Month: September 2019

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Celebrate Banned Books Week 2019

 

Banned and Challenged Books

by David Kubicek

Read a challenged or banned book to celebrate Banned Books Week 2019, which runs from September 22 through September 28.

If you haven’t chosen a banned book–or several–to celebrate, here are some lists of banned and challenged books. There are plenty to choose from.

I have opted not to choose a book to read from the lists this year because I’m in the process of reading Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, her sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale (published 33 years later!).

Being the decadent reprobate that I am, I’ve read many of the books on the BB lists already, some of them two or three times or more, and although The Testaments was just released last week, I’m sure it soon will be, like its predecessor, challenged and/or banned–if it hasn’t achieved that status already (censors can act swiftly when they detect the scent of something they might not like).

But do celebrate Banned Books Week, which comes around every year in the last week of September, and celebrate the authors. You know you must have touched a nerve when certain people want to prevent others from reading your what you have written.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.

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Writing by Ear: Learn the Rules First, Then Break the Rules

by David Kubicek

writing by earWhen writing fiction you may sometimes you can break the rules of grammar, but first you must learn the rules. It is a process I call writing by ear.

Several years ago there was a game show, hosted by Jeff Foxworthy, called Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?  in which adult contestants tried to answer questions from first through fifth grade textbooks. The questions got harder as the contestants’ winnings grew.

My wife, Cheryl, kept pestering me to apply to be a contestant. I resisted mainly because I would have to fly out to LA on my own dime to be interviewed. I’d been to LA a couple of times so combining what was basically a temp job interview with a vacation in sunny southern California was not that enticing.

Cheryl thought I would be good at this game because all of my life I’d read a lot on a variety of subjects and my head was, in her words, “full of useless information.”

On the show, the contestants chose from several categories like grammar, math, astronomy, history, etc. When I told Cheryl the first categories I’d choose would be history and astronomy, she was surprised. She was sure that I, being a writer, would ace the grammar questions. Her amazement deepened when I told her that grammar was my weakest area.

In elementary school I learned proper names for phrases and parts of sentences and what you’re supposed to do and what you’re not supposed to do in composition. But I forgot most of the technical terms years and years and years ago.

What I did learn, before I forgot the grammar proper names and rules, was how to use the language to create an effect. As I learned to write, some things remained as ghosts of my early grammar lessons. I know what nouns and verbs are, of course, because they are a crucial part of a coherent sentence. I know what adjectives are, and I use them sparingly so they won’t detract from the effects I’m trying to create. And I try to avoid splitting infinitives, but sometimes the prose sounds more natural if I split the bloody thing.

I write by ear, which means putting the words down in an order that will sound best, or read best, to help create a desired effect in the reader’s mind. And sometimes that means not going strictly by the grammar rule book–but I learned the rules before I forgot them.

So quiz me on science, history, or even math, but I would fail miserably at grammar.

For more information about David Kubicek’s books click here.