I'm So Proud of My Wife

My wife, Kristen, passed the Praxis test for her teacher certification with a score in the top 15% of all people who took it.  On her first attempt at it.  Was I surprised at this result? No.  She is earning her Master's degree in Special Education. One of the requirements of this program is for her to attempt to pass the Praxis before completing her degree, yet in the fall she thought that they expected her to pass it before completing it.  So she signed up immediately for the next test date. Even though that date was before she took the classes that typically cover the content for the test (she's taking them right now).

What does this have to do with writing? Everything.  How did she do it? Good old fashioned hard work and discipline. During the six-week break she had off from classes between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day she organized a brutal study schedule... attempting to put in at least three hours a day of study time, every day except for Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  And despite the numerous distractions of our crazy household, she managed to do it most days. Either by getting up extremely early, taking advantage of kids' being out of the house, or studying after everyone else went to bed.

If I devoted even half of the amount of time to writing that she has to studying, I would have a dozen books under by belt by now. Excellence of any form in any field requires many hours spent hitting the books, running miles, hitting baseballs, diagnosing patients, laying bricks, or (in the case of us writers) time spent with our a$$ in the chair... writing.

Procrastination: The Movie

Why haven't I embraced the use of a blog?  I resist blogging. It is hard to sit here and write it. And I haven't really explored this issue until now.  But alas, this is just another tool of the insidious inner-critic (AKA Monkey Mind) who works hard to keep me filled with excuses for not doing this.  Here are a few of them:

1. I can't format these entries the way that I like.  I am a perfectionist about not only the words I write, but also how they appear on the page.  The text constantly lines up wrong (see the post previous for an example of this), the font ends up too big, or too small, or changes in the middle of a sentence.  There also are spacing issues, problems with bullets, a font changing in the middle of an entry, and more.  No matter how much I mess with it in editing mode, it still seems to be messed up when I post it.  I know that these are DEU (Defective End User) errors, and if I stick with this, and post many entries, I'll get better at it, but I hate, hate, HATE how it looks right NOW.
   
   
2. Cutting and pasting content from MS-Word always causes formatting problems. Even if I use the Blogger tool.  There are many ways to work around this of course, but I'm stubborn. I don't want to use Google Docs to draft them.  Not sure, but isn't there issues in the Terms of Use regarding what rights Google has to the content I create?  A stupid concern, and maybe no longer valid, but I'm too lazy to research it further. And it probably doesn't really matter anyway since I'm using Google-owned Blogger and I've probably sold any creative rights (and my soul) I have for the Grist for the Muse movie or made-for-cable TV series.
   
   
3. Pictures -- I'm not good at formatting them for posting.  I am also unsure if it is OK to link to other people's pictures to serve as clever illustrations to my witty insights because it might be considered to be stealing their bandwidth.  Google seems to think this is OK according to the help file, but who should I believe? I don't want anyone angry at me for this... Who am I kidding really?
   
   
4. Pressure to produce -- If I commit to this, I really have to do it and keep writing. A lot. And maybe even resurrect the Grist for the Muse newsletter that was supposed to be monthly until I stopped sending it out two years ago.  The guilt about not producing is embarrassing since that is the central point of what I teach. Write every day. Even if it is crap. Just do it.
   
   
5. I have to admit that I've been a slacker -- I spend too much time on Facebook. I haven't finished remodeling our master bathroom that I started back in 2006.  I have a book review to post.  I've got a sinus infection and I want to lay here reading comic books and catch up on The Big-Bang Theory on TiVo.  I need to vacuum the master bedroom. It is hard to admit I haven't practiced what I've preached lately.

Tune in for more reasons for procrastination... sometime in the future...

What I've Been Up To

It has been a busy couple of months... but in the down time (on conference calls or as a break in between tasks) I've been organizing my massive collection of random word tickets to integrate into my upcoming JumpStart Jar projects.

Taking it from this:

Then sorting them into 4 basic piles:

• Nouns

• Verbs


• Descriptors: Adjectives/Adverbs/Prepositional Phrases


• "Provocative" Phrases

I do have some other piles that I'm sorting them into. The tickets for the "Flagrantly Foul" project which has all of the colorful swear words, graphic sexual content, drug references, etc. Basically all of those things that are too impolite to say around your boss or the kids. I don't know if the "Flagrantly Foul" jar will ever see the light of day or not, but I can't bear to throw any of them out right now. Another pile was for all of the name-brands, products and pop-culture references, which I've been told by a reputable attorney, would not be good to include as content for the jars. But again, being the pack-rat that I am, I cannot bear pitching them. I also had another pile, which I called the "Remainder" pile was where I collected all of the conjunctions (and, but, or); determiners (A, an, the); the singular prepositions (of, for, on, in): the exclaimations (hurrah!).

When you look at words in this way... the raw components of language, you see it a bit differently. As a writer working with language every day, it tends to blur into the background if you are not careful. The wonderful thing about word tickets, and undertaking a massive project like this, categorizing, sorting and thinking about each and every one of them... it forces you to really think about the language and how it works.

A lot of words easily fit into two of the three major categories: Nouns, Verbs and Descriptors (Adjectives/Adverbs). Our habit of gerund-ing nouns provides a lot of words that are both nouns and verbs. Some examples: hike (hiking); blog (blogging).

Then there are those that can cross into all three territories. Words like light, test and fine.

Light - The light emanating from the leg lamp was glorious (Noun).
He lights the candles in the hayloft, which will, of course, burn down the barn (Verb).
I went to Hoggy’s for a light snack (Adjective).

Test – I think I flunked the driving test when I swerved to hit a copperhead, sunning itself in the road (N).
“Don’t test my patience,” I said to the cop that pulled me over.(V)
I’m a NASCAR test driver (Adj).

Fine - The judge fined me a small fortune, suspended my license, and held me in contempt (V).
The fine was hefty, but worth the look on his face (N).
I was a fine looking boy, so my cell mate told me (Adj).

Go out there and have some fun with words. Collect your own bits of sound and language and see what you come up with.

Muse Reviews: Pep Talks, Warnings and Screeds

Pep Talks, Warnings, And Screeds: Indispensable Wisdom And Cautionary Advice For Writers by George Singleton

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Maybe I just need to get out of the review of writing books game. This one is nothing new really. A prolific writer of fiction who has taught at all levels of education tells us the wise things that he’s learned by both through his work and teaching of how to work to others.

It is loosely organized into three sections entitled Pep Talks, Warnings and Screeds. But the advice really doesn’t strictly fall into the category in which it is organized.


Each tidbit of advice is just a paragraph or two long (which is what attracted me to the book in the first place). I no longer can tell if I didn’t like it because a lot of the advice I saw was commonplace: Write down your ideas or you’ll forget them; take it easy on the exclamation points; don’t rely only on spell check; etc; or because that some of the ideas were unclear and confusing, or simply didn’t make sense. Singleton loves putting stuff on your writing desk that he calls: essential tools. Some of the things that he suggests that you put on your desk to remind you about various aspects of writing: a wrench, a micrometer, a pet rock, a whetstone, a compass, a can of WD-40, paddleball, swizzle stick, sponge, hand sanitizer, a 3 pack of flints, a grappling hook, a spinning top, a cow, a glass eye… you get the picture. Doesn’t leave much room on the desktop for paper, pens, or a laptop does it? Each item is supposed to constantly remind you of a writing lesson: sponges, to remind you to soak up everything around you for your stories… images, conversations, mannerisms, etc. A cow reminds you to rewrite and rewrite again, much like a cow chews and re-chews its cud.


I like the author’s tone within the book. It just doesn’t seem to be consistent or (a lot of times) provides helpful advice in clear language. It seems as if he hides behind his cleverness from time to time and forgetting the point he was trying to make.


It is an OK book that I wouldn’t recommend for beginning writers or advanced ones who have a good understanding of the writing and publishing process. So if you are somewhere in between, you might find some useful info within this book. If just one of these paragraphs gives you a unique perspective on a problem that has challenged you, then it has done its job well.


View all my reviews.

Harper's Index Now Online!

I do not read Harper's Magazine often, but when I do, I LOVE the Harper's Index, a luscious potpourri of statistical trivia goodness. What a great FREE resource of offbeat facts and stats.

Here is a small example of the bounty within:

6/07 Minimum number of different books sold in the U.S. last year, as tracked by Nielsen BookScan: 1,446,000

Nielsen BookScan (White Plains, N.Y.)

Number of these that sold fewer than 99 copies: 1,123,000

Nielsen BookScan (White Plains, N.Y.)

Number that sold more than 100,000: 483

9/07 Number of goats that Chattanooga, Tennessee, has rented to roam city land and clear kudzu: 12

City of Chattanooga Public Works Department

Number of llamas it has had to rent to guard the goats from neighborhood dogs: 2

City of Chattanooga Public Works Department

So if you are looking for an oddball statistic to use for a story-starter, or idea, the free Harper's Index is the place to go.

What's My Excuse?

I think it all started when I lost the all of the data on my USB jumpdrive when Elvira, my imposing feline office-guardian, leapt off of the monitor, landed on the edge of my laptop, causing it to do a complete flip and landing on the jumpdrive inserted in the USB port when it hit the floor. The good news: the jump drive must have absorbed all of the impact when it landed and the laptop was fine. The bad news: It fried the drive... and I hadn't backed up the drive in MONTHS. I should know better. And considering that I had data on it was more valuable to me than a horde of gold buried in a rabid survivalist's back yard, I sunk into a morass of self-pity and self-loathing. The contents included: a completed book proposal, all of the data for the Fantasy and Sci-Fi JumpStart Jar tickets (which I had been wrapping up at the time of the "Leaping Cat Incident," the spreadsheet that had been tracking all of the books that I had bought or read since 2004, (which hadn't been updated in about 6 months), along with dozens of other projects in various states in completion.

I should know better. I've worked both in IT and technical writing for over a decade now, and have seen similar catastrophic data loss many times. Did I learn anything?

I spent days scouring the internet for tricks to revive the drive. I even tried to solder it back together (which appeared to be successful), but all it did was make the broken drive hot enough to burn my hand. But losing data is like losing someone close to you... and you must go through the grieving process mentioned in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' book, On Death and Dying

• Denial - You can fix this jump drive enough to get the data off of it. All I need is it to let me copy a few files... You're not so stupid as not to have backed this up this week... right?!?
• Anger - Damn cat! How dare you jump on MY computer! POS jumpdrive! How could you break after such a perfect flip and then crashing down to the floor so far from the desktop above!? Haven't they tested these types of scenarios in Quality Control?!?
  
• Bargaining - Please, please, PLEASE let me have backed this up to an obscure folder somewhere on the external HD... I PROMISE to set up extensive alarms and reminders in my Outlook and Palm Pilot to nag me incessantly to back-up if you'll JUST LET ME RETRIEVE MY FILES THIS ONE TIME! Please?
  
• Depression - I can't believe I was sooooo stupid. Those files were a ticket to the best-seller list for me... I'll never be able to create anything as brilliant as this again...
• Acceptance - Now?

Starting All Over Again...

I’m digging out of my long funk at last. It has been about 2 years now since I’ve really been actively engaged in any writing projects and that is a lot of lost time. With a new little one that we adopted from China last summer, and my wife going back to grad school, I’ve had to cut back my teaching schedule as well.

So this is going to be like starting all over again and re-discovering my writing identity. As well as finding out what Grist’s new identity is as well. This will be a process which we will go through together I think as I use the blog to drive content for the newsletter once again. Drop me a line. Let me know what you are up to.

What I do know is that Grist for the Muse will be part good info that I find out on the net… both writing-related and non-writing related… it may have some ranting and raving, maybe a little unsolicited opinions about the world and life in general. I’ll try to make it visually appealing with an occasional picture or two. But mostly it will be about me, the writing life, and trying to figure it all out.