March Ends
Last day.My challenge ends.No more poems for now. AsSpring appears, we hope for times ofLight and warmth, long walks, cheer, good friends to shareOur memories of winter andOur plans for future life.We welcome you,Last day.
Copyright 2008 by Marlys Marshall Styne
Susan Breen's novel The Fiction Class (Plume, 2008) is a book that kept my attention from beginning to end. This book interweaves the challenges of writing and teaching writing with the challenges of life itself.
Arabella Hicks, named for the heroine of her mother's favorite romance novel, balances copy editing jobs and weekly visits to her argumentative, hostile mother in a nursing home with teaching fiction writing to a varied adult ed class.
Arabella is 38, single, isolated, unsure of herself, and still grieving for her father, who died after many depressing years in a wheelchair as the result of Multiple Schlerosis. Her mother has advanced Parkinson's Disease.
A further depressing fact is Arabella's inability to conclude the novel she's been working on for seven years, Courting Disaster.
Her Wednesdays form a pattern: teach the class, then visit her mother, Vera Hicks, bringing coveted fast food that may or may not be appreciated. Vera's condition and mood swings are impossible to predict, so Arabella approaches the visits with dread.
Like many writing teachers, Arabella seems to rely on her students' written work to get to know them. Ironically, when her talk about the class inspires Vera to write a story of her own, Arabella learns about her mother as well.
The newly-awakened Arabella learns, in a sense, to believe in miracles as she finally begins to understand her students and her mother and to open her heart to love. and as that happens, she can begin a new novel.
The connections between real life and fiction have always fascinated me. My experiences as a reader, writer, teacher and visitor of my own mother in a nursing home make The Fiction Class ring amazingly true to me. The book also supports my belief in the power of writing for all, something that Arabella and Vera and most of the writing class students seem to discover as well.
Postscript, 3/22: Author Susan Breen has an interesting web site. Visit to find out more about her, and enter her writing exercise contest to win a free copy of The Fiction Class.
http://www.susanjbreen.com/writingexercises.htm
Copyright 2008 by Marlys Marshall Styne
Seductive Candy
Candy:
Tempting. Too good.
Chocolate, caramel,
Peanut butter, almond, raisin.
Bane of teeth, producer of fat, best friend.
How convenient to buy it,
Calling me from each shelf.
Must resist it,
Candy.
Copyright 2008 by Marlys Marshall Styne.
This sounds like a day of celebration for stodgy old English profs like me, but--not really. I approach so-called Grammar Gurus with caution. I've come to realize that too much emphasis on grammatical correctness can stifle writing efforts completely. I favor a more relaxed, common-sense approach.
According to Nathan Bierma in his article "Don't get carried away on National Grammar Day" in the February 26 Chicago Tribune, the "policewoman" behind the sponsoring group, SPOGG, or the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, is Martha Brockenbrough of Microsoft's Encarta web site (http://www.encarta.msn.com/). She writes a column there entitled "Grumpy Matha's Guide to Grammar and Usage."
Like almost everyone, I laugh at extreme examples of poor writing. Here's one from Courtney Love's blog, as quoted by Brockenbrough:
"ive been nbot working the tightest program and been multi tasking and managing time horribly- so i was on the phone and i said i wanted pretty short bangs- not NO bangs and she cut them when i was on the phone with one of these whakcjob banks that heres some trust and some joint bogus account and some insane mortage in- these f***s for years and years and years=- in anycase anyone know exactly how many records Nirvana has sold all in worldwide since Nirvana started?"
"Grumpy Martha" provides a translation, but I'll let you look it up or do the translating yourself. 'Nuf said. Nobody should write like that. If Love's fans think that's adequate writing, I'm glad I belong to an older generation. Still, it's possible for grammatical criticism to go too far. Martha even takes Elvis to task for singing "I'm all shook up" rather than "I'm all shaken up." It just wouldn't be the same.
Nathan Bierma goes on to quote Mignon Fogarty, whom he describes as "a more level-headed grammatical authority" known as Grammar Girl (http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/) . Fogarty hopes that "participants [in National Grammar Day will] focus on spreading the word about the style points and grammar myths that many people latch on to as truth. For example . . . it's OK to split infinitives, and sometimes it's acceptable--even preferable--to end a sentence with a preposition. It's shocking, but true!"
National Grammar Day is promoted as a chance to flag any violation of standard English usage in any situation, to write notes to storekeepers about misused apostrophes in signs and to set errant newspaper writers straight with "friendly" emails. However, I agree with Mr. Bierma that "Such corrections are seldom friendly, welcome or necessary. They are usually self-righteous, irritating and misinformed."
If you note some personal conflict here, you're right. I believe in good, correct writing, but I also believe in honest self expression. Let's hope that the two can coexist. Let's just be a bit careful!
Copyright 2008 by Marlys Marshall Styne
Like most people with an Internet presence, I Googled my own name recently. There are certainly a lot of references to me, many of them very minor. It's an interesting exercise, however.
This time, I found a new review of my book Seniorwriting on a senior site I've been aware of, but not visited very often. I was reminded that this site is worth checking out. You can find the review of my book (with a mention of Reinventing Myself as well) at
http://www.septemberuniversity.org/booksaging.html. Take time to examine the rest of the site as well.
The reviewer mentions the relatively brief length of my books. I'm happy to say that he did not condemn that quality: instead, he wrote, "Ironically short books are much harder to write than long ones and Seniorwriting contains all of the elements you need to begin writing." I guess it's not bad to be a woman of few words!
Copyright 2008 by Marlys Marshall Styne
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