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My Favorite Misunderstood, Misused, and Abused Words

1/5/2016

Every day, I start out my morning with an exercise workout video, part of a series put out by a very popular weight loss and fitness program. The bouncy, enthusiastic instructor is, as one would expect, very obviously fit, perky, and glowing with health (notice my cunning use of the Oxford comma there), and looks and sounds like your average American girl-next-door. But every time I play one of the workouts, she makes me cringe. It's not just the unconscious sexism in the way she sometimes chides the men for using "girl weights" or having "perfect little ballerina arms", both of which intended insults wring hoots of derision and laughter from everyone else in the room, including the women. It's also the way she barks instructions such as, "We're going to lay down on our backs" and "Raise up on your toes".
Okay, I, too, am a victim of the public school education system in America today. I regularly cringe when reading through some of my older works and finding misunderstood, misused, or abused words, the correct use of which I was sadly ignorant at the time. But I keep trying to improve, working toward winnowing down the list of errors I'm likely to make every time I write. Like an ex-smoker or a reformed alcoholic encountering someone who still imbibes, I twitch when I find easily avoided mistakes in manuscripts I'm editing or critiquing. So I've made a list of some of the most common:
All right/already: It's become popular to use "alright" in recent years, but there is no such word. It's supposed to be two words: "All" and "Right", which, when used together, means that all is well or correct. It's short for "All is right with the world."
"Already" on the other hand, is a perfectly valid boiled-down contraction for "All is in readiness" or "all is ready."
Aught vs. Ought: "Aught" is used more often in historical and fantasy writing these days, but it's still a perfectly good word that means, "a quantity of no importance." For instance, when that demure heroine of yours states, "Aught may be done to mend matters, sir; your apology is useless."
"Ought" on the other hand, is still widely in use, and expresses a duty or a necessary action: "You ought to apologize to her." "I ought to get the butter out to soften."
A while vs. awhile: I'm one of those Neanderthals that insist that "awhile" is not a word. After all, you can say, "A long while later…" or "After a little while…" but you can't say "a little awhile later…" There are those who disagree, and insist that "awhile" can be used to indicate a short period of time. But I still say "awhile" is not a word. Use "a while."
Farther vs. Further: Contrary to popular belief, farther and further are not really interchangeable. I know; I was surprised to find that out myself when an editor nailed me for it years ago. Farther refers to matters of distance: "The bottom of the ravine was farther than he'd imagined; he gulped and backed away from the edge." "I've gone farther down this road than I intended."
Further refers to a matter of degree. "Further action is necessary to repair the damage."
All right, sometimes they can indeed be used interchangeably, such as when your demure heroine warns your hero, "Go no further", which can refer to both distance and degree at once. But after all, you wouldn't have someone say, "That's fur enough" unless they were speaking in dialect, even if they are referring to a matter of degree rather than distance.
Lie/Lay/Laid/Lain: During one of my period bouts of insomnia, I once entertained myself by coming up with a mnemonic rhyme for the correct usage:
The insomniac gave a long sigh through his nose.
"If I lie down now I may sleep, I suppose."
He lay on his bed for a time, reading prose,
laid his head on the pillow in attempted repose.
When he'd lain there an hour, he gave up and rose.
Hey, at 4:30am, it was funny. Anyway, it does not address the present tense use of "lay" referring to an object: "Lay the fork on the table." But feel free to steal it if it works for you.
That vs. Which: The full explanation for this is kind of long and complicated, but the correct usage is not. If removing words would change the meaning of the sentence, use "that." If not, use "which". Here are two examples:

Horses that are healthy and well-kept smell wonderful.
Horses, which can easily weigh 1200 lbs, are too large to sit in your lap.

Basically, using "which" implies that whatever follows is additional information and can be left off without changing the meaning of the sentence. There should be commas bracketing said additional information. Use "that" when whatever follows is necessary to the sentence.
I recommend reading the fuller, far more erudite explanations offered at the Writers Digest site: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/which-vs-that
Or at Grammar Girl: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/which-versus-that-0?page=all.
I could go on. But why? The point is: English is a wonderful language, filled with ways to trip yourself up. We use this wonderful, rich, endlessly varied tool to communicate, to tell stories, to enrich the lives of ourselves and others. So, why not try to use it as correctly as possible? If you find yourself hesitating or uncertain about how to use a word, hey—look it up! These days, it takes virtually no effort to look up something on the internet, and wonderful sites with examples, explanations, and everything else you need, are everywhere. Happy writing!

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Paris

11/17/2015

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Below is a re-post of something I originally put on my FaceBook page the day after the Isis attacks in Paris. Like everyone else, I watched the news unfold with shock and horror. But not, alas, disbelief. I've been expecting something like that to happen. For some reason, seeing it happen in Paris, the City of Light, hit me especially hard.

The next day, I watched my friends change their profile pictures to show solidarity and sympathy with the French. I thought long and hard about doing the same. After a while, I decided I just couldn't. So I posted the little essay below to explain that my refusal was not due to any lack of sympathy or a rejection of any sign of compassion. I've made a few small edits, because I'm a writer and can't stop doing that...

11/14/15: I respect those of you who have made the choice to post the French flag in a gesture of solidarity in the wake of the Paris attacks. I am not putting the French Flag over my profile picture for several reasons. First off, there are just too many atrocities being committed by numerous Islamic terror groups all over the world, all equally horrible and tragic. These days, I'd have to be changing my profile picture every other day. How can I pick just one as the most horrible? I love France and have many warm memories of the people I met there (even a few in Paris, where I'd been warned time and again how dreadful they were to Americans). So, yeah, I feel the attacks there more strongly, since I have a personal connection.

But the murder of 150 Kenyan University students made me want to hurl. So did the rape and kidnapping of 200 African schoolgirls. I remember clapping my hands over my mouth to stifle a scream when I saw the news about that brave, doomed Jordanian pilot caged and burned alive. The rape and slaughter of children and wholesale murder of Christian communities throughout the Middle East wakens murderous impulses in me. I didn't change my profile picture for any of them, so not going to now, much as I grieve for Paris.

I think so many of us are reacting more strongly to the Paris attacks because we have, on some level, come to sort of expect the ongoing mutual slaughter and atrocities in Third World countries; we cringe, shake our heads, and say to ourselves, "How can people live like that? Why won't they stop?" This time, it happened in an advanced, ancient, and supposedly enlightened European capital, one many of us have visited or lived in. That somehow makes it more personal, brings it home.

There are many reasons for the current rise in Islamic extremism and the terrorist movements it spawns. Some of it goes back nearly to before recorded history, to cultural paradigms that can't be easily changed, or maybe changed at all. Some of it is a direct response to US and other foreign governments' intervention in the Middle East. Some of it is due to the darker side of human nature. Regardless, it's not going to stop. It will, in fact, get worse before it gets better. And sharing a flag on FaceBook is not going to change that.

I pray something does. And soon.

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Restart: The Price of Doing business

10/5/2015

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Much as I personally prefer good old fashioned print books made out of real paper and so forth, I've had a few of my books and several short stories available on Smashwords (www.smashwords.com) and in Kindle format at Amazon for some time now. For those who have never used it, Smashwords is a retailer that converts your books to almost every conceivable e-book format so people who didn't jump on the Kindle bandwagon can download and read your stuff.
    Sales have been modest; since I suck at marketing and don't do a lot of it, I really didn't expect anything else. But after receiving several nagging notes from readers asking when my entire Triads of Tir na n'Og series was going to be available for Nook (I'd only put the first book, Ironwolfe, up), I finally decided I needed to finish uploading the rest of the series. It seemed like a good opportunity to do another long-overdue marketing push anyway.
   Then friends of mine (Michael "Tinker" Pearce and his lovely and gregarious wife, Linda) who are also authors told me about another publishing platform called Draft2Digital. They found it much more user-friendly for authors and swore their sales had risen almost immediately after they'd gone ahead and uploaded a couple of their books. (If you want a really fun read, try their Dwarven Rifleman series: michaeltinkerpearce.com). So I decided to give it a try as well.
    After going through all the the Smashwords and Draft2Digital pages, I couldn't find anything that actually said I had to use either one or the other but not both. So I went ahead, made a few minor changes between the editions, and uploaded the series onto both. Draft2Digital does not run a store; it sells to other e-book retailers. Smashwords sells books directly to readers, but it also distributes to most of the same retailers as Draft2Digital.
    Sure enough, Draft2Digital is much, much easier to use for the authors. Sales reports are also obviously displayed and pretty much readable by anyone with more than a third-grade education. It's newer and not as well-known as Smashwords, but hopefully my books will fare well through them. I plan to wait and see how things go, then unpublish from whichever platform is doing the fewest sales.
    Although Smashwords has been pretty good to me, I'm rather hoping it loses this little competition. This is based solely on the differences in the way the two platforms offer their sales reports.
I am a reasonably well-educated person, but I confess I've had ongoing issues with the comprehensibility of the reports I can download--sometimes only with extreme difficulty–from Amazon and Smashwords. In the first place, computers and I are not natural allies. Yes, I've had to use them almost exclusively for work for the past 20 years or so, but it's never been a happy partnership. They hate me, and I remain uncomfortable with them. This is no joke; at my last job, my co-workers used to laugh at my seemingly magical ability to crash almost any program I worked in. My very touch could bring about the "blue screen of death" faster than anyone's. I'd like to think this has more to do with my personal electrical/magnetic output (we are all living batteries, after all), which also stops almost any watch I wear for any length of time, than with my intelligence or general competence. On the other hand, that may just be a comforting lie I tell myself. Dealing with computers for more than the most standard tasks puts a knot in my stomach. Nothing can make me feel as if my I.Q. begins with a decimal point faster.
    Amazon and Smashwords were designed by people to whom computers are extensions of their own psyches. I'm sure to them and others like them, which seems to be most of the rest of the world (and certainly almost everyone younger than I am), the reports are clear, efficient, and easy to use. Not so much when I go to look at them or download the specific time periods I want.
    Then there are the numbers themselves. While I understand about lending libraries and free downloads and all those special circumstances that change the prices various consumers or outlets pay for each book, how on earth do I get a royalty of $2.37 on one sale and $.24 on another of the same book? And no royalties at all on what the same charts insist is another dozen sales? Deciphering all those often highly misleading headings and numbers is sometimes a horrendous chore that gives me a headache and makes me too often skip what I should dutifully work out to the last detail. Which leaves me to do the whole year in one fell swoop at tax time, making it all an even more horrendous chore.
All part of the price of doing business. But this particular re-start is going to have to signal a change in the way I do it. If I'm going to continue to run this business, I have to start treating it seriously as a business. And that means tackling my arch-nemesis.
*sigh*. Okay, Metzger, welcome to the computer age. Now sit up and quit gibbering.

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Re-Awakening the Voices

8/14/2015

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I finished my last book more than a month ago, and yet I still haven't started the next.

I've gone reading through story ideas, fragments I started and abandoned ages ago, trying to figure out what I want to do next. The Operation Magic Carpet book has so consumed me for so long that now I feel like I've just come out of a box and am standing around blinking in the light, trying to make sense of what I see around me. I'm reaching inside and listening for the voices that used to be there whispering stories at me.

So far…they're staying mute. It has me a little worried.

For years, while I wrote the Triads of Tir na n'Og novels, other stories were clamoring inside to get my attention, crying to get out, hit the page, come to life. I got used to shutting them out, ignoring them, however reluctantly. I couldn't afford to get sidetracked. I was afraid if I did, I'd never finish what I was working on.

It takes me an average of two years, more or less, to write a book. It's not just that I'm a slow writer. Until recently I also had a day job and, on top of that, I perform in, write for, and help run a show troupe, a small business my husband started more than twenty years ago with a heavy performance schedule between May and October. That doesn't leave me a lot of writing time.

Nevertheless, every once in a while over the years, I'd try to set aside whatever Triad book I was on and write something else, just to keep things fresh, do something different. To prove to myself that I could write something else. After all, between one thing and another, it took almost fifteen years to write and publish the entire Triads of Tir na n'Og series. That's including a second, re-written edition of The Triads, which was traditionally published as Book One in its first edition. That's a very long time to stay with one set of characters and one story, however convoluted.

But trying to change horses in midstream almost never worked; I'd start a different book, get a few chapters in, and find I absolutely could not continue until I'd gone back and finished the current Triad book. And then that one would always dovetail into the next, and so on…. There were times when I thought I'd never reach the end; it was like serving time in my own personal purgatory.

Don't get me wrong: I'm proud of those books; they're damned fine reads, and they've done well for me. But writing them over so many years forced me to put aside nearly every other story that struggled to be born during that time. I had to silence every creative voice vying for my attention unless it was whispering to me about the characters and situations from the Triad books.

And then, when those were at last behind me, I turned all my writing attention to working on the Operation Magic Carpet book. Except for a couple of short stories, nothing else was even lurking in my peripheral vision, so to speak.

Well, now that's behind me too, and at last I can let all those stories that have been waiting all these years out to play. Except…where did they go?

Someone once said that every writer has only so many books in them. I've always scoffed at that. Now I'm really hoping it's not true. That silencing those voices all these years hasn't killed them. That they'll come out and whisper to me again.

I'll listen this time, kids. I promise.

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When to stick a fork in it.

7/8/2015

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When I started my current my non-fiction project (working title: On Wings of Eagles: Operation Magic Carpet), I set specific goals for myself. One of these was to have my first draft off to my first readers by 5/15/15, have their comments back by 6/15/15, and, using their comments, have my second draft ready to go by 7/1/15.

Only one of my first readers made that deadline, but another came pretty close. The other three…well, I have started getting comments drizzling back from one of them. The other two are hit-or-miss. One has never done this before and didn't understand the whole "first-draft-second-draft-deadlines" concept. The last, well, love him dearly, but I may never hear from him again. But I was sort of half-way expecting that.

But I can't blame the fact that I'm still working on it on my first readers. Truth is, I'm having trouble letting this puppy go. For one thing, I'm second-guessing myself. Did I actually get everything right? What if I got this part wrong? What if I overlooked something, forgot something, made a major error? What if I did a disservice to these people?

Besides that, the work has been grueling, but fascinating and rewarding. I've had the almost unique experience (in my life anyway) of waking up in the morning and actually looking forward to going to work every day. I've learned a lot. It's been – dare I say it – fun.

Part of this is just separation anxiety; empty nest syndrome. I've gone through some version of it with every book I've ever written. Wait; did I do this part right? I should have had hero do this on this page instead of back here. Oh, this would be so much better if so-and-so did this instead of that… I can spend the rest of my life writing and re-writing my stories. I've learned to grit my teeth and send them away, but it's always hard.

And mostly…I'm not ready to leave this world, this time, these people. They're almost all dead and have been for years, but they jump out of the notes at me, shout from log books and faded documents, laugh from letters. Their voices, grumbling out of old and very poor recordings, resound in my head, as familiar to me as the friends and family I deal with almost every day. They sound so alive, so vital, so real. How can they be gone?

But all good things, they say. It's time. I must move on. There are other stories to tell, and this one has to start earning its way.

On the other hand, there really is one thing I absolutely have to fix before it goes out…

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When is a Tale not a Tale? Walking Off the Beaten Path

5/22/2015

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So, after spending the past twenty years or so writing however-many fiction novels and short stories, I girded my loins and tackled a non-fiction project that has been eating at me for the past 8 years. Even as I write this, the first draft is in the hands of my "first readers" who have offered to very kindly donate their time and attention to give me their impressions of my efforts. I'm planning on having the final draft ready for the mail by July 1st.

It's been enormously satisfying and challenging in many ways, and I've learned a tremendous amount. But I'm still somewhat at sea on a few of the differences between writing fiction and writing non-fiction. For instance:

1.     How do you put the reader into the characters' heads? It's so easy to write dialog, show a character's thoughts, the small, telling details that let readers know what they (the characters) are thinking/feeling when you can make it all up. When you can't make it up? Sure, I can infer all kinds of things from letters and other documents, but people didn't used to display their innermost feelings before the world the way they do these days. How the heck do you really know what those people thought/felt/experienced when there's no one you can ask?

2.     Are you ever allowed to "fudge" where you don't have a direct or definitive answer? I tried it once or twice, and discovered that an inner alarm started going off if I strayed too far from the path of what I could document in some manner. It got so I had to go back and take out all my "what if" meanderings. And yet, there were huge gaps in the narrative where no one at the time had thought to comment or record ANYTHING. I had to fill in those moments. When you're making up stories, you never think of yourself as lying. When you're writing about real history, that suddenly puts a huge damper on your creativity. At least, it did mine.

3.     In this era of excessive "political correctness" and hyper "offensensitivity" (yes, a made-up word, but one I love. Thank you, Berkeley Breathed), do you need to modify real history to avoid offense? What if a certain organization or group of people really were jackasses? What about heirs? I could have been a lot rougher on some historical figures than I was; I found myself back-peddling on some issues because they might still have living relatives. But wait; they actually did do those things, say those things…when does veracity trump sensitivity?

4.     When you have two accounts that contradict one another, and can't find sufficient evidence to give a clear "win" to either, how do you choose? Or, what do you say about it?

5.     When do you stop researching and just write the story? I'm realizing now that I may have to do another entire review of all my notes, all the tapes, all the interviews, the books, etc., before tackling my re-writes for the 2nd draft. It intimidates the hell out of me. But I know full well there were things I overlooked, answers I found and lost but that I might find again on yet another pass, if I wait long enough to let my memory fade a bit. But OMG, the work involved. Arrgh.

I've also come to the conclusion that Laura Hillenbrand is a goddess. There's no other explanation. I've studied "Seabiscuit" and "Unbroken" page by page, trying to figure out how she does what she does. I've used her as my "high water" mark, knowing I'll never reach it but just to have something to aim for.

Well, we'll see how this all plays out; wish me luck.

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The Right Word, the Right Way

3/27/2015

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Every year, I volunteer to do critiques for the Writers' Workshops at Norwescon. It's a way to keep in touch with my fellow Fairwood Writers, since I stopped attending meetings several years ago, and of "giving back" to the writing community. After all, that's how I started out a couple of decades ago: submitting to the writers' workshops at science fiction conventions and taking my lumps. It's also a good learning experience for me, a great "refresher", and it gives me a glimpse of what's new in the writing world, where tastes and trends are going. Best of all, I often get to meet new and upcoming talents. It's a win-win.

Over the years, the quality of the submissions has gone up considerably, and the level of professionalism with it. I've been delighted more than once to be among the first to discover new writers who have gone on to do great things.

This year, I printed out all my assigned submissions (I prefer to read hardcopy; I want my eyes to last as long as possible), and settled back the other evening after I'd finished writing for the day, looking forward to the possibility of finding another gem.

Yes, there were several happy surprises. But I also noticed something that I've been seeing more and more of in my free-lance editing work as well, that compels me to write this column.

The internet is wonderful. Since almost everyone writes on their computer these days, how hard is it to open your browser and pull up a dictionary or thesaurus? Try it. Aside from Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, you'll get half a dozen others. You can actually LOOK UP WORDS you don't use every day or are not familiar with, and see if you are using them correctly. You can even find word usage sites. Honest! You can type into your search engine a question like, "what's the difference between aught and ought?" and in seconds, several wonderful examples of correct usage, with explanations, will magically appear. Or, the one I most often see mis-used: "Lie, Lay, Laid, Lain". Just type that into your browser's search bar, and see what happens. Amazing!

Same thing with grammar and punctuation. If for some reason you don't have a copy of "Elements of Style" or "Eats, Shoots & Leaves," or my personal favorite, "Mother Miller's How to Write Good Book," sitting by your computer as you write (and if you don't, why don't you?), you can still send out a query like, "correct use of quotation marks" or "how do I punctuate dialog?" and BINGO, lots of sites with all the answers you need. My favorite is probably Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogerty's delightful site, which can be found at http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl, but there are many others.

I ran into two separate stories where the authors used the word "belied" in exactly the opposite way they obviously intended. Simply looking it up would have told them it means "to show to be false" or "to misrepresent", rather than to convey or betray some secret trait, which is how they used it. another author insisted on using apostrophes to convey plurals instead of possessives.

I know American public school educations are woefully inadequate these days. Kids graduate with almost no ability to construct a correct, coherent sentence. It's horrifying.

Look, I started off with a lot of the same bad habits and level of ignorance about my own language as anyone else, and I know I'll never achieve perfection; no one ever does. But because I deeply, passionately cared about the art, and about my stories and wanted them to be the very best they possibly could, I learned. I read books on sentence structure, character development, how to write dialog, how to set scenes, the proper use of punctuation, etc., etc. I considered it all part of learning my craft. I'm still learning. I still make mistakes sometimes, too.

Seeing writers who, again and again, mis-use words, make repeated, sloppy errors in grammar, punctuation, etc., who don't bother to properly format a story – in other words, who basically convey the unspoken feeling of, "eh, good enough" when they hand in a story -- make me question not just their skill, but their dedication.

The correct use of the written word (or spoken, for that matter) is essential for communication. Language is the gift of civilization. If you're going to try and make your living (or even make a successful hobby) of writing, language is the tool you use. Anyone who truly cares about their craft should take the time to learn the rules, and follow them. Even if you intend to break them, learn what they are first; otherwise, what you do looks like a mistake.

Care about the tools of your craft. They are all you have to work with.

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Jousting in Fiction

1/30/2015

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Back in 2013, Sue Bolich (S.A. Bolich, for those of you looking for a great read) asked me to contribute an article for her ongoing "Horses in Fiction" blog about jousting, and what a writer might need to know about it before tackling a jousting scene. I recently came across my original stab at it, as well as the one that she posted in June of 2013. (http://blog.sabolichbooks.com). It's a great site, and Sue does a fabulous job, but on re-reading my efforts, I found I liked the draft version better. So, below is the original article, slightly expanded because I don't have a word-length limit on my own site…

Supposed you're writing along on your historical or fantasy novel, and suddenly realize your hero/heroine is about to be involved in a joust. If you're not a horse person or have never done it yourself, how can you give your readers an authentic-tasting experience? How true-to-life is jousting in movies, TV, other novels? What glaring gaffs do you need to avoid?

Hopefully, I can help with that. I can't say I'm any kind of expert on the ancient and noble sport of jousting. Okay, yes, I spent about ten years jousting in a professional capacity, but strictly as a performer, not competitively. There's a good reason for that. I decided at an early age that I wanted to live, and I also decided that I'd prefer to live independent of wheelchairs and machines designed to force-feed me or keep me breathing. And I like my teeth.

So I'll skip the long, erudite overview of the various types of jousting popular in particular time periods or geographical areas. If you're curious, look it up. A short list of really excellent books on the subject is at the bottom of this post.

Despite Hollywood's legendary ineptitude concerning horses in general, a writer can actually pick up quite a bit about jousting from many films, though I advise against using them as an exclusive source of information. Such a wide variety of forms and equipment were in fashion at various times in various parts of the world that fantasy films that depict jousting have a better-than-even chance of getting at least something right. No one would refer to the Heath Ledger movie "A Knight's Tale" as historical by any means, but it did pretty well at depicting what jousting was all about and the frenzy it generated in the popular imagination. The mini-series version of "Game of Thrones" has a quite spectacular jousting scene, which includes the use of strategy and the death of one of the competitors, as well as a taste of some of the pageantry and spectacle that was very much a part of the actual sport. And the classic film "Ivanhoe" has a great formal duel starting with a joust between Bois-Guilbert and Ivanhoe, even with the obviously rubber weapons. As for fantasy novels, few go into sufficient nit-picking detail to display flaming gaffs. We won’t even mention those recent reality shows featuring jousting. They weren’t seriously trying to be authentic anyway.

Actually, it's misleading to say "jousting" and "authentic" in the same breath when discussing the sport on film and television. After all, it's all authentic, strictly speaking, so long as riders and horses are actually charging one another with lance and shield with occasionally unpredictable results, and not being replaced by a computer-generated special effect. It may not be "the way it was done", but it's certainly authentic. That kind of crazy is hard to fake.

But on to the subject of this post: how can you, a writer who is not him-or-herself a horse person (or at least has never jousted), write a convincing jousting scene?

First off, keep in mind that up until good ol’ Henry VIII’s time (Note: by then, the renaissance was passé everywhere else; England was pretty much the last bastion of jousting, and that's when it turned into the equivalent of Monster Truck rallies, with tank-like armor and so forth), winning at the joust did not really require size or physical strength. Skill, aim, speed, and superior horsemanship were far more important. There is plenty of documentation to prove that women did, in fact, sometimes participate, most often (though not always) disguised as men. Male jousters hated this, and protested it vociferously, but it did happen.

That being said, all things being equal, the heavier opponent has a better chance of staying in the saddle. That’s just physics. Let me say that again: ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL. That means, you have two superb riders on two equally fast horses of the same size and weight with lances of equal length and weight and equally well-aimed and controlled, and armor and shields (if you’re using shields) of equal protection and quality. Young Thomas the Miller is not going to be able to avenge his father by climbing onto his cart pony and charging against Sir Invincible in the lists. (And yes, I know, the barrier between jousters was originally rope, and called a "toil". The term “list” referred to the list of contestants, later to the overall competition, and only much, much later to the wooden barrier between opposing jousters. But these days, people get confused if you mention the word "toil," so I use the more well-known term.)

So, replace Young Thomas the Miller with Young Thomas the Squire, who actually knows how to ride and has received at least a few of the basics of "how it's done" by his liege or knight. A lot of the technique of jousting is dependent upon the equipment. If Young Thomas is wearing maille and a Great or Barrel helm, he is probably going to be jousting in one of the Frankish styles, which means using a lance and shield. Most of the other styles require some form of plate armor. Very possibly, he will be "free-jousting", which means without the use of a barrier between his horse and the opponent's.

If, on the other hand, he's in the equivalent of full gothic plate in the late medieval or early-to-mid-renaissance style, you're going to have a lot more variables to deal with. For one thing, instead of a spear or lance and shield, you'll have a "heavy" lance with a blunted tip or a coronal, possibly rigged to blow apart (if this is in a tournament, not a duel). Yes, surprise: knights sometimes cheated in order to win. And by the way, Young Thomas the Squire had better have a damned good reason for being there and using someone else's armor and horse, since it's doubtful a knight's squire would have the appropriate types of either.

And of course, as soon as I said that, I immediately thought of half-a-dozen exceptions. So let me add, all of the above presumes we're talking about a tournament competition. Knightly duels are a different kettle of fish altogether. Wow. Confused yet?

Okay, back to Young Thomas. What kind of weapons would he be using? Will he be following his five passes with some kind of foot combat? You can make the circumstances come out any way you like -- it's a fantasy, after all -- but they do have to make sense. If Young Thomas has plate armor, he doesn't need to carry a shield, but you might want him to for other reasons having to do with your story. No problem. It happened somewhere at some time.

Take it as a given that most knights were better riders than any of us will ever be, even in our most rose-tinted, self-deluded imaginings. They generally started younger, did it a lot more often, and their lives depended on it. If you're writing about a culture that corresponds to our medieval or renaissance eras, the same rules apply. Your hero/heroine has superb balance even in full armor and helm, can steer a horse with just weight shifts and simple leg aids, handle a lance and shield on a galloping horse without accidental mis-cues, and can, while fully armored, leap onto his or her charger from the ground without assistance.

Which brings me to one of my biggest problems with the way some films and writers handle jousting…KNIGHTS DIDN’T RIDE DRAFT HORSES. Draft horses as we know them today didn’t even exist. The average warhorse was about 14.3 hands, and a lot of them were smaller. A horse 15.2 hands -- average-sized by today’s standards -- was considered large. It was a big deal when the Spanish bred Andalusians that reached 16 hands in the late 1500 or early 1600’s. I originally wrote a long paragraph proving my point, but this post is already too long; if you're curious, I'll send it to you.

But what was true then is true now: unless your horse is a trained warhorse with actual jousting experience, the chances of being able to successfully get down the list are about 1 in 10. Most horses will turn and run when they see another horse charging at them. Younger horses will almost always yield to older ones. How do they know? They just do. It's a horse thing. But even those with the right mind and disposition for jousting require training and a great deal of practice before they can charge down the list at another horse and hold their ground.

I’ve had other jousters tell me that mares will always yield to a stallion. This, in my experience, is what may be politely referred to as "a load of crap." Which horse yields to which depends entirely upon the individual horse. Just as with race horses, jousting horses can learn how to out-bluff one another, and the tricks to make the other horses flinch or veer so their riders miss. Smaller horses learn when to brace themselves for impact against bigger horses. Faster horses learn when to pour on the speed and when to reserve it. Of the horses that become successful jousting horses, some get competitive about it; others are just doing their jobs and could care less; still others honestly love it and enjoy "playing the game."

Yes, I've heard the story about that big battle during the Crusades where the European knights were defeated because they rode stallions who went berserk when they went up against the Arabs' mares. I don't know how true it is, but if your stallion is sufficiently well-trained, he should ignore a mare, even one in heat, while under saddle. He has a job to do, and he knows it. Work now; play later. Mares are the same way (and there are mares who are just as difficult to handle when in heat as any stallion), though how much her hormones affect her work ethic and concentration is entirely dependent upon the individual.

I’ve jousted with "light" lance (a 10-to-12' hickory or oak pole with a rounded tip) and shield, and with just a "heavy" lance (false-tipped balsa or foam),as well as the massive, carved wooden lances that weigh 15 lbs or so which are used by some jousting troupes for competition jousting. All of these hit with a lot of impact, even the false-tipped ones, and armor doesn't keep you from feeling it, just from getting hurt. At least, that's the theory. I've had bruises, bloody lips, dislocated ribs, and concussions that told a different story. The horse's weight and speed add a LOT of "oomph" to a blow. Historically, death in the joust was not that unusual; broken necks and splinters through the eye slits happened all the time.

But what if you're writing a modern story with jousting, such as in a renfaire or something? In that case, anything goes. I have yet to see a joust troupe in the U.S. that is actually 100% historical, although there are some that try, and some that do a pretty good job of at least getting the flavor.

Because I’m a bit obsessed with horses (gee, can you tell?), I write jousting scenes with a heavy emphasis on the horses and how their performance affects the outcome. But, truthfully, a better approach would be to treat a jousting scene as you would any other action scene: remember that too much detail slows things down. Brevity, lots of active verbs, short sentences, and sketchy but telling details speed it up and add tension and excitement.

For an excellent overview of the development of medieval war horses, I recommend The Royal Horse of Europe by Lady Sylvia Loch and The Conquerors by Deb Bennett, PhD. For reference works that deal with jousting, you can't go wrong with The Medieval Warhorse From Byzantium to the Crusades by Ann Hyland, and, first and foremost: The Royal Book of Horsemanship, Jousting, and Knightly Combat, by Dom Duarte (the King of Portugal in 1438).

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To Dream the impossible dream?

1/16/2015

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This past Wednesday, I had been an hour at my job, the "day job" I've now held for 15 years, when my secondary boss called me into his office. My primary boss and someone from HR were already sitting there, and I knew instantly what was about to happen.

In this day and age, in this economy, I know that I am hardly unique in having been laid off; companies everywhere are "downsizing", fighting to stay afloat and doing whatever they have to do. I just fell into that lucky 10% margin.

Once I got past the shock, the initial rush of panic, the sense of loss and betrayal, I realized I'd actually just been given something I've fantasized about for years. The gift of time. If I had the courage to accept it.

My largest handicap as a writer has always been time. My job paid the majority of the bills, but we also run our own small business, a business we've run successfully for more than 20 years, now. It generates income, but not enough to live off of; it's largely a labor of love. As with every other business in this economy, especially small businesses, the last few years have been a struggle, and it seems like every year the struggle gets harder. Rise or fall, it takes up a fair chunk of time. When you run your own business, you don't work 8 to 5; you work when the work needs to be done, and you work until it's finished.

In the less-than-copious free time I squeeze in between juggling 2 jobs, my family, ordinary life maintenance tasks, and my social life (HA!), I write. In the past 20-odd years, I've finished 9 novels, dozens of short stories, 3 collections, started my own press 3 – no, 4 years ago now, published or re-published my works and put it out there for public consumption, and launched 2 websites related to same. I've been working on a non-fiction project of mine for several years, now. It is extremely research intensive and has been very slow going. I've had editors express interest in it several times over the years, and last year a publisher asked for a treatment, my summary, outline, chapters, etc. He wanted to see the entire manuscript when it was finished.

But it's still not finished.

I've sometimes wondered if it ever will be. Riding the bus to and from work, or lying awake at night staring at the ceiling, I go over and over the same question: how can I make more time to write? Will there ever come a time when I can just sit down, undisturbed, and work on what I want to work on, without being answerable to what seems like the entire rest of the universe? What do I have to do to get more time? Am I kidding myself, hanging onto my dream of writing full-time?

And suddenly, it's been handed to me. Or…has it?

On the one hand, my health insurance goes away, and considering it's now illegal to not have insurance, I will have to come up with it somehow. My salary paid a big chunk of our bills. Yes, we have savings, enough to live off of for a while, but that's for emergencies; in our line of work, retirement is not an option. We both plan to die in harness.

On the other hand, with my severance package, there's enough for me to spend the time finishing my book before I have to look for another job. Or…what if this is it, my big moment, my longed-for opportunity? What if I actually can live off my writing?

Do I take the chance? Do what I've always dreamed of? Take the leap and become a full-time writer and see if we can survive?

Naturally, the very next day, my former employer upped the ante by calling to tell me of a newly vacant full-time position in another department, and asking me if I wanted to apply for it. Same pay, no loss of seniority, all my benefits back as they were.

The clock is ticking. And I have no idea what I'm going to choose. At my age, finding a job is not as easy as it was 20 years ago. Do I pull the Disney routine and go after my dream, or make the safe, sane, and solid choice?

What's the difference between "courageous" and "idiotic"?

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Why I changed my tune about beta readers

12/19/2014

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One of the quiet pleasures my husband and I enjoy is "story time." We pick out a book and I read it aloud. We usually only get through a chapter or two a night, stopping before my voice gives out. Dameon is a great audience, and I get to be an actor again for a while, calling up skills I don't use much since I quit the stage.

In virtually every book I read, I find typos and other editorial errors that raise my hackles or stop me cold. "How could this happen in a professionally edited book?" I fume. Pure carelessness. Sloppy. It shouldn't be tolerated. Humph, and all that.

Then a few months ago, Dameon's book of choice was The Triads, the original first book of my Triads of Tir na n'Og series (it's now the second, since I wrote Ironwolfe, but it was #1 for its original release). Once we finished that, we just kept going and read through The Red Triad, The Green Triad, The Blue Triad, The Ironlords, and The Gate, one after another. It's been long enough that I'd actually forgotten some of the earlier books, and the details on the later ones were getting comfortably blurry.

Overall, I'm still proud of them. They're darned good reads, even with some of the shortcuts I ended up taking and finding things I'd change now if I could. But one thing I really didn't enjoy at all.

I am a really good editor. Ask anyone I've done it for. But you'd never know it by reading some of my own work. As Robin used to say, "Holy Scrabble, Batman!" How the blue-bloody-hell did that many typos get by me?

It is not the fault of my Alpha readers. The mistakes all happened on parts I re-wrote or changed later. I've heard other writers admit they can't find the mistakes in their own work. And I know it's often true of me, as well; I read what is in my head instead of what is on the page. I see what I expect to see, not necessarily what is actually there, staring me in the face in black and white. I was sure that this time, however, I'd gone through every sentence with a fine-toothed comb, over and over again. I was convinced that I, with my so-superior editing ability, had caught what was there to catch.

Most of the errors, however, happened in the later books. The ones written after I no longer had my core group of Beta readers, and decided against finding replacements in the interest of saving time. I have most definitely been humbled.

One of the joys of being an indie publisher is that when I find a problem, I can fix it. But that there were that many problems definitely makes it a mixed blessing. I will be re-loading the new, cleaner versions as soon as possible, and arguing the nice people at KDP into re-loading the new text into my e-books. I understand there is a way to let my e-readers get the new, improved text free of charge. I'll be looking into that. It doesn't help all the folks who bought the trade paper versions, though.

So, the lesson I've learned: Beta readers are not a luxury, but an essential part of the writing and publishing process, especially for indie authors. Alpha readers are there to help with story issues, the "big picture" items. Your Beta readers are there to make sure your work is ready to hit the ground running. That what you put out there is not only the best story it can be, but as clean and polished as anything that comes out of a corporate press.

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My Favorite Misunderstood, Misused, and Abused Words

Paris

Restart: The Price of Doing business

Re-Awakening the Voices

When to stick a fork in it.

When is a Tale not a Tale? Walking Off the Beaten Path

The Right Word, the Right Way

Jousting in Fiction

To Dream the impossible dream?

Why I changed my tune about beta readers

Darragh:

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