If you missed out on the Backerkit campaign for The Awful Alphabet, by me and Sara McCall Ephron, you’re in luck. The post-campaign preorder store is now open. You can find it here:
You can order the book in a variety of formats, as well as some nice posters and art prints, along with previous publications.
The Awful Alphabet, is a picture book for adults in the tradition of Edward Gorey and Neil Gaiman, but also Go the F*ck to Sleep and All of My Friends are Dead. Adulting is hard. Nourish your inner (emo) child.
My story “Noah’s Great Rainbow” has won the Secant Publishing Best Climate Change Stories Contest, sponsored by Book Bin. The first page prize comes with $1000 grand prize and a commemorative gold medal. I am humbled and honored by the selection. Congrats to all the winners.
See the complete press release below, and look for the winners anthology in September.
“Best Original Climate Change Stories” Will Feature 34 Authors from Nine Countries
The Book Bin in Onley, Virginia, and Secant Publishing in Salisbury, Maryland, are announcing the winning entries in an international contest that will produce a one-volume anthology of new, original short stories on the human impact of climate change.
With recurring themes that include a warming climate, rising seas, and retreating flora and fauna, the 34 winning submissions were drawn from nine countries and ten states. Submissions were accepted from October 15, 2023 to March 1, 2024.
Cash prizes of $1,000, $500, and $250, respectively, will be awarded to A. A. Rubin of East Williston, New York (“Noah’s Great Rainbow,” First Place); K. M. Watson of Sykesville, Maryland (“Desert Fish,” Second Place), and Olaf Lahayne of Vienna, Austria (“Beyond the Timberline,” Third Place). Prizes are sponsored by the Book Bin.
All 34 stories, including the three prize winners, will be published in a book-length anthology to be released in September of this year.
“It was exceptionally difficult to pick just three stories for special recognition when we were presented with so many arresting takes on the climate crisis,” said the judges, Philip Wilson of the Book Bin, Ron Sauder of Secant Publishing, and Karen Gravelle, a widely published Onancock, Virginia author.
“In the end, the top three were chosen for their general excellence in storytelling, imaginative scenarios, and central focus on climate change and its many ramifications in the lives of individuals.”
Common themes in the collection include subtle changes in human psychology, with growing erosion of personal relationships and society at large; the increasing precariousness of childhood and parenthood; changing relations between humans and animals, especially pets; and the gradual erasure of history, whether in the form of low-lying coastal graves or the public architecture of coastal communities.
“Almost all of our stories portray human resilience and tenacity, including in the form of geoengineering,” the judges said. “But all of that resourcefulness is balanced against the exceptional complexity of Planet Earth and our limited ability to anticipate and control the future. In the world of this anthology, humans win some battles, while incurring losses whose magnitude is still to be fully reckoned.”
In announcing the contest, which was promoted nationally and internationally, the judges made it clear that a wide range of genres would be welcome. The resulting collection features themes from social realism to dystopia, social justice to post-apocalypticism, humor to horror.
In addition to the three stories listed above, the winning entries are:
“2100, Remnants of a Thriving World,” B. E. Saunders, Tasmania, Australia.
Today is opening day for most teams in Major League Baseball, so, continuing what has become an annual tradition, I present my Sonnet For Opening Day. Play Ball!
That time of year thou mayst in fans behold That malediction, fever of the spring Surrounded by lingering snow and cold, We dream of pennants and World Series rings. With pride we root our noble heroes on Eating hot dogs, peanuts, and crackerjacks And all our worldly troubles fade, are gone When that first pitch is thrown and bat doth crack But Lo! When April fades to crueler months, We reach the summer of our discontent Like Mighty Casey in the Mudville ninth Our hearts bereft of joy and merriment Yet hope springs eternal for one and all, When that blue-clad umpire calls out, “Play Ball!”
–A. A. Rubin
While the baseball season is just beginning, my Backerkit campaign for The Awful Alphabet is quickly drawing to a close. There are just under to weeks to support the project and secure your copy of the book. Support the campaign here.
In the first post I published on this blog, I bemoaned the reductive nature of writing advice. “If you write like everyone else,” I wrote, “your writing will read like everyone else’s.” While I have gotten away from that theme from time-to-time, I try to return to it every now and then as part of my series: Rules: What Rules? which consists of a series of blogs that deal with common pieces of writing advice, and then present a famous work–by a successful author–which breaks those rules. My aim is not to criticize these authors—I enjoy all of them, that is the point. Rather, I present their works as examples of successfully writing, which might cause you to reexamine the writing “rule” critically. I am not advising you to ignore these rules, rather to take control of your own craft, and consider your choices actively. As always, I believe there is more than one path to success, more than one formula for great writing. Consider these posts synecdochally. The specific rule is not the point; it speaks to a general attitude which is prevalent within the contemporary writing community.
In each blog post in this series, I will give a brief summary of the rule, followed by a case study of a successful author, work, or series that breaks that rule. Finally, I will provide some analysis of the rule and the alternative techniques the featured author makes. Since the posts in this series will not necessarily be consecutive blog entries, I will link each piece to previous entries.
“The passive voice is weak.” “Always use the active voice.” “Eliminate ‘was’ from your vocabulary.” If you have taken a creative writing class, read any books or blogs about writing, or attended any writing workshops, you’ve probably heard some version of this advice. The active voice, which gives the subject and the action primacy in the sentence, is clearer, more concise, and according the Strunk and White, who list it as #14 in their elements of composition, “makes for more forcible writing” that is “vigorous” and “bold” in opposition to the passive voice, which is “less direct, less bold, and less concise.” Their views on active and passive voice, like much of their manual, has become gospel in the pedagogy of writing.
And yet…
One of Mark Twain’s most famous quotes: “The report of my death has been grossly exaggerated.” (Often misquoted as “rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated) was written–or more accurately, said–in passive voice.
The acclaimed science fiction novelist Douglas Adams, one of the most beloved and successful writers of all time, begins The Restaurant at the End of Universe like this:
The story so far: In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
That’s two consecutive passive voice sentences (and an “very” to boot).
Franklin Delano Roosevelt began his Pearl Harbor speech by saying:
Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
Like Twain and Adams, FDR used the passive voice.
I think it is safe to say that Mark Twain, Douglas Adams, and FDR are all excellent writers, and that the choices they made in the above examples are highly effective. So, how did they manage to break this so-called writing rule in pieces which have stood the test of time? Read on to find out.
There are a few reasons why a writer would choose to use the passive voice. Two of the more common reasons are to emphasize the object of the sentence, and to create rhythm in their writing.
Let’s take Twain’s example first. Twain uses the passive voice to highlight the irony of statement. He simultaneously de-emphasizes the subject by leaving it out of the sentence, and highlights the object of the sentence both in contrast to the lack of subject and by placing it at the start of the sentence.
By placing the object in the front, “the report of my death” is the first phrase the reader hears. The irony is established at the outset by the contradiction between the phrase “my death” and the fact that the speaker talking about the reports of his own death is very much alive, and is the one who is speaking about it. With this contradiction fresh in the readers’ mind, the end of the phrase just serves to emphasize the irony, to grossly exaggerate it, if you will. If Twain has used the active voice, “the newspapers have grossly exaggerated the report of my death,” the focus would be on the newspapers rather than on the ironic phrase. Thus, Twain’s use of the passive voice, is a deliberate choice meant to highlight the irony of the situation.
Like Twain, FDR chooses to highlight the object over the subject in his famous speech. By using the passive voice, he places the emphasis on America rather than on Japan. Facing resistance to entering WWII, he highlights the fact that America was attacked rather than the fact that Japan was the country that attacked it. This serves two main purposes rhetorically. First it emphasizes that the isolationists who were against America joining the war were wrong. America is not safer not entering the war. America was attacked anyway. Lives were still lost. It would be better to (ironically) take the active position and enter the war. Secondly, it allows FDR to go after the Nazis as well as the Germans in his response. Yes, America was attacked by the Japanese, but who attacked them first is only part of the problem. The Germans would do the same thing, if given the chance. America was attacked. America needs to enter the war. To do this effectively, America needs to enter the war on both fronts. The passive voice, by emphasizing the object and deemphasizing the subject , makes the phrase more effective rhetorically.
Douglas Adams’ use the passive voice is a little different because it is the start of a novel. Fiction stories often start with sentences featuring delayed subjects. The traditional “once upon a time, there lived a ___” is probably the most famous example, but there are others as well. Tolkien’s “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,” is another example. Neither Tolkien’s nor the traditional fairy tale are technically passive voice, but they do delay the subject to the end of the clause, which makes them syntactically similar to passive construction. In these cases–whether they are written in passive voice or not–the delayed subject draws the reader into the story. The familiar “once upon a time” is a portal into a the fantasy ream. It tells the reader what kind of story to expect, and similar phrases exist across cultures in folk and fairy stories because the technique is effective. Tolkien’s opening also establishes a poetic rhythm. The phrases which delay the subject scan (in a HOLE in the GROUND) which helps establish a rhythm to the prose as well.
The passive voice can be used to affect either of these purposes as well. It is the most common way to delay a subject, and sprinkling in a few passive voice sentences can slow down the rhythm of a story, vary the syntax, and make the writing more interesting.
It is certainly possible that Adams had this in mind when writing the opening to The Restaurant at the End of Universe. There is, however, a thematic reason Adams would use the passive voice here as well. The first of the consecutive passive sentences, “In the beginning, the universe was created,” alludes to the biblical creation story. The first line of the bible reads: In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.” Adams expects his reader to associate the phrase “In the beginning” with the biblical verse. This allusion naturally sparks a comparison between the two lines. What is the difference? The notable absence of God. Whereas, the biblical universe is the creation of order out of chaos, as spoken into existence by the divine voice, Adams universe is one of randomness and absurdity. There is no order. There is no one in charge. Throughout the series, the reader meets authority figures, including the creator, but each is absent the power and the will to order the nascent chaos on the universe. Thus, by eliminating God from the traditional creation story, Adams establishes the theme right from the outset of the story.
In this case, the passive construction is the most effective way Adams could make this particular point. The passive construction here, much like in the Twain example, allows for the elimination of the subject entirely. In the beginning, the universe was created. By whom? We don’t know. To paraphrase one of Adams’ more famous passages, God disappears in a puff of grammar.
While the passive voice is not something that should be used exclusively, or even for the majority of your sentences, the examples above show how it can be an effective tool in your writing which should not be discarded out of hand. It can be used to highlight the object of a sentence or eliminate the subject entirely when rhetorically appropriate, to delay the subject for effect, or to establish a poet and comforting rhythm which might be appropriate to the story you are trying to tell. The reports of its death have, indeed, been grossly exaggerated.
A is for A. A. Rubin, and also for The Awful Alphabet. S is for Sara McCall Ephron. B is for the book we created. The Awful Alphabet is live on Backerkit. Support the campaign today!
Let’s face it, the last few years have been hard on all of us. What better way to deal with the existential stress of modern life than with a nostalgic plunge into your subconscious? The Awful Alphabetis a picture book for adults, which features A. A. Rubin’s twisted verse and Sara McCall Ephron’s surreal art. In the tradition of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies and Neil Gaiman’s Dangerous Alphabet, but also Go The F*ck to Sleep and All My Friends are Dead, The Awful Alphabet is the perfect complement to the ennui which envelops your heart.
Adulting is hard. Nourish your inner (emo) child.
See a free preview below, and support the campaign by clicking here.
A few years back, there was meme going around the online writing community about what the differences between fantasy and science fiction. Most of the answers were intended to be humorous, because, at first glance, fantasy and science fiction are easy to tell apart. Common answers included “it’s fantasy when you pay in coin, and science fiction when you pay in credits;” “it’s fantast when you ride horses, and it’s science fiction when you ride a space ship;” and other simple, fairly obvious explanations that basically boiled down to it’s fantasy when the speculative element is magical, and it’s science fiction when the speculative element is scientific. The meme resurfaces each year, and I was recently reminded of it three separate times during interactions on social media. During one of those interactions, which was a chat on BlueSky where writers were asked to answer a series of questions as part of a chat event, I gave an answer that fit into the character limit, which got a decent reaction, but which I feel needs to be explained in a longer-format piece like this one: Science fiction speculates based on the conscious, rational mind, whereas fantasy is derived from the subconscious or irrational.
To me, science fiction, for the most part, evolves from a rational premise taken to an extreme. What if some new piece of technology existed? How would we deal with that, both as individuals and as a species? AI, space travel, and even time travel would be examples of this type of fiction. What if a certain social construct or system in the real world was either amplified to the extreme or allowed to continue unfettered on its present course? Dystopian sci-fi, social-critical science fiction, and solar-punk would fit under that rubric. In summary, most of what is considered science fiction derives from a real world situation taken to a logical extreme.
On the other hand, fantasy, generally comes from a different place, and since it is not based in reason, it will take a bit longer to explain. Let’s start with the father of modern fantasy, JRR Tolkien. In his essay “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien writes the following:
“Now “Faërian Drama”—those plays which according to abundant records the elves have often presented to men—can produce Fantasy with a realism and immediacy beyond the compass of any human mechanism. As a result their usual effect (upon a man) is to go beyond Secondary Belief. If you are present at a Faërian drama you yourself are, or think that you are, bodily inside its Secondary World. The experience may be very similar to Dreaming and has (it would seem) sometimes (by men) been confounded with it. But in Faërian drama you are in a dream that some other mind is weaving, and the knowledge of that alarming fact may slip from your grasp.” [Emphasis mine]
This part of the essay is a part of a larger discussion, of great interest to Tolkien, about the magic–the spell–of words and their effect on the reader, but for our purposes, the point is that, in what some scholars have called his most successful attempt to define the fantasy genre (fantasy and fairy stories are synonyms for our purposes), he uses the metaphor of a dream.
A dream is one the most common manifestations of the subconscious. We could examine the implications of the dream being someone else’s rather than our own at a different time, because that is another essay entirely, but the important thing is that the realm of fairy, and by extension, secondary world fantasy, is associated not with reality or with something connected to reality like time or space, but rather with something from the subconscious, outside the realm of rational experience.
This, by the way, does not preclude the fantasy rules from having it’s own rules or logic. Tolkien discusses the need to keep the secondary world consistently logical with itself elsewhere in the same essay, but the rules there, are different than rules here, and what happens when you are under the glamour of the story, is outside of the logical, rational realm.
While Tolkien wrote about secondary world fantasy, which makes sense given that the vast majority of his fiction takes place in a secondary world, the root of all fantasy derives from the subconscious, even those stories which take place in our world.
I recently attended an online discussion with Alan Moore and Susanna Clarke, two of the greatest contemporary fantasy writers. Clarke and Moore both write fantasy set in the “real” world, yet when they talk about fantasy, it is tinged with the same types of allusions to the subconscious, the irrational, and the extra-rational.
Moore said, “there is a thin membrane between fiction and reality. It must be permeable.”
Clarke said fantasy “becomes a repository for all the non-human things which we are ignoring.”
Both of these statements reflect a psychoanalytic lens for looking at fantasy, and Clarke’s repeated references to Jung during the talk establish the connection between the subconscious and fantasy to an even greater degree.
If we look at where the fantasy element is found in fantasy stories which take place in the so-called-real-world, they often echo these archetypes as well. The fantastical or magical element comes from underground (as, for example, in Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere), on the edge of town, from a foreign land, or from some distant past (as in Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell). Irrational states, like madness or religious fervor are often conducive to magic as well. Each of these metaphors relies on a common metaphor for the subconscious, a liminal state reminiscent of a dream.
Thus, fantasy, regardless of setting, bubbles up from the subconscious whereas science fiction is the logical extension of the rational.
I am just days away from launching my book The Awful Alphabet on Backerkit. Sign up to be notified on launch by clicking here.
I am about to launch my first Kickstarter, and I need your support to make it happen. It’s an alphabet picture book for adults called, The Awful Alphabet, which features my twisted verse and Sara McCall Ephron’s surreal art. Sign up to be notified on launch, and read more about the project below:
A is for A. A. Rubin, and also for The Awful Alphabet. S is for Sara McCall Ephron. B is for the book we created.
Let’s face it, the last few years have been hard on all of us. What better way to deal with the existential stress of modern life than with a nostalgic plunge into your subconscious? In the tradition of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies and Neil Gaiman’s Dangerous Alphabet, but also Go The F*ck to Sleep and All My Friends are Dead, The Awful Alphabetis the perfect complement to the ennui which envelops your heart.
My recent research for one of my writing projects has led me to revisit both Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Rereading Sir Arthur Conan and Doyle and Agatha Christie, I was struck by the differences between the two characters who are, arguably, the two most famous detectives in literature. Holmes is a bohemian, a slob (Watson calls him an “one of the most untidy men that ever drove a fellow lodger to distraction” in The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual), a serial pipe smoker, and someone who puts in the grunt work to find every possible clue at a crime scene himself, while Poirot is proper, neat, only an occasional smoker (who prefers Russian cigarettes to pipes), and a believer in psychology over clues when it comes to solving crimes. The two detectives have certain traits in common to be sure: they both like a long, quiet think in which they can reason out a problem, both are exceptional reasoners, and both have a fondness for a proper parlour scene and dramatic reveal. Yet, in reading (or rereading) them, I was struck by their differences much more so than by their similarities.
I’ve always been interested in the different paths one can take to reach the same destination. There are, despite what fashion and the cottage advice industry profess, multiple paths to success. The key is finding a path that works for you and that fits your personality and traits.
Turning this idea to writing, it is important to understand that there are many approaches that could lead to success. Be a plotter like JRR Tolkien or a panster like CS Lewis; use simple syntax like Hemmingway or complex prose like Faulkner; disavow adverbs like Stephen King, or use them brilliantly like Salman Rushdie; revel in writing like Ray Bradbury or enjoy having written like Dorothy Parker; be prolific like Ursula Le Guin, or write one great book like Harper Lee; write long like Tolstoy or short like Vonnegut. I could, of course go on.
There are, to be sure, some baseline practices which all successful writers must possess, just as the two fictional detectives share certain characteristics, but in choosing any of the authors listed in the dichotomies above (or the myriad of others who aren’t listed here), you are choosing a path which has proven to lead to your desired destination in the past, so you can be sure that it is possible to get where you’re going by following it.
And remember that many of the so called “rules” are merely trends, and that trends and fashions change over time.
The world of writing and publishing can often seem like a great mystery, but a great mystery can be solved by either a Holmes or by a Poirot.
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It’s the end of the year, and that means everyone is doing summary posts about their writing achievements over the past 12 months. If I were to make an end of the year writing post it would look something like this:
—Qualified and became a full member of the Science Fiction Writers Association
—Qualified and became an active member of the Horror Writers Association.
—Finished drafting my novel which I will be querying in 2024
—Was nominated for the Saturday Visiter Award by the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum in Baltimore.
—Won the blue ribbon in rhyming poetry at the Long Island fair.
—Was invited to submit to two projects by editors who had previously published my work.
By certain measures, it was my most successful writing year. I finished my novel, I won or was nominated for a number of awards, and I achieved one of my long-time writing aspirations by qualifying for the SFWA and HWA.
So, why do I feel so down about my writing at the moment? I’m not sure, but it’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot recently. Perhaps it’s because many of my publications are not available online so I can’t do one of those long posts with many links, like so many writers do at this time of year? Perhaps because at this time last year, I had six acceptances pending for this year whereas this year I have three similar acceptances so I feel a lull at the beginning of next year coming? Perhaps because, while I had very successful years in poetry and comics, I didn’t publish as much prose fiction as in previous years? (Which makes sense since I spent so much of my writing time on the novel, but still…) or, perhaps, because as I advance in my writing career and submit to more professional level markets, fewer things get published? I really don’t know the answer.
I do know that I’ve been feeling down about things for th last few months, and that perhaps I need a change in perspective. When looking at my accomplishments over the last year listed above, it’s been, objectively, a good year for my career. I just wish it felt that way to me.
Ah well, time to open a nice scotch, enjoy the holidays and reset with a new perspective for next year.
Levar Burton Reads is one of my favorite podcasts. One reason, of course, is because of the nostalgia of being read to by the host of Reading Rainbow, but it goes beyond that. I appreciate the way Burton frames each story, setting the context before he begins, as well as the way he comments on what he’s read at the end of the episode. These intro/extro-ductions enhance my experience as a reader beyond just listening to an audiobook or dramatization. As it turns out, Levar Burton is an excellent teacher for adults, as well as kids (but you don’t have to take my word for it.)
This was especially the case in the recent episode where Burton read “The Tin Man,” by Lilliam Rivera. In his introduction to this episode, Burton said that the story caused him to reassess his attitude toward ritual and to make a conscious effort to add more ritual to his life. I found this interesting as the story, which is about a young girl from the Bronx who survived the apocalypse, is not necessarily about ritual per-se. Sure, the girl engages in ritual, but it is not the first theme I would have thought about if I read the story without Burton’s guidance.
I happened to listen to the episode the week before Yom Kippur. One of the main rituals on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, is the confession. The confessional prayer, which is recited in each of the 5 prayer services during the holiday, consists reciting a wrote list of transgressions for which the penitent is supposed to apologize while bending over and beating one’s chest. Many people struggle to find relevance in this tradition, as the list, like most of the traditional Jewish prayer service, was written in the middle ages and the things for which they are supposed to be atoning for are generalized and often outdated.
Thinking about this ritual, I recalled a memory of a teacher in high school who said that, one Yom Kippur, he noticed a man praying near him who composed his own list of transgressions and recited it to himself at the appropriate place in the service. The teacher suggested mimicking this practice, and in doing so, hoped to make the confessional more personal and relevant.
Writing a list of things one is sorry for in the previous year, while not a common practice among adults, is one of the more common strategies used to make the service more meaningful for children. Children are often asked what they want to apologize for in Hebrew school and children’s services at synagogue. While this practice does make the holiday more immediate for children, it also, often causes children (and many adults, to be honest) to view the holiday negatively. I will admit that, as I’ve become less observant throughout my adult life, the holiday and its associated rituals have lost much of their meaning for me as well.
After listening to the aforementioned episode of Levar Burton Reads, I decided to reexamine the ritual. How could I make it more meaningful for me, even–and especially–when it was devoid of its religious context. Could I find meaning in it, both for me and for my children. While I no longer believe that God assesses each person, inscribing the good in the book of life, and the bad in the other one, the holiday provides an opportunity to reflect and to assess oneself. The way the holiday is framed traditionally, focusses on the negative, which is not surprising given the medieval origins of the liturgy, but modern theories of assessment offer a more nuanced approach.
A balanced assessment should consider the good, the bad, and the in between. A person who evaluates themselves honestly should take self-criticism seriously, but they should not come out of the experienced so down on themselves that they are unable to change.
To this end, I asked my children to make a private list (one they did not have to show me) on which they wrote three things for which they are sorry, three things which they have done well in the last year which they want to continue doing in the coming year, and three aspirations for improvement for the coming year which are not necessarily connected to the things for which they wish to apologize. I committed to make my own list as well.
Personally, I was happy with the results. I liked it better than either the traditional confession or the personal list of “I’m sorrys.” It not only felt more authentic, but more actionable as well, less negative, but at the same time, solemn and serious enough to be appropriate for the holiday.
I am planning on employing a similar strategy as we approach the end of the year. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve found New Year’s resolutions to be a bit of a vapid tradition. I’ve written about ways to make them more meaningful in the past, but this year, I’m going to try the more balanced approach I came up with for the confession to this end-of-the-year ritual. It seems to me, that it is important to assess ourselves completely–both the positive and negatives aspects–if we intend on improving ourselves in the future.
Inspired by Levar Burton and his reading of Rivera, I will continue to reassess the rituals in my life, and I invite you to do the same. I also invite you to adopt the self-assessment practice I outlined above. It worked for me, but you don’t have to take my word for it (sorry, I couldn’t resist writing it one more time).
Get your copy of Into That Darkness Peering, the perfect read for the Halloween season, by clicking the link above.
A. A. Rubin 