Friday's Odds and Ends

Most of us know that former senator Rick Santorum is against legalizing gay marriage, and he has been known to make some inflammatory remarks about homosexuality. More recently he told students at a college in New England that having gay parents is worse than having parents who are convicts.  His rationale is that a father in prison is better than having no father.

Hmmmm... I wonder if he has ever checked the statistics that show that young people are more prone to crime and violence if their father is or was in prison? That is a fact I discovered when doing research for my book on violence in schools, Coping With Weapons and Violence in School and on Your Streets.

If you'd like to read more about what he said, here is an article  that has more details. In researching this topic, I also found this comment on a forum that offers another viewpoint. "As the daughter of two lesbian moms, I'm disgusted and offended by the "family values" crowd claiming to want to protect children like me. Note to Rick and his ilk: you're not helping us. You're hurting us by making sure that our families are stigmatized and unprotected."

Whatever your views are on the subject, if we are truly to have separation of church and state, doesn't it stand to reason that a person's religious view of homosexuality should not influence legislation?

On another note, I found this quote on a blog titled terribleminds which is written by Chuck Wendig. I liked it enough I thought I would share it. "The writer’s voice is the thing that marks the work as a creation of that writer and that writer only. You read a thing and you say, 'This could not have been written by anybody else.' That is voice."   

Who are some authors you have read that have a distinctive voice? If you are an author, do you consider your voice as uniquely yours?

Here is an example of what I mean when I encourage clients to escape the ordinary in their writing. This is from Louise Penny's latest book A Trick of the Light. Instead of writing "Clara's heart beat faster." Or, "Clara's heart thumped in her chest." Both descriptions which I have read numerous times, she wrote, "Clara's heart threw itself against her ribs like something caged and terrified and desperate to escape."

It would be interesting to know how easily this comes to a writer like her. It reads effortless, but for me it takes time to move from the ordinary to the not so ordinary. That is why it takes me a long time to write a book. How about you?

It's Friday the 13th. A superstition says that if a black cat crosses your path on Friday the 13th, you will have bad luck all year. I'd better stay away from our new kitties.