1 Happy Friday.
2 We all pulled up reasonably unscathed.
3 Dodger fans, welcome to the couch.
4
5 Yup.
6 Moving On, Part One: I got down to the Bay Area yesterday, and caught a glimpse of good ol' Mt. Hamilton, the hills, and mostly, the familiar.
7 I managed to get all the stuff needed on the Altima done.
8 I told you that I hopped into a Maxima last week, and thought my Altima was having issues.
9 Well it was some other guy's Maxima, turns out, which explained why the "No Key" light kept appearing on the dash.
10 I don't know nor remember nor do I have the wherewithal to look to see if I told you this: the next morning, I went out to the Altima, pushed in the key, stepped on the brake, pushed the start button, and...
11 The "No Key" light popped up, another in an astonishing week of coincidences.
12 A lot of time that happens when the gas is low, so I filled it up, gave it a bath and it came out shiny---and with the "No Key" light out, replaced by the return of the outside temperature light.That's just how I like it.
13 All calmed down.
14 So we were able to pull out and drive down to San Jose with a nice, clean car and no issues with the "No Key" light...until we were around a third of the way "home."
15 It still feels like home sometimes.
16 Helene knew of a drive-through Oil Changer place near Santa Clara University.
17 We drove right up, and these guys got busy. They were friendly, helpful, and reasonably quick. They took care of air pressure, fluids, windows, and they treated us to a free car wash!
18 Our original reason for going down was Helene had a dentist appointment. The fact that we were so close to this place made it easy to take care of all the main working parts in the car.
19 And it felt wonderful to be back. I looked around, thinking I might be able to visit people, but in the end, knew I couldn't. At one point I almost drove up to Evergreen to visit my homies but we got hungry, and I wound up not going anywhere.
20 This was really just a sort of in-and-out situation.
21 At least I got down there. I'm always uncertain as to when I'm going to stay a few days and see people. I had an amazing time visiting the Y.B. Class of '05 reunion a few weeks (or was it months?) ago.
22 Right now, I'm pretty busy.
23 All apologies.
24 Seesly busy.
25 Moving On, Part Two: Anybody lookin'?
26
27 I've jumped from book to book when bringing some writing tips and tools to people. A lot of the writing books I read keep mentioning the books I have sent you to in this series: Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, Warriner's English Grammar and Composition: Fourth Course, various editions, Stephen King's On Writing, and a fun book called Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark.
28 We can throw Maya Angelou into the mix, but Maya goes in all sorts of different directions. In an interview with George Plimpton, she is reminded of having told Plimpton that she wrote "...lying on a made-up bed with a bottle of sherry, a dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, yellow pads, and ashtray, and a Bible."
29 I get that, with the exception of the sherry. To me, sherry shouldn't even be used in cooking. Ever.
30 This amused me, because nearly every writer I've come across in my shoddy research for this nonsense mentioned the need for a quiet place, a place to be alone, but not necessarily lonely.
31 I've never attempted writing in bed. I have on many occasions written in a comfy chair, dating back to my college days when I wrote a piece in grad school entitled George and the Magical Comfy Chair. Like everything else I write, it was chock full of nonsense. I'm convinced it is filed in one of the mothy boxes sitting in my new garage. I don't dare sneak out and look for it for fear I may find it.
32 But comfy chairs, yes. You can sit and put your feet up, but you don't commit to putting on a stocking cap and rolling over when you decide to doze.
33 So: no bed, no sherry, no need for a dictionary, no Roget's Thesaurus (isn't that extinct?), since we have dictionaries and thesauruses online; no yellow pads, no ashtrays (not a smoker in any serious sense) and no Bible, since I took a class called The Bible as Literature in college, and had to go through The Dartmouth Bible AND read East of Eden. We were given way more reading and writing than all my other classes combined, assigned by the same sadistic instructor, whom I believed and continue to believe today to have been a female version of Satan. Every time she looked my way she grew horns.
34 I do, however, agree that most writers need the peace, a place to concentrate, and the time to edit the same page a thousand times.
35 If you consider writing, whether for shooting around or for publishing, realize it takes that sort of effort.
36 I'm exaggerating, naturally, but it requires serious commitment, something I find myself learning the hard way.
37 I'd like once again to switch you over to Clarke's wonderful book, WritingTips.
38 The author, Roy Peter Clark is the guy who likened punctuation to driving, with a period being a stop sign, the comma a speed bump, the semi-colon a rolling stop, the parenthetical a detour, the colon a flashing yellow light, and the dash a tree branch in the middle of the street.
39 That's a brief summary, and an accurate summary as well.
40 I'd like to share a little more to follow that up. This comes to you from Writing Tips:
A writer once told me that it was time to hand in a story when he had reached this stage: "I would take out all the commas. Then I would put them all back." The comma may be one of the most versatile of marks, and the one most closely associated with the writer's voice. A well-placed comma points to where the writer would pause if he read the passage aloud. "He may have been a genius, as mutations sometimes are." The author of that line is Kurt Vonnegut.I have heard him speak, and that central comma is his voice.
41 The reference to Vonnegut, incidentally, came to me after I had read and shared Chapter One of Slaughterhouse-Five. I jump from book-to-book. I never looked past the punctuation-as-driving encounters paragraph. Once that one finished with the tree in the road, I laughed, stopped, and closed the book, leaving a bookmark where I left off. The bookmark, by the way, is not one of those fancy lacy ones they sell at Barnes and Noble. This bookmark was almost a perfect circle remnant torn from a MacDonald's box.
42 You get nothing but the best from Clark's tips and tools. I did glance further into the book, just to peek at where he was headed next go-round.
43 I skimmed, and saw that his treatment of the dash---that lonely tree branch in the road---was hurtful.
44 Interesting, since one thing I noticed across the board with successful writers---they all use the dash. They also use lots and lots of italicized words. Lots of them. I've also seen a tremendous amounts of colons and semi-colons; what happens with them is sometimes left to the writer.
45 I'm guessing there is a writer out there reading this and thinking, "This guy! I swear!" And I don't mean that in a nice way. Tetchy sorts. Writing, once more, is not for the faint of heart. I'm sure a few people roll their eyes right out of their heads when they read this. And then there's that one guy...
46 When he signs my pay check, I'll listen.
47 Meanwhile, I'm surprised I got all this done. I don't do well with this when I do over-nighters.
48 I think I'll put this one to bed.
49 Gottago.
50 Thanks for listening, and thanks for reading this stuff. Keep the cards and letters coming.
51 Have a GREAT weekend, and we'll see you again.
52 Peace.
22 Right now, I'm pretty busy.
23 All apologies.
24 Seesly busy.
25 Moving On, Part Two: Anybody lookin'?
26
27 I've jumped from book to book when bringing some writing tips and tools to people. A lot of the writing books I read keep mentioning the books I have sent you to in this series: Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, Warriner's English Grammar and Composition: Fourth Course, various editions, Stephen King's On Writing, and a fun book called Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark.
28 We can throw Maya Angelou into the mix, but Maya goes in all sorts of different directions. In an interview with George Plimpton, she is reminded of having told Plimpton that she wrote "...lying on a made-up bed with a bottle of sherry, a dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, yellow pads, and ashtray, and a Bible."
29 I get that, with the exception of the sherry. To me, sherry shouldn't even be used in cooking. Ever.
30 This amused me, because nearly every writer I've come across in my shoddy research for this nonsense mentioned the need for a quiet place, a place to be alone, but not necessarily lonely.
31 I've never attempted writing in bed. I have on many occasions written in a comfy chair, dating back to my college days when I wrote a piece in grad school entitled George and the Magical Comfy Chair. Like everything else I write, it was chock full of nonsense. I'm convinced it is filed in one of the mothy boxes sitting in my new garage. I don't dare sneak out and look for it for fear I may find it.
32 But comfy chairs, yes. You can sit and put your feet up, but you don't commit to putting on a stocking cap and rolling over when you decide to doze.
33 So: no bed, no sherry, no need for a dictionary, no Roget's Thesaurus (isn't that extinct?), since we have dictionaries and thesauruses online; no yellow pads, no ashtrays (not a smoker in any serious sense) and no Bible, since I took a class called The Bible as Literature in college, and had to go through The Dartmouth Bible AND read East of Eden. We were given way more reading and writing than all my other classes combined, assigned by the same sadistic instructor, whom I believed and continue to believe today to have been a female version of Satan. Every time she looked my way she grew horns.
34 I do, however, agree that most writers need the peace, a place to concentrate, and the time to edit the same page a thousand times.
35 If you consider writing, whether for shooting around or for publishing, realize it takes that sort of effort.
36 I'm exaggerating, naturally, but it requires serious commitment, something I find myself learning the hard way.
37 I'd like once again to switch you over to Clarke's wonderful book, WritingTips.
38 The author, Roy Peter Clark is the guy who likened punctuation to driving, with a period being a stop sign, the comma a speed bump, the semi-colon a rolling stop, the parenthetical a detour, the colon a flashing yellow light, and the dash a tree branch in the middle of the street.
39 That's a brief summary, and an accurate summary as well.
40 I'd like to share a little more to follow that up. This comes to you from Writing Tips:
A writer once told me that it was time to hand in a story when he had reached this stage: "I would take out all the commas. Then I would put them all back." The comma may be one of the most versatile of marks, and the one most closely associated with the writer's voice. A well-placed comma points to where the writer would pause if he read the passage aloud. "He may have been a genius, as mutations sometimes are." The author of that line is Kurt Vonnegut.I have heard him speak, and that central comma is his voice.
41 The reference to Vonnegut, incidentally, came to me after I had read and shared Chapter One of Slaughterhouse-Five. I jump from book-to-book. I never looked past the punctuation-as-driving encounters paragraph. Once that one finished with the tree in the road, I laughed, stopped, and closed the book, leaving a bookmark where I left off. The bookmark, by the way, is not one of those fancy lacy ones they sell at Barnes and Noble. This bookmark was almost a perfect circle remnant torn from a MacDonald's box.
42 You get nothing but the best from Clark's tips and tools. I did glance further into the book, just to peek at where he was headed next go-round.
43 I skimmed, and saw that his treatment of the dash---that lonely tree branch in the road---was hurtful.
44 Interesting, since one thing I noticed across the board with successful writers---they all use the dash. They also use lots and lots of italicized words. Lots of them. I've also seen a tremendous amounts of colons and semi-colons; what happens with them is sometimes left to the writer.
45 I'm guessing there is a writer out there reading this and thinking, "This guy! I swear!" And I don't mean that in a nice way. Tetchy sorts. Writing, once more, is not for the faint of heart. I'm sure a few people roll their eyes right out of their heads when they read this. And then there's that one guy...
46 When he signs my pay check, I'll listen.
47 Meanwhile, I'm surprised I got all this done. I don't do well with this when I do over-nighters.
48 I think I'll put this one to bed.
49 Gottago.
50 Thanks for listening, and thanks for reading this stuff. Keep the cards and letters coming.
51 Have a GREAT weekend, and we'll see you again.
52 Peace.
~H~
fin.
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