…and discovered a food container in the floor, courtesy of our boys. No food after midnight? We don’t think so.
So I had to call the vet, apologize, and reschedule for Wednesday. The vet was very ok about it—I’m sure they’d rather have people catch this and reschedule rather than have a kitty with an emergency on their hands. I’m not sure they got any food out of it, but Jane spotted it, and better safe than sorry. We’ll be more careful Wednesday. Aspiration under anaesthesia is a scary thing. So we let Seishi out of his cage, and I try to get some work done.
We are past the hump re the heat surge, and from now on the week should trend down rather than up. That’s welcome, not usual, but very welcome. We’ll get back into the 80’s.
Pleasant and clouded this morning, before 9 am, and I got the algae-preventer in the pond (just to prove it’s working, we had a very little blush on the rocks as it ran out [once weekly]) and trimmed the suckers off the tree peonies, and wished the filter.
Got my schedule to SpoCon and it looks good, a lot of writing stuff, which I really don’t like a schedule full of (does it occur to people that writing is what I do to get to the part I like, which is story and science and such, but at least not stupid writing panels…last year we had somebody in tears over a critique, and I really empathize with the gal. I would NEVER subject my work to a panel of people to take apart—I’m not sure I would do it now, because a writer’s writing mechanism is so iffy that a butterfly wing can disturb it. I don’t like Milford or that other conference, Clarion, for example. I’d never survive it as a writer. I’m tough as nails in some regards, but I’m really very fragile when it comes to my writing, and I’m not sure I could survive it even as an instructor. It’s just too unkind, and I have heard of people who went and just got messed up emotionally for quite a time.
So I think I’m going to do myself AND a contestant a favor and duck out of the writing critique operation this year.
Oh, the memories this post brings up. When I was a teenager, we had our female spayed, and no one realized my brother had left a bag of cherries in the living room. My mom, the nurse, brought the dog in after her night shift, and upon realizing no one would be in the vet’s office while the dog was coming out of anethesia, brought her home afterward. So there’s the dog gated in the kitchen, Mom sleeping on the couch in the living room, when she hears the most godawful hacking. She leaps up, runs into the kitchen, sees the dog hacking up blood red clots of something, sticks her hand in Missy’s mouth to help the her get stuff up and realizes these blood clots are hard. Then she realized the dog was choking on the plastic bag, and the hard clots were cherry pits. Missy was fine, by the way, but she’d have choked to death if Mom hadn’t brought her home.
TOTALLY better safe than sorry.
As for writing groups, I went to a 6-wk writing group in 2000, and even though people liked my stuff, I haven’t been able to write F/SF/H ever since. I’ve since then snuck back into writing through the back door of writing a couple of romance novels, but I’m so hyper critical of my own writing now that I can’t stop editing and let them go. I learned a lot, but it’s of dubious use if you’re paralyzed afterward.
Lol, re the doggie. And y’know, mrgawe, I entirely know where you’re coming from re the writing group, and it’s my strong suspicion those things are injurious as often as helpful. I’d suggest a few cures. Number one, figure if they were all that brilliant, they’d be Shakespeare—but I doubt any are. I wouldn’t rate MYSELF as right about a given manuscript problem, which is why I don’t give hard and fast answers. I tend to critique one fixable thing, say, ‘go fix that,’ and when they come back, I (I’m sure it drives people mad) point out the thing that fix has just made evident: “go fix that.” Half a dozen re-writes later, I can at least say if they’ve got the fortitude to keep rewriting, it’s a heckuva lot better or they’re not thinking enough.
I’d advise you sit down in a comfy spot, and think of a really self-indulgent story, something that’d only please YOU, and write it. Write it high and wide without even half trying, and do it with my favorite maxim, ‘write garbage, but edit brilliantly.’
What you’ve got to do is pry the hands of the Editor-mind from about the throat of your Creator-mind, and just let the Creator go have fun for a while. The Creator’s always brighter than the Editor, actually, just can’t be bothered to be perfect, logical, or sequential, or historically accurate, or any of the other shibboleths of the art these groups tend to worry about. The Editor is a purist and is nuts about forms and will look everything up: the Editor will have his moment. The Creator just wants to walk barefoot in the sand and feel the world through his feet.
Just have fun with it. YOu are NOT required to suffer FROM your art: it’s enough to suffer FOR it, in the sense of perservering through the computer glitches and such. Writing, for one thing, is NOT something that has to be published to be valid. Some of my stuff will NEVER see the light of day, for very good reasons. Some things are meant to be private; some things are meant to be published, and one is not the other, nor the other the one. Enjoy it like a sunset or a flower.
I have to say writing critiques are vastly different from art ones.
It’s taken a little time, but I’ve gotten my seas legs finally when it comes to the art of knowing what to do with them. My solution is simple genius, really. I take them all, put them in a box with the written piece and don’t look at any of it for at least four months.
By then, I’ve moved on to several different projects, having half forgotten what it was I wrote in the first place. When I look at them again, all at once–it’s a completely fresh read on everything. (Not advisable for those needing to pay their electric, but for those who have time–use it to your advantage.)
Sometimes I can catch what I couldn’t see initially all by myself. Sometimes I get really good suggestions I might have never thought of, but most importantly the really bad advice is easier to see.
If someone says they didn’t like it, or it made no sense, or they don’t read this kind of fiction—that should be the end of it right there–it’s going to be bad advice. Trying to shape your work to the whims of people who don’t care for it is only going to trick you into doing terrible violence.
It’s not so much that I think we should only favor reviews and critiques from those who like our work–but it is very important to know that the other person, upon whom you are depending on to give an accurate impression, understands what you are trying to say.
It’s more of partnership than is comfortable to think about–and yet there is nothing more precious in all the world than a critique partner who is also a devoted reader of your writing–someone very passionate for it.
Everybody in the whole wide world needs a lovely and faithful friend like your Jane Fancher. Someone who believes in that sometimes fragile talent, unafraid to remind the world and perhaps the author herself of just how great it is when difficulties arise.
Those people are out there, but you have to risk a little to find them. Be willing to share imperfect things, put up with uninformed, lousy critiques, sort through a pile of untested suitors never really knowing how long the relationship might last…
Perhaps it is just luck or maybe it’s just being lucky enough to see it when a good critique partner crosses your path–whichever it is–don’t let that person slip by unnoticed. You never know when you might have just met someone wonderfully irreplaceable.
Jane and I are lucky to have found each other, for sure—and what we have when we read and critique each other is something we know other writers have to envy. Our trust of each other’s opinion is not absolute, but I know when Jane says something isn’t clear, or she really wanted something else to happen—I listen.
Our method is simple: if we’re going on a long trip, the one who has a work ready to read, reads it, while the other drives. We find that driving occupies the over-working part of the brain and encourages blunt but honest comments. And it occupies the mind enough that if something isn’t clear, there’ll be a “Huh? Where did you set that up?” So we know, hmn, that wasn’t set up well enough to be caught by a reader. We’re technical with each other at need, but most times we just say, “huh.” And we laugh at all the right spots, or we know that the funny bit wasn’t good. Completely relaxed, completely honest.
Our other method is if we don’t have a trip handy, but need a critique, and that’s where the Creator sends the apparently finished work past the Other’s Editor—which is asking for it; but we don’t talk about it—it’s TALK that overworks something to the point it makes another writer crazy. What you have to see is what the Other Editor is moved to do, in print, and then how that will affect the rest of the story: can it be worked in? So yes, we take each other’s manuscripts and run them through our own computer, reading and editing, to the extent of wiping out bits and replacing them or just inserting a little paragraph.
The recipient then runs a Compare Versions and reads that, so you can see what the Editor did and figure if you like it or not. It’s rare that the changes get tossed. There’s no ego in it, because we trust each other to make a writerly judgment and do what’s good for the story. Occasionally we’ll just write WORD SALAD, meaning ‘it reads real purdy but it ain’t makin’ sense, friend.’
So every time you read one of mine, you’re reading some of Jane’s; and every time you read one of Jane’s, you’re reading some of my little notes. That’s just the way it is. We can write solo and hammer these things out the hard way, but a single writer is just as apt to correct a good thing in favor of one that doesn’t make sense—so before pounding our heads against the figurative brick wall and most important — BEFORE we start to pick nits with our own work—-we have another ‘take’ on it to assess. “Gee, you liked that bit?’ Big smile. Wasn’t sure about that bit, but now I’m happy. “Word salad? Makes sense to me. Oh. VERBS are good, thank you.”
WE have the absolutely ideal working relationship: equal skills, equal creator/editor skills, and we each love the other’s work, which is just that bit different from the way we think that we are constantly surprised. WE have fun at it, even when the Compare Versions comes back looking bloody. When that happens, I can almost tell you which of my several major faults is at fault, and I know that I’ll like what I see when I see it.
I read your post about the Chicago Style–what was it called, “Hey, what did you do to my language, man!”? I think I like your position. One thing I’ve noticed in your writing is that sometimes you use punctuation in ways none of my English teachers back in school ever told me I could do, but I understand what it expresses perfectly. It reads more like a script. Communication is more than rote rule following!
I have one bete-noir of my own, based on my career in computing and the proper “nesting” of constructs–unless I’m quoting something that had its own puctuation, which I then respect, I put punctuation outside the terminating quote mark. (Unless I’m writing something that’s going to be edited by someone else–because they care more about a silly rule than logic.)
Lol—as I told Jane back at the beginning, when she said she’d never ‘gotten’ all the rules of grammar, —heck, you speak well. Just write it down the way you hear it. ANYTHING can be punctuated.
I spent my college days reading languages (Latin and Greek) that existed before there WAS punctuation. They invented the period, but that was for what we call paragraph-end. And the Greeks at Gortyn on Crete wrote one line forward and the next line backward—letter by letter, not just the words in inverse order—with NO punctuation.
Now literacy is being hampered by an unanticipated problem: computer word processor designers and internet programmers who don’t know the rules either, and didn’t build them into either WP programs (Word Perfect STILL cannot cope with had had) or CSS. CSS can’t cope with m-dashes, where it throws a word too long for justification of a line, and it goes berserk over quote marks. So writers who know they’re working with CSS have to build a space in after the m-dash and install code to get directional quotes…just one of those things your friendly e-book producers do.
Punctuation is, however, a coping mechanism for the readers, just a set of turn-signals and traffic signs. It’s to make it easier, not harder. That’s why a writer has to make up his mind what he wants the reader to understand, and then put in the signposts to make that interpretation work. 😉
I’m all for going back and teaching grammar in school again, not to mention spelling. I always liked diagramming sentences, and we learned that when you have a sentence that involves 3 different things, you separate each of them with a comma. For example, “Andy, John, and I went to see a movie.” But the CSS doesn’t like that second comma between John & and. I had an argument with my Executive Officer about that, and he finally just said, “Chief, that’s the way it’s going to go out.” As much as I hated to do it, a lawful order is a lawful order. 😉
I also took Latin and Greek, although my Greek was a short-lived course, because there was only the beginning course – Greek 101. We studied koine first, beginning with the Gospel of John, and then Attic with Xenophon’s Anabasis. My Latin teachers always told us that the Romans did not use punctuation in sentences and that you had to understand the relationships between various words in the sentence. I can still remember Mr. Ratermann telling us, “Adjectives agree with the nouns or pronouns they modify in gender, number, and case.” That’s how we’d pick out the proper meanings. (I guess my paraphrasing of the first paragraph of Caesar’s ‘De Bello Gallico’ at ShejiCon3 made somewhat of an impression.)
The comma before ‘and’ in a list is known as a “serial” or “Oxford” comma and is quite legitimate!
😉 Andy, John and I went to see a movie………can be construed as telling Andy that the two of you went to see a movie. The common sense rule should override: if this is a military or diplomatic communication, or your grocery order, and it CAN possibly be misconstrued, stick in enough punctuation so it won’t be, eh? America, South Korea and China are now at war. Does an optional comma matter?
I think so.
And your memory is correct.
I’ve never been able to relate this story where anybody would “get it”.
Back in the fondly remembered days when I was in the UCLA Computer Club, it had various educational hand-out materials. One was on the formative computer language Algol, which began “Algol is divided into three parts.” 😉
“1. Structure of the language
As stated in the introduction, the algorithmic language has three different kinds of representations — reference, hardware, and publication — and the development described in the sequel is in terms of the language are represented by a given set of symbols — and it is only in the choice of symbols that the other two representations may differ. Structure and content must be the same for all representations.” — Revised Report on the Algorithmic Language Algol 60
Some people will go a long way for a suitable joke! 🙂
(For example, “The Boysenberry”. 😉 )
I thought both posts were funny. Thank you for sharing the humor, Paul.
BTW, today would be Julius Caesar’s birthday (as well as Bill Cosby & yours truly).
🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/69105_%28number%29
And as a cultural sidelight, Two of Three and Three of Three have now been caught and remanded to the Humane Society. The one we nabbed first was apparently the oldest, most vocal kitten, or maybe the final two were happier because they were in the box together; there was significantly less fussing en route.
Here’s hoping they all find happy homes.