Sunday, May 17, 2015

Perfect doesn't work

Good morning Don!
Thanks for reviewing Jeff's stories for me. I've always thought he was a talented writer – nice to know someone else agrees with me! I received the cover art for Transport 42 yesterday – it blew me away! June will be a very special Transport!

We've been watching a series - Firefly – an oldy but goody with Nathan Fillion. The series was filmed in 2003 and had a very limited run.  It is steam punk at its finest: old fashioned cowboys, gun slinging and bad guys, space ships and shot guns, the saloon concubine and the doc who is on the run, and a lost and confused preacher who isn't sure why he is where he is. It has been fun imagining steam punk in space. 

This led me to review Ariel Cinii's series, A Dance in White Time (the stories we released this month). I'm once again struck by the steam punk properties of her stories. Ariel has written four books with us, Don: world building, delightful characters, description that puts Tolkien to shame.  I'm not sure if she has any more books, but I hope so!

In the meantime, I've moved on to more interesting writing challenges. One of our instructors at the Art Institute is the well-known, award winning video producer, Dr. Don Dexter. I have been pestering him for years to give me insights into video writing so I can help his students as writers. This quarter, Dr. Dexter agreed! He has been guiding me through the video writing process for the last couple of weeks.

The biggest problem for me has been overcoming the "perfect sentence" syndrome that comes with being an English instructor. Video voice over is not always a complete sentence. Nor does it always end in a nicely tied up paragraph. My brain has finally able to compare this writing to writing a landing page for the internet. I'm hoping that my examples for Dr. Dexter tomorrow will be "satisfactory."

I've also been editing a book that has been picked up by Hay House Publishers. My edits are due back to the author by June 1. That means my whole schedule this month has been teaching, grading, editing, editing, teaching, grading, editing ... all the habit changing I did last month to complete the Nanowrimo writing challenge seem to have gone out the window.

I saw the hand specialist for the last time this week. His advice? Cut back on the grading and start climbing. Relief! This afternoon I plan on taking him up on that. I'll go to the local rec center and try out their wall. I'll keep it simple, my arm strength has diminished over the last year. I think that just getting back into a harness and "hitting the top of the wall" and riding the rope down will make a big difference in my attitude.

I have made no promises to myself this month other than to complete what I've agreed to do. I'm not sure I agree with Clemens that a broken promise is better than no promise... the broken promise can become the past experience that keeps us from moving forward.

Have a great week! Hopefully you didn't get in on the last round of bad weather that came your way.

Carolyn

All images downloaded from Google Images




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