 A round robin Oh, the sneering! Oh, the superiority! Even Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots and Leaves) is on BBC Radio4 broadcasting a series of witty ripostes to round-robins (RRs).
Now some RRs are painful: long-winded, which goes hand-in-hand with boring; poorly composed and/or typed; with scattered blurry photos; and produced with tight margins in tiny, coloured or weird fonts. But some gems are witty, near professional offerings, mostly photos with hilarious captions leaving you wanting more. The best ones make you grab the ‘phone or start bashing out an email to the sender immediately after reading.
In time-strapped, intense lives, the RR can reach many more people without the sender getting RSI, paying a fortune for individually printed photos or dying from exhaustion and insanity repeating the same stuff up to, and possibly beyond, a hundred times. How are RRs different from all the blog posts we chuck out indiscriminately into the digiverse?
But, like trying to avoid the slush-pile that many writers end up on, how do you write an RR that’s entertaining, informative and has that spark of something special? I’ve been sending them out for over twenty-five years, well before the time they became fashionable, so I’ve got some experience.
Keep these key points in front of you:
- The recipient may only have a quick minute to scan your letter, so keep it snappy
- Include lots of photos, but interesting, non-forced ones. Do not reduce them down to such a low resolution that they look like a blurry mess.
- Do not witter on about Jemima’s first day at school. Most people have been to school, so have their children – we know. Just say J has started school and add a photo of her in her too large uniform.
- Yes, a mention of holidays, but not a detailed description of the sangria night when you all got trollied. As above, we know this experience.
- Achievements – careful does here. Of course, say that Jemima bagged a first in Icelandic or her sister passed her hairdressing apprenticeship and has secured a stylist job in a top London salon – these are great things. But don’t go on about it (Even I was reasonably restrained about the publication of my debut novel INCEPTIO on 1 March 2013. 😉 ).
- What people in the family are doing now – as in the point above. A brief sentence or two is enough.
- Try to inject some wit, but don’t force it.
- And guess what? Edit it! An RR is like any other piece of writing and if you are sending it to recipients who are your friends and relations, they deserve the same courtesy as the rest of the reading public.
- Lastly, make sure you leave a space at the end for a short, personal, handwritten message and signature.
Do you write or receive RRs? Go on, now, tell me your thoughts…
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Saturnalia was THE most important Roman festival. Heavy on feasting, fun and gifts, it was originally celebrated in Ancient Rome for only a day around 17 December (today!), but it was so popular it expanded into a week or even longer, despite Augustus’ efforts to reduce it to three days, and Caligula’s, to five. Like today’s Christmas, this holy day (feriae publicae) had a serious origin: to honour the god of sowing, Saturn. But also like modern Christmas, it was a festival day (dies festus). After sacrifice at the temple, there was a public banquet, which Livy says was introduced in 217 BC. Afterwards, according to the poet Macrobius, the celebrants shouted ‘Io, Saturnalia‘ at a riotous feast in the temple.
Modern mid-winter habits echo Roman conspicuous eating and drinking, and visiting friends and giving gifts, particularly of wax candles (cerei), and earthenware figurines (sigillaria). Masters served meals to their slaves who were permitted the unaccustomed luxuries of leisure and gambling. A member of the familia (family plus slaves) was appointed Saturnalicius princeps, roughly equivalent to the Lord of Misrule.
The poet Catullus describes Saturnalia as ‘the best of days’ while Seneca complains that the ‘whole mob has let itself go in pleasures’. Pliny the Younger writes that he retired to his room while the rest of the household celebrated. Sound familiar?
Macrobius described a banquet of pagan literary celebrities in Rome which classicists date to between 383 and 430 AD. So Saturnalia was alive and well under Christian emperors, but no longer as an official religious holiday.
But alongside ran the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti (the birthday of the ‘unconquerable sun’), a festival celebrating the renewal of light and the coming of the new year and which took place on 25 December. By the middle of the fourth century AD, the dominant Christian religion had integrated the Dies Natalis into their celebration of Christmas. So it seems that Saturnalia wasn’t the official ancestor of Christmas after all. Never mind.
Io Saturnalia!
Read ‘Saturnalia surprise‘ about how the Mitelae were celebrating one year…
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers, INCEPTIO, and PERFIDITAS. Third in series, SUCCESSIO, is now out.
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 I’m reading a book at the moment full of “prithee, varlet” language. It’s as irritating as Hades, but maybe that’s just me. The atmosphere of fear is building, the characters are forming and the plot slowly emerging.
But despite the over-elaborate language, the author’s grammar is spot on. And that’s what saves it.
Writing is a form of communication and when we structure writing correctly then our message is unambiguous, even in “prithee” language. The reader reads what we intended them to read. Even in a very minimalist-styled book such as any of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers, the accuracy and clarity of the writing enables the reader to see exactly what the author is saying.
If we don’t write clearly, then the poor reader has to re-read sentences and pause to work out what he or she thinks we meant. After a few jolts to continuity, it’s inevitable that the reader’s pleasure diminishes. And after too many, the reader chucks the book on the floor.
Editors can, and do, do a wonderful job, but even they get to the hair-tearing stage in the face of relentless sloppiness. If they have the choice of working on a well-written manuscript and one weighed down with mistakes, guess which one they’ll prioritise?
Poor grammar and spelling are the things that irritate readers of self-published books most, and most quickly, even in a free book. We have so much choice these days, why would we spend precious life-hours reading something that is written in a careless and sub-standard way?
However fabulous the plot, characters and narrative thrust of the story, good grammar and spelling matter.
Horrors to avoid (Any one of these makes me chuck the book on the floor.)
your/you’re
Can you say ‘you are’ instead? If so, then it’s ‘you’re’. ‘Your’ is to indicate something belonging to ‘you’, e.g. your book.
it’s/its
Can you say ‘it is’? Then it’s ‘it’s’. 😉 As with ‘your’, when used to show something that belongs to ‘it’, ‘its’ doesn’t have the abused apostrophe, e.g. “Gorgeous book. I love its cover.”
There/their
Can you say ‘here’ instead of ‘there’. e.g. ‘there are /here are’? There you are, then. Remember, ‘their’ is very possessive…
Affect/effect
‘Affect’ is an active verb. ‘Effect’ is the outcome, e.g. cause and effect. A quick way of remembering is that A comes before E, i.e. you have to affect something before you can see the effect.
‘Bored of’ or ‘bored with’?
Please don’t start me on this one. I hope you know the correct version. See me in the comments if you don’t.
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