I have a confession to make: the words blonde and blond have sometimes given me trouble.
In British English, blond is masculine and blonde is feminine. However, in American English blond is the correct spelling when it’s used as an adjective whereas in British English the gender spelling always applies.
American English: Suzie has blond hair. The blond girl playing golf is Suzie.
British English: Suzie has blonde hair. The blonde girl playing golf is Suzie.
If these words are used as nouns in American English, they keep their appropriate gender spelling.
Examples: She’s the blonde sitting at the table. He’s the blond smoking the pipe.
“…the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.” Herman Melville, White-Jacket (1850)
Admiral Takeo Kurita. His face usually wasn’t as severe as seen in the photo here. According to his daughter as cited in Sea of Thunder, by Evan Thomas, he was suffering from dengue fever and defeat when this photo was taken. By all accounts, he was really a nice guy, amiable and friendly and who often smiled. He was a true gentleman.
My
late father, a United States Navy and World War Two veteran, told me many war
stories during my growing up years. A corpsman, his battle station was on his
cruiser’s main deck. He was assigned the duty of rendering first aid to gunners
and other sailors wounded during battles.
One
day, while he was in his ship’s stern, a kamikaze
(suicide plane) roared out of the clouds and headed straight for him. He’d
never seen such a thing before, so he took off running all the way to his ship’s
bows while gunners futilely blazed away at the attacking enemy.
The plane missed the stern and splashed into the water not far from the bows where my father stood. This was the only time he ever ran from a kamikaze, he told me, because this experience taught him you could never be sure where one would hit.
The
sad truth is this: These poorly-trained Japanese suicide pilots, due to their
ignorance of history, were brainwashed by their instructors. They were taught
that the code of bushido (the way of
the warrior) was to serve their emperor no matter what it cost. They were told it
was a good and honorable thing to eagerly sacrifice one’s life for their emperor.
It was part of their country’s glorious history. Over three thousand Japanese kamikaze pilots died because they
believed this lie.
Admiral Takeo Kurita, who almost defeated the United States Navy in the famous Battle of Leyte Gulf, knew better. His grandfather was a famous scholar and historian, as was his father, a professor at the University of Tokyo. From childhood, he’d learned the true history of his country. Brave warriors in his country’s past didn’t always engage in ritual suicide if they lost a battle, nor did they attack their enemies in reckless“banzai charges,” not even for their emperor. In medieval Japan, emperors didn’t wield a lot of power. The nobles did, that is, the samurais and the lords they served. Medieval Japan’s samurais were similar to Europe’s medieval knights. They fought for different lords, and sometimes switched sides. An eagerness to die recklessly in the name of the emperor wasn’t always a part of Japan’s history and culture.
In
fact, bushido didn’t come into
prominence in Japan till the late nineteenth century, though it can be traced
earlier. Why, the word didn’t even exist before the 1600s. Kurita practiced
Confucianism, not Buddhism. Confucianism was the main philosophy that dominated
Japan during the seventeenth century and later. Ritual suicide was not a
Confucian principle.
Confucianism
did find its way into bushido,
though. However, it got twisted. In Chinese Confucianism, where the philosophy/religion
began, the main duty people had was obeying their parents. In Japan, it was
obeying their lord.
Kurita, aware of his country’s history, grieved when he saw these pilots wasting their lives for a lie and on a cause he knew was lost. Bushido wasn’t the true way of the warrior. It was not the way samurais fought in his country’s earlier centuries. He knew that samurais held no moral code until the seventeenth century. Because he knew his history, he didn’t commit seppuku (suicide) after Japan lost. Other Japanese commanders, after losing battles, did. One might say that his knowledge of history saved his life. He lived for many years after the war and died in 1977.
Is history important, then? You bet it is! When we don’t bother to study and learn our history, we set ourselves up for being brainwashed just like those poor kamikaze pilots my father witnessed during the war.
If your computer has a voice recorder, or if you have another type of recorder such as a cassette player, try reading your manuscript aloud into it. Reading aloud helps writers spot mistakes they may have missed through silent reading. By playing back their words and listening closely, writers hear their prose’s rhythm and pace, spot poorly written dialogue, wordiness, and numerous other stylistic errors.
Enjoying my favorite fishing spot–Horn Island, off the Mississippi Gulf Coast in Mississippi Sound. I have lots of personal experiences from this place!
One of the best ways to begin a professional writing
career in the Christian industry is through personal experience articles. This
is how I started. Such articles require little if any research and teach
lessons the writer learned from his/her experience.
Here
are four rules for writing them.
1. The experience must be true. We may not remember our experience’s every detail, but we must try to be as accurate as possible. If others accompanied us during our experience, we can always ask them questions to refresh our memories. If we teach a negative lesson through our experience (what not to do), we must be the one who learned it. We writers must be secure enough to be vulnerable, which means having a willingness to expose our shortcomings and mistakes to the world.
2. The article must have a strong opening. If we don’t hook our readers in the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph, readers will probably set aside our work and go on to other things.
3. The article must use fiction techniques. When we write a personal experience article we’re also telling a story. Like any other story, it must include action, conflict, dialogue, description… all the basic elements fiction requires. If we can’t recall exactly what a person said during our experience, at least write the essence of it. That’s all we can do.
4. The article must teach a lesson without being preachy. What is preachiness? It’s moralizing on and on, as though lecturing(or preaching) to our readers. Instead of doing this, let the story itself teach the lesson. At the end of the article, use a short takeaway message and/or Bible verse to reinforce our main point. “Short” is the key word here.
Well, these are some thoughts on writing the personal
experience article. Give it a try!
The book that started my literary career. It’s still available on Amazon!
It
was a small thing, it was a big thing, it was one of the most memorable and
important days of my life. Oh, no one understood my excitement. Most just
“ho-hummed” when I announced the news. But for me, it altered my life’s trajectory
and launched me on an orbit in which I continue today.
What
was this big, small thing? A short devotional I sold to The Upper Room, a United Methodist publication, back in the 1980s.
Though I was only paid $10 for it, it convinced me I could get paid for my writing.
Since childhood, I’ve wanted to be a writer. All it took was this one small
thing to start me on a professional literary career.
During a summer break from teaching school, I wandered into a bookstore and happened upon a book titled Writing to Inspire, a collection of articles written by then-leaders in the Christian literary industry. I picked it up out of curiosity and thumbed through its pages.
My
eyes hit upon a chapter on devotional writing. The chapter’s author? Mary Lou
Redding, editor of The Upper Room. Well,
since my background is Methodist, I was familiar with this little publication.
I purchased the book, took it home, and read the chapter. Maybe I could write for this magazine, I thought.
Following Mary Lou’s tips, I wrote the article. After I typed it out on my electric typewriter, I submitted it with SASE (Self-addressed, stamped envelope). A few months later, I received an acceptance letter. And a few months after this, once my article was published, a check arrived in my mailbox! My long-dormant desire to become a professional writer resurfaced. I was off and running.
While
I wrote and submitted more articles, I also took correspondence and college
courses, subscribed to writing magazines, and studied the craft. Another year passed
before I sold my second article. Because I’d learned to expect rejections,
though, their sting didn’t hurt as bad. I’ve received a load of rejections, but
the Lord has blessed me with bylines as well.
If
there’s one thing this experience taught me, it’s this: don’t despise small
things, because small things can lead to bigger things in the future, like they
did for me. Short articles such as devotionals have their own challenges and
are hard to write.
Don’t
let the “ho-hummers” discourage you, either. If God has called you to write, if
He’s put that literary drive in you, He’ll bless you in your efforts. Most non-writers/non-readers
don’t understand writing and writers, but the Lord does. Having His blessing
and approval is, after all, all that matters.
Famous mystery writer Agatha Christie was a private person, but when she was younger she was very active. One of her favorite activities was surfing, as seen in these two photos of her during her younger days. She has the distinction of being one of Britain’s first female surfers.
The Author's Cove: John "Jack" Cunningham on Writing & History 