The “great” opening paragraph

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

It was a delightful, cold, calm, Monday morning, and I had just finished showering after my 3-mile jog.  Relaxing music played in the background, and I was sitting at the dining-room table reading the Monday edition of The (Toledo) Blade.  Thomas Walton’s op-ed column, “In search of the Great Opening Paragraph,” caught my attention.  That’s not surprising since reading the editorial pages and op-ed columns is my favorite part of the newspaper.  I spend more time on that section than on any other.
    
In his op-ed column Walton invited readers to submit their “best opening paragraph for the novel that’s been kicking around in [their] head.”  Walton continues by explaining the perameters of his request: “The rules are simple.  Make sure your paragraph is truly your own unpublished work.  Hold it to 50 words or so.”  I love temptations like this, and being a writer this invitation was not just tempting, it was downright irresistible.
    
Using an advertising insert card for a subscription to USA Today which I regularly pull out of that newspaper and that was lying nearby, I quickly (without much thinking) jotted down the following:

        “Her scent lingered momentarily, then she disappeared as if a lighthouse beacon had passed over me.  Bathed in the flow of that beacon, I became suddenly alive and aware, then conscious of my past.  With that conscious awareness, I realized I was not to have her, and I was surprisingly pleased.”

Those 50 words came to me immediately without pause, investigation, or searching.  They just seemed to be there waiting for a breath of fresh air — for release from the literary prison that bound them.
    
When finished with breakfast and the newspapers, I sat down at the computer keyboard; however, before I stroked a single key, I remembered something my wife said to me twenty years ago — about five years after I began using a computer.  She said, “You write much better when you write your thoughts out long hand.  Perhaps it’s because it gives you more time to think about your ideas.”  I had taken to using the computer so quickly that I had stopped writing long hand and simply composed at the computer keyboard because it is faster and more efficient.  (I can write more!)
    
Remembering what my wife said, I stopped.  Using what I had written on the USA Today advertising card as a beginning point, I re-wrote my 50-word passage on a half-sheet of paper.  That iteration went as follows:

        “Her scent lingered momentarily, then dispersed as if a light breeze had massaged the fibers of my being. [I had written “leaves of a tree” but crossed it out for this more vivid, less cliche-ridden version.] When fully recovered, I became alive and aware, then conscious of my past.  With that mindful insight [I had written “conscious awareness,” but having just used the word “conscious” I made the change to “mindful insight.”], I realized I was not to have her, and I was surprisingly at peace.”
    
I have also discovered — on a regular basis — that if I write it out longhand then edit it as I type it into the computer, that re-write becomes significantly improved over the original.   I am always reminded of Strunk and White’s [The Elements of Style] fifth suggestion to beginning writers who are searching for a satisfactory style: “Revise and rewrite.”
    
The edited 50-word piece above is what I e-mailed to Walton.  I had no idea how long I would wait to see if my writing merited publication.  I knew, however, that he liked my writing, because he was the editor of the Blade who initiated the column, “Saturday Essay,” and published over the course of several years, sixteen of my essays.
    
On January 3, 2011, Walton’s follow-up op-ed column appeared.  It was titled “‘It was a dark and stormy night’ . . . or not.”  He began the column, “I’ll say this for readers of One of America’s Great Newspapers.  Give them a challenge and they embrace it.”  He followed this opening with a second paragraph, “A month ago, I asked you to compose your best opening paragraph for the novel that you wish you had time to write.  Several dozen of you responded — many with eloquence, all with earnestness and passion.  For a few, it was indeed a dark and stormy night.”
    
After openings written by Rani Marshall, and Phillip R. King, my opening was the third one printed, followed by eight more.  Then, the most surprising openings of all were included.  Walton printed two written by an eighth grade creative writing class at St. Rose School in Perrysburg.  Those two were absolutely outstanding, but time and space prohibits me from reproducing them here.  (They can be found online.)
    
On the very same Monday morning when the second Walton op-ed piece was published, my daughter called me from the parking lot of Toledo Eleven Television in downtown Toledo saying she had a flat tire.  Being an AAA (Automobile Association of America) member for many years, I drove to where she was parked, called AAA, and they appeared one hour later.  On the way out of my driveway, however, I stopped at our mailbox and picked up both of my morning newspapers, so I had them in the car, and I was reading them as we waited for AAA to arrive.
    
Seeing the column, surprised by the inclusion of my submission, I read what I wrote to my daughter.  Her response: “Wow!  That doesn’t even sound like you.”
    
I have never written fiction.  One of the problems with writing a best selling college textbook [Communicating Effectively, 10th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2012] is that it gives you little time for other pursuits.  I have written a number of other college textbooks as well [Understanding Interpersonal Communication went through seven editions.], and with all the academic articles, chapters in books, and speeches, there was no time left over.  Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it, but I have had no choice except to wait for the right time.  It is true, there may be no “right time”!
    
In addition to all of this, when I Googled myself (See my essay on “Egosurfing.”) for the purposes of writing an essay about it, I discovered a Chinese website where Walton’s column of January 3, 2011, appeared with a date just one day in advance of when it appeared in The (Toledo) Blade, and I now realize that the whole world is waiting (breathlessly, I’m sure!) for my “great” follow-up novel to my “great opening paragraph”!  I’m so excited I’m out of breath!
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At All About Manga  there is a cute, short essay written May 7, 2010,  titled “My Life as a (Rookie) Editor: The Joy of Being Published.”  The writer of the blog essay explains: “People instantly have more respect for you. I am not kidding. Tell them you’re a published writer/editor/artist/whatever, then somehow you get street cred. Even aspiring writers and artists admire people with actually published work. It’s a big accomplishment. And when you think about it, it really is, getting ANYTHING published takes a lot of time and money from somewhere. People admire scientists and other non-writerly types with major published studies in some related journal they’ve probably never heard of. YOU have something to show for yourself. You’re not so hackjob that no one’s heard of because obviously someone published YOUR thing.”

On his blog, (March 16, 2007) David Louis Edelman, discusses the topic, “Five Things That Ddelman <o Happen When You Become a Published Author.”  1) Strangers become deferential, 2) you become “the writing expert,” 3) you get “mixed feelings about what you’ve written,” 4) “self-published authors look to you for validation,” and 5) “You’ll have accomplished something that nobody can take away from you.”  I wonder if a 50-word “great opening paragraph” can accomplish the same thing?
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Copyright January, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing, L.L.C.

Egosurfing (I Googled Myself!)

by Richard L. Weaver II, Ph.D.

I Googled myself recently out of curiosity, but I’m not alone according to Rachael Rettner of LiveScience.com, who wrote an essay, “Most people Google themselves now,” which begins with this paragraph: “If you've Googled yourself recently, you're not alone. The majority of American adults, 57 percent, now keep tabs on their reputations online, using search engines to track information about their Internet identities, according to a report from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project [based on results from telephone interviews of 2,253 individuals in 2009], released today [May 26, 2010]. That's up from 47 percent in 2006" (Rettner, “Most people . . . ,” May 26, 2020).  So, I’m not alone; this is what I discovered.

I used quotation marks around my name, and there were 117,000 results (January 14, 2011), but in 26 pages, only 260 web sites were displayed.  That doesn’t mean I was disappointed, because Google told me that the remaining sites duplicated what was contained in those displayed, and I had already seen a great deal of duplication.  It took me several hours to wade through some of the sites, and in this essay I want to report my findings.

Perhaps the largest number of sites displayed were those that sold copies of my books.  Having written somewhere between 15 and 20, that isn’t surprising.  Many offered used copies of the various editions of my current college textbook, Communicating Effectively.  Once again, that isn’t surprising given the fact that it is in its tenth edition (March 18, 2011) and has been used extensively around the world.  (Communicating Effectively was written with Saundra Hybels who died in 1999.)
   
Speaking of “around the world,” I found it interesting that there were sites that had to be translated from Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Thai, Polish, and Spanish.  Some were quoting from my textbooks, using my textbooks in their footnotes and references, or citing me as a communication expert.  Some years ago my Communicating Effectively textbook was translated into Chinese, but that doesn’t necessarily explain all the foreign web sites mentioning my name or my books.  My textbook, Research in Speech Communication with Raymond Tucker and Cynthia Berryman-Fiink (Prentice-Hall, 1981) was mentioned frequently.
   
There were several web sites that occurred simply because of the use of my quotation, “One of the best things people can have up their sleeve is a funny bone.”  I found it in a number of places, but one of the most interesting was John Mark Ministries where they listed the quotation under the heading, “Quotes to Help With Sickness and Illness.”
   
Quite a few of the web sites displayed had copies of previous academic articles published during my professional career as a teacher.  For example, “Ten Specific Techniques for Developing Humor in the Classroom,” (Winter, 1987, Education, 108, No. 2, pp. 167-179) was mentioned several times.  “Faculty Dynamation: Guided Empowerment” (Spring/Summer, 1990, Innovative Higher Education 14, No. 2 with co-authors Darrell G. Mullins, Howard W. Cottrell, and Thomas A. Michel) was mentioned several times as well
   
My YouTube videos appear on a wide variety of web sites.  At the ChaCha web site, the “Stand Up, Speak Well” video appears, and at the “Types of Research Evidence,” my video titled “The Curse of Knowledge” is front and center.
   
When you write as much and as widely as I have, the chances for misquotations and distortions becomes greater than those who do not.  At Puritan Daily Life, those who write for the site went almost as far as they could go (in distorting the information) when they stated: “The aboriginal branch of the essay, ‘Self-discipline can change your life in any way you appetite [sic] it to,’ reads as follows: During my aboriginal years, I heard from my parents bout [sic] the Puritan assignment [sic] ethic, but every time I heard the byword [sic] it was affiliated with alive [sic] heard.  Never did I apperceive [sic] that it was Biblically based . . . .” And, my name was assigned to the quotation.  Can you figure it out?  I could not.  I hope it’s never cited as an example of my best work!
   
Thomas Walton’s The (Toledo) Blade’s January 3, 2011, p. A-7, op-ed column titled, “‘It was a dark and stormy night’ . . . or not,” which printed readers responses to a request Walton made on December 6, 2010, in a column titled, “In search of the Great Opening Paragraph.”  Walton wrote readers: “Send me your best opening paragraph for the novel that’s been kicking around in your head.”  I wrote, “Her scent lingered momentarily, then dispersed as if a light breeze had massaged the fibers of my soul.  When fully recovered I became alive and aware, then conscious of my past.  With that mindful insight I realized I was not to have her, and I was surprisingly at peace.”  What surprised me was that on January 14, 2011, just 11 days later, the quotation (and Walton’s op-ed column) appeared on a Chinese web site. 
   
On the web site “Frankly Speaking," for Thursday, August 23, 2007, Frank Bellizzi, a college teacher and campus minister, used six paragraphs of my speech, “Sticky Ideas,” that highlighted and discussed “The Curse of Knowledge” (August, 2007, “Sticky Ideas,” Vital Speeches of the Day, p. 354), to stimulate a discussion on his web site.  I never received a request to use the material nor gave permission.  He thoroughly credited the source (me! —as well as the authors I cited), but normal ethical behavior would have suggested a request was in order.
   
One of the surprises (although it shouldn’t have been a surprise had I simply thought more about it!), was the large number of publishers and authors who used my reviews of their books to advertise and sell their books on the Internet.  Many of the web sites displayed offered my reviews.  Once again, having posted well over a hundred reviews on Amazon.com, this would be an expected outcome, and I am delighted that so many have found my reviews well-written, concise, and flattering enough to reprint them in other contexts.  Thank you.

Source/footnote: Rettner, Rachael. (May 26, 2010). “Most people Google themselves now.”  LiveScience. Retrieved January 14, 2011.
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At Wikipedia.com, their brief explanation of “Egosurfing” and the various other terms for it is delightful: “Egosurfing (usually referred to as Googling yourself and sometimes called vanity searching, egosearching, egogoogling, autogoogling, self-googling, master-googling) is the practice of searching for one's own given name, surname, full name, pseudonym, or screen name on a popular search engine, to see what results appear.”

At the BrownNoser web site, Eric Johnson writes the following two paragraphs to open his article, “Catholic Church Condems Googling Yourself As a Sin”: “Some people do it every now and then. Some do it multiple times a day. Some are simply addicted. But regardless of how often you do it, the Catholic church wants you to stop it.
   
“Googling yourself, a longstanding pastime since Google's launch in 1998, is just as wrong in the Catholics' eyes as murder, adultery and wearing non-silly hats, according to Pope Benedict XVI. Speaking from his balcony in Vatican City, the Pope said Googling is a strong contributor to society's moral decay.”
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Copyright January, 2012, by And Then Some Publishing, L.L.C.