Welcome to Vocabulary School, a silly yet instructive newsletter that promotes vocabulary building. Thank you for reading and supporting my work! To help me grow, share with a friend and make sure you are subscribed to get a weekly word to add to your working vocabulary to better communicate with the world.
I sat patiently on the waitlist for Katie Sturino’s first novel, Sunny Side Up for months. When I told a friend that I was picking it up from the library last week, she said they wanted to read it but had changed her mind after reading the New York Times profile of Sturino where the author “admitted” to working with a ghostwriter.
When a book I’d like to read comes out, I assiduously avoid media surrounding it to keep my mind clear, so I entirely missed this kerfluffle. Since I had waited for so long to read it, I persisted. But why did I have misgivings about the disclosure? After cruising through the book in a few days, I realized that I actually didn’t have misgivings about anything—I truly enjoyed my reading experience. I’ve followed Sturino on Instagram for years and I value her voice in the spheres she occupies. I value what she has to say and I think the world is often a better place when she says it. I suspect that much of the criticism stems from how she looks when she says it because an equal amount of reviews bemoan “plus-sized ideology is being shoved down their throats.” Oh, no! Their poor throats! Bad vibes and worse intentions wearing a stylish cloak of intellectual rigor. Bo-ring.
When “ghostwriter” enters the chat, people clutch their pearls and opine they’re skipping the book because somehow using a ghostwriter is wrong. Is it though? In the profile, Sturino makes an excellent point that there are a lot of barriers to entry when writing a book that determine who can be an author. Needing help to write a book isn’t new or that interesting, but it isn’t wrong. If you have a generative mind with a zillion ideas freefalling off your mental conveyor belt, should you be able to get someone to save them and put them in order? Good work if you can get it, if you ask me. Which you did because this is my newsletter.
This Week’s Vocabulary List
Reader submission! Reader submission! Reader submission! This week’s word comes from my beloved Michelle who is finally getting to the latest Emily Henry book. This word was on my list of potential words when I read it in May, so it’s perfect for it to come back around like this!
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry
Unicursal (adjective): relating to or denoting a curve or surface which is closed and can be drawn or swept out in a single movement.
Margaret, the reclusive socialite, takes Alice, her potential biographer, on a walk through what looks like a maze, which has more than one way to the center, but is actually a path with one way in and out.
Sound familiar?
Unicursal, by Michelle’s reporting, occurs a few times within 40 pages which builds the case that the events of the book are taking place because it is the only way in or out. Nothing can change what is already in motion and is all going to the same place.
The unicursal path is a recurring motif in Margaret’s life that it appears in her garden, her art, and in her manner of getting what she wants. All roads lead back to Margaret.
Practical Applications
Yesterday on my football podcast, a guest said if you see in black and white then you’re a child when talking about the performance of a young player who is about to outgrow the excuse of youth. And this screaming man had a point! Wherever you land on this issue is valid but neither side merits more worth than the other. It simply is. I don’t think my indifference to using a ghostwriter undermines my own writing or whatever writing took place to put Sunny Side Up on bookshelves. Being a working writer is not a unicursal path to success and stability— it doesn’t look the same for everyone going in or out. Heaven forbid a writer makes money! While AI scrapes original work, the algorithm demands to be fed and writers struggle to write full time in the face of debt for school we had to have, I’m sure you can pay your health insurance with the morality coins you mined banging your head against a wall on Goodreads.
This book literally could have been written by anyone and I would have enjoyed it. It reminded me of the books I’d pick up at the mall when I was a kid with my cool aunt Terri who wanted to buy me clothes but all I wanted was My Crazy Cousin Courtney and a fresh box of crayons. A fun book can transport me to a cooler place than my current life, doing things I can’t afford or am too tired to do, and saying clever things to hot men who fall at my feet.
Either because I’m a bitch in real life or I have a fulfilling personal life I don’t really connect with the internet criticism. Why can’t we have fun? Why does it have to be perfectly done the same way, all the time, by the same type of person? There’s a lid for every pot, so if you can’t match your lid to this particular pot, I urge you to seek your match and go be over there. We are having fun over here.
Remember, writing looks different for everyone!
Love,
Andrea
I hope that you, like Strong Bad, consider writing a children’s book.