The days are only going to get longer. Cheer up, more daylight. Soon you’ll get up and it will be daylight. That is until summer then the days get shorter. But that’s six months away.
Stay strong, write on. Professor Hyram Voltage
I had to go to the Social Security office. I know you can make an appointment so I got on line and pulled up the web page for the local office.
The web page did not list a phone number that you could call to make an appointment at the local office. The only phone number listed on the local Social Security office web site is the national Social Security telephone number. I called that number and the automated voice told me it was an hour to and hour and a half wait to talk to someone. I pushed the buttons to have them call me back and was told that was an hour and a half wait time too. I went down to the social security office and waited an hour there instead. It was quicker to go to the office than deal with the nation telephone number.
Once I got to see a representative I asked how do you make an appointment. He said you call this number. I told him the number wasn’t on the local office web site. He said yes, you either call the national number or Google the number. Why have a web site if your not going to put a phone number on it that speeds up service for both the customer and the office?
I needed to help a family member get Medicare. I told the rep that the Social Security web site had a button called How To Apply. If you click on the button it gives you all sorts of information about the benefits of Medicare, but tells you nothing about how to apply for Medicare. He said you can apply for Medicare on line from the Medicare web site but that’s buried somewhere on the Medicare site.
The How To Apply web page should tell you how to apply, what site to go to or where to go to and what buttons to push.
The Social Security web site is a true Dilbert or software coder’s web site. Lots of information, but nothing you need.
Write on, draw on. Professor Hyram Voltage
or How a Great Company Killed Itself.
I tried to log in to Yahoo to change my password. I haven’t gotten a notice that my password has been hacked, it’s just for safety reasons I want to change the password. I went to sign in. The sign in box say it does not recognize my email address or my user name. I have a password vault program that I store my user names and passwords in, so I know the names and passwords are correct.
I go to the help page. There are a bunch of FAQs. I work through the FAQs and none of them help to get me logged in. I click the contact box (as in contact Yahoo) and it bounces me back to the FAQs.
It looks like Yahoo has laid off all the help desk humans. Saves lots of money if you have people that don’t work for Yahoo tell you how to work around Yahoo problems. I can see why users needing help get frustrated and desert Yahoo. With less users and income Yahoo has to lay off more workers. The executives get pay raises for firing people and saving money. Service goes down and more users leave. Finally executives lose their jobs, but only after making millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. This is not user friendly, this is a death spiral.
I go to the user groups and can not post a request for help because I can not log in. I need help to login in and I have to log in to get help. That sounds like a Dilbert Moment.
Good bye Yahoo, I will miss you.
Stay strong, write on. Professor Hyram Voltage
A recent update to MicroSoft Windows 10 caused many computers to lose the ability to connect to the internet.
In an old Dilbert cartoon the Dilbert character email stopped working at work. The next panel shows him talking to the company computer technician. Dilbert tells the technician that his email doesn’t work. The computer technician smiles and tells Dilbert to send him an email.
For the loss of internet problem the official MicroSoft fix is to turn off your computer, leave it off for one minute, then turn it back on. If that does not work then go to the MicroSoft web site for more help.
If you’re a programmer you have several computers and this makes sense. If your an older user and have only one old second hand computer that someone gave you (and doesn’t connect to the internet because of a MicroSoft update so you can’t get to the MicroSoft site) or if your on the road with only one computer then you’re a very angry Dilbert character about to form a neck tie party and go after some pointy haired MicroSoft types.
Stay strong, write on. Professor Hyram Voltage
I like the editor I used the last time, but. There’s always a but. It was a sterile relationship. The editor worked for a company. There was not much back and forth. I don’t even know the editor’s name or if I was dealing with a man or a woman.
I got a lot of good inputs from the editor. I think the editor did a good job, but I don’t know who it was.
I’m looking for an editor that will do a lot of work. I’m not good with the English language and I need a lot of help. I also want re-edits, edits of what I corrected, at a reduced rate. Hey the editor has looked at it already. I can make more mistakes fixing something than were there in the first place. I don’t do this on purpose.
I was lucky to get the last editor I got. It was a lot of work to find him/her. During this busy time of year it’s hard to find time to write let alone search for an editor.
Stray strong, Write On. Professor Hyram Voltage
The holidays are the time for exceptions, and an exception is a good excuse for missing a day or two of writing. Last Saturday I went down to Los Angeles to help a friend. She has vision problems and can’t drive a car. In California that’s major inconvenience. One time it took her two hours by bus to get a pound of butter. California was built around cars.
So I spent the day driving her around to five different stores so she could get the fixings for Thanksgiving dinner and enough supplies to last her a month or until I came down again. I don’t mind doing this, even if it takes all day, I’m going to get a Thanksgiving dinner out of it and I won’t have to do the dishes. She has a big fancy dish washer machine.
The last thing she wanted to do was to go to another grocery store and have the butcher butterfly a turkey. She does this every year. By butterfly I mean the butcher cuts the backbone out and break the breast bone so the turkey will lay flat in the pan. Doing it that way cuts the cooking time way down and ensures all the turkey is done. It avoids the top or breast meat being over cooked and dry while the bottom is raw.
By the time she got to the butcher counter the main butcher had left for the day. No one else was qualified to run the saw to cut up the bird. Panic time. She had visions that on Sunday she would be hauling a 20 pound bird on the buss back home. Not easy.
Here I come to the rescue. I told her I would get the bird and have it butterflied up where I live and bring it down on Thursday in time for her to cook it. She was worried I would not know how to dry brine the bird. So, I had her write up the brining instructions. She even made up a batch of salt and season mix to cover the bird with. It’s like she thinks I can’t cook. I do occasionally make a mess in the kitchen, but I can cook.
So Thursday I will load up the bird and drive down to L. A. I will also be carrying a couple of home made pies (I can cook). Nothing like a home made pecan pie and maybe a couple of dozen home made chocolate chips cookies.
Write on, draw on. Professor Hyram Voltage.
Have turkey, will travel.
Artist are often asked what they use to draw with. Authors are asked about their writing process. People want to know what is the best paint, pencil, or brush to paint with. While budding authors want to know what the best time, computer, program, or method to write with.
You want to know the secret. It doesn’t matter. And it all depends on you.
Here is a link to an artist that proved it by drawing a drawing with a charcoal briquette (like you use to barbecue with) on an old fashion brown paper grocery bag.
It’s not the tools, it’s the artist or the author making the story or drawing with what he’s got. That doesn’t mean having good tools makes the effort go faster, but you shouldn’t wait till you can afford the most expensive computer, the $200.00 pen, the finest art paper. A number two pencil and copy paper, even the back of a five year old financial report will do for a first draft. Here’s a YouTube video showing the first Harry Potter was written with a cheap pen on whatever paper or note book was handy. You have to watch about half way through to get to where they show the writing.
But it has to be typed on the finest paper you scream. Maybe not. Several years ago I was at the world science fiction convention. The top editor of a leading science fiction magazine gave a talk. In the talk he mentioned how every month they received a hand written manuscript from an author on the east coast. Like clock work these thing would arrive. After a while he tried to read one. It wasn’t a story. He wasn’t sure what it was. He got other people on the magazine staff to read different manuscripts that this author sent in. No one could figure out what the author was writing, but they read it. I don’t recommend doing this, but they read it.
The point of this is that magazine editors will read hand written stories. They don’t have a lot of time and your chances of this happening are near zero, but it can happen. Don’t do it. There are $200.00 laptop out there. You can use McDonald’s or Starbucks for a internet connections. There are public libraries that will let you use their computers.
The problem is you have to write a story. The editors want stories, I want stories, the world wants stories. And the authors have to write stories, not rants, not dialog, and not gibberish. You can find help for spelling, proper English, but you have to make it a story, even if it’s written on a 7 year old third hand computer. Been there, done that one and I have friends that are doing just that.
Stay strong, write on. Professor Hyram Voltage
You’re afraid.
You’re afraid you’ll fail.
You’re afraid the book will be no good.
You’re afraid they’ll make fun of you, especially that mother-in-law that’s determined to show the world what a loser you are.
You’re afraid the internet trolls will track you down, tear the skin off your soul, and drive a stake through your heart.
Well they, whoever they are, don’t have to know you wrote a book. Just use a pen name.
A pen name is not like an actor changing her name. You don’t need a court order to write under a pen name. Have you every noticed how many actors have changed their name?
Many famous writers use pen names. Mark Twain comes to mind. In recent (before ebooks) times publishers only wanted authors to come out with one book a year and to release that book at a certain time. If the author wanted to or had another book to publish the author would publish the book under a pen name.
Pen names are good for people that have names that are hard to spell or pronounce. Or they have last names that start with Z or one of the other letters at the end of the alphabet. Authors with last names starting with Z end up on the bottom shelf of the book rack and are the last to get their book reviewed if the reviewer doesn’t get burned out by the time they get to the bottom of their reading stack and doesn’t review their book at all.
So stop worrying about what people will think of your book and write it under a pen name. If the book doesn’t do well change your pen name and write another one. Decades from now a researcher will wonder who wrote the first book and no one will ever know.
The worst that can happen is that you become a famous author and have to make up some excuse for why you write under a pen name. And that is a problem every writer would love to have.
So choose your pen name carefully. Make it unique. Make it easy to spell and pronounce. Make it start with one of the first letters of the alphabet. Now go write that book.
Stay strong, write on. Professor Hyram Voltage
Pen Name An author’s pseudonym.
Pseudonym A fictitious name used when the person performs a particular social role.
Nom de guerre A fictitious name used when the person performs a particular social role.
Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that incorporates technology and aesthetic designs inspired by 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery. And a great place to use a nom de guerre.
Step 5 – Recycle but don’t be boring;
Recycle good ideas, that’s how series are born.
A. Figure out why the idea was a good idea?
1. Why did it resonate with you and/or audience.
2. Can you expand on the points that makes the idea resonate with the audience? That’s even better if you didn’t use all those points in the old story.
3. Can you use the good idea in a story that will resonate with the audience of another genre?
4. Can you mashed up the good idea with something that is going on now, or other not so good ideas?
B. Is the good idea, that you used before, bordering on cliché?
Make the recycled idea the opposite of the cliché (the weak do not inherit the earth, they mine the garbage pit that earth has become, sell the valuable recycled material and leave for another planet).
C. Use the idea in another story, but tell it from the point of view of another character.
1. Tell the story from the villain’s point of view. Explain why the villain made the decisions she did from her point of view.
2. Tell the story form the view point of a character that doesn’t understand the good idea behind the story or what’s going on.
D. Change the hero the idea was destined for to a hero that lacks the critical knowledge needed to over come the idea’s obstacle.
1. Change the critical features of the hero, her; height , weight, skills, luck, abilities, gender.
2. Don’t forget to explain why the hero didn’t know the critical knowledge.
E. Don’t be a hack.
1. Don’t be lazy or predictable, don’t repeat the same idea, plot, story line, over and over.
2. Do incorporate current events with your good but used ideas.
Stay strong, write on. Professor Hyram Voltage
Steal like an artist.
Get some old issues of Wired Magazine. Issues before their writing turned into the equivalent of sound bites. Issues of the magazine where they talked to people, about people, and what the people did. You the writer have to come up with why the person did what they did. Autobiography are good to but remember that famous people will not tell you about the dirt. About the pile of bodies with knives in their backs that they are standing on. Bodies that they had to go over to get to where they are. There’s always someone in front of you, someone better than you. It’s your job to fill in who and how they knifed their way to the top.
One story I remember was about a guy who repaired used video slot machines he bought from Russia and sold them in his eastern European country. He hired people to redesign obsolete parts that the maker of the video slot machine was too cheap to do. His rebuilt machines were better than new machines. As time went on he sold the refurbished machine with the latest games on them to people in other countries. Then he started teaching other how to refurbish the machines to save on shipping cost. I liked the part where the US and European cops showed up at his factory and he didn’t expect it. How could he not see it coming? What was the guy thinking or not thinking? That a big gambling company (could there be Mob connections?) that made the machines would let him horn in on their business and not get revenge?
Can’t find back issues of Wired magazines? Then go to a used book store (or on line if you have too) and get several different copies of trivia books. Trivia adds realism to your story. Throw a few bits of random trivia in your story and it makes it sound like you really researched the story’s back ground. Mash trivia pieces up and try them as story ideas.
Also get a bunch of the Bathroom Reader books. You don’t think that works? In one of the books there was a foot note that a Russian prince taught the French to eat meals in courses. A barbaric Russian teaching the French how to eat, what an idea. What a story idea for a Steampunk story. Dinner with the mad Russian. Tell them you heard it here first.
Quote; Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized. Rod Serling.
So go out and get emotionalized. And ideas do stink.
Stay strong, write on. Professor Hyram Voltage