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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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« APRIL 29, 2003 - FEBRUARY 21, 2007 | Main | Independent Thinking »

March 02, 2007

TEV GIVEAWAY & GUEST BLOGGER ANNOUNCEMENT: THEN WE CAME TO THE END

TwctteI'm outta here, folks, off for a lovely honeymoon week in Paris with the newly annointed Mrs. TEV.  Many, many thanks to all of you who emailed, commented and linked.  I plan to reply to everyone directly but if I fall behind I hope you'll understand.  In the meantime, I'll be leaving you in the very capable hands of Joshua Ferris, whose debut novel Then We Came to the End is a TEV favorite that's been garnering all sorts of deserved attention elsewhere.

So in honor of Joshua's stint, I'm happy to offer a very special TEV giveaway this week: a signed copy of Then We Came to the End. But since it's signed, it's going to require just a little more work than the usual send your name in.  Here are the rules:

Email in your best office workplace story - it can be funny, grim, moving or otherwise.  Let's keep it to about 100 words or so.  The contest will stay open all day to give you a chance to write in and give me a chance to read, and I'll announce the winner here in Saturday.  Please use subject line THEN WE CAME TO THE END and please include your full mailing address.  As always, previous winners are ineligible.

To prime the pump, I'll share a workplace story of my own:

In 1985, I was a 21-year-old lad working for a New York advertising agency which shall remain nameless.  The company's bread and butter was making those annoying little inserts that used to come in your credit card bills selling radios and watches and the like.

I was the newly hired typist, who took the blatherings of the retirement age drunkard (not unlike Ferris' Brizz) who wrote the banal copy and typed them up on a typewriter - yes, typewriter - for submission to the client.  The proofreader was a friend and she and I would often try to trip up one another.  I'd insert various random or offensive lines into the copy to see if she was paying attention.  She always was and would duly note the offending the passage, I'd retype and on we'd go.

The mailer in question this fine day was a fur coat mailer.  The soused genius who scribbled this crap up wrote "Give Her The Fur Coat She'll Always Remember You For" as his attention-getting headline.  By the time Jennifer saw the copy, it had become "Give Her The Fur Coat She'll Fuck Your Brains Out For."  She made a note, jotted down "Ha Ha!" and returned the copy to me.

And I missed making the change.

And it went to the client.

And to the client's legal department.

And to the client's corporate headquarters.  (This was a very big client.  You all carry it in your wallet.)

I wandered in from lunch one day and the creative director hustled me into her office, telling me "You are in big trouble."  Apparently, word reached the agency boss who wanted my head on a plate right there and then.  Fortunately - and this is the truth - the creative team on the client side consisted of a group of single, middle-aged women who were more amused (and titilated) than offended and now wanted to meet me.  Lived to fight another day.

Jf_2 As for our esteemed guest host, Joshua Ferris was born in Illinois in 1974. He graduated from the University of Iowa in 1996 with a B.A . in English and Philosophy. He worked as an advertising copywriter in Chicago before attending the MFA program at the University of California, Irvine. His short fiction has appeared in The Iowa Review, Best New American Stories, Prairie Schooner, Phoebe, and New Stories from the South: Best of 2007. Then We Came to the End, published by Little, Brown, is his first novel.   Please make him feel welcome - there's nothing a writer likes more than action in the comments section, so don't be shy.

I will see you all apres vacances, on or around March 12.

UPDATE:  Congratulations to Michael Lucy of Victoria, Australia, who shares the following tale of office woe:

"I have a colleague named L. We sit facing each other with a low cubicle wall between us, and when I am not careful he makes eye contact with me and starts to talk. His conversation ranges from lengthy descriptions of TV shows he hasn't seen to even lengthier speculations on the subject of what he might have for lunch.

He is not evil, but surely the fact that I am forced to be near him is an indication that evil exists. Once he asked me how bread is made, and I started telling him about flour and yeast and kneading and what-not. After a few seconds he interrupted me to say that this was all unnecessary, as he could make quite adequate bread by mixing water and self-raising flour, and putting the result in the microwave for five minutes. I can't even reply to anything he says now."

Posted by TEV at 12:01 AM in Giveaways, Guest Bloggers |

Comments

I cannot believe you didn't get fired for that. Hats off.

(Found your blog through the mention in Publisher's Lunch -- congrats!)

Posted by:amy | March 02, 2007 at 03:58 AM

Have great, romantic fun, Mark. And take notes for your next novel...set in Paris.

Posted by:Daniel Olivas | March 02, 2007 at 07:13 AM

Enjoy Paris, enjoy your honeymoon. Best wishes.

Posted by:Sean Ferrell | March 02, 2007 at 08:51 AM

Have a wonderful time in your Parisian honeymoon. :)

Posted by:Cynthia | March 03, 2007 at 11:02 AM

Hey, if people wear the stuff, anything goes. Glad you were lucky, though. Amusez-vous bien.

Posted by:genevieve | March 03, 2007 at 08:37 PM

Dear Michael Lucy,
Thanks for the bread recipe.
Best,
L.

Posted by:Sean Ferrell | March 05, 2007 at 10:42 AM

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