Meet Beautiful Singles

Without my electronic hearing devices I am almost as deaf as these marble busts.

When you are a writer and something extraordinary happens to you, you sometimes put your work on hold to capture the experience in writing.  I had such an episode last spring.

What you don't know about me is that I have struggled with hearing loss for most of my life.  Recent accelerated deterioration of my good ear had pushed me to consult a new specialist.  But rather than fixing what was wrong with my good ear, the doctor prescribed surgery for a cochlear implant in my bad ear.  I was skeptical, unable to imagine how a cochlear implant would be any different than struggling with hearing aids that simply amplify what's left of bad hearing, including poor discrimination and missing frequencies.  It felt as if I were taking the next step into the world of total deafness; another futile expenditure of time and money for nothing that would make any difference.  I left the doctor's office and sat in my car and cried.

But then I met the people in the support group who'd had the cochlear implant surgery, and their hearing was better than mine.  I began to understand that an implant works differently than a hearing aid since it bypasses the dysfunction of the middle ear to work directly with the brain.  I imagined the possibility of improved hearing for myself.  And so I had the operation.

The experience of having my new ear "turned on" was something I had to capture in writing and share; people who suffer from hearing loss do not know about the recent drastic improvements in technology.  I'd had no idea!  So my novel-in-progress went on the back burner while I documented the entire experience in a blog: from the story of my childhood ear infections and gradual but profound loss of hearing, through surgery and recovery, to the amazing experience of listening to the jingle of a broken lightbulb held next to my new 'ear'.

Now I am back at work on my novel.

Click to visit:  A Cochlear Implant Diary: Memoirs of a Bad Ear
   

By Cindy Jones

Mikaela Shiffrin is a world champion downhill skier.  I'm a struggling novelist.  Think of it this way:  she races at tremendous speed down snow-covered mountains, I mosey across pages while sitting in a cushy chair.  Her body moves at 80 miles per hour while mine can spend 80 hours not moving at all.  Although we both work on steep white spaces (consider the angle of the white page on the screen), how could a slowly writer like me find resonance in the words of a young super athlete?

Here is what she said about getting down a tough racecourse:  "Things you don't expect come up and you have to adapt.  You can't let it throw you off.  You have to cope...."

If Mikaela and I were discussing setbacks we might agree on some general categories:

• Bad Snow Distraction.  Patches of melting snow, afternoon shadows, and unexpected ice probably distract a skier a lot like social media and mindless internet 'news' articles with their attendant photo galleries distract writers.  Spending the day with a computer that has access to pictures of The Royal Baby can undermine the most self-disciplined among us.
  
  
• Racing on a Tough Course.  Skiers race on courses full of tight turns, just as many writers have day jobs as well as family responsibilities.  The gold medal does not care how many gates a skier manages to clear any more than a publishing house cares how many obligations an author juggles.  Skiers scope out the course before the race and writers can block out time on their calendars.
  
  
• The Dreaded Wipeout.  We've all watched coverage of skiers who lost their edge and went careening off the race course, out of the race, and possibly out of the sport for surgery and rehab.  A writer can be thrown off-course by devastating events that sap their emotional energy.  Without emotional capacity a writer cannot connect to the story and if I appear to be harping on this, it is because I recently spent a lot of time in writer's wipeout.                       

Mikaela's words resonated because she reinforced what I've been thinking:  nothing that happens to set me back will ever be made right.  The bottom line is, if I want to reach my goals I must do everything I have been doing, plus address my setbacks: working smart, striving for self-discipline, planning ahead, and praying to the setback gods to spare me from wipeout.  But I will save my setback stories because they do win points at author talks.    
        

Speech has fashion trends, too.

By Cindy Jones

Why do people start sentences with the word 'so' and why do I feel compelled to understand this linguistic trend?  At first, I was only dimly aware of the word 'so' popping up at the beginning of non-interrogatory sentences.  So, I'm not going to the party at the lake.  Then I read this post on Facebook: So we had dinner at the museum. Finally, when a young woman stood at a podium and said, So we're having a fundraising event..., I said to myself: what's up with 'so'?

How did this word, formerly used as a conjunction, intensifier, and adverb suddenly ascend to the position of prominence at the beginning of sentences?  What caused 'so' to merit the privilege of initiating a thought and introducing content?

Upon consideration, the use of the word 'so' at the beginning of a sentence seemed to imply that the speaker and I were midstream in an ongoing conversation--even though we weren't.  Starting with 'so' allows the speaker to skip the work of orienting the listener with the implied information leading to whatever conclusion starts the conversation.  Perhaps people who say 'so' are busy and need to conserve words by cutting conjunctions in half. Or maybe there is a larger trend in speech away from conventional conversation toward more casual, rule-free communication.  People who put 'so' at the beginning of a sentence are in tune with the latest speech fashion: cool.

Even if you don't lay awake at night pondering the 'so' epidemic, you might be interested to know that professionals can pinpoint the origin of a linguistic trend with the same accuracy investigators can trace a forest fire to a cigarette butt thrown from a car at a precise time and place.

In a NYT essay by Anan Giriharadas I learned that while writing his book, The New New Thing, Michael Lewis found 'so' endemic to Silicon Valley.  Microsoft employees claimed it as indigenous to Redmond, Washington, with the rest of their rich lexicon of geek-speak and corporate jive.  Employees at Hewlett Packard survived boring meetings by counting the number of 'so's.  A joke even circulated: What's the sound of Santa Claus at an HP Christmas party? "So so so!"...In immigrant-filled technology firms, the word 'so' democratized talk by replacing a world of transitions with a catchall. 

So why do I care that 'so' is starting sentences? (I did it).  Because writers are wired to notice things, especially things that influence human dynamics such as a change in speech fashion.  Close observation of the choices a person makes in personal expression--whether in attire or speech--is key to understanding character, motivation, and, yes, fears.  

Bonus speech fashion trivia:  Did you know the phrase 'just sayin' is the equivalent of 'with all due respect'?