Hope none of my psycho friends take exception to this, but...sometimes psychology really boils down to just psychobabble. It's just...bizarre. Strange stuff. And, when you read between the lines, it more often than not says "we don't know." But that's just my somewhat amateur and very jaded perception.
Yes, I'm doing research. Remember how glowingly I talked of researching when I was writing the fiction book? That's because I was able to use sites like Wikipedia and Maynotbetrue.com. Heck, I was researching fiction, so as long as I got something that sounded good, it was good. Now, though, it's researching non-fiction. Most of the book I'm already pretty knowledgeable in, but there are some aspects of each chapter that I have to look up, if for no other reason than to make sure I'm presenting reasonably current stuff.
Compared to a dissertation, it's not all that rigorous. Compared to fiction research, it's quite tedious.
Take, for example, the current chapter on figuring out what you want to do with your life. Every success book has one of those. I know where I want to take the chapter, but I need to discuss the concept of Interest Inventories. I mean, they're sort of kind of useful as long as you don't take them too seriously. At least, the one I took back in high school was useful, in a "I probably should have paid attention back then" sort of way. It told me I should become a teacher or a writer, after all. Granted, I was taking it as part of the West Point admissions process, and so I made sure to keep re-rolling till I rolled a 20 on my Disbelieve check (ask a Dungeons and Dragons player if you don't get that). What good would it have been to tell my West Point Liaison officer that I needed to become a teacher or a writer, two fields that really aren't big for Army officers? Instead, I became an Infantry Officer, and sucked at it. Then I became an Engineer Officer, and sucked at that. Then I became a product engineer, and by that point I'd figured out how to make lemonade out of lemons, so I was...well, I was OK. Then I became an electrical engineering grad student and flunked right out. After a few more years of trying various other career paths, I settled into...teacher.
Don't get too excited, though. There's plenty of research that says the career inventory stuff is psychobabble. I know; I'm looking at it right now. Granted, they don't say that; nobody would use the word "psychobabble" in a peer-reviewed publication. Instead, they say things like, "It appears that getting exact three-letter RIASEC profile matches on even two inventories may be an infrequent occurrence" (Savickas & Taber, pg. 203). In other words, had I taken another format of assessment, it may have told me to become, say, a stockbroker. That still would've been rather useless, with me going into the Army come Hell or high water, but it's a far cry from teacher. That, to me, is psychobabble.
Ah, well. It's actually a little fun, after straying away from the scholarly type of "stuff," to get back into real research. It's fun, anyway, to a point...and after that point, I want to get back to writing.
Speaking of writing...I have a few hundred words still to commit to the book tonight, so now is a good time to wish you good night. Good night!
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Writing non-fiction
What a great weekend it's been! We went into Washington, D.C., Friday night and picked up a friend at the airport. Spent Saturday in the Smithsonian, and I finally got to go see the Asian art exhibit at the Freer. It's astoundingly beautiful, and it helped quite a bit in putting things in order for my third Return of the Gods book. I still need more time...nearly an entire day or two, probably...in that exhibit, but it was a great start.
Today I've gotten most of the day to write. Writing non-fiction is significantly different from writing fiction, I'm finding. For one thing, I'm pleased at my accomplishment, which was only about 3K words. When writing fiction, a solid day at the keyboard would generate at least twice that. But non-fiction requires a different part of the brain. Instead of telling a story, massaging it out of the nether with creativity and a touch of humor, I'm talking to a different audience, telling a series of truths that I've known for a while. I thought it would be easier, honestly, than the fiction writing. I mean, it's all just the honest truth as I know it set up in a pattern that's already outlined. It's not, though. Easier, that is. There's a lot of effort that goes into stringing together ideas in a persuasive manner, I'm finding. I'm not shooting for any particular number of words as I write, though I kind of figured it would be less than I wrote for Return of the Gods. It might be, but it's still a pretty involved process.
So, all that being said, it's been a good, productive day, tacked on at the end of a good, enjoyable weekend. Have a great week!
Today I've gotten most of the day to write. Writing non-fiction is significantly different from writing fiction, I'm finding. For one thing, I'm pleased at my accomplishment, which was only about 3K words. When writing fiction, a solid day at the keyboard would generate at least twice that. But non-fiction requires a different part of the brain. Instead of telling a story, massaging it out of the nether with creativity and a touch of humor, I'm talking to a different audience, telling a series of truths that I've known for a while. I thought it would be easier, honestly, than the fiction writing. I mean, it's all just the honest truth as I know it set up in a pattern that's already outlined. It's not, though. Easier, that is. There's a lot of effort that goes into stringing together ideas in a persuasive manner, I'm finding. I'm not shooting for any particular number of words as I write, though I kind of figured it would be less than I wrote for Return of the Gods. It might be, but it's still a pretty involved process.
So, all that being said, it's been a good, productive day, tacked on at the end of a good, enjoyable weekend. Have a great week!
Saturday, July 9, 2011
A story well told is good
I finished Water for Elephants today. It was a good read.
After waking up in our hotel in D.C., I was reading in the bathroom (the only one, of course) when Heide needed in. I told her it was perfect timing, because I'd pretty much finished the book, and "the bad guy died, while the good guy and girl got together and lived happily ever after." When Heide jokingly jumped my case for revealing the end to her, I replied that that was the end to nearly every book I liked to read. Then I realized the truth in my attempt at humor.
Don't get me wrong...WFE is an awesome book. You probably don't need my recommendation to read it, but if you do then you certainly have it. It's a very well told story. It's clearly well researched. Most importantly, the telling of the story is entirely transparent. It opens with an engaging scene, so unlike most books out there I didn't have any problem sticking with it at first. It's told in the first person present and past tense. Gruen does such a great job with that tense that it feels like Jacob is actually sitting there telling the story. That's in my bathroom, too, and if I don't have a problem feeling like another old guy is sitting in my bathroom with me, then that's clearly a well-told story.
All that said, there's something to be said for the power of telling the same old story, dressed up differently, in an excellent way. There doesn't have to be anything new at all about the plot. The amount of hope that knowledge brings an author-wanna-be like me is immense, really. I don't HAVE to come up with a brand new story idea. All I have to do is take an already-used story idea, set it in a new setting, and tell it very, very well. The good part of that is that I, like any other aspiring writer, can learn to tell a story very, very well.
So...with those words of hope, I say good night. It's been a long day of touring and this old guy needs sleep. So, what are your thoughts?
After waking up in our hotel in D.C., I was reading in the bathroom (the only one, of course) when Heide needed in. I told her it was perfect timing, because I'd pretty much finished the book, and "the bad guy died, while the good guy and girl got together and lived happily ever after." When Heide jokingly jumped my case for revealing the end to her, I replied that that was the end to nearly every book I liked to read. Then I realized the truth in my attempt at humor.
Don't get me wrong...WFE is an awesome book. You probably don't need my recommendation to read it, but if you do then you certainly have it. It's a very well told story. It's clearly well researched. Most importantly, the telling of the story is entirely transparent. It opens with an engaging scene, so unlike most books out there I didn't have any problem sticking with it at first. It's told in the first person present and past tense. Gruen does such a great job with that tense that it feels like Jacob is actually sitting there telling the story. That's in my bathroom, too, and if I don't have a problem feeling like another old guy is sitting in my bathroom with me, then that's clearly a well-told story.
All that said, there's something to be said for the power of telling the same old story, dressed up differently, in an excellent way. There doesn't have to be anything new at all about the plot. The amount of hope that knowledge brings an author-wanna-be like me is immense, really. I don't HAVE to come up with a brand new story idea. All I have to do is take an already-used story idea, set it in a new setting, and tell it very, very well. The good part of that is that I, like any other aspiring writer, can learn to tell a story very, very well.
So...with those words of hope, I say good night. It's been a long day of touring and this old guy needs sleep. So, what are your thoughts?
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Hey, look! A squirrel....
I'm not easily distracted, I just.... Why does my scanner scan to .jpgs, while my work scanner only scans to .tifs?
So yeah...I started a new project today. I feel perfectly justified doing so. At this point...today, in fact...I have been working with Matt and Crystal and all for six months. It started as a trilogy, and then became a...um, what do you call a two book series? A bilogy? Ick. But anyway, the trilogy became two books which then became one book which then became two books again which has now become a trilogy with what was the second book now the third and making a lot more sense from a story perspective, and that book is yet to be written. Phew. 160,000 words written and counting.
I really like Matt and Crystal, I really do. It's just that immersion in one story line has become taxing. I understand, now, why authors keep at least a couple of different series going at any given time, and Mr. Jordan, I take back everything I said about you doing Conan when I was hoping you'd finish WoT. It just...gets old.
Now's a perfect time for a new project, really. The second book is still largely crap, but it requires a fresh mind and perspective to revise it as much as it needs. I tried last night, and though I successfully added a much-needed scene at the end, I didn't really "feel" it. It's an important scene, too; when I had written the draft, I got to the climactic battle scene, had a lot of fun swinging the prose back and forth through the clang and whoosh of combat, and then...ended the book. It's missing the "so what was it all about" wrap up part that, if I leave it out, will tick off the readers. Problem is, if I just vomit a bunch of "what was it all about" onto the page, as I suspect I did last night, it won't be very fulfilling either. What I fear, then, is that I could spend a lot of time revising only to be making it just as bad, or even possibly worse.
Meanwhile, the first book is on the way to the editor's desk, and that's probably a month wait once it gets there. No point revising that one any further.
So...this morning, I chased a new squirrel. Wrote around 500 words, in the short time I had before work, on the non-fiction book I've been gonna write. I've actually been quite good about being gonna write it, refusing up to now to dive into this project despite having it entirely outlined. Now, though, I have no reason not to jump right on in. It's a fun project, really, and allows me to speak directly from my experiences as a career college DoE. It's also first person, so it feels a little like blogging, except that I have to be careful to not just write in steam-of-conscience mode. But that one exception aside, this is a very fun project so far.
Have a great day chasing your own squirrels!
So yeah...I started a new project today. I feel perfectly justified doing so. At this point...today, in fact...I have been working with Matt and Crystal and all for six months. It started as a trilogy, and then became a...um, what do you call a two book series? A bilogy? Ick. But anyway, the trilogy became two books which then became one book which then became two books again which has now become a trilogy with what was the second book now the third and making a lot more sense from a story perspective, and that book is yet to be written. Phew. 160,000 words written and counting.
I really like Matt and Crystal, I really do. It's just that immersion in one story line has become taxing. I understand, now, why authors keep at least a couple of different series going at any given time, and Mr. Jordan, I take back everything I said about you doing Conan when I was hoping you'd finish WoT. It just...gets old.
Now's a perfect time for a new project, really. The second book is still largely crap, but it requires a fresh mind and perspective to revise it as much as it needs. I tried last night, and though I successfully added a much-needed scene at the end, I didn't really "feel" it. It's an important scene, too; when I had written the draft, I got to the climactic battle scene, had a lot of fun swinging the prose back and forth through the clang and whoosh of combat, and then...ended the book. It's missing the "so what was it all about" wrap up part that, if I leave it out, will tick off the readers. Problem is, if I just vomit a bunch of "what was it all about" onto the page, as I suspect I did last night, it won't be very fulfilling either. What I fear, then, is that I could spend a lot of time revising only to be making it just as bad, or even possibly worse.
Meanwhile, the first book is on the way to the editor's desk, and that's probably a month wait once it gets there. No point revising that one any further.
So...this morning, I chased a new squirrel. Wrote around 500 words, in the short time I had before work, on the non-fiction book I've been gonna write. I've actually been quite good about being gonna write it, refusing up to now to dive into this project despite having it entirely outlined. Now, though, I have no reason not to jump right on in. It's a fun project, really, and allows me to speak directly from my experiences as a career college DoE. It's also first person, so it feels a little like blogging, except that I have to be careful to not just write in steam-of-conscience mode. But that one exception aside, this is a very fun project so far.
Have a great day chasing your own squirrels!
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Just papers....
It's really a rather strange feeling, sending a manuscript away to be looked at. And then to tell a big fat hairy lie...sheesh.
Today I slipped out between the thunderstorms (and we've had some doosies today!) and went to the post office with a manila envelope containing the manuscript and an outline. Oh, and a check. I did decide on an editor, by the way...one with a track record. She's not cheap, but I've been assured by more than one person that I'll get my money's worth, so...yeah. It was a big check.
FedEx'ing 250 pages seemed a tad outrageously overpriced, so I decided on the good ole' U.S. Postal Service, Priority mail. Oh, I could have sent an electronic file to be edited through "track changes" in Microsoft Word, but I've always preferred revising in hard copy. In fact, at home now I have a few older versions of the manuscript all marked up. I'm saving them because I hope that some day I'll be a billionaire bestseller and they'll be valuable...or on the off chance that we have a cataclysm and I need stuff to start fires. One way or another, they may be worth something some day.
Anyway, I handed the parcel over to the Postal Service employee behind the counter and asked for Priority mail, and then she gave me the ritual queries about whether it contained anything flammable, breakable, perishable, or capable of destroying the entire state of California. I smiled, and said, "No, it's just papers." Immediately, I hated myself for that response. Just papers, my tuckass. It's six months of my life spent staying up late, getting up early, sitting at the computer all weekend, editing, revising, thinking...yeah, all that. And more! This, lady postal employee, is the NEXT BEST selling novel! It's the best thing since sliced bread, for srs.
*ahem*
OK, 'nuff of that. It's been a long road, is all. I'm excited to be at this point, but I'm also a little apprehensive. It's just...strange. Part of me hopes the editor deposits the check, reads over the manuscript, and says "Ohmygod I wouldn't change a thing this is the best ever it's a new bestseller I guarantee it'll do well thankyouforthecheck it's grrrrreat ohmygod!" The fear, really, is that the editor will do what I'm paying her for to the extreme that the manuscript comes back to me with a big "F" (for "Firestarter") on the front. I mean, I like it, and Heide likes it, but the editor is, like, well, real.
OK, OK, that really is 'nuff emoblogging for the day. I'll just get busy revising Ascension tonight while I wait eagerly for the results.
Today I slipped out between the thunderstorms (and we've had some doosies today!) and went to the post office with a manila envelope containing the manuscript and an outline. Oh, and a check. I did decide on an editor, by the way...one with a track record. She's not cheap, but I've been assured by more than one person that I'll get my money's worth, so...yeah. It was a big check.
FedEx'ing 250 pages seemed a tad outrageously overpriced, so I decided on the good ole' U.S. Postal Service, Priority mail. Oh, I could have sent an electronic file to be edited through "track changes" in Microsoft Word, but I've always preferred revising in hard copy. In fact, at home now I have a few older versions of the manuscript all marked up. I'm saving them because I hope that some day I'll be a billionaire bestseller and they'll be valuable...or on the off chance that we have a cataclysm and I need stuff to start fires. One way or another, they may be worth something some day.
Anyway, I handed the parcel over to the Postal Service employee behind the counter and asked for Priority mail, and then she gave me the ritual queries about whether it contained anything flammable, breakable, perishable, or capable of destroying the entire state of California. I smiled, and said, "No, it's just papers." Immediately, I hated myself for that response. Just papers, my tuckass. It's six months of my life spent staying up late, getting up early, sitting at the computer all weekend, editing, revising, thinking...yeah, all that. And more! This, lady postal employee, is the NEXT BEST selling novel! It's the best thing since sliced bread, for srs.
*ahem*
OK, 'nuff of that. It's been a long road, is all. I'm excited to be at this point, but I'm also a little apprehensive. It's just...strange. Part of me hopes the editor deposits the check, reads over the manuscript, and says "Ohmygod I wouldn't change a thing this is the best ever it's a new bestseller I guarantee it'll do well thankyouforthecheck it's grrrrreat ohmygod!" The fear, really, is that the editor will do what I'm paying her for to the extreme that the manuscript comes back to me with a big "F" (for "Firestarter") on the front. I mean, I like it, and Heide likes it, but the editor is, like, well, real.
OK, OK, that really is 'nuff emoblogging for the day. I'll just get busy revising Ascension tonight while I wait eagerly for the results.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Damn, this is good.
I try very hard to be the kind of person who's not considered self-absorbed. I know I fail...a lot...but the effort is there, anyway. That said, I have to admit that there's a strange self-absorbed pleasurable giddiness that comes from reading over a work of fiction that wasn't written as a result of any teacher's command, when you can read over text that you breathed life into yourself and say directly to the author, "Damn, this is good."
Damn well oughtta be good. I started writing the book sometime back in February; February 16 was the date I posted in my guild's World of Warcraft forum that I would be taking "a little time off" to write this thing. March 20 was the date I posted to this blog that I was done...it was in a post titled "Finis" that, I admit, reads as though I was a bit drunk. I really had no idea at the time how much work still stretched out before me. I revised it once, and then let it rest as I wrote what is now book two (a.k.a. Return of the Gods: Ascension) and let several friends read over it. I could tell then based on the relatively few critiques I received (it's tough, I admit, to tell your friend that his stuff stinks) and what was written in the ones I did get, that it wasn't up to snuff. So I went at revising it again, removing wholesale sections, shifting stuff around, and wordsmithing in general.
Now, nearly six months after I started, it's really getting there, and that makes me indescribably happy. Heide is still doing a final read-through, and she's catching some great stuff, asking some important why questions. As I'd added and removed and moved words, I'd forgotten a couple of details about when certain characters learned certain stuff, and so I've got a couple instances in the book where people are commenting on things they can't know yet. Ah, well...it's all fixable, and she's doing a great job catching it. We're in the last couple of days, in fact...she has a few dozen pages left to read, to be revised after, and then I'm ready to package it up like a manuscript and either send it to an editor or send queries to agents. In either case, I feel like I've accomplished something significant.
I've written a novel. I hope I've written a publishable novel.
That's probably enough blustery stuff for one post, so with that I'll say...hope everyone has a happy and safe Independence Day Holiday, if you're in the U.S., and if not, hope you still have a happy and safe 4th of July.
Damn well oughtta be good. I started writing the book sometime back in February; February 16 was the date I posted in my guild's World of Warcraft forum that I would be taking "a little time off" to write this thing. March 20 was the date I posted to this blog that I was done...it was in a post titled "Finis" that, I admit, reads as though I was a bit drunk. I really had no idea at the time how much work still stretched out before me. I revised it once, and then let it rest as I wrote what is now book two (a.k.a. Return of the Gods: Ascension) and let several friends read over it. I could tell then based on the relatively few critiques I received (it's tough, I admit, to tell your friend that his stuff stinks) and what was written in the ones I did get, that it wasn't up to snuff. So I went at revising it again, removing wholesale sections, shifting stuff around, and wordsmithing in general.
Now, nearly six months after I started, it's really getting there, and that makes me indescribably happy. Heide is still doing a final read-through, and she's catching some great stuff, asking some important why questions. As I'd added and removed and moved words, I'd forgotten a couple of details about when certain characters learned certain stuff, and so I've got a couple instances in the book where people are commenting on things they can't know yet. Ah, well...it's all fixable, and she's doing a great job catching it. We're in the last couple of days, in fact...she has a few dozen pages left to read, to be revised after, and then I'm ready to package it up like a manuscript and either send it to an editor or send queries to agents. In either case, I feel like I've accomplished something significant.
I've written a novel. I hope I've written a publishable novel.
That's probably enough blustery stuff for one post, so with that I'll say...hope everyone has a happy and safe Independence Day Holiday, if you're in the U.S., and if not, hope you still have a happy and safe 4th of July.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Blackheads and dandelions
When I was a teenager, there were two activities I hated beyond all others: squeezing blackheads and pulling weeds in the lawn. Neither was particularly painful or difficult, granted, and both seemed quite necessary, as the blackheads, if left in the skin of my face, would invariably become whiteheads, a.k.a. zits, that would show up at the exact inopportune moment to ruin a nice romantic encounter...or what passed for them at that age...you know, like when Sally McCordle (name changed to protect the blissfully unaware) smiled, yes, actually smiled, at me...or would have if not for the huge alien life form growing on my cheek...and thus crush my hopes and dreams of a normal life for the remainder of my time on the planet. Whew, I kinda hope that last sentence was at least close to grammatically correct. In any event, the other was important because, well, my stepdad said so, and he was bigger and meaner than me.
Many Saturday afternoons, then, were spent in the front yard with a funky little tool he'd bought. It looked like a screwdriver that had had its business end smushed. The goal, then, was to push the thinner blade of the tool down beside an offending weed--in California, it was usually a dandelion--and give it a little twist and a flick. Yes, that description sounds kind of like what the students at Hogwarts were taught to do with their wands, but it was absolutely nothing like that in reality. There, the swish and flick made feathers float and turned rats into cups, but in my yard it just made it so I could then grasp the weed and pull most of it out with some small amount of effort and a big clod of topsoil. One is magical, the other is dirty.
The interaction with dirt wasn't really what I hated about it, though. It was that I was never really done, it seemed. I'd start at one corner of the lawn and sweep up and down, moving across the expanse in a deliberate pattern. After reaching the other side and obtaining a glowing feeling akin to having won the homecoming game or actually gotten a "hello" from Sally, I'd do this little celebratory dance that, from a distance, must have looked a lot like standing up, and walk back toward the house. Only I'd never make it. I'd get some distance toward the door: sometimes a quarter of the way, sometimes halfway, sometimes close enough that I could see the spiderwebs embedded in those funky bushes we all had at our entryways in the late 70's and early 80's, and I'd nearly trip over another dandelion. How I'd missed it in my sweep, I never ever had any idea. But I'd always miss one, and its discovery would lead to another, and that to another. It was the task that never ended, because some strange invisible person was going along behind me planting dandelions as rapidly as I was taking them out. Or so it seemed. Same thing with...well, the other activity, but I'm done talking about bathroom practices of teenagers. For this post, anyway.
What brings this to mind now is that having a manuscript that's ALMOST ready to go out is roughly the same. I'll lovingly open it and flip to a page and start reading the prose that I wrote five and six months ago and have since gone through...TWICE!...and revised, and sure enough, there's a grammatical blackh...er, dandelion. How did I miss that unneeded adverb? I'll ask myself reproachfully. Grrrr. Is it EVER going to be done? I can imagine myself standing up and doing a little celebratory dance that from a distance looks like a guy taking a 200+ page document off of a printer, opening it one last time to make sure the ink didn't run out in the middle, and wham! Tripped! Right over a bad sentence construction.
I guess that's what editing is for, but that feels a little to me like my stepdad coming out to inspect the lawn. He'd always find another dandelion that I hadn't tripped over, and that was more embarrassing than my own late discoveries.
Ah, well...back to examining the manuscript. Have a great and happy Fourth of July weekend!
Many Saturday afternoons, then, were spent in the front yard with a funky little tool he'd bought. It looked like a screwdriver that had had its business end smushed. The goal, then, was to push the thinner blade of the tool down beside an offending weed--in California, it was usually a dandelion--and give it a little twist and a flick. Yes, that description sounds kind of like what the students at Hogwarts were taught to do with their wands, but it was absolutely nothing like that in reality. There, the swish and flick made feathers float and turned rats into cups, but in my yard it just made it so I could then grasp the weed and pull most of it out with some small amount of effort and a big clod of topsoil. One is magical, the other is dirty.
The interaction with dirt wasn't really what I hated about it, though. It was that I was never really done, it seemed. I'd start at one corner of the lawn and sweep up and down, moving across the expanse in a deliberate pattern. After reaching the other side and obtaining a glowing feeling akin to having won the homecoming game or actually gotten a "hello" from Sally, I'd do this little celebratory dance that, from a distance, must have looked a lot like standing up, and walk back toward the house. Only I'd never make it. I'd get some distance toward the door: sometimes a quarter of the way, sometimes halfway, sometimes close enough that I could see the spiderwebs embedded in those funky bushes we all had at our entryways in the late 70's and early 80's, and I'd nearly trip over another dandelion. How I'd missed it in my sweep, I never ever had any idea. But I'd always miss one, and its discovery would lead to another, and that to another. It was the task that never ended, because some strange invisible person was going along behind me planting dandelions as rapidly as I was taking them out. Or so it seemed. Same thing with...well, the other activity, but I'm done talking about bathroom practices of teenagers. For this post, anyway.
What brings this to mind now is that having a manuscript that's ALMOST ready to go out is roughly the same. I'll lovingly open it and flip to a page and start reading the prose that I wrote five and six months ago and have since gone through...TWICE!...and revised, and sure enough, there's a grammatical blackh...er, dandelion. How did I miss that unneeded adverb? I'll ask myself reproachfully. Grrrr. Is it EVER going to be done? I can imagine myself standing up and doing a little celebratory dance that from a distance looks like a guy taking a 200+ page document off of a printer, opening it one last time to make sure the ink didn't run out in the middle, and wham! Tripped! Right over a bad sentence construction.
I guess that's what editing is for, but that feels a little to me like my stepdad coming out to inspect the lawn. He'd always find another dandelion that I hadn't tripped over, and that was more embarrassing than my own late discoveries.
Ah, well...back to examining the manuscript. Have a great and happy Fourth of July weekend!
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