Channie Greenberg, Granny Does It, Vol. I
excerpt
Publisher: Seashell Books Date: May 13, 2022 Length: 302 pages ISBN: 979-8811236343 |
My head is full of words; I spend a lot of time rolling around in my thoughts. All the same, whereas electronic and print venues willingly host my books and shorter works, none of my poems, stories, essays, novels, live lectures, or telecasts ever excused (and ought not to have excused) me from making soup for Sabbath, engaging in weekday laundry, or being responsible for the concepts I express.
See, my imaginative sharing’s not limited to tales of fantastic critters or shimmery skies. Sometimes, (gasp!) I write about cultural veracities, which, though important, are ordinarily less “entertaining” than narratives about gelatinous wildebeests. Still and all, by portioning out relatively staider gleanings, whether those assemblages shed light on careers, religion, family, or femininity, I endeavor to be helpful-communications remain more powerful than apparatuses and more precious than serums in impacting lives.
Writers owe readers accountability apart from the extent to which readers get invested in published materials, specifically, or in community principles, more generally. Authors’ yields, wittingly or not, sanction other people’s promotions of collective efforts and unblock their attempts to resolve private kerfuffles. By extending protective or even “decorative” perimeters, originators gift publics with all manner of attributions that can be affixed to experienced events.
So, wordsmiths’ obligation to address amazing as well as pedestrian deeds is endless. What’s more, wordies to a certain extent, are answerable when society’s wardens employ their scribblings to back actions that auteurs might never embrace.
Accordingly, in this volume, I caution word players about our communal duties. As a confrère skilled in expanding upon goings-on plus as a gal skilled in stating fine points, I’m taking charge of the rhetorical results of my productivity and asking readers to do the same. It’s my hope that this book, plus the other parts of Granny Does It, improve lives by dispeling social myths and by laying out alternatives to some of the unease experienced in the status quo.
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Note: this excerpt was originally published as “Granny Writers.” “Word Citizen.” The Jerusalem Post. 11 April 2018. Some Musings on Granny Writers
Grandmothers’ lives are odd things. On the one hand, if we’re blessed, our worlds are peopled with generations that adore us. Conversely, if we’re less fortunate, we might endure great loneliness, suffer ill health, or both.
Howbeit, even when physically or interpersonally challenged, most senior gals, chiefly those who are authors, continue to enjoy mental prowesses that perform the fandango (with or without applause). More exactly, it’s almost always crones, not matrons or maidens, who deign to spit out veracities, stop playing coy with power lines, and (after meticulously securing ourselves within our hollyhock houses) point fingers at cultural malevolence. Living past one’s prime, i.e., being functional past sixty-five, means being able to stop dwelling on corporeal manifestations and on social survival. Rather, we’re dedicated to “high falutin” causes.
Principally, women in life’s third season, i.e., females who wax and wane between mundane nadirs and spiritual highs, benefit others as much as we benefit ourselves. Our power derives from our lack of self-imposed restrictions on probing the status quo. Silver-haired girls, markedly those who are wordslingers, have less to lose, thus more to stake, than youngins. We can get cozier with jeopardy and laugh louder at complex, contemporary issues than can juniors. Simply by exposing existent offenses, grey ladies ensure that society has a future.
Viz., it’s to everyone’s advantage that articulate, mature women chortle, flash our purple bloomers, and rejoice over being dated and dog-tired enough to be unconcerned about peers’ or younger denizens’ judgements. More explicitly, irrespective of the fact that youth is most often credited for “breakthroughs,” it’s advanced oldsters who bear up against the umbrage concomitant to introducing widespread paradigm shifts. Childish persons contribute ostentatiousness to problems that impact populations, but golden agers contribute persistence.
Weigh that Toni Morrison wrote Home, a story about finding personal identity during post-war times, and G-d Help the Children, a narrative about the world’s ill-use of youngsters, respectively, while in her seventies and eighties. Margaret Atwood wrote The Blind Assassin, a novel about love alliances, in her late sixties, and MaddAddam, a post-apocalyptic tale about survival, social strata, and friendship, in her seventies. Plus, Elena Ferrante wrote, in her late sixties/early seventies, the Neapolitan Novels, a series of books about a clique of girls who attempted to thrive in a misogynous society. Although each of these renowned writers molded remarkable volumes in their early and middle years, the products of their golden decades manifested more bite and less contrition than their first publications.
Writing is necessarily a mindful process. Workarounds are okay for misplaced anniversary cakes or for ruined neckties, but not for compositions. Communication can’t be revolutionary if it’s not backed by gumption that costs diligence. Over and over, ancients, not emerging adults, are the citizens most frequently employing intellectual moxie in the manufacture of collectively distributed verbal wares.
It’s hoary ones who retain the presence of mind to write well. Erstwhile hipsters are not only exceptionally capable of sitting back, sipping ginger tea, and gauging sunsets, but, because we decrepit wordies have swum so many punishing trenches, and hiked so many immoderate peaks, all the while recording observations, we’re inimitably capable of paying no attention to the various messes that clog up fledglings’ critical and creative thinking channels. Truly, matriarchs and patriarchs are inclined to be more strong-minded than our adolescent counterparts. Adding on birthdays doesn’t necessarily cause caducity.
As well as inviting bravado, senescence can increase cleverness. Months’ worth of writing typically builds competency better than does weeks’ worth. Correspondingly, years of practice trumps months. Decades devoted to skill building often results in expertise.
Crosswise to oldsters, newbies sometimes create documents the wrong way round. Ancients, who have had tens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of works broadcast, tend to make clear analyses. Youngsters, all the same, are apt to demand instant success and riches, simultaneous with their investing few resources, or simultaneous with squandering resources on technological exchanges’ lights and bells. Rewarding authoring requires hard work, not self-flattery or the amassing of tawdry souvenirs.
For example, recently, a student of mine refused to make any more fixes, aside from a free, easy-to-use app for correcting citations, to the documentation a nonfiction work. She only cared about meeting the stated requirements for a writing contest. She did not win. She also never again constructed fact-based pieces. Hers was an “all or nothing mentality,” which prescribed doing nothing to acquire all. When nothing was achieved, she redirected her all to an application outside of creative writing.
In another instance, someone, who was paying me to critique his work, refused to put his short story through a needed rewrite. Instead, he posted it, raw, on his Facebook page and then, a couple of years later, added that tale to a collection that he paid a vanity press to publish. Eventually, that aspirant, likewise, stopped writing, He became a midlevel manager at an insurance company.
Up and coming scribes ought not to wait until they boast wrinkles, wear bifocals, or have mastered a champion’s vocabulary to bend over their manuscripts. Immediately, they should survey the actualities of the publishing world. The book business offers no haven for grandiosity. It’s better for wannabes to spend years perfecting their skills, and then move from farm league publications to preeminent ones, than to lose their ambitions because they yielded to daydreaming.
Too often, developing wordies turn their backs on sound rulings. They choose to be insulted by advice that could have empowered them. They direct their talents without analyzing, interpreting, or evaluating their verbal corpuses. They fail to ascertain, on a project-by-project basis, why they are writing and how they could best meet their goals.
Unsophisticated word players could do better, faster, if they made efforts to come to terms with why some publishers accept hardly any works, and why others magnify writers’ professional credibility. In this era of self-publishing and self-promotion, achieving “author” status carries no great clout.
When all’s said and done, granny writers are awesome because we possess wisdom, shrewdness, and knowhow. We’re not distracted by convergent media popularity. We’re “influencers” when we assign ourselves culpability for vital topics.
Comparatively, younger authors often emphasize form over substance and don’t know how to or want to be disciplined. They could gain from reading nanas’ words and from behaving like us. In fact, it would behoove all humanity to recognize their debt to seniors, by and large, and to be grateful for the risks that elder writers incur to move society forward.
Copyright © 2022 by Channie Greenberg
