So, Am I Writing Now?

Here's the rub: Am I writing now?

No.

Creative writing. Novels, in particular. Or short stories. Or poems. Or anything for that matter.

I'm not.

I mean, I'm on the verge. I have some ideas bubbling.

But nothing really in the works.

Doleful Creatures and the Hermit of Iapetus, still sitting there. Moribund. I think they're part of what Ray Bradbury described as the bad writing that has to come out through effort in order for the good ideas to come.

I need someone to keep me accountable. To keep an eye on me, because me on my own, I stink.

I'm getting back into reading, which is good. I love to read a good story -- and even reading the bad ones is educational.

Still at the point I need to get out of a few things. Closing in on getting out of Scouting, and hoping that once that's done I'll have more time to get to writing. But discipline is lacking. I need to get on a writing schedule. But I'm also at the computer ten hours a day for the full-time job, and I'm still teaching, so more computer work.

Maybe my students need to keep me accountable. That's something to think about.

Getting out of a basic English course would also be nice, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

The Audacity . . .

Fan fiction is one thing.

Writing fan fiction based on a highly-popular intellectual property is another thing.

Continually harassing -- and then suing -- the holders of said IP when they don't respond to your requests to "collaborate" and have official sanction of your fanfiction, well, that can only be said to be Demetrious Polychron.

Who is this dude? Well, I don't really know. His self-assuredness knows no bounds, however, as he wrote what he calls a "pitch-perfect" sequel to JRR Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings.

And yes, everything about the lawsuit, the attempts to get attention from Amazon (producers of a Lord of the Rings-based TV series I haven't seen) and the Tolkein estate, and his lawsuit arguing Amazon was impinging on his copyright is all true. Read about it here.

Mr. Polychron has posted(!) some of his work in The Fellowship of the King online here. And while my own writing isn't anything to brag about, his certainly isn't either. If this is pitch-perfect, then Tolkein's tone is really insipid. Which it is not. This guy's deluding himself on the quality of his writing to be sure.

Most fan fiction is of this ilk and variety.

What came of the lawsuit, well, per the BBC:

On Thursday Judge Steven V Wilson called the lawsuit "frivolous and unreasonably filed" and granted the permanent injunction, preventing him from selling his book and any other planned sequels, of which there were six.

The court also awarded lawyer's fees totalling $134,000 (£106,000) to the Tolkien Estate and Amazon in connection with Polychron's lawsuit.

The estate's UK solicitor, Steven Maier of Maier Blackburn, said: "This is an important success for the Tolkien Estate, which will not permit unauthorised authors and publishers to monetise JRR Tolkien's much-loved works in this way.

"This case involved a serious infringement of The Lord of the Rings copyright, undertaken on a commercial basis, and the estate hopes that the award of a permanent injunction and attorneys' fees will be sufficient to dissuade others who may have similar intentions."

Tolkein's work doesn't enter the public domain until at least the mid 2040s. By then I'll be dead, of course. Mr. Polychron's writing will be dead long before that. Going to the author's publication website, fractalbooks.com, is already telling.

Forget the Fifth of November, Just Remember to SLOW DOWN when You Edit

Letting someone else look at your work is kinda scary.

But gather around and let your teacher tell a true story about how having others evaluate your work can be a benefit to you.

This was me, a few weeks ago. Invisible to management until a mistake was noticed in my work.

Why was the mistake there? Two reasons:

1. I assumed the people I was working with had scrubbed this particular document for errors like this.

2. I did not scrub this particular document myself to detect errors like this.

I'm being vague because I can't discuss the nature of the work, but suffice it to say: Mistakes were made. I did not detect them -- and detecting is part of my job -- and the errors were detected by someone higher up in the chain.

I have since re-evaluated my work process with these particular documents and implemented a stragegy to help me detect these errors before the higher-ups have a chance to spot them. It means more work, but it also means infinitely less work and increased trust further in the document review process.

I neglected to check someone else's work properly, and it cost me a weekend of anxiety and two long weeks of work following that to make things right.

So, the lesson here is twofold:

1. When you peer review someone else's work, be sincere in your efforts.

2. When you get feedback, be sincere in accepting that your writing isn't perfect.

Here's a quick lesson on what's called "Levels of Edit," something I'd forgotten as I worked (or didn't work) on the document in question.

Levels of Edit means you read a document more than once -- each time focusing on a particular attribute of writing. That does mean more work on the surface, but it also means your likelihood of catching errors goes up significantly as you go through the various levels.

Here are some typical Levels of Edit to consider:

Spelling/grammar. Just looking to see if there are typos, misused words, awkward sentences and such.

Flow. Are the transitions between ideas okay? Does what your reading make sense, or are there gaps that the writer needs to fill to help you understand better?

Citations/APA. Does the author tell us where each quote or paraphrasing comes from? Are references included, as well as the works cited page?

As usual, Purdue OWL has some pretty helpful suggestions on the levels of edit to consider.

But wait -- won't I save time if I do all this editing at the same time?

Maybe.

Or maybe you'll miss important stuff if you don't take a more methodical approach.

I have more than 25 years of professional writing experience, and yet I still screwed up on something pretty fundamental because I was trying to do all levels of editing at the same time.

My advice to myself now: Slow down. Remember the fundamentals. And avoid future, high-profile screw ups. They're not pretty.

And if Dilbert isn't enough, consider the wisdom of John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and diplomat: