Tag Archives: fiction editor

Here comes the concrete

August 27, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

Concrete guy was here today to drop off his Bobcat, which I agreed he could park in the driveway early. It would be pretty illogical to cause petty inconveniences for the guy. Showed him the brackets he needs to seat in the concrete so that when someday I bestir myself to replace the fence, I have good fencepost anchors. Feeling hopeful, but apprehensive. Evidently they are starting work at 6:30 AM Monday, so that should be a pleasing wake-up call.

Got Deb here for a day and a half, so we are going to Outback for dinner, then the fair. Harmonic convergence: saves us from spending a lot on fair food, which often isn’t that great and is usually difficult to eat with flimsy utensils in crowded dining areas, and means we get out and walk after we eat. We will engage in one of our timeless rituals: I will make a manful attempt to win my wife a cheesy stuffed animal, usually by throwing darts. I’ll fail. Deb will step up and nail it immediately, winning a larger animal.

I always wonder about the carnies. It’s a hard life, I think, with long hours and no dental care (to go by the looks of most of them). They always look like they lived in Wyoming and aged prematurely due to the harsh conditions. On one hand, it would be an interesting summer adventure for a young person–especially a young male with little to zero sexual experience. On the other, you could end up doing meth and/or getting hepatitis. What strikes me is to look into those eyes and wander what sort of story lies behind them.

Homeownership

The driveway begins…

August 25, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

…with a concrete sawyer. The garage is built onto a concrete pad, so in order to pour a new one without causing a huge mess, someone had to make a clean cut along the garage door, the rockeries and the steps. The process started today. I wasn’t here, but god that must have been noisy.

I have cautious optimism about the contractor. That’s about as good as I get until I see proof of honest, prompt, quality work. My enthusiasm about engaging contractors corresponds to most women’s enthusiasm about mammograms and pap smears: it makes you feel vulnerable, it generally hurts, and there could be very adverse results–and whatever they are, you will have to pay. But if this is not done, water will keep getting into my garage and damaging my siding. Not good.

Part of the headache is the need to find alternate parking for my truck and Deb’s car for a week. Happily, we have wonderful neighbors. Mrs. A has graciously permitted us to park over at her place except for Sunday, when her place is full of family. Long life and health to Mrs. A.

Why am I writing about this mundane subject? Because I was told to, and because I didn’t do any other writing today (errands), and because writers must write.

Homeownership, Married life

I am Become Hedgehog, Slayer of Yellowjackets

August 24, 2011 jkkblog 3 Comments

No, this isn’t about Ron Jeremy. Out trimming the hedge and other overgrown stuff in preparation for the pouring of a new driveway, and since I could definitely stand to lose weight, the title seemed to fit. For some reason I like doing work outside when it’s in the nineties and up–I feel like I get more out of it from an exercise standpoint. Of course, there is probably a study posted somewhere with the headline: “Working in high heat or cold actually burns less calories” because of the ‘everything that seems to make good sense can be proven wrong by some study’ principle. Don’t care, I’m doing it anyway.

It doesn’t come without some excitement. It seems that yellowjackets build their paper nests in my hedge; I’ve already uncovered two tangerine-sized nests, and I think there’s another. The yellowjackets naturally did not appreciate the construction work going on near their homes. Were it up to me alone, I would not molest them, but it isn’t just my decision. My wife is apiphobic, meaning she has a morbid fear of bees, and if I left the nests alone she would phone a pest control service and have them soak the entire property in toxins. Thus, selective hosing of the nests with bee killer is the lesser of the two evils.

Protip, by the way: if you ever get stung, get baking soda and make a paste with it using water, and rub that on the sting. I was at my cousin Roger’s in Wichita some years back and got stung. Well, Rog was the chief chemist for a refinery, so when he says to do something with chemistry, I pay attention. “Ah reckon their poison’s based on formic acid,” he said, “so this ought to take care of it.” I don’t know if all bee sting venom is acid-based, but if it is, a base (such as baking soda) should neutralize it. It certainly did for my own sting.

When the people around you ask you where you figured this out, blow their minds by telling them you got it from an editor.

Editing/writing life, Technology

Container of bubbles

August 23, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

This feels very weird. I’m writing on a netbook from a hotspot in a Starbucks in Renton (that’s south of Seattle). It is noisy in here, and 80% of those present here have their faces buried in computers. This isn’t a coffee shop; it just looks like one.

It feels so Seattle. It’s even cloudy outside, with rain threatening. Air’s humid, though it’s not cooking hot. And not a single person in this Internet terminal that happens to serve coffee would voluntarily have a conversation with any other person, unless they met here on purpose.

This is what I do not like about cities. I understand wanting to have one’s bubble of not dealing with random people; I really do. But if you look at this situation right now, this place of ass-numbing hardwood chairs and crappy music, it is all just a container of bubbles. There is another human being three feet from me on the right, and if I tried to have a conversation with him, I would absolutely shatter all the social rules. I would be marked as fundamentally odd, probably dangerous, and quite irritating.

Technology may be connecting us with people far away, but it is isolating us from people who are close enough they could grab each other’s junk without leaning.

Technology

My dumbest computer user ever

August 20, 2011 jkkblog 2 Comments

You’ve all heard the computer-idiot stories about the executive who complained that his computer’s coffee cupholder no longer retracted, right? I have a true-to-life one.

Before I was an editor, before I was a writer, before I was a computer shaman, before I was an assistant MIT at an investment company that managed ten-figure sums, I was a computer salesman about five miles from the Micro$oft campus. I worked for a very wise entrepreneur from Taiwan, Mr. TeLung Chang. Mr. Chang (who had literally been an American longer than I had) gave me opportunity, guidance and consideration. I returned his kindness by being contrary, troublesome and having the highest profit margins in the company, so I was a mixed blessing for him. He passed on in 2008, and the world was the poorer for it.

This was from 1988-1990, and the main computer sold was the AT (80286) clone in some form or other, gradually giving way to 80386-based machines. IBM was trying to make the world want MicroChannel PS/2 machines. The world was laughing at IBM’s doddering distance from reality. A woman named Nancy bought an Acer 900 from me, a great big can of an AT clone. She ordered it with the standard 1.2MB 5.25″ floppy, a standard 40MB hard drive, and the usual 640K of RAM. It was for her plastics company in south Seattle. She had bought it over the phone, and picked it up while I was at lunch, so I never met her in person.

That afternoon, I get a call. It’s Nancy. “Jonathan, Jonathan! My computer’s no good!”

“It doesn’t work?”

“No, it doesn’t. The disk is broken.”

“Your hard drive won’t start up at all?”

“No, I don’t have the hard disk, the little one. I have the big kind, the floppy kind.”

I then had to explain to her the the hard disk was inside the case, and that the 3.5″ disk was actually a floppy, just with a firmer case, so yes, she did in fact have a hard disk. Then: “So what exactly is the problem?”

“Well, my disk is broken.”

Clearly we weren’t communicating. “You must mean that the floppy drive is broken, then?”

“Yeah. It’s stuck.”

I brightened. “Oh. So there’s a floppy stuck in the drive and it’s not working?”

“Yes.”

“Just out of curiosity, Nancy, what’s on this floppy? Is it important data?”

“No, it’s my dose disk.” At this point, I admit, I put the conversation on speaker so my colleagues could hear the rest of it. Mr. Chang would most definitely not have approved, so I’m glad he didn’t come upstairs right about then.

“It should boot up to a C: prompt. How come you put a DOS disk in?”

“Well,” she snipped, as if explaining the obvious to an imbecile, “I opened the manual that came with it and it said to insert your MS-dose diskette in drive A. So I did.”

I then had to explain to Nancy that we had actually loaded DOS on her hard drive when we assembled the machine, and that while we included the DOS manuals and floppies because she’d paid for them by buying DOS, she did not need to do anything with them but hang onto them. Might be useful to look up some DOS commands, if need be. Then back to the problem-solving: “So this is your DOS floppy and it’s stuck in the drive. Is the arm broken?”

“There is no arm!”

“Then there must be a little spindle where it used to be. Perhaps somehow it came off. That could explain this. Is there?”

“No, there’s just a slot. There’s no arm and no spindle.” The 5.25″ floppies of the day always came with a closure arm that engaged the drive and locked the floppy in place. It could be removed, or could slip off or break, but never without a trace. What she was saying was absolutely impossible. Unless…no, surely not…

“Nancy, where exactly is this slot? On the right side of the case are three rectangular bays, one with a floppy drive and two covered with faceplates, all the same size. Is it over there?”

“Yes.” Oh, no…

“Let’s narrow this down very precisely. Where exactly is the ‘slot’ in that area? How high up is it, and how much room does it have?”

Her frustration with my stupidity or obtuseness grew worse. “It’s right about a third of the way from the top! It’s the width and height of a disk!”

She had. She had actually managed to stick a floppy into the small, 1/8″ high space between drive bays, failing to notice the authentic floppy drive immediately above it. I had a sudden burst of hilarity, which I had to strangle. The effort broke my voice. “So, what you are saying is that you stuck your DOS disk in the small space between the faceplates, and therefore, you think your computer’s broken?” I am lucky my colleagues didn’t have worse control; I was beginning to tear up with suppressed laughter.

“Yes! This is a design flaw! This shouldn’t be possible!” Now she was angry. And I was about ready not to care.

“Well, Nancy,” I croaked, “most people do not traditionally do this.”

“Well, I want it fixed!” Raising her voice. I didn’t care. I summoned my composure.

“No problem. I can give you two options. The warranty is not on-site, so for $75 an hour I’ll send a tech out. He will fish the floppy out of there, then put scotch tape over those gaps so that this ‘design flaw’ will be remedied. Or, if you feel technically competent to do so, you may open the machine and push it out, then apply the tape yourself. If none of that is satisfactory to you, you can bring it here, and I’ll fish it out and put the tape on it for you for free. How’s that?”

“Fine!” she snapped. “I’ll be there in about an hour!” I’m not sure now if she hung up on me, but the conversation was at an end. As soon as I buttoned the phone off, my fellow sharks howled with laughter. At least someone could benefit from this. But it wasn’t quite over. About fifteen minutes later, Nancy called back.

“What’s up, Nancy?”

She sounded miffed. “I don’t need to bring it in. The disk slid out while I was loading it in my trunk.”

“Great! All’s well that ends well, then?”

“Yes,” she growled, her tone making clear that it hadn’t ended well, that she was very dissatisfied with my equipment and me. Thank the gods. I hoped she never called us again, or if she did, that she got another salesperson. It was the last I heard from her. But here’s to Nancy, who brightened a few days by giving me a funny story to tell.

Editing/writing life

When one is not on an assignment

August 18, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

Just because I’m not on a writing assignment doesn’t mean I get to goof off all day. That wouldn’t be good for me anyway. What to do on such a day?

Read. Authors must read, as must editors.
Respond to a business query about editing work.
Find nephew guilty of leaving boxcutter in shorts put in washer. Criticism–much stinging criticism.
Do some financial stuff, since I’m also the $ manager around here.
Think for a while about the Ireland book and what needs to happen to it to improve it.
Watch Big Brother.
Drop off wife’s prescription refills.
Blog.

Not an arduous day, though I will pay for it another time when I’m writing for fourteen hours a day seven days a week. I’ll take the more relaxed days when I have them, remembering the ones where it felt like my eyes would bleed–and a few that left marks.

Investing

Being greedy when others are fearful

August 4, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

One of my life philosophies is that if very successful and smart people say things, one should pay careful attention. This blog, for example, resulted from just such a situation.

I look at the markets today and I see and smell fear. Never mind that much of the fear is generated by skewed, distortionary indices like the Dow; never mind that the media deliberately worsen it by anthropomorphizing and exaggerating the market.* Never mind that it’s all based on taking advantage of a fundamentally innumerate public’s emotions. I can’t change any of that. I can, however, profit from it.

(*Think I’m exaggerating, myself? Riddle me this, Robin. When I first started losing money buying stocks because I thought I was smarter than other people, in 1987, the useless, worthless, despised Dow was around 2000. A 100-point triple-digit loss would be 5% at least–a really bad market day by nearly any measure. Fast forward to our modern day of Dow 10000+. A triple-digit loss of 100 today is 1%–essentially the expected daily fluctuation. And yet today, even today, a triple-digit day (by itself a meaningless threshold anyway, just a number) gets big reactions, reactions like it used to get in the early 1990s. Why? This is stupid. If you get taken in by it, or even influenced by it, you harm yourself. And when the media characterizes the market as ‘struggling to hold gains’, you surely can see how stupid that is. The market does not care what it did five minutes ago. It does not struggle. It is not a person. The way the media present this offends me on editorial, mathematical, and intellectual levels. They twist perception to create volatility and interest.)

Anyway. My own philosophy on investing is fairly simple: patient and ruthless. I don’t use investing as a social responsibility tool. I would buy Wal-Mart in a heartbeat if I thought I could make good money. Owning their stock does not help them because the initial offering is already subscribed; if you sell it, someone else will own it. Plus, if you want to use it as a social responsibility tool, buy up a ton of shares and then vote them against the board of directors, and start shareholder movements that annoy management. That actually affects them.

So when I see a big selloff after a week or two of selloff, I’m not nervous. I never look at the market without asking myself what I would do if this were the day–the day it plunged 20% followed by another 10% tomorrow. Having seen that in life, when I see the markets go south, I start doing like Buffett says: others are fearful, so be greedy. I am bargain hunting. I want to buy solid income investments at bargain prices, gaining high yields. Why do I like income? Very, very simple. I don’t have to worry about when to sell the investment. I just collect my money and thank them. The important thing is to buy so cheaply that your own yield is ridiculously higher than what most people will get.

Waiting, watching and checking cash balances. C’mere, high yields. I won’t hurt ya. We’ll be friends for a long time. I won’t freak out and sell you in a panic like most people. It’ll be great for both of us. Stability, steadiness, profit.

Married life, Social comment

What not to do to heavily bearded people

July 27, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

This is a public service announcement from an owner of considerable facial shag (not that kind, jeez).

It is okay to stare at a heavy beard. We are basically used to that. Your kids will gawk up at us and even hide from us. We’re used to that, too.

It’s not so okay to reach up and start playing with it without permission. I have empathy for what pregnant women go through, with everyone rubbing the belly without leave.

It is okay to say you want to braid it. However, it’s usually not very appealing when actually done. And if you want to kill the chances of getting to braid it, don’t say ‘it would be so cuuuuuuute!’ Cuuuuuuute really isn’t the look bearded guys are going after.

It is dumb to ask ‘how long have you been growing that?’ Think about it. Most of us eventually trim them off at the ends (may have done so for twenty years), so the question is pointless (and the first one everyone asks). I’ve had mine thirteen years. ‘How long does it take to get that long?’ is an intelligent question, use that one instead.

It is okay to ask if we play Santa at Christmas, especially if (like me) we look very much like a young Santa.

It is very helpful, at dining, to point out if something has gotten lodged in it. Most of us want to keep our beards very clean. It is, however, pretty dumb to ask ‘saving that for later?’ No, I really don’t want to slurp stale or decaying food scraps out of my beard. I’m already embarrassed enough, like most people would be if they got marinara sauce on their white blouse’s cleavage. If you let me know, I can go to the men’s room and straighten things out, and it was good of you.

It isn’t very polite to frankly remark, ‘I think you’d look better without the beard, I can’t stand beards on men.’ We would not generally say to you: ‘You really need to put a lot more makeup on, your natural face looks pasty and old.’ I’m not trying to edit your face; be nice if you’d avoid offering editing guidance on mine.

It is okay to ask fairly thinking questions about it. ‘Does it cause problems using power tools?’ Yep. Have to be very careful. ‘What’s the worst beard disaster you ever had?’ Got Gorilla Glue in it, had to cut a chunk out.

It is not okay to yank on it. Surprising we have to mention this, but kids especially do it. Please don’t let your child do this.

It’s a little intrusive to ask if it’s religious, though I don’t think it’s intrusive to ask the general question about why we grow it. In my case it’s simple: I dislike shaving, always did.

If you like it, it’s okay to tell us so. If you don’t like the way we wear it, it’s not very polite to tell us what we should do to it to please you. Not unless you’d be okay with us telling you that those jeans make your posterior look pudgy and you should get different ones.

Editing/writing life

Writers’ groups

July 7, 2011 jkkblog Leave a comment

Always been on the fence about these. I live in an area where interest in the written word is minimal, so there aren’t that many local writers and there are fewer capable ones. At the same time, one can possibly gain from critique. And if there aren’t that many of us, should we not at least be acquainted? Most of the time my answer is sort of ‘meh,’ but I realize that’s kind of a cop-out. So I gave one a try tonight, brand new one, formed and organized by a very quiet young mother.

The organizer feels we should pass our material around for review online first. While I can see the logic in exchanging critiqueable material offline and bringing one’s impressions to the group, it seems that if we are going to just do that, we could do this on Facebook and not bother worrying about a face-to-face meetup. It also seems like the idea is to intersperse our comments into that, print it and bring it to talk about. They are talking about a 5000-word limit, which would be about 15 pages. I could end up expected to print 40 pages of other people’s stuff. I am not sure I think that’s a good idea. I am definitely not sure I’m willing to do that at all.

I have about talked myself into at least sending some material out and going through the motions for a second session, just to see if all is redeemed by some serious insight. Or if my insight helps someone. Or something else happens to make me think this is worth doing. One participant writes exclusively screenplays, in which I have less interest than even Harlequin romances. The other two write young adult fiction, about which I know little and care rather less. I don’t feel any camaraderie there, so there isn’t that draw.

What would make a good writers’ group? In my view, intelligent critique without soul destruction is the first step. I personally have no problem having someone rip my work apart in intelligent fashion, but I keep hearing that a lot of people in writers’ groups think it’s like boot camp, where you have to break people down before they can be remolded–that brutality is a virtue. I don’t think it is, and I think that’s a viewpoint of big-fish-small-pond hotshots. I don’t like it and I don’t like them, by and large. Fortunately, there aren’t any in this group or I’d just go somewhere else.

I guess we’ll see how it goes.

The Editorial Maverick