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You Should Read This: The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Suzette Haden Elgin

Cover for The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Suzette Haden Elgin, recommended by Cat Rambo
Elgin identifies eight basic types of verbal violence and the modes for dealing with each one.
This book changed my life. I read it in college, at a time when I was becoming aware of how much could be contained in language. It helped me deal with dysfunctional relationships and it provided strategies for dealing with verbal bullies that I still use on a regular basis. Elgin is also a science fiction writer that I highly recommend, including her book, Native Tongue. I still buy anything I see by Elgin, because I know I’ll end up giving it away.

What: The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense helps identify sneaky verbal attacks like back-handed compliments, insults disguised as jokes, and other jabs, as well as providing tactics for dealing with each other.

Who: Read this if you’ve ever felt bullied and didn’t know exactly why. Or if you’ve ever been accused of bullying someone in communication.

Why: Even if you feel totally in command of conversations, this book will help you write better dialogue by showing many of the constructions bullies use, as well as a better understanding of verbal interactions overall.

When: Read this when you’re at your wits end in dealing with a friend, colleague, or anyone else.

Where and how: Keep it handy for frequent reading. If you don’t understand what all the fuss is about, try working through the exercises.

2 Responses

  1. Great suggestion, Cat. As a lawyer, I have no issue with responding to openly aggressive attacks. But I do struggle with those passive-aggressive, snide comments from “frenemies”. I always question how you respond to someone who doesn’t actually say what they are thinking and just implies it. I’ll check it out!

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You Should Read This: The Birthday Problem by Caren Gussoff

Cover of the Birthday Problem by Caren Gussoff
Ever wondered what it would be like to wander through plague-ridden Seattle in the future? This book’s a good approximation.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that Caren’s a close friend. But beyond that The Birthday Problem is terrific SF, and a great example of interweaving narratives that is a) highly enjoyable to read and b) highly instructive to take a look at.

The Birthday Problem of the title is a common mathematical puzzle: find the probability that, in a group of N people, there is at least one pair of people who have the same birthday. (Hint: it’s a much lower number than you think. You can find out more about it on Wikipedia if you want to understand why.) The book is about odd ties and coincidences, set in a crumbling Seattle in a world plagued by nanobots that make people crazy.

Why’s it instructive to take a look at? Because Gussoff confronts two problems that speculative writers often face. The first is a complicated scientific or mathematical concept, like the birthday problem, which the reader needs to understand. Gussoff manages to convey it to the reader with no “As you know, Bob” or overly pedantic moments.

The second is that it’s constructed in a way that is incredibly hard to do: overlapping points of view, and plenty of them. When you switch POVs, you bounce the reader out of the story just a little, and Gussoff does it in a way that swiftly gathers the reader back in.

I like to include a beginning chunk of the book I’m discussing to show you what the author’s prose style as well as what they set. Here’s the first three paragraphs from The Birthday Problem:

Chaaya wasn’t surprised when she woke up and saw lips aimed directly over her face. It was beginning. It’d been just a matter of time.

It begins with one, good solid hallucination.

That was how it had happened to her Nani.This is how it would happen to her.

Gussoff also makes the most of her setting in a way that will delight Seattleites. There’s a joy to imagining Pike Place Market as a post-apocalytic trading post or the SF Museum hosting a cadre led by an aging rock musician.

If you’re interested in more of Gussoff’s work, she’s got a novella appearing this January from Aqueduct Press, Three Songs for Roxy. Its main character is an alien raised by Romany, and Gussoff draws on her own heritage to create a realistic, unromantic, and absolutely appealing narrative.

#sfwapro

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An Octet of Useful Resource Books For Writers

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about books I’d recommend for writers focusing on their craft. This time I’m choosing books that are handy to have on a nearby shelf, particularly books that help spark new ideas, whether it’s at the overall story or plot level, or bits that can be used to adorn a story, the tiny embellishments like filagree or the lines in the Book of Kells, because we can always use new idea, little shocks, a kick in the head that turns the world askew in a way that lets us see it more clearly.

  • The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Sometimes when I’m stuck on a story (or even a polish of a story), I like to look up things that appear in the story, using this dictionary. Looking at the lore behind a symbol can often help you use it effectively.
  • Talk the Talk: The Slang of 65 American Subcultures by Luc Reid. I love this little book both as a way to spark ideas for stories or characters, but also creating touches of authenticity when ivoking subcultures like rock climbers, sky divers, and UFO believers.
  • Visual Dictionary – I like my Macmillan Visual Dictionary, but there’s also plenty of others, like Merriam Webster’s. If you don’t know what a widget or boat part or architectural feature is called, this will have it. A great aid towards precision.
  • Some book of poetry. It could be anything, Shakespeare to Ogden Nash. T.S. Eliot. Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson. Something densely poetic. It can be prose, but it has to be dense, poetry-drenched prose, like Djuna Barnes or James Joyce. Recently I’ve been employing Rumi. Use it several ways – to spark timed writings or stories or whatever, but I use it primarily for coming up with titles.
  • People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. (Kindle version) This is a view of history from the left, and one that looks at a lot of moments that are not covered in the mainstream history books. Look here for interesting story ideas or historical details for period pieces.
  • Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer. (Kindle version) A career guide that is worth looking at repeatedly. (Disclosure: I wrote the appendix on writing workshops, but there are much, much wiser voices throughout the book, particularly Jeff’s.
  • A tarot deck. Yes, technically not a book, but certainly there’s been plenty of books written about them and these books tap into all sorts of archetypes.
  • The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, by Robert Graves. A rich source of European Mythology, Graves is both reading through or dipping into on an occasional basis, this can be another useful source of starting images, symbols, or even poetic titles. For similar books, look at Weston’s From Ritual To Romance or Frazer’s The Golden Bough.

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