The Grasshopper Sunday Edition April 30, 2023: Coffee
The writer’s friend
I am, admittedly, a coffee addict. Not those giant buckets I see people carrying around like security blankets; espresso, either cappuccino or a single shot for an afternoon pickup. I have my ritual in the morning: turn on my ornery old Italian machine to warm up, grind beans, etc. The machine makes great coffee but it has a knob that is so hard to turn that I keep a pair of pliers in a nearby drawer in case it gets stuck.
I don’t need the coffee to write, and sometimes I make one, then start writing and find it has gone cold while I was away in whatever place I go when I’m working. But my twice daily cup is a part of my routine.
When I wrote down the date for this issue I had to ask myself, where did April go? It’s a perfect example of the elasticity of time, a subject I think about a lot these days, probably a symptom of getting older, but also a tool writers play with, a lot. James Joyce, in Ulysses, a book I read when I was younger and more patient, took about 500 pages to follow one day in a life.
Maybe I should reread it as part of my ‘have one long book going at all times’ routine. Probably not, as I have this idea that it is a book for a young man that may seem like a relic now. That may be a good reason to try it again.
Joyce, and his sometime friend Gertrude Stein, broke down the bones of language until they were barely coherent from a conscious point of view. Their books and stories always struck me as a kind of puzzle for the subconscious, one you could not think about too much when reading them. Not really my thing these days.
Maybe they needed more coffee.
Odd espresso tip: did you ever wonder why they serve espresso shots with a little spoon? It’s because you should always stir espresso before you drink. When the machine forces the hot water through the grounds it creates layers of different strength coffee in the cup. A quick stir evens out the flavor.
A new word to me:
alinéa: the beginning of a train of thought, an indentation
Substack has introduced yet another new feature, the ability to embed a sample of past issues, Twitter-style, in a post. Because all my archived content requires a subscription, this could be useful as a way of encouraging paid upgrades. I’ll try not to abuse it.
Punditland got a lovely shot of shocking news with the firings of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon from Fox and CNN. Carlson is an extremely dangerous liar and racist who played at outrage for ratings, the lowest of the low. Lemon just seemed a bit too proud of himself. I suspect he was insufferable to work with, but that is speculation.
Earlier this week I wrote a bit about the trend to writing dystopian stories that is all the rage, but I think the real trend is escapism. The world is pretty strange these days and often alarming, and a story that takes you away can be very appealing. But I think they are appealing for the writers too when the story becomes your escape hatch into a world where we have total control.
Though in my experience, we have less control than we might imagine. It’s been my experience that the story, if it is working, is in charge. We just try to rein it in.
There are mourning doves cooing outside, one of my favorite sounds and one of those things that trigger lost memories, a lonely and alluring sound. Like cicadas in summer, another sound that makes me extremely happy when it reappears on a hot night, singing in the trees.
Time for more coffee.
https://martinedic.substack.com/publish/post/70761883
It’s ok to just play
Is writing serious business? It can be, and there are times that it should be. But there is a difference between being serious and taking yourself seriously. The latter is not going to help you get and keep readers, but a little play in your writing can do both.
We read for two reasons: to be educated and to be entertained. Really good writing is often a combination of both. This is particularly true with opinion pieces. Yes, there are times when outrage is the right thing to do, if you sincerely feel it. On the other end is relentless cynicism and a sardonic voice.
There is an Esquire opinion writer, a liberal observer, who overdoes it in both categories. While I often agree with the why of his writing, the snideness gets tiresome. It’s like a teen who discovers that constant cynicism makes them seem worldly.
We’ve all run into that, and a lot of us went through that stage. But some people adopt it as their personality and that gets tiresome fast. Being clever and sardonic can be entertaining, but being constantly clever and sardonic will chase readers away.
I struggle with this in my opinion writing. I can write pieces that are relentlessly caustic and biting and may even give readers a chuckle. And sometimes, usually when I am genuinely outraged about a topic, I will use those tools. They can make your message stronger and more compelling.
But they can also make you look like a teenager who is going through the cynical stage. And btw, no one can be in a constant state of unbridled anger all the time and not be damaged by it.
Getting personal
Writing about what you think and feel means exposing a part of ourselves to the world. It is the place where new writers often find their voice and begin to formulate a worldview of their own. And it helps make a more intimate connection with readers.
The Grasshopper seems to be moving towards being more personal. I try not to do too much planning about what I write here, but find the less practical topics more fun to write about. This doesn’t mean I’m going to air my personal issues in life because, frankly, I don’t think they are all that interesting.
But that is my personality. I’m not a huge sharer about certain stuff. Part of this opinion writing thing is the ability to stand back and formulate what I think is the underlying pattern and what I think about it. In its way it is intensely personal. I can’t pretend to be dispassionate about the direction the country, climate, and world are going in- it can be pretty alarming.
And op-ed writers are actively sounding the alarm when they experience it.
Ok, that’s my two cents. Don’t spend it all at once.
Did you write today?
Martin
1074 words
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