Topical Ointment

Has everything already been written about? No. New technological innovations enrich our lives, and science fiction will always have something new to discuss. Those historical events which have yet to come have not yet been written about. Fantastic settings yet to be created burble and simmer in the fecund minds of children and adults, bare daydreams brushing against different worlds. So long as people continue to be, there will always be something new to write about.

And yet, these will rehash the same themes. Someone once told me that there are only four things you can write about, and I only remember two: love and journeys. I suppose discovery would be three, and four might be lost love? Whatever the four overarching themes, they reflect the core of human existence, or human existence as we have come to define it over the course of our collective existence. So, yes, everything has already been discussed.

Not everything has been exhausted. People still write, contributing to the human experience. Not a rehash of the old topics, but new twists on the age old themes. Consider homosexual literature. Society has never quite accepted homosexuality. Same-sex erotica, judging by the bowed bookshelves lining small D.C. bookstores, is burgeoning and more widespread than it would have been two hundred years ago. Though the same topic (love, lost love), it introduces new facets to the jewel of literature. Has there ever been a society before that pseudo-celebrated lesbians (aside from the celebration of Sappho of Lesbos)?

We all view things differently in our lives, perhaps by necessity, for without that diversity of opinion and judgment, we would all fall into the same pigeonholes, become as vanilla as ice cream. At the same time, all of our viewpoints are quite important, for they are unique, and shall pass from the earth along with you (and yes, you will die. Having had to drive with a 16 year old who won’t die has only affirmed to me my all-too-real mortality). People sometimes think that they have nothing interesting to contribute to the canon, if there even exists a canon. Bullcrap. All of us has something to contribute if only we are brave enough to make an attempt to contribute, to write, to express, to create.

Come Together...

Belated Huzzahs go out to C.E and J.E (nee J.O.)!

Here is where I should vow to post more often, but we see how that goes.

Legalistic Regimentation

I have bucked like a wild stallion against the bridle my legal writing professors wanted to affix upon my head, and my grades reflect this. Damn their structure, damn their eyes. Legal writing’s ultimate goal is to produce a clear and concise document, one which states the information a judge or justice would require to render a decision. Legal writing succeeds, though with a caveat: once you’ve been trained in the Esquires arcane ways, only then will you be able to read one of these documents with velocity and comprehension.

There is a new trend in legal authorship to strive for clarity over “hithertofores,” “henceforths,” “wherewithals,” and other strangulating terms. However, this trend fights the old school, those entrenched lawyers trained to construct ponderous sentences using dense language. No one knows which side will have its day. However, consider that a clear document can be understood by anyone with a passable educational history, while an incomprehensible document requires, and deserves, a lawyer trained to muddle through the verbose morass. By its very nature, legal writing eliminates much of the populace from reading it, much less enjoying it.

Legal writing is also highly structured. Introduction, where you introduce the work. Roadmap, which walks the reader through the main points you will address within the work. The body, each section dedicated to one of the main points you addressed in the roadmap. Conclusion, a summation of the main points addressed in the body. Bam, bam, bam. You are done. While this makes a document easy to search through, it also leaches a document of imagination. Though the arguments within the paper might be clever, they will generally follow the same structure. You will state your conclusion, state the applicable rule/law/statute, analyze and apple the rule/law/statute to the situation at hand, and restate the conclusion. Again, great for when you need to find information, hell on creativity.

You want to know everything up front. I don’t. I want to leave something for the reader to discover. I want to engage the reader, not spoonfeed them rotten applesauce. For them, the judge or justice has neither time nor patience, and wants information now. There is a good possibility the judge or justice may not even read the entire document, choosing instead to flip to a certain section, read a page or two, then move on. Though no one will admit it, I’m sure some of these readers don’t bother to even read some of the briefs that cross their desk, having made their minds up beforehand, only requiring the briefs for form’s sake.

For me, I hope my audience, the leisure reader, wants to have a little fun. Someday, I hope they’ll pick up my book and read it because they heard it was a good read, and will remove them from this world for a little while. I hope they’ll reread certain sections because I shocked them, or because of a deft twist of phrase, or just because they want to reread it. I hope they never even think of me, because the world I crafted was so real, to them, I don’t exist, only the world does. And if I should write starting at the end and work backwards, or if I should desire the book printed half upside-down, or if I choose to publish in binary characters, I hope they would appreciate the decision to deviate from the main road, as long as it makes sense (I would never publish in binary until our new robotic overlords overthrow the government).

Is Fluffy Bunny real?

Fluffy Bunny hopped through the forest. Fluffy Bunny felt sad. Fluffy Bunny had missed the summer fair. All his friends left him behind. Mama Bunny made him clean the entire burrow. Fluffy Bunny had enough. He hopped back to the burrow to collect his carrots to throw at everyone.

What does this tell us? Fluffy Bunny (a bunny), is sad at being left behind. His mother forced him to clean the burrow. Fluffy’s frustration will manifest in the form of flying carrots.

Big whoop.

We’ve heard this story a million times before. Hell, I think I live Fluffy Bunny’s life over and over again. Who cares about Fluffy Bunny? I’ve told you everything you need to know. There’s nothing left for you to discover.

Now, consider:

Fluffy Bunny limped through the forest, his ears drooping, not even bouncing with each hop. His once plush coat sagged, matted with dirt clumps and broom bristles. Mama Bunny wrapped Fluffy Bunny’s forepaws in soft cloth after biting out the pricking broom splinters. He couldn’t even bother to wipe away the sweat beading above his eye, or the tear welling in it. When he arrived at Grover’s Shift, it was deserted. He looked at the long tree shadows, realized he’d missed all of them, and that the fair must have already begun. Sighing, he started limping back to the burrow. As he stumped along, his ears started to draw back. Sharp breaths rushed through his teeth. Faster and faster, the soft cloth dyeing crimson, he galloped back to the burrow. He’d kept his carrots beneath his bed. They’d soon find out.

Same Fluffy Bunny as before, but at least now, he’s a “real” bunny, insofar as anthropomorphic bunnies exist. We can see his post-cleaning exhaustion, his missed-friends and missed-fair dejection, his burgeoning vengeance. We can also see that I have problems in making an angry anthropomorphic bunny. It hurts that reading contains no visual component, aside from the printed word. You may see facial expressions, gestures, appearances in your mind, translate the picture into emotion (as you do everyday), then commit it to paper. You have to disconnect those wires, just transmit what you want them to perceive. You are a conduit, telling a story. Once you get control of that, then you can start interjecting with what’s happening.

“Show, don’t tell” plagues nascent writers. “Fluffy Bunny is angry.” “Fluffy Bunny is tired.” “Fluffy Bunny must destroy humanity.” So easy. So boring. The audience is not straitjacketed and drooling onto padded walls. They are vibrant, curious people (I pray). They want entertainment, challenge, escape. Sure, you can come right out and say that Fluffy Bunny planned to ruin the fair. Or, you can describe the twinkle in Fluffy Bunny’s eye, and the carrots bandoliered across his puffed-out chest. There’s always the danger they won’t get it, but is it not the greater danger you don’t engage them at all?