More Voltaire

Happy Tax Day! I hope a refund is on its way to you. If Tax Day doesn’t do it for you, April 15 also marks the day that Major League Baseball honors Jackie Robinson. Players can wear his #42 and every team sets aside time for a ceremony.

Onward to writing -- Yesterday I briefed you on some of what I had learned about the French philosopher, Voltaire. Let us now return to his most famous work, CANDIDE.

I find CANDIDE a very simply stated, straightforward, short satire that avoids the long drawn out opinions that infest other 18th century works. I’m not yet completely through it, but I will go ahead and say that CANDIDE’s timelessness likely rests on the fact that Voltaire conveys his political and religious criticisms through a book that mostly reads like a child’s fable.

Stated another way, Voltaire knows what he wants to say and says it in the simplest terms. Doing so isn’t an accident. Voltaire had a fine education and knew Latin, Spanish, and English as well as his native French. I’m sure he could have impressed us by stating his complex philosophies in equally sophisticated terminology and plot.

So, as I ask myself what I can learn from Voltaire, one of the ‘authorly’ lessons I’ll take away is another example of KISS -- Keep It Simple, Stupid. Oh, and be intentional about it. Sometimes the best and most beautiful things are those whose masters left them simply crafted. Incidentally, by simple, I mean simple in appearance to the reader, seamless if you will. Thus, even if my story contains hidden meaning and plot twists and complex characters, I must take the extra effort to think through the ‘simplest’ way to present these elements within my story.

Do you agree? I do think there is an equally enticing other side of writing, whose extended complexities create its attractiveness, but we’ll blog on that in a later post. Unlike taxes, I can put that off to another day. ;-)

Taxes, the Zoo, & Voltaire

First, my condolences to all tax procrastinators. My sympathies as I’ve been there before.


Next, I want to report a successful zoo trip. It’s been years since I went to the zoo. I can’t speak for the kids, but I had a blast. If you visit DFW, definitely plan on going to the Fort Worth Zoo. I think the only zoo in the country that is supposed to top it is the San Diego Zoo, which I’m excited to say, LW and I may see next month on a vacation (more on that in a later post)! Anyhow, the pic shows LW and #2 son admiring a giraffe.




Onward to business – First, for those new to the blog, I’m in the process of tackling all of literature’s classics in hopes of bettering my writing skills. At the moment, I’m most of the way through Voltaire’s 18th century work, CANDIDE. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t ever recall having been coerced into reading it in high school, and I had anticipated a painful, difficult read. My paltry recollection of Voltaire centered around him being a French philosopher. I envisioned pages of meaningless tangents and needless listings of monarchies and lengthy descriptions of items such as divans. Nothing could be further from the truth.


A little history – Voltaire is a pen name for François-Marie Arouet who appears to have been a prolific writer, having over 2,000 books/pamphlets published. Born in 1694, this Frenchman argued for social reform, occasionally landing in prison or exile for his work. His father wanted him to be a lawyer, but Voltaire felt writing better suited him.
Get this – it said that his 1752 work, MICROMEGAS, might well be the first sci-fi book. Hmm … apparently, alien ambassadors visit earth. Who’d have thunk it? My appreciation for Voltaire deepens.


Another odd fact – a month before his death in 1778, he apprenticed himself to the visiting Benjamin Franklin as a Freemason. Then, when he did die, and maybe somebody can explain this to me, but according to Wiki, Voltaire’s heart and brain were embalmed separately from his body.


Voltaire certainly seems an interesting fellow, huh? I’ll talk more about my impressions of CANDIDE on the next post. Stay tuned! In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you if you’ve read any of Voltaire’s work or if you had similar misgivings.

Going to the Zoo

I’ve the day off today, and if the weather cooperates, we plan on taking our 15 month old son and our recently turned 5 year old nephew to the Fort Worth Zoo today. I’ll let you know how we fare. Has anyone seen the news about all the wildfires in North Texas? I hope we can still go. Yesterday, the sky turned gray and a burnt smell permeated the air.

Switching topics, have you ever wondered why Easter falls on different calendar dates? I knew it had to do with the moons, but I wasn’t entirely certain exactly why. Here’s an excerpt from Wiki (feel free to skip the next 2 paragraphs if such useless trivia bores you):

Good Friday is the Friday before Easter, which is calculated differently in Eastern Christianity and Western Christianity (see Computus for details). Easter falls on the first Sunday following the Paschal Full Moon, the full moon on or after 21 March, taken to be the date of the vernal equinox. The Western calculation uses the Gregorian calendar, while the Eastern calculation uses the Julian calendar, whose 21 March now corresponds to the Gregorian calendar's 3 April. The calculations for identifying the date of the full moon also differ. See Easter Dating Method (Astronomical Society of South Australia).

Because Easter in Western Christianity can fall between March 22 and April 25 on the Gregorian calendar, Good Friday can fall between March 20 and April 23, inclusive. In Eastern Christianity, Easter can fall between March 22 and April 25 on Julian Calendar (thus between April 4 and May 8 in terms of the Gregorian calendar, during the period 1900 and 2099), so Good Friday can fall between March 20 and April 23, inclusive (or between April 2 and May 6 in terms of the Gregorian calendar). (See Easter.)

Quite a mouthful, huh? Anyway, I am thankful to be off work today and to have some time to reflect on the sacrifice made on mankind’s behalf so long ago on this day. Enjoy your Easter weekend!

TT: R.Harris' POMPEII

The end of POMPEII’S first page reads:

Already he could feel the heat of the morning beginning to build, the promise of another day without rain.

POMPEII is the first book I’ve read by Robert Harris, though I recently purchased IMPERIUM. As you might surmise, POMPEII deals with the infamous volcano that erupted in the year 79 AD. I like the above sentence because it sets a nice tone and foreshadows the volcanic eruption. Preceding it, the main character has just finished fixing an aqueduct two hours before dawn.

In honor of another Thesaurus Thursday, let’s see how else the excerpt might be stated. My effort:

A stifling heat already suffocated the dark fields ahead, signaling another hot, rainless day.

Anyone else want to try? Feel free to critique my sentence or the one Robert Harris wrote. It’s a good exercise I use to hone my writing skills.

Prologues

Blogging agent Nathan Bransford published a post a couple days back on prologues that I found interesting. He doesn’t object to stories that use prologues, but I’ve seen where other agents vehemently object to material beginning with a prologue. In fact, I even axed my prologue in writing my first work simply because I didn’t want to hoist a red flag to any prologue hating readers.

Most of the time, the prologue opponents’ logic includes statements such as, “If it’s relevant to the book then it can go in chapter 1.” Seemingly, some agents think a prologue amateurish, as though it should be beneath a ‘real’ writer. Oh my!

I suppose prologues follow the authoring rule that is not a rule: If you write well, it doesn’t matter. If you don’t, then it does. I actually enjoy a good prologue, will likely write a book in the future containing one, and I’ll even confess to LOVING the leisurely, over-informant epilogue. What about you?

Interesting Links

I finally plowed through my backlogged Google Reader after being out of town over the weekend. I came across a few interesting links to share with you.

Need more willpower to finish writing your story? Try brushing your teeth with your other hand, courtesy of Life Hacker.

Fast Company has a list of 5 noteworthy figures’ favorite kid books. There's a couple in there I hadn't read before that I'll have to find for #1 son.

Paula over at Writer’s Edge has a post up about the top 10 best books on writing. Can you tell that I love any sort of post involving book lists?

I found this interesting: GalleyCat conveyed an NPR story that attractive authors have a better chance of getting a book review. I suppose I won't just set the timer for my author photo. Well, a little Photoshop can go a long ways. ;-)

Last, being that I work with Excel practically everyday doing my day job, I love that GalleyCat also passed along a story about a guy who wrote a story on an Excel spreadsheet and has had it downloaded 10,000 times.

Opening Day

The United States Army 4th Infantry Division Band from Fort Hood ushered in the 2009 baseball season at 1:05 PM in Arlington, Texas with the national anthem, interrupted by the early arrival of two sensational looking (and loud) B-1 bombers flying overhead. Former President and past Ranger owner George W. Bush threw out the ceremonial first pitch – a great looking high fastball across the plate.

Everything looked set for a great afternoon, and the game didn’t disappoint. LW had bought us two upper deck tickets a couple months back for my birthday. It was blustery cold, but we were there, and we enjoyed every moment.

The Rangers pitched well, played solid defense, and made key hits, including this one: 20 year old phenom Elvis Andrus hits a double in his first big league at bat. Look close. You can see the ball flying off the bat.

The Rangers posted a 9 to 1 win over the Cleveland Indians. Let baseball season begin!