Pride and Prejudice

is my favorite novel. Some of you are rolling your eyes right now, because it's so stereotypical -- a female English major whose favorite novel is Pride and Prejudice? Get out. Shocking. But hang out for a sec, guys. It's not for the reasons you might think.

Lots of people, both men and women, have the idea that Pride and Prejudice is a love story between two perfect characters. I've seen... oh, I reckon at least a half-dozen ranty posts and articles from men criticizing women for liking P&P, lamenting the existence of Fitzwilliam Darcy, the supposedly ideal man. I've also heard countless women talking in (understandably) swoony voices about the (rightly) famous BBC adaptation and Colin Firth's utterly delicious portrayal of one of the most well-known characters in all literature, or the newer adaptation with the equally delicious Matthew MacFadyen...

OK, sorry. I know I lost a few of you there.

The point is, the rather sexy movie/TV serial adaptations are not the book. The book is not even a romance. It's scarcely a love story -- it's really not about "love" as much as marriage, in a society where love was often considered a bonus to that institution, not a prerequisite. You want the bottom line? Pride and Prejudice is a (sometimes gentle, sometimes quite biting) satire of Regency society and relationships, with an especially sharp eye cast toward marriage and particularly men's roles in making marriage successful or otherwise. In plain English: it's about marriage and men, good and bad.

You know the old saw about Austen "writing what she knew"? I don't buy it.

More to come on the marriages and the men of P&P, what we can learn from it, and why men ought to read it.

In a poetic mood.

Whatever that means.

Sometimes the mood strikes me to write a poem. And sometimes I do, and it's awful, and sometimes I do, and it's "fair to middlin'" as my father would say, and sometimes it's just what I wanted. Sometimes I hit all those perfect authorial high notes -- lean, vivid, evocative, just the right combination of wit and punch.

I guess I have to realize that all my writing is like that -- that hitting "publish" on this blog is going to mean that I put a lot of things out there that I'm not satisfied with, that I go back and read months later and cringe at. I'm no "First-Draft" Lewis, and I never will be (alas?). And I realize that part of the discipline of being a writer is just continuing to hit "publish" week after week even when I don't have anything profound at the front of my mind. Because sometimes when I write a poem, it starts out as a sloppy ramble and ends up quite nicely summing up a thought filed away back in my brain. I reckon writing here won't be any different.

Lent, Day 4: I hate writing papers.

Sigh. I need to get good at this paper-writing stuff again. My writing has turned so sloppy and ridiculous in the last couple of years that writing this paper I feel like the fat kid in the gym after New Year's resolutions kick in, wandering around in a fog, getting onto the weight machines wrong and falling off the treadmill.

I'm just going to remind myself that I don't need an A, and that the grader is looking for completeness and support rather than, you know, life-changingly beautiful prose.

On Hitting A Wall and Hating My Own Voice

When I was in college, I was a mediocre writer.  I got a bit better over the years thanks in no small part to an excellent creative writing prof who frequently eviscerated my verbose poetry, but in a really nice, upper-Midwest way, with a smile on her face, until it stopped being overwrought brain dumps and started to be lean distillations of emotional experience.

In seminary, writing dullsville reports on the minutiae of evangelistic techniques and scrambling for essay topics that wouldn't put me or the grader to sleep, my writing got both better and worse.  More technical, perhaps a bit more precise, but thudding and heavy.

When I started writing this blog, I went through phases.  One week I'd toss out the same overwrought brain dumps I'd been carefully trained not to write, and the next obsess over word choice and syntax for hours before deleting the lot.  Now, having been out of seminary for going on three years, not having had to write a paper for anyone's approval, not having deadlines and due dates looming, I've gotten sloppy.  I want that taut academic precision back in my writing.  I want to stop sounding like a cross between the Fug Girls and Ree Drummond, which, I fear, is the voice that's developed.

So, all that to say, I will probably be writing here quite a bit more than usual, because practice, as they say, makes perfect.