May I Compliment You on Your Complement? Homophones

Now that I've finished the final proofread of No Turning Back, I've found out a few shockers about my writing habits. One, I always type "lead" when I mean the past tense of that verb (that likely comes from a deep-seated psychological story in my head having to do with how I learned to spell "dead"), and two, I always write the wrong version of the homophone pair compliment/complement first, then have to go back and correct it. After checking which one is correct.

So, I though perhaps if I outline the difference between them, it would help me as much as anyone else.

A compliment (noun), with the i, is something spoken in praise of a person or thing. First and foremost, something is complimentary when it's given free of charge. As in the picture above, it's given as a gift, sent with greetings and good wishes. That meaning of the word evolved into the praise we use it as today, and "with our compliments" predates that change. The now easily transitions into a verb now, as in "They complimented her dress." When applied to people, complimentary is often closely related to flattering.

Or, you can do as the theatre folk do, and just say that the free tickets given to certain audience members are "comps." Then there's no worry about whether to use an e or an i.

On the other side, a complement (noun) is something that is complete. It takes the e from that word and brings to mind shades of Jerry McGuire. So, for example, we can have the full complement of personnel in attendance. The personnel roster is complete at that time. The first attested use of complementary was in the phrase "complementary colors." In this case, the colors complement (verb) each other, which is to say that they bring about a contrasting balance that creates a sort of whole within the color spectrum.

So, Renee Zellweger complements Tom Cruise in the above-mentioned movie, although I don't recall them giving each other a lot of compliments.

The best mnemonic device I've come up with is the title of this post. "May I compliment you on your complement?" meaning something like, "May I praise your completeness?"

Coming Soon: The Inheritance of the Spanish Dictatorship

In contrast to the way some other countries have handled life after a dictatorship, in Spain, once Franco died, silence reigned. Seen as a necessity to smooth and quicken the transition to a modern democracy, no one made reclamations about the abuses of power, and the old wounds festered.

No Turning Back is my translation of Lidia Falcón's Camino sin retorno. It is the first novel to describe conditions in prisons at the end of the dictatorship and also the first to point out the inherent machismo of both sides of the political coin, making progress for women challenging, to say the least.

The book debuts this month (specifics as soon as I find out!) and I am proud to have had a part in bringing such an important document to the English-speaking world.

The blurb:

Barcelona, 1986: The dictatorship is over and life is free and easy. But what if you can’t forget the seventies?

Elisa’s troubled past comes back to her in the form of her ex-husband, Arnau, who needs her help to exonerate a former comrade. Elisa relives her Catholic childhood, her marriage to Arnau, her blind loyalty to the communist cause, her experiments in feminism, and her prison time to create a twentieth-century emotional history of the political Left in Spain. The women who faced so much adversity with Elisa weave their own perspectives and testimonies into hers, making this more than a novel: it’s an important contribution to history that gives a voice to the silenced.

Can Elisa ever leave the path history has carved out for her? Is there really no turning back?

“Followers of contemporary Spanish history … will now have the opportunity to understand some of its complex factors … through Falcón’s unswerving critical appraisal of Spanish politics. … Knauss’s agile and eloquent translation guarantees that the memory of clandestine resistance is no longer consigned to the past or to scholars.” —from the critical introduction by Linda Gould Levine

My husband, who actually has a Y chromosome, agrees that this book is incredibly important. It's a compelling read for anyone interested in justice. More information, and the book itself,  is soon to come!

SSS: A New Fiancé

The cover of the program of an academic congress about the medieval epic poem upon which The Seven Noble Knights of Lara is based.

For today's excerpt of my revisions of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara, I thought I'd do something new and give you a dialogue-heavy snippet. It's still the first chapter, and the Count of Castile, Doña Lambra's cousin, has come to tell her he's going to marry her off to his most valuable vassal. She is none too pleased.

* * *

“He’s completed his thirty-fifth year.”

She couldn’t help but wring her hands at the thought of a grey beard and broken teeth, worms sprouting out of every orifice. Maybe he wouldn’t live that long, then she would administer all the territory they had between them.

“Is he landed?”

“He has a few parcels in the region of Lara, called Vilviestre.”

“A few parcels?”

* * *

That's not the last piece of her mind she's going to give him!

Thanks so much stopping by! I trade comments for comments! Get a lot more wonderful excerpts today at SixSunday.com.

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

Target practice by WAVES at Treasure Island, California, Feb. 1943. Note that while four  are practice aiming, one has a different target!

With the amazing new opportunities for writers to reach their audiences faster than ever, more and more  sage advice is being shelled out about how to write well. I recently came across A. M. Schultz's thoughts on the subject, and appreciated his candor.

There really is no other way to become a good writer. Whatever method works best for you, you have to put in the hours.

Luckily for me, I put in most of my training while still a youngling, so I've banked much more than 10,000 hours. I wrote picture books in the third grade and started keeping a diary, probably long before that. In my senior year of high school, my English teacher asked me if I wrote every day. I replied, "Of course!" I was a writer already, and that's that writers do: they write.

"It shows," he told me, beaming.

That wasn't the first compliment I'd received on my writing. All those hours of scribbling began to pay off (in the praise department, which is the most important coin for a beginning writer) fairly quickly. There will always be more to learn, but the world is thankful I got a lot of sketchy writing out of the way when I did.

It's never too late to start, but the bad news is that no one starts out writing Shakespeare-caliber poetry. Good writing must be cultivated, and to do that, you have to write badly for a while. So if your writing leaves something to be desired, the best advice is not to follow some formula or to write at a specific time of day. It's just to keep writing.

And then after you write, rewrite. That's what I'm up to these days.

Eligibly Illegible (A Pair of Near Homophones)

"The X Book Contest is open to voting between December 31 and February 27. Both of my books are illegible."

--Author Unattributed for His/Her Protection

I was surprised (and, I admit, I laughed and laughed) by the error here caused by trouble with spelling similar-sounding words. The writer meant to indicate that the books were eligible.

Both of these words are Latinate, and perhaps therefore inherently confusing. 

Eligible is an adjective meaning that the noun is able to be elected or selected.

Illegible is an adjective meaning that the text in question cannot be read for any number of reasons.

It's important to distinguish between e and i sounds, and to intervene with a critical eye when SpellCheck messes with them, or else a book that readers can choose may become unreadable. There is no worse fate for any book!

Six Sentence Sunday: Beginnings

For my little contribution to the farewell of Six Sentence Sunday (click on that for a lot of other great excerpts!), I thought I'd share some of the revisions I'm working on for The Seven Noble Knights of Lara. It can still be improved, I'm sure!

These are now the first six sentences of the novel. Do they grab your attention, or are they too calm?

* * *

           The sun began to relent from its long day's punishment of Busto de Bureba. The fish in the river sought out the barely forming shadows cast by rocks and branches. Inside a stone house, under a thatched roof, twenty maidservants and their lady planned a cool evening meal, brought in the washing, and put away the day's sewing without bumping into each other.
           Doña Lambra looked out the open door at the fields where her vassals were setting down their scythes and pitchforks for the day. Most of the serfs would return to their tiny homes in town, but some of the overseers lived on the estate, and would come to the main hall for supper. If nothing went wrong, in another seven mornings or so, Lambra would have to provide some kind of reward for successful haying, and the laborers would all expect meals at the haystacks in the meantime. 

* * *

Thanks so much for stopping by! I return comments for comments!

Revisions

Slice and hack! That's what revisions are for!

Now that I've finished the first draft of The Seven Noble Knights of Lara, it looks as if 2013 is all about revisions for the foreseeable future. Last week, I started sharing the book with my husband. With his help, I've come to the wrenching decision to cut -- absolutely get rid of every last word -- the first chapter.

The first chapter preoccupied me inordinately form the beginning. I started with Chapter II because I was so worried about how to start the book and draw the reader in. A previous consultant had commented that since it's going to be a violent book, it should start with a violent scene. In the first version of Chapter I, a small boy gets murdered on the first page.

But the chapter had too many problems compared to what it brought to the story. I tried to untangle the political mess I'd made for myself by writing without researching first, got rid of the poor murdered boy in order to introduce actual important characters, and shared that new version with my husband. It was the first time he's had any notion of what I've been agonizing over for two years. He's far too kind to have said it, but I imagine he was thinking, "Dear God, she's wasted two years of her life on that drivel?" Luckily, he was able to honestly enthuse about Chapter II, and lopping off Chapter I has put the breath of inspiration into the revisions.

Chapter II begins slowly and the only violence is off-screen, when they have to catch and skin rabbits for supper. So of course, the old anxiety resurfaces: that it will not be exciting enough to draw readers in and to set up their expectations for the backstabbing and bloodletting that is to come.

Normally, beginnings aren't such a problem for me, while endings make me run for cover. With The Seven Noble Knights of Lara, I'm pretty thrilled about  the ending, so perhaps it's only right that I should have trouble with the start.

I'll try to stick with that breath of inspiration as I go through the first revisions. When I finish with that, an editor gets the masterpiece. I'll leave the decision about how to start the darn thing with the professional.