evil editor opines on brevity

I have become a quick fan of two publishing-related blogs recently. One, Miss Snark, led me to the other, Evil Editor.

Evil Editor had a Q & A post the other day that discussed the difficulties of summarizing an 80,000-word book down into one or two paragraphs for a query letter. (It could be noted here that my book's first draft took me 35 days to complete at 72,000 words. My first query letter took 14 days and is less than a page.)

Here is what EE said about the plot distillation process:

Your ability to distill your entire book into one brief paragraph is admirable. Your literary heroes, no doubt, are screenplay log line writers, who describe a two-hour film in one sentence. But don't forget about title writers. The complete essence of Frank Herbert's 500-page story of political, environmental and economic intrigue is conveyed in the simple word Dune. Stephen King outdid Herbert by half with It. Among the greatest plot distillers in literary history was the guy who determined that only one m needed to be stamped on the side of an m & m. Janice Delaney's legendary query for her history of menstruation entitled The Curse, consisted of a blank sheet of paper with a period in the center. (This used half as much ink as the previous record, the query for Dr. Jensen's Guide to Better Bowel Care, which was, of course, a colon.)

And here are a few other choice quotations about brevity:

Brevity is the soul of wit.
-- William Shakespeare

Much wisdom often goes with brevity of speech.
-- Sophocles

Can do thirty pages in two days. Need thirty days to do two pages.
-- attributed to Mark Twain, in a note to his editor

I am sorry I wrote you a four-page letter; I did not have time to write a one-page letter.
-- I do not know, but one web site attributes it to George Bernard Shaw

2,400 and counting

It's worth a reminder.

off to Minneapolis

Heading out to Minneapolis for a conference the next few days. This year it's already been DC, Orlando, Eugene, Tahoe and Seattle. Tomorrow it's Minneapolis, then in the next few months it's Denver, Reno, Seattle, and Minneapolis again. And if I'm really really really lucky, another side trip to Seattle again.

If you look in my job description, it does not mention travel anywhere. Still, as long as someone else is paying, who am I to complain? Airplanes and lonely hotel rooms are great places to get some writing done.

Speaking of writing, a quick update: No recent rejections. I submitted another short story, so I have four out for consideration right now and will be submitting another one at the end of the week, plus I'll send out a poem in a couple weeks. But I'm back at my novel, and I've met a successful author (over 40 books published) who also does writing classes, and her initial feedback is so positive that I'm thinking that I might be on to something.

must be an election year!

I just read that Bush has relaxed regulations so refineries can produce more gasoline without those pesky environmental concerns. All of you with 8 MPG SUVs can once again return to the pump this summer. In the same announcement, he said that no oil would be set aside for the national petroleum reserves for the next several months. Immediately after Bush's announcement, oil prices dropped.

Normally, gas prices rise dramatically after the July 4th weekend and then fall again in winter. Also, incumbents fare less well when gas prices are extra high. The Republicans know these things, of course, and they are desperate to ease the pressure for this November's elections.

Bush managed to do several things in one fell swoop:

1. screw the environment
2. help the oil companies, who just happen to be making record quarterly profits
3. feed America's "oil addiction," which just days ago he touted as a primary national concern
4. keep our oil reserves low, which will be terrible in the case of another major disaster
5. perpetuate our dependence on foreign oil, hurting our national security in the long run
   

The ONLY reason for making these decisions is to keep gasoline prices close to their current levels for a short time, perhaps, say, oh, maybe... through October?

My 1994 Toyota 4Runner, an SUV, gets about 16 MPG. While I would love to get a hybrid instead, my conscience is clear because I drive it only about 35 miles a week, or a full tank roughly every other month. I just got rid of my gas-powered lawn mower and got a leg-powered "reel" mower. I am doing my part to reduce America's "oil addiction," and I plan to figure out even more ways to be more efficient with our driving.

Bush, however, is rewarding rich, suburban republicans driving their Suburbans and Tahoes and Hummers with their fading yellow magnets that say, "Support Our Troops" and in the process screwing the environment, our children, our troops, the working poor, and our nation's long term economic health. When you are in debt, economic health is not created by raising your credit limit. Economic health is created by fiscal responsibility. Bush prefers raising the credit limit and toxifying the environment.

It really makes me physically ill to think of the arrogance, the sense of entitlement, the utter denial that most people have about their gasoline usage. How often do I hear someone say, "But I NEED the Tahoe/Suburban/Hummer... nothing else is big enough for three kids." Funny. When I was growing up, my dad and his three kids got around just fine in a small sedan.

Anyway, back to the point: I hate paying high gas prices, but the blatant disregard Bush shows for the environment, disaster preparedness, and national security is galling. All for a few pennies per gallon at the pump, which may or may not buy Republicans a few percentage points in November's election.

Pathetic.

still a little left in the tank...

(Nope, not a political post about gas prices, how they've risen because of the war, the obscene profits being made by the oil companies, or how gas prices should have risen further but Bush decided to open the national oil reserves to keep prices lower before the election... no, this is a post about soccer.)


Yesterday morning my over-30 soccer team trotted onto the field with our third-string goalkeeper between the sticks and just seven field players, one of which was at about 50% due to a mysterious injury in his hamstring. Our opponent had a full squad and three subs. We figured we were in for a very long and tiring 90 minutes. (Or, this being a Cup game, possibly 120 minutes plus penalty shots.)

We looked over our numbers and decided to play a 3-3-1, which turned into a 3-4-0 after a bit, which sort of devolved into a 2-5-0, with all seven of us trying to cover large sections of the field. 25 minutes into the first half, the injured guy got hurt more and essentially wandered around trying to get in the other team's way until halftime. Then he dropped out. So we switched to a 3-3-0. Our opponent managed only about four decent chances in the first half, and we managed three of our own and even a couple corner kicks. Our goalkeeper, being a tall guy, actually went all the way forward for the corners, but we failed to score. Just before halftime, the opponent managed a good corner kick and scored off a header. After all, it's not easy to mark all 10 men with just 7.

The second half saw more of the same despite being four men down. It took about 35 of the 45 minutes for the opponent to salt away their second goal (which was a weak bouncer that just eluded the keeper's hands), and we had some very good defending in the box. Again, we had a couple decent chances ourselves, and it was hard not to be proud of the final 2:0 score.

I'm a little sore today, but with my 39th birthday coming up I think I can feel pretty good about my fitness. It really was a good game on our part, though it helped that the opponent is simply not a very good team.

saving the world one pint at a time

Give blood today. I did.

(And you thought this post was about beer, didn't you?)

fourth time the charm, or I'm Just Not Good Enough

A Love Sonnet to Rejection

A rising eastern brightness wakens me--
Oh shit I might be late to work today--
In twilit corners I attempt to see
The cleanest clothes to don without delay.

The traffic's light; the train is right on time!
My fears, ill-founded, fade by clicks and clacks.
I close my eyes and drift to thoughts sublime
While rain outside purrs gently on the tracks.

An email in my inbox lurks in bold;
I see it's from that web site as I sit.
My tingling skin feels blood beneath it cold
I'm sure it's not rejection... is it? Shit!

The email says, "It's good, but we will pass."
Well, they can pucker up and kiss my ass!

"spending restraint"

In an article about the federal budget proposal unraveling in the House today, CNN.com quotes Bush as saying, "If necessary, I will enforce spending restraint through the exercise of the veto."

This is the same president that has made a habit of leaving the Iraq war out of the annual budget and then asking for "emergency" funding for the war in the hundreds of billions.

Is anyone fooled by Bush trying to spin himself as the "spending restraint" president?

But wait... since Republicans control both houses of Congress, doesn't Bush's statement imply that Republicans are unable to exercise fiscial restraint without his personal involvement via presidential veto? Republicans can't restrain government spending? Republicans are the party of "big government"?

Welcome to Wonderland, Alice. Have a piece of cake.

rats and a leaking ship

If the President authorizes a "leak" of classified information, and the President has the authority to declassify information, wouldn't that in and of itself stop the "leak" from being a "leak"? It would make the Plame leak no longer illegal, right? Essentially, if Libby got permission from the prez to drop the info on a reporter, that would essentially amount to declassifying the information.

Then why all the coverup in the White House?

The problem in the White House is that they have a serious problem with ethics. Courage is doing the right thing when no one is looking. Cowardice is doing the wrong thing and covering it up. THIS is the problem with the tendency towards secrecy in the Bush administration.

It may turn out that the biggest illegal activity was Libby's alleged lying to the grand jury. If Bush authorized the "leak," then it would no longer be a leak per se, it would just be an unethical (though legal) abuse of Bush's power as president. But as Bush has shown again and again, ethics and courage don't matter much in his administration; the public will again let him off the hook on the technicality that he didn't specifically break any law.

Maybe by now I should expect politicians to be corrupt, unethical, and untrustworthy. And maybe I'd say "so what" about Bush, as I mostly did with Clinton's misdeeds. But Bush's decisions have led directly to the death of over 2,300 American soldiers (talk about courage) and countless innocent Iraqis, and there is strong argument that indicates he has increased the world's terrorism, not decreased it. He's a policy disaster, and the entire kit and caboodle of them comprise an ethical quagmire.

But hey, as long as the Nascar Nation feels they can have a beer with him at a backyard barbecue, he makes a great leader of the free world, eh?

A few minutes ago in Chicago...

The time was 01:02:03 04/05/06. In just under two hours it will be that time here. Cool.

Rejected Again (again)!

Sestina got canned
I worked really hard on it
Ok, not that hard

I'll show them, I will
They've not heard the last of me
I've got another

a depressing time of year

I hate baseball season. The fact that the Earthquakes moved to Houston and left the Bay Area with no MLS team makes it worse. I'm happy the World Cup is this year, but still... once tonight's basketball game is over there is little else to look forward to until late August when college football starts up again.

I can think of no sporting reason that baseball became our "national pastime." It's so lame they can't even play it in a light rain. 95% of the game consists of three players--the pitcher, the catcher, and the batter.

I had the opportunity to hear Ken Burns speak last year, and he gave me the only credible reason I can think of that baseball is so popular. You hear football fans say, "Remember that [catch|goal-line tackle|etc.] that won that game?" You hear basketball fans say, "Jordan was really something that day he scored 60." You hear baseball fans say, "Remember that time we piled in the back of the station wagon and dad took us to Fenway?" That is, the experience is not about the sport but about family, friends, atmosphere.

I think that's one reason soccer is so popular elsewhere in the world but not in the USA. I play on a team, and the only spectators we get are the occasional wife and kids that are dragged along. We sometimes play on fields next to a Latino game--in our area it's mostly Mexicans--and there are literally hundreds of people out with barbecues, kids, coolers... it's a whole community event.

I guess that's why baseball is so popular. The game's pace (glacial) lends itself to frequent trips to the barbecue, bathroom, beer cooler, Asia, etc. It becomes a community event, not a game.

But I really wish the blight on sports that is Major League Baseball would wither and fade away. Sure, it would put some sportswriters out of work, but overall the impact on America would be positive.

a good reason to stay away from Lake Merritt

So I flew across the country today. That gave me the opportunity to browse Southwest Airlines' Spirit magazine. Its featured destination on page 34 was Oakland. The first item in the summary was this "Best Factoid":

Not only is the formerly undamned tidal marsh now known as Lake Merritt the largest urban saltwater lake in the United States, it is also the country's first wildlife sanctuary.

OK, perhaps I missed a news item. Lake Merrit was recently undamned? If it is "formerly undamned," that would mean that it is no longer "undamned," which would make it damned, right?

Maybe it was just a misspelling of dammed, but just to be safe, I'm going to start wearing garlic around my neck whenever I go to downtown Oakland.

Rejected No Longer

Boy, was I surprised to check my email this morning and find that one of my stories had been accepted for publication. It's a small, literary journal, a new one. My story (a personal essay, actually), will appear in their first print issue. One publication does not a career make, but it has come more quickly than I anticipated. And, even though I don't think I will actually get paid for the story, I find I am euphoric today--difficult to concentrate, but generally in a very good mood.

liquid sunshine rains
all butterflies and sugar
accepted at last

Another Downed Tree!

Remember The Tree That Fell?

Now, we've got the sequel: The Tree That Really Fell! This is the story. These are the photos.

Shortly after noon today, after a hard morning of yardwork and paperwork, I sat down for a few minutes on the couch. Then, a loud noise like one of the boys riding his bike full speed into the garage door had me up and running for the door. Partly to make sure no one was hurt, and partly to deliver some heck to the kid that did whatever it was.

As I sped out the front door, I saw something quite unexpected (see the photos below). The irony in this is that on Thursday, we called the city and had the sidewalk guy come out. For years, the sidewalk next to this tree has been buckling, pushed up by the roots of this tree. It finally got out of hand, and the city guy put some tar on the trip hazard and said he'd schedule someone to come out later this summer to take down the tree and fix the sidewalk.

Fortunately, it was a city-planted tree, and the policeman who responded to our call got the tree guys out within an hour. They cut it all up and got rid of it except the thick stem, which requires "heavy equipment and a dump truck." Also fortunately, no car was parked there at the time and no children were playing in that area.

Cal to win NCAA basketball national championship

You heard it here first. Cal is going to win not one, but BOTH NCAA basketball championships this year. Men's and Women's. After they do, I will be hailed as the only genius in the country to have predicted it.

There is a fine line between genius and a lot of other things. I've been called a lot of other things.

Writing update: Still waiting for rejection on four submissions made at the end of February. I don't expect to hear for a while, so I'm just sitting tight. I have written another story which is currently in revision for submission to a contest at the end of March. So that's that.

W

Warning: Liberal Content Ahead

I find it hard to believe that many people in my town still appear proud of their "W in '04" bumper stickers. Don't they realize by now that they've been had?

Does anyone know what the W in George W. Bush stands for? I've never learned that. I know his father's W stood for Walker. Here are some possibilities:

• Waffle. As in, waffle on the reasons for sending over 2,300 GIs to their deaths. Was it WMDs? Spreading democracy? Affiliation with Al Quaida?
• Waver. As in, wavering on his "mandate" from his landslide 2004 election victory. What were his top priorities? Oh, yeah: Social Security reform, right?
• Wimp. As in, the tag his dad picked up and W clearly has been desperate to shed from the family name with his "Bring 'em on" bravado and "Mission Accomplished" idiocy.
• Weak. As in, the administration's response to Katrina devastation.
• Whoops. As in signing a deal to turn over control of our nation's ports to a company housed in a prime Al Quaida country. Or as in, "Whoops, guess we goofed on the Iraq thing." Or as in, "Whoops, maybe we should make sure we have the right target before we start spraying the buckshot." (Guess it's really the same mistake, isn't it?)
• Warrant. The GOP is pretty familiar with the concept of warrants and indictments.
• Where? Back to that WMD thing again.
  
• Whopper. OK, back to that WMD thing again.
• Wrong. I would say "back to that WMD thing again," but this one applies to so many, many aspects of Bush, his staff, and his presidency that it doesn't even come close.
• Waste. Over 2,300 American lives have been wasted bringing civil war, terrorism, and instability to a country that, while run by a ruthless dictator, had been pretty stable and non-threatening to the USA. What a waste of people, power, prestige, equipment, and money.
  
• War. Clearly, Bush's middle name is War. It's defined everything about his presidency. A guy who could have been known forever as a truly heroic leader after 9/11 by going after and demolishing Al Quaida instead chose what he no doubt thought would be an easy war for the greatest military power on Earth. I believe that Bush will, after a hundred years of hindsight has been applied, be known as one of the worst presidents in our nation's history.

I read recently that the Democrats are so wrapped up in W-hating that they have lost the ability to put forth a proactive agenda or plan of any kind. Perhaps. But right now the most proactive, right, forward-thinking plan is any plan that counteracts even a small amount of damage Bush and his administration have done to our country.

It's my belief that the simple truth is that the country has become too big for human beings to run effectively. The problems have become too large, change too rapid. In such an environment, even the best people get caught up in a cycle of confusion, special interests, and power brokering on small levels. The big issues (health care costs, the economy, security, ethical behavior of corporations, the environment, the deficit) get lip service because no one in Washington really has any idea how to change the existing systems so they actually work.

It is a cynical view, but I don't believe Democrats in charge would be any more effective at creating positive change than Republicans. The difference is that while Republicans are in charge, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. While Democrats are in charge, the gap tends to narrow and the environment gets more attention and deficits are smaller. As part of the disenfranchised "middle" class, I tend to fall on the side of the poor people, the workers, the environmentalists, the people in favor of religious freedom, those in favor of restrictions on corporate behavior, etc.

I guess I'd make a great writer...

Here is the quiz.

Here is the result I got: 93 points. That grades out to the following:

You'll probably make a great writer. You should think very carefully before getting married, having children, or buying a pet, however. Walking into your livingroom and discovering the dust-covered skeleton that was your cat -- or your spouse -- can be really bad for morale.

I never thought I'd say this...

I wrote a sestina today. It wasn't in my mind to do that when I woke up, or even when I started writing it. I won't post it here because I plan on submitting it for rejection by an online publication. After the rejection I might post it. Or not. I might save it for a later compilation of my rejected stories, poems, haiku, and essays. So there.

A sestina, by the way, is defined thus:
A fixed form consisting of six 6-line (usually unrhymed) stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order and as the middle and end words of each of the lines of a concluding envoi in the form of a tercet. The usual ending word order for a sestina is as follows:

First stanza, 1- 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
Second stanza, 6 - 1 - 5 - 2 - 4 - 3
Third stanza, 3 - 6 - 4 - 1 - 2 - 5
Fourth stanza, 5 - 3 - 2 - 6 - 1 - 4
Fifth stanza, 4 - 5 - 1 - 3 - 6 - 2
Sixth stanza, 2 - 4 - 6 - 5 - 3 - 1
Concluding tercet:
middle of first line - 2, end of first line - 5
middle of second line - 4, end of second line - 3
middle if third line - 6, end of third line - 1

But you already knew that, I'm sure.

blue funk day

The time is out of joint, and things seem no longer to be what they used to be. Some days it's hard to see all the good. Blue funk days. But I know there's plenty of good, in fact more than my share, and now guilt piles on the wagon, straining the axles and creaking the joints and making the horses sweat and snort with the strain of dragging the wagon past nine a.m. Sunny warmth outside, though the forecast is torrential rain. Same as yesterday. But other things are different, and I get tired thinking how many more years I have to hitch those horses to the same wagon. And I wonder how many more times the forecast will be wrong, and I'll wake up on a blue funk day while the rest of the world smiles sunny and warm.