The Republic Isn't Doomed Yet, but They Sure as Hell aren't Literate

I should probably blur the name, but what the hell, she posted it.

I don't understand a world in which proper and common writing practice is regarded as political. But maybe I should expect to see more of that since basic literacy is dying.

Commenters are likely to deride EIN's response to this comment as condescending. Maybe it is. But it does set the facts straight. And these facts are expressly NOT political. They're not even pedantic. It's the basic kind of thing I learned in school, and am trying to teach my students now.

How to cure it? Read a lot. Write a lot. Practice some basic literacy skills. Recognize that maybe not everything in the world is political.

Revision

I used to think that when you wrote a first draft, what you ended up with was a puzzle in which you could see most of the picture, but needed to fill in the rest of the missing pieces.

No.

A first draft is a completed puzzle. Revision comes not in making the pieces smaller or filling in the holes, but in adding to the picture by adding on to the puzzle.

And the puzzle pieces you keep finding stuck to your forearm or on the floor beneath the table aren’t necessarily to the same puzzle – you get bits to one novel and bits to another, all waiting for some alchemical process that’s going to get them all to fit together.

Writing a novel is easy. Revising a draft, not so much.

That’s why I laugh whenever I read tips from writers on where to get ideas. I don’t need ideas. Ideas just come flying in and squash on the windshield and I collect them in little bins to sort out later.

I’ve tried the tried-but-true: Setting a novel aside and just collecting the ideas, hoping at some future, undetermined date to do the revision. I’ve tried printing them out and reading them, holding alongside a crib sheet of additions and other ideas to see where they might fit into the puzzle. Neither method has met with much success. And yet I know the puzzles, complete as they are, could be more resplendent, more colorful, more detailed – better – with the little bits and bobs I’ve collected.

Back to the writing books, I suppose. Let’s look at revising.

But in the meantime, progress must be made.

I’ll go at it the slow, plodding way. Print them out. Read them. Look at where ideas might fit. Because I’m certain that’s what I’ll find as I pore through the books on writing. There is no other secret way to do it, but hard work. There may be little frills and decorations and pips to spit at the process, to be sure, but the process will remain the process, no matter how much wishing one might do.

The best tip I’ve found so far: “Think big. Don’t tinker.” That from the Scott Foresman Handbook for Writers. Revision is “re-seeing,” not copy editing, poking around with silly little commas and such. That’s what I try to communicate with my students – commas and punctuation and capitalization and word choice, that’s all easy. Re-seeing is hard. As I know.

I read in a technical writing forum over the weekend an author’s post in which he decries revision. If something needs to be revised, he says, then the initial writing process that led to the writing is flawed and needs to be examined. Or a different writer needs to be assigned to the project. A piece of writing should be perfect the first time out, or that effort was wasted and only the revision counts as positive energy.

He is, of course, wrong.

Another revision tip: Pose specific questions. A study quoted here shows students produced “better” stories when they responded to a teacher’s specific questions on what was written. So I have to ask myself: Is this bit necessary? What questions would my readers ask at this point? But those are pretty general. Re-seeing also means re-reading. Or, in many cases, reading for the first time. The best approach: Read as you would if you were reading a book, but this time, annotate the text with questions you would ask the author. Forget that the author is you. Ask hard questions. Call them on the carpet for faulty plotting or thin characterization. Make the author be honest.

Another reminder: Successful revision is not correcting grammar. That is editing.

Yet another reminder: Collage. Start with the idea of printing out what you’ve written, cutting apart individual paragraphs or chapters or sentences, then rearrange them. Glue them to a big roll of butcher paper. Glue in visual cues of things you might want to add: Photographs, links to video and sound clips, other ephemera – is there a computer program or app that would let me do this? Or should I create one of my own?

Another reminder: Book trailer. Write a book trailer. Or better yet, look at what you’ve written and storyboard it. Find out where there are conceptual gaps by drawing things out – literally. Doesn’t matter if you’re a bad artist or not. Just draw things. Sketch them out. If you’re bad at art, do collage. Collect old magazines or scour the internet for pictures – no copyright worries here, you’re just re-seeing, sometimes through the eyes of another. You’re not publishing their stuff. Just re-seeing your own.

Never mind that this video references filmmaking. Storyboarding is storytelling whether you’re writing a story or making a movie. Do it.

Or just go to storyboardthat.com.

Another reminder: Consider things from a different point of view. See how a scene might be better by changing how a character is presented in the narrative. Like this:

Also, follow the KISS method: Keep It Simple, Stupid. If the computer programs are overwhelming, of you know you’d spent too much time tinkering and not thinking big while using them, then use paper, glue, and scissors. That’s the direction I’ll be heading.

Where Do the Taxes Go? Or, Why Our Government is Broken.

Over at the White House's website, they've got a nifty little calculator that tells you, to the penny, where your federal income taxes, Social Security taxes, and Medicare taxes go once the government gets its hands on them.

It's kinda fun, thinking that, for example, that 1.2 percent of the federal income taxes I could have theoretically paid -- the numbers you'll see in this figure are an approximation of what I might have paid, but not actual numbers -- went to NASA and other science programs.

Except it doesn't work.

Here's what happens: As the year progresses, the federal government collects may taxes. And because the federal government is like a six-year-old with his allowance hot in his pocket while he's in the toy aisle at the dollar store, that money gets spent as soon as it hits the pan.

Then, when I file my taxes -- and you'd better believe your sweet chunk that I file them early -- I get all of my income taxes back, and then some, because of those wonderful things called dependents and deductions. We have three kids. Dependents mean instant tax savings. My wife's going to school. That means a lifetime education tax deduction. Then there's this and that and the other thing and at the end of it all, I'm getting back from the federal government more than I paid in federal income taxes.

So that leaves them with a conundrum: They're suddenly looking at a bank account where their checks to NAZA and the military and such are going to bounce. So, naturally, they look at the pots of money they took from me and didn't give back -- Social Security especially -- and say, um, we've got some rubber checks coming. Couldn't we just borrow  . . .

And they do. And they borrow from other folks, because they certainly don't want that check they just mailed to me to bounce unless they want to hear from my senator who is busy spending the money I'm sending to Washington on projects in my state and then letting the feds worry about those bouncing checks because, hey, they're the ones spreading that money around in the first place.

Now we've got politicians who are looking at this situation and saying it's unsustainable. Well, it is sustainable if they increase taxes or cut spending or do a combination of whatever. But because they're politicians and have to deal with hotheads like me who'll get all upset if the checks they're sending me aren't bigger than the ones I'm sending them, they do half-hearted little efforts that kinda almost don't solve the problem. But since they can make noise about cutting government waste or finding more ways to squeeze blood out of us turnips they score political points and the media loves them or hates them and we love or hate the media depending on what message they're sending us.

I look at it all, look at the money I send the government and the additional money they send back, and realize, as does PJ O'Rourke in "Parliament of Whores," that we are all doomed. Doomed.

According to Annie Lowrey writing at Slate.com, there are a lot of geniuses out there who think this tax receipt calculator is just the bees' knees since it'll explain where all of our money goes and get us not focusing on aid to foreign countries and such, where they seem to think we all seem to think the money is going.

She writes:

According to the many proponents of tax receipts, such a breakdown should serve as a powerful corrective to our wild misconceptions about government spending. The foreign aid canard is perhaps the most outrageous and persistent, so much so that Obama actually mentioned it in his debt-reduction speech this week. Americans believe we spend about 25 percent of the budget—that's about $890 billion—on foreign assistance. They think that number should be 10 percent, so they are eager to put foreign-aid spending on the chopping block. But foreign aid makes up about 0.6 percent of spending. If you pony up six grand in federal taxes, just $33.97 goes overseas, according to Third Way's calculator.

Except there's no accounting for tax deductions that end up giving me more money than I pay in.

Doomed, Part V

 

Used under the fair use doctrine for commentary purposes.

Because I enjoy navel contemplation, I’ve been thinking about how my own book-buying habits relate to the fact that I want to write books and, more importantly, that I’ve written a book I’m editing and hope soon to start farming out to agents.

So how do my habits impact my future as an uthor?

I’m doomed.

Doomed before I even take the vow.

Why?

Because over at Nathan Bransford’s blog, the question came up: What advice would you give bookstores? Here’s my response:

My advice: Surrender Dorothy.

I have lots of books. We've got shelves and stacks of them in the study, plus the five boxes, no, six, for which we've got no room. The kids' rooms are overflowing with books.

We get about 90 percent of them from the local thrift store. Another five percent comes through the book order forms the kids bring home from school. The rest come from used book purchases via the Internet.

Stocking used books is a good idea, if the prices are right. I laugh out loud at the prices at our regional used book store when I can go to the thrift store and find the same used books for substantially less.

I love all of you folks who go to the new book stores, buy new books, read them, put them on a shelf and then, after a while, get bored with them and take them to the thrift stores so I can buy them cheap. Keep it up. Don't buy e-books, though, they're not resellable.

Keep taking your rare and collectable books to the thrift stores, too. I've found several that are worth upwards of $30 to $50 at Powells for $2 or $3 at the thrift store.

Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I bought a new book.

Hence, I am doomed.

I want to write books. I have written a book. But if everyone in the world is like me, the only way I’ll get any money out of it is to open a thrift store and sneak copies of my books onto the shelves and then pocket the money when and if they sell.

That brings up other tantalizing questions: Self-publishing? E-book-only publishing?

No. I need an editor, a disinterested outside observer to tell me where I’ve gone wrong. I’ve read enough poorly-written self-published stuff to know better. Of course, I’ve read enough poorly-written traditionally-published stuff to know better as well.

What to do, Dorothy, what to do?

Broken Yoke

The best thing that’s come so far from being doomed?

The yoke is broken.

A psychological yoke, of course, started in October of 2008 when I suddenly had a lot of posts on this blog for the month. Something in my little head snapped and said, “You know, I should write a lot more on this blog. Each month having more or at least an equal number of posts than the month before. Besides, it’s good writing practice. Get a lot of stuff out of the head so there’s more room for better stuff.”

Now that yoke is broken.

I am free.

Not that writing this blog has been all that bad -- it certainly has inspired me in many ways, and having a little bit of writing to show every day is encouraging, especially when some of it is even good.

Welcome Back

Used under a Creative Commons license. Photo from dumbeast's Flikr stream.

Due to popular demand -- oh, who am I kidding -- due to a suffering ego, Mister Fweem's Blog is now back from being ensconced behind a privacy wall of immense magnitude.

I had to do some expurgation, of course. Lost 99 [101; sorry, my math stinks] posts for last year, and about thirty for this year. Why is that, you may ask? Well, this, for starters.

So, most everything relatd to the novels I'm writing is now either gone from this site (cached, of course, likely elsewhere, but at least there cannot be any further damage or exposure) or ensconced behind the privacy wall at the Targhee Writers blog which, of course, is popular with me but hardly with anyone else.

And that's fine.

I was chafing a bit behind the privacy wall. Not that I have much of value to say -- one of my most commented posts of the year had to do with the difference between loth/loath and loathe, and the comments were from people pointing out mistakes I made in my post -- but by darn I reserve the right to say it.

So if you'd like to read the novels I've been working on, trot on over to the Targhee Writers Blog and sign up. Otherwise, the babble store is now open again for business.

Doomed, Part IV

Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Photo by Alan Light.

More and more, I turn to the wisdom of Ray Bradbury when I’m seeking inspiration on writing.

Today’s quotation is this:

“Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.”

Despite all my talk of being doomed with the first publication rights of my novels perhaps being used up since I published them on my blog, I’m seeing glimmers of hope. Not necessarily for these projects, but for others I’ve started, then abandoned, and for others which right now are only just a few jots and tittles on errant bits of paper – or blog posts – for now.

I know most of the stuff I’ve produced for “Considering How to Run,” and “Their Hearts Run Cold” isn’t stellar – but if these two projects have taught me anything, it’s that I can complete a novel, even if it’s mediocre. That gives me hope that some of the other things I’ve started or have cooking, which I think I can make better than these first two, have a chance of coming to fruition.

And since I’m not completely done with the first two books, there’s a chance still I can make them better through editing and re-writing.

It’s just getting to it. Right now, the act of creation is a vast and vile temptation. I know I could be working with other material, but the draw to create new cloth right now is very strong.

Quantity produces quality. I can see that in Bradbury’s own work, because there are some things he wrote that I read and say, Yeah, that’s not his best. But then there are the other things, of which I remain in awe, thirty years after having read them for the first time.

The man speaks – and writes – the truth.

Doomed, Part III

Used under the Fair Use Doctrine for commentary purposes.

Doomed has quickly become a meme here at Mister Fweem’s Blog, and with good reason. Read here if you’ve fallen behind on the reasons that we here are doomed. Doomed!

So today we explore the question: You’ve posted creative writing on the web that now you’d like to erase completely from the Internet so as not to risk losing your rights of first publication. What to do, my friend, what to do?

First of all, maybe this:

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

Then again, maybe not.

Many tend to shake in their boots at the inviolate permanence of the Internet. Once it’s there, they say, it can never be concealed. And, in a general sense, that may be true, because you never know who has read and downloaded or copied your material, though for the most part you’d have to wonder why they bothered, given that you can’t interest an agent in it to save your life.

But there are ways of ridding the Internet of your stuff if you so desire.

First line of attack: the Wayback Machine.

Used under the Fair Use Doctrine for commentary purposes.

No, not that one, Sherman. I mean this one: The Wayback Machine, part of web.archive.org, where the good folks there aim to preserve not only the Internet as we know it, but every single iteration of every single web page as we know them now and as we might have known then back in the early 1990s and such.

Every bit of writing I’ve read on posting unpublished novels and novel excerpts on the web cites the Wayback Machine as one of those inviolate net caches that will collect and store your first use in perpetuity and thus rob you of any benefits you might have reaped.

But it can be breached. Thanks to the folks at the Wayback Machine itself.

First off, they’ll tell you this:

The Internet Archive is not interested in offering access to Web sites or other Internet documents whose authors do not want their materials in the collection.

Since my blog is hosted by Google, they make this pretty easy. Restricting web crawlers in the “permissions” menu, and then ensuring that the proper robots.txt information appears in the HTML of your blog using your Google Webmaster Tools can cut off crawlers and searchers, such as the Wayback Machine. (I know I’m grossly oversimplifying things; for more in-depth information, go here.) Simply put, the robots.txt on my blog bars all crawlers and searchers.

That’s well and good, you say, but what about for those – like me – trying to close the barn door after the cows have escaped?

First of all, go the analytics route. See what are the popular terms being searched for, that bring people to your site. My analytics show people have come to my site much more frequently on terms such as “loughner beck” and “nose hair” (which should tell you something about the quality of writing topics on my blog) than anything to do with my novels.

Second of all – and this is where it gets tedious – you can request that Google remove cached copies of your individual pages. That means for each page, you send a request. And if the URL is off, no touchie.

So my publishing acquaintance’s advice holds true:

1) Posting novel excerpts on the web is a no-no, unless it’s behind a security wall.
2) Be up-front if you get a deal, lest your publisher discover on their own what horrible mistake you’ve made.

Do not be doomed.

DOOMED, Part II

So, what do you do as a writer if, as we discussed yesterday, you're already DOOMED?

Well, according to my publishing acquaintance, this:

The situation will be specific to the publisher and author negotiation. I would advise disclosing it since later discovery could be a contractual violation that would seriously impact not only that contract but future possibilities. (We are a pretty tight group and we do talk to each other about authors--especially problem authors.)

I would advise to not continue the habit. If he needs to put it up on a blog to develop the ideas, he should restrict the blog to only credible evaluators--a very small number--basically an online writing group. Then he would not have to disclose it being out in the public.

That right there, friends, is why this blog and the Targhee Writers Blog went private yesterday. I know, classic case of closing the barn door after the cows have already gotten out. But better to stop the potential damage now than let love lie bleeding.

As you can tell, I've done a lot of nervous reading of the Internets over the past few days, trying to sort this situation out. Te advice I'm getting from my publishing acquaintance is pretty much in line with the vast majority of what I'm reading, so the walls went up. If you're reading this, obviously, you're part of that "credible evaluators" group, so if anyone like, you know, the FBI and such, call you up to ask, that is exactly what you tell them.

The disclosure thing seems to make perfect sense. Better to hear it from the author than for the publisher to find out for themselves. That goes with a lot of things, from publishing to the workplace to marriage. So if Michelle is suddenly talking about some startling revelations on her Facebook page, you'll know what's up.

We're Doomed

So, if one Icelandic volcano can disrupt air travel to a continent because of a little bit of ash flying into the air -- at least a little bit on a global scale -- we are, as a sapient species, doomed.

Look at this picture from the BBC:

Note that the the gray cloud spewing out of southwest Iceland is the volcanic plume in question; the rest is just ordinary cloud. Now I know volcanic ash preads all over the place and is even present in spots where the gray plume doesn't appear, but I hardly think it's justifiable to close down a continent's air travel just because of one measly volcano.

Happily, I'm not the only one. People way smarter than me think the same thing. Behold:

ACI Europe - which represents major airports - and the Association of European Airlines issued a joint statement urging officials to reconsider the restrictions.

"The eruption of the Icelandic volcano is not an unprecedented event and the procedures applied in other parts of the world for volcanic eruptions do not appear to require the kind of restrictions that are presently being imposed in Europe," the statement said.

This is being reported by the BBC.

So there's some science but a lot of paranoia going on over there over this situation. Even President Obama declined to travel to Poland to attend a state funeral because of the mess which, frankly, isn't all that messy. This is what happens when bureaucrats are in charge and listen to the worst case scenario, and that scenario is echoed, seal-bark-like, by the penny press.

Oh, I've seen the videos. This is one of them:

But remember, this plane flew directly through the ash cloud, not just though air space where a bit of ash might be present. So they're overreacting to the nth degree there.

Maybe I'm too dim to fathom all this. But when the flight bans first came out, I thought, my gosh, that plume must be enormous for Europe to ban all flights in or out. Enormous, I mean. Globe-spanning. Then I get to thinking, well, even the largest volcanic eruptions don't spew plumes dense enough to disturb vast areas of airspace. Somebody's playing silly with me. Then I see the picture and think, yeah, overreaction.

I'd fly to Europe today if someone gave me a free ticket, just to prove it's safe.