A Good, Better, Best Lexicon

My husband can make numbers dance. It’s a computer analyst thing. Numbers take the place of words in my husband’s binary mind. What you can’t say with a 0 or a 1 isn’t worth saying.

I, on the other hand, love the wordy majiggles, sometimes making up new twinkle words right on the spot. Words are magic.  In my mind, words are like pieces of a glorious puzzle that fit together in endless combinations to form blazing snapshots framed in braided twists of golden licorice.

You see the basic problem.

I spend my days tapping away at letters, blending them into words—also mowing, chopping, burning, edging, mucking, grooming, raking, planting, growing, dragging, and nailing, but that’s a subject for another day.

My husband reads what I write and says, “Good.”

He says it always and forever, because the word “good” is his describing word of choice. No matter what I write, how much or how little, how sad or how happy, he will call it good. No matter how much he likes a piece or how moved he is by it, or how hard it’s made him laugh, he has one and only one word to bestow on it.

GOOD. Not wonderful. Not amazing. Not wham bam thank you Sam. Just good.

I can’t decide if a one or a zero represents the word good in his binary brain bucket.

 

My latest project is a novella (a short, sweet novel) set in rural Florida in the mid ‘60’s called Mooncalf. It’s a very serious, literary work requiring a lifetime’s worth of blood and bone.

He read Mooncalf. When he finished reading, he paused, pondered, and said, “This is terrific.”

I just may have a Pulitzer Prize winner on my hands.

To illustrate what I’m up against, I’ve compiled a Sherwood Zern compliment lexicon:

It’s good.  (Said in a neutral tone)  1. I know you were making sounds resembling our mother tongue, but I wasn’t listening so I’ll play it safe.  2. What?

That’s good. (Said with no discernable intonation)  1. Why do you insist on reading this stuff to me when you know I prefer to read it myself.  2. No, really, I’m listening.

Good! Of course, I mean it. (Said in a clipped, sharp way)  1. I’m on a conference call and I forgot to mute it.

Well, isn’t that good.  (Repeated)  1. What’s for dinner?  2. Did you take my power cord?  3. When are you going to get a job?

That’s dang fine good.  (Eyes glued to computer monitor)  1. I didn’t understand a word you just read; it must be stellar.

And then . . .

Linda, this is really terrific. (With eye contact and vocal inflection)  1.  I love you, babe. Hang in there. 2. Dr. Suess received twenty-seven rejections before he was published. I believe in you.  3. You misspelled cooties on page eighty-three.

So back to page eighty-three I go, working like the devil to deserve such high and mighty praise from the king of the binary people.

Linda (Good, Better, Best) Zern

 

   

Seriously Taken

NOTE:  I want to be a serious writer, and I want to be taken seriously. I do. I really do.

I mean, I think that I really do.

It’s just that the words get away from me sometimes and take on a silly life of their own and go bucking off across the page like rodeo broncos, making me sound like the mad woman of Kissimmee Park Road when she’s tied to the back of a convulsing horse that’s got its doodads tied in a knot.

That’s the problem with being a writer, the words can be unruly and hard to tame.

For example, it wasn’t until after I sent this email in response to an invitation sent out by the head of our English department that I questioned my own literary seriousness, dedication, and bronc riding sanity.

Well Howdy Yourself,

While I will not be able to attend the counseling session this evening, I would like to express a concern I have about the lack of a creative writing major at Rollins/Hamilton Holt. As a writer of serious stuff or a serious writer of stuff or a stuff writer of a serious nature, I openly mourn the lack of such a degree. Perhaps "openly mourn" is overstated; more correctly, I quietly grieve.

Seriously, it is something of a conundrum.

While the University of Central Florida, better known as UCF or U Can’t Finish, may have a creative writing major, it is a factory—a soulless, heartless, knowledge factory.

Rollins College, on the other hand, is a lovely brick strewn statement of academic gentility that does not offer a degree in the fine art of the writing of the words. Sheesh! Every assignment that drags me away from my serious word writing is . . . mean . . . in my opinion, of course.

And yet I press on, because my children are nags, and I love walking by the rose garden on my way to Orlando Hall and let’s not forget the bricks.

Sincerely,

Linda (Major-Minor) Zern

The Courtyard at Orland Hall

Hamilton Holt Student and Thrill Seeker      

Color Me Skeptical

The Internet is a marvelous work and a wonder. Except when it’s not.

On one of the websites where I post my writing, people occasionally chime in, sound off, make comments, and post responses. These people do not identify themselves with their given names. They use online names or aliases such as “Hello Kitty Hat Hair” or “Dolphin Dew Dipper.” They often say complimentary and encouraging things about my writing.

The problem is that I’m never sure if these people are real.

I mean, it would be one thing if somebody with a name . . . oh . . . I don’t know . . . maybe, a name like Ray Bradbury commented on my recent essay about chupachabras by saying, “Nicely shaped paragraphs” or “lovely sentence length” or “good use of the article ‘the.’”

Note:  Yes, I know that my writing idol, Ray Bradbury, is dead. But still, how cool would that have been?

Ray Bradbury would be one thing but when Dolphin Dew Dipper sends me a note saying, “You’re funnier than a monkey sitting on a power pole that may or may not be a chupacabra—the monkey, not the pole,” I tend to wonder if Dolphin Dew Dipper isn’t a Ukrainian chick trying to hack my computer in an attempt to get to my sensitive vital statistics.

Or, that Dolphin Dew Dipper isn’t really my husband trying to get to my sensitive undercarriage—also vital statistics.

I want to believe that people saying nice things are real. I do.

But what if Dolphin Dew Dipper is really homeland security, because the word chupacabra is a codeword meaning ‘dirty bomb transport ship arriving from Pissport Nowhere?’ The subtext of which is, “Round her up, boys.”

Or what if Dolphin Dew Dipper is my mortal, sworn enemy come back from my too trusting past to taunt me with manipulative, faux praise designed to soften me up for that Ukrainian hacker chick?

See my problem? 

The Internet is a marvelous work and a wonder. Except when it isn’t. Who knows if anyone is who they say they is/are/was/were/am?

But this much I do know. I know who I am, and that I really am who I am when I say that I am that. Even if sometimes I’m less of who I wish I was and more of what I could be, except when I’m not.

Count on it.

Linda (Zippity) Zern