I read this post about author put-downs, and it goes on all the time… one of the solutions, and it is not easy to sustain, is to read, review and say positive remarks about authors with whom you disagree. But not all care to be peacemakers. I see some who can’t agree with a thing others say, but if their favorite author said the very same thing they’d stand up and applause.

Go to the link to see quite the list of put-downs.

One man’s Shakespeare is another man’s trash fiction.

Consider this pithy commentary on the Great Bard’s work:

With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Shakespeare….

But, of course, there must be SOME writers we can all agree on as truly great, right? Like Jane Austen. Or not:

Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone. [Read more...]

REUTERS /KEVIN LAMARQUE /LANDOV

When traveling across the United States, it sometimes feels like the locals are speaking a whole different language. That’s where the Dictionary of American Regional English comes to the rescue. The last installment of this staggering five-volume tome, edited by Joan Houston Hall, was published last month, and let me tell you, it’s a whoopensocker.

In celebration of slang, here’s a list of 19 delightful obscure words from around the U.S. that you’ll want to start working into conversation.

1. whoopensocker (n.), Wisconsin
You know when something’s wonderfully unique, but the words “wonderful” and “unique” don’t quite cut it? That’s why the Wisconsinites invented whoopensocker, which can refer to anything extraordinary of its kind—from a sweet dance move to a knee-melting kiss.

2. snirt (n.), Upper Midwest
A gem of a portmanteau, this word means exactly what it sounds like: a mixture of windblown snow and dirt. Also, for your linguistic pleasure, try out the adjective version: snirty. [Read more...]

By Adam Ruben:

I’m still fairly new at this science thing. I’m less than 4 years beyond the dark days of grad school and the adviser who wouldn’t tolerate “lone.” So forgive my naïveté when I ask: Why the hell not?

Why can’t we write like other people write? Why can’t we tell our science in interesting, dynamic stories? Why must we write dryly? (Or, to rephrase that last sentence in the passive voice, as seems to be the scientific fashion, why must dryness be written by us?)

I once taught two different college science writing classes in back-to-back semesters. The first was mainstream science writing; the students had fun finding interesting research projects and writing about them. One student visited a lab where scientists who were building a new submarine steering mechanism let her practice steering a model sub around a little tank. Another subjected himself to an fMRI and wrote about the experience. [Read more...]

I’m a huge fan of fountain pens. (See here.) In fact, I rarely use anything but a fountain pen, even to underline in books. When I travel I use a Waterman pen with blue ink to leave a reminder that blue ink means vacation and travel. Otherwise I rotate through my small collection of fountain pens. I enjoyed this piece:

Here’s something to think about: How many times have you used a pen today?

Maybe you crossed something off of your to-do list or maybe you wrote a check to your landlord or maybe you scrawled “BRB” on a napkin before running out to pick up milk. Maybe you did Sudoku.

Whatever you did, chances are good you did a lot less of it than you did five years ago. Technology has made sure of that.

Still, at a time when the swipe of a touch screen is quickly replacing other modes of communication, not all of the past has been erased. In fact, some surprising vestiges of the pre-digital era are still being churned out and scooped up today.

Enter, the specialty fountain pen.

My favorite? I’m a big fan of Pelikan. Bics clog and pollute our world; fountain pens never get tossed. Nothing like the scratch of a fountain pen on a piece of paper.

From Lists of Note:

In July of 1952, Nancy Mitford wrote to her friend, the famous novelist Evelyn Waugh, and asked:

“What do you do with all the people who want interviews, with fan letters & with fans in the flesh? Just a barrage of nos?”

Waugh’s reply contained the following — a list of the stock responses he used in such situations.

(Source: Evelyn Waugh: A Biography; Image: Evelyn Waugh, via.)

I am not greatly troubled by fans nowadays. Less than one a day on the average. No sour grapes when I say they were an infernal nuisance. I divide them into… [Read more...]

By Tim Parks:

Since when did being a writer become a career choice, with appropriate degree courses and pecking orders? Does this state of affairs make any difference to what gets written?

At school we were taught two opposing visions of the writer as artist. He might be a skilled craftsman bringing his talent to the service of the community, which rewarded him with recognition and possibly money. This, they told us, was the classical position, as might be found in the Greece of Sophocles, or Virgil’s Rome, or again in Pope’s Augustan Britain. Alternatively the writer might make his own life narrative into art, indifferent to the strictures and censure of society but admired by it precisely because of his refusal to kowtow. This was the Romantic position as it developed in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries…. [Read more...]

How do you cite a tweet in an academic paper? Or, how do you do so with the approval of said authorities?

Begin the entry in the works-cited list with the author’s real name and, in parentheses, user name, if both are known and they differ. If only the user name is known, give it alone.

Next provide the entire text of the tweet in quotation marks, without changing the capitalization. Conclude the entry with the date and time of the message and the medium of publication (Tweet). For example:

Athar, Sohaib (ReallyVirtual). “Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).” 1 May 2011, 3:58 p.m. Tweet.

The date and time of a message on Twitter reflect the reader’s time zone. Readers in different time zones see different times and, possibly, dates on the same tweet. The date and time that were in effect for the writer of the tweet when it was transmitted are normally not known. Thus, the date and time displayed on Twitter are only approximate guides to the timing of a tweet.

Some of you may know I am one of three editors for Currents in Biblical Research. Our senior editor is Alan Hauser at Appalachian State University, and I stand alongside Jonathan Klawans at Boston University. Alan edits the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible articles, Jonathan the Judaism articles, and I do the New Testament articles.

Currents in Biblical Research is unique in that it publishes articles that tell us where the state of scholarship in a given Biblical book, method and topic is. Recently we published a piece on the state of research in “intertextuality” in the Old Tetament, an article on the Gospel of Peter, one on religious experience in the New Testament, one on the identity of Jesus in Mark, and one on the future resurrection of the dead in early Judaism.

We are always listening for new articles, our turnaround (for a journal) is reasonable, and our articles are useful to other scholars. Furthermore, it is an excellent way for young scholars to get their foot in the door of publications. If you have something, check us out at:

Currents in Biblical Research

Tim Maly has a sketch of a new iPad app, and I wonder if anyone here is using it. Any reports?

Confession: I use an iPad and I carry it in a ClamCase — and I love it though I think the space bar on the keyboard is not as smooth as it could be. When I write on the iPad, which I occasionally do on an airplane, I use Notes. It works as a seamless conversion to MSWord.docx. But, I wonder about this app.

One of the core features and frustrations of Apple’s iPad experience is that you can only use one app at a time. Joanne McNeil once lauded the iPad’s lack of multi-tasking, saying that it was a focus machine. “It’s putting a constraint on me … and my worst multi-tabbing, unfocused habits.” iOS 4 has since introduced multi-tasking, but that’s in the form of allowing apps to stay resident in memory. You can still only look at one thing at a time. This can be a real benefit, but it gets problematic if you are working on a single task that requires more than one tool. EnterWriting Kit by developer Anh Quang Do.

Most iPad writing apps like WriteRoom, iA Writer or Daedalus Touch focus on doing one thing well. Often their big selling point is that they are a “distraction-free writing environment,” meaning the only thing you can really do on them is type text into a file. If you write like I do–which is to say: in a constant flow between checking notes, looking things up and typing–none of these work for completing drafts.

 

From The Atlantic:

Here are a few favorites:

“Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Don’t ever write a novel unless it hurts like a hot turd coming out.” ~ Charles Bukowski

“Breathe in experience, breathe out poetry.” ~ Muriel Rukeyser

“Begin with an individual and you find that you have created a type; begin with a type and you find that you have created — nothing.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” ~ Saul Bellow

[Read more...]