The Final Touch

This is a longer-than-usual post, but since it is a book review, I didn’t want to split it into two or more parts. I hope you will enjoy my reflec­tions and per­haps be moved to read the book your­self. Please let me know what you think in a com­ment below.

I just fin­ished read­ing Bat­tle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua (Pen­guin, 2011). It stirred up quite a con­tro­versy upon its release, so I requested it from our local library to see what all the hub­bub was about.

Chua, the American-born daugh­ter of Chi­nese immi­grants, writes of how and why she val­ues the Chi­nese tra­di­tion of parental author­ity and the belief that – in my words, not hers – father and mother really do know best. She uses the terms “Chi­nese par­ent­ing” and “West­ern par­ent­ing” some­what loosely, explain­ing that, of course, nei­ther all Chi­nese par­ents nor all West­ern par­ents see eye to eye. In fact, she acknowl­edges, some actual Chi­nese par­ents have adopted pat­terns of leniency with their kids, while some U.S. par­ents with­out an ounce of Chi­nese blood fall more in line with Chi­nese par­ent­ing than with the style more com­mon in the United States.

Chua shares that as a child, she was not allowed to do such things as the fol­low­ing; nor did she allow her own two daugh­ters, Sophia and Louisa (“Lulu”) to do them:

• Attend a sleepover;
• Have a playdate;
• Choose their own extracur­ric­u­lar activities;
• Get any­thing less than straight As;
• Play any instru­ment other than piano or violin;
• Not play piano or violin.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like me, my sis­ter, Shan­non Hyland-Tassava, is a writer. Actu­ally, she does more orig­i­nal writ­ing at the present, while I am pas­sion­ate about help­ing oth­ers’ writ­ing shine. I’ve writ­ten a few pieces here and there — the Fore­word in a forth­com­ing book, a few arti­cles for the web-zine 10,000 Cou­ples, and some of the monthly con­tent of a sub­scrip­tion pub­li­ca­tion for church newslet­ter cre­ators — but Shan­non now has two essays pub­lished in antholo­gies related to wom­an­hood and moth­er­hood. I invite you to check them out!

The first essay, “The Mommy Wars Killed Our Friend­ship…,” Read the rest of this entry »

I am so delighted to share with you the promo video for a soon-to-be-released book I’ve had the honor of edit­ing. Author Bathsheba Smithen is only in her mid-20s, but she has wis­dom beyond her years. Watch the video (Bathsheba is the first indi­vid­ual in it)… and then read the book’s Fore­word, below, which she also gave me the priv­i­lege of writing:

Editor’s Fore­word

“All is van­ity and a chas­ing after wind. … So I turned to con­sider wis­dom and mad­ness and folly…” (Eccle­si­astes 1:14 and oth­ers; 2:12, NRSV)

When Bathsheba Smithen first invited me to write this Fore­word, I replied with a laugh, “You want a pasty white girl from small-town Min­nesota to intro­duce a book by an African Amer­i­can from Wash­ing­ton, D.C.?!” Read the rest of this entry »

I have been so blessed in my work as a free­lance copy edi­tor to meet some truly inspir­ing peo­ple I would never have met oth­er­wise! I’d like to intro­duce you to one of the busiest of them, I’m quite cer­tain: David E. Wat­ters.

Some­times my copy edit­ing crosses over into the oppor­tu­nity to do some orig­i­nal writ­ing, as it did when an arti­cle was urgently needed for the April “10,000 Cou­ples” web-magazine for which I serve as copy edi­tor. I hope you’ll take time to read the entire arti­cle here, to see pho­tos and a rel­e­vant side­bar, and per­haps even to sub­scribe to “10,000 Cou­ples” if you wish (it’s entirely free, and though you can read the whole e-mag with­out sub­scrib­ing, doing so has its perks — like allow­ing you to post com­ments). But to give you a teaser, here’s a bit from my arti­cle, and a video mes­sage from David him­self:
Read the rest of this entry »

photo © 2005 JP Esper­ança | more info (via: Wylio)

This morn­ing, I took the time to fol­low a few Face­book links posted by peo­ple I know. Each took me to a piece of fine writ­ing recently posted in cyber­space. The arti­cles are quite dif­fer­ent from one another, but what they all have in com­mon is the high cal­iber with which they are writ­ten. I’ll pro­vide links to the arti­cles — as well as to two other exam­ples of fine writ­ing I came across recently — at the end of this post.

Some peo­ple are not con­vinced that the qual­ity of their writ­ing — cor­rect­ness of punc­tu­a­tion, accu­racy of spelling, smooth­ness of sen­tence flow, and so on — really mat­ters. “Peo­ple know what I mean!” groused one writer for whom I used to proof­read. “And if they don’t get it, they’re not the kind of read­ers I want read­ing my stuff any­way.” Well! Read the rest of this entry »

Is any­one out there work­ing on writ­ing a novel? I’d love to hear about it!

I haven’t writ­ten a novel myself, but I love read­ing them. Some of my favorite authors are Jodi Picoult,

James Pat­ter­son,

John Grisham,

and Lynn Austin.

When you get fully engaged in a book, you’re not stop­ping every few min­utes to pon­der what makes the book so good. But you would notice if it weren’t so engaging.

That’s why the arti­cle, “How to Edit Your Dia­logue,” by a mem­ber of the Writer’s Digest com­mu­nity of blog­gers caught my eye. I thought I’d pass it along for the sake of any of you who might also be interested.

Even if you’re not a fic­tion writer, you might find it inter­est­ing to see just why you like to read the fic­tion you do, and what the author’s use of dia­logue has to do with that.

By the way, would you please share your favorite authors/books in a com­ment below? I’m always game for some new read­ing mate­r­ial!