Review: Caleo

Caleo by James Crawford
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While Caleo is an enjoyably gripping read, with decent characters and some nice sexual and romantic tension, it also has some serious issues that stronger editing might have resolved. The background and motivations for Leeches -- the non-human, powered beings in the book -- as a whole are muddy and inconsistent. I didn't understand all the reasons for the warring, and the history of Leeches remained unclear. Visualization of setting gets dropped out in unfortunate places. The bombing of the town was the most egregious example. The scene lost all immediacy and seemed third-eye blind. It felt like a discomfort with epic action sequences. Issues with emotional consistency pop up pretty frequently. Mourning is often elided until necessary to the plot, and emotional tone varies wildly. While the sentence structure of the writing is relatively clean in the beginning, with only a few incorrectly constructed sentences, by the end, commas have dropped out, run-on sentences abound, and typos start popping up. Some basic grammar correction is sorely needed. That all said, I'm hooked by the characters and I'll probably read Book #2.

9 Ways to Improve Your Poetry

My mother was planning to teach a poetry class this week, so she asked me to come up with a list of suggestions for editing poetry that she could pass along. I considered how I rewrite and revise my own work, and the advice I'd give to anyone wanting to make their poetry (and prose) more effective and interesting.

1. Reread your poem word by word, line by line, and check for proper spelling, grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and capitalization. Either use the same rules as prose, or consistently break them all like e e cummings. Don't allow accidental errors. Fix typos.

2. Don't mix metaphors in a small poem or a section of a long poem. Use a conceit, which is an overarching thematic metaphor for the whole poem, which all smaller metaphors and similes refer back to. (Like the sea as the big metaphor, and then all smaller metaphors using imagery about the sea.)  For instance, don't describe the way someone walks as puppet-like, and then like a leaf in a windstorm. It just gets confusing when metaphors mix. Look over your poem, check your metaphors, and change them to bring them all under the same thematic umbrella.

3. Use real, concrete details whenever possible. Don't talk about abstract concepts -- use specific nouns and verbs for real things and actions. So don't write "My ideas spun in the universe." Write, "Violent blue Venus flickered with warnings to not judge John."

4. Get specific. Don't write "It smelled bad." Write "it reeked of clumpy milk." Look over your writing and change your words to be more precise and exact.

5. Use details from your own life. Make it personal. Be honest and observant. Write down what you actually experience or remember experiencing through your own senses. Use your own thoughts. Think about real people and places and things. Reread your poem and make the details more personal and honest.

6. Connect your real emotions about real things and occurrences and people and places to the poem. Always feel as strongly and truthfully as you can. The stronger you can hold the feeling and vision in your head, the more powerful the writing will be.  Look over your poem line by line and see if you can imagine it more clearly and feel it more strongly. Then change your poem to fit a better description of the moment inside you.

7. Be strange and silly and wild. Let your imagination run riot. There are exciting thrills and chills there. Do not be boring and predictable and normal! Write about the edgy, fun, funny, dizzy, scary side of you. Read over your poem and change the parts that seem too safe.

8. Avoid clichés. If you've heard or read someone use a phrase before, don't use it yourself. Make up a new way to say the same thing. Use real, specific details from your own life to make the phrase your own. Comb through your poem and rewrite anything you've heard or read before.

9. Don't be stubborn about changing your words! They're not etched in gold the first time you write them down. Think about all the possibilities. It's okay to revise and edit and experiment. Restart at the top of this list and edit your poem again.

Grammar Lesson: "Over" Versus "More Than"

While decrying the distinction in usage of "over" to mean "more than" is perhaps a losing battle (even a lost battle), I will never succumb to such imprecision in language.  They are both widely used interchangeably to signify "in excess of," but, simply put, "over" is a spatial term while "more than" is a term of quantification.  That is, "more than" is an expression of extra countable amount, while "over" expresses the concept of being relatively higher in physical space. 

For example, these are correct:

Wendell owned more than two hundred My Little Pony collectible figurines.

The dark cloud loomed ominously over the head of Lourdes.

NOT:

There are usually over twenty ingredients in mole sauce.

It's MORE THAN, people!  MORE THAN!  There are usually more than twenty ingredients in mole sauce!

Using "more than" instead of the erroneous "over" to signify a greater quantity has become popular because it is shorter, but rarely does using the correct "more than" make a sentence sound awkward.

When I was a children's book editor, I ended up specializing in coloring books, and often we would need to include a sales burst on the cover trumpeting our inclusion of stickers or temporary tattoos or window clings or an iron-on or whatnot.  Because of the smallish size of the burst (in a star shape), there wasn't room to fit "MORE THAN 50 FUZZY STICKERS!" comfortably.  However, I absolutely refused to let a book I worked on be released with "OVER 50 FUZZY STICKERS!" emblazoned on it.  We compromised by putting "50+ FUZZY STICKERS!" on instead.  A poor solution, but at least the burst text was still in the realm of quantity.

Yes, I understand that often "over" can be seen as a metaphorical usage, such as in these incorrect examples:

The temperature in India is over three hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

Mt. Washington is over 6,200 feet high.

In both examples, "more than" would still be correct, even though temperature climbs higher on a thermometer, and mountains rise into the sky.  We are still talking about quantity, not direct spatial relationships.  Mt. Washington is NOT over 6,200 feet high, or the mountain could be misread to start at 6,201 feet above sea level.

Yes, I realize that most books on grammar and style accept both usages.  They are wrong.  And they are pussies.  

So, to recap:

"Over" = comparitive spatial relationship signifying "above".

"More than" = quantitative expression meaning "in excess of".

Get it right, people.  Get it right.

Punctuation Lesson: the Apostrophe

OK, people, listen up.

People!

I am fed up with the worsening frequency of incorrect usage of apostrophes to indicate pluralization.

Stop it right now!

Stop it!

This sentence is very wrong:

What shall I do with this sack of cat's?

If I see such pluralization travesty again, I will scream.

The only time an apostrophe indicates plural is when it refers to a letter or word itself.

Example:

There are two u's in vacuum.

If you left out the apostrophe there, it would be a very confusing sentence.

Such a rare instance is the only time an apostrophe is used to pluralize. Even plural words like TVs, CDs, Baby-Ts, etc., do not get apostrophes.

Again, an apostrophe does not signify plural. Quit using it that way. I am entirely sick of this unacceptable mistake and if you continue to err you will be severely punished.

An apostrophe signifies possession or omission.

On the possession side, an apostrophe is used to indicate ownership: John's testicle, the cat's boil, the baboons' butts, the Joneses' desires, Fish's Eddy, cacti's phallicity, chess's complexity, Congress's mistakes, Dennis's slingshot, Jesus' virginity.

Yes, there are funky exceptions in there, but no usage of the apostrophe to indicate pluralization.

A singular word that doesn't end in an s gets a normal 's to show its ownership (to show that it's the owner).

John's testicle

the cat's boil

A plural word just gets an apostrophe without another s.

the baboons' butts

the Joneses' desires

That is, unless it is an irregular plural word that doesn't end in s and in that case it does get the apostrophe and an s.

Fish's Eddy

cacti's phallicity

If a non-plural word ends in an s, it gets the whole apostrophe and s added on.

chess's complexity

Congress's mistakes

Dennis's slingshot

The exception to that last rule is historical names, which for some reason do not get the extra s.

Jesus' virginity

Perhaps adding the extra s seemed vaguely blasphemous and therefore was stricken.

The biggest exception to the possessives rule is the one that seems to trip up everyone most often:

Possessive pronouns do not get an apostrophe.

These include: her, hers, his, their, theirs, your, yours, and its.

The only personal possessive pronoun with an apostrophe is one's.

Indefinite pronouns such as anyone's do get an apostrophe.

The worst culprit here is its. Its is a personal possessive pronoun and does not get an apostrophe.

It's means something else.

In the case of it's, the apostrophe signifies omitted letters. It's is a contraction of it is or it has, with the apostrophe sitting there as a placeholder for the truncation. This has absolutely nothing to do with possessives -- it is a different usage entirely and should not be confused.

Its works the same way as his.

It's (it is) works the same way as she'll (she will).

Other common usages of the apostrophe indicating omission are truncated dates ('06), dropped endings to words (hangin'), and weird absences for poetic rhythm (o'er).

Now that I've explained all this, no more apostrophes in pure plurals, yes?

If you do not shape up, I will lecture you until it hurts.

It's my duty.