Q&A WITH LINDA KAY

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Linda Kay, author and blogger of note at Senior Adventures, sent me a question when I offered to respond to grammatical concerns in my Friday blog posts. I made her wait for an answer until the A to Z Challenge ended.

Here's Linda Kay's question:

One of my critique group ladies recently attended a writing class in which the teacher emphasized not using words that end in "ly". What are your thoughts on this?

First, let's talk about what the teacher meant by words that end in -ly. 

Her concern was probabLY with adverbs, or words that modify (describe) a verb. Adverbs can also modify other adverbs, an adjective, or a sentence. 

Examples: The old man walked slowly.

Rumack: Can you fly this plane, and land it?

Ted Striker: Surely you can't be serious.

Rumack: I am serious... and don't call me Shirley.

However, not all adverbs end in -ly, and not all words that end in -ly are adverbs.

But do I agree with the teacher?

Oh, yeah.

Reasons:

1. Writers fall into the use of -ly words the same way they fall into repetitive sentence structures. If I read several paragraphs and see one -ly, okay. If I see -ly in multiple sentences, I get tired. Lazy writer. Bor-ring!

2. They tend to be weak words. Consider my example above. Why would I write The old man walked slowly when I can write The old man shuffled along or The old man dragged his feet as he walked? Don't "shuffled" and "dragged his feet" create stronger word pictures than "walked slowly"? 

3. Sometimes adverbs indicate that you think your readers won't get your point. "I didn't do anything wrong," Sam shouted angrily. Why do you need angrily? "Shouted" gets the idea across. Removing "angrily" gets rid of a word you don't need. 

4. Adverbs can confuse your reader. Yesterday on my blog, I used a song about suffragettes from the movie Mary Poppins. One lyric begins "though we adore men individually." Does that mean they adore individual men, or they, as individuals, adore men?

I hope I answered your question, Linda Kay. Feel free, my friends, to email your grammatical worries to me at dumpedfirstwife@gmail.com. And please don't freak out about adverbs in your blog posts, unless you plan to publish your posts in a book. Then it's freak out time. 

Hey, if you haven't voted in my Battle of the Bands, you have until midnight to cast your vote HERE. The song is Nothing Compares 2 U. The contenders are Prince with Mary J. Blige and Sinéad O'Connor.


Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

  

Thank you, fishducky!

MOVIE WEEKEND: SUFFRAGETTE

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Today I present quite an interesting movie: Suffragette (2015, Rated PG-13, Available on Video).

If you read my blog post yesterday titled FIVE UNFORGETTABLE SUFFRAGETTE FACTS (click HERE if you missed it), then as you watch Suffragette, you'll see that the main character, Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan), serves as an emblem for the early feminists who fought for women's rights.

Maud works in a laundry, where her boss has sexually assaulted her for years. She dutifully turns over her pay to her husband, Sonny (Ben Whishaw). When she joins the suffragettes and is arrested, she becomes a pariah in her neighborhood. Sonny takes Maud back, but later shuts her out of his house, offended because she has disobeyed and embarrassed him.

Sonny Watts: I took you on, Maud. Thought I could straighten you out.

Maud Watts: What if you don't have to?

Sonny Watts: You're a mother, Maud. You are a wife. You're my wife, and that's all you're meant to be.

Maud Watts: What if I can't be that anymore?

Sonny thought he could straighten out Maud? I wonder at that line. Is it because Maud had already lost her virginity, through no wish of her own, but it's still her fault that she didn't come to her wedding night as a virgin? Or is it possible that the boss is her son's father, and Sonny married Maud to save her from bearing a bastard? 

Whatever the case, Maud then endures at Sonny's hands her greatest torment: the loss of her son, three-year-old George. She has no right to money, no right to her child, and no right to vote. How are Maud and other women to effect a change? 

Emmeline Pankhurst: Deeds, not words.

Violent acts become the modus operandi of many of the suffragettes. These acts lead to imprisonment, which leads to hunger strikes, which leads to the horror of force feeding.

Mulligan, as always, gives an excellent performance. She was nominated for the Best Actress BAFTA. Neither the film nor the actors received Academy Award nominations, although we have a favorite of mine, Helena Bonham Carter, in a fine role. Meryl Streep has a small part--but she's Meryl Streep, so she can't help making an impression--as Emmeline Pankhurst.

Suffragette is not a movie for children, but for teens? Absolutely. Watch it with them, and then make sure they know you exercise your right to vote, whether you live in England, Australia, or the U.S., where suffragettes also fought so American women can vote.  

Suffragette earns The Janie Junebug Seal of Highest Approval. I watched this movie on a DVD from Netflix, ever so kindly delivered by my local postal worker.

I'll also write a second post about Emily Davison, a compelling character portrayed in the film who was a real person.

I wish you knowledgeable viewing!

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

EMILY DAVISON AND A COMMENT ON MRS. BANKS

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

I don't want my review of Suffragette to be too long, so I shall include some additional information on the fight for women's rights here.

In the movie, Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) meets Emily Davison (Natalie Press) in prison. Davison was a real person, and an ardent suffragette.

She partook of the violent acts designed to draw attention to the cause of suffragettes, and as a result, was jailed nine times and force fed one hundred one times. A year before her death, she threw herself down a steel staircase in jail in an attempt to end the force feeding of all the women.

On June 4, 1913, Davison attended the Epsom Derby. During the race, she stepped out in front of King George V's horse. The horse somersaulted and rose to finish the race. The jockey's foot was caught in one stirrup. Unconscious, he was dragged to the finish line, but he survived.

Davison died four days later of a scull fracture and internal injuries. Her sister suffragettes gave her an extravagant funeral.

The question is, did Davison intend to commit suicide? At the time, many people thought she wished to call attention to women's suffrage by ending her life  in an extravagant manner. Others speculated that she wanted to pull down the king's horse. (The belief that the woman thought she could grab and stop a galloping horse is madness.)

Modern analysis of the film suggests that Davison hoped to attach a "Votes For Women" banner or scarf to the king's horse, although a book has been written to argue against this theory. We'll never know the truth.

Click HERE to see a video of the race on my blog

Some of you mentioned you had never heard of Emily Davison, and wondered why you didn't learn about the suffragettes in school. I think high school history courses focus more on dates and events. We probably learned the year that women earned the right to vote, but didn't see the faces of the women--and men--behind the event.

And now I want to chat about the first suffragette I met: Mrs. Banks, in the Walt Disney movie Mary Poppins. As a young--very young child--I saw that Mrs. Banks wore pretty dresses while she marched with other women who wanted the right to vote.

It never occurred to me until I watched Suffragette that Mary Poppins belittles and denigrates the cause of the suffragettes. The Banks' children are unhappy because their father works all the time, and their mother is out protesting for women's rights. Mrs. Banks is portrayed as a silly creature who learns to give up her cause and stay at home so her family can be happy. It doesn't matter if she's happy and fulfilled. Her home is the place for her to achieve satisfaction.

Victorian ideals remain in place in Mary Poppins.

Do you remember this song?




Mrs. Banks appears unharmed--and quite fashionable--although she's been to a militant demonstration. Did it ever occur to you that one plot point of Mary Poppins is opposition to women's rights?

What do you think of these lyrics? Our daughter's daughters will adore us, and they'll sing in grateful chorus, Well done! Well done! Well done, sister suffragette.

It would be nice if we appreciated those who fought for our rights, but how can we appreciate women when we've never heard of them?


Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

FIVE UNFORGETTABLE SUFFRAGETTE FACTS

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Tomorrow for MOVIE WEEKEND, I shall review Suffragette. First, we should learn some suffragette facts that pertain to women in England, where our movie is set:


1. Organized groups of women fought for the vote beginning in the late 1800s. Suffragette was first used as a term of derision by London's Daily Mail, but the women embraced it and hardened the "G" to show their determination to get the right to vote. Women also had no right to their children. If they brought a fortune to their marriages, the money belonged to their husbands.

Queen Victoria ruled from 1837 to 1901,
but she did not have the right to vote.

2. As the fight dragged on, some of the women became more militant, especially those led by Emmeline Pankhurst. Beginning in 1912, Mrs. Pankhurst's followers chained themselves to railings, set fire to the mail in postal boxes, smashed windows, and even detonated some bombs. In 1913, Emily Davison stepped out in front of King George V's horse during the Epsom Derby. Whether she intended to commit suicide for the cause or hoped to pin a suffragette banner on the horse remains unknown.

3. Suffragettes were punished with stints in prison, during which they fought to be considered political prisoners. Denied, some protested with hunger strikes and were force fed. As a history professor of mine described it, a sort of porridge went through a tube that had been forced down the woman's throat and into the stomach. Overfed, or with the stomach unable to accept the porridge, the women vomited. The porridge came back up through their nose and ears because their mouths were blocked. Nasal tubes were also employed at times. 

4. Prominent leader Emmeline Pankhurst did not expect the women who followed her to suffer alone.

Pankhurst was arrested seven times and was force fed on at least one occasion. During a public demonstration, a group of men threw stones, rotten eggs, and clay at Pankhurst and other women, and beat them. Although Pankhurst fought for women's rights for the remainder of her life, with the advent of World War I in 1914, she gave up her militancy in order to support the men who were off to war. She later lived in Canada for a time, visited Russia, and returned to England in time to see the beginning of women's suffrage in 1918, when women older than thirty (with several restrictions), were granted the right to vote.

5. In 1928, women older than twenty-one gained the right to vote in the United Kingdom. Be sure to exercise your right to vote. It was hard won.

I'll see you tomorrow with my review of Suffragette.

Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

TIP TUESDAY: BEWARE OF FALLING INTO A SENTENCE STRUCTURE HOLE

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

When I edit, one problem I notice is that writers--and yes, I might mean you, Dear Client--fall into a sentence structure hole. That is, writers use the same sentence structure over and over.

We talked about slipping in a short sentence to call attention to important words, but if you've forgotten that tip, you can check it our HERE.

I also called attention to a sentence structure I see so often that I want to mention it again:

He wasn't that late, considering how bad the weather was.

If I tell you that you have too many -ing words, then look for the aforementioned sentence structure. I bring it up again because I see it over and over and over . . . oh, and do you remember how to use ellipsis?

In your comment, can you replace the sentence in blue with a different structure?

Here's another example of a problem with -ing words that I don't think we've chatted about here:

She was telling him that he was creating a mess.

Let's simplify:

She told him that he created a mess.

Dig yourself out of the sentence structure hole. Avoid -ing, and you'll avoid verbosity. Your editor will thank you.

This Friday, I hope to answer Linda Kay's question about words that end in -ly. I've made her wait a long time.

If you have a grammatical concern, please email your question to dumpedfirstwife@gmail.com.


Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

Thanks, fishducky. You rock my grammatical world.

QUESTION OF THE MONTH: TIPS FOR NEW BLOGGERS

Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

Michael D'Agostino of A Life Examined has a great Question of the Month for us.

Michael wants to know, “If a friend came to you looking for advice on starting a blog, what three pieces of advice would you give them?”

 That's a great question, Michael. Here's my advice:

1. Allow your blog to evolve to suit your needs and the needs of your followers.

My blog began in December, 2009, as Dumped First Wife. What if I were still complaining about my ex-husband and exploring my divorce? It was good therapy for me at the time, but it would be old by now. Next, my blog became WOMEN: WE SHALL OVERCOME. Lola was the character, or persona, who wrote the posts. She was pretty sassy. A persona more similar to me took over: Janie Junebug. When I realized how many bloggers wrote books, my blog became Janie Junebug Righting & Editing because writers are hungry for tips on grammar and publishing.

What will my blog be called in two years? I don't know, but I'm open to change.

2. Write as clearly as you can, but feel free to be creative.

In spite of my grammar-obsessed self, I don't think your blog has to follow every writing rule. It's fine to write the way you talk. Be casual and conversational if that's your style. What's important is that your followers understand what you mean. Make an effort to avoid distracting errors, such as misspelled words or using "should of" when you mean "should have."

I make missteaks, too. Perfection doesn't have to be the goal. Clarity does. What good is writing if people don't understand what you mean?

3. If you take some time off from blogging or decide to stop blogging, then please let us know.

Before long, New Blogger, you will have loyal, devoted followers. Abandon them, and they'll worry about you. I don't know how many bloggers I've followed who have simply disappeared. We don't know if those bloggers are okay.

I take regular blog breaks. I try to post a message if I'm sick and need time to recover, or if I'm editing a book and don't have time to blog. Usually, when I say I can't blog because I'm tired of it, then suddenly, I'm in the mood to blog. I use reverse psychology on myself.

Well, all righty then, Michael and company. I hope you like my three pieces of advice. This is a bloghop, so you can sign up to join us, and I hope you'll visit other participants.


Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug

Participants in the Question of the Month:

1. Michael @ A Life Examined	2. Janie Junebug Righting & Editing
3. Chrys Fey - Write with Fey	4. Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
5. Raviolis & Waterworks	6. An Apel a Day
7. Pat Hatt	8. Tamara Narayan
9. Play off the Page	10. Tossing It Out
11. The ToiBox of Words	12. Cherdo on the Flipside
	14. Susan Says
15. Bish Denham	16. Mama Diaries
17. This and That (As I Bounce Thru Life)	18. Liz's Random Ponderings
19. Patricia Lynne	20. Wandering and Wondering
21. The Sound of One Hand Typing	22. Life 101
23. Jemima Pett, Author	24. Color Me Writing: Wild About Words
25. Kalpanaawrites	26. Cold As Heaven

BATTLE OF THE BANDS: PRINCE WITH MARY J. BLIGE V. SINEAD O'CONNOR

Note: I wrote this post the day before Prince died. I decided to leave it as it was.


Gentle Readers . . . and Maxwell,

It's time for the May 1, 2016, Battle of the Bands.

Mr. Stephen T. McCarthy provides us with this information about the bloghop:

The whole thing is really quite simple: You select two different versions of the same song (versions  you feel might give each other some competition in the voting) and you post them on the 1st and the 15th of each month. On the 7th and 21st of each month, you add your own personal vote to the mix, total up all the votes and announce the winner on your blog.

Beyond that, just try to have fun with it and let your readers/voters have fun with it.

All right! Let's have fun!

Prince wrote Nothing Compares 2 U for one of his group creations, The Family. The song was on their sole album, released in 1985. It received little attention.

Much later, Prince performed the song live with Rosie Gaines, and released it on a compilation album in 1993. He also recorded a solo version and released it in 2002.

It's not easy to find videos of Prince. The best I could do was this version of Nothing Compares 2 U sung by His Royal Purpleness, with Mary J. Blige:


Mary J. Blige & Prince - Nothing Compares 2 U... by FerrellSouza

Nothing Compares 2 U is better remembered as a one-hit wonder by Irish singer, Sinéad O'Connor.

Her version became a huge hit in 1990. Every time my son and I see the video, one of us says, Oh, God, I love this song, while the other agrees.



Your task is to decide if you prefer the composer of the song, Prince, as he sings it with Mary J. Blige, or the killer hit by Sinéad O'Connor. Please vote in your comment. If possible, tell us the reason behind your vote. 

I'll announce the winner on May 7. It's been almost one year since someone took her love away from me, and nothing compares to her.

Try not to cry. It's a song to break your heart.


Infinities of love,

Janie Junebug


I hope you'll also visit these participants in the bloghop.

• Far Away Series
• Stephen T. McCarthy’s Battle of the Bands Blog
• Tossing it Out
• Mike’s Ramblings
• Curious as a Cathy 
• The Sound of One Hand Typing
• dcrelief ~ Battle of the Bands 
• Shady Dell Music & Memories
• Cherdo on the Flipside 
• THE DOGLADY’S DEN 
• Jingle Jangle Jungle 
• Janie Junebug Righting and Editing
• J.A. Scott
• Holli’s Hoots and Hollers
• Quiet Laughter
• Your Daily Dose
• ReInvintaged
• Evil Pop Tart