My Writings. My Thoughts.

Reading Out Loud

// December 6th, 2010 // Comments Off // Blog, Instructive, Literature, Poetry, Prose

In school, one of the things that my professors were always quick to stress was the practice of reading your own work out loud.  It seems like such a strange concept, doesn’t it?  Besides the risk of sounding like an idiot, reading out loud seems to make about as much sense as reading in your head, right?  Do you ever wonder why sometimes, you’ll write something and then give it to a peer to read (this is assuming you are aware that peer review is always a step in healthy writing) and they have no idea what you’re saying during a given part?  It’s because our inside voices (the ones we think with) are essentially the same ones we write with.  Sometimes, I think about how embarrassing it would be if people on the street heard everything we were thinking.  I suppose the most embarrassing thing would be what we were thinking as opposed to how we were thinking it.  Regardless, people would undoubtedly see how lazily we think.  Do you really want that laziness translating into your writing?  Of course not, so this is how we avoid it: we read out loud.  This is the most self-sufficient method of proofing your own work.  Plain and simple—if you’re not doing it, you’re wrong.  We always assume that if it makes sense to us on our first read-through, it must be infallible.  It’s not exactly something I can explain to you with black and white clarity.  The kinds of things you’ll pick up on when adopting this practice may be different from the way it helps others.  It’s something specific to each individual.  For me, reading out loud helps me to avoid run-on and train-wreck sentences that sounded just fine to me at 3 A.M.  Perhaps it will help you remember that commas don’t come after every word, or that there is such a thing as a period.  For those of you who think you’re writing The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner could write two page sentences because he was William Faulkner.  Give it up.  Be a responsible writer and give reading out loud a chance.  The amount of careless errors and distracting language you will avoid will alone be worth the extra two minutes.  Trust me.

A Christmas Challenge from Creative Writer Tabitha York

// December 4th, 2010 // Comments Off // Blog, Seasonal

What happens to the cheer during the holidays?

Why is it that the holidays always seem to bring out the worst in people?  After all, isn’t it the season to by jolly and merry?  Why then do most of us end up being a Grinch during this time of year?

In my opinion, it is because we have lost sight of the true meaning of Christmas. Christmas, as we know it, has become commercialized.  It has become about who gets the better gift, who has the most lights on their house and so forth.  We are in a constant rush trying to outdo each other. We push and we shove in the stores.  We have road rage on the highways and we become envious of our neighbors when their house has more lights on it than ours. We become scrooges and Grinches, and all for what? The gifts lose their newness after the first month.  The price of a speeding ticket cost you enough for you to have purchased a Wii, and the lights come down after a month. Was all of that worth the stress and the hassle? Again, in my opinion, it is not.  It is time we step back, take a deep breath and re-discover the true meaning of Christmas.

What is the true meaning of Christmas?  To discover this, you must look at the very first Christmas some two thousand years ago. It was then that God our father gave us the most perfect gift of all, his son Jesus Christ. Why was this the most perfect gift of all time? Because when God allowed for his son to be born on this earth, he did it knowing that he would be sacrificed for all of our sins. He knew that the weight and burden of all of our sins would fall on him, that he would bare them on his back in the form of a cross, and that he would die as the perfect un-blemished lamb so that all of us might be free from sin and death. Could you imagine how painful that was for God? Yet he did it because he loved us and wanted us to be free and to live with him for eternity.

The perfect gift was the birth of our freedom and a father’s love. Christmas is a time of giving but we cannot forget the sacrifice or love that was in that gift, or the reason why Christ is in Christmas. Therefore, let us remember it, hold it in our hearts this season as we give, and let us give of ourselves not expecting anything in return. Let us remember those who have nothing and those who cannot be with their families and sacrifice of themselves so that we might have freedom.  Finally dear friends, let us give joyfully and cheerfully as our scrooge-ness is melted away.

Art & Adversity

// November 13th, 2010 // Comments Off // Literature, News

I recently learned of a Broadway musical called Avenue Q that features a song entitled: “What do you do with a B.A. in English?”  The question is truly everywhere—not just in the mouths of our aunts and uncles, who always seem to be the first to ask us about our plans.  The assumption that nothing good can come from a passion for writing has become a kind of societal norm.  Professional writers are a stereotype as common as plus size models in a world where the question is,  “how am I going to make money doing something that only a handful of people are successful at?”  I’ve heard all manor of discouragement, and the words are always the same.

The most well known observation, if you’re passionate about the arts, is that one needs a backup plan.  Personally, terms like “backup plan” and “career” make me feel like I’m devolving, but the issue still exists—we need money to live.  As much as I hate to admit it, there is a harsh line that exists between being monetary and being homeless.  You’re either one or the other.  My dad always says, “I work because you guys like to eat.”  If there is an antithesis of art, be assured, it isn’t destruction—it is money.  There exists another school of people who believe in being realistic.  These are types who believe it is their divine duty to remind us that we live in a mutualistic environment, and that we are naïve to think we can escape mediocrity.

When Paul and Silas were in Philippi, sharing their faith, they were seized by those profiting from the selling of fortunes.  Paul and Silas had angered the merchants by disrupting their accepted customs for drawing capitol.  “These men are Jews, and are throwing our city into an uproar,” they said, “by advocating customs unlawful for us Romans to accept or practice” (Acts 16:20-21).  Paul and Silas were artists of Christ, creating new life in a society not readily accepting of such professions, due to their unnatural and unrealistic means for practice.

For those of you who don’t know, I have one of those english degrees, and everyday, I have to force myself to realize that most people will never truly understand the aspirations I have of reaching a place in my craft where I am finally be able to sustain myself financially with the words that God has entrusted me with.  Occasionally, I’ll come across someone who celebrates my desire to tap into as many creative outlets as possible until something breaks through, and those times are truly encouraging.  We are artists.  We are not only immune to mediocrity, we are also incapable of normalcy.  Art is the only thing that we know how to do, and God has assigned us to be storytellers, so we had better figure out how to tell those stories, or we are going to die.

When the merchants appealed to the magistrates in the book of Acts, they elected to have Paul and Silas thrown in prison.  After describing how they were placed in an inner cell with their feet shackled, the account says, “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God […] Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken.  At once, all the prison doors flew open, and everybody’s chains came loose” (Acts 16:25-26).  Instead of deliberating on how they would appeal to the merchants with apologies or acceptable terms, Paul and Silas decided to create, and their chains were broken.  There exist no better examples in history for advocacy of the arts than when martyrs or those in dire circumstances combat death, and even worse, indifference, by singing hymns at the stake or forfeiting their blood on a canvas of persecution.  I will change my literary community, and my only fear while doing so will be that my adversity never reaches the heights that cause me to continue to grow in the way that it did for Paul and his friends.

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