Writing Gooder

When Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” it was in response to a population surge and economic crisis in Ireland. His proposal was to cook and serve Irish children to the English gentry as a benign solution to this crisis. It was a joke of course. His real aim was in demonstrating the exploitation of Ireland by England, as well as to demonstrate the fraud in cure-all solutions. It also targets those well-intentioned individuals who nevertheless view the poor in a cold and calculating manner.

So maybe that is what Larry Niven was referring to when he made this suggestion:

Niven said a good way to help hospitals stem financial losses is to spread rumors in Spanish within the Latino community that emergency rooms are killing patients in order to harvest their organs for transplants.

“The problem [of hospitals going broke] is hugely exaggerated by illegal aliens who aren’t going to pay for anything anyway,” Niven said.

Satire at its best, as well as sci-fi authors ignoring Congressional officials (probably the intelligent thing to do), after the jump!

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Eminent.  Imminent.  Immanent.  Each is said the same way, and is even spelled similarly, which causes a lot of confusion.  However, they each have very different meanings.  So when to use which?

Imminent is the easy one; you use it when something is about to happen.  “He was in imminent danger of being run over by the Road Runner.”

Use eminent when you’re talking about prestige (Eminent Statesman, Your Holy Eminence),  when something is conspicuous or noteworthy (an eminent dribble), or when something is very high (eminent towers).  What confuses a lot of people, though, is when you say something like, “The government’s use of eminent domain.”  In that context, it’s always eminent and not imminent.

And finally immanent, which most people don’t even know exists!  Usually, you only use this one in reference to a higher power (God’s immanence throughout the universe), but you can also use it in reference to governments or even societies which wield much power (the Free Masons’ immanent influence in the Revolutionary War).  It means inherent in, and, again, is most often used in a religious sense of the term.

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Whether it’s high school or college (some of you are even younger!), writing competes for time with studying and other activities. Between balancing your schedule and the fact that many people don’t think young writers have much to say, it can be discouraging to those of us who want to someday become writers. Five tips:

–At this stage, writing is a hobby. However strongly you feel about your future as a writer, if you’re still in school and aren’t employed as a writer, then writing is really just your hobby at the moment. It may be the most passionate, heart-felt hobby you’ve ever had, but it isn’t yet your career. It might be tough to face the facts that professional writing is a difficult field, but realizing that fact is the first step toward growing more resilient when your work is continuously rejected. Breaking in is very hard, and as the years go on, the competition only gets fiercer. Writing can be a hobby without being a profession, so don’t feel as though it must be your livelihood in order for you to survive.

–Your elders don’t have a monopoly on wisdom and knowledge. One of the most discouraging things about being a young writer is that many adults don’t believe we have much to say or have the experience necessary to write anything of importance. This is simply not true! It is only in the near past that writers were thought of as older. Ernest Hemingway and Nikolai Gogol were both 26 when their first novels were published. Mary Shelley was only 21 when she published Frankenstein. But this sword is two-edged: don’t feel as though you must publish when you are young. Many good authors didn’t start publishing until after they were retired!

–School always comes first…most of the time. This tip may contradict everything you’ve ever heard from your parents and/or teachers. While school is so very important, especially if you plan to earn a degree, remember that perfect grades and a résumé that rivals a president are not everything. Don’t get me wrong, you should try your best when performing at school, but learning things on your own can often be worth ten times of what you learn at school. There are some horrible teachers in this world, especially when it comes to intolerant English teachers, so just stick it out in your class, and you’ll be satisfied with the knowledge that you can learn more reading and writing outside the classroom than in it.

–Read, read, read. Right now, if you want to become a writer, reading is probably more important that writing. Doesn’t make sense? The craft of writing is also the craft of reading. In order to write well, you must know how to read well. Writing is a skill that comes from your ability to recombine all the different techniques and ideas that you’ve seen other writers before you use. If you want to write well, you’ll have to know what good writing looks like, and that means lots of reading. But I bet you do tons already.

Sidenote: You don’t stop reading when you become a writer. In fact, you probably read more. There’s always something you can learn.

–Relax. You have your whole life ahead of you. You don’t have to be a virtuoso author at age twelve. That’s the beauty of literature. Starting to write at a young age can certainly give someone an advantage, but it doesn’t mean that person needs to get published immediately or that they’ll even be a good writer. We’re young; there’s plenty of time for us to develop our own styles and figure out exactly what we want to accomplish as writers. Many athletes tire out by their thirties, but that’s about where authors come into their prime. So relax, you’ve got time. You’ll be doing this for the rest of your life.

Veritas numquam perit – Truth never perishes. (Seneca)

This is interesting.  From CNN.com:

Drawing on their expertise in theology, children’s literature, globalization studies and even the history of witchcraft, professors have been able to use Harry Potter to attract crowds of students eager to take on a disciplined study of the books.

Danielle Tumminio, a Yale Divinity School graduate student and the instructor for Yale’s Harry Potter course “Christian Theology and Harry Potter,” said her academic background in literature and theology, combined with her personal interest in the books, inspired her to design the course.

I’m always very wary of any pop culture courses as too often they seem contrived and silly.  Remember that Simpsons episode where Lisa is taking a course about Itchy and Scratchy at Springfield University?  There really are courses like that at some universities.

On the other hand, these courses also show the connections between pop culture and our cultural heritage, which makes them very worthwhile.  Plus, there’s obviously a demand for them: 81 people showed up on the first day for only 18 open seats.

Like sports, writing isn’t just a fun activity. It also has tremendous therapeutic value. Writing can be an outlet for venting, or to describe how you’re feeling. And as The Times of India reports, it can also ease the stress of cancer:

The simple act of writing down their deepest feelings can help cancer patients improve their quality of life, according to a new study.

A team of researchers in the United States has found that cancer patients who express their fears through writing can experience changes in thoughts about their illness, The Oncologist journal reported.

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Heh, there’s a huge game of tag going on right now at YWS.  I’m not sure how long it’ll continue (I imagine that since each person tags five people that many are going to quickly tire of it), but it’s pretty interesting.  I think Jennafina started it, and so far it’s pretty cool.  The idea has been tossed around for some time, but she decided to finally do something about it.  If you’re tagged, you have to write a blog post listing five facts about yourself, then go and tag five other people.

Of course, some people are being a grouch about it, but I think it’s pretty cool.  If you want to, you can easily ignore it after all.

Ha, a round-up of the Top 100 “Top 100 lists.”

Back in 1996, maybe even 1995, The Young Writers Club came into being. A Computer Science professor in Turkey created it for his daughter, and the site was one of the very first writing forums on the Internet. It brought together kids around the world to share their writing for the first time. While the site would like dated today, it was revolutionary for its time and it would thrive until 2004.

By that time, TYWC could no longer keep up with demand. Stories & poems had to be approved by moderators, so it took weeks before your work got posted. As time went on, the wait got worse until it almost approached a year.

However, it still lasted until, I guess, a few months ago. I’m actually not sure if it’s dead or not, but there is a 403 Forbidden Error now, which most likely means it’s gone.

It really is sad to see it go. Many may not know this, but TYWC is the reason why YWS exists. If it weren’t for TYWC, I never would have gotten as into creative writing as I did, and I would have never even tried starting my own writing site. I was active there for about two years, and I met so many great people. I can’t believe it’s gone, but TYWC did make a huge mark on the early days of the Net. I bet almost every young writers site could trace it’s origins to TYWC in some way.