Ralph Keyes

This book arrived, a gift from donut, in that awful place in the middle of a first draft when you feel lost and discouraged, and on top of that I was so swamped with lifestuff I couldn't figure out wtf I was doing trying to write fiction on top of it all, especially when I feel like my chances of getting published are approximately equivalent to the chances of winning the lottery without buying a ticket. Anyway, donut advised keeping the book near my writing area to flip through in moments show more of angst, and yup. Here it is. I actually read it straight through, though it would be an easy book to page through at random. I read it in little snippets at my computer, whenever I was waiting for my super slow internet to process something, or when I had those moments when nothing, even the most banal of writing, would come out despite how many times I tapped my fingers anxiously against the keys. I love it. It made me much more hopeful without ever making me roll my eyes at some stupid cheesy business, without feeling like I was holding a vacuous, fake-smiling cheerleader in my hands. :D show less

Ask a non-writer which sounds scarier, writing a book or climbing Mount Everest, and the answer you hear will likely be the latter. Writers know better.

In his fine 1995 book “The Courage to Write,” Ralph Keyes explores just how scary writing can be, even for and perhaps especially for the best writers. The fears are many: Can I actually do this? Will anyone publish it? Will anyone want to read it? Will they like it? Will people laugh at me? What if I make embarrassing mistakes? What if show more people realize I am actually writing about them? What if I expose my true self in my writing?

Keyes shares the words and stories of many writers who have addressed their fears. E.B. White worried over every word, he tells us. "I write in terror," Cynthia Ozick said. "I have to talk myself into bravery with every sentence, sometimes every syllable." Erica Jong wrote, "Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads."

Yet fear in a writer is not necessarily a bad thing, assuming that writers possess the kind of courage Jong speaks about. Toni Morrison put it this way: "When you stiffen" (in anxiety while writing) "you know that whatever you stiffen about is very important. The stuff is important, the fear itself is information."

Or as Robert Cormier put it, "As much as there is joy in writing, there's always the little bit of terror to keep you on your toes."

There are plenty of how-to books out there for writers, but this book by Keyes is different in that it addresses not so much the writing itself as the courage it takes to actually do that writing, day after day after day. How much easier it would be to climb a mountain. show less

A surprising number of the words and phrases that we use every day are actually allusions to once-current events, people, pop culture, or technology, and many more of them originated as sports references, military terms, movie-making lingo, or other kinds of specialized language. Some of them have been used so often and for so long that they're now just part of the way we talk, long after we've forgotten what they originally referred to.

I Love It When You Talk Retro explores these show more expressions, with examples from various categories (names-turned-words, literary references, allusions to politics, etc., etc.) and short explanations of where they came from and how they entered our speech. Some seem very obvious, others interestingly obscure, but, as the author points out, which ones you think are common knowledge and which are new to you will vary from person to person, and depends a lot on exactly when you were born.

I've read a few other books lately that have dealt with similar topics, but I think this is far and away the best of them, or at least the most entertaining. That's largely because Keyes doesn't take a condescending "Here's some allusions you should be aware of if you want to be culturally literate" tone. He also doesn't organize things in a dictionary or encyclopedia format. Instead, he just takes a pleasant ramble through the history of American speech, and invites the reader along for the ride. And it's kind of fascinating, not least because it highlights the fact that so much of what we say can't be understood just by knowing what all the individual words mean, but is steeped thoroughly in our culture and history in ways that we don't necessarily even realize. It's also fun to speculate on what references or catchphrases that are current today will still be in use ten or twenty or fifty years from now, something Keyes indulges in a little bit in the final chapter.

It's hardly a comprehensive collection of "retroterms," but for language lovers, it's a pleasant and often informative read. show less

It took me forever to finish this book because I insisted on savoring it. Seriously, I didn't want it to end.

Anyone who has a serious desire to be a writer needs this book. I mean, knowing that an editor once told Rudyard Kipling that he didn't "know how to use the English language..." Harsh! Well, if Kipling can take that kind of insult, so can I.