Verbing

Ever notice that it seems to be getting harder and harder to tell the difference between nouns and verbs these days?  Let me shed some light on this timely topic with a few seemingly topical observations ....

The English language, I’m happy to announce, has now become so flexible that we can email an email.

I think I’ll text you about that one after I google up some thoughts.

Do we use funds to fund that project, or can I just forward the money?  Because, surely, that will adversely impact progress.  Am I making progress here, with this progression of progressively complex examples?  Exemplary, my dear Watson!

I suspect I never fathered a child because my parenting skills were suspect.  But, creativity is the father of intention.

We should really talk about this: Let’s do lunch.  We’ll need a liaison to facilitate that, though; who can we talk into liaising for us?  Maybe we should just get lazy and laze around the house while we dine.

I’ll have to access my schedule to make sure I’m free ... but I can probably free up some time in any case.  I’ll contact you when I know.  I hope our schedules don’t conflict, ‘cause I detest conflict ... most of the time, anyway – I’ve always been a little conflicted about that.

I think I need an organizer to write this all down so I have access to it later ... but I’m not organized enough to locate a retail organization who sells them, so I’m not sure I’m sold on that idea.

(If I stop off at church for a little keyboard practice, will I then be organ-izing?  Or at the pastor’s lectern for a lecture ... will I be sternly lectured if I take the lectern to the rear of the church?  Or should I just collect the collection plates?  Let’s get together and make a decision ... collectively.)

I’ve got a couple ideas about growing your business that might grow on you ... grow, grow grow your boat, gently down the stream (talk about stream of consciousness!), merrily, verily, scarily, warily; strife is jest a scream.

In general – generally, that is – I could be serious when I contend that the flexibility to flip-flop among verbs, adjectives, gerunds, nouns and adverbs is one of the things that makes writing fun in English.  Thing is, though, I’m really just funning you.

Seriously.  Are we agreed?  Because you have the right to object, am I right?  If so, what is the object of your objection?  Affection?  Rejection?

Can you prescribe a prescription to solute a solution for all these convoluted convolutions?  Perhaps we need to engage an advocate to advocate our diverse points of view about this pending engagement.  Lawyer up, as it were.

Or, we could just man up and decide on our own (our owns?) to salute these various salutations with salutatory indifference.  Do you object to my objections?  That was the object in the first place – to place the onus on you.

One time.

For we are one.

But I don’t want to single you out.  Not one single time.

Ain’t the English language great?  Or does it just grate on your ear?  Gratefully, I’m done; I’ve done it.  Put a fork in me – I’m done abusing y'all with all this verbal abuse.

Next: Disambiguation

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

When did I become the oldest one in the room? – Part 3

God isn’t done with me yet.

And if God is still editing, there’s hope for me yet.

I wonder whether God, like the writer, starts with a rough draft.  If so, does he turn loose of the manuscript before or after we land in the womb?

Before or after we’re torn kicking and screaming therefrom?

Before or after our baptism or bar mitzvah?

Before or after our bones are interred in the cold, cold ground?

I think maybe God turns the rewrite task over at some point in our childhood.  Oh, God watches: As I’ve steadily progressed toward becoming “the oldest person in the room,” I’ve felt his hand upon my shaky tiller more than once.

My journey to elder-statesman status was built largely on “wingin’ it.”  Rules of thumb.  Guesstimates about the best course of action or the way best to avoid embarrassment and defeat.

When I was 12, I learned that residential home lots were 25 yards wide ... I could throw a football 50 yards or so – down to Bob Minnock’s house from my front yard – but 25 was a more comfortable hard-spiral distance.

Then in the 1970s and 80s, they shrunk, and my rules of thumb – which were, after all, only rough guidelines to begin with – shrunk along with them.  Older and portlier, I could maybe hit a slow wide receiver at 20 yards ... with no hope of flinging that NFL special more than 40 yards through the air.

Yep, residential home lots shrunk from 25 yards to 20 yards just in time.

Today, with a shredded rotator cuff, such old and comfortable standards no longer seem relevant.

Can’t punt a football anymore.  Handsprings and headstands are out.  Even hide ‘n’ seek with my grandson is a significant challenge, it seems.

Can’t hit a 7 iron 150 yards anymore, either.  That worked out to a little over 150 paces back in the day, when my stride was 2.9 feet on the old pedometer.

Blessed today with a titanium hip, I set the pedometer at 2.2 and still start looking around for my 7-iron shank 150 paces out.

Still, I can accept that.  Most things in life now ... I anticipate every day with relish, but have learned to scale back my expectations.

My life as a Writer?  A constant revision.  And by that, life has taught me about writing:

Do a rough draft.

Edit.  Rewrite. Revise.

Revise your expectations, and those of your audience, to fit the vagaries of reality.

God isn’t done with me yet.  And I’ve still got a few pages to go on the old manuscript. 

Next: Verbing

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

When did I become the oldest one in the room? – Part 2

What’s newer than an old idea? 

It’s one of the perquisites of being the oldest person in the room: Chances are there are at least some jokes I can conjure up old enough that nobody’s heard them before. 

The same things we found compelling about Charlie Chaplin drew us to W.C. Fields, Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Johnny Carson, Robin Williams, John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Jerry Seinfeld. 

Any one of those 10 people could do a variation of “Take my wife ... please!” and mold it into a memorable moment. 

That is the Writer’s charge, for truly, nothing is new under the sun.  We all stand in the shadow of past greatness; the mediocrity of the past is in large part forgotten. 

Or, as Shakespeare’s Mark Antony so aptly phrased it: “The evil that men do lives after them – The good is oft interred with their bones.” 

Good writing is rarely made of sterner stuff. 

There ‘tis, fair reader, three paragraphs, and not a fresh thought amongst them. 

Whether a writing challenge is fictional (a Great American Novel to rival Billy Budd, no doubt), non-fictional (In Cold Blood) or corporate (“You’ll wonder where the yellow went ...”), the value in a well-turned phrase is perishable. 

Andy Warhol claimed every person was due 15 minutes of fame.  Assuming a 75-year lifespan, and fame accruing 24/7, each American would have to share that fame with about 150 other people.  Throw in India and China and, well, fuggettaboutit ... 

Looking at it another way, Americans stand to be demonstrably unique for about 1/150th of 15 minutes ... or roughly 5.7 seconds. 

Writing is a way of being remembered for more than 5.7 seconds.  Writing extends the hope that a small piece of the good we do can live beyond us. 

For it’s not so much dying that I fear, as being forgotten. 

Next: Part 3

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

When did I become the oldest one in the room?

I attended a nonprofit board meeting recently.  Looking from face to face at the dozen or more people around the conference table, it suddenly occurred to me:

I’m probably the oldest person in this room.

Over the next 90 minutes, my focus drifted sporadically from the business at hand (probably a function of my newly discovered seniority):

•  That guy mentioned Van Halen. The Stones, Deep Purple and Pink Floyd were in my wheelhouse, so gray hairs aside, he’s easily five years younger than me.

•  I can’t really ask these people how old they are.  Well, OK, maybe the guys, but curiosity killed the cat, and asking a woman her age (at least in my tired old generation) is suicide waiting to happen.

•  Wait a minute, Vicky’s crow’s feet are deeper than mine ... and “Vicky” – that’s straight out of the 1940s, isn’t it? ... no, she talked one time about not being able to take early retirement for five years.  I’ve got her by a year or two, at least.

Once upon a time, I was a boy wonder.  I learned to read at the tender age of 4, and was tackling newspapers, magazines and grownup novels within a couple years.

I was editor of a small-town daily at the age of 23, business editor of a mid-sized paper five years later, and headed national PR operations for a major nonprofit in five more.

Yeah, things drifted after that – a couple recessions, an entrepreneurship that didn’t fly and what-not ... but exactly when did I become the oldest person in the room?

In the car, on the way home from the board meeting, I had a long talk with myself:

“Self,” I says, “you’re getting to be kind of an old fart ... and a curmudgeonly old one at that.

“What could these young people possibly learn from me that has relevance to their everyday existence?  Heck, my idea of a new-age band is Black Sabbath, and Ozzy Osbourne’s out doing commercials for Depends these days, isn’t he?”

How in the world can I stay relevant to the huddled masses, when a multi-gizillionaire like Osborne is reduced to passing himself off as an addled old codger with a fried brain and problems with incontinence?

Relevant indeed.  Sounds like the kind of a problem a Writer might have to face on a regular basis.  Hmmmm.

Next: Part 2

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

Writer's Checklist: Make a methodical 10-step check

Drivers used to know how to check under the hood.  It was second nature to check the oil (when did you last do that, personally? Can you even find your dipstick?  How about battery levels?) 

Today, almost everyone pays a mechanic / computer technician – and, 86 times out of 100, a list of checkpoints covered by a $79.95 diagnostic backs him up.

Thus armed, he verifies the car’s engine, electrical and computer systems are at peak efficiency ... or at least won’t leave us stranded by the side of the road somewhere.

  1 – Word count: MS Word, Quark and other word-processing software lets you conveniently spot check wordiness.  Make sure that count is appropriate for your format and audience, then rip through your draft, line-by-line, and pare at least 30 percent.  Excise extraneous words and phrases, rework verbose passages (look for commas and the word “and”), and focus on redundant content.  If that leaves you short of your targeted length, add something fresh – but at 30% off, you’ve likely made your point; it’s just punchier and more readable.

  2 – Spell check: Let software regenerate everything you learned in 2nd grade spelling class, and then dig in for “your / you’re” and “their / there” errors.

  3 – Grammar check: MS Word, in particular, can at least point to sentences that don’t fit templated algorithms.  But here’s where you’ll really start to get your hands dirty.  Does what you’ve written make sense, flow and comply to basic rules?

  4 – Idiot check: Now it’s time to step back and think things through.  Ask questions that will keep readers from thinking you’re the village idiot.  Do the level of vocabulary, assumed background knowledge, content and angle fit your audience?  Is it politically correct?  (Do you want it to be?) Does your exposition / argumentation progress logically?

  5 – Verb variety: Study each sentence and make a note – mental or physical – of verb usage.  If you use the same verb, over and over, a visit to the bookshelf (or online) Thesaurus may benefit your work?

  6 – Action verbs: If your verbs are cobbled into sentences with  “have” or “is” or “to” ... chances are your writing is passive (Ooops ... you’re writing passively).  If, for example, your product “has passed” peer review (or worse, is “peer-reviewed”), consider writing that it “passes peer review.”  Think your copy is good?  Not in the big leagues: Your copy sings.  Are you accepting an offer to sell?  No, you’re accepting a sales offer, or, just “selling it.”

  7 – Buddy check: It’s critical that friends, associates, brothers-in-law – whomever – read and critique your copy.  Even if your brother-in-law is the village idiot, at least he recognizes idiocy when he sees it – he’s probably an expert.

  8 – Recheck: Take all seven steps, review, reorganize, rewrite, edit and re-edit.  Did a Step 5 change cause some problem with something you did in Step 2?  Even likelier, you probably didn’t do it right in the first place, haven’t noticed it so far, and need the “recheck” to polish the work.

  9 – Publish: The point of all writing is that someone reads it.  And don’t just “put it out there.”  To one extent or another, you need to be a salesman, an advocate, if written work is to have the impact you desire .... whatever that impact may be.

10 – Feedback: In the age of computers, it’s never too late for second-thoughts.  If others say they love your work unconditionally, that’s great.  But don’t count on it.  Even brothers-in-law can be sycophants.  Dig in until you really know how others perceive your work – then fix what you can, re-publish as appropriate, and note the lessons learned to guide you on your next project.

These writing checkpoints combine hands-on and computerized evaluation of potential flaws.

Like today’s professional grease monkeys, it’s not wise to ignore the myriad high-tech tools available to assist in their work.

Still, I gravitate toward the service guy who has a little bit of grease on the soles of his shoes ... whose fingernails are three shades shy of neatly trimmed and de-gritted.

After all, it’s still a car, and somebody needs to poke their head under the hood once in a while.

Next: Potpourri

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]

President Reagan and the elusive backbeat

About 25 years ago, a television news piece featured President Reagan in front of a large crowd merrily singing along with a band, happily clapping hands in time with the music.

The blurb was perhaps 30 or 40 seconds long, and it supposedly was a humor piece, poking fun at what clearly was to be perceived as an aging and inept President ...

For, if one looked closely, it became clear that the President (gee, what an idiot!) clearly was clapping out of time with everyone surrounding him – as best as could be seen, out of time with everyone in the huge ballroom.

Yet, if one listens closely to the audio track (which was difficult, due to the guffawing of the announcer), it became clear that several hundred people in the ballroom were clapping on the first beat of every musical measure.

Experienced performers like the musically trained Ronnie Reagan – a song-and-dance man in early Hollywood – know that the clap comes on beats 2 and 4 ... the backbeat!

So ... Ronald Reagan was comfortable enough in his own skin to clap correctly – even though he drew the ridicule of the masses, who didn’t know any better than to clap on the downbeat.

The artist/writer is a performer.  He must know what’s correct and appropriate (i.e., clapping on the backbeat), and he must have the self-effacing grace and confidence to place what is correct and appropriate down on paper.

But, we are told: March to the beat of your own drummer.  OK, you can do that.  But know which drummer you want to make your own.

In President Reagan’s case, he was clapping to the beat of the correct drummer, though it may have been more politically correct to go along with the crowd.

But Ronald Reagan was the kind of politician who had faith that the downbeat-driven audience eventually would come around to the backbeat.

Next: A 10-step Writer's Checklist

[For personal writing assistance, go to www.fixadocument.com]