1 Overheard at Lucky's: "Eric do not get a shopping cart!"
2 "Eric?"
3 A minute later, heard from an aisle over: "Eric where are you going with that shopping cart?"
4 " ERIC! I KNEW this would happen!" <sound of footfalls running amuck.>
5 "Eric you come back here right now. I MEAN it!"
6 And on and on.
7 I'm glad I got back my Chi.
8 If that had happened two night's ago I would probably have punted Eric through an H-shaped goal post.
9 They used to have those, you know.
10 For the record I would probably not have punted Eric through an H-shaped goal post.
11 But you get my drift. I can dream, can't I?
12 Eric clearly needed a swift kick-in-the-seat-of the pants.
13 Little snoot.
14 Fortunately my Chi returned last night.
15 Funny about things like that.
16 Call it age.
17 If this is age, then bring it.
18 Moving on, Part One: I enjoy things. LOTS of things. It's nice.
19 Yesterday I got off WAY early. I actually get off early anyway, because my prep period is the last period of the day.
20 Never had that at EV.
21 I now get off work at 2:00 in the afternoon. I have spent each prep period collaborating with a colleague, but he came to my room yesterday at lunch and told me he was busy.
22 It worked out well because I had to hop over to Kaiser for a blood draw, just routine stuff. That took about twelve seconds.
23 I decided to stop the entire world.
24 This month I have dragged around Stephen King's AWESOME book on writing called oddly enough, On Writing.
25 I fasted for the blood draw and found myself a bit dizzy afterwards from lack of food. I looked at King's book sitting on my car seat, with several post-it notes and a beat-up envelope slipped between the pages. It looked dog-eared. The cover sported fingertip smears, a clear sign of overuse.
26 King's book reads. It kicks. It encourages laughter. It encourages fingertip smears. It is that good.
27 It teaches. It even reaches hacks like me.
28 Moving on, Part Two: Sorry. Had to break that all up. Just had to.
29 King attacks. He spares no feelings. He disdains the passive voice. Here is a wonderful excerpt about the wussiness of the passive voice and the power of the active:
Regarding passive verbs:
"...I think timid writers like them for the same reason timid lovers like passive partners. The passive voice is safe. There is no troublesome action to contend with; the subject just has to close its eyes and think of England, to paraphrase Queen Victoria. I think unsure writers feel the passive voicesomehow lends their voice authority, perhaps even a quality of majesty. If you find instruction manuals and lawyers' torts majestic, I guess it does."
He goes on talking of someone insisting on writing in the passive voice:
" Two pages of the passive voice--just about any business document ever written, in other words, not to mention reams of bad fiction--make me want to scream. It's weak, it's circuitous, and it's frequently tortuous as well. How about this: My first kiss will always be recalled by me as how my romance with Shayna was begun. Oh man--who farted, right? A simpler way to express this idea--sweeter and more forceful as well--might be this: My romance with Shayna began with our first kiss. I'll never forget it. I'm not in love with this because it uses with twice in four words, but at least we're out of that awful passive voice."
30 He goes on to show the basic difference. He steals an idea from William Strunk, but it is easier to pose it this way: if a man is drowning in a swamp, and the writer is the only person around, it is the duty of the writer to throw the man a rope. Words like "was," "were," "has" etc. create a passive voice. If we avoid those, then the subject of the sentence is doing the action, not the object.
31 "And remember," says Stevie King, " The writer threw the rope, not The rope was thrown by the writer."
32 Take that one home.
33 Moving on, Part The Thoid: Blogspot allows me to do a few things that Xanga never could. For one thing, when I push the save button, the blog doesn't disappear. I find it faster and safer to save as I go.
34 A second feature of the new DN is having the ability to cut pieces from other websites without some catastrophe going in and changing the basic design.
35 Xanga became aggressive any time I would cut and paste something from another website. It would shrink all my fonts to the size of a chick pea, almost as punishment for such heresy.
36 I work with deadlines. Once I commit to an idea for the DN, I haven't the time to turn back, nor to change my mind.
37 I can now expand content. One feature I wanted to bring to this year's mix was free writing lessons. Not all the time, mind you, but every now and again.
38 And not each Tuesday night or Wednesday afternoon--too structured.
39 I know that I have readers out there who could use advice on how to improve writing skills.
40 I'm schooled enough to help out, or at least to throw some rich sources out there.
41 It's fun, but challenging. I have a cross-section of readers from all walks of life, rich and poor, young and old, female and male, gay and straight, etc.
42 Teaching with the DN can be sketchy.
43 It can also enrich even the enlightened.
44 King, for example, demonstrates a fierce disdain of adverbs.
45 Disdain of the passive voice is almost cliche', right? But adverbs? Seriously?
46 King's fierce disdain of adverbs pulsates. It doesn't pulsate vigorously. It shouldn't be fierce.
47 He'd kill me.
48 It pulsates.
49 Writers out there! You listenin'? Time to annihilate all things adverb. Holla.
50 How liberating! Play with it. Great new toy.
51 Might be an old toy, but it shines, in my eyes.
52 It doesn't shine brilliantly.
53 But it shines.
54 Feeling good this morning. I'm glad I unloaded all this nonsense.
55 I feel like I just returned from the dumps. I love the ritualistic washing of the T000000NDRA following a visit to the dumps.
56 I get home, the T000000NDRA shines, and my place looks cleaner.
57 Life's rocked last night. Even my idiotic analogies shone at the end of the evening.
58 Something changed. This place looks cleaner.
59 I smiled. Okay. I JUST smiled. M'bad.
60 Gottago.
61 See you again.
62 Peace.
~H~
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