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Category Archives: Writing

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Is this irony?

words and images Posted on December 23, 2010 by dlschirfJuly 17, 2021

From “Paying the Experienced Hand Less” at The Daily Dish:

I am a patent lawyer with a background in biochemistry. Most of the business people at my clients don’t understand what I do, what the technology is that I am working on and generally look at us as being lawyers with “propeller” beanies on our heads and pocket protectors in our shirts. They can’t judge me on what I actually do for them, generally, in the legal sense. No one can really judge the proficiency of my work product at the time it is delivered – it has to “bake” for many years before any actual decisions are reached at the US Patent Office. They can – however – judge how “good” something looks. Do I use correct grammar and punctuation? Do I use words that they can understand? Do I format my letters and applications in a clear manner that screams “organized and authoritative”?

They judge me not on what I obtain for them through my legal skills – they judge me as a copyrighter or a graphic designer. It is the hardest thing for me to teach my younger associates that they should spend as much time on their grammar and punctuation as they do on their legal research and brilliant legal positions. In the end – we get judged by our attention to detail more than our legal acumen.

Shouldn’t a patent attorney who takes pride in correct grammar and spelling and emphasizes their importance know the difference between “copyright” and “copywriter” (and “copywriter”)? It’s a common mistake, but I don’t know why. The difference between “right” and “write” is clear.

Posted in Blog, Language, Writing | Tagged grammar | Leave a reply

In all, not the best place for the comma

words and images Posted on February 27, 2009 by dlschirfApril 27, 2013

At 2:15 a.m., I couldn’t understand this sentence from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson:

In all, the internal turmoil particles within the cloud pick up electrical charges.

After a few moments I mentally moved the comma:

In all the internal turmoil, particles within the cloud pick up electrical charges.

Only Bryson and his editor know whose choice it was to (unintentionally) misplace the comma, given the sentence’s meaning. It makes it read like a bad foreign language translation.

And so to bed. Again.

Posted in Blog, Books, Language, Writing | Tagged grammar | Leave a reply

Elizabeth Gaskell — writing passion

words and images Posted on February 26, 2009 by dlschirfJuly 24, 2019

Most mainstream Victorian authors like Elizabeth Gaskell generally aren’t known for the sensuality of their writing, but the Brontës weren’t the only ones who could write about passion. Here are some evocative quotations from Gaskell’s Mary Barton, a novel about the working class in 1830s Manchester:

. . . triumphant fire . . . sent forth its infernal tongues from every window hole, licking the black walls with amorous fierceness . . .

Jem felt a strange leap of joy in his heart, and knew the power she had of comforting him. He did not speak, as though fearing to destroy by sound or motion the happiness of that moment, when her soft hand’s touch thrilled through his frame, and her silvery voice was whispering tenderness in his ear. Yes! it might be very wrong; he could almost hate himself for it; with death and woe so surrounding him, it yet was happiness, was bliss, to be so spoken to by Mary.

Meanwhile, her words — or, even more, her tones — would maintain their hold on Jem Wilson’s memory. A thrill would yet come over him when he remembered how her hand had rested on his arm. The thought of her mingled with all his grief, and it was profound, for the loss of his brothers.

What were these hollow vanities to her, now she had discovered the passionate secret of her soul?

This quotation from a tale told by old Job Legh is about passion of a sort, and it’s a marvelous image that captures the imagination:

So says she, quite quick, and stealing a look at her husband’s back, as looked all ear, if ever a back did . . .

Posted in Books, Language, Writing | Tagged grammar | Leave a reply

Our lady of October

words and images Posted on October 14, 2008 by dlschirfApril 27, 2013

Nothing makes me soar like a full October moon.

Not even city lights can diminish her rising glory.

She illuminates the faint wisps of clouds that try to veil her face.

Powerless, they reflect back her glow until she fills the sky.

It’s a perfect night for spirits. Ghosts. Mysteries.

Erotic love.

Soul-bending erotic love.

Shivering naked on the cool, damp earth.

Sharply outlined in her dispassionate white rays.

Shadowy under the mischievously moving wisps.

Crying out to her face.

Bewitched.

Enchant me again.

While our lady keeps watch.

And spirits roam, seeking a place to lie.

Posted in Blog, Writing | Tagged poem | 3 Replies

The grammar police, they live inside of my head

words and images Posted on September 2, 2008 by dlschirfApril 27, 2013

I have no idea how I came across this on BBC News, but here it is:

In June it emerged that Winehouse had developed the chronic lung disease emphysema after she collapsed.

To develop a chronic disease after collapsing is amazing and alarming. I suspect the writer meant:

After Winehouse collapsed in June, it emerged that she had developed the chronic lung disease emphysema.

That’s why I’m paid the big bucks (depending on what is meant by “bucks”).

Posted in Blog, Language, Writing | Tagged grammar | Leave a reply

New toy: AlphaSmart Neo

words and images Posted on December 29, 2007 by dlschirfDecember 30, 2014

I just ordered an AlphaSmart Neo for taking to the library along with the usual complement of tablet and pencil case. It may take a little getting used to, but most writers who have them seem to like them. Beats the weight and distractions of the old Titanium.

Update: Sadly, the AlphaSmart Neo has succumbed to the tablet. There is room in my heart for both.

Posted in Writing | 2 Replies

Basic creative writing

words and images Posted on June 1, 2006 by dlschirfJune 1, 2006

I don’t know whether to be excited or frightened. About a month before my 45th birthday, I signed up for a University of Chicago Graham school noncredit class — basic creative writing.

I have taken a few other continuing education courses, two on copyediting and one with Roger Ebert on film noir. In the late 1990s, I enrolled in an online course on short story writing, but for various reasons I didn’t become as involved as I should have and did not finish it.

So this will be my first serious (I hope) attempt to unlock my creative abilities. I admit it — I need help.

That’s really the heart of my problem; I am not convinced I have any abilities. If I do, they have been buried so deep for so long that they have probably atrophied, asphyxiated, and rotted away by now, leaving behind me, a shell of a human being with no talents to call her own.

Often I feel like I deserve no more than to be a corporate wage slave, and every effort to rise above that lot, to do something worthwhile, would be wasted. At other times, though, I feel like there are important things to be said or revealed, or contemplated, but I can’t think them all through. They, like so much about life, elude me.

I don’t know what this class can or will do for me. I don’t expect it to turn me into a good writer, or even a competent one. I do hope that it does, or at least that it helps me find my voice and perhaps some stories to tell. Finally.

Posted in Writing | 1 Reply

The lake, my lover

words and images Posted on May 5, 2006 by dlschirfAugust 18, 2018

The lake is with me every night like a lover. After daybreak I must leave him, but I know that I will return to him and that he will be waiting.

Like a lover, he is moody, often unfathomable. In the morning he may be calm, mirroring the world exactly as he sees it — bright and cloudless. Or he may feel imaginative, clearly reflecting the shapes the illuminated clouds playfully form and re-form. Sometimes the low-lying clouds try to influence his emotions by casting themselves between him and the sun, which can make him kick up a few choppy waves of impotent protest and frustration. If the clouds leave him alone long enough, he may settle down.

At other times, the clouds and the lake will continue to spar, each forgetting that their conflict started as a game. The clouds gather in mutual support until they block the sun and blacken the sky. The wind, like an annoying younger brother who cannot help but provoke the combatants, joins in the battle, teasing the lake, at first ruffling him, then turning him wild with fury, unsettled and grey. Then the lightning and the thunder and the rains come, and it becomes all-out war. It can last for minutes or for hours.

When it is over the air clears, and the wind exhausts itself, but the lake is slower to stop seething than his foes. After a time, though, his complexion will change from white-capped steel grey to breathtaking blue, and I will know that we are once again all that is in each other’s hearts.

I am away for most of these outbursts, which are frightening and beautiful at the same time. I do not understand these tantrums, but they are as much part of my lover as peace and calm and loveliness.

His moods can change in what seems like moments. He may arise cheerful with the sun, but turn gloomy and chill so quickly that I do not notice the transition. At other times, the change is so slow and gradual that its escapes even my observation until it is complete.

I love all of the lake’s moods because I feel and understand all of them — the inexplicably happy ones, the playful ones, the torn and confused ones, even the angry ones — but the quietly sad ones most of all.

It is on moonlit nights that I love the lake best. The moon glows across his surface, making a strip of his nakedness glow incandescently and leaving the rest in the mystery of semidarkness. It is then that I feel the coolness of his touch, the influence of his soul over mine.

The moon is a silent witness to our coupling, slow, deep, intense, with a hint of danger. It is exhilarating for me. For him — I cannot be sure, for despite his passion he holds himself and his power in reserve.

Even now I know that the lake and I will someday part. I do not know what will separate us beyond some kind of change in circumstance. I dread the thought and therefore do not think about it very often. Always I am aware of it, in the same way that I am aware that I must die. I do not know when or how, but I understand why. The lake changes, I change, all of life changes. Life is change. Then, finally, there is the end to change that death brings.

The lake is immortal; I am not. But we love where we can and how we may. Is not that the way of all lovers?

Posted in Writing | Tagged nature | Leave a reply

Colette and Mansfield

words and images Posted on November 16, 2005 by dlschirfNovember 16, 2005

Old photos and paintings fascinate and disturb me. They fascinate me because they are often the only visual recored that remains of historical, literary, and other notable figures. They disturb me because they reveal the face of the person at a certain point in his or her story, when I, the viewer, know the ending.

Based on my recent reading, I’ve been looking up biographies of Colette and Katherine Mansfield. I don’t know much about Mansfield, but I do know that both she and Colette were sensualists who devoted themselves to living life to the fullest. They each had a wealth of experiences, not to mention lovers. Yet, invariably, all of each writer’s photos show an unsmiling woman with expressions ranging from serious to glum. There is no joie de vivre in the countenances of either Colette or Mansfield. Even the 10-year-old bespectacled Mansfield looks grim, with lips tightened and teeth clenched, as though she were acting out a scene from a particularly dreary Dickensian childhood. Even the young Colette, wearing breastplates in a theatrical production, looks as though she has had enough of this earthly life. It’s not just Colette and Mansfield. Especially at the turn of the century, women seemed unable to smile, at least for the camera, even on their wedding day. What message are they trying to send us across time?

Looking at the young Colette, whether in a portrait pose or in theatrical costume, it’s difficult to reconcile the pagan country girl so clearly defined in the Claudine novels with the urbanite haunter of opium dens and the demimonde of Paris. The older Colette looks more like the worn woman of the world that she was, although her expressions are even harsher and more forbidding. While the author Colette is judgmental, she is also approachable in her knowledge and understanding of human weaknesses, especially those of the flesh and heart, including her own. The pictured Colette does not invite the viewer to come closer; her eyes suggest that distance is preferable to intimacy. Yet this may reflect Colette as she was; for all her understanding of the heart, her public face is dispassionate, even when troubled.

In Mansfield’s photos, limited by the brevity of her life, you can see the evolution in style from old-fashioned to modern. In her childhood photos, she could be Laura from The Little House on the Prairie books. Her hair is long and soft, her dress conservative and feminine. Only the look of determination hints at her future as a thoroughly modern woman, and nothing reveals a predilection for a life of sensuality. By the time she is an adult, however, her hair is shorn and her clothes naturally reflect more modern, more urban — and less charming — fashions. Like Thea Kronborg from Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark, she appears to have been transformed by her new world, status, companions, and opportunities into a weary artist. In some ways, the adult Thea seems different from the child Thea; I wonder how much Katherine Mansfield changed over the 24 years between her serious childhood portrait and her death.

By the time she was in her mid- to late twenties, Mansfield looked much older. Her face, still grim in expression, seems worn and shadowed, and she looks like a woman to whom life has been difficult. She does not look like life, warm, inviting, enticing, but like death, cold, forbidding, and distant. She suffered from tuberculosis and, according to some biographies, gonorrhea — similar to the ailments that plagued a bon vivant like Errol Flynn.

While I read the words of Colette and Mansfield, sometimes I gaze into the eyes of their images and wonder what they knew — about themselves, about their world, about their futures. I wonder what they told and what they kept secret. There seems to be more in the eyes than can be told in words. What more could they have said?

Posted in Writing | Leave a reply

"It’s only words, and words are all I have"

words and images Posted on October 22, 2005 by dlschirfOctober 22, 2005

There’s a student publication at the University of Chicago that gets delivered to The Flamingo every Thursday, so I read it. The past two years, it looked like a newspaper — masthead, several stories on the front page. I liked it. Now it has gone the way of everything designed to appeal to youth — a big, pointless, out-of-context photo on the front, with the contents at the bottom in as few words as possible. Words! No one can stand words any more! Someone in a meeting with me said the biggest turnoff for him on a Web site is “too many words.” He’s in his mid-40s. Is it my generation that’s decided reverting to communicating through the equivalent of cave paintings is chic?

What other animal writes?

How have we come to hate words?

Especially when there are billions of them online?

Posted in Writing | Leave a reply

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