Trusting My Own Opinion

I've been taking an online course given by Margie Lawson called Deep Editing and Rhetorical Devices. It came highly recommended by a couple of my writing friends. It's definitely giving me more and better tools for my journey toward publication of my novel, A Different Song.

This is my second online class, and since I've really just started rolling with this one, I'm getting a good process going. I'll work on a class lecture, do the homework assignment related to the new tip, trick or tool, and then go back to the spot where I left off editing my novel. I'll read the next chapter, then go back and edit using what I've learned in the class up until then. It definitely is working for me, and I'm learning to trust my own opinion more. I also have an edits partner. We mail homework assignments back and forth, and our comments hopefully help each other keep things tight and on track.

Today I was reading one of my chapters. I call it Facing the Fire. It was my first read-through in a while. Sitting at the computer, I was unaware when John walked into the room and stood next to my chair. I didn't see him as I continued reading. I didn't see him as tears rolled down my cheeks. I didn't see him as emotional despair swept me away from home and computer, lying half broken beside the injured bodies of two beautiful people who wanted only to die.

"Is it that bad?" John asked, tearing me out of my story world.

I didn't see him for long, as I reached down and grabbed for the electric flyswatter I keep by my chair.

Recommending Another Blog

Have I ever recommended someone else's blog? I don't think I have, and perhaps that's a mistake. I read several that are very good. I'm going to highlight two this week that are particularly wonderful for people who love to read. Sounds like me. I'll begin with the one I found first, and let you enjoy that for a couple of days before pointing you toward the next one. They're very different, and each has its own strong points.

Thoughts in Progress is a reader's blog I should have mentioned months ago. Mason Canyon is the blogger's pen name, and while she's giving writing tips and holding great contests and give-aways on books and audio books, she's also hosting guest authors. They talk about their latest books, writing methods, inspirations and more. It's a very inventive way to learn about what's happening in a broad spectrum of the publishing world.

I realized a long time ago that no one was going to just let me read all day, and that even if it were possible, there are simply too many great authors for me to be up to date on all the really worthy ones. My tastes are too eclectic to keep up with all the genre fiction I love as well as all the great literature that is being written in so many styles. Besides, if all I did was read, when would I write?

Give Mason's blog some time. Enter her contests. I've won books or audio books twice now, so I know it can be done. It's really exciting, too, to get that email in your inbox telling you your name was drawn. I'll admit, though, that even if I was never one of the book winners, this is still a site I would go to regularly to see who is writing what that I might want to put on my reading wish list.

Olympic Dreams Can Be Sad

Even as a child I loved watching the Olympics. Back then it was every four years, and we'd get it during the summer and then the winter of the same year. Now, of course, we get one or the other every other year. It might be better like that. For the viewers it probably is, but I'm not sure how the athletes feel. I've never asked them.

One thing is very different. There are more human interest stories now than there used to be. Back then we saw the sports and that was pretty much it. It was what we expected, and what we got. Now there's an awful lot of filler. (There are also a lot of DVRs recording and skipping through a lot of that filler...) Anyway, tonight they did a piece on the coach for the Chinese Ice Skating Pairs team. Twenty years ago they entered their first competition and people laughed because they were so bad. Now they're champions.

Obviously, I don't think anyone should be laughed at for doing their best. Where were those Olympics held? That's what they should have told us in that little fluff piece, but they didn't. They made the coach sound like a hero for being away from his family for the better part of two decades to train the athletes into the champions they are. His son is named the Chinese equivalent of "Far Away." Is that supposed to be a heroic thing?

These athletes are "picked out as children," taken away from their families while they're tiny and taken to live together in a sports facility with the coach. They live in dormitories, eat in cafeterias, and see their families only on rare and special occasions so that they might obtain this gold medal for their country's honor.

It made me sad. This isn't a heroic thing to me. Families living and loving together, driving to practice and having macaroni and cheese instead of something more expensive to save money so they can pay for lessons—that's heroic. And if you get a bronze or a silver, or even just tenth place and know you've done it with the support of family and friends, not the power of a big nation? That's heroic in my mind. And many of them do get the gold. Different priorities.

I would think the personal feelings of success have to resonate on a different level.

It's The Little Things: Mr. Coffee Café Frappe

There are few special treats my husband appreciates more than a good blended mocha. In one of the after-Christmas sales I had ordered him a Mr. Coffee Café Frappe machine to make icy blended coffee drinks at home. Since I've not been feeling well, between the broken rib and the chest cold, I just stuck the box out of sight until I mended a bit.

Tonight was the big night. I made a cheeseburger pie, and once that was in the oven, used our phone's intercom feature to warn John to stay in his HAM room until dinner was ready so he wouldn't ruin "a surprise." Then I dragged out the box and set up the machine. Once I had everything cleaned, set up and figured out, I was nearly able to grind a drink without the machine, I got so angry.

These machines cost $79 retail. Once you open it up, you finally realize that you need to go buy a small size package of coffee filters before you can use it. You'd think they'd at least give you a few to start with. So there I was, with a meat pie ten minutes from the table, and my surprise a very unpleasant, "Well, you can look at how nice it fits on the counter, but I can't make you a drink until we go buy filters."

Really, Sunbeam Products (DBA Jarden Consumer Solutions), don't you think that an eighty dollar product should include everything the customer needs to have a good 'out of the box experience'? Especially if it's just a few filters that you could have packed in there for maybe three pennies? I noticed that at Amazon I could get 12 packages of filters, 200 filters per package, for $18.28 with no shipping and handling. That would mean I could have sent ten to each customer for seven cents. I'll bet a big corporation could get an even better price ratio.

Customers like to feel that they've been treated well. I will probably end up loving this machine and using it pretty close to daily, especially in the Summer. I won't, however, forget that the company didn't care if I had a hassle getting to use it when I first opened it. When it eventually breaks, I'll look for another brand.

What did John say? The cheeseburger pie was really good...

Forward This to 10 Friends in 15 Minutes...

My inbox fills with email, and I check it frequently throughout the day when we're home. I love it, but will admit to a few things that really make me nuts. Since we all have things that tend to push our buttons, I finally feel the need to push back a bit.

The first thing I don't want to see when I open an email is that I'm one of forty addressees, and all their email addresses are there with mine for everyone to see. I don't usually know the rest of the people, and It's been forwarded several times. By now there are two hundred email addresses at my fingertips. If I were an unscrupulous person, I could probably think of many things to do with this new database of contacts. It also means I need to scroll way down before I get to the actual message.

It only takes a moment or two to copy and paste into a new email to be sent, and your list of addressees can be placed in the BCC box. That means blind carbon copy, which might only make sense to us older folks, but it means that nobody sees who you sent it to (or their addresses) except the sender. It also means the person opening the email gets a nice clean copy.

My second hot button is getting really great stories that aren't true. Hasn't anybody ever heard of snopes.com? Whether it's an inspirational story, a political rumor or a letter supposedly written by a famous person, please check its validity on someplace like Snopes before passing it along to hundreds of your friends. If you send me an unverified story, believe me when I say that I will check it out and do a "reply to all" (since you didn't do a BCC, I can let your entire email list for this mailing know at once) to inform them if it is a fake.

My final and biggest pet peeve, causing more frustration with email than anything else I deal with, is that little sentence near the bottom of so many emails. It cheerfully tells me to forward this email to a certain number of friends within a certain number of minutes. It implies that if I don't, I'm either not a patriot, not a Christian, not interested in supporting our troops or beating breast cancer. Or it will promise me treats, rewards or blessings as soon as I do forward it to so many in a certain amount of time.

If you send me something that says that, it won't ever be forwarded on, no matter how otherwise impressive it might be, unless I can remove that entire statement. And I rarely send anything to more than three people. I don't have "group lists," and if you receive something forwarded from me, you'll no doubt understand that when I read it, it made me think of you—either your sense of humor, your political leanings, or something you as an individual might need to hear.

I treasure the email friends I have, the blogs I read, and the connections we are able to maintain across so many miles. Email and the internet give us so much. I'm just begging for a bit of responsible mailing practices. Now, if you will just forward this to everyone on your contact list within fifteen minutes, next Tuesday you will receive...

News That Makes Me Tired

I seriously considered posting this with just the title. There's a sarcastic little voice inside myself that's saying things like, "Wow, it's a good thing nothing else happened in the world today besides Michael Jackson dying, because according to the news, that's all that's going on."

A comment on Facebook proclaimed how sad it was that "God could take such a great man." (What?) Brother...

I'm going to make this short and to the point. God will know what to do with each of us as we cross that line. I'm not sure what He'll do with me, so who am I to judge another? I'll admit to being human and finding it very hard to keep from jumping to conclusions. Whether he was saint or sinner, I wouldn't have taken a chance on putting any little boys I loved around him. Like most people, he probably had much good keeping company with his shortcomings.

I loved some of his music. He could certainly dance at one time. The theatrics I could live without. But face it—he wasn't Princess Diana or John F. Kennedy. I don't believe an entire day of news coverage was warranted.