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Why does Pat Buchanan yell all the time?

Also where does he find his ties?

How come the majority of people are incapable of replacing an empty toilet roll with a full one?

Is there anyone more charming than Rachel Maddow?

Is this election ever going to end?

And, um, what am I going to do with myself when it’s over?

Am I the only one who doesn’t think the money spent on Palin and family’s clothes, hair, and make up is that big a deal?¹

I’ve been living in NYC too long, haven’t I?

Don’t answer that!

I have never spent 150k on clothes. I’d kind of like to. Yes, I know it’s wrong. I’ve just always wanted a Vivienne Westwood ballgown . . .

1. Ask me what I think of the Alaskan governor’s policy on wolves. That I think is a VERY big deal.

I’m sure you all know about it, but I am having a ball going through shorpy’s historical photos. Though there aren’t nearly enough from the early 1930s. Still. Dead fascinating.

To everyone who sent me the photo of the Aussie spider eating the Aussie bird: Why, yes, out spiders are tough. But our birds are not wussy.

Riddle me this:

Why do I so often think that a dream sequence will solve my plot propblems when as a reader I hate dream sequences?

Gah!

Yeah, I just deleted the dream sequence.

Until recently I had little respect for acting. My line was that all actors have to do is say words written for them by someone else and prance about making believe. Plus the few actors I’d met had been, um, how do I put this? Not the smartest people in the world. (Not all of them! Not, you!) But most of them.

However, going on tour has changed my opinion. TOTALLY.

Basically what I did for the last two weeks in Michigan, Ohio, and then Kansas City, Missouri was get up and perform in front of audiences ranging from 5 to 200. And I did it between two and six times a day.

It was shockingly hard. Astonishingly so. One of the most exhausting things I’ve ever done. Why did no one warn me?!

Yet I did was play myself. Talk about my books, answer questions. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? I can’t imagine what it’s like getting up night after night on stage pretending to be someone else. Or doing it take after take in front of cameras.

My tour gave me a glimpse of how hard acting must be.

Don’t get me wrong: touring was heaps of fun. I now also have a glimmer of understanding of why people want to be actors. The energy you get from an engaged audience is amazing. I can see how it could get addictive.

So there you have it. I was wrong. I take it all back. Acting is hard. I sure couldn’t do it.

Well, okay, a vague sense of satisfaction is . . . reducing you inbox from over two thousand to 93.

I have answered all my fanmail. Hallelujah! I am up to date with the universe! (If I didn’t reply to you write me again. Your letter may have been accidentally deleted or misfiled or something.)

Er, 94. Someone just sent me letter. Crap. Ninety-five. Why are people replying? The whole point of the exercise was to reduce my mail! Not generate more. Stop it! Don’t write to me!

Um, never mind.

Look over there: irradiated mangosteens mutating into killer monkeys!

I recently finished reading a book that I found so poorly constructed and lazily written I was kind of astonished it had been published by a reputable house. It read to me like a poorly edited first draft by a talented writer. Vast stretches consisted of dialogue only. There was no sense of place. The only way you could tell where you were was because names of streets and other landmarks were dropped in. Oh, and the cover copy announced where it was set, which, truly, was my biggest clue.

I’ll be honest it kind of made me angry. I know lots of writers who work their arses off getting it right and here’s this writer just phoning it and getting away with it.

But then I talked to a librarian friend of mine, who liked (though didn’t love) the book and whose students enjoyed it. She also mentioned that it had some very enthusiastic reviews, which I immediately looked up. They left me bewildered and a bit cranky. If someone can phone in a crappy first draft and suck in the readers and reviewers why bust a gut to write the best books we can? Why do we bother doing research? Why aren’t we phoning them in too?

Now, of course, my reaction assumes that there’s a shared understanding of what makes a good book and good writing, which clearly there’s not. Each reader is bringing something different to the page when they read and thus reading something different. But I feel like even when I hate a book I can at least see what other people are seeing it. I think I get why some people love Moby Dick even though it bores me into a coma. I don’t think it’s badly written. It’s just the last book in the world I want to read.

Not this time. This book was shoddy. There was no there there.

But maybe that’s exactly what it has going for it? The less there is on the page, the more a reader can bring to it, and the more they can make the book their own? And that what I think of as “good writing” just gets in the way of that kind of reading experience.

Who knows? Certainly not me. I don’t think I’ll ever understand the appeal of this particular book or the many books just like it. But it doesn’t really matter because it clearly wasn’t written for me. And heaps of wonderful books that were written for me are getting plenty of love too.

And, yes, I will keep writing the best books I can. There’ll continue to be readers out there who think they’re rubbish. Because those black squiggles on white paper? We can interpret them any old way we choose.

Some of you have expressed annoyance that I have not named the hated book in previous post. To which I can only say: tough.

My blog, my rules.

Is long-standing policy of this blog never to name the author or title of books I don’t like. This will never change.

I don’t name them because authors are the most sensitive creatures alive. Layers of their skin disappear every time one of their babies books is dissed. This is why agents and editors never pass along any but the good reviews. They do not want their authors to wind up skinless because then they’ll be in the intensive care unit an unable to write more books.

Then there’s the other kind of author who seek out and destroy those who speak less than praise-ingly of their books. And—even worse—the fans who do likewise. Fans can be VICIOUS. What can I say? I am a coward.

The only time I will name a craptastic book or author is if they’re dead AND they don’t have a rabid fan following. Mentioning my dislike of a certain detective by a long-dead author led to my receiving hate mail. I have learned my lesson: Passionate readers are to be FEARED.

So far that means I can only tell you how much I hate hate hate hate Moby Dick. That’s because American Lit scholars aren’t very scary.

how do YOU say “shone”? as a US-ian, “shone” is pronounced, well, just like “shone.” rhymes with “own.” i’m totally curious as to how we’re “supposed” to say it!

another peeve: “strick” instead of “strict.” i hear this one ALL the time. it’s sheer laziness to not even pronounce the “t” at the end of that word!

I love the U.K. pronunciation of “shone” (which rhymes with “on”). Is it the same in Australia?

What gets me right now is the blending of short e and short i in the Midwest. Milk pronounced as melk, get as git…it’s like a regional dyslexia and it’s driving me nuts.

My mom has that weird [r] in wash, squash, Washington. My husband can’t help but imitate it in his own Russian accent for fun.

aussies say “shon”. Rhymes with Ron.

i NEVER noticed that before! silly americans. like aluminium and oregano and basil and all the others.

but there is one USian pronunciation that I really like, and that’s “squirrel”. Americans seem to say it in one syllable: Squirl (to rhyme with girl), instead of squi-rell.

Supposably. See also: hyperbole. There’s an obnoxiously popular song by someone or another, and buried in one verse she calls it “hyperbowl.”

And while I’m on the subject, curses also to those who say, “All of the sudden.”

Mis-chee’-vee-ous drives me nuts. It’s mis’-che-vous! (I put the apostrophes in to show which syllable is accented, so don’t get on my case, okay?)

It also bugs me the way east-coasters pronounce western U.S. place-names incorrectly, especially Or-a-gawn (ugh!) and Nevahdah (well la de dah). (Quick pronunciation guide: for “Oregon,” think “Finnegan.” For “Nevada,” think “I coulda had a.”)

ooh!

i hate it when people say “if you think X, you’ve got another THING coming”, when it should be “you’ve got another THINK coming.”

This might just be an Australian thing, but ‘arkse’ instead of ‘ask’ seems pretty common. Well, my Mum does it.

This probably falls more into the realm of mondegreens than mispronunciations, but I always find myself bubbling with irk-juice when someone says ‘for all intensive purposes’ instead of ‘for all intents and purposes’.

[rant] And don’t get me started on the misuse of the words ‘literally’ and ‘obviously’ in Australian broadcasting. [/rant]

Finally, you can always count on someone mispronouncing ‘mispronunciation’.

Er, shone is a long o because it has a silent e at the end…

That’s not wrong.

How about I don’t say the way you say it is wrong (even though it is [d,r]), if you don’t say the way I say it is wrong.

‘Kay?

Snow patrol (and indeed Grey’s anatomy -eek) should have barbed wire wound around their gonads for: ‘ if i just lay here would you lie with me..’ o god. the hives

Herb. The h is there for a reason. Same with human.

And PUMA.

Vunnerable - for you know what.
And this is not mispronunciation as such - but I hate news that is not delivered in complete sentences. With a passion.
‘The driver leaving the scene of the crime before police arrived.’(Probably an Oz news transgression.)

What saddens me no end is that people no longer seem to understand plurals. I don’t just mean they don’t know that ‘media’ is plural, or that ‘phenomena’ is plural, but that collective nouns are singular (e.g. ‘Telstra is charging too much for NextG’ NOT ‘Telstra are charging too much for NextG’.) Everyone seems to have developed this problem lately.

Every writer in the world should be made to read ‘Eats Shoots And Leaves’ by Lynne Truss.

Snow patrol (and indeed Grey’s anatomy -eek) should have barbed wire wound around their gonads for: ‘ if i just lay here would you lie with me..’ o god. the hives

omg, i thought they were doing it both ways to hedge their bets! i was going to play this for my students to demonstrate that we’re in a moment of linguistic change, where the verb “to lie” (as in “I lie down” rather than “I lie about my age”) is dying, and the snow patrol song is its last gasp.

but i’m pedantic like that.

nuke-yoo-ler is near the top of my list, too. the one that really bugs me right now, though, is “divisive,” pronounced di-VISS-iv. dude, it’s di-VICE-iv, like “divide.”

genevieve: I hate news that is not delivered in complete sentences

But people don’t talk in sentences, and most news is delivered live.

I’m fairly liberal when it comes to language, because I think it’s there to be played with, but it kills my boyfriend when I pronounce ‘feud’ as, erm, ‘fwayed’. I’m more than aware that this is completely wrong, but can’t seem to stop myself from saying it that way. I think it’s the way his eyes bulge and his mouth tightens; adorable.

Differences between long and short vowels I can forgive. If we English speakers hadn’t decided to do away with accents to show how vowels should be pronounced, how are we to expect people to get them right?

On the other hand, USians appear to have got so lax on their vowels as to make them totally interchangeable. If the people of Los Angeles want to call their city “Los Angilis” I suppose that’s down to them, but I draw the line at pronouncing Sirius as “serious”, probably because every time I hear an ad for “Serious satellite radio” I feel an urgent need to bite something.

@11: Nope, New Zealand reporters do it too, and even the BBC. Stabs me to the heart, it does. Finite verbs are not the enemy, people!

Christopher Miles @ 7 - I associate the original “arkse” or “aks” in place of “ask” with Brits of Caribbean* origin, though I might be wrong.

Also, rather than mondegreen (which is a mishearing on the part of a listener) your “intensive” problem might be a Language Log-invented eggcorn , which is a mistake on the part of the speaker (in fact your “intensive” is one of the examples here). BTW Language Log, a linguists’ blog, does not appreciate Truss-like prescriptivism.

As for “shone” having to be pronounced “shoan” like bone and tone because of the silent e - well, it doesn’t work for “done” and “gone”. English, like Whitman, is large and contains multitudes, and you can’t necessarily appeal to some other word for guidance!

I had a gf once who pronounced “awry” as “oary” even though she knew it was “a-rye” - she just couldn’t help it.

*I prefer “carry bee-an” to “kuhRib-yun”.

My wife always laughs when I say ‘especially’. When I was taught that word, I was told it meant ‘Extra Special’ so I have always pronounced it ‘EX-specially’.

Maybe Scott could use that as a book title.

“Shone” pronounced the same as “shown” drives me INSANE as well — and I’m Canadian. Up here we say “shawn”, like all right-thinking people.

And “nuke-yoo-lar” brings me closer to a meltdown every time I hear it.

You have to look at dialect, history, education and culture.

What bugs me more than anything is assuming someone is an idiot, ignorant or less than someone else because they don’t speak “proper” or “the King’s English”.

And I agree with Meg - How about I don’t say the way you say it is wrong (even though it is [d,r]), if you don’t say the way I say it is wrong.

We can go on and on about the “proper” pronunciation of words. But the argument can be made that some people immigrated or were brought to the US without knowledge of the language and taught themselves how to speak. America is made up of a myriad of different people and cultures which makes it interesting and fun.

As someone who was born with speech issues, I often mispronounce words, still. But my point still gets across. And if anyone looks at me as less because I can’t say “shown” or some other word “properly” it’s on them.

And as the movie/song goes - you say Po-Tah-Toe and I say Po-Tay-Toe - it’s still the same word.

I’m in the US, and have always pronounced shone like shawn, but maybe a little softer on the vowel sound. But rhyming it with tone never bothered me.

And if the h in herb is there for a reason, how do you explain the w (and double e) in Greenwich? Or the w in Southwark?

Jewelry pronounced as jew-ler-ee drives me up a tree.

Here in Utah there are all kinds of delights for the ears. Depending where in the state you grew up and whether or not your parents beat it out of you, people commonly say “hill” when they mean “heel,” and “sell” when they mean “sale.” But that’s just regional accents, I guess. What truly bugs is that here, “arctic” is pronounced without the middle hard “c.” I ranted about this self-righteously on my blog only to have it pointed out to me that “artic” is an accepted pronunciation (yes, even in the OED) and in fact closer to the word origin (which I believe is native american). Still.

I have never ever ever ever heard “shone” pronounced any way but to rhyme with “own.”

As a librarian, few things irk me more than “liberry.”

RE: “shone”: Yes, but YOU guys make it sound like “shun,” which isn’t a nice thing to do and makes me sad. Shun the unbeliever! (And silent E makes the vowel long!)

For “Nevada,” think “I coulda had a.”

ACK THIS IRKS ME NO END. There are two A’s in there, why shouldn’t they sound the same? Buuuuuut, I defer to people who actually live there, of course.

And the English (well, West Londoners) tend to do something cute but baffling with the “Y” in “anything” — they turn it into the sound of a gut punch. Enn-uh-thing. Where’d that come from?

To be honest, there are too many Anglophone accents for me to get all worked up over much, unless there’s an actual transposing of consonants, as in “nookewlar” or “ax” instead of “ask.”

Americans seem to say it in one syllable: Squirl (to rhyme with girl), instead of squi-rell.

I have never said “squirl” in my life. Must be a regional thing — there are lots!

I didn’t know about the shone/shun thing.

I loathe and hate NOOK-you-lurrr all the more because it reminds me of George Stupid Bush.

Some say tomayto and some say tomahto; some say potayto and some say potahto. In the song, it was the ordinary joes against the pinkie-lifted posh. In your case, the shown-shon thing is a legitimate difference in pronunciation, coming from the phonetic differences in American and Australian English.

Nukular, on the other hand, is just plain wrong, even in Texas, where “Golly” has 4 syllables.

Yes, I am pedantic. I’m a pedant. Pedantry is my native woodnote wild.

Of course, Homer Simpson is the authority on physics terms:
OFFICER: Now Simpson, because of your many years as a nuclear technician, we’re putting you on a nuclear sub.
HOMER: “Nuc-u-lar”. It’s pronounced “nuc-u-lar”.

As for jewelry @ 21, in the UK we often spell it jewellery - ie it’s stuff made by jewellers as opposed to simply another way of saying jewels - and some people pronounce it like that (but not me); based on the French joaillierie, apparently.

What strikes me as odd is the way some Americans, who often enunciate each syllable more distinctly than Brits do (as in vee-hickle for vehicle), pronounce words like missile and futile. “Launch the mistles!” and “Resistance is fewtle!” sound strangely febile.

A friend from England once said we were divided by a common language. By hey, who would believe someone who pronounced “Pontefract” as “Pumfruit” anyway?

“Launch the mistles!” and “Resistance is fewtle!” sound strangely febile.

I like saying fu-tile, like floor tiles. Makes me feel powerful.

Ooooh, speaking of this, I found myself recently VERY impressed (seriously) at the way some Britons actually pronounce the “TH” in “months” and “clothes.” In the interests of keeping some of my Japanese ESL students from bursting into tears trying not to say “mon-thezz,” I found myself often telling them that it was legit to say “muntz” and “close.” (And not to bother with the glottal stop in Manhattan/”Manha‘N”)

i hate it when people say “if you think X, you’ve got another THING coming”, when it should be “you’ve got another THINK coming.”

See, I know it’s “another think,” but I think that sounds just so ridiculous, I use “another thing.” Nobody’s called me on it yet, probably because my friends aren’t sensitive to such matters.

but I draw the line at pronouncing Sirius as “serious”

What’s the alternative?

Also, I don’t know if there was an announcement and I missed it, but you gave us back our capital letters. Yay!

“Note to self: never write about language differences again.”

I coulda told ya that! Oh, the fights I’ve gotten into!

I’m surprised that no one has mentioned pumpkin yet. I know people who say pun-kin, and that drives me nuts.

Also, what about foliage? I hear a lot of people call it “foil-aj” instead of “foh-lee-aj.”

And finally, I always say carmel or caramel “car-mel” rather than “kara-mel”

Matt: So do you pronounce sin “sen” and simple “semple”? If you do then at least it is consistent to pronounce Sirius “serious”.

Of course the way to stop USians doing this is to point out that it is actually an Hispanic pronunciation, as in “feelthy greengo”.

So wait, Cheryl — are you objecting to the broad “ee” or the short “ih” sound? (Are you wanting me, I’m asking, to rhyme the first syllable of “serious” with “Herr?”) And how are you with things like “blood,” “brooch,” “good,” and “food”?

Also, what about foliage? I hear a lot of people call it “foil-aj” instead of “foh-lee-aj.”

LOLOLOLOL at me — I pronounce it “correctly,” but constantly spell it wrong. Go fig.

At the end of the day, if I try to pronounce things the way my dear British friends would like me to, I sound pretentious, so I’ll just have to be satisfied with my Yankitude. (I love these conversations, though. We have to all learn those common orthographic symbols so we can be sure of what we mean!)

P.S. I know Australians are not “British” per se. But I haven’t met any who wanted me to talk differently, yet. I will point out, though, that they seem to be particularly BRILLIANT at imitating Yank accents.)

How is “shone” meant to be pronounced?

I’ve always pronounced “shone” as “shon”.

I hate it when chavs here say words wrong. For example, they will be meaning to say “hate” and they will say “ate” so when they say “I hate you” I hear it as “I ate you”. It’s really annoying but funny sometimes!

Erm, this is very random but is there a smiley face at the bottom of every one else’s screen?

Ooh, one annoying thing I find it when people are saying “naughty” yet pronounce it “nough-ee”. What is so hard with prnouncing your t’s??

Data. I get irritated when people say “dah-tuh”. I prefer “dayta”. How do you all pronounce data??

Camille: I’m not objecting to anyone’s pronunciation of “serious”. As far as I can see there’s no disagreement on that. I’m just noting that USians pronounce the word “Sirius” as if it were spelled “serious”. And as Matt rightly pointed out, most of them have no idea there’s any other way of doing so.

I’m seriously laughing too hard to really think of the ones that really cheese me off… Oh, wait.

“For all intensive purposes.”

It’s “for all intents and purposes,” not for just the REALLY STRENUOUS purposes!! I got into a huge fight with my boyfriend about this when I was 19. I don’t think it’s why we broke up, but it didn’t help.

Also, my college roommate got mad at me once for saying “more zippity!” Not that I was saying that–I was saying “more’s the pity” but she heard it the other way.

So “sirius” should be SIR-(As in, “Hello, sir, how may I help you?”) ee-us? Hmm. Never thought of it like that.

Matt: you got it (although actually the British pronunciation is more si-RIUS than SIR-ius).

Now, given that I’m used to hearing “Sirius” pronounced differently, can you see why it totally boggles me to hear satellite radio described as “serious” (Howard Stern and all).

hehe! I’m British and I say “Serious” rather than “Sir-ius”

Li-berry.

Champ-een (for champion).

When someone “arx” instead of “asks” a question.

People in Saskatchewan have a teeth-clenched “R” - must be the cold - so they buy veggies from the “ferrmrrs merrket”. Which makes me giggle and mimic unkindly.

LOL to # 18- I also am guilty of saying it incorrectly!

Probably the latest annoyance when it comes to language is those who add the unnecessary “s” at the end of words, i.e. “Yous live around here?”

Another thing that drives me crazy is when people say “blush you” instead of “bless you.” It may possibly be the Northern Michigan custom, but it does get annoying.

So “sirius” should be SIR-(As in, “Hello, sir, how may I help you?”) ee-us? Hmm. Never thought of it like that.

Oh my. Neither have I. Actually, to be honest, I don’t know that I’ve ever had the occasion to say it aloud myself, but while reading it I always hear it in my head with both I’s making the same sound, because of Latin.

BUT, you will all be pleased to know, the dictionary I’m obliged to use for work agrees with Cheryl: “’sir- e -es”. That first E is long and the second is one of those all-purpose sounds, that upside-down-e “schwa” thing.

(Because apparently it is from Greek, “Seirios,” not Latin. Neither of which I ever learned, even a little bit, so that’s my excuse :-D)

I promise I’m not really this obsessive. This is kinda my job, or close enough — I’d be doing similar anyway.

“For all intensive purposes.”
I’m still kinda shocked that this even exists. I’d never heard this version before I got on the Internet.

It still irks me less than “could care less,” though.

Other peeves:
“And plus.”
“Added bonus.”
“Discuss about.”
“The reason is because.”

Grrrrr.

…you mean, a redundant tautology?

“free gift”!

‘ Other peeves:
“And plus.”
“Added bonus.”
“Discuss about.”
“The reason is because.” ‘

ha ha! and i thought I was super nerdy and took things too seriously.

nice to see that i’m actually somewhat . . . normal as compared to some of these other peeps who get all het up. LOL

i have several friends who say things that are really funny are Hill-ARE-e-us. instead of, say, Hill-Air-e-us.
this drives me insane.

they accuse me of having a Jersey accent.

i accuse them of being crazy.

@Nicholas Waller

I hadn’t heard of ‘eggcorns’ before; cheers for that.

FWIW, I don’t think people should be lambasted for mispronunciations, misunderstandings or misuses based on ignorance, but when broadcasters, presenters and writers misuse the language (like reporting news in sentence fragments as mention by @genevieve above, something that’s been happening for at least 15 years in Australia, or using the word ‘literally’ when they mean precisely the opposite), it’s a problem.

Some changes in written and spoken English are, to borrow from George Michael, natural and good; others actually diminish our ability to communicate.

Thanks so much, everyone, for behaving in my absence. I really appreciate it!

Hey, Michael (back at comment 14). In Australia the news used to be read in sentences. Truly. And they have fallen on evil ways, using present participles instead of verbs. Actually that’s what I really object to, I think.

I definitely agree with the whole beauty and diversity of language thing. That being said, I have stopped listening to audio books if a particular and repeated pronunciation has annoyed the hell out of me. Although in each case, I went ahead and bought the paper addition, so maybe publishers could make it a marketing strategy.

Orientated
Sam-widge
Figger (instead of fig-ure)

1. This seems like an excellent time to link to The Joys of English Pronunciation.

Although not all of it works if you aren’t actually English.

2. Sometimes I say “liberry” ON PURPOSE. But only within the family.

3. I don’t get irked so much by mispronunciations as by misplaced accents.

I had this teacher last year who would always pronounce “bathroom” as “baffroom”.

Drove me nuts!

I knew a teacher who let a little boy wet himself in class because he was Jamaican and said “ba - troom.” =/

I just remembered a couple of really weird examples of mispronunciations.

One was the teacher of a short course on Access databases who said ‘astrid’ instead of ‘asterisk’. Bizzare.
Another was a teacher of a desktop publishing and Photoshop subject who said ‘cirtle’ instead of ‘circle’. Again with the bizarre.

My brother and sister and I make fun of my mom all the time because she’s from New York and still sort of has an accent.
She says “caw-fee” and “waw-ter” and “awww-sum” (which I guess is really how it should be said…) and “dawg” and it just sounds so wrong to me.
Then again, last summer I found out what constitutes a “Washington State Accent.” Apparently the words “caught” and “cot” sound different. You could have fooled me, haha. XP

I can’t believe nobody said this one: EX-scape.
Or how about ax (for ask)?
Nu-cu-lar bothers me too, but it’s hard to distinguish anymore whether it’s just the pronunciation or the major offender (Bush).

Justine, don’t swear off of these - this has been such a fun and enlightening dialog!

FWIW, I say “shone”, rhymes with “bone”. I am a NJ USian.

Ah! EX-scape! In class we were coming up with a title for a project the class had done (sort of a writing compilation thing) and this girl was suggesting hers — apparently called the “Ink Exscape.” Our teacher corrected her about ten times on the pronunciation, and she just couldn’t say it correctly…

Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone pronounce “shone” like “own,” not even in the States. But apparently us Canadians aren’t included in the US bandwagon for once on that front. Ha! This has been fun! I love accents.

ha!!

(are interjections allowed? )

why?

She is smart!

Dawn: why?

Because I say so.

It’s not so hard if you verbify or adjectivize the nouny ones you’re tempted to use.

Okay. This might be slightly challenging. Hee hee!

Write all your future books in the language of Tlon. “Upward behind the onstreaming it mooned.”

I can’t find any thingamabobs?

I’m not sure if it’ll work, but hey, it’s worth trying.

Why the sudden dislike of…you-know-whats?

~Mary

Oh, and, um, does this mean we can use adverbs now?

~Mary

Also wondering: what about implying, as in “give me a little of that,” which implies “a little b-t”?

>I’m also fond of hideously bad neologisms

Which would of course be cacoeidechthineologisms…

Big words….it hurts!

Stephen: But that’s a really good neologism!

Kadie-Wa: Breathe slowly. It will pass.

I LOVE BIG WORDS!

Recently I met a lawyer named Deb Solvibili and thought “that should be an adverb.” As in “She’s solvibili taking her own sweet time” or “The kitten bounded solvibili in the spring sunshine.” You get the idea.

i LOVE big words, they confuse my friends!

and if you reall love adverbs check out Maureen Johnson’s latest blog post

http://maureenjohnson.blogspot.com/2008/03/department-of-advice.html

Aren’t adverbs the ones we are told to never use (at least the -ly words)

Mark: Ignore such stupid advice. All parts of speech are good.

So does Ms You Know Who. We won’t mention names lest I seem to be trading on her glory…is an abundance of adverbs the secret of success?

Oh no, that’s not the secret of success! To be successful you have to love Elvis and dance whenever you can—especially near Stephen Fry.

You can add me to the list of people who sold a first book without knowing anyone in the biz.

[:: chomps a freeze-dried mangosteen ::]
[:: thinks of you ::]

(I’d like to take this time to squee like a 14-year-old over the appearance of Cherie Priest.)

SQUEEE!

(Thank you for your patience.)

The phenomena reminds me a bit of an interview with the Traveling Wilbury’s a couple of decades back. At one point someone asked Bob Dylan (Bob Dylan!) a question and his response was something like: “Dude, Roy Orbison (Roy Orbison!) is in my band! How much does that rock?” That’s pretty much how I feel when I check my email and see stuff from Jane Yolen, or Kris Rusch, or Tim Powers. “Dude, I’ve got email from author X! How much does that rock?”

Camille: Hello! And color me flattered by your squee The thought that anyone, anywhere, squees over me … well, it makes me want to squee, is what it does.

I know exactly what you mean about the whole “books I love were actually written by people!” thing. When i think that books like Looking for Alaska, Suitte Scarlett, and lots of other books i love so much were written by humans, like me, pretty much blows my mind.

Cherie: Of course there is squeeage!

You have a toilet category XDDD
sorry, that was my random realization of the day.
I pretty much agree with everyone else–it’s so cool to not only be published, but also know other awesome published people…we get jealous

I am curious… what is the story of your living in New York and Sidney? Do you spend half a year here and half there, or..what?

OMG Justine and Cherie KNOW EACH OTHER!!!

(I couldn’t resist. :-D)

I discovered “Not Flesh Nor Feathers” and Eden Moore very recently, is why I’m so excited. (Also, I discovered the Jim Butcher oeuvre on the same day. It was a most excellent day.) I am honored to provide the squee.

Hey, I wonder if another reason we don’t think of authors knowing each other is that we “know” them mostly, and most intensely, through the worlds they create, and thus sort of think of them as inhabiting those worlds, so to speak? Maybe subconsciously we’re thinking how cool it is for these alternative universes to be colliding with one another.

…But it surprises me HUGELY that I am making a living as a writer and therefore I have many writer friends. I constantly have to pinch myself. How on Earth did I get here? Please don’t let anyone take it away!

That fear is real: many writers don’t make a living at it for their whole lives. It takes a long time for most of us to get published (took me close to twenty years) and then once you are published there’s no guarantee that your books will keep selling.

This makes it sound a little as though you think that if you quit writing, or quit selling, you couldn’t be friends with writers any more.

And while you say that writers aren’t special people, there’s still, in any literary community, something special about getting to be friends with writers. There are certainly times at sf conventions when the writers are all gathered in a huddle, and only a few very lucky, favored fans get to hang out with them — and then only until it’s time to go to dinner. This may simply be because the writers are going off to talk shop together, but since the fans want to become friends with the writers, and the writers have a lot of people clamoring for their attention, there’s a permanent imbalance. Writers may not be special people, but fans treat them like special people.

I try not to fall into that trap any more — after all, there are many, many talented, interesting people who are not writers and who are easier to approach and talk to. I don’t think it’s good for me to behave as though I’m lesser being. And I doubt that many writers like being surrounded by fawning supplicants.

Do I sound crabby? I’ve had an ear infection that’s just starting to get better after three weeks: of course I’m crabby.

[…] trying to get published for about ten years. YA author Justine Larbalestier said that it took her close to twenty years to get published (and look at her success, now). It takes a long time, it’s wearing, can eat […]

It seems that so many writers, especially for teenagers, have lost their “day eyes”[1]. The books then are just as false as the Leave It To Beaver stereotype of Dick-and-Jane goodness, where the authors seem to have gouged out their “night eyes”[1] in order not to affright the kiddies (or, more likely, their parents)

I think a fairer question than “why did you have to put in X?” is “why did you leave out Y?” Where’s the rest of the story? The rest of the world? And if you chose to narrow your focus down to just this bit, well, why? Especially if the “why” is real question, wanting a real answer (usually interestiing) rather than just a reflexive opportunity to condemn.

In any event, if you’re not writing a documentary; it not a mirror; it’s trompe-d’oeil. What you choose to paint, and how you choose to paint it, is in the end a choice. One hopes it’s made with care…

[1] Why, oh why, isn’t The Glassblowers Children as popular in the anglosphere as it is in Sweden? This is such a useful story! And so well told. Brief summation: A raven had two eyes, a day eye that saw only good, and a night eye that saw only evil. When he lost one (his night eye) he was no longer wise…

I agree with everything you’ve said here except the implication that the Anne of Green Gables books are all sweetness and light — because they’ve actually got quite a lot of gloom, sorrow and despair in them (esp. the later ones), and the presence thereof was one of the reasons I re-read them so frequently as a teen.

Writing for young adults is not the same as writing for little kids; but even little kids need books that tackle difficult subjects (the death of a parent, the death of a pet, being very sick, having to go into hospital, surviving parents’ divorce and remarriage…). The books that spoke to me most strongly during my horrible early-teen years had a lot of bad stuff in them: sex and accidental pregnancy, unhappy love affairs and unrequited love, child abuse, violence, death galore, SIDS, war and destruction and the Holocaust and orphans surviving in the ruins. Anything that made me weep buckets, I’d read over and over. Some of what I read is highly recommendable, while some of it (I’m thinking particularly of a certain series of YA books about teens with terminal illnesses of various kinds) was formulaic trash, but I was fortunate to have parents and teachers who would never have dreamed of censoring my reading.*

I also liked to read frothy stuff, granted. But teens, just like grown-ups, need all kinds of stuff to read, and they need to be allowed to use books and reading (and writing!) for all the many purposes adults use them for. Being an adolescent is horrible enough without dictatorial adults telling you you can only read happy things. Sheesh.

*Not all my friends were so lucky; one was marched out of My Life as a Dog by the ear following the penis-in-bottle scene, while another’s mum confiscated her copy of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 because it mentioned breasts.

You are awesome.

Valiant is Holly Black’s worst-selling book? Well, I personnally think it’s her best book! Haven’t read Spiderwick yet though. Shh.

I feel like a lot of adults, particularly those who don’t read a lot or who, at least, don’t know much about the industry, are sort of perverted as to what sells and what doesn’t sell. Apparently, like you said, sensational and controversial books sell better. Well, that may be true sometimes, but I definitely think the book has to come at the right time. A book that’s amazingly popular may not have been if it’d been published ten years earlier.

I’ve heard way too many adults snobbing books, or music, or whatever, simply because it’s successful. I know that’s not quite the same issue, but you got me thinking about it. “Oh, yeah, that’s just some commercial crap.” Sure.

Oh, what a good post. I gotta link, even though I already did one today.

I have been looking for a replacement copy of “The Glassblowers Children” for YEARS. (And “Elvis, Elvis!”)

I don’t have much to add to the previous comments — I’m just constantly amused and seriously disturbed and frightened by, say, the Amazon comments from adults I see that seem to assume that 14-year-olds are five, or that keeping all knowledge of unpleasantness from them is actually doing them a service.

(Ahhh. The Glassblower’s Children. I see what you did there.)

people who grumble about issues in books are SILLY!
silly silly silly
why on earth they think they can dictate what I read is beyond ME!
the weird thing about being a minor.
Fortunatly I had a really great mom who encouraged me to read anything and everything (well except horror books that I had to steal from my brother).
oh and i’m technically an adult now… so that helps too…

but uhm… fight the power justine!

Thank you Justine! Thank you for writing this!
I’ve honestly never read any of your novels, but, I just read Uglies, and was talking to a friend of mine (we’re 17, by the way), and he hasn’t read it yet, and, when talking about Uglies, I said “I kept waiting for the sex scene.” And he seemed shocked. Not because he can’t handle a sex scene, but because he seemed surprised I would suggest that sex scenes have a place in YA. (As an aside, I’m not disappointed there wasn’t a sex scene. I mean, its not like Tally was at the Smoke for that long, but, if she had been there for a more significant amount of time, I would expect that either it would have happened or a concise explanation of why it hadn’t happened would show up eventually.) When he asked if sex scenes are appropriate in YA, we had the following conversation:
Me: You’re 17. Your girlfriend is 16. Tally’s age.
Him: Yes.
Me: And how far have you two gone?
Him: Not all the way.
Me: Exactly. If there was a book about a relationship similar to yours, wouldn’t a scene that involved some sort of sexual activity be important? Even if the book was intended for people between 13 and 18?

My point: Teens have sex! Gasp! In books about teens that involve relationships, if they’re the type of characters that would go all the way after a couple of months, they should go all the way! Or whatever!
This point can be translated to drugs, alcohol, or any other “edgy” thing you may put in your books.

Q.E.D.

In many ways, Valiant is my favorite of Holly’s books (I’m sure this won’t last as she is constantly inventing new and brilliant stories). Despite the fantastical elements, Valiant has resonated for me as a cautionary tale about love. The people suffer. Not the ‘author twirling mustache as he writes painful scenes’ approach but a very realistic, ‘I am alone, despite all these people around me’ sentiment. Ravus feels that way. So does Val. It causes them to act out, lash out, hide away, seek comfort, sometimes all at once. It’s a rich book, full of raw emotions.

Did you guys hear about the controversy behind The Higher Power of Lucky? They wanted to ban it because Lucky wants to know what a scrotum is. After I read it that really irked me. Lucky is just a curious kid, and it’s really only mentioned twice: the beginning, and the end, where she asks what a scrotum is. And it is explained in the best way imaginable. When I told my aunt about this book she thought it was a cute and had me read it to my cousins for her.
Sometimes I wonder if the people complaining about these books even have children, and if they do, how good is their relationship with them? I bet that they really don’t understand their kids. Because, seriously, the parents who actually care want their children to read these ‘dark and shocking’ stories, so that they know life isn’t all peaches and cream, because it isn’t. Life can be very dirty and gritty and hard and, most of all, SHOCKING! Just like all these books people are complaining about. Life doesn’t always end happy so why ban books that imitate life in one form or another?

UK children’s publisher Random House just did a survey of parents (under 2000 respondents, mmm, how representative) and concluded that British kids are going to hell in a handbasket because they are drinking and having sex so young. UK newspaper dutifully contacts children’s author Jaqueline Wilson for a comment; she says she thinks it’s sad kids are growing up too fast; newspaper then criticises her for writing novels about kids who drink and have sex…

From the Independent:
‘Fiercely strict parents, ugly divorces, terminal illness, and various kinds of abuse are all common themes in Dame Jacqueline’s work. Given such gritty content, is there not a whiff of hypocrisy about her outrage?

“I wish I could write novels in which children didn’t have to confront these issues”, said Dame Jacqueline, who has sold more than 25 million copies.

“But my role as a writer is to hold out a metaphorical hand to these children, and to reflect the difficulties they face in an imaginative way….”

I agree with so many of the comments that have already been made, and I’ll just add that it seems to me that there will always be people uncomfortable with teenagers showing any kind of maturing or independence - ie, sex, drugs, disobeying authority, etc. And in my experience, they tend to be people scared of the world in general. Scared their child will go a different path than they did, or more often, than they want their child to go.

A few years ago I suggested a friend let her eleven and thirteen year old daughters watch Bend it Like Beckham. After she watched it she got really angry at me for suggesting she show her daughters a movie about a girl who disobeys and lies to her parents and flouts their moral code. (She also incidently advocated for installing spyware on her family computer to spy on her kids’ online activities). My response was astonishment that a movie showing a strong independent and pretty-morally centered young woman would be viewed so negatively.

It’s just one example of my experience that people who are uncomfortable reading about/watching movies about teenage sexual or chemical experimentation are also uncomfortable with teenagers.

Emily

“Pretending that teens aren’t people with as wide a range of desires and aspirations as any adult is dishonest.”

Thank you! We’re treated like children and expected, in opposite moments, expected to act like an adult, and a child with no knowledge of the world as it is.

My best friend and I both have divorced parents. My mother barely gets out of bed when i wake her, and Maria’s gotta take care of her younger sister. We both have moments where we forget, because we’re expected to be responsible adults, that we’re only 15. It’s ridiculous to expect that we as teens don’t know what the world is like, merely because we’re not adults.

i get what you mean about the swearing. there was this kid who sat behind me in german class and he said a cuss word every other word. i got really annoting. and all of my friends say cuss words on a dialy basis.
if it is a book about tenns it needs to have things in it that teens say and do. you don’t want a teen book where the characters say “oh, how are you my dear old chum.” or “oh, my!i am so weary!” and stuff like that that that tenns don’t say! i am a teen so i know!!

Oh, one more comment I forgot to make. With regard to the comment about the Higher Power of Lucky…

That whole hoopla about librarians threatening to ban the book because it included the word scrotum was somewhat not so much based in reality.

The original article claimed that the book was being banned or that librarians were threatening to ban it because of the use of the word scrotum. That is not accurate.

The author based her story on an online discussion of a handful of media specialists regarding whether the book should be recommended for use in the classroom. Specifically, one librarian wrote something like “I’m not sure I’d recommend it be read out loud to one of the 4th grade classes.” But all of the librarians discussing it already had it in their collections.

In following up on the story, an AP writer discovered that no one was actually advocating for banning or actually banning the book. In fact, the librarians he contacted from the same online discussion list all had it in their collections.

Now, I am not advocating for (or supporting) that the word was even a concern - it is the anatomically correct word, would they have preferred a slang term? - or that educators should refrain from using the book because of it, etc…

What I am saying is that no one was discussing banning the book until after the article said it was being banned, and I am not actually aware that anyone ever really banned it.

There certainly was controversy after the article was printed, but the article’s original controversy was not based in reality. It’s a shame the New York Times never printed a correction to that ridiculous story.

You can read a little more here, although maybe out of deference to the Times it doesn’t clear up all the exaggerations and ridiculousness:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/contentbe/EPIC_shim.php?story=248469

Emily

I totally agree with you. It is so aggravating to listen to people who seem to think teenagers lives are these happy times filled with no care in the world. So why would they want to read such books?

…

Yeah, sure. I admittedly am not a huge fan of Valiant. But not for the reason given by adults. I love both Tithe and Ironside very much and this comes from the gritty realism. Holly writes so vividly and I love that. But I know some people who would be shocked at the amount of swearing and drinking in it. I think they keep their heads in a whole in the ground too much. Her stories to me are some of the most real I have read. I feel so much like I’m actually there.

I’m not a big fan of swearing, but I’m also not so naive to think that teens don’t cuss. And I think sometimes adults/parents don’t want to think that their kids do. They seriously need to get over themselves and pay attention.

“Why did you have to put x into your book?” is a question that almost all of us seem to hear at one time or another.

It drives me nuts.

It drives me nuts, too, especially because no one ever asks this about an adult book. I started off writing for adults, and it was only when I switched to writing for kids that all the “should yous” and “why did yous” started showing up.

It especially drives me nuts because a sixteen year old really isn’t a child. They’re not that different from an eighteen year old, all told. But there’s this notion that if you’re even a year or two under eighteen, you need to be protected from everything. It makes no logical sense.

(In, say, books for seven year olds, the issue is maybe a little more complicated, though even there, not as much more complicated as some folks seem to think. Seven year olds live in the wide world too, after all, but that’s a whole other issue.)

Well, just so people know.
I love both Valiant and Looking For Alaska. Think they’re both great books, and have copies of both of them in my bedroom.

I think it (Valiant) has a lot to do with the fact that people are most comfortable with predictable stories. A sequel should pick up where the previous one left off. What she did was innovative and slightly experimental. It was risky, and she reaped the benefits and the damages there.

I liked the story, though I didn’t understand why it was loosely titled a sequel until I got to the end. I think a lot of people were upset they didn’t see Roiben and Kaye immediately, and intimately. The new characters still had a remarkable depth to them, and I loved her solution to the iron problem.

There’s some interesting research in linguistics and psychology showing that as people age they actually tend to speak more about the future, and more positively in general (they use more ‘good’ emotion words like ‘happy’ and ‘excited’ and fewer negative emotion words like ’sad’ or ‘tired’). The stereotype that the young are full of hope while the elderly bear more than their share of despair isn’t bourne out.

Which makes sense, if you look past the stereotypes. The older we get, the better able we are to think about the long term, to realize that the things we might have thought, as teens, would break us, are in fact survivable (in many cases because those things have come to pass, and we’ve survived). We know ourselves, so we know how far to push ourselves, what we need in order to recover, how to replenish our resources. Adults often have more obligations - mortgages, family, career - but with those obligations also comes power and control that teens and children don’t have.

When we’re younger, we’re still figuring out how the world works, and how we work within it. We push ourselves too far and break. Far more people have control and influence over us, and sometimes that influence is abused. Everything is more immediate. I know when I was in grade school a week felt like FOREVER. In high school six months felt like a very long time. In college it was a year. Now a year feels like nothing. I feel like the younger one is, the more space tragedy and pain can take up. All the habits and adjustments that let people weather hard times are still being built, and often smashed, when we’re young.

I think it’s a travesty that people don’t want kids reading ‘edgy’ literature. And *swears*? Jesus, I went to a good grade school, and I still knew every swear word in the book by fifth grade. Are people aware of how young some people are when they lose their virginity these days? Even those seeking to reverse that trend need to admit that limiting books with sexual activity in them is not what they should be spending their time on - books are just easy targets, ways for people to feel like they’re accomplishing something. I was a dark kid - if I’d had to survive on empty Mary Sunshine pablum I would have quit reading. Seeing things from the world around me in the books I read helped me come to grips with them, to think about what they were in relation to me. Without that, I would have been much worse off.

From a 14 yr old whose father won’t let her read Looking for Alaska until she’s 16 (and possibly older) and thought that Valiant went “a bit too far” (actually, it rocked)- Justine, I freaking love you.

Emily-

I amy have used the term ‘ban’ a little too losely. And I didn’t mean the librarians were trying to ‘ban’ it, more like certain people who have way too much time on their hands and rather than do anything productive, like, say, actually read one of these ‘controversial’ books they would rather complain about it without really knowing what the book is about.

And thank you for then link, I didn’t know about that one.

I also loved Valiant. My latest theory is that adults want to think that it’s the books, movies, TV and bad companions that give kids dark, edgy ideas because then they (the adults) could control teenagers’ behavior by controlling what and whom they see. Wrong! Newsflash: the kids can’t be controlled and as you so rightly point out, Justine, unfortunately many of them have survived situations as horrendous as any problem novel. When I heard that Looking for Alaska was being considered pornographic, I thought “Well, then, we need a lot more pornography out there.”

Yeah, I would have to say that my biggest complaint about Valiant was that I was expecting a direct sequel to Tithe and didn’t get it. But Ironside makes it all better, so YAY!!!

It really seems like sometimes adults don’t understand teenagers at all. They seem to have forgotten the years before they were 20 completely. I’m 21, and yes, that’s an adult…but I LOVE YA. In fact, when I’m shopping for books, that’s directly what I go for. No one would ever find me in the adult sci-fi or fantasy…just because I don’t think they’re as well-written as YA. YA authors are forced to write at a higher standard because teenagers are just pickier, I think. And thank goodness for that. Then I wouldn’t have anything to read otherwise.

[…] author Justine Larbalestier posted a lovely rant on her blog called Cranky about what it’s like to be a YA author whose books have something in them that one person or […]

Thank you so much for posting this, Justine! You are saying everything I think when I see lists of banned books. I was looking at a poster the other day of books that had been censored, and Mark Twain was on it for goodness sakes! There were books on that poster that dealt with difficult and sometimes mature issues, but that is not a good reason for censorship. And when you read some of the stuff that’s out there not being censored and then look at stuff that is, I wonder where the logic is at all. The poster said ‘Censorship is Blindness’. I could not agree more.
Everyone else has already said what I’d be saying in my second paragraph!