Everyone who Tweets is hovering around the watering hole that is Twitter and wondering if the company will go under. Me included.
The implosion at Twitter is not surprising to me - for all that Elon Musk claims that he was nobly trying to “save” Twitter, he now has to make the platform more profitable. The minute that profit becomes the main point of a communications platform (or really of anything creative), that platform loses its integrity. (People will always be willing to pay far more for vices than they do for virtues. Think of your own desire to “indulge” a little…and how that slight tinge of pride in overcoming your own shame makes it that much easier to drop a little bit more money on that favorite luxury, be it cashmere sweaters or Belgian chocolate.)
Money is not necessarily the root of all evil, but who wants a mistress who is only after the cash you offer her? Plus the easiest way to make more money is to degrade quality.
WRITING NEWS
Is it an acceptance letter if it is unsolicited? I posted a tiny little flash story to my Medium account and Birdhouse Magazine saw it and replied with this note: “If I had words for how much I'm obsessed with this piece, I'd find them. But here's the thing, I'm quite literally speechless. So I shall leave it at this: My mind has been blown.” Immediately afterward, there was an offer from the magazine.
So that was some good news!
In other good news, it looks like my editors have decided on a tentative order of the stories in the collection that Borda Books is going to be publishing this coming year of my short fiction. See how slowly I am revealing the details of this delightful event? It is because I still can’t fully believe it.
Random Final Thought
Because I noticed a post on Twitter by Linda Jones, the wife of John Foster who is an author in my writing workshop, that she was in a new play, I went last week to Death of a Salesman on Broadway, and last night to see Linda perform in Mrs. Loman, a play that Barbara Cassidy wrote as a sequel to Arthur Miller’s timeless classic - her contemporary sequel begins at Willie Loman’s graveside. Linda Jones was excellent in her role as Esther. (Go see the show, it runs until November 20!) At the theater I noticed that the lead actress shared a surname with one of the writers I know through Pen Parentis. As it turns out, this actress and the writer are cousins!
Why does it make me so happy to randomly discover that I am watching the performance of the cousin of a writer I know? No idea. But it does—it does!
All of this is to say, make friends with the friends of your friends. See them in real life. Create a bunch of humans who care about what you care about.
It could make you inexplicably happy.