The best phrase to hear in social media

Where all the magic and sharing begins. Image courtesy of Seemann on Morguefile.

There’s an old African proverb that says, “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.” Okay, so it’s not the most uplifting quote in the world, people, but the person who came up with this proverb had a good point: Each person is a unique library. Everybody’s got their own set of experiences and knowledge that influenced the person they’ve become today.

What I like most about social media is the infinite opportunities it provides for exchanging knowledge with other people, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogging and so on. I get such a kick out of it when I’ve passed on a bit of my knowledge with someone and they say “Hey, I didn’t know that!” Now it’s become my favorite phrase to hear in social media. (Sometimes I get to say it to them, too.)

And that is the essence of social media — sharing and interacting with others. However, some people still don’t quite get it. They make social media about themselves, first and foremost. I wince when I see a tweet that says “Retweet me!” because if it’s interesting enough, I’ll retweet it anyway. Other tweets, such as those on #writing, are only quotations and nothing BUT quotations. (Snore…) Still other tweets I click on turn out to be about pushing a product or service, rather than trying to create a relationship first between buyer and seller.

I’ve seen this lack of sharing on Facebook pages, too. Some business-oriented Facebook pages are “sell, sell, sell”. But I’ve also viewed some excellent Facebook pages where lots of interesting information is posted — upcoming events I might want to attend, educational videos, and informative articles that may be written by the business or that come from another source entirely. I admire these Facebook pages because they show that the creator truly has the readers’ best interests at heart. Yes, they’re selling products and services, too, but they’re entertaining and educating you at the same time.

Blogging’s added to my “library” in a host of different ways. People worldwide have shared all sorts of information with me. They’ve recommended books, movies and bookstores I should see, given me great recipes I want to try, shared trivia about historical events or people, made me think more about life, and shown me their photographs of scenes all over the world. I even get to trade quips between my blog and theirs.

And through the magic of my keyboard, I can put up a post I’ve written and get a response from someone halfway around the world within minutes. I still marvel at that.

I’ll keep adding to my library and I hope I’ve added to yours in some small way. Happy Memorial Day weekend, people.

Laughing at the dictionary

Teddy Roosevelt laughing. Maybe he read my Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

One of life’s great pleasures for bookworms like me is the chance to visit a used bookstore. You’ve got the best of both worlds. There are infinite opportunities to seek out literature in every genre you can imagine, and you save money on the books. Sweet!

You stroll leisurely up and down the aisles, pulling out whatever attracts your attention from shelves, crates or tabletops. And if you’re really lucky, you come across a little-known, marvelous gem of a book. In my case, it’s the Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, edited by Evan Esar.

Originally published in 1949, this little paperback book contains a treasure trove of humorous quotations by people all over the world. It is full of sass and wisdom.

There are some of the people you’d expect to see, such as Dorothy Parker, Will Rogers, Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw and James Thurber, who are known for their humor. The book also has some surprises, such as Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, as well as quite a few people of whom I’ve never heard. Thankfully, Esar put in a few words next to each person’s name so I know when they lived and who they were.

There isn’t room to put all of the quotations here, but I’ll share some of the best. (Hopefully, nobody will take offense, chase me down and whack me upside the head with a dangling participle. I only mean to amuse and I’ll insult each gender equally.) Enjoy!

John Steinbeck — Coney Island: where the surf is one-third water and two-thirds people.

Abraham Lincoln — He can compress the most words into the smallest ideas of any man I ever met.

Helen Rowland — Love, the quest; marriage, the conquest; divorce, the inquest.

Robert Louis Stevenson — He sows hurry and reaps indigestion.

Mark Twain — His money is twice tainted: ‘taint yours and ‘taint mine.

Edgar Allan Poe – I have great faith in fools; self-confidence my friends call it.

Oliver Herford — Diplomacy: lying in state.

Dorothy Parker — A girl’s best friend is her mutter.

Lord Palmerston — The best thing for the inside of a man is the outside of a horse.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt — When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

Mary Heaton Vorse — The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Proofreading prevents the “OhNoSecond”

Ohhhh, noooo! They didn’t proofread! Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Have you ever published a post, tweeted on Twitter, or replied to a blog/Facebook comment, only to realize a moment later that there’s a mistake in what you said? Congratulations, people. You’ve experienced the “OhNoSecond.”

As a professional proofreader, it’s my job to help clients avoid embarrassing moments such as the “OhNoSecond.” I use different tricks when I’m proofreading printed work. Sometimes I’ll read a project from the beginning to the end and then from the end back to the beginning. Reading backwards can be helpful because it’s all too easy to skip over certain words or lines and reading backwards forces your eyes to concentrate to a greater degree, so you’re more likely to catch any mistakes.

Other tricks I use involve reading each project twice or using the edge of a brightly colored envelope (neon green or red, for instance). I move the envelope downward, line by line, as I proofread. The bright color enhances visual acuity and is also a good way to pick up any errors.

In social media, proofreading is more difficult because it’s all on your screen and is rarely printed out. Depending on the social media platform you use, you get a chance to fix your mistakes. But on other platforms, your message stays out there and all you can do is send a follow-up.

 

Where you get sent by the Proofreading Police if you fail to proofread. Prison cell image courtesy of kconnors, Morguefile.

 

Save yourselves from the “OhNoSecond” now, people. Take a little extra time to read over what you say before you send it. Remember: What goes on the Web, stays on the Web.

The Art of War and the literary bucket list

Shanghai, China. Image courtesy of kaconnors on Morguefile.

Sometime this week, people, I’m realizing a literary dream. (Drum roll and stately trumpet salute, please…) I will finally read Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

Why is this significant, you ask? It’s one of the books that I’ve always intended to read someday, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. The Art of War is a classic combat and military strategy book, written by a Chinese general, filled with advice about how to defeat your enemies. Military strategists have been using it for centuries.

Right now, the book sits patiently in my bookbag, waiting until I have time to read it. I’m looking forward to what Sun Tzu has to say. Maybe he’ll have some good advice about tactics I can use to defeat the traffic around here. (If you don’t believe the DC metro area is a traffic battleground, people, just visit the Beltway during the morning or evening rush hour.) And if I get stuck, hey, there’s always Cliffs Notes.

After I finish this book, I’ll be able to cross it off my literary bucket list. The list has grown pretty big over the years. For example, I plan to read Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit, John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, and Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. Plus, there’s William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair, Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford.

The literary bucket list got even bigger since I started blogging and got reading recommendations from other literature-loving bloggers. (See what you started, people???) I’ve created a list of those books, too. Thanks to another blogger, I found and read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, a book that’s about defeating your inner enemy (Resistance) so that you don’t pay attention to that internal voice inside you that holds you back from achieving your dreams. Then there’s Nicholas Sparks’ The Lucky One, Shobhan Bantwal’s The Sari Shop Widow and John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Oh, boy.

I don’t know when I’ll find time to read them all, but I’ll manage somehow. I figure if I read one book per weekend, I can do at least 50 books a year. (I’m leaving out two weekends because I’m going to need a couple of them to rest my eyes from all that reading.)

Readers: I’m curious. What books are on your literary bucket list?

 

Literary smackdown: Lisbeth Salander vs. Eve Dallas

Dragon tattoo image courtesy of lorettaflame on Morguefile

When Oscars time rolled around, I heard quite a bit about a movie called “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” and I got curious. What was it about this movie that had everyone talking about it? So I started watching videos of the movie on YouTube and later found out that the book was based on a Stieg Larsson crime novel. And then of course, I had to go read the book since I like mysteries.

Thankfully, I was warned by the videos; the book is graphic. But the main character, hacker Lisbeth Salander, is compelling. She has her own sense of morality, isn’t adverse to breaking laws when she feels it’s justified (often in self-defense or to protect another person) and is tough beyond belief. Lisbeth has strong reasons for being the way she is, but she’s considered dysfunctional by society.

Lisbeth is an amazing literary creation by Stieg Larsson and I got even more curious to find out what happens to her after the first novel. So now I’ve worked my way through all three books: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest. All three were excellent.

As I finished Hornets’ Nest, it struck me: Lisbeth reminds me of Eve Dallas, the futuristic New York homicide cop of the J.D. Robb (a.k.a. Nora Roberts) In Death books. Like Lisbeth, Eve Dallas has had a tough life, suspects any human affection and has few close friends. It’s difficult for either of them to trust anyone.

But Eve is luckier than Lisbeth. She meets Roarke, a brilliant and good-looking Irish billionaire and reformed crook who understands her better than anyone. Eve also has others who care about her: Feeney, Dr. Mira, Peabody, Charles, Louise and Morris, for example. Lisbeth, however, seems to make her own luck but does have a loyal friend in investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist, once she unbends enough to permit him into her life and allows him to help her.

I’d love to see Nora Roberts introduce a Lisbeth-type character in one of the In Death books. Imagine the literary possibilities. Lisbeth could be one of the good guys working part-time for Roarke in one of his gazillion businesses and she and Eve would probably be battling it out through most of the novel due to Lisbeth’s distrust of cops and her dislike of society’s rules. (Can you blame Lisbeth?) Eve would recognize Lisbeth as a fellow victim and feel some compassion for her. After a few fights and witty one-liners, they’d probably achieve a mutual tolerance for each other in the end. Maybe. It’s interesting to speculate, anyway.

Contrarian librarians

 

So many books, so little time. *Sigh.* Library image courtesy of Raysonho on Wikimedia Commons.

I’ll finally admit it. I’m a book addict. I cannot go one single day without reading (or at least leafing through) a book. Drat it. I blame those wily librarians.

All my life, librarians have been my enablers. They presented me with a wide choice of nefarious temptations, slyly accompanied by the line, “Oh, you’ll enjoy this!”, until I helplessly surrendered and took the books home with me. Thanks to these librarians and the enticing events they host (a.k.a. “book fairs”), my bookcases are exploding and I have books stashed in just about every storage location I have. Bags, boxes, crates, drawers, my vehicle’s glove compartment – you name it, there’s probably a book in there.

Traditionally, these librarians have been kindly and helpful souls willing to point me toward whatever I wanted to investigate that day. I could curl up in a comfy chair beside a library window, with my stash sitting next to me, and browse through the books to my heart’s content until it was time to check out and leave.

Hollywood movies have interesting views on librarians, have you noticed? In The Music Man (the 1962 version with Robert Preston and Shirley Jones), Shirley Jones is “Marian the Librarian,” the stereotypical, straitlaced librarian with very little sense of humor. This year, there was also the gentle Morris Lessmore of the short film The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. By contrast, the 1994 movie The Pagemaster features Christopher Lloyd as a librarian who is the sinister gatekeeper to an animated world for Macauley Culkin.

But I think the best movie librarian is Flynn Carsen of “The Librarian” TV movie series. Played by Noah Wyle, Flynn is a funny, geeky hero/librarian with a set of encyclopedias for brains, working for a library that holds the world’s greatest mythical treasures. The poor guy gets beaten up, shot at, tossed around like confetti, ambushed, robbed, shoved out of an airplane, almost crushed by falling rocks, dumped or abandoned by his girlfriends, tied up and scratched by swords. (If anybody ever needed Worker’s Compensation, he’s got my vote as the ultimate candidate.)

Plus, librarian Flynn is a fellow book addict like me, judging by his living room. I’m sure he and I, plus other book addicts, would get along. See for yourself!

The art of inspired writing

Appalachian mountain photo courtesy of K.W. Kiser, Morguefile

What inspires you to write? For me, it’s often something I see. Years ago, I was visiting a relative and saw something that snagged my imagination. This particular relative lives on the top of a hill in a rural area and you drive up a gravel-lined road to reach his home. Behind the house is a mountain ridge, thickly covered with trees.

As I was leaving the house at sunset after a family reunion, I spotted a set of bright lights on the mountain and asked my relative, “What are those lights up there?” He explained that the lights belonged to someone’s house. For some reason, that house perched by its lonely self at the top of a mountain ridge fascinated me. It was all too easy to weave stories around the house and its occupants – tales of mystery, intrigue and suspense.

Great art also inspires my creativity, such as Renoir’s “The Luncheon of the Boating Party” and Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergere”. The “Luncheon” features a group of people having lunch beside the Seine river and it’s fun to think about the stories of their lives (in reality, most of them were Renoir’s friends and Renoir himself appears on the left). 

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Renoir. What is everybody talking about, do you think? Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Manet’s painting is equally evocative, because you can’t help wondering what is going on in the barmaid’s mind when you see the detached expression in her eyes. Probably she’s thinking something prosaic like, “Can all of you just go home already so I can get off my aching feet?”, inwardly planning her day off or fantasizing about the handsome stranger she met on a Parisian street that day.

Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. What do you imagine she’s thinking? Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

As a copywriter, I get some of my best ideas from the stock photographs that graphic artists use. I’ll see an intriguing photo and start thinking, “Hmmm…now what words can I marry to this image and sell the product or service I’m marketing?” Other times, a phrase springs into my mind and I’ll adapt it with the rest of the advertising copy to suit clients’ needs. 

I enjoy blogging for its creative possibilities, but finding inspiration for a blog post is a never-ending challenge. (!) Once I get an idea, various things to say pop into my mind until I can’t wait to get to the computer and share my thoughts with everybody else. And isn’t sharing what social media and blogging is all about?

Blog readers: What are your sources of inspiration?