Final Writing Show Authoring Update...

The second entry has been sent in! A third round of minor edits was performed, converted it to PDF, and then mailed it off with the contact info and disclaimer. I even remembered this time to give it a tentative title on the stop of the first page before emailing it this time (insert a little grin here)

I'll refrain from commenting on my own sizing up of the work here. I remember Mur saying in one of her I Should Be Writing podcasts that authors shouldn't downplay their work to the people they're pitching it to...basically any potential audience...so I'll just reserve my own judgement here and let others decide.

Again I already think that I did well just in starting the story, writing it, and managing to send it in. I even did this twice! I completed the tasks and thus achieved my goals. I don't need to actually win the contest (although it would be nice, don't get me wrong) because my goal was to submit something respectable as an entry in the first place, to see this through to the end. I did that. I even got it in before the deadline of the 31st!

Now all I can do is wait and see if I get some confirmation that Paula B. received the entry.

Whether in the end the story...well, stories...are good or bad, I gained some experience. I'm happy with that!

Critiquing an Author's Work

I listen to several different podcasts; I listen to audio books (like Zombie Chronicles, the Heaven series, and Sigler's novels), I listen to tech podcasts (StackOverflow is a favorite) and various podcasts centering on advice for amateur authors (I Should Be Writing, for example).

A recent podcast I started listening to is called "Get Published" by Michell Plested. He took a risk and read an old story as an audio story and fed it into the podcast feed. A subsequent podcast included some feedback, which sounded like he had some good comments.

Me...I didn't like it. I couldn't finish listening to it. Maybe there was negative feedback and he didn't acknowledge it. Maybe he just didn't have a lot of people give negative feedback. I don't know.

I just know I didn't like it. I actually stopped listening partway through it.

His characters were simply so far off in some ideal world of black-and-white behavior that I couldn't suspend belief. Even when a story is sci-fi or fantasy, you have to be able to put yourself into that story, into that situation, and believe that what is happening could actually happen in those circumstances. His story had started off with a character that was utterly revolting in his behavior towards a woman that he essentially "saved" after her husband was killed and was claiming as his own property. As I recall he was taking her to the king or sheriff or some other official to make his claim over her official; he was physically and emotionally abusive, as she was property, not a person.

That in itself is believable behavior in a particular environment. Stories including slavery tends to demonstrate this attitude. Many stories centered in Olde England or medieval Europe or very pious and religious societies shows women treated as less-than-equals in status. Okay...I'll buy that.

Except he and his property meet up with this "knight" that is the polar opposite. Far, far extreme opposite, where he stands up for the damsel's dignity, threatening the revolting bastard that was abusing his newly-claimed property.

Now...in a society where this appeared to be the "norm" in how people are treated, how do you just happen to find two such extremes in behavior? Even the speech patterns were way too far over the mark, with the noble knight stepping in to show what an uncouth rascal the jerk truly was. Yes, there are extremes in any society, but this was just too coincidental.

Worse, in a society where it was apparently accepted as the "right thing to do" (the antagonists words) to go to a local official to make the claim over his "woman", somehow this knight was so far removed from this society in which he lives that he was appalled at this guy's gall.

Sorry, not buying it.

But I didn't give the author feedback. I wouldn't want to, unless I was directly asked. He took a big risk in exposing his writing like that. And I hate to discourage him without being prompted for an honest opinion.

So how does one handle critiquing a new author's work?

I prefer, personally, getting honest feedback. If I'm on the wrong track, let me know. If it's salable material, I'd love to know and if it's not then I don't want to continue wasting my time on it. I'm not a professional writer or English major so if I'm not very good at writing then I can accept that kind of criticism; I'd be as broken up about it as hearing my future does not lay in a sports career or professional ballet dancer.

But I also know I am an introverted individual with Asperger's, so I don't know how other people prefer to get feedback. I prefer open honesty but apparently other people don't; just observe the reaction of Alice Hoffman, an established author, when she got a bad review from a critic. That article also has many other examples of authors bahaving poorly to criticism...

So I guess the question is, what is the expected protocol in giving feedback? Michell sounded like the feedback he got was positive; but I know that if asked my feedback would have been less than positive. I was glad to hear in the followup that the story was very old and I'd presume that with time and practice he would have found more of his voice in his writing and hopefully improved. I'd like to think that I can offer constructive criticism that, if taken in the manner it was meant when offered, could be used to improve his writing a bit.

Or maybe my criticism is specific to me; his story simply didn't appeal to me. He obviously had some people that liked his work from the feedback he repeated on the next podcast.

If anyone has been in the position to be asked to give feedback to someone who is writing a story and you found elements that you really didn't like, how did you handle the situation? What affected your decision to handle it the way you did?

The Writing Show: Entry Number Two Update for August 20th

Well...round two of editing done, I incorporated the changes along with some extra trimming, and it's now at 4,996 words! Remember it had to be under 5,000...I had to trim several bits here and there. I think I ended up chopping about three hundred words or so. But the story is slightly tighter now.

As I type this my printer is spitting out a copy once more for my gratis editor to look at and see if it has her blessing to send out. I'm more or less happy with it as an entry. I don't think it's as good as it could be, but if I waited until the perfect story came onto the digital page I'd never bother starting a story in the first place.

I was slightly sidetracked while trying to edit it because I looked through the transparent window on the side of my computer case and realized my CPU fan had died. I don't know how long it had been seized up, but if left that way there was a possibility of the CPU overheating and dying. Luckily the case was kind of overengineered for cooling and it never skipped a beat. I removed the side panel and stuck a mini desk fan near it at an angle to help with airflow, then went to NewEgg to buy a new CPU fan on rush order.

I hate working on those. I don't mind replacing hard disks, CD-ROMs, memory, daughter cards...but those @#% coolers on the CPU? I hate them. Now I get to spend time trying to replace it, hopefully tomorrow, since I don't relish leaving this little deskfan on all the time but I access my computer all the time, even remotely, for doing file storage and email.

My next "data storage" system is definitely going to be designed with commodity parts and distributed failure protection built in. This computer was expensive and is a pain to fix up when there is a failure, but it was very well engineered (I definitely recommend Puget after dealing with them several years ago to get this system, especially if you're a gamer. These guys worked with me to get a great Linux system with RAID; it's built like a tank. With a broken fan, now, but it's a few years old so I'll forgive that.)

Anyway, that was my night. I've been putting in crazy hours at work and still trying to get gym time and story time and the occasional blog time along with the journaling for the insurance-mandated psychology appointments (from the surgery...you have been following the blog, right?)

Print job is complete. Time to head out until tomorrow. Paula...you'll be getting the story soon!

Writing Show Entry Two Update for August 16

As I type this the first round edit is done. Did some rearranging, some altering, some rewording, and now I'm printing out the document to review it again. It's been trimmed to just around 5100 words...still more cutting to do.

Here's an interesting question...from what I have found on manuscript formatting, you're not supposed to do things like italicize words and bold words and such, so how do you express certain ideas as thoughts if you don't? I could probably get away with doing that, but in this story I just used quotes as if the character were speaking for now. I don't know what format it's "supposed" to be in.

If I were asked this question by my daughter I'd tell her to look for the rules and see if there was clarification in the rules, but I didn't see anything at the Writing Show's website. I guess Paula's either looking for the standard manuscript formatting rules or she doesn't mind liberties with formatting...I'm toying with the idea of just emailing the show to ask her.

It's probably not a big deal but I'd prefer to do whatever makes it easier for the judges to get through their pile of entries. I know that little things can really make a difference if you hit that little annoyance fifteen times a day.

What I'll probably end up doing is digging around for my standard manuscript formatting notes and see if I can rework it that way. The thing is that last time I researched this topic I could have sworn that the SMF was actually more like "suggested manuscript format", and the rule of thumb was to fall back on those suggestions (or close to them) only if there wasn't a stated preference by agents and publishers for the submission you're making to their particular taste. Ugh.

I'll first concern myself with getting the story polished a little then worry about formatting, I suppose.

Writing Show Entry Two Update for August 14th

I didn't write too much about this because it was late last night when I finally crawled off to bed, but my story reached over 5,000 words. It was near the 5200 mark, actually, and I printed it out...22 pages...and handed it over to my in-house editor for critique/alterations/editing/checking/general suggestions.

I personally didn't think it was all that great. If it is a decent story it's probably in need of a few coats of paint and really big dose of polish, but the primary goal for me was to sit down and just do it; it is an entry, I managed to get a small story out, and I completed what I started. My work in this case is to short stories what Nanowrimo...national novel writing month, in case you didn't know...is to published novels.

I should be careful saying that though. Some people have gone on from Nanowrimo entries to be published. Keeping that in mind would get my hopes up.

At any rate, the story is in the hands of my wife to get the first round of cutting and pasting. After she gives several rough chops I'll go back through it and we'll work on paring it into something that would be decent enough to email to Paula B. for the contest. Hopefully it'll be in her hands by the middle of next week.

If you do visit the Writing Show website, you should also check out the tribute being assembled for screenwriter/author Blake Snyder; he passed away of a pulmonary embolism on August 4th. His Save the Cat! series was great for aspiring screenwriters and his talent as a mentor preceded him in the industry. He'll be sorely missed.

That's where things stand on the second story. I've been negligent in maintaining the blog while I worked for periods of time on the story, but most wouldn't have noticed (even though my audience consists of maybe three people)...I had already queued a large number of blog entries to keep on my minimum-one-posting-a-day regiment. The only thing that really suffered was my replying to comments.

I read them, of course, but I didn't take the time to reply. Please don't be too offended if I didn't reply to a comment that you wanted a reply to...I was just working on the story instead of the blogging.

Until there's more to report I'll be flitting off for a bit. Well, not entirely. I've got a small backlog of topics to add to the blog queue. So until next time, here's a tip-o-the-hat to you all...have a good night!

Writing Show Entry Two Update

Well the last update had me at a few shy of 2500 words for my second entry. I see on Facebook that Paula B. is saying there's under three weeks to get an entry in...I'm working on giving her at least a week of lead time on this, since I know she probably gets most of her entries at the last minute (not that a week before deadline gives much leeway, but hey, it's something, right?).

That's my goal anyway.

Tonight I reached a word count of 3,554.

It's progress!

Hopefully I'll wrap it up in the next two or three days, then I'll see how it's received when I ask for help with the editing.

Until next time...

Three Signs of a Miserable Job

I had read Three Signs of a Miserable Job awhile ago and thought it was fantastic. I enjoyed it so much that I even wrote the three signs down on a paper and found them again recently while going through my desk and it reminded me of where I remembered ideas like having measurable goals and how in part to try managing other people in the workplace in a way that hopefully doesn't leave me looking like a PHB.

You can read a quick summary here (although I REALLY encourage ANYONE with questions about their job happiness to read the book...it's short, it's easy to read through, and the story format is very user-friendly!) but the three signs are:

1. Anonymity, the feeling employees get when they realize their manager has little interest in them as a human being and know little about their lives, aspirations and interests.
2. Irrelevance, when the employees cannot see how their job makes a difference in the lives of others in one way or another.
3. Immeasurement, which is the inability of employees to assess for themselves their contributions or successes. Without a means of doing this employees have to rely on subjective measurements and opinions of others, usually their manager.

It's something that gives me pause to think once in awhile and sometimes a reason that I plant myself down and start researching either the programming language hobby or plug away at that novel in my head; the hope that maybe one or the other could pay off in a better job function for me. But no matter what my situation is, these three nuggets of wisdom are invaluable for anyone in the working world and that book may help you evaluate if it is time for you to polish your resume and see if the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence...once you can get over the fear that it's greener because of the hidden septic tank, that is.

Writing Show Entry Two Update

I haven't posted for awhile about the story...shame on me...

The truth is that I've been on a trip out of state for a few days so I've been a little busy as of late. The blog has been running largely on autopilot, so there may be some posted comments that I haven't replied to. I simply didn't set aside time to do it. As I type this it's 12:26 in the morning and I'm going to be heading home soon after we all get around in the morning...

Anyway, I did take some time to work on the story over the past few days. My previous update had me at 798 words. My current word count is just a couple words short of 2500. For something I'm cramming into an hour or so at night before bed I don't think that's too shabby!

Anyway, the story is progressing. I am hoping to get it finished over the next few days and then it'll get edited and hopefully in with a bit of lead time for Paula B. to review.

I'm not thinking this will be a masterpiece by any measure but my primary goal is to get experience and writing something, so simply completing it and getting it turned in for review will be enough for me to count it as a victory. I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to get some feedback on the story, some suggestions and such would be great. But that's not a guarantee with this contest. It's also a no-fee for entry contest so I wouldn't be surprised if there's simply limited time and resources for offering such feedback. That would just be icing on the cake; no hard feelings or disappointment if it doesn't happen. But that doesn't keep from having the hope of getting such feedback from tickling the back of my mind.

It's late, I'm supposed to finish packing up in the morning and then a long long ride home followed by trying to catch up on a lot of backlogged items (like getting to the gym!) before heading back to work. So good night everyone. Tune in later for yet another posting to appear from yours truly...

Scheduling Blog Entries

You know one of the neat things about Blogger?

Most people probably don't take advantage of it. But I have been. I've been trying to make it a goal to improve some writing skills by writing enough material to fit at least one entry a day. So far I've been pretty good at keeping up with that.

Turns out there's a place at the bottom of your Blogger posting window called "post options. " If you click it, you can allow or disallow comments and backlinks for the particular post, but you can also change the post date and time.

Neat! I can back date stuff!

But I haven't. What I discovered was that it was a simple way to post things in the future.

I know, bloggers probably already knew it. But what it allowed me to do was queue up several entries in a row...if I have enough time to get three or four things off my chest and they're not time dependent, like my "writing show updates" I had been posting, I can set things to appear several days in advance. You don't know when this posting was being written because I just set it up to come into the lists days from now; that way if something happens I still have material appearing, keeping me up to date with my goal of at least one post per day.

Neat, huh?

Well, maybe not for most people, but I'm finding it useful for my purposes. I did tell my wife it'll be weird for her if something happened to me...accident, heart attack, who knows?...and still my posts are appearing one at a time for the next several days. Depending on how far ahead I get she may get material trickling in for a month or more.

That could be a little creepy, I suppose...

Second Writing Show Entry Update

I am a little disappointed that I only made it to 798 words tonight, adding a mere 373 words to my previous count. I did an admirable job of procrastinating, though.

Honestly, I was poking away at it and got to a point where I want to work through a scene without stopping and I thought I'd be interrupted at some inconvenient point, seeing the time and all. So I'll save it for tomorrow.

Oh well. Not a fantastic amount of progress, but it was still progress. I'll get this story out one way or another...

Second Writing Show Entry, Second Try

I have been working for awhile on a second story entry for The Writing Show, and all the while it was slowly morphing into a substory from another, longer story idea I had been playing with.

In the end I didn't think it really fit into the whole Halloween storyline theme thing.

I knew I could chop out a large portion to fix the length issue (it was way over the 5000 word limit and not done yet!). I was pondering what to do while wandering through a Walmart to pick up some prescriptions when inspiration struck.

Unfortunately it does mean I scrapped trying to enter the other one. I'm now 425 words into a new story. With some luck and perseverance, I will have this one done fairly soon and can see if my wife will help me with the editing.

I've had a lot to cram into a night...a family picnic, rebuilding an old computer for my in-laws...twice, since as SOON as I installed Windows and tried updating it with antivirus and an updated web browser, the @#$% hard disk died, so now I'm re-reinstalling everything on another drive. As you can tell this is taking some time and I'm getting rather wonky in the head. Perfect time to have worked on my new story.

Anyway, I made some progress and I'm optimistic about it. Hopefully we'll see more posts about progress appearing here!

Weight Training for Dummies

It took me about a week to finish reading Weight Training for Dummies (this review is being posted long after I've finished the book) by Liz Neporent, Suzanne Schlosberg, and Shirley Archer.

The book includes the trademark Dummies 5th Wave comics and is filled with the entertaining, down-to-Earth writing style I've come to expect from Dummies books. At a glance, the book includes chapters on "Before You Pick Up a Weight", "Weighing In with Weigh Training Wisdom", "Tackling the Exercises", "Setting Up Your Workout Programs", and of course no Dummies book is complete without "The Part of Tens".

I'm a complete novice at the whole weight training thing. More than that, I hate the whole fitness "thing". Hearing people slinging lingo like "abs" and "glutes" makes me immediately try to tune out the conversation and being lectured about the importance of fitness sounds like one long la la la la la...

However, due to the surgery, I had to do something to try exercising. I love biking, but the area I'm in makes it difficult to ride. I managed to stick with a stationary bike routine but I still wanted to do something to add some variety.

I mentioned to my parents that I was considering doing something with a local gym and they decided to gift me with a one-year membership there. Knowing nothing about working out in a gym, I picked up this book to try learning some of the ins and outs of what to expect with a workout routine.

Keep in mind that I am anti-fitness and knew next to nothing about it.

This book communicated in a clear and fun way to a complete novice different things to remember when weight lifting, from safety to courtesy in gyms to some background on the Nautilus machine versus the Nautilus brand.

If you're considering starting a weight-lifting routine and don't know a dumbbell from a barbell, you should definitely start with this book to start your learning journey. I didn't finish the book an expert by any means but I definitely had a better grasp of my goals and understanding of working out; it was at least enough to help put me a little more at ease the first time I walked into that gym.