Letting 2020 Go

I haven't been here for quite a while. 

Frankly, I just haven't felt like putting up a new blog post for most of the past six months. And, while I don't really know that anyone who reads my blog on a regular basis really wants an explanation (or needs one at this point), I feel like I need to write one out for myself. 

In July, my dad died. He'd had a lot of medical issues over the years, but - honestly - his death was still sudden and unexpected. From the time he went into the hospital to the time he was gone was just barely long enough for my sisters and me to make the trip to my hometown to say good-bye. Oddly enough, that was one blessing of the pandemic - the fact that no one was flying in July, so that my sisters could book last-minute direct flights without breaking the bank. 

It wasn't related to COVID-19. (I guess that, for deaths in 2020 and 2021, that will always be a question.)

The funeral home wanted to know when we would want to have a service, and the decision was "sometime after everyone can travel safely" - we're still not sure when that will be. 

I've been told by people who would know that the first year is the worst, because you're having all of your "first XX without..." situations. And we've definitely had those. I've had my first visit back to my hometown without him there in the house with my mom. We've had our first Thanksgiving and our first Christmas. 

But we've also had our first random Wednesday. Our first "I've got a sore throat, what do I take?" (Dad was a pharmacist so he was always our first call in medical situations.) Our first trip to Trader Joe's without buying those ginger cookies he liked to take home to him. 

For me, it's exactly like when the Narrator in "Our Town" explained to Emily that she should choose to revisit an ordinary day, because even that holds too much emotion for the heart to bear. 

And, as of today, we have the first calendar year that he won't be in. As of midnight, his death is now "last year" - a marker in the past. 

I know that a lot of other things happened in 2020. A lot of things people wish hadn't happened, and a lot of things that we, as a society, should never forget. And I know that we're not the only family that dealt with losing a loved one. It was 12 months of the world going on. And there were probably just as many good things as bad - weddings and births and beautiful sunrises and dances in the kitchen. 

But, for me, the beginning of July changed everything. And I have been dreading the change of the calendar and having to say that it happened last year. Because the memories will always be immediate and I will always want to make one more phonecall, one more visit, one more drive down that road because we haven't gone down it in a while. 

A new year is just a date on a calendar. Life goes on. It's persistent. And so does memory. And there will always be new firsts. They just won't ever be quite the same. 

-----

Because it kind of seems appropriate, here is a link to Dad's obituary. 

The Sound of Comfort Food

Hey, there.

I know I've been gone for a while. And, honestly, I don't have a really good reason. But here are some honest thoughts on the matter (in no particular order):

1) Work has been strangely busy, which has been keeping me from wanting to open my laptop when I get home at night, but that's not really a great reason.

2) I had a couple of side projects come up and felt like I needed to focus on those instead of focusing on my own work.

3) We went to New York City for a week to visit family and friends (and friends who are more like family) at the end of May.

4) We've each had some family things going on that have been at least a little distracting.

5) The world has gotten weird - and I don't always feel like writing a frivolous blog about food and day-to-day life is really right. And I wonder whether I should be writing pithy pieces about the world, instead of frothy pieces about my kitchen.

A couple of days ago, however, I had a good experience in the grocery store (as we all know - grocery stores are my happy place), and I wanted to share.

No. It's not a recipe. And, no, there's not even a tasting at the end.

But I hope you enjoy this quick video, even so.

And - believe it or not - I'm also working up a post that should be coming up on Friday of this week, as well.

Hopefully we'll see each other then!

The Cake Post That Wasn't Actually There

I've been having one of those weeks (or two or three of them, actually), and just when I thought I was going to turn a corner I ran into another hiccup. Let me explain:

So, there you have it. The cake is still in the ingredients stage (or at least the "most of the ingredients" stage), and I am set to show you the clips that haven't been shown before - but which I seem to have kept on my phone for no good reason. (Yay! Now there's a reason!)

(You may be able to play them all in a row from this link, or just scroll through them one at a time, below. Don't worry - they're very short!)

Here we go:

Let's try that again...

So... maybe we won't use a book next time?

Maybe what I need is fewer props.

Oh, come on. Once they're baked I should be okay, right?

With any luck, I'll have the Christmas cake put together and baked by next week, and we'll continue to move forward.

In the meantime, please send me any questions or comments you might have - or suggestions for recipes - and I'll see what I can do to work them into the blog!

Writing 101: Use Your Words (Wisely)

As an editor, I see a little of everything when I'm working with authors. I see the authors who want to keep everything as "real" and "gritty" as possible (in other words, they swear a lot and graphically describe sex and violence), and I see authors who apparently don't want to offend anyone (so they censor out everything).

Here's my take on this:

Use what works for your book.

It seems easy enough, right? It's not - at least for many authors.

You see, authors tend to put themselves into their books. Sometimes, this is great, because it means that we can get honest reactions to situations. I can totally imagine some of my authors sitting at their computers running through scenarios from start to finish: If someone walked up behind me and goosed me, what would I say? How would I react? Would I scream? Would I jump? Would I simply keep walking? 

But - and this is a big but - the question truly should be: If someone walked up behind my character...

And this makes all the difference.

Probably the most obvious place this happens is with interjections. (In case you don't remember what interjections are, I offer you this from Schoolhouse Rock.) (And even if you do remember what they are, this is kind of fun.)

You can tell a lot about an author when you find that the interjection doesn't match the character.

When the "gotta stay gritty" author has an otherwise suitably grandmotherly character yell out "Fuck you, you asshole!" at the pizza delivery boy who handed her the wrong pie, readers might suspect something is wrong. On the other hand, when the author who doesn't like to get too close to things has her college-age ruffian say "Gosh, that's no good," readers will probably also get the feeling that something is out of place.

For fiction (or memoir, for that matter) to really work on all levels, your characters - and your audience - should have as much of an impact on your word choice as your own personal opinions do.

It's not just in fictional outbursts when words have meaning, though. You only have to look at two or three different news sources these days to realize how much difference word choice can make.

When one news source says "passionate young men chanted as they processed through town" and another says "domestic terrorists shouted out epithets while carrying torches and storming through town" - both trying to describe the same situation - you can start to see the power of words.

As writers, we create the world that our readers will see. In fiction, this can be a fun, playful task - or a painful, laborious one - depending on how well you understand your characters. In non-fiction, this takes on even more weight, since - in essence - you're crafting the world your readers live in.

As readers, we need to hold authors accountable for their word choices. If a character's words don't match the character's character, it's up to us to decide if we should read on.

If what we're seeing with our own eyes doesn't match what we're being told, we need to call the author (or news organization) out.

Words are tools. Use them wisely.
   

Editing 101: I Am Not a "That" (and neither are you)

All of us have our pet peeves. They range from "people who drive slowly in the fast lane" to "flowers that only bloom during the one week while you're on vacation" and all sorts of things in the middle.

Editors are no exception.

Yes, we follow style guides that give us the basic (and not-so-basic) rules for how material is supposed to be presented. And we lean on dictionaries a lot to confirm spellings and proper usages of words. And we think about how our English teachers explained grammar and usage to us all those years ago. Then, once we have all of that in hand, we go out and apply it to what we're editing.

But, in the same way that we need to figure out the author's own style, we also tend to have our own.

A few examples:

• Current usage is moving toward "they" as a singular, non-gender-specific pronoun. Your editor has to help you decide whether that is right for your piece of writing and its audience. 
• There is constant debate regarding whether or not sentences can end in prepositions. You and your editor should discuss how you feel about that. (Trust me - if you want to make that a hard-and-fast rule, you could end up with some pretty painful sentences.)

And a huge pet peeve of mine, which I probably altered about one thousand times in one of the last things I worked on:

• Current usage frequently allows the pronoun "that" to refer to a person, instead of only indicating objects/places/animals/etc. 

Here's the thing: who and whom (yes, I realize a lot of people find "whom" to be archaic) are made to refer to people. Sometimes, it's obvious:

• Who is at the door?
• Who gave you that bouquet?
• To whom does this sandwich belong?

I can't imagine anyone saying "What is at the door?" or "What gave you that bouquet?" And "To what does this sandwich belong?" sounds to me like someone at a deli is trying to figure out why there is an extra sandwich after all of the orders have been bagged up.

When it comes to usage within a sentence, though, it can get a little more interesting:

• "Who is the person that is at the door?" should be: "Who is the person who is at the door?" 
• "Do you know the person that owns that?" should be: "Do you know the person who owns that?"

I realize that this, in the broad scheme of life, is not a life-and-death situation. But it is a person-versus-object situation. And, while it's easy to fall into the "that" usage, it makes people into things with just the change of a word. Which, to me, seems like a bad thing to do.

I can't imagine anyone saying "Who is the person what is at the door?" (Can you?) But again, in essence, that's what the "that" in that sentence is doing. It's making a person into an object.

Personally, I don't want to be an object - I'd rather be a person. And, when I'm working on an edit, I do my best to make sure that the people are people throughout, as well. (Unless... you know... it's part of the story where a person becomes an object, but that situation would probably need a whole different set of rules.)

Writing 101: Sometimes Technology Is Not Your Friend

I've been working with authors for a long time - probably close to a decade on at least a semi-professional basis, but really all the way back to college - in creative writing courses as well as just helping out friends as they wrote papers.

Not me.

I'm part of the generation that started working with keyboards on typewriters (mostly electric, at least), and experienced things like "daisy wheel" typewriters (which kept typing even when you had stopped because they had to catch up with you - which completely threw me off in the same way that an out-of-sync movie does).

I also had a dictionary. And - in my parents' house - a full set of World Book Encyclopedias. And - at school - a full school library.

Also not me.

We went through word processors that would show you one line of text at a time, and then print it out when you moved on. There was a computer lab in the basement of my dorm when I was in college - it had no Internet access of any kind, but it would allow you to type up your papers, and then print them out on a dot-matrix printer. In grad school, the computers in the lab got an upgrade - and so did the printers.

I still had a dictionary, but the school libraries were much bigger with stacks upon stacks of card catalogs and references for books and topics I'd never heard of. But this idea called "spellcheck" was beginning to take hold. 

And then, suddenly, I had my own computer in my apartment. And my own printer. And a dial-up connection to the World Wide Web, which I could even use when I brought home a laptop from the consulting job I had.

Yep. Both mine.

I was still mainly relying on my dictionary and my reference books, but suddenly I could also rely on my computer to tell me if words were spelled wrong, or if my sentences were oddly constructed. (Okay - the grammar checking function mostly just annoys me, if I'm being honest, but it does help to point out some of the cases where words might be spelled right, but are simply the wrong word in the situation.)

Then - in 2007 - the iPhone came on the scene, and everyone suddenly had access to all sorts of technology right in one handheld device. Spellcheck and web searching became the norm, and - in many cases - it was for the better.

Which of these tools are you more likely to use for making a note?

But then we got into the age of autocorrect and speech-to-text writing. And writing in shortened "text speak," which sometimes seems to want to send us all into a course on ciphers and hieroglyphs. This is the world where a voice message asking about "Going to South Dakota for the weekend" becomes - in text: "Going to sort the code for the weakened." (True story.)

Granted, in some situations (I'm thinking enabling people who could not otherwise communicate) this is amazing. But, from an editorial and proofreading standpoint... wow... there are times when I miss the days of dictionaries and encyclopedias. Or at least the days when people would read what their computers were writing before sending it out for the world to see.

Of course, the more people ignore their dictionaries and rely on their autocorrected emojis, the longer I'll have a solid job. So maybe I shouldn't disparage all that tech quite so quickly.

Editing 101: Sometimes Brief Is Too Brief

So often, people send me things saying "I'd like this to be shorter, if possible."

For the most part, I have no problems with that. Many of the authors I work with spend a lot of time putting a lot more words onto the page than they really need. It's often easy to cut out a certain amount of text.

Barring any issues with the author's style preferences, shaving

"Then, he moved to the door and leaned against it, with an air of disgust." 

down to

"Disgusted, he moved to lean against the doorframe." 

is often pretty easy, after all.

And, taking it a bit further, I have to admit that I absolutely love condensing entire books down to the text on the back cover. (I used to work at a job where we had to boil entire operas down to three or four words. That was challenging, but really fun.)

What I'm trying to say is that I completely understand the desire (and need, at times) to strip text down to its components. However, if you go too far it can have some pretty ridiculous - and indecipherable - consequences.

Take, for instance, this set of words found on the packaging for some toothpaste:

Maybe it's just me, but I kind of expect that the listing on a package will be telling me what the product is good for. My expectation is that it will either give me a list of the things the product will do or the things that the product will get rid of. Does that sound right to you?

So, looking at the list, above, and seeing that "cavities" are the first item, I'd assume that this is a list of the things that this toothpaste is going to get rid of:

• cavities
• plaque
• gingivitis

     -----

• enamel
• tartar
• breath
• whitens

Wait... wait... wait...

The first three make sense, but why do we want a toothpaste that gets rid of enamel?

So maybe that line in the middle means that we've switched gears and the rest of the list is good stuff? But what about "tartar"? We obviously don't want more of that. "Breath" has me confused here, too. Is the toothpaste going to get rid of my breath? Is it going to make it easier to breathe? What does that mean?

But even breath (because it's a noun) makes more sense in this list than the verb "whitens." After all, you can't add a "whitens" to something. You certainly can't remove your "whitens" from your teeth.

The more frustrated I became as I looked at this packaging, the more I thought "I must be missing something," so - in the interest of full disclosure - here is a photo of the entire panel:

Okay. So the bottom line does clarify what we're doing with the plaque and tartar. But if we apply the "prevent" idea to the first set ("Prevents cavities, plaque, and gingivitis"), then what do we do with the second set? Do we really want to say that this "Fights enamel, tartar, breath, and whitens"? (And, again, how would one "fight whitens" anyway?)

Luckily, because this was a mini tube from the dentist - and because I tend to keep those for when I'm travelling - I dug around in my stash and found an older box of the same brand.

Thankfully, the older box had been printed before someone at Colgate had decided to eliminate a whole bunch of the helpful words. It yielded much more information:

Remarkably, in the exact same amount of space (and even after giving more space to the logos), we're presented with actual phrases and clauses that make sense.

Okay, if you're paying close attention, you'll see that the older version does not mention enamel at all. But - is it really worse to not mention it? Or is it worse to insinuate that the toothpaste removes it along with the tartar and plaque?

I don't know about you, but I'm thinking that this was one situation where a few too many words were removed for the "author's" own good.

(I won't lie. There's a part of me that is really looking forward to my next trip to the dentist, just so I can see what the latest version of the packaging looks like.)  

Drawing an Editorial Map

As an editor, I spend a lot of time trying to coach authors down the paths I think they should take. I also try to nudge them away from things that I just don't think are working.

I was trying to figure out a nice way to explain this to someone I was working with, recently. Sometimes that's much more difficult than others.

Then, as I was out walking the dog that evening, I came across this driveway, and realized that maybe working with authors is easier than working with some drivers - or maybe contractors - I'm not entirely certain what prompted this.

Luckily, I've never had to resort to neon orange spray paint with my authors.

But it's good to know that it might be an option sometime if I really need it.

Preparing for the New Year

I was answering a question for an online acquaintance earlier this evening, and I decided that I kind of liked what I said. So I'm sharing it here:

I think there is a layer of angst built into the perceived pressure of a new year. It's bliss because it's a new, blank state, but it's also terrifying. The same fear of the blank page that causes writer's block. All we can do is... do. And the next day will dawn, and we'll move into that one and start the new day as we shake off the old.

So... Here's to moving into the new year--and scribbling gloriously all over the blank pages.

Expectations Versus Reality

I seem to be having some issues with getting my expectations and reality to align, lately.

Typically, I can let things like this pretty much just slide off and I can keep going. But the past couple of weeks things have just been kind of "off." I don't know how else to put it.

That's a large part of why I haven't been blogging - I just haven't had anything upbeat to write about and those of you who do take the time to read this really don't need to deal with my random existential angst.

I'm not going to lie - having this happen in the weeks around Thanksgiving and Christmas has been a bit of a bummer. (I'm sure the people I've been interacting with lately would agree.)

We'll see what the next few weeks have in store. Or - you know - the next few hours, since those expectations might be easier to manage.

No Words

There are days when I simply have a little bit of a block and can't figure out what witty thing to write on here. Most days I push through and find something. Some days I don't.

Today, though, as I saw news reports of the attacks in Paris, I was trying to figure out what to say. I looked at some maps and realized that a couple of the attacks were in the neighborhood near where I lived when I lived over there.

I found out this evening that two of the restaurants were within less than a block of my old apartment. One of the news reports listed casualties in my old street.

Christopher asked me whether I was okay - whether there was anything he could do - as I was scrolling through the news feeds with tears running down my face.

I tried to explain what was going on in my head - in my heart - but it's too irrational, emotional, visceral.

I simply have no words.

Is It Over Yet?

One week from now, I'll be a very happy guy.

I really can't stand Halloween, you see, and this time of year it is EVERYWHERE.

Ads on line. Ads on TV.

Last weekend there was a zombie pub crawl in Minneapolis, and so all week this week there has been fake blood on the sidewalks.

I really can't wait for it all to go away - both the fake blood and the holiday.

Okay. Some of the candy bars can stay around. But the rest of it can go away.

Saying What You Mean (for better or worse)

I had one of those moments at work today that probably shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have happened for a LOT of reasons, honestly, but here's the full story, at least as I experienced it.

I was in a meeting. It's a bi-weekly meeting where people who have issues which the IT department should know about - but which might be too hard to put into an email - meet up to talk them through.

I was trying to explain a particular situation which, I think, has probably been causing some problems, lately. (We have a drop-down box at one point which only offers two possible answers. But since clients could actually have other answers, it has a line which says "If your file isn't X, then choose option Y." The trouble is that many people have actually had file Z, Q, P, and L - and so when they get further into the system those can cause issues.)

So, I was trying to explain this issue, and one of the other people in the meeting kept asking me questions like "How many people do we really deal with with that?" and "Well, we can fix that for them anyway, can't we?" She interjected multiple times, and eventually - as my brain was getting overwhelmed with trying to keep my question out - I looked over at her, put my hand on the table, and said "Calm the fuck down" then I went right back to finish what I was saying.

Yep. I said fuck at work. I did say it with a smile on my face and my tone of voice must have been cheerful because a few other people did laugh. And, well, the young woman who had been talking over me the whole time finally stopped.

The end product, then, was what I had hoped for.

But I probably should have just said "Calm down" - though I don't know if it would have done as much good.

Definitely a case of saying what you mean (and meaning what you say) possibly needing a bit of a thought-pause somewhere in the middle.

A Realization Tiz List

It's been a while since I've done a Tiz List of things that you might not know about me, and while realizing a few things about myself I also realized that. So here we go: a list of recent (though not all new) realizations about myself:

1. I exasperate easily. I mean, I can put up with stupid stuff for a really long time, but then there will be that moment when things just go over the edge and I will go from calm to exasperated in 0.0001 seconds.

2. It takes me much longer to dial back the exasperation.

3. I really dislike it when someone asks for my advice and then ignores it. This is something I have known for eons, but working on the second round of an edit where the author obviously ignored big issues that I had corrected... ugh.

4. People who get away with breaking rules bug the heck out of me.

5. People who let people get away with breaking rules also bug the heck out of me. Yet, somehow, I've realized that the rule breakers, themselves, bug me more.

6. Mainly I think the reason they bother me is because I don't often break the rules - and even if I don't get caught I tend to feel guilty.

7. Perhaps it's really an issue with me and my ethics-related guilt complex.

8. Ninety percent of the time I'm a very non-competitive person, but if you push my buttons I'll do my damnedest to pummel the hell out of you - in a very sportsmanlike way, of course.

9. I've been known to cheat so that I can let others win. And I've been known to feel guilty about winning. Oddly enough, these two things don't often coincide.

10. I hate when people who are obviously not ready to order stand in front of you in line and don't offer to let you go in front of them, since you already know what you want. Or when they aren't ready to check out, but they block the cashier while waiting for someone to bring them something. I suspect the Holiday shopping season will be tense for me this year.

In case you're wondering, eight of the above realizations have happened at work. Three of them happened while commuting to or from work. No, that doesn't add up to ten. It's not supposed to.

Learning My Own Lesson

As I've mentioned I was going to do, I went to Idaho last weekend and gave two talks on the subject of "The Seven Deadly Sins of Self Publishing." They went pretty well, and I'm really glad I did it. But that's not what this post is about.

This post is actually about listening to your teachers, paying attention to words of wisdom, and following the right path - even when you're the one who is teaching/imparting/pointing it out.

You see, I've been feeling pretty good about the two sessions. Yes, three people nodded off during the first session, but the conference room was probably about 80 degrees and pretty stuffy and at about 3:30 in the afternoon they'd all been in and out of sessions for 7 hours. Plus... well... the majority of the audience were not spring chickens, so they hadn't ever learned to over caffeinate to keep going. And it was only three people out of about 18, so I figure that's pretty good.

By the second session, I was a bit more on my game (remember - it has been 20+ years since I last taught a class), and of the 12 people in attendance, only 1 nodded off. And I saw her nod off at the banquet that evening, as well. So I figure she might do that a lot.

From what I've learned, there were about 45 people in attendance at the conference. I had about 30 of them listening to me between the two sessions. Plus I had 4 people sign up for one-on-one writing coaching sessions in advance, then 1 signed up after hearing me speak - and one of the original four signed up for a second session with me to try to answer some more of her questions, and truly seemed energized by what we discussed.

After each session, people came up to chat. People struck up conversations with me later on. And someone even asked if I'd be coming to their conference next year.

I left there feeling pretty darned good about it all. I texted Christopher and we chatted on the phone and I told him all about it. I couldn't wait to get back to work today and talk about it with people.

Then, as I was sitting in the office this afternoon, my boss came in and asked how it had gone. I told him I thought it had gone well - that I had handed out all of my business cards and lots of people asked about the company - and that I was glad I had gone. He asked how many people attended, and I gave him the ballpark numbers, and told him how many people I had spoken to. And he just kind of looked at me and said "Oh," which seemed to include a mix of "Is that all?" and "I'm glad we're not paying you for that." in his voice.

I went from really proud of my weekend to feeling like the conference might have been a bust.

Then someone asked me what my talk was about. And I told him my topic. He asked what the Sins are, as I see them. And he laughed with me as I listed them off, ending with "Sin #7: Judging your success by anyone else's standard." To which he said "Sounds like a good idea for life in general."

Lightbulb. Lightning bolt. Whack upside the head with a pillow. All the cartoon cliches for epiphany moments.

No. I wasn't the opening act at Madison Square Garden. No. I didn't do a Ted talk with 47,000 views on YouTube. What I did do was step out of my daily life, put my skills and knowledge to good use, and - hopefully - make a difference in a few people's lives. Maybe inspiring a few people to write some more. Maybe convincing a few writers to consider self publishing. Maybe reminding some frustrated self-published authors that success is what you make of it.

And I had fun doing it. Which is why this weekend will become cocktail party conversation for the next few months, while the eight hours I spent at work today will simply become a footnote.

I guess you could say I learned my lesson - I just needed someone else to remind me.

A Wrinkle in Time

There seems to be something really odd going on with time, lately. In part, I blame the weather for this, but mainly I blame weird marketing and such.

You see, it was really warm last week - the first week of September - and so it felt like it was still summer. But this weekend it is really cool, making it feel more like the first week of October.

Christopher and I went to a birthday party tonight held in a neighbor's backyard - and although I was comfortable in shorts and a long-sleeve shirt, by the time we were leaving, they had turned on a propane heater in the yard because people were getting cold. If they had had it last weekend, they'd have needed extra ice and fans, instead.

But - even more than that - there is the fact that we're already getting pushed toward Halloween. The grocery stores are full of Halloween candy and ephemera. Even if I didn't hate Halloween, I would still think this is way too early.

That's how I feel about the fact that I'm already seeing some pushes for Christmas.

It all just makes me want to unplug from the world - or else plug in an iron to smooth the calendar back out.

Confusion in Aisle 7

Could someone please explain to me why two grocery stores - both part of the same chain - can have such completely different stock?

I was looking for some toothpaste this past weekend, and after striking out at Target and Walgreens, I tried our "local" Cub grocery store. They also didn't have what I was looking for. 

So I went to a different Cub, where I didn't find what I was looking for, but did find something really close to it, which I thought maybe had replaced it. When I got it home, though, I realized that it wasn't the same. 

This led me to going to Cub number three after going to a movie tonight. I returned the toothpaste I'd found at Cub #2, and then went down the aisle just for the heck of it. Lo and behold, on the bottom shelf, there were probably a dozen or more boxes of what I had been searching for - the kind which didn't even exist in any of the other stores. 

Now, I know that some stores carry food items specific to their shoppers' demographics. I used to live near a "mainstream" grocery store that had a HUGE selection of international foods because most of its clientele were first-generation immigrants. And when I lived in Baltimore there was a chain grocery store in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood which carried no pork products. 

But toothpaste? Why would there be such a huge disparity between stores in the types - not even the brands, but just the types - of toothpaste they stock? 

Some things I suspect I will never understand. 

Writing Good Copy for Mediocre Books

One of the pieces of my job that I typically really like to do is writing back cover copy for books. I think, in part, it's because I get to battle the "Don't judge a book by its cover" aphorism by truly asking people to judge books by their covers.

Most of the time, writing them is pretty decent. I sit down, I read the book, I look at the marketing plans the authors have proposed, and I write about a page of copy for them to use. About 75% of the time, they use about 75% of my copy. About 20% of the time they dump it entirely and put up something of their own. The remaining 5% - if I'm lucky - they actually use what I've written in its entirety.

(Ironically - though most authors don't know this - I actually proofread their covers before they go to print. So I see what they've done to what I've written. Sometimes it's interesting to see what they think the point of the book is. Sometimes it's really well done. Sometimes it's just not good...)

As I've said, most of the time this part of my job is pretty decent. When it's not decent is when I find myself having to write copy for books I don't find to be good. Some are really well written, but about really bad topics or with characters with really horrible morals/ethics/politics. Some of them are really interesting ideas, but are just poorly written. (Yeah... we write a lot of copy for books that didn't get edited.)

Writing this stuff sometimes makes me feel like I'm writing press releases in support of a natural disaster ("You're going to love the flooding from this next hurricane!") or maybe asking people to buy an unfinished cake ("Sure it needs frosting, but just look at how level the layers are!").

But it's all part of the job, and it's something that I've found I'm pretty good at. So I do it and get paid for it and go on with my life hoping that the authors approve and their books sell.

And - every so often - I come here to confession. Your forgiveness - though not mandatory - is greatly appreciated.

If Wednesday Were A Fruit...

Christopher's sisters were having an online discussion earlier this week about what fruit would symbolize each day of the week. Apparently someone had arrived at work and declared Monday to be the apple of the week, because, you know, a Red Delicious apple is just kind of Monday-ish. 

My contribution was for Wednesday, which I suggested would be a tomato. 

After all, a tomato is pretty strange as a fruit, but there's an awful lot you can do with it - as log as you're a little creative and not too literal. 

Makes sense to me. 

Living Life As... Myself

There is a new Mazda ad on TV where a young guy gets a new car, and then we watch him get different Mazdas as the ad goes along. He takes one to college. He drives one away from his wedding. He drives his kids around in one.

Then, at the end, he gets a new car and the voiceover says that he should celebrate feeling a little more like himself.

The ad bothers me every time I see it. I don't know if it did the very first time. I probably thought it was kind of sweet, you know?

But then I started to think about that final line and realized that this guy has apparently lived his whole life not being himself. According to the ad, he was himself when he was young, single, and owned a convertible. Then, after that, he had to become someone else to get married and have kids. Only getting into a new car - alone - and driving away allowed him to feel like himself.

And, yeah, that makes me sad. For him.

It's kind of like the people who are absolute hell to work with for 8 hours every day, but then you get told that they're "totally different - really fun" outside of work. That means that for at least 1/3 of their lives they're... someone else? What is the point in that?

On this Friday of Pride Week in Minneapolis - and on the day that the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is the law of the land - I would have to say that I spend pretty much my whole life being me.

That's how I was raised. I was raised to be myself and to be happy with that. Okay. Yes. I'm also a Gemini, which means that there may or may not be multiple sides of me that not everyone knows, but they are all very much me. I don't need to drive away from my daily life in a new car to find out who I am.

And as much as I would love a new car, I'm perfectly happy with the everyday me.