Code-Switching and the Freelance Writer

Repost/Revision

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When you make your living as a freelance writer, you need to be able to turn on a dime in terms of style. One day, you might have a deadline on an academic journal article in which you need to observe strict MLA style. The next day, your assignment may be a short blog post for an entertainment website; now you have to shift gears dramatically, writing in a relaxed, conversational tone. Challenging to say the least-- and one of many reasons that flexibility is one of the most essential secrets to freelance success.

Some writers’ natural writing voices are quite colloquial; the reader almost feels as if the author is in the room with her, having a conversation. At the other end of the spectrum are those whose voices are naturally academic or “highbrow.” Most fall somewhere along the spectrum between these two poles.

It’s an open question among writers to what degree writing should mimic speech in any given forum. The real ninjas, I think, are the ones who manage to sound conversational (in those media in which it’s appropriate) while observing all the rules of English grammar, spelling and usage. These writers understand that the secret of coming across as both accessible and professional lies in the rare synthesis of conversational style and flawless grammar.

Very few people speak in sentences that could be transcribed word-for-word and used in an article or blog post without some editing. Writing that concept for a “middlebrow” medium, you might write, “No one’s grammar is perfect when they’re having a conversation-- they have to make some adjustments when they put the words on paper.” If you were expressing the same thought in an academic journal, it might appear as, “Few people observe strict grammatical rules in colloquial speech; expressing the same ideas in print, they need to make the necessary adjustments to fit the new forum.”

But what if you were expressing the same idea in a highly informal setting, such as an entertainment or fashion blog? There, you might well get away with, “Hey, not many of us are walking English textbooks, right? We’ve got to make some changes when we write things down!” The fact is that all three of these examples are grammatically correct, even if the third might be a stretch in terms of usage. The important thing is that readers in any of these forums would clearly understand the idea without the jarring effect of having one style substituted for the other. For instance, imagine how thrown a reader of People Magazine would feel coming across the “few people observe strict grammatical rules...” sentence above. in the context of a People Magazine article. By the samw token, a reader of Scientific American would no doubt find “Hey, not many of us are walking English textbooks” equally jarring.

My own natural writing voice tends toward the formal end of the spectrum: phrases such as “highly colloquial setting” and “the rare synthesis of colloquial style and flawless grammar” pretty much give that away. Other writers have much more conversational voices. There’s no “right or wrong” here; the essential thing (again) is flexibility. Unless you’re getting all your work from a single source, a good deal of code-switching is going to be necessary.

Of course, none of this quite takes into consideration the unique degree of flex required of the ghostwriter. To succeed, ghostwriters have to carefully read all their clients’ correspondence and attend closely to their patterns of speech. This is because the stakes are higher here: people who know the “author” personally have to believe she could have written the article or manuscript herself; otherwise the ghostwriter has failed at his most important task. If words and phrases completely alien to the client start cropping up in a manuscript, people who communicate with her regularly are going to have their doubts about the authorship.

Contrasting and comparing patterns of speech with the production of grammatically-correct prose is a source of inexhaustible fascination for wordsmiths. Or to put it another way, Dude! Those grammar wonks never get tired of checking out the way people write and talk, right?

Perhaps something in between.

Best regards,

William K. Ferro

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

New Favorite Yoga Quote

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“As on the mat, so off the mat.”

This is my new favorite quote; I know it’s well-known to most yoga devotees. It can be applied to so much in life: on the mat, you need to be limber and flexible; so must you be in your daily life. If you’re struggling too much in your yoga routine and forcing yourself to hold poses that your body clearly doesn’t want to, there’s a problem. The same principle holds for life in general, and applies to mental constructs, belief systems, habits and routines.

I’ve discovered that when I’m struggling unduly with some aspect of my life--be it relationships, work, or whatever--there’s almost always something fundamentally wrong with my approach to it. If I’m busting to make ends meet and suffering headaches, insomnia, and so on, something in my approach to my work, spending habits, and/or self-discipline is usually out of whack.  

Similarly, any time I find myself in a twist about a relationship, the way someone else is behaving, or the way things are going globally, I need to reassess my approach. In the first and second case, I’m probably trying to force someone into a predetermined role that doesn’t fit his/her personality. In the third, I’m taking on responsibility for the way things are that simply isn’t mine to claim (the things we are responsible for are more than enough!).

I’ve come to terms with the fact that there are a few asanas I will probably never completely master. This isn’t defeatism, but an embrace of reality; no one practitioner can do all things equally well. This kind of reality check is great for our daily lives as well: if we spend most of our energy focusing on projects for which we have limited aptitude, we’ll probably miss out on developing our abilities in our high-aptitude areas.

“As on the mat, so off the mat.”

Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro

All rights reserved

Counting Our Blessings

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Cultivating a Grateful Mindset

When I’d get in a grumbling mood as a kid, I remember my mother advising me to “count [my] blessings.” Her parents had lived through the Great Depression, so awareness of the possibility of scarcity had filtered down to her. My generation of Americans--most of us, anyway--were so far removed from that mindset that we took material comforts for granted. I remember (like so many in my generation) hearing grandparents and other adults saying, “you kids have no idea how good you’ve got it!” We all heard the stories about how tough times were in days gone by, but it remained largely an abstraction for us.

We still tend to take a great deal for granted. A look at the Facebook page First World Problems (http://first-world-problems.com/) is a humorous eye-opener. People there make ironic comments such as these:

“I had to wait a whole minute for my money to come out of the ATM today!”

“My plane seat was so uncomfortable, I got a crick in my neck!”

The implication being that we take for granted that we put a little card in a machine and it spits money out at us and that we’re flying in one hour to a city it would take us a whole day to drive to!

Accordingly, I’m compiling a list of “Things to Be Happy About.”

We’ll start with the basics and move up the hierarchy of needs.

-- Food, water, shelter, and medicine.

These are things people in the developing world may or may not have on any given day. Not a guilt trip, just a fact.

-- Central heating and air conditioning.

For those same individuals, heat means keeping a fire going, or if they’re fortunate, a wood-burning stove. Air conditioning is fanning yourself with a palm frond.

-- Multiple forms of powered transportation. Most families in the developed world own more than one car.

-- Multiple forms of home entertainment: cable or satellite television (often, units on each floor of the home), multiple stereo systems, desktop computers, laptops, cell phones, tablets, and so on.

You get the idea: Mom was right; there are just too many “blessings” to count! Let’s not let this induce feelings of guilt, but rather a sense of gratitude and a desire to share with those less fortunate than we are.

The Greatest Thing

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When someone you love is beating breast cancer at an early age, it’s the greatest thing in the world.

That’s happening in our house right now, and I’m quite impressed with the recent advances in cancer treatment and surgery. In fact, they’re mindblowing, especially when you see them up close. Treatment is more preventive, surgery less invasive. Plastic surgery is particularly amazing-- they now do it as part of the surgery to remove the tumor, not months and months later. This helps the survivor to feel like herself; there’s no need to go through months of dysmorphic depression (although post-operative depression is hardly unusual). It will be some time before the survivor will be able to execute a Downward Facing Dog or Tree Pose (she’s under the influence of wonderful narcotics to knock out the post-op pain), but already I’ve seen how her own idiosyncratic spiritual practice is aiding in her recovery.  

What about similar practices for those helping the person recover? I’d call them a must. If you already spend half an hour a day doing yoga and meditation, you definitely don’t want to cut it out. If anything, you might want to consider doubling it, if possible. From the moment you hear the diagnosis, you’ll be under considerable stress right along with the patient; you may not even realize it. You may find yourself lashing out at people for no reason at all; small irritations may become magnified and your responses to them out of proportion. It’s next-to-impossible to recognize the impact your psychological stress is having on you while you’re in the midst of it. That’s why an ongoing meditation practice is so important.

I recommend Thich Nhat Hahn’s book Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. In that book, Thay goes into detail on how to manage anger and other storms of strong emotion, all of which are amplified when someone you love receives a life-threatening diagnosis. Let’s face it: that news can make the most habitually serene individual more than a little pissed off at the universe. At the heart of the book’s advice lie the old stand-bys: conscious breathing and making meditation a part of everything you do. When you’re helping somone recover from cancer surgery, you’ll be more useful if you make a point of becoming a veritable meditation machine. Practice medication scheduling and administration meditation (“Breathing in, I prepare today’s medications. Breathing out, I know I can stay on top of administering these meds on time.”); food preparation meditation (“Breathing in, I prepare a nourishing meal for the patient and the rest of the family. Breathing out, I know this food will nourish everyone’s compassion and wellness.”). And so on, covering every aspect of recovery.

Cancer is the plague of our time, but we’re making progress. My dream is to see a vaccine for it across the board in my lifetime, for it to become as curable and manageable as tuberculosis and other once-deadly diseases. If you share that dream, there are two websites you need to visit: http://www.cancer.org/ (The American Cancer Society...leading the way to transform cancer from deadly to preventable) and http://ww5.komen.org/, the website of the Susan G. Komen for the CureⒸ. From that highly useful website:

Nancy G. Brinker promised her dying sister, Susan G. Komen, she would do everything in her power to end breast cancer. In 1982, that promise became Susan G. Komen for the Cure...Today, Susan G. Komen is the boldest community fueling the best science and making the biggest impact against breast cancer. 

Join the fight to make cancer a fully preventable disease, and please don't neglect your practice while you do. We're all more useful to whatever cause we've aligned ourselves with after we've meditated.

Copyright 2013 by William K. Ferro
All rights reserved

Ernie and Me

My novel manuscript just cruised past the 20,000-word mark, meaning the first draft is a little more than one-third finished. And the people rejoiced!

Internalizing Hemingway's quote about first drafts ("The first draft of anything is shit") is tremendously liberating. Some days you're inspired; the words flow from your fingers as if by magic. Other days, it's a grueling slog. Those are the days I find comfort in the Hemingway quote and keep on writing. Yeah, whatever I do today will certainly have to be revised about four or five times before it's finished. Yes, what's coming out may indeed appear to be a bunch of crap on this particular day. Stay with it, though, believe in your plot line, characters, and story world, and the finished product will be excellent.

A Universal Human Preoccupation

Quite by accident tonight, I experienced pure sonic perfection. It was late, and I was doing some writing while listening to Pandora.com, when Gratias agimus tibi from Bach’s masterful Mass in B Minor began playing. A lump in the throat, spontaneous rapture. The Mass in B Minor is rightly regarded as Bach’s preminent masterwork, the greatest product of his mature genius. The Gratias agimus tibi section holds a special place in my heart.

Virtually innumerable composers have set that text--it’s from the second part of the Mass (the Gloria), which has been set both as parts of complete masses and and stand-alone works since the Medieval era. Yet, in my view,  no one before or after J.S. Bach ever supplied those words with such a gloriously perfect musical setting. Bach’s soaring melodies, his magical interweaving of choral and orchestral parts, the sense the listener gets of constant ascendancy, express splendidly the magnificence of the text: “Gratias agimus tib propter magnam gloriam tuam (“We give you thanks for your great glory”).

There are many times when we sit down deliberately to listen to our favorite music. Occasionally, however, that music comes to us unexpectedly, like the surprise visit of a dear friend. This was certainly one of those times for me. A far as I can tell, Bach’s genius lies well beyond anyone’s ability to express in words. This is to be expected: as Heinrich Heine trenchantly put it, “Where words leave off, music begins.”

I was trained as a classical guitarist, and had the pleasure of learning to play several transcriptions of Bach’s works for solo lute, violin and cello. One of the truly striking aspects of Bach’s music is that it works extraordinarily well in transcription. There are many great composers whose works have been successfully transcribed: the orchestration of Mussorsky’s solo piano work Pictures at an Exhibition is an excellent example. But Bach’s music seems to have a uniquely elastic quality to it. Pieces written for harpsichord or violin sound just as excellent--or more so--on the guitar, organ works have been successfully adapted to brass ensemble format, and there are beautiful orchestral versions of pieces originally written for choir. Never do any of these works lose any of their piquancy, their unique perfection, as they move from medium to medium. Never have I heard a Bach transcription and said, “Ugh! Loved the original, but this just doesn’t work!” What is it about his music that makes it so infinitely malleable? Is it somehow quantifiable?

I’m delighted to have had this chance encounter in the dead of night with Herr Bach. I know that most people have music that provides profoundly moving spiritual experiences for them. Music as an art form is unique and powerful, a universal human preoccupation. Along with fine art and literature, it’s part of what defines us as human beings.

Best regards,


William


Copyright Ⓒ 2013 by William K. Ferro
All rights reserved

Progress on...

In the Veiled Realm

A Novel

My new novel manuscript crossed the 17,000-word mark today. I have a long way to go (shooting for between 50,000 and 60,000 words). Writing every day--even when inspiration comes hard--is definitely central to the task of remaining thoroughly engaged with your story-world.

Two gems from Walter Mosley:

"Writing is a serious enterprise that takes a certain amount of constancy and rigor."

"Plot is the structure of revelation."