Creating a Lifestyle Worth Living

As I approach my thirties, I have come to truly learn what kind of job I can not only handle but not dread from day to day. From micromanaging bosses to the gossip around the watercooler, I have not looked back since choosing to go freelance. I worked during college at my school’s private library for four years as a part-time student assistant, then as a receptionist in a law firm, and finally as a library assistant in a public library before being fed up with the pace and lifestyle those kinds of jobs made for me.

I have always been self-driven and goal-directed without the “helpful push” of a boss. I have always been my own boss. (My carefully filled-out agenda each school year would tell you as much). And with this personality came the difficulty of watching my peers slack off and enjoy standing still in their jobs while I felt like I was suffocating. Once I had paid off my student loans in about five years, I resigned from my last employee-centered job and went full-time freelance.

I began my freelance proofreading journey by taking the Proofread Anywhere course in 2017, and by 2018, I had completed the exam successfully. At this time, I was a receptionist at a law firm because the law had always interested me. My philosophy professors in college certainly pushed their students into law during my time there. It was considered a more “practical job” over becoming a philosopher, I suppose.

Proofreading has now become my longest-held job, and I have no plans to quit now. To me, typos had always jumped out on the page while reading books or other people’s papers. Perhaps I can thank my mother and father for reading to me at an early age and allowing me to challenge myself with more difficult reading material. My mother was also a writer and her day job consisted of copywriting for publishing houses, and my father wrote poetry for pleasure. Words were always a part of my world.

As a child, I loved holding my younger brother hostage, reading out loud from any book I could get my hands on. I would read for hours until my voice gave out. All of those moments of getting lost in a book, listening to the cadence of my voice rising and falling like waves, were so deliciously addictive. Nothing interested me more than continuing to read…and I still feel the same way.

With copious amounts of reading blossoms a desire for quiet, space, and routine. I grew accustomed to sitting in my home alone in silence and maximizing my time to accommodate more reading. This lifestyle translated extremely well into becoming a remote proofreader. I pull up the chair to my desk with my rather small laptop open on it, sitting in the quiet and reading most of my transcripts and manuscripts out loud. The lull of my voice carries the words back into my head, tripping an alarm every time I come across an error or something that simply does not sound or look right.

I usually have a split screen between the piece I’m proofreading and the Internet or a style guide sheet. Usually, reference books are strewn around me on various tables to my left and right. The thing about proofreading is that you have all the answers at your fingertips—you just have to know where to quickly search for them. Decision fatigue sets in after answering a million questions that crop up after reading every sentence with so much care. This is why I am being paid to do it. Proofreading can cause headaches, eyestrain, and fatigue. I have experienced it all. But I am good at it, and, while it is hard work, I love it.

Opening up a fresh transcript from a court reporter, I learn so much about any number of topics. I always wanted to learn everything growing up, and since we have yet to produce a chip to insert into our brains, I have had to spend time reading to learn. My desire to know more is not hindered by my job now—it is quenched. I learn new legal terms in Latin or medical terms or criminal slang on any given day.

When a publishing company asked me to copyedit and/or proofread for them a few years into my proofreading career, I paused. In college, we had creative writing workshops which were essentially learning to give editorial advice on everything from developmental, structural, and grammatical aspects. And I loathed it. Why? Sadly, the culture in this country, especially in the universities, is one of liberal, collectivist thought. I disagreed to my core with most of the stories. The fictional pieces were filled with things the college students had read in their other classes or filled with childish clichés from a lack of reading enough or riddled with grammatical errors that were acceptable to pass off as a “stylistic choice” thanks to modern writers everywhere. Not only was editing not appealing to me, but freelance writing and journalism paid for writers to produce work for businesses and products that I did not care about. My words (and brainpower) felt too precious to waste on those challenging jobs, writing was already hard enough.

My college days taught me that I would never be able to become a professor, though I loved learning, or an editor, though I loved writing, or a traditionally published author, though I knew my writing was good enough. My choices were made and shaped so much by this culture. But without feeling too much pity for myself, I decided that I still wanted to live a happy life on this earth right here and now.

So I pulled away from the “traditional 9–5” in exchange for the atypical freelance life. I took control of who I interacted with on a daily basis, which mostly consists now of my husband, family, and friends. I behave with the proper etiquette to all strangers I meet, but I do not engage any more than I need to. I guard my time carefully, and I devote myself to the most black-and-white type of work possible in the writing world: proofreading.

In another blog post, I wrote about how I considered proofreading a skill, calligraphy a craft, and writing an art. I wrote the novels that were in my soul when they needed to be written and put them out into the world myself. I practiced calligraphy after a long workday to help free my mind from the meaning of words to focus more on the beautiful shapes they made instead. (Plus, I had always wanted my cursive to look like my mother’s when I was young). However, in the spirit of transparency, living in Iowa and in this dormant age, the royalty checks are not large enough and the calligraphy clients are few and far between. Most of my money comes from proofreading alone.

While I struggle financially, I am not a “starving artist” thanks to the help of my wonderful husband. I surely help supplement our family income, but I am not at all the breadwinner. I am learning to be okay with my status, investing myself in more of the domestic duties around the home while continuing to learn as much as I can, since knowledge means much more to me than wealth. In a proper society, the value that I produce would bring me the appropriate amount of money, but this is not a healthy period. I acknowledged this reality, and so I adapted my life accordingly.

I continue to incorporate my skill, craft, and art into my daily life, and it is not something I ever plan to retire from. I won my freedom back from a school system that expected us to conform to the traditional workforce. I have created a life that I feel good about. And with my husband and me beginning to plan for children, I can stay at home with them in the future while working. A new chapter of my life is beginning and, for once, I feel grounded and in control of it.

My hope is more people think critically about the work that would fit best with their own personality and lifestyle. I realize that my path of being very much a homebody and self-directed is not for everyone. But it is what makes me happy. What makes you happy? If you had all the free time in the world, what would you do with your time? Is there a way you can monetize your passion for something? Go out there and create the world you want to live in, even if that is only within your own four walls.

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.

Literary Critique of Sally Rooney’s Normal People (Part I)

I picked up and put down Normal People by Sally Rooney multiple times as I came across it in my everyday life—at the bookstore, at the library, online. I had heard that she was a Marxist, and I could only roll my eyes and vow to never read her book.

But a few years after its first publication, I saw her top all the literary fiction lists and lauded as the voice of the millennial generation. I could hardly ignore someone who received such ravings and applause from what seemed like several thousands of fans. So, I borrowed the book from my local library and spent a weekend reading.

The following article will need to be in two parts: the first part concerning Rooney’s writing style and the second part concerning the story itself.     

The very first thing to pop out at me was the use of dates for chapter headings. It begins with “January 2011” right on page 1. The readers now know that this text is time-sensitive and not evergreen like all good literary fiction should be. Please note that when I critique these style choices and techniques, it is not just found in this book but in most of the modern books of today, be they genre or literary fiction. Exact dates and times, like those found on all of our digital paper trails nowadays, erase the concept of reading a piece in any time period.

This brings me to another important point: I do not believe that Man and the values he requires to survive have changed. His emotions have not changed. That is why we can read ancient texts, like those of Plato and Aristotle, and still gain wisdom from them. They are not static pieces of text, which make no sense to us today. So, writing can be everlastingly relevant, and literary fiction, a form of fiction that teaches us what it means to be human, should be sensitive to such notions.

The next striking decision made by the author is that there are no quotation marks used at all in the book. The whole point of grammar is to make the reader stay with the story. It is the hidden mechanics of a piece well-written. Therefore, quotation marks are necessary to avoid confusion and pull the reader out of the story.

A single printing press traveled overseas from England to Massachusetts in 1638 and another arose in 1685. These presses printed mostly religious texts for their local communities. Colonial America began to publish more news-based books in 1728 when Benjamin Franklin began his own printing press. Since those early days of publishing, books were an enjoyable pastime for many a family.

But since the creation of the publishing industry, the roots were planted for today’s “Big Four” (Penguin Random House (1927), Macmillan (1843), Hachette Book Group (1826), and HarperCollins (1817)). By the end of the nineteenth century, the companies began publishing the likes of William James (1842-1910), James Joyce (1882-1941), William Faulkner (1897-1962), and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). All these writers, and many others, used James’s idea in psychology of “stream of consciousness” writing, where I believe grammar was first butchered and thrown to the wayside in favor of primal emotions cast upon the page. The authors took this theory to mean that our minds do not form complete sentences and that incomplete phrases are best for expressing our true inner experiences. Forget the structure of language and the reasons for its construction, these writers shout.

Though Sally Rooney and most modern writers do not go as far with the nonsensical writing as Joyce did, it is still common to see sentence fragments used for emphasis, much like in Hemingway’s writing. Ernest Hemingway used a mixture of sentence fragments and short telegraphic sentences. Rooney is similarly described for her “perfectly spare prose” (Goodreads blurb) in which this technique is still used. However, this type of prose used throughout a book strips it of its intended emphatic impact and renders the impact of the text overall immature.

Therefore, alongside this “modern” choice of skipping the quotation marks is also the author’s decision to slip in sentence fragments, like using “Yesterday” (2) to emphasize her points. Unfortunately, many more modern writers have bent the grammar rules like Hemingway, Faulkner, and Joyce. Perhaps poets more than novelists can get away with such playful uses of language, but for a story that is trying to delve into a serious study of character, I find that it, again, pulls the reader out of the story.

Another massively annoying technique used by every modern author I’ve read is the use of name-dropping. Brand names are tossed left and right, which to a modern audience may be understood, but in a decade will be lost on the readers. Rooney will require several footnotes at the end of her book for things like “Facebook” (4, 82, 170, 192 x2, 212, 232 x3), “MacBook” (21, 70), “Destiny’s Child remix” (32), “Kanye West song […] with the Curtis Mayfield sample” (40), “Aldi” (47), “Watch the Throne (74), “Vampire Weekend” (86), “Twitter” (100), “Skype” (191, 192, 222), “Evian bottle” (197), “Microsoft computer” (121), “Coke” (160, 229 x2), “White Lies song” (234), “PlayStation” (266), etcetera. I am only a few years younger and even I had to look some of these references up. That’s why I believe it is a good idea, especially in literary fiction, to never drop brand names. I know writers wish to give more detail and I even remember my creative writing teacher asking the class, “What kind of apple is it? Is it a Gala apple or a Red Delicious?” But for a reader, all they want to know is if it was a red apple, or if it was sweet, or bruised, it does not require a name for them to understand the point you are making as a writer. You can describe things with the senses, not by their brand names.

I also feel uncomfortable reading about characters texting, emailing, and online chatting because oftentimes the writer, as Rooney does, keeps the messages in their “original” forms, which usually means sentences that begin with the lower case, shorten words to letters, and generally misuse all forms of the English language. A novel is not meant to be a photograph of real life; it is an art form. An author does not have to choose to put in text messages as they look in real life, just as epistolary novels probably did not add the obvious spelling mistakes or scratched out sections in real letters they received. Art is all about omitting and shifting around things in real life to make it better, showing Man how the world ought to be—not how it is.

Instead, Rooney chooses to show her readers what the world is as she sees it, in the words of Hobbes’s Leviathan, as “nasty, brutish, and short.” Rooney emphasizes such ugliness by using curse words in her text, such as, “The economy’s fucked anyway” (21). I find that unless no other word would be better suited to that character, curse words should never be used. Being vulgar in literary fiction is unnecessary, lowly, and a cheap way to show character. I feel the same way about using clichés. There are better ways to explain a scene than just throwing around garbage words and seeing what moves the reader only after having a fit.

My final critique of the style choices this author made is her trickling throughout the book of her liberal ideology. Of course, I believe that this is the key to what got her published in the first place.

Allow me to list every obvious moment of liberalism and virtue signaling allowed to carry on throughout this book:

  1. “school as an oppressive environment.”  (12)
  2. “He told her she should try reading The Communist Manifesto, he thought she would like it” (13, about Marxism)
  3. The Fire Next Time (14, about racism)
  4. The Golden Notebook (27, about feminism)
  5. “It’s something to do with capitalism, she said.

      “Yeah. Everything is, that’s the problem, isn’t it? she nodded.” (36)

  • “The communist Declan Bree. Connell, unprovoked, continued watching the road. We could do with a bit more communism in this country if you ask me, he said. From the corner of his eye he could see Lorraine smiling. Come on now, comrade, she said. I was the one who raised you with your good socialist values, remember? It’s true Lorraine has values. She’s interested in Cuba, and the cause of Palestinian liberation. In the end Connell did vote for Declan Bree, who went on to be eliminated in the fifth count. Two of the seats went to Fine Gael and the other to Sinn Féin. Lorraine said it was a disgrace. Swapping one crowd of criminals for another, she said. He texted Marianne: fg in government, fucks sake. She texted back: The party of Franco. He had to look up what that meant.” (48-9)
  • “reusable plastic bag” (52, 114)
  • “Critical Theory seminar” (69)
  • “Jesus, don’t tell me he’s involved in this Nazi thing, is he?” (82)
  • “Holocaust denier”;  “white moderates” (83)
  • James Connolly & The Irish Trades Union Congress (87, Socialist Marxists)
  • “I wanted to try an open-relationship thing. […] Men can be possessive, she says.” (98)
  • “Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves, says Marianne. […] I mean, when you look at the lives men are really living, it’s sad, Marianne says. They control the whole social system and this is the best they can come up with for themselves? They’re not even having fun.” (99)
  • “Would you rather live under a matriarchy? says Peggy. […] Don’t you enjoy your male privilege? she says.

“It’s like Marianne was saying, he replies. It’s not that enjoyable to have. I mean, it is what it is, I don’t get much fun out of it.

“Peggy gives a toothy grin. If I were a man, she says, I would have as many as three girlfriends. If not more.” (99)

  1. “Time consists of physics, money is just a social construct. […] I don’t buy into the morality of work, she says. Some work maybe, but you’re just moving paper around an office, you’re not contributing to the human effort.” (112)
  2. “May the revolution be swift and brutal.” (125)
  3. “fascist”; “chauvinist pig” (144)
  4. “Peggy thinks men are disgusting animals with no impulse control […]” (144)
  5. “That’s money, the substance that makes the world real. There’s something so corrupt and sexy about it.” (166)
  6. “Magdalene Laundry report”; “Denis O’Brien case” (173)
  7. “The whole idea of “meritocracy” or whatever, it’s evil, you know I think that.” (180)
  8. “Recycling bin” (256)

Now, there were some other more minor points made concerning class division and Connell wearing “Argos chic” clothes (151) and being a “milk-drinking culchie” (154), but those do not slap readers across the face as the other quotes above do.

Many of these topics concern the Left’s tribalistic love affair with topics like racism, feminism, and Marxism. Sally Rooney openly declares herself to be a Marxist, and it seems like that opened the doors to her publishing career.

End of Part I

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Views Expressed Disclaimer: The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily represent the postings, strategies, or opinions of American Wordsmith, LLC. Please also know that while I consider myself an Objectivist and my work is inspired by Objectivism, it is not nor should it be considered Objectivist since I am not the creator of the philosophy. For more information about Ayn Rand’s philosophy visit: aynrand.org.