The name for this beauty, or this Japanese style of beauty, is wabi sabi. As one might imagine, it partakes of the zen loveliness of a Japanese garden, leaning toward minimalism, in Western terms. The phrase comes from two words originally: wabi, meaning poverty, and sabi, meaning loneliness.

How cool is that? Pretty darn poetical, I’d say.

The most inspirational image of this style, for me, comes from the poet Basho, who said that an overdone artwork is like “painting a flower on a flower petal.” That is, let nature be, don’t futz around too much making things pretty. Let it go.

To Basho and his wabi sabi buddies, beauty is fundamental and universal, way beyond mere emotion. Way I reckon it, beauty is the building block of the universe, the one indivisible atomos of the Greek ideal. There’s molecules and atoms and electrons and quarks and gluons and as one goes deeper and deeper into the heart of reality, one finally arrives at the building block of matter: beauty. Whether it is a wave, a particle, or a doily has yet to be determined.

So what has that got to do with football? Everything, dude. Football is the most beautiful violence of all time: brutal ballet, except better. Like most violence that’s worth a damn, it requires officiating. And with officials come mistakes.

That’s where wabi sabi comes in, or anti-wabi sabi in this case. Since it wasn’t perfect, we had to make it better: that is to preclude all mistakes via instant replay. Supposedly, one could check back to make sure no mistakes were made, and then it would be perfect. Bullshit, they made it way worse—destroyed the integral fluidity of the game. It’s frankly horrific, esthetically.

All to avoid mistakes. Good luck with that. Blown replays are common as assholes.

Pissed,

LWIII

My best to everyone,

LWIII

•    More words do not mean more power.
•    Sometimes okay is good enough and sometimes it ain’t.
•    You know, if you were writing to you, that would be perfect. But you ain’t.
•    Mellifluous prose is nice, but sacrificing meaning for it is the habit of an amateur.
•    Life may be hard, but at least I’m fat.
•    You don’t write for effect, you write to describe.
•    One doesn’t need to be taught to write. One only needs to read. If a writer is in you, it will come out.
•    Perfectionism has no place in a writer. Only in an editor.
•    Writing on impulse is great, but editing on impulse can lead to more editing.
•    I think editors must be in a conspiracy to not mention how freakin’ easy it is to spot boo-boos in other people’s writing.
•    Those arguments you have in your head with somebody after the fact? Good dialogue practice, keep doing it.
•    Artistic isn’t always better, especially in popular fiction.
•    A good editor is happiest when he’s wrong.
•    You need to quit treating your reader like a dumbass.
•    What makes a writer isn’t the way you say stuff, it’s having something to say.
•    Some words are so unusual you can only use them once a book. Twice, and you seem like a total ass.
•    What people don’t realize is that infinity is in everything.
•    Nothing can be pre-assumed or other-directed. It must come from your soul, pure.
•    If you never say ‘off on the necessary’ once your entire novel, I shall be pleased.
•    You’ll find expert writers don’t mind word duplication as much as inexperienced ones.
•    When objects and people become too artistic, they become annoying.
•    Nothing is ever always verboten.
•    All words are equal.
•    Band-Aids are bad.
•    Understatement is better than overstatement.
•    As long as you stick to the mighty principle that you can’t fix plot problems with narrative, you’ll be fine.
•    Hope is the fuel of self-discipline.
•    No matter how many rules you follow, eventually you come to stuff that’s in between all of them.
•    Not being a writer is the greatest failure I ever had.
•    You write out of your own head. You edit out of the reader’s head.
•    It’s actually possible to edit life the way you do a book: line up your options, be creative, pick the best one, continue onward.
•    You cannot give excuses in the description for a plot that is contrived. That never, ever works.
•    Never brag about your characters in the description. Let their actions and words do that.
•    I think there should be a law that you can make up a new word whenever you need one.
•    ‘The helicopter whirred thumpingly’ does not work for me.
•    The main thing that makes me better than normal editors is that they’re not insane.
•    Don’t write from the outside in, directing your chars. Write from the inside out, see with their eyes, feel what they would do.
•    One of the greatest things about being an editor is you don’t have to tell anybody anymore you’re a writer. Whew.
•    I am an artist. I am not afraid (it’s my job).
•    The main thing is to keep your writer from killing himself.
•    A writer writes on confidence the way an engine runs on gas. Do not tamper with that precious confidence.
•    Putting a word into italics so you can add a little special meaning of your own is disrespectful to the real word. Just tell it.
•    The problem is never the problem. It’s the despair over the problem that’s the problem.
•    How to tell if something is true: Heck if I know, it just is. You can tell, can’t you? It has an unmistakable ring to it.
•    Anything that is possible—if it’s true—you can make seem normal and natural.
•    What you don’t understand is that I like clichés. Just don’t use them in such a clichéd manner.
•    I know, it sucks, but sunset doesn’t last 24 hours a day. Sorry.
•    Overstatement is not our pal.
•    Novels are not sermons, fyi.
•    If you’ve got a favorite cause to flog, like diversity, for god’s sake don’t put it in your novel. Write a blog or something.
•    Being an editor is a good lesson in thinking twice before you act.
•    The artist’s ego is a precious thing, part of their engine, and it must be treated as if it were spun gold hanging on a thread.
•    Sometimes it’s hard to tell if the writer is being straight with you on an esthetic choice, or is just defending their ego.
•    Tremblingly is a word, but not a very good one.

But I got lucky. Turns out I’m one of them. And I like it. I am now the guy who used to sit on my shoulder and berate me unmercifully for not being better as I wrote. Sweet.

Not that I’m sadistic at all, or much. To me the artist (or in this case my client) is a precious jewel to be treasured and cherished and coddled. I want to be that dickhead guy I used to hate so much except good. I rip your prose to shreds in a good way, lol. I am now the Word Doctor by trade, but I don’t just love and heal words, I love people, and artists most of all. I heal words and wordsmiths both.

I just wasn’t brave enough to be one. But I am brave enough to help them. And I will try with all my heart and soul to help those mighty beings of light. Lieutenant Yourword, at your service, Cap’n.

Love,

The Word Doctor

Some of these are actually valuable for an editor, some are silly, some may be wrong. But one thing about them all, they’re short.

Since I collected them off Twitter, they’re in backwards order from when they started.

LWIII

• Any editor who don’t worship the paper his writer writes on ain’t worth the letter e.

• Improvement is painful.

• Never begrudge the writer their tantrums.

• Beware of the writer’s resistance building up in you over time. Energy that should go toward story can leak into neurosis.

• Just because something feels a certain way doesn’t make it true.

• Words of wisdom: the, and, but.

• Just because you have an excuse for why something could be some way is no reason to keep it that way, if it wasn’t deliberate.

• We don’t need no stinking badges: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lj056ao6GE

• I just go by the rules. What’s the big deal?

• If you’re a novelist you have to know everything. Sorry.

• When I’m writing, it’s all about me. When I’m editing, nothing is about me. What a relief!

• Unfortunate discovery #732: Even editors encounter resistance.

• Not sure I would ever want to work on a novel that didn’t address the big questions. Maybe, if it was good.

• I do want to change some of your words, but I never want to change any of your meaning.

• Words are only scary if you have to write them. Otherwise not.

• If you want to do more than tell the truth, you’ll have to find another editor.

• If it’s a vague place in the south of France, a generic provincial villiage is okay. But if in Paris you better get the streets right.

• Beware superlativity. Everything is not the biggest or the worst or the grandest or the whatever-est. Serious.

• Let the non-fiction writers belittle stuff.

• One thing about being an editor, you don’t have to be artistic in the least. Man, that’s a load off!

• It’s all about levels within layers within mysteries of imagination.

• Because that’s how it rolled out of my pen is not necessarily a good argument.

• Killing your darlings is a heck of a lot easier when they ain’t your darlings.

• Show me the money!

• It doesn’t matter if something is a cliché or not. It only matters if it’s true.

• The comma is your best bet, unless other punctuation is indicated (after the beloved period, of course).

• The only thing an editor need really worry about is story. All else is extraneous, including the author’s poor benighted ego.

• Someday I want to look upon coffee as more of a beverage than a drug.

• Writing your own novel is suffering the torments of the damned. Editing somebody else’s novel is looking on and giggling.

• Anytime you think something is about you, you’re probably wrong.

• One never knows what other people know. Best to ask.

• The finest tool of the writer (other than his ass of course) is the ability to learn. Most already know, so can’t be bothered to learn.

• If editors were 100% honest with most writers, they wouldn’t get any clients. I prefer to call it diplomacy rather than lying.

• Unless your editor is a better writer than you, you’re hosed, dude.

• One bad thing about being an editor is pretty soon you edit everything in your head. Can be annoying. Thought-editing, oh yay.

• Words are funny that way.

• An editor is someone who will torment you when the chips are down.

• As an editor it’s my job to advocate for the story in opposition to the writer’s ego.

• It’s about the product, not the process.

• Amazing how much easier and pleasanter it is to notice the screwups in other people’s writing.

• Editing is not the process of sitting back and oohing and ahhing about how great everything is. Sorry.

• Never realized editing was such a sweet gig. All the pain and suffering has been gone through already. Now you just word it up!

• You can’t base your novel-writing on the opinions of civilians or you’ll always be small potatoes.

• Other people are just like you, except different.

• When deciding whether to pronounce coyote as cai-ote or cai-o-tee, I will always choose the one that’s closer to yodeling.

• Emotions are the writers toolbox. They must all be instantly available at all times. Best keep insanity in that little drawer.

• Just because you got words don’t mean ya gotta use ‘em.

• The only difference between a good editor and a bad one is the bad one sucks.

• Style is nice as a hobby, but you can’t make a living at it.

• Writing dialogue is actually just listening to your character speak and taking it down.

• Emotional blackmail is a good tool to use to get your clients to treat you more humanely.

• A well-turned-out cliché, used at the proper time, is a marvel of originality.

• An example of the problem with clauses: He went to the bathroom, running to the front door.

• As an editor you have to remember it’s only fair if you have to suffer once in a while, too.

• An editor works more for the book than the author, but don’t tell anybody.

• A good editor should squeak loudly when being used as a whipping boy by the client—customer service always a priority.

• It’s not a true author-editor relationship until the editor has been threatened with firing.

• Fixing stuff is way way way easier than making stuff, especially if all you got to do is fix it.

• Save your best writing for the dialogue.

• Wanted to be concrete in a specific area of the mss, so changed ‘stone’ to ‘concrete’.

• Changed ‘bottom’ to ‘top’.

Might as well be my lastish blog, slow as I’ve been posting lately. Been busy, believe it or not. Lucked into the greatest gig on the planet. Never knew a sympatico editor/writer relationship could be so amazingly wonderful. I am an editor, plain and simple. Frankly, I’m the best editor I ever knew. In fact, I never knew editors could be this good. Born to be one. All these many decades, and I never had a clue.

I’m actually good enough at something finally to not give a shit what anybody thinks about my work. I know it rocks. Very solid. And editing is such cake. You fix other people’s stuff. How easy is that? The hard part is creating it. All I do is just point out where it could be better. Duh. It’s all pre-suffered. I’m just the annoying guy at the end. Emotional freedom is such a blessing.

I can’t believe nobody ever told me about this.

Went down to Taos to research the setting. Came back with some terrific pics. Here’s one, with a little editorial flair, a fictionalized graphic.

Your ever-lovin’ editor,

LWIII

This book broke my heart. I hate it. I loathe, despise, revulse, and malign it. And yet I love it with great passion and abiding joy. Am I crazy? Read it and see.

I don’t generally write book reviews on my blog. but came across a memoir a few days ago that makes it imperative that I do. Elephant Girl by Jane Devin reminded me why I love the written word above all things. As a writer and editor (editor mostly, as those who wondered where my blog went may have noticed lately) I whine, mope, and complain frequently about how words are fluff and not to be confused with reality. Words are the tools us writers use to jerk around our readers. They are also what the generality of everybody use to fool ourselves. Words felt useless to me, fake – or at least not enough to hold Truth.

Well, Jane Devin was a splash of cold water. Words do matter, hugely. How could I forget that?

* Cover design by Stephanie Cameron

The story of Jane Devin’s life as related in this memoir is something that is an action. Words as doingness. And her action has created an immense reaction in me, physiological and mental. For one thing I almost read myself sick. I could… not… stop in my second sit-down with her book and read all through the night, putting it down only when I finished after 8 a.m the next morning. Boy I felt like crap physically for two days later. That damn book. My mind, however, is still in joyland, despite how awful so much of her narrative felt, a litany of punishment for the compassionate soul. Too bad she draws you in so effortlessly, or I wouldn’t have had to feel so crappy about the whole thing. Darn that unobtrusive writing!

This story of her life is a human story, as it says in the subtitle. It is so universal, I can’t be the only one who reads this tale and is cut by its nature to my very core. It makes you look into places you wish weren’t there, and yet you’re glad you did, even so. I know many things, but I never knew this.

Jane Devin’s fine book is the product of an amazing human being. I’m kinda embarrassed to be wasting my skin so much after reading her experiences. Add another unwanted emotion to the effects. For people who have left any portion of their emotional equipment on the shelf for very long, Elephant Girl will bust it out in spades.

As a reviewer I leave much to be desired, since I would rather the reader learn from the book what it’s about, and not from somebody telling them. Besides, as far as I can tell, this book is about me.

In awe, wonder, and gratitude,

LWIII

So I began posting my own versions of factual truth, such as the indisputable fact that wood was originally made from rocks.

A sampling:

Pain doesn’t really hurt, it just seems that way.

Giggling was invented by a baby.

In the future, short people will rule.

Lawyers used to be Satan, but they sued and got out of it.

Science is the science of being scientific.

The ear of a beagle puppy is softer than a cloud by 1.42 softograms.

Monkeys used to be king of the world.

Burgeoning is a lost art.

They talk like that in Joisey ‘cause they ma got they gum stuck in they teeth.

Questions were the first answers.

Brains were originally located in the right asscheek.

Cinderella’s birth name was Elmer Fudd.

The diameter of a man is directly proportional to pie. 

Some people may call it stupid; others idiotic; while some may term it pointless or a waste of time. Not sure who to agree with. They could be right. And then again….

It’s true, I swear!

LWIII

I’m tweeting presently as a character in a Twitter movie, spending hours a day tweeting as someone I’m not. Sure does mess with your style. Now I find myself naturally falling into the style of that character, a colorful old man. It’s the old man thing that’s getting to me, because I’ve realized a lot of the things I say are like an old man already, like lordy or dearie.

Oh lordy (in a young way).

The movie is being written and cast and beginning some filming now. We had an outline, and while the rest of the gang began work on auditions, the website, the script, and soon the filming, I started tweeting, doing exactly what the protagonist does in the film. This the the story of the story, as it’s made, since we don’t know the final form of the script, it being only a synopsis so far.

Don’t know why I’m so set on it being a secret I’m doing this, or a partial one, since I am telling my friends it’s me. So if it’s okay my friends know I’m tweeting as whatshisname, why is it not okay for everybody else?

Don’t know exactly. I do know I want it to be as much like that guy as possible. Positive realage, fakewise. It’s great fun to write, very spontaneous and interactive. A combination of storytelling, acting, conversation,  twoetry, and doing the limbo. Did invent a language in my spare time: Twinglese. You just put ‘tw’ in front of everything. Ha. Twike twis, twy twonfused twiend. Tworry, twit twinda twucks, twas twa twanguage. But what the hey, sure was easy. Tolkien here I come!

Considerably easier to get under that limbo bar when it doesn’t exist.

Amazing how my writing experiences have prepared me for this role. It’s a lot like the letter game, except with tweets. And I do have a penchant for roleplaying, as in Wisdom Boy or Lone Wolf III.

This is nothing like writing by yourself. Much more collegial and friendly, a social forum. It’s a public performance artform, based on an outline, but much of the subplot of the story is being built up by interaction with other tweeters. They say something, then the character plays off that, and so the story is the result partly of chance or fate, which is kinda cool in this postmodern era.

Hello World!

LWIII

And so I watched as well as read my way through Intro to Shakespeare. Our professor was a massive bardaholic, an ancient fella with a huge passion. His belief was that the only way to begin to understand a Shakespeare play was to read it seven times. So I did that with Romeo and Juliet, right in a row. The sacred 7.

Talk about word heaven. Don’t know about understanding, but I did get steeped in the sound. So much so that for two weeks I dreamt in iambic pentameter. My soul no longer had its seat in modern times, but was sucked by the sound back to times of yon. And anon and stuff.

Which brings us to the present. When I first joined Twitter I had the good fortune to find @IAM_SHAKESPEARE,  a guy who auto-tweets one line of Shakespeare every ten minutes on the dot, consecutively, all 120,000 of them. The entire godlike ouvre.

Twitter is so great. Readus Interruptus, an ever-changing kaleidoscope of earvision. Every ten minutes, without fail if you’re watching your timestream, you get a reminder of what the human race is capable of, such music, such humor, such terrible insight, the kind that gnaws at you and makes you wonder and go yeah. I had to get me some of that.

So I started tweeting back to Shakespeare, playing with his words. I would take a word or four (it has settled pretty much on three, as the personal mini-form has evolved) and snag it from William’s latest line then use it to start my own poetical plagiarism tweet.

As an example I’ll paste in my last, posted less than 5 seconds ago from web:

A deep indent you make in me, a place inside the mystery where you are. Once I was there but now are you. Am I blue? No freakin’ way. Yay!

Not my finest hour but a good example. I try to stuff as much rhyme into the piece as possible. 140 characters. Rhyme on. I don’t even mess with slants to differentiate lines. A waste of the form which follows from its short function. A perfect “twoem” ends with a period at 140 characters exactly. Sometimes I leave out punctuation to fit it all in.

That last one was from the line “It shall not wind with such a deep indent,” spoken by Hotspur in Henry V, in reference to a river. We just recently finished Hamlet, the most glorious collection of words ever slapped between a cover, by my lights. That was awesome. A little like dancing with the muse in person.

I find the quality of my quasi-verse often declines abruptly towards the end of the tweet, but that comes with the territory. No arguing with 140. And no diddling around forever. Part of the high-wire property of this format is the good chance I’ll write a real dog. Happens frequently, I’m afraid, but it’s the nature of this expression. Postmodern art and all, y’know. You have to make it suck occasionally to keep your hand in.

Here’s ten of my favorites from the past few months:

Again to lie with myself, I plump the pillow finely, sigh and rub my ass divinely. To sleep with me then, again. And so it goes, alone.

1598 was the year grandpaw exploded. Ate a whole pig. Done turned the house pink, insides anyway. Not much use for a blown-up gramps.

Tell my story, an thou will’t. Give your listeners a stilt to climb thy words, and a wrap against the wind, for these are chilling rhymes.

Will not wrong my simple song by singing it to you, nor shall I ever pen a poem to your beauty too, for my words are of love and you hear hate.

Madness is poor when madmen prove insane, and left their ticket to the normal train in their neighbor’s coat. The mad castle has no moat.

Very soft society, for it builds on rumor and mends by trends, a body of nothing but hot air long-exhaled. We are by our own rat, tailed.

Enter Hamlet and his duck: “Bad luck, mad quacker, I am no whacker of the dad, not bad like you, you ducky goose. O my feathery caboose!”

Wonder-wounded hearers gape away, for I have something strong to say and your ears must stand it. I can land it, I promise. Just let me try.

For no man is an I, land where he will, only I can be that. I am me, you cannot be, nor can I be your I too, for we are always I and you.

To my bow I bend my thought, see that recurved shape that wrought such hidden power, backwards-bending, thus with power arrow sending.

LWIII

…with thanks to @Guy_Vincent, who showed me how to look at a tweet as its own artistic format.

It seemed like he had to have everything his own way and that way was not my way because I like stuff to be up front and to make sense but he didn’t like it that way he liked it when stuff didn’t make sense and things that he said where like strange cloth wrappings that went all soft and turned everything into a bizarre funhouse of nothingness that didn’t really mean anything to begin with but was an awful preconditioned reality that he already knew but I don’t already know anything that is so horrible so it doesn’t matter but really it does matter which is why I’m doing this because I would like something to matter someday but that doesn’t matter either because those are just words and words are just a count so that I can get my daily sufferage of time and nature in a basket of awful feelings of sorrow and horror and the feeling of failure that I say I hate so much but don’t really because I do it so much so I must really like it because is everything really so horrible that I can’t do the things I say I like but have to do all the things I day I don’t but really do? I don’t know if that can happen that way because of the bad essense that I am and when I am bad I’m really bad but not so much because I’m not as bad as some other people who are bad but I am kinda bad but that is okay since what we see is what is there and when it’s not there it’s okay too because we need to wonder what is going on here when we just hurry and get things done even though the words are fun to play with and thoughts come slowly if at all but those words do come and here we are now so what matters what happened before since every moment is a new moment that comes to us we know not how and here it is and now it’s gone so now is all we haver right now and this is the time of the life when we finally get going and all our furious anger is left in the lee of the cliff that stands at the end of time and when that time is over it’s the end but not really since every beginning is an end and all ends are beginning always so we can start to keep saying it’s the start of things when we do this in ways that seem so weary but are also very smooth and smart because all of when we go somewhere we go to places we know not of because we know not of every single moment when the new comes in and come it does because it does come in but not as we may have hoped because this is the way that we can type as fast as possible but it doesn’t seem to be that way yet it is because it always is the way it is or seems to be even though what seems to be is not always what is when we wonder about the things that happened or didin’t happen when we go to places where we have not ever been before and those places are not so great but also they are very great so we wonder if that is possible because of possibility is sometimes not possible but also it is possible so that is also true to find the meaning behind the matter of not mattering or nattering as ways of finding the truth is also not the truth and I wonder if I can go to my Outlook and get the chess game that chess game is a very good one even though it may seem at times to be really hard it also is not so hard because it’s always harder than it seems though it also is very easy because all I’m doing is putting words one after the other even though I want them to make sense it doesn’t matter if they don’t because I’m just making up stuff to hit my count and that count is good even though it may seem like it isn’t a good count it is because good counts go to good counties and Broomfield is a good county because it’s its own county and that’s pretty cool even though most cities are not their own county because counties don’t count. So hurry up and finish this word count thing and get back to wondering about the story. I like the idea of a wind that eats stories. And I’ll just pop in a few more words so I can get over the count I thought I was going to get.

Sigh,

LWIII