On Word Choice

I have decided for my final blog to write about my own work. Currently I am writing a fantasy novel for my cousin for a Secret Santa game my family is doing this year for Christmas. I am a third done and need to talk about my experience writing a novel. I think that whenever I have written down stories before they have never been longer than seven or eight pages but now I am third way through a planned 100-page novel.

I think the most frustrating experience as a writer is my shallow depository of vocabulary. What I mean is whenever I am writing to say things eloquently, with precision, beauty and attractiveness. What I find instead is a group of about fifty to sixty words which force themselves through my hands and into my manuscript. It makes the creative process at worst excruciatingly nauseating and at best wickedly dull. I am sure that the reading process would mimic such reactions.

So I decided to test my self by putting my manuscript in wordle. It came out with my top used words in a creative, artistic format. Use it on your papers, your blog posts or even a favourite play for fun. I have decided to list the top used words without any conjunction or proper names. They are as follows:

- need (I tend to write from the view-points of the characters, although I am inconsistent with this, and this word is used a lot from the characters point of view. I seem to have one-dimensional characters who only think in terms of 'need')
- violence (One of the many themes of the book, I guess I can not hide it very well and use the word a lot. Now that I know this I will try to find other, more covert, ways in order to bring out this theme)
- moved (I tend to write very akwardly when it comes to physical movement of characters as the plot progresses. The frequent use of this word proves my intuition that I can not write actual events creatively or expressively)
- together (Another word related to my theme, but one better hidden. A lot of the book deals with 'Life Together' or communal living on a journey. I feel that this is a pretty standard word though and may need to find others ways in order to clearly articulate this main theme or idea running through the story. I should also find ways to indirectly show this)
- know (The plot is driven by personality, and I am finding one of my weaknesses deals with not being able to show the full contours and multiple dimensions of personality. In my writing personality seems to be essentialized in phrases like "they know" and as before "they need")
- good (This might be just laziness on my part but when I want to express something as good I should find other interesting and innovative ways besides saying in a rather dull fashion "It was good" or "They were good")
- history (This is less of a theme in the book and more of part of me that seems to have soaked through the layers of the text to come up over and over. I tend to think a lot in the terms and categories of narrative, story, tradition and history and this personal bent seems to have cast shadows in my work)
- sun (This one is simple: whenever I can't think of anything to say or any events to emerge I usually begin talking about the weather or the atmosphere, which always involves a 'bright sun' somehow)
- found (Just as 'need' and 'know' feature extensively as my own construction of personality so also does 'found' as apparently in my little literary world characters are very minimalist creatures who are driven by 'need' and desire to 'know', both of which require 'found'. As in "I found what I needed" or "I found what I wanted to know")
- people (my characters often encounter large crowds and interact with them in some way. This is either from me needing to add some action into a boring scene and not knowing how without adding a crowd or my own personal interest in group psychology seeping through the vocabulary use of this text)
- group (The characters are almost always together. I can't seperate them! But then I just can't describe well that they are in the group so I resort to saying 'group'.)
- death (As I said 'violence' is a theme so naturally the word 'death' will appear every once in a while)
- earth (At the same time I use the word 'sun' a lot to describe the atmosphere when I can think of any event to write about I use to word 'earth' to keep people, well, grounded. What I mean is that I intentionally try to describe the details of the surrounding, what colour leaves or what texture of 'earth', not so that they can imagine a very detailed picture of what is happening but in order to cultivate their imaginations and give the impression of reality.)
- houses (Another major aspect of the novel is the characters interaction with cities. I tend to be in a poverty of language when I approach urban areas in writing and end up trying to describes 'houses', their colours, make-up and shape. I hope, therefore, to lead any reader away from my lack of description of anything else in the city)
- horde (One of the themes of my book is, again, violence. What better images of violence are there than a loud, unorganized, dirty and bloody 'horde')
- attack (This is word is used a lot for two reasons. One, obviously, is my intent on displaying and considering violence. Two, my excess anxiety that I have a lack of plot. An anxiety which I fill by producing various scenes where the hyperbolic action of 'attach' is used.)

And my most used word outside of proper names?

BEGAN

I think the reason for this illustrated one of my biggest obstacles as a writer. Because of the way I think and behave in my life I have a difficulty imagining or expressing action. In my day-to-day moment by moment life I tend to experience, enjoy, participate and value conversations and dialogue over lesser-experienced, lesser-enjoyed and not very well participated in action. The closest thing I come to action is walking, and I walk a lot. But walking, walking and walking is not something very interesting in a story. Therefore I have this constant ghost haunting my work; a fear of writing inane chit-chat and long dialogue as opposed to captivating and enthralling action.
This is why, I believe, I use the word 'BEGAN' so much. It expresses an urgent desire to display action. To begin, and begin and begin and begin. Unfortunately I do not think this actually translates into more and more action with an increasingly eventful plot. Alternatively it becomes an overly abused and cruelly tortured verb which happens to return to my lexicon every so-often only to be hurt and assaulted once again.

Now where does this leave me?

I've been seriously trying to understand what is better to use: the same word used over and over again to create potency and value to the text or the playful wielding of synonyms in a thrust and parry of literary beauty? This is a serious question not only as an author (amateur as I may be) but also a reader (also as amateur I may be). I can see the strengths of both sides. The constant use of the same word can establish a well drawn out theme of idea. On the other hand the mixing of a multitude of synonyms and metaphors can help to create a genuine sense of originality and uniqueness to the text without being painfully obvious about the thematic elements within.
Then again the constant use of the same word or words can be come stale, dry, repetitive and boring, It can become unreadable and revolting. Also the use of multiple words for the same thing, idea or concept can crush a reader's sense of coherence and drown them in an endless sea of confusion and frustration. Both types of uses, then, can have very negative and unpleasant results despite the promise and potential for great use.
As for me I am still undecided. Do I go the one route and prefer a certain set of words, seeing them used over and over again for the good of the text or do I choose the road of synonyms as a road less travelled (in the sense each word is used but not too often) and hoping that it makes all the difference? As I have said, I can not decide. Hopefully for my cousin, whatever path I choose to depart on, he will enjoying reading what I have wrote. That despite perhaps poor word choices the text becomes something wonderful for him, something to curl up on the couch and read with a cup of warm cocoa on some cold, blustery winter day.

Action?

What is action?

Not in any complex, abstract, out-of-this-world sense but in real life experience. There is a difference between being passive and being active but I do not believe the difference is the defined. Because of that we have all these discussions raging about whether writting, talking, buying etc is actually acting or not.

I'm specifically thinking of a few weeks ago where someone mentioned that when people buy fair-trade coffee they "trick themselves into believing they are actually doing something". If they deceive themselves that they are actually doing something what IS doing something?

A piece of bread, a matress and a candle wick

Currently I am reading through Ivan Illich's "The Rivers North of the Future". It is a quasi-biographical work with an emphasis on the nature of Illich's activism and thought. In the first chapter Illich relates the story of an Asain pilgrim, just prior to the second world war, who after conversion decides to hold a pilgrimage to Rome. Throughout the east he is let into every house he comes to, and the locals show him hospitality, after he explains he is on a religious pilgrimage. He was given food, a handout and shelter. In fact, it does not matter that it is even a specifically Christian pilgrimage, they let him in anyway once they found out he was going to a sacred place.
As he comes closer to Rome he arrives in Eastern Orthodox territory and something changes. Instead of going to a strangers house the parishioners pointed him to the Parish house, a place designed for guests and visitors. This is a big difference; an act of hospitality starts to have a form institutionalization. Instead of being able to allow guests into their home the Christians in those land organized themselves in such a way that they built a house for the stranger.
This trend became stronger when he arrived in Catholic Poland. Here people put him up in a hotel. It moved from a choice of the villagers in Asia, to a parish culture of support in Orthodox lands to a fully developed form of a hospitality industry in western europe (that is; the parts of Europe that grew underneath the influence of Catholic Christianity). Illich criticizes this entire trend by explaining how "a gratuitous and truly free choice had become an ideology and an idealism".
According the Illich this developed around the time when (a) Christianity was becoming a dominant force in the Roman Empire and (b) the Empire was collapsing. With the social upheaval at the time the emperors began legislating strict rules in relation to homelessness. In order to deal with homeless refugees the empire gave major financial support to Churches who were already showing hospitality to these people. Thus, in order to deal with the huge influx of money and privelege, the churches institutionalized hospitality.
This is what Illich calls "the perversion of the best is the worst".
At this point Illich seems to be completely lost. We have a socialist government which runs our electricity companies, gives us education for thirteen years, helps fund post-secondary education, funds our health care and medicare,helps set up pensions, finances the disabled, builds our roads and funds social workers who work with homeless and poor with programs such as homeless shelters and soup kitchens, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT? Aren't all these things intrinsically good? Yes, yes: bureaucracy sucks sometimes being inefficient and wasteful. Yes, it is not perfect. Nothing is. What right does he have to call it "the worst".
Following his discussion about what has happened to hospitality he turns his attention to one of the earliest historical record of Christianity. Outside of an old brothel in Rome there is picture of a man on a cross with the horse of a donkey. Underneath the words "Anaxemenos adores his God". One of the oldest records of of Christianity is some who mocked a person for worshipping a crucified God. How foolish!
It is this sense of foolishness which is lost in Christianity, at least western Christianity, according to Illich. The Good Samaritan parable in Luke is what Illich based his analysis on. According to him "the way of the Samaritan is - pure folly if you really think it through". It is pure folly which is the ultimate duty and can not be normalized in institutions as it has been without being perverted from the ethical duty of the individual.
Illich goes on too talk about the first two generations of Christianity. With the first two generations each Christian community had a prophet, as can be seen in the New Testament records. Yet no longer where they prophets awaiting the coming of the messiah, for he had already come, nor were they bringing the word of God to the people because the word had already come through Jesus. So what did they do? They warned about the antichrist. The antichrist, a mysterious figure, was somehow meant to emerge from the church itself.
For Illich the idea of the anti-Christ is a type of evil opened up only through the revelation of Christ. In a sense that it is a thing which directly contradicts what Christ means. Christ, for Illich, opens up the opportunity to see the potential of others to be redeemed. Sin is the denial of this dignity that Others can have through Christ. It is something completely new. This seems to be an aside, but is utterly important for what Illich is discussing. For this type of treatment, treating people as those who can be redeemed, is "radical foolishness". This freedom of being loyal to someone as if to be loyal to God is the heart of the matter. For Illich "the idea that by not responding to you, when you call upon my fidelity, I thereby personally offend God is fundamental to understanding what Christianity is about."
Christianity then opens up a new possibility. The possibility is that "[we] can encounter God in Chris and Christ in the unknown one who knocked at his door and asked for hospitality." Now this is what Illich means when he says "the best". By "the worst" he means a situation where it is thought that"charitable institutions can do much better than a bunch of individual Christians". That is the central perversion. The loss of the original purity of the gospel. The cause of all the stress, all the corruption and all the evil coming out our western bureacracies today comes from this way of using the gospel.

On the Noam Chomsky Lectures (a play)

When I first saw "the Noam Chomsky lectures: a play" I was intrigued. What could this possibly be about?

I was subsequently disappointed. I went in assuming some interesting themes to come about concerning how the media operates expressed in how the play was written. All there was some of this it was not enough to leave me satisfied. I'm deep discontent with what I read.

First of all the authors play themselves in the play. It is two characters who are modeled after the writer/actors who created them. Maybe this was an attempt to make some sort of point to how characters are represented in literature versus the news media: if so I completely missed that. The characters are really just mouth-pieces for a fairly long history of Canadian involvement in American atrocities in the American proxy wars and oppressive policies during the twentieth century. Other than that there was narrative, personality or genius to either of the two characters.

Secondly there is no structural critique of the media. I was expecting that that way the play was written and set up what be critical about the way the media operates. Although on occasion the play experimented with this (one particular scene involved the characters asking the audience for bribes regarding what should be discussed in the later half of the play) over all it was generally disappointing. I would have been more entertained with the play had an element of Chomsky's criticism of the media's propaganda model within the play itself. Perhaps having the characters mirror the different steps.

Again, I saw a little bit of this. A brief reference to the CIBC ownership of the theatre and sponsoring of the company, some references to Flak and anti-ideology but overall the play had a creative poverty in relation to this. It seemed to have potential in the very idea about making a play based on Chomsky's activism but if fell short; horrifically so.

Finally I would like to point out a few positive aspects of the play as well as some of it's challenges to how we perceive literature and theatre as a whole.

First, reading the play was geuinely educational. I found most productive how the play focused on the naive and hypocritical idea that Canada is a nation of peacemakers. It points to the Canadian involvement in the Vietnam war, making nearly three billion in weapons manufacturing and manipulating data at an international level to make it seem that the war was not illegal by Geneva standards.

The play also gave a fascinating history into the US involvment in South America, Asia and Africa and questioned the policies of the various presidential administrations in relation to their liasons with big business. It is genuinely frightening but nevertheless interesting list of the terrible offences our souther neighbour has been involved with; along with a record of our sheepish complacency with their foreign policies.

Also it gave some interesting insights for me about how literature is produced and received.

First of all I wonder how much literature is political in someway or another. This play was obviously political but how many of the plays and novels and poetry we read has some sort of ideological current flowing underneath the textual surfaces? What have you read for this class that is somehow political? Whether antiracist, feminist,marxist or what have you.

Secondly, and this is related, how does the literature we receive and work through simply add to the maufacturing of consent? Although Chomsky's target is the mass media how do the plays and novels we read fit into the larger landscape? I think about the 'deep' novels we can read with 'meaning' haunting every page: how much of those really just distract us from real issues? Or on the other hand how do 'political' works of fiction make us believe we are actually doing something, contributing to the causes of human rights when really all we are doing is sitting back, drinking a cup of tea and reading a book printed by a publisher connected to big media?

I think the last two questions are the most important?

How much of we read is 'political'?

And, then, how much of what we read 'manufactures consent'?

On the US vs John Lennon

I had the opportunity rececently to view the documentary the US vs John Lennon. I will leave my personal response and opion of the film aside and instead focus on an image in the film that to me manifested all the political power was, is and can be.

The image is of Richard Nixon looking out the window in white house, presumably at a collection of anti-war demonstrators connected Lennon's peace activism. Nixon seems to be both anxious and preoccupied with it.

To me this seemed absurd. Why would the President of the most powerful nation on earth be afraid of a group of people who are young, without much financial power, and had no intention of violence? The film tries to make the point that 26th Amendment, which lowered the suffrage age by three years, perhaps caused this. I found this to be a weak argument as the number of voters would have been in the millions, but not a threatning number.

Yet Nixon was still afraid.

The point of the film is to show that somehow Lennon was heroic in his activism and that he made a substantial difference. I do not doubt his sincerity but I do doubt the amount of credit they give him for his influence. I blame, rather, the US government, for actually being afraid of him. The evidence of this is CIA documents leading up to Nixon himself which showed the agencies survellience of Lennon.

For the rhetorical sake of repition: I find this absurd! Lennon had little geopolitical influence yet the US accredited him worthy of suspicion. In the middle of the Cold War, during the end of the Vietnam war and all the other major geopolitical events going on in the 1970s it seems incredibly foolish to hunt a popular musician - despite his activism.

This got me to thinking about the way the world works: there exists a great degree of unpredictability and chaos to what happens. I'm not talking about the externally human world, such as the environment or the spiritual realm, but what happens in human society.

And this is not neccesarily negative.

If Lennon, who has only a small amount of power, can be perceived as such a threat by the United States, that has fantastic ramifications. It seems to give much more agency to us as historical actors - that is, as people who live, work and create change in history. If Lennon could become something analgous to a national threat what can we do?

This idea that we have an untapped, unused potential for historical agency really intrigues me. As someone who desires justice on a global scale I can see potential in the future. I can also see grave danger.

What happens when people awaken to this agency, one that is both powerful yet uncontrollable?

Milbank on the Incarnation

You know I like an author when I make my own category for him..

Anyways I was reading part of his book "Ontology and Pardon" when I came upon this quotation: "In this way a single suffering became also a sovereign suffering, capable of representing all suffering and of forgiving on behalf of all victims."

This is something rather new to me, or at least he presents it in a way that is rather new, for I never considered that the forgiveness that comes from the cross might relate to Christ being a victim of the world. It is weird to talk about Christ this way - our normal language talks about him offering himself which seems very different from being a victim. But perhaps looking at Christ as being a victim - of the cruelty and apathy of the Roman regime, of the second-temple religious establishment, of the violent nationalism of his people and of the cowardice and abandonment of his disciples - can give us a whole new understanding, a whole new way of looking at Sin and Forgiveness.

This new, or at least different, way about looking at Sin is that it a thing, a force, that victimizes. Forgiveness, the alleviation of the guilt and responsibility, can only be offered by a victim. God being supreme could then only offer forgiveness on behalf of the victims if he himself became one. And he did so in the person of Christ on the cross.

I have to say this idea is absolutely stunning. It threw me off. I think the other way of thinking about the Cross, as Christ offering a sacrifice, is still valid. Now though a whole other dimension is added. It really effects our theologies, ways of talking about Christ and the way we do ethics.

Churches as Microcredit lending groups?

Andrew Jones recently posted on his predictions about the church in the next ten years here.

This relates directly to my previous posts on co-operatives and facebanking. It got me to thinking: how can the Church financially aide it's community? How can we back this up theologically or, maybe, missiologically? I know that this is a very similar idea to what the Mennonites are doing, a institution I will be attaching myself to when it opens its membership to non-members of Mennonite churches in May.

I wonder how this look like in Evangelical or mainline churches. I can see Evangelical churches becoming interested out of a desire to reach people and so to fund their member's entreprenuership if it relates to evangelism. I can also see that Mainline churches would fund different types of social justive iniatives, although what kind I am not sure.

Then there are megachurches. Churches with a thousand(s) of people might utilize this, if they do it can be an explosion of creativity. Of course it could also cause the churches to change focus in a negative way and will also force some churches to change their legal organizational structure but it could really make an impact.

Finally there is the question of denominations. These churches who choose the route of ministering through micro-finance have the choice of either doing so with a denomination or doing it at a local level. Both would have their advantages but both would have their disadvantages as well.

What do you think? Good idea, bad idea? How will it play out? What opportunities would this give to the church?