Redecided
June 7, 2010 in Blogs
I had a rough weekend and didn’t really give much thought to that problem with the title of the new Examiner temporal anomalies article, with the result that early this afternoon I abruptly realized I had to make a decision. I decided not to change the title, but did not have time at that moment to upload it, and when I returned to the job and started the upload process I changed my mind, and changed the title of the article. It is at least defensible that The Lake House part 3: the bitch is magic is a statement of the truth. I can hope that it does not offend too many readers, but then, I’ve offended readers before, and if the proper use of language can do so (even when used for promotional purposes) then I’m not going to avoid doing so again.
Meanwhile, I took the time over the weekend to read the latest installment of Eric Ashley’s serial novel, Cereal Novel: Third Bowl, which continues its confusing introduction to a rather different world, reminding the reader that the character is completely disoriented and letting the reader share the experience. I’m still intrigued, waiting to find out something familiar enough to begin constructing an understanding of the world.
But I’m behind schedule again, in part because we lost an hour to a power failure and in part because I had an errand I couldn’t complete last night, and I need to get a handle on things tonight.
–M. J. Young
JohnA1nut said on June 7, 2010
MJ, it sounds like you tell people to relax and get a grip when they are offended by your writing. You obviously don’t apologize and correct your “error” such as it was. Kind of similar to me telling everyone else to relax and get a grip about my writing.
(Doing Therapy)
M. J. Young said on June 8, 2010
Actually, I think I adjusted a little. I liked the title the other way around, but I was going for a catchy title to draw an audience. If I’m going to use potentially offensive language, I really must use it inoffensively–I can speak about hell as a theological concept and as a real place, and speak of the damned who inhabit it, but I cross the line if I start naming people who ought to be there. I can write of a bloody crime scene or a bloody steak, but when I start using the British expletive to describe objects that do not literally drip blood I will offend British readers. Thus when I say “the bitch is magic” it is obvious that I mean that the female canine in the film is a magical creature present as part of the fantasy magic of the story. If I reverse the nouns in the equation and replace the definite with the indefinite article, the double-entendre leans too heavily toward the risque meaning and does not have enough connection to the normal sense, suggesting only that magic is the sort of nasty creature that has too many mates and does not love any of them.
So in response to the criticism, I adjusted the title. I am not unreasonable and do not insist that others accommodate me–I’ll meet them in the middle.
–M. J. Young
JohnA1nut said on June 9, 2010
I wouldn’t call it obvious. To me, naming my neighbor’s daughter Plunger because when I met her, she was “Plunging face first into trouble” was obvious. Yet, everyone said they thought of a toilet plunger. Everyone except you. What’s obvious to us isn’t so much to everyone else.
M. J. Young said on June 9, 2010
Maybe “obvious” was the wrong word. “Defensible” might be better, that that statement means “a specific female canine is somehow identified with magic”, and if a reader takes it otherwise I have at least plausible deniability that what he thought is not what I meant. Reversed, it is a lot harder to make the claim that I meant “magic is a female canine”, or that that statement is exactly true, because magic is not usually a female canine, it’s just that this particular female canine has something to do with the magic.
–M. J. Young
Tadeusz said on June 11, 2010
If I do this right, you’ll get more information and then right after that you’ll get more questions and disorientation. After all, every writer needs to write a drug trip like novel, right?
Tadeusz said on June 11, 2010
A better way to look at this is as a simulationist mystery where the story question is ‘what is this world?’