Category Archives: Writing

Editorials and Litigious Leisure

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I was once almost sued because of something I wrote. The crappy part is I didn’t learn about it until the case was dropped which means I can’t claim I was a persecuted writer.

Several hundred years ago when I was at Kansas State, for reasons I don’t remember (money) I applied to be a columnist for the Kansas State Collegian and, surprisingly, was accepted.

By luck I landed the prime spot on Monday. This allowed me to pay attention to events during the week and then write about it on Friday for publication on Monday.

Being a columnist was kind of odd. We were simultaneously part of and outside the news staff. We were more like specialists who dragged ourselves in once a week to write on whatever topic struck our fancy and then fled before the police could arrive. (Something like that.)

Being a columnist also had two odd effects on my life. First, people I didn’t know would say “Hey, Dwayne” and start talking to me as if they knew me (as my mental Rolodex flipped cards and tried to match a name to the face). People also felt it was okay to casually snipe at one of my columns if they didn’t like the cut of my political jib.

The other odd effect was the lawsuit. Sort of. Every now and then I couldn’t come up with a single coherent topic and I would instead resort to random aphorisms, observations and questions. For example, I’d write something like “Do athletes actually graduate from the University of Oklahoma or are they just transferred to maximum security?” and then move on to a new topic.

In once such column I went after an easy target, the Department of Leisure Studies. I wrote something like “What is Leisure Studies? What do Leisure Studies’ majors study? Do they get more credit for going to class or for staying home?” It was an obvious joke and I probably could have thought of something better, but I wrote it and forgot about it.

A few months later I was in the newsroom writing a column when all of a sudden the editor casually said something along the lines of  “I forgot to tell you Leisure Studies was going to sue you.” I paused for a minute and then I and the devils over my shoulders all went “WHAT?” at the same time. She explained that someone in the department had felt I’d defamed the program and they were going to sue me for slander, libel or being a jerk.

She also said the newspaper legal people explained how the lawsuit was a bad idea and Leisure Studies dropped it.

I was young enough that I thought a law suit would have given me a certain amount of credibility. Almost getting sued wasn’t as impressive, especially as I didn’t know it until it was too late to be impressed.

I had the last laugh though. Leisure Studies would eventually change its name to the Department of Kinesiology, which is much more intimidating. I’ve always taken credit for forcing that change.

Slogging Into Oblivion and the Unreadable Mess

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Despite my best efforts, I managed to eke out 50,399 words to “win” National Novel Writing Month. I’m not sure it was a good idea.

Part of the problem, as I’ve mentioned before, is that NaNoWriMo requires a level of seat-of-the-pants writing that, after a point, becomes useless. Now, part of this was my fault, as I chose to continue writing a work in progress. which meant I was doing pure free-writing on something that had been planned.

You can see a clear demarcation in the book between “gave thought to this” and “Run, Forrest, Run!”

I suspect that if I had just sat down and started writing from scratch, the process would have been easier, albeit a lot less coherent. (Not that it’s very coherent now.)

I ended up with repeated passages, lots of under-description, lots of over-description and the entire last third of the whatever-you-call-that mess is random quotes, random scenes and bits of dialogue. I included back story that was unlikely to make it into the final draft. I also included notes about scenes I needed and things I needed to remember. “Protagonist (not his real name) would try to figure out X’s location the week before her death.” This seems like basic stuff, but it took me 30 days and 50,000 words words to realize it.

November is also, even for us in Japan, is not a good month to attempt something like this. I’ve got school functions for the girls, karate tests, final school projects to mark and have to make two final exams. In the USA you’ve got Thanksgiving and Black Friday. It’s almost as if the creators of NaNoWriMo wanted you to prove you are a writer by forcing you to write in the worst conditions possible. (Next year’s NaNoWriMo: NaNoWriMo on icy spikes). It’s all got the feeling of a double-dog dare followed by “You wanna be cool, dontcha? Well, dontcha?”

I did find that I had better luck writing sections by hand then entering them into the main file later in the day. (Of course, my handwriting was an issue but only a small one.)

If I do it again next year I’ll do one of two things. 1) I’ll start 100% from scratch and see what happens. Twice now I’ve tried to complete works in progress and had mixed results. (Last year I stopped after three days and 3500 or so words). 2) I’ll do the 30 days in October and post the results in November.

Oh, I also won’t have a daily blog to worry about (maybe just a twice or three times a week blog).

 

And The Pain Was Brought

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Two days ago I wrote something so crappy it almost made me kill a project.

As I’ve written before, because I don’t have enough to do and am a total moron, I decided to try National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) on top of this blog and my job. The results have been mixed.

First, it’s clear that in it’s current state, the “novel” may not make it to 50,000 words which means it doesn’t count as a novel. This is partly because the nature of NaNoWriMo seems to make you either over-write or under-write in order to meet the quota.

Second, in order to meet the word quota, I’ve been tolerating stuff that I know will eventually have to be cut. I’ve gone back and rewritten a few scenes to flesh them out but that’s caused other passages to be out of place and, in the case of a couple scenes, irrelevant. However, if I cut them out, I have to do that much more work to replace them.

Third, I am, on occasion, capable of producing scenes that are nothing but crap. I wrote three pages of one scene before stopping myself and going “really, DL, really?” I had to stop writing and think a lot more about the project. The next day, though, I rewrote the scene before the crap and wrote a scene after the crap that, mercifully, made the crap scene unnecessary. In fact, the scene has the unique pleasure of being both unfinished and useless. However, I’ve left it in at this point to keep the word count buffed up.

Thus far, for me, the most useful parts of NaNoWriMo have been 1) the discipline of making a regular time to write; 2) using free time to write instead of waste time; and 3) as a source of at least two blog posts, with at least one more to come.

I’ve missed the quota three times, including today and am now a couple hundred words behind “par”. Luckily the weekend in approaching and I can catch up.

However, the novel’s still on track to be too short, which means I need to sit down and re-rethink it. Which, unfortunately, doesn’t count toward the word quota.

International Bring the Pain Month

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This month, because I don’t have enough to do, I’ve decided to write a novel. I only have 30 days.

This month, for the uninitiated is National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo). The goal is to produce at least 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. This is not to be confused with Movember, where men get paid to grow mustaches for charity or the 3-Day Novel Contest where the goal is for masochists to produce a 100 page novel in 72 hours. (This is the equivalent of “Black Friday” for the caffeinated beverages/energy drinks industry.)

This means I have to write at least 1,667 words a day until November 30th.

Now, if you’re keeping score:
1) I have a day job and winter, er, exams are coming;
2) I’ve committed to write at least 300 words a day on this blog;
3) I occasionally am expected to speak with the members of my family;
4) I’m now writing about 6-7 typed pages of text a day.

The good thing about the challenge (which given the international participation should be called IntNoWriMo) is that it requires the participants to write without thinking–I recognize that look so shut up–and learn to use free time to meet the daily quota. The idea is that the rapid pace required shuts down all internal editors (ha, as if) and the participants just generate words.

In my case I’m what’s known as a NaNoWriMo rebel. I’m finishing a project rather than starting a new one. I still have to produce 50,000 words to “win” and I’m only allowed to submit the words written in November. This was something only recently allowed as the true spirit of the event is to start from scratch and produce 50,000 words. I’ve heard of writers who finished one project and then started another and somehow got to 50,000 words. (To give you a sense of the size of this project, my current novel is at 17,227 words–7,925 written in the last four days–and is 80 pages long.)

After everyone is finished, there used to be a follow up event called National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo) but it appears to be on temporary hiatus.

Wish me luck. I already feel the madness setting in…

The Guardians of Quietness and Random Denialy Things

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The girls are away welcoming Mother of She Who Must Be Obeyed back from the hospital, which means I’ve got until tomorrow to trash and clean the apartment.

it is hard to explain but there is a difference between having time to yourself during the day knowing someone will eventually come home and knowing that you’re completely on your own. Since I’m already feeling the grind from being back to work after summer, I decided to pretty much waste as much time as humanly possible today.

This time wasting involved going to see Guardians of The Galaxy which, given that there were only seven of us in the theater on a Saturday is unlikely to be extended a few extra days. It also didn’t bode well that I was the only one laughing. I enjoyed the movie a lot even when I was going “Golden net? Really’? Haven’t these space people heard of cruise missiles? You’ve got a green woman, a former Doctor Who companion, a humanoid plant and a talking raccoon but you don’t have Tomahawks or even a couple handy MOABs to drop? What do you people think this is? A movie?

I also had a chance to play with the new iPhones. I like the iPhone 6 as it’s about the same size as my current phone. The iPhone 6 Plus would work a lot better if Apple abandoned the big round button. I have large hands and had to do hand yoga to turn off an app. It’s also way to big to be used as a phone. You might as well get one of those old Gordon Gekko models. It at least would look retro, instead of “I’m sticking a plate on my face”.

Basically, I spent the day not working on a big writing project (novel number three) which has been roughly outlined and world built over the past couple weeks and only needs for me to put butt in chair and start typing. Even Kimberly is getting impatient waiting for me to start.

First, though, I’m serving as judge at another Junior Karate Tournament tomorrow. That will give me a heck of an excuse not to work on the book. Then the girls are coming back.

Half Done is, Well, Begun

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Today marks blog post 183, which means by the end of it I’ll be over half done with this daily project. 183 down; 182 to go. I’ve tried to write at least 400 or so words each time (more or less) which means I’ve already got at least 72,800 words on this blog (some of which actually make sense and are spelled correctly.)

I remain shocked that I’ve been able to keep up with it. For the last few weeks it’s been a particular chore. A bunch of posts were written, quite literally, in front of the in-laws, who didn’t seem to understand why I was swearing at myself and telling them to shut up so I could concentrate. (At least one of those statements is not true.)

My rules remain the same: Post before midnight Japan time (10 a.m. Kansas time) and spend no more than one hour writing the post. Unfortunately, life and life related things–and computer games–generally have pushed back my start time until after 10:00 each night, which is not always the best time to write, especially if it’s been a hectic day. I also don’t always have a clear topic.

One time I was playing World of Tanks about 10:00 at night and, via TeamSpeak, one of my friends asked me what the topic of the day was. I said I didn’t know yet. I’m not sure he realized I was serious.

I’ve opened up the “Add New Post” form at 11:15 at night still not knowing what topic I wanted to write about. Quarter by Quarter Dollar By Dollar and The Politics of Work Sustaining Energy Shots came out of nowhere. Others went nowhere. Some were just strange although I kind of liked them. I still don’t know where The Application is Half the Battle came from.

Some of them have been pleasant surprises. I’m especially happy with the recent No Good Idea Goes Unpunished and Let’s Have a Drink and a Chunk of Your Wallet which also came out of nowhere. (If you have any favorites, please tell me which ones they are as my goal is to assemble the best posts into a book when this year is done.)

I, too, have been shocked at the large number of drunk blogs.

I have about a third of a small notebook full of possible topics, but I’ve been holding off on those. Some of them are seasonal and some are for the dark places when all other lights go out.

I’ve also been holding off doing other kinds of posts on the site–photography, hobbies, reviews, random bits of randomness–mostly so I don’t mess up the nice and neat post count. However, the long term plan for this site is to start doing things like that.

I’ve made feeble attempts at monetization. I have PayPal donation button and, at the suggestion of a friend, included a Bitcoin donation plugin, but I didn’t like that the Bitcoin donation link was almost as large as some of the posts so I pulled it. (If I learn how to adjust the size, I may put it back on.) Instead I’ve added a wallet number in the sidebar for those who 1) find it and 2) understand it. For the future, I may add a page of recommended books with Amazon Affiliate links and encourage everyone to shop through those.

I’ve also noticed that I tend to go in phases in posts about Japan. I’ve tried to stagger those out more, but, well, 11:15 p.m. and no topic. My long term goal is still to modernize The Crazy Japan Times which right now can’t be read on most mobile devices and start a daily Japan related post there.

Readership has been small but consistent, but that’s partly because I’ve not been expanding the subject matter beyond myself. Some of the random posts about pens and notebooks have been picked up by the Pen Addict but that’s only provided short bursts of new readers. Russian spammers remain my most loyal commenters.

I remain torn about how honest and revealing to get in the posts. There are topics I’ve been putting off because they might dredge up unpleasant history even if I don’t name names, but, well, we’ll see. There are also topics that push the edge of political, which I’ve also been avoiding. (Hint, think of where I live and the big events that happened in August in 1945.)

That’s an hour, now, so it’s time to stop. For those who’ve stuck around since the first post, thanks. I hope I haven’t wasted your time and I hope you’ll stick around until the end.

Tales of Skinned Knees and Broken Hearts

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I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.” ― Gwendolen, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Fewer things horrify me more than looking back through my diary. This is partly because it’s pretty horrifying to look back over your life and think “Lacks action” and “needs a plot with more direction.”

Looking back over mine, even with two years in Albania and several years in Japan, I’m always shocked at all the wasted time and all the whining over skinned knees and broken hearts. Even worse is the horrifying sameness. There’s a long period after I got settled into Japan where all the daily posts started with either “Ordinary day” or “Okay day.” Those went on so long that I pretty much stopped recording anything. Mind, you this means that my time in Japan was ordinary but safe and I was protected from living in “interesting times”.

This is also because, as I’ve mentioned before, I find diaries to be largely a waste of time. It’s lots of time and energy spent sending daily letters to yourself. (Unlike blogs which are time and energy spent on sending letters to yourself and a few other people and the kind bots that keep your inbox filled with semi-coherent spam so you know that at least something cares.)

On the other hand, when interesting things do happen in my life, I tend not to write about them for a long time. This means my diaries have long blank periods often spanning years. Although I have an entry on proposing to She Who Must Be Obeyed, I don’t have an entry about any of our three wedding ceremonies. I also don’t have entries on the births of either daughter. I didn’t write one about my father’s death until two months after he was buried and even then it was part of a “Wow, a lot of stuff has happened” entry.

For the most part, anything I have resembling a diary falls under the category of what I call a “confusion journal”. Periodically, usually several months apart, when events and emotions swirl, I’ll sit down and vent with pen and ink and that can usually calm me down and give me some perspective.

One time I realized how boring my complaints were and actually fell asleep whilst writing about them. That’s right, I’m so boring some times I can cure my own insomnia.

 

 

Losing the Train in Translation

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Soon after I got to Japan I came up with what I thought was a brilliant idea for learning Japanese. Because was in Niigata, and Niigata was nicknamed “Snow Country” (Yukiguni) I would study Japanese by studying Yasunari Kawabata’s novel Yukiguni (雪国) in both English and Japanese. (I remember a guy doing this with a novel when I was in Albania and it seemed to work for him.)

This idea crashed and burned fairly quickly and all because of a train. Snow Country is famous for its simple opening line: “The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.” In Japanese it looks like this: 国境の長いトンネルを抜けると、雪国であった.

I broke out a dictionary (more on that later) and started translating:

国境の–border
長い–long
トンネル–tunnel
を抜けると–exited
雪国–snow country
であった–was

Somehow, someway, I’d missed the train. I went through each word several times trying to find the train. I copied the words onto paper and double checked to see if I’d missed a word. I even got a different copy of the book in case there was a mistake in the version I had. Eventually I gave up and asked Ms. Ogura, my Japanese colleague for help,

Me–Umm, excuse me, Ms. O. Where’s the train?”
Ms. O–It’s implied.
Me–It can’t be implied. It’s the opening line of the novel. It’s like walking up to a stranger and saying “guess my name” and never telling them your name.
Ms. O–Because it’s トンネル (tonneru) in katakana, we know it’s a train tunnel.
Me–That doesn’t mean he’s on a train. He could be walking out of the tunnel.
Ms. O–Why would he be walking in a train tunnel?
Me–How do you know it’s “he”? (Remind me again: why don’t I get invited to parties?)

Something like that. Either way I threw that idea aside, along with the Japanese version of the book, which actually turned out to be a good idea. Sort of.

Back at university when I attempted Spanish (and for one semester, Latin) my bad habit was relying on the dictionary too much rather than the context of the sentence. This meant I’d look up every other word and feel as if I wasn’t making any progress through the assignment. When I went to speak, the introvert would take over and all the grammar rules would lock up in my head (If I were to use the subjunctive at this point in the conversation I would look impressive. If I were capable of understanding the subjunctive I would remember how to use it.) The result was me blabbering on about nothing, usually with a bad accent.

In Japan, I eventually learned to just try to speak more, but the perfectionist would eventaully take over as the other person got faster and faster and the panic and the brain lock would ensue. I was also torn between reading Japanese and spent a lot of time studying the four Japanese alphabets and getting nowhere.

My solution was to pretty much punt and marry a woman whose English was better than my English. I know it’s lazy, but it works when your goal is never studying.

Commenting and Carefully Crushing Dreams

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Because I dabble in writing things, on occasion people will ask me to check their work. When I did this in my fraternity, I quickly learned to establish a couple rules:

1–If you do not know the assignment, I cannot help you.
2–If you cannot explain the assignment, I will not help you.

I adopted these rules because I tried to help out a couple fraternity brothers and it turned out that they didn’t understand the assignment and my help didn’t actually help them and they blamed me. Later, for reasons I don’t remember, I started editing masters theses from Pakistani students who needed help from a native English speaker. This led to a new rule:

3–Rules 1 and 2 are negated by bundles of cash. (Everyone has a price; mine is quite low.)

I bring this up because several years ago a friend asked me to give my opinion on his novel. He emphasized that he intended to publish it. He then handed me 90 pages of text that, to my surprise, turned out to be the entire novel. It also turned out it wasn’t very good.

I then faced a dilemma. How brutal do I get? Is it my job to crush his dream? After all, he’s not a student. I’m paid to break their dreams. On the other hand, I’ve asked friends to look at things for me and been disappointed when their feedback was sparse and/or vague.  In the case of my friend, I found what little I could that was positive and was as honest and supportive as I could be. I also added my usual caveat that if you follow my advice you’re a fool. Your work is yours; if you make it mine you do so at your peril. (Translation: don’t blame me if you muck things up thanks to me. Something like that.)

A couple years later he gave me a revision. I was shocked at how much better it was. He’d dropped most of the potboiler aspects and had changed the point of view. It was still a bit short and he’s prone to flowery prose that draws attention to itself with its verbose radiance and luminosity.

Recently, he gave me third version. He’s brought back the potboiler elements but much more effectively. He still has a ways to go to get it publishable, but he’s getting there and I’m having fun reading them because thus far each has been different. He’s actually been revising the novel by rethinking it and moving parts around, not just proofreading.

A Deadline is Dead to Me if it’s Not Really Dead

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One of the skills I’ve never been able to fully master is the art of establishing and abiding by artificial, self-imposed deadlines. This was especially true at university when I had research papers to, well, research and, eventually, to write. I’d draw up a nice, relaxing schedule that staggered out my research and writing and even included a couple days to set the project aside so that I might edit and finish it with the clarity of calmness instead of panic.

I typically stuck to the schedule for about a week, maybe less. The devil over my right shoulder was always reminding me that the fake deadlines weren’t real and nothing would actually happen to me if I missed them. The devil over my left shoulder reminded me I still had a lot of time to get things done. “Take your time. Take all the time you need. Play with us, DL. Play with us forever and ever and ever.”

Something like that. I eventually finished all my projects, but before each deadline there was a a bunch of denial and a bunch of dodgy math:

A = read one book + take notes + return to room + translate bad handwriting into English + organize notes + return to library for book you forgot
B = Random computer failure
C = Printer out of ink
D = meals + toilet breaks + random internet surfing
E = actual writing – denial + rationalizing
Finished paper ≈ 3A(B^2+2C)+4D-E/2

I know it looks crazy–and it is and it wasn’t the best for sanity retention–but it got me through university.

By contrast, friends of mine had, and probably still have, the ability to set a fake deadline and behave as if it’s real. They even said no to social activities because they “have to get part ABC of project XYZ done by Thursday”.

Give me an actual deadline, and the shorter the better–XYZ must be finished by Monday or there will be actual consequences–and I’ll have everything done.

Tell me that telling myself that is a great way to get things and I’ll agree with you and might even try it out, but I’ll eventually realize it’s all just a fake deadline.

Part of the purpose of these daily posts is to impose an artificial deadline and stick to that deadline, especially if I have no ideas when I sit down to write.

Like tonight.