The use of words has always confounded me. I remember English classes where the definitions of terms like verb, adverb, adjective, noun, pronoun and my favorite, the dangling participle, were drilled into me on a daily basis. There were also diagrams, lines that connected one word with another and I had to draw more lines to somehow show how certain words related to one another. I remember that much.
But the reasoning behind the connections was always lost on me. Instead, I would randomly draw lines connecting various words as long as I found the line pattern pleasing to the eye. This usually got me a failing grade.
To this day I couldn’t give you the definitions of any of those terms. Definitions and verbal descriptions don’t stick in my head. The phrase “draw me a picture” was coined just for me. This caused bigger problems for me as I progressed through school. We were supposed to read things, analyze them and then somehow discuss the meaning of what it is we read. My written discussions were generally short and to the point.
It’s not that I couldn’t see where an author was going with a story, or the meaning behind the words. I couldn’t describe it again in words.
But I could draw you a picture.
Which probably explains why I have a degree in fine art rather than English Literature.
And yet, I read voraciously. Granted, they tend to be short stories and articles, I don’t have the attention span for a novel, a book, but as a teacher in high school once told me, at least your reading.
Apparently it wasn’t always like that. It never dawned on me that I used to read a lot of books till one day my brother, the English Major, put up a list of books that supposedly all English Majors were supposed to have read. There were about 100 titles and he put up the total amount that he had read, I can’t remember the exact number. I went through the list. I had read about 10 more on the list than he had.
I think his remark was…WTF?
I know how that happened. For around four years while I was in college, I went for six, I didn’t own a car or a television. Lots of time on the bus, lots of time at home with nothing but books, I guess. To me it was just something to do.
So here I am a few decades later with a business card sitting in front of me that describes me as Outdoor Writer and Photographer. How the hell did that happen. I can’t write. I quit painting a little over 20 years ago, but I never put down my camera. I’ve been wandering around with one of those things around my neck for over 37 years now. I take pictures and now with digital cameras, I take lots of pictures.
For the past 15 years I’ve also been writing down a lot of words. It started with a short paragraph on a bumbled fishing adventure here and there, then 13 years ago it took off to what I pretty much do to this day. For better or worse.
That brings me back to the beginning, the title of this sequence of paragraphs.
I was going through a bunch of older posts, stories they could be called, and some are quite awful. At least I think that in retrospect. A total butchering of the english language for the most part. (For all I know, I’m doing that now, but I wouldn’t know now, would I).
It all seemed to flow so naturally. Sit down, hack it out, put it out there and some people seemed to genuinely like it. Looking at the things I wrote, I cringe. I don’t know what I expect or what I expect it to sound like, but the words just sound off kilter. My friend Bob Long, Jr. says I sound like me. If he reads them out loud, he can hear the words exactly how I would have said them, in the same tone and rhythm. When I read them out loud I hear Gertrude Stein, which is okay, I guess. I’ve read a lot of her work and like quite a bit of it. Maybe I like her because that’s the way I think I sound.
I’m not sure that’s always a good thing.
Looking back through 13 years of words, I noticed there were gaps from one to three months in the writing. They seem to happen every 12 months or so. I looked at the dates of the stories. I could pin point things going on in my life that were giving me doubts about what I was doing. Apparently, I needed a break from the words, reassess what I was doing. I didn’t stop completely, but went from 3 or 4 little stories a week, to just one. Then after a month or so I would go back to my regular pace.
I’m going through one of those again now. For the month of October I had put up 19 posts here on my blog. For November, just four. So far for December, I’ve put up a few, I have quite a few in the works, but the words just aren’t coming and I’m not sure when those in the works will get done.
I should probably quit beating myself up about this, I’m my own worse critic. I always seem to go back to putting things down in writing again and each time, in my own opinion, they don’t suck as bad as the older things.
Times like this I tend to play around with my pictures more, you notice I don’t call them photographs. They’re my pictures. I play with my pictures in Photoshop to make them look like they’ve been done by hand, kind of. I’ll never go back to painting, I don’t miss the overwhelming smell of turpentine and linseed oil. This is part of the pattern I go through when I struggle with words and almost stop. I play with pictures.
Maybe this is what I need. All those words I write down drain my brain of all the pictures in my head. I need to put those pictures back, then maybe the words will come back.
Seems to be how things go. Time to quit fighting it.
(Those are prepositions at the ends of those sentences, aren’t they? You’re not supposed to do that, aren’t you)?
Or are those dangling participles.
I’ll be damned if I can remember and I’m sure as hell not going to look it up.
Very likely education does not make very much difference.
One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come.
Gertrude Stein
Erin Block
12 Dec 2011You know, all those rules and verbs and adverbs….I’ve never understood them either. I failed English in 6th grade. But I read a lot and I always have. And I write how I read and how people actually talk.
Hang in there, Ken…one of those daily miracles will come soon enough. They always do, somehow….they always do. And this was a great piece of writing, usually the best words are the ones that have to be fought for.
Ken G
13 Dec 2011After reading this again this morning, could I have tried to make a more disjointed point?
I almost bought a voice recorder last year and that Dragon software.
That would be a surrealist nightmare.
Thanks Erin.
BrookfieldAngler
13 Dec 2011My wife just finished her masters degree in education with a focus on reading language arts. As she was working towards this achievement, I remember laying in bed with her as she was doing hours upon hours of school work. This post reminded me of something she was doing research on and a conversation we had – how do you grade a written paper? Do you grade on content or accuracy? She was student teaching while she was researching this and would read me some of the papers that her kids had written. The structure was atrocious, punctuation was non-existent, and you actually got a headache from reading it. Once you got through that though, you would always be able to tell the point the kid was trying to make.
My point is this – in your older posts that make you cringe yet people seemed to genuinely appreciate, it was because of the content; not the accuracy.
Ken G
13 Dec 2011Nick, I think it’s the pictures too. I put enough in there to break up the narrative so you don’t think about the words as much 🙂
With the drought in work in the graphics industry I was considering substitute teaching. Then I heard yesterday that Illinois had let go 8800 teachers in the last year and they don’t know when or if they’ll be called back. That can’t be good. Without people like your wife there trying to teach the language arts, I’m afraid everything will start to look like text messages. Talk about a headache. On the forums, if they look like that, I skip them. Good content or not. Don’t need the headache.
And I’m getting the email notices from your blog, just a few hours delay.
BrookfieldAngler
13 Dec 2011You do split up the paragraphs very well! I also make a very deliberate effort to do that in anything I write.
The teacher situation in this country, and state, is scary. Unless we quit firing teachers, I am afraid that your fears will come true. OMG KN IS RT
I am glad that the email notices are getting sent out! I should put my email in there just to verify that things get sent.
The Four Season Angler
13 Dec 2011I doubt anyone really struggles to read your written dialogue Ken. Like you said, that’s really all it is, dialogue, internal or external is no matter. Sometimes you have something to say, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes I learn something from you, and sometimes not.
If I’ve been out recently I can judge my success against yours, if not (like lately) I can live vicariously through your reports.
Nobody else writes experience pieces about local (local for me) fishing anymore. Just reports and quick run-downs. Too utility for me, I want to feel like I am right there with you without having to smell your cheap cigars and hear your incessant moaning about your waders’ crotch leak… visual imagery that I could live without.
It’s like spending a day at the old folks home and hearing my great grandpa say “You gotta see this boil on my ass…”
Keep writing, its’ good for your soul. Or don’t and I’ll hunt you down and show you MY boil.
Then you’ll have something to write about.
Ken G
13 Dec 2011I don’t get boils on my ass cause I don’t sit still long enough.
I’m waiting for you to get your act together with your site so I can go harass you there.
There aren’t many writing experience pieces around here. I was hoping I set the stage for that 13 years ago, not many are following suit. BA is doing a good job, CB Fishes can be pretty good at times. If we can get Sims to edit his stuff, it wouldn’t be bad. I think the blog world will improve that, but the forums have become a waste, for that anyway.
And no, I have no interest in your boils.
Quill Gordon
14 Dec 2011Diagrams of sentences drove me almost as nuts as equations where letters equaled numbers. I never did anything to anyone, so why this punishment? On the other hand, I have spent hours trying to get just one short sentence to sound the way I want, and when I do it sounds more like Alice B Toklas than Gertrude Stein.
“Daily miracles” probably come more often to those with more discipline than you or I, but I still think you write good.
Ken G
14 Dec 2011In my brief studies as an architect, I failed all my calculus classes, but aced any class where it was applied in real life. My instructor could never figure that one out.
In Tropic of Cancer (Tropic of Capricorn is much better by the way) Henry Miller has one sentence that I believe goes on for about 3 pages. I’m gonna start doing that.
I think you take pretty good pictures, too.