Archive for the ‘From Pen to Print’ Category:
Phoenix Excerpt – Welcome to Southfield Fire Department
The morning had been blessedly quiet. Wanstall and West had taken Engine 5 out on a claim of actual fire, but it had turned out to be a neighbor’s backyard barbecue. At nine thirty in the morning. With alcohol. And a bottle of lighter fluid.
Mondy was almost to the Chief’s office when he got a straight view into the bay.
Bloomberg, who had been dutifully checking out the trucks and familiarizing himself with the equipment, now stood talking to a knockout redhead. She was smiling at him, her eyes glowing with admiration. Read more »
Phoenix – Intro and Chapter 1
Homeless Newspaper
You are likely having the same problem right now that I have most days when I drive into town. What does “homeless newspaper” mean?!?!? This title made it into a “Grammatical Crimes Squad” entry earlier, but has now earned its own spot . . . why? Because I don’t get it.
This all started when I saw a man on the side of the road hawking newspapers. This isn’t uncommon in big cities. If you aren’t familiar with the process, it goes like this: spend change to get paper from an old vendor box (you can grab as many as you want – it’s kind of honor-system based), and grab the whole pile. Then sell the papers for less than the standard price from a prime spot on the side of the road. Make profit!
Having been in LA for a while, this was what I expected in Nashville, too. But this man wore a nice apron with a clear section on the front, into which he had slipped a printed page that read:
Homeless Paper
The Contributor
$1.00
Just a Phrase . . .
There are so many phrases in the English language that foreigners claim it is one of the hardest to learn. Idioms abound. And phrasal verbs make things much more complicated – it’s very different to ‘hold on’, ‘hold out’ or ‘hold up’! So it gets even better when we add phrases that don’t make any sense at all.
Some are just idioms . . . like “It’s a piece of cake” – from the idea that a piece of cake is actually easy. Martha Stewart will tell you this is so. Martha lies.
Some are from analogies that may have made sense the first time . . . “cost an arm and a leg” or “beating a dead horse”. You probably didn’t flinch, but in reality both of those are disgusting!
Some have roots way far back . . .
I have sometimes read about someone referring to their “salad days”, and though I knew this referred to their youth, I wondered how this phrase came about. Was it about courses in a meal? Was my grandfather in his dessert days? Would I still be considered soup, or had I crossed the age into main course? Or the other possibility, that “salad days” actually was some sort of a lettuce reference . . .
Grammatical Crimes Squad – Spill Check
I texted my friend the other day that “I Java free time Thursday morning.” Java – with the capital J, of course – instead of ‘have’. This was okay though, because this was in response to his text to me that he would “put a pig together for me.” His second text clarified “that was supposed to be pkg” which made a lot more sense but was a lot less interesting.
We’ve all had issues with Spell Check in the past. All in all, it’s a reasonable program. It checks whether what you typed exists, and makes an effort to correct it if there’s a nearly-there actual word that Spell check knows.
However, there are two major problems with this: First, Spell Check makes no account for typos. It doesn’t look to see that you might not have actually thought that ‘abd’ was a word, but maybe your finger just slipped to the next nearest key.
Second, (maybe in an effort to be more efficient?) cell phone Spell Check has gotten seriously aggressive, often going so far as to see three letters and post the most common things you might have meant. So, though your ‘abd’ may have been an attempt at ‘and’ your cell Spell Check might be looking forward to ‘abdomen’ – because that’s a common thing to text!
Grammatical Crimes Squad: And I Quote!
It seems that quotes are a tricky thing. Or at least they are for a lot of people. Can we put a lock on the quotation mark key until folks prove they know how to use them? I mean, there’s the obvious someone-is-speaking need for those two funny apostrophes, but other than that, they are rarely used correctly.
Let’s review: Aside from direct wording of speech, there are two main uses for quotes. 1 – the need for a new term. Something was so great we made up a new term for it and we show it off with look-at-what-I-just-made-up marks. 2 – sarcasm. We mean the opposite. If we say: antibiotics are “miracle” drugs, then we expect to read about resistant bacteria and pharmacological company greed. The quotes tell us that.
Instead, the marks are used willy nilly like we never had any idea what to do with them. No, your store doesn’t have “CDs” . . . you didn’t make that term up! And it’s not sarcastic, because you have actual CDs in there. (Don’t get me started on the apostrophe often put into CDs – as though the CD owned something.)
It’s so bad that correct use of quotation marks doesn’t get the attention it deserves either. We received a notice in the mail that our kids’ school system was offering a way to pay lunch money online for a “nominal” fee. I didn’t even notice the quotes! It never occurred to me that they would be used correctly! But it was right! When I called, the school officials were shocked that the charge-per-use was so high. But the letter was right, it was “nominal” (see ‘sarcasm’ above.)
Grammatical Crimes Squad: The Err of My Ways
There are two things people should know before they get involved in any project with me. 1 – I like to buck the system. Just because I can. If you want it done, just tell me it will never work. 2 – If there’s a weird way to do something, that’s how I’ll do it.
This is how I came to type the way I do. When I was in junior high, I didn’t really see the need for typing class. How fast could you really write code anyway? (I know now, stupid question.) I was told that I couldn’t look at the keys, I would never get fast enough to make the minimum times. That there was no way to memorize enough to be fast enough.
If you were paying attention just a moment ago, then you know where this is going. I did it. I memorized entire paragraphs verbatim, then looked at my fingers while typing. I passed my test, and my happiness at this success lasted until I actually had to type something. (I do also realize that this is a total waste of a really cool skill.)
I later learned as a writer that I could at least get into a groove where my subconscious could take over. But this really pissed me off. Clearly my subconscious could type, why couldn’t I? When I put all the pieces together, I realized that even my subconscious can’t type. I merely had motor patterns for various common words or phrases. If something was uncommon, I was back to looking at the keys.
Interview with AJ: A Book and a Chat
Check out my radio interview on A Book and a Chat here: Read more »
Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS
Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!
Back Story interview
Check out my radio interview on Back Story: Read more »
Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS
Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!
Endgame
Different writers work different ways. I know, that’s not really news to anyone. One of my favorite quotes about writing (and I’m sure I’ve mangled it a bit) is the following: ‘I write it once to get the idea down, I write it again to make sure it says what I meant for it to say, I write it a third time to make it sound brilliant, then I go back a fourth time to make it sound like I just wrote it that way the first time.’ Sadly, I have no idea who to attribute that to. (If you know, let me know!)
I love that quote partly because it is so different from my method. Some writers are fast and some are slow, there’s the wordy and the terse, the action driven and the thoughtful character oriented. Some writers are disciplined, some just write when the spirit moves them. I was of the latter and am moving more toward the former. But then there are those times when I am a bit of both.
Those times hit when the end of the story approaches. I don’t map every little detail of the story when I start. I often don’t map anything at all – even for a novel. But as I approach the end, I see exactly how all the little pieces fit together – all the ties to the little loose ends and how to tuck them in so it isn’t too obvious. And that’s when the fever strikes.
That’s when I write furiously. The trash doesn’t go out. I don’t eat much, and my family realizes that I’m not really there. If they ask me a question they get waved away with muttered phrases about ‘killing this guy’ or ‘ending the world’. There’s actually a three-way sign on my office door that I can change to indicate whether I’ll answer questions. They are color coded, green, yellow and red, and the red states that there had better be a fire or a lot of blood before you even knock.
