And not because it's -30 degrees outside.
What an eventful reading week. I've been meaning to post something for days now, but either skiing or censors have stopped me from doing so. The place I play badminton and go bowling does not like Blogger...or DeviantArt...or Freewebs. So I'm limited to other sites I'm sure they would block if they only knew about them. Let's just say I probably shouldn't be reading Scandinavia and the World comics when there are mothers with their four-year-olds sitting behind me.
EXHIBIT A: Ten pages worth of writing in the past two days
That...doesn't seem like much, but it's pretty good for me. My story on bowling has been going well, and has been fun to write. I have to be careful with the style and content though. Style because it's mimicking another author a little too close. Content because I want to avoid being too technical and I need to have some sort of "point" to it.
EXHIBIT B: WMRR exceeding 100 pages
Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have surpassed the 100 page mark. Well, technically I'm at 104 pages, but 3 of those pages are more or less blank. They have notes on them and that's about it. Dan's little bit has turned out to be longer than I anticipated, but I'm loving it. I might need to rewrite the freerunning bit. It's a little...lacking. Also Chapter 10 so far needs a lot of revision. I made the mistake of reading it again, and the writing is weak. Oops.
EXHIBIT C: An article everyone should read
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
Given to my fiction writing class by our prof to read over our break. It makes a lot of good points and I agree with most of it. A good way to make your writing better. Also I will point out that there are a few mistakes in the piece, but I think that's caused by it's reproduction on the web. At least I hope so. I'd laugh hysterically otherwise.
EXHIBIT D: A video everyone should watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UouP8cRYZ8
Because I'm beginning to hate Facebook. A lot. Mostly because I realized that I would have no idea when, where and if people were planning events, social gatherings or sports teams otherwise. Essentially I'm counting on Facebook to have a social life. Permission to shoot me granted.
This is also a little loaded coming from me since I get half my viewers from links on my Facebook. Creepy.
EXHIBIT E: Editing success?
What is this "suck-cess" word and where did it come from. I have actually received requests from people to edit their work. AND GET PAID. Oh lordy. I may or may not be a little insane with my edits though, so I think I need to tone it down a bit. Just a bit. At any rate, I have a big job coming up. Yay.
------
ARGH MY ANKLES. I MEAN LEGS. I MEAN CALVES. I MEAN MID-CALVES. Seriously I've been having problems defining the injured body part after the French medic told me multiple times that the pulled muscles were NOT IN MY ANKLES. Then he insisted on checking my arms, neck and upper legs for injuries before asking me if I remember what happened and if I hit my head. I realize it could be standard procedure, but I don't understand why since it was only my legs that were messed up and he didn't bother asking what happened. Regardless, it hurts like hell. I still skied with injured legs for three hours after, but it hurts.
And apparently peanuts do not make bombs.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Down to Business
Editing business that is. So far so good is my report. I've only edited three papers (two people), but a lot of people seem to have taken the tags on my posters. And posted other stuff over them...but that happens at the uni. Which reminds me of a genius advertising scheme, but I'll get to that in a moment.
I'm convinced that I'm a terrifying editor. I get a little nuts about the edits at times. I was supposed to edit another paper of someone's, but after I gave them the first edit I never heard from them again. In my defence, I received the paper late Sunday night when it was due on Monday. I didn't have time to do the type of content edit I would have liked and ended up skimping a little on the comments. I was up all night preparing for presentations and document analyses, so I was a grouchy bitch all day. A lot of the time when I'm tired I look extremely sick. I might have frightened my poor customer off.
So back to the advertising. Some sort of poetry event is going down at the university (I'm not sure what that's about, but let me explain) and to promote it the people organizing it have torn down other people's posters, turned them and wrote the name of the event on them. The event is entitled: Deface. It's offensive and awkward, but at the same time enticing. That and it's a great way to get attention. It's either arrogance or brilliance...probably both.
All in all, not a bad week despite my exhaustion. I even got a small bonus on my last edits. Either he thought I did a good job or was grateful for doing the one so late, but it certainly made my day.
I've actually been working hard on WMRR over the past few weeks whenever I've had time. I have my fourth short story to complete, which has been fun to write so far. It's about bowling. Bowling can be surprisingly sexual. I was shocked. As for WMRR, my order of writing is a mess. I am essentially writing four chapters at once (chapter 10, 11, 12, Dan's Interlude). Let me just say that Dan's part has been going exceptionally well. I have the first portion and part of the middle done (middle is hand-written on paper in my notebook). I still need to add a lot of details concerning free-running. I'm still working out how to write 10 and 11 (half done 10...it's a short one, and I'm only done about five sentences in 11). I haven't started 12 yet, but it's going to be quite different, told from the perspective of a character I haven't introduced yet. It's going to be a fun one, especially when I introduce his status and how he fights. OHHHHH THIS IS FUN. Insert excessive amounts of smiling faces here.
Also, my spelling is getting better. I made it through this entire post without my spell-check underlining anything. Go me.
I'm convinced that I'm a terrifying editor. I get a little nuts about the edits at times. I was supposed to edit another paper of someone's, but after I gave them the first edit I never heard from them again. In my defence, I received the paper late Sunday night when it was due on Monday. I didn't have time to do the type of content edit I would have liked and ended up skimping a little on the comments. I was up all night preparing for presentations and document analyses, so I was a grouchy bitch all day. A lot of the time when I'm tired I look extremely sick. I might have frightened my poor customer off.
So back to the advertising. Some sort of poetry event is going down at the university (I'm not sure what that's about, but let me explain) and to promote it the people organizing it have torn down other people's posters, turned them and wrote the name of the event on them. The event is entitled: Deface. It's offensive and awkward, but at the same time enticing. That and it's a great way to get attention. It's either arrogance or brilliance...probably both.
All in all, not a bad week despite my exhaustion. I even got a small bonus on my last edits. Either he thought I did a good job or was grateful for doing the one so late, but it certainly made my day.
I've actually been working hard on WMRR over the past few weeks whenever I've had time. I have my fourth short story to complete, which has been fun to write so far. It's about bowling. Bowling can be surprisingly sexual. I was shocked. As for WMRR, my order of writing is a mess. I am essentially writing four chapters at once (chapter 10, 11, 12, Dan's Interlude). Let me just say that Dan's part has been going exceptionally well. I have the first portion and part of the middle done (middle is hand-written on paper in my notebook). I still need to add a lot of details concerning free-running. I'm still working out how to write 10 and 11 (half done 10...it's a short one, and I'm only done about five sentences in 11). I haven't started 12 yet, but it's going to be quite different, told from the perspective of a character I haven't introduced yet. It's going to be a fun one, especially when I introduce his status and how he fights. OHHHHH THIS IS FUN. Insert excessive amounts of smiling faces here.
Also, my spelling is getting better. I made it through this entire post without my spell-check underlining anything. Go me.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
EDIT RAGE
I'm reading "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon for my Writer's and Comics class this term. Let me just say this right now. Mr. Chabon, you better hide your thesaurus. I will find it, and I will burn it.
I haven't been so torn about opinion on a book in a long time. Usually I can say, yes, this book is horrible in plot, but has magnificent writing. Or perhaps I can say that the concept and ideas are fantastic, but the writing is complete trash unworthy of the dirtiest landfill. This book? My God I can't make up my mind. I almost put the book down after the opening sentence. It was horrible. I haven't read a first sentence in a book as bad as this in ages. It made me want to cry. Then about halfway through the first paragraph I found "...he would learnedly expound." Why. Why did you have to say "learnedly expound"? It's awful. Then he shocked me with his descriptions. I haven't encountered anything like them. So strange, and yet...most of them work. I revelled in the beauty of the "flatulent poison-green ribbon"(6), and was in awe of "to bend and crimp the armature of a sturdy and elegant plan"(16) (though I had to use a dictionary to decide what the exact definitions of the words were to understand what the hell he was talking about...and I still don't really know). His way with words is amazing.
And frustrating. I have to keep a dictionary on hand while reading this work. It's not like I don't understand the words a lot of the time, it's just he uses precise definitions to glean meaning out of the words used. It's infuriating. I swear, he took a simple word, flipped to it in a thesaurus and stuck in something elegant in order to sound smart and profound. It makes me want to destroy the nearest object to me. Take for example, the most ridiculous line I have seen in a book for years: "But in his imaginings, Sammy found that, for the first time in years, he was able to avail himself of the help of a confederate." My God every time I read it I feel like I've killed a puppy, and I didn't even write it. Seriously, there are commas and stops in places that there shouldn't be, the sentence starts with "but", and it's long and broken. Oh, but we're just avoiding the elephant in the room here. Because, while all the points mentioned above are used effectively in writing, there's one detail that can't be forgiven.
"...avail himself of the help of a confederate."
What. The. Hell.
I am sorry, but there's a whole list of words that could have been used that would have made this sentence sound all right. Be passable. No, we don't do that here. It took me about five reads to understand what this meant. I was ripped out of the narrative to go to the dictionary, look up all the exact definitions of "avail" and "confederate", not because I don't know what they mean, but because I needed EXACT dictionary definitions to be able to decipher the meaning. For those of you at home, it essentially means that he could "see himself making use of an alliance." In context, Kavalier and Clay are in bed (it sounds worse than it actually is you pervs) discussing Kavalier's arrival in America and his ambitions. So Clay began to think of partnering with Kavalier to make comics. Why did we need to confuse everyone? This makes no sense.
Aside from my rage, the book is pretty captivating in story. When I'm not being dragged out by my pinkie toe into the cold by horrible sentences and stupid words, I actually enjoy the narrative. I recommend the book to anyone, but the editor in me is about one horrible sentence away from finding Mr. Chabon and using his thesaurus to beat some literary sense into him.
I don't care that he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Sorry if I sound like a pretentious dick, I just had to get this rant out. That sentence...God...
Also, for another interesting and annoying point concerning the term "Caterpillar Scheme" in the novel, visit:
http://paulmichaelmurphy.blogspot.com/2010/11/lesson-from-michael-chabon.html
Because I completely agree
I haven't been so torn about opinion on a book in a long time. Usually I can say, yes, this book is horrible in plot, but has magnificent writing. Or perhaps I can say that the concept and ideas are fantastic, but the writing is complete trash unworthy of the dirtiest landfill. This book? My God I can't make up my mind. I almost put the book down after the opening sentence. It was horrible. I haven't read a first sentence in a book as bad as this in ages. It made me want to cry. Then about halfway through the first paragraph I found "...he would learnedly expound." Why. Why did you have to say "learnedly expound"? It's awful. Then he shocked me with his descriptions. I haven't encountered anything like them. So strange, and yet...most of them work. I revelled in the beauty of the "flatulent poison-green ribbon"(6), and was in awe of "to bend and crimp the armature of a sturdy and elegant plan"(16) (though I had to use a dictionary to decide what the exact definitions of the words were to understand what the hell he was talking about...and I still don't really know). His way with words is amazing.
And frustrating. I have to keep a dictionary on hand while reading this work. It's not like I don't understand the words a lot of the time, it's just he uses precise definitions to glean meaning out of the words used. It's infuriating. I swear, he took a simple word, flipped to it in a thesaurus and stuck in something elegant in order to sound smart and profound. It makes me want to destroy the nearest object to me. Take for example, the most ridiculous line I have seen in a book for years: "But in his imaginings, Sammy found that, for the first time in years, he was able to avail himself of the help of a confederate." My God every time I read it I feel like I've killed a puppy, and I didn't even write it. Seriously, there are commas and stops in places that there shouldn't be, the sentence starts with "but", and it's long and broken. Oh, but we're just avoiding the elephant in the room here. Because, while all the points mentioned above are used effectively in writing, there's one detail that can't be forgiven.
"...avail himself of the help of a confederate."
What. The. Hell.
I am sorry, but there's a whole list of words that could have been used that would have made this sentence sound all right. Be passable. No, we don't do that here. It took me about five reads to understand what this meant. I was ripped out of the narrative to go to the dictionary, look up all the exact definitions of "avail" and "confederate", not because I don't know what they mean, but because I needed EXACT dictionary definitions to be able to decipher the meaning. For those of you at home, it essentially means that he could "see himself making use of an alliance." In context, Kavalier and Clay are in bed (it sounds worse than it actually is you pervs) discussing Kavalier's arrival in America and his ambitions. So Clay began to think of partnering with Kavalier to make comics. Why did we need to confuse everyone? This makes no sense.
Aside from my rage, the book is pretty captivating in story. When I'm not being dragged out by my pinkie toe into the cold by horrible sentences and stupid words, I actually enjoy the narrative. I recommend the book to anyone, but the editor in me is about one horrible sentence away from finding Mr. Chabon and using his thesaurus to beat some literary sense into him.
I don't care that he won the Pulitzer Prize.
Sorry if I sound like a pretentious dick, I just had to get this rant out. That sentence...God...
Also, for another interesting and annoying point concerning the term "Caterpillar Scheme" in the novel, visit:
http://paulmichaelmurphy.blogspot.com/2010/11/lesson-from-michael-chabon.html
Because I completely agree
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