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a message from Vicki Cobb
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From: Kathleen Horning <horning>
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 14:58:15 -0500
Note: Vicki Cobb is having difficulty with posting to CCBC-Net, so I am forwarding this message from her:
I find it refreshing that Lisa Peters is treating science subjects in poetry. Traditional science literature in journals comes from a male-dominated culture where the most important sub text is that it be authoritative and authority was derived from a writing style that was distant and dispassionate. Also, the writing style for scientific journals had to meet certain well?fined criteria because the editors were only judging content and did not want to be distracted by style. If you read Deborah Tannen's book You Just Don't Understand: About Women and Men in Conversation you'll discover that we women communicate to create community--to share what we know by humanizing it. Men traditionally communicate to create dominance--the zero sum game of if I'm up, you're down. (Except for those enlightened ones who prefer our kind of conversation.) The tradition of language gets ingrained in all of us and we accept traditional text without questioning it. The new journalism in books like The Right Stuff made adult nonfiction into a good read rather than a dry one and broke a few barriers in its own way. Just because something is fun to read doesn't mean that the information is suspect.
I've had my battles getting editors to allow me to use playful language and an irreverent tone in my books. I've even had to explain to a young editor fairly recently why I write the way I write. (She was used to reading nonfiction text books.) The book was I Face the Wind. Apropos of the last conversation, there's a limit to silliness and scatological humor that I will put in my own books. It's one thing to wink and smile knowingly and another to wallow in bad taste. The content of the material and who the author is as a human being and a master of language is what makes any kind of writing literature--even science books. Vicki Cobb
Received on Thu 14 Jul 2005 02:58:15 PM CDT
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 14:58:15 -0500
Note: Vicki Cobb is having difficulty with posting to CCBC-Net, so I am forwarding this message from her:
I find it refreshing that Lisa Peters is treating science subjects in poetry. Traditional science literature in journals comes from a male-dominated culture where the most important sub text is that it be authoritative and authority was derived from a writing style that was distant and dispassionate. Also, the writing style for scientific journals had to meet certain well?fined criteria because the editors were only judging content and did not want to be distracted by style. If you read Deborah Tannen's book You Just Don't Understand: About Women and Men in Conversation you'll discover that we women communicate to create community--to share what we know by humanizing it. Men traditionally communicate to create dominance--the zero sum game of if I'm up, you're down. (Except for those enlightened ones who prefer our kind of conversation.) The tradition of language gets ingrained in all of us and we accept traditional text without questioning it. The new journalism in books like The Right Stuff made adult nonfiction into a good read rather than a dry one and broke a few barriers in its own way. Just because something is fun to read doesn't mean that the information is suspect.
I've had my battles getting editors to allow me to use playful language and an irreverent tone in my books. I've even had to explain to a young editor fairly recently why I write the way I write. (She was used to reading nonfiction text books.) The book was I Face the Wind. Apropos of the last conversation, there's a limit to silliness and scatological humor that I will put in my own books. It's one thing to wink and smile knowingly and another to wallow in bad taste. The content of the material and who the author is as a human being and a master of language is what makes any kind of writing literature--even science books. Vicki Cobb
Received on Thu 14 Jul 2005 02:58:15 PM CDT
