Pet Peeves

The older I get, the older I seem. Don't laugh. The older I get, the less patience I have with just about everything that doesn't really matter--and the more I have with things that do. Most of the former seem to be connected with being a writer, a teacher, and a lover of the language.

E.g.:  The fashion for female voices whose placement seems to be entirely above the soft palate--nasal, deliberately hoarse, high-pitched, and grating. It's awful, and almost universal on TV.

Then there's "Mom." Is it written somewhere that mother is no longer in the vocabulary? Even if I were single (which in a way, I am), I hate the expression a "single mom." Echoes of satiric essays we were made to read in school on the subject of American "momism." Besides, being a single mother is hardly a subject for slangy off-hand terminology. Or is it?

What ever happened to the the designation "children?" "Kids" is okay a lot of the time, but there are certainly instances when that flip expression simply ought not to be used. No one seems to be aware of that. When listing casualties, for example.

And "snuck?" Surely in a serious dialogue, it's still possible to say "sneaked," and be understood. "Snuck" used to be as grammatically abhorrent as "ain't."

I won't even go there, as they say, when it comes to "lay" and "lie!"

To Blog or Not?

Someone I met online insisted I must blog to put myself out there where I might find a buyer for my books. From other bloggers I have gathered that one is expected to keep at it, week in and week out. I'm amazed at the number who keep to a strict schedule, producing weekly or monthly, or whatever. I've also read that if a blogger wants readers, s/he must offer something a reader wants or needs. "Aye, there's the rub."

In my opinion, many bloggers offer tips and hints and glimpses at inside tracks to help their readers sell or learn something. From day one, I've known I don't have that kind of thing to offer. All I can put out there in the blogosphere is what I can put out there in articles or novels or stories or poetry:  what I hope might touch a sympathetic vibration in another human being. I might as well be trying to sell an essay to yet another uninterested agent or market. Makes a person wonder if it's worth the time invested.

So herewith a list of tiny successes thus far in 2012:

Two poems in www.lowestoftchronicle.com; one in Lucidity Poetry Journal; one in Red Poppy Poetry Review; one for an anthology to be published by the Poetry Institute of Canada; one for an anthology to be published by Inner Child Press; and a dozen or so reviews and essays for www.seniorwomen.com. An essay has been published in an anthology called Heartscapes by Spruce Mountain Press. I'll spare us all the number of rejections or simple non-responses.

What I'd really like to know is whether this blog has helped. If a reader responds, it's encouraging. If no one does, it's discouraging. But the latter is the result of 90% of what most of us send out, isn't it?