March, 2012
It’s Not Rocket Science—Just Read the Directions!
I had this experience in elementary school, and I bet some of you did, too (then, or at some other point in your life). My teacher passed out a quiz/assignment. The first thing it said was, “Read everything before doing anything.” It then proceeded to list a number of random tasks, from writing your favorite color in the right margin to hopping around the room on one foot.
The very last item said, “Write your name at the top of the paper and do none of the items listed here.”
A good chunk of the class got through some of the sillier tasks before catching on.
Okay, that was third grade or something. Kids are still learning that whole follow-directions concept, right? By the time we’re adults, it’s a no-brainer, right?
Not right.
I see it with my teenage students. Student: “What am I supposed to do for #13?” Me: “What do the directions say?” Student: “Umm …” Me: “Maybe you should read them, huh?”
But teenagers aren’t adults yet, right? By the time we’re old enough to legally drink, smoke, and otherwise shorten our lifespan, we know better, right?
Still not right.
If you follow agent @SaraMegibow on Twitter, you’ve probably seen her weekly #10queriesin10tweets. She goes through ten random queries in her inbox and tweets whether she’s passing on it or requesting, and a quick reason why.
Guess what one of the most common reasons for a pass is? Wrong genre. You can find Ms. Megibow’s fair-game genres easily, on AgentQuery, QueryTracker, the agency’s website, or her page on Publishers Marketplace.
Yet people still query her with thrillers and non-fiction and who-knows-what-else.
Want to look smart? Be one of the few who doesn’t go hopping around the room on one foot. We’ll have plenty of time to make ourselves look like idiots later, in slightly more intelligent ways. (Yes, let’s aspire to be intelligent idiots.)
What directions do you find people not reading when they really ought to know better? Want to confess to your own “shoulda paid more attention” faux pas?
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3 commentsI’m Not a Bipolar Writer—What’s Wrong With Me?
Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of tweets, status updates, and posts relating in some way to the bipolarity of writers. The euphoric highs of Mega-Manuscript Love, and the desperate lows of I Hate Writing But I’m Doing It Anyway, Sort Of.
I don’t get it … which makes me wonder if I’m missing something.
It’s not the first time I’ve wondered that.
It’s not that nothing about this business gets me way down (One word: rejection … yeah) or way up (Full requests! Agents acknowledging me on Twitter!). But the super-extreme emotions don’t tie to the actual WRITING OF THE STORY.
If you saw my post last Friday, you know I’m not into the super-whiny (or super-effusive) approach to much of anything. Aside from letting that writer-bipolarity dominate your social media presence, though, I imagine there’s nothing wrong with it.
Is there something right with it? Am I actually missing something? Are my emotions not getting engaged enough as I write?
I don’t think that’s it. There was a particular scene that truly creeped me out to write. And I’ve gotten teary while writing others. So I don’t think I have a death-grip on my emotions while writing.
Maybe it’s my “analytic-artist” nature. (Trust me, it’s taken ages to acknowledge the “artist” half of that.) The analytic part has never been prone to extreme emotions without truly extreme circumstances. (My teenage years don’t count, Mom.)
I have times when the words come fast and furious. I have times when the pace necessarily slows down so my brain can work out some connections. I’m fine with both.
Here’s the thing. I write because I want to. I write because I enjoy it. I write because I love reading what I’ve written, making it better, and having others read it.
The knowledge that I need to keep working keeps the love from taking me super-high. The love keeps the knowledge that I still have a lot to do from taking me super-low.
Every writer will have a slightly different process. For me, keeping the balance works. So, there might be things wrong with me, but this isn’t one of them. It’s just my way.
Are you a writer that hits those highs and lows during the writing process? What gets you through the lows? What do those highs feel like?
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1 commentState of the State Testing
Oh, joy, the time for state-mandated testing is upon us.
For my school, the brunt of it happened last week. We made a patchwork quilt of our schedule so testing would always be in the morning, but the kids wouldn’t miss just their morning classes all week. The kids who had to take it (those in their second or third year of high school) were divvied up into groups and teachers were assigned to administer certain portions of the test.
I only had to miss one class for my test administration. Not bad. But giving these tests to deaf kids is always a big-time drain on the brainpower.
Most of the kids have a testing accommodation on their IEP stating that any test material (other than in the Reading section) can be signed to them. No problem. I handle math stuff in ASL all day.
Except this is totally different.
First, I don’t get to see the test until the day of. Second, some math signs are so iconic, they may give away too much information. So I have to read each question, decide what’s being tested, and determine which words should be spelled rather than signed.
For example (and these examples are completely made-up and unrelated to any I saw in the test), if a test question said, “What is the numerator of the fraction 4/5?” I couldn’t sign “numerator.” Why? The sign for it is one hand held flat like a fraction bar and the other making the N-handshape above it. (Guess what denominator is. Yeah, same thing, D-handshape below.)
Another example is “parallel.” If a question asked, “Which lines are parallel?” I couldn’t use the sign. It’s too visual. On the other hand, if a more complex problem relied on the fact that two lines are parallel and some information needed to be derived from that, I could sign “parallel.”
It makes my head hurt.
It’s a test to gauge mathematical ability, so the accommodation is there to make sure English reading ability doesn’t get in the way of the kids showing what they know. But it’s such a delicate balancing act between that and giving an unfair advantage.
Anyone else have brain-busting balancing acts going on in their lives right now?
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Comments Off on State of the State TestingHey, Whiners, Cut It Out! (But Not Too Much)
During my tenure in social media (particularly Twitter and Facebook), I’ve observed a lot of whining, complaining, and overall negativity. I confess, I’ve been known to gripe now and then. Everyone needs to vent sometimes. But I try to keep the public venting reasonable and infrequent, while the more everyday venting gets handled in private by my friends. (Love you, friends!)
There are mega-extremes, of course. Those people who reply to agents’ form rejections with F-bombs and C-words. Most of us aren’t that far gone. (And those who are kind of scare me.)
But there are the little things, consistently and constantly griping, that actually annoy me more. The expletive-spouting writers I can assume are crazy. Others are just negative to the point it affects the image they portray to the world at large—especially the professional image for my fellow aspiring writers.
People with spouses, boyfriends, etc. who never do anything but complain about them. (Ladies, I have to say, I’ve yet to see a guy trash-talk his wife on Twitter. Husband-bashing, however, is rampant.) People with children and/or jobs who whine about those, too.
I’m pretty sure there are people out there who wish they could find a romantic partner, who wish they had kids, who wish they could earn enough money to make a living. Can we have a little gratitude for what we have?
But wait…
Going to the other extreme annoys me, too. People who never stop gushing about how they have the best. Husband. EVER. Or how adorable and wonderful their kids are. Ugh.
I don’t believe we need to be sunshine and happiness all the time. Let’s keep it real. When we don’t approve of something, it’s okay to speak negatively of it. When we’re excited, there’s nothing wrong with showing enthusiasm. But real people have both highs and lows, likes and dislikes, good days and Mondays.
Share the whole spectrum. Keep it balanced. If you find your tweet-stream (or timeline, or whatever) is full of negativity, take a minute to evaluate. What can you do to get yourself to a more emotionally healthy place? Maybe some things are better shared privately with those who will help you get over life’s speed bumps. That’s not the same as putting “Pity me!” attention-seekers out on social media.
On the other hand, if you’re constantly raving about how thoroughly awesome your life is … stop rubbing it in to the rest of us poor saps. 😉
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1 commentWhipping the WiP
First, let’s make this clear. The speed at which you write your first draft has nothing to do with the quality of the end product. It varies by individual. Some can crank out a novel-length draft in two weeks, and others take years. It really doesn’t matter.
From talking to others, it seems I’m on the slightly faster end. As long as I’m not in a “muddy” area, I can write 1k in an hour pretty easily. I managed over 50k in the month of November for NaNoWriMo without having to push myself that hard.
Here’s something important to remember: My free time is pretty distraction-free (unless I choose some distractions). I have a day job, but once I get home (evenings and weekends), I have no kids to chase nor spouse to feed.
An interesting thing I’ve noticed during my time in the online world of writers’ communities is that there are two polarized types of writers—those who hate drafting, and those who hate editing/revising.
Not everyone falls into one of those two camps. Personally, I like both. I like initial writing, getting the story down, because then I can read it. That’s what I do—I write novels I want to read. I think that’s part of what pushes my daily word-count along, especially in the final third or so when I really get some momentum going. (Also, by then I’m pretty clear on what’ll happen in the rest of the book, i.e., no mud in my path.)
I also like making what I’ve written even better. Fleshing out some things, tightening others up, hitting things a little harder. Making it all pretty.
How about you? What motivates you to keep moving forward on your work-in-progress? What do you do when you can’t seem to get that momentum going?
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5 commentsIt’s Opposite Day!
Grr, Blogger’s post scheduling failed me again … better late than never?
No, not really. Some of my students think every day is, though, finding it highly amusing to speak in opposites, so I’ve had enough of that.
Math is all about opposites, though. More specifically, inverses, such as inverse operations. Many of the math problems we did in school related to “undoing” something. Pretty much anything we did could be undone. (I hit some advanced math courses in college with operations that were irreversible. Most of you probably don’t want to go there.)
Addition and subtraction. Multiplication and division. Squaring and square-rooting. Even all the way up to trig—sine and arcsine–and calculus—derivatives and integrals.
It’s an accepted fact that mathematicians, at their core, are lazy creatures. So it makes me a little crazy when I have students who don’t grasp the power of the opposite. These two things add up to 64. You need 100, so how many more do you need? Some kids will guess and check, or count up … or add 64 to 100. (This particular case kind of goes back to my earlier rant on subtraction.)
It happens in higher math classes, too, though less frequently (fortunately). In algebra, the idea of “undoing” is huge, so when someone gets to Algebra 2 without catching that division undoes multiplication, I get a little headdesk-y. Then I teach them about it until they understand. The squaring/square-rooting dyad is newer to them, so I make sure to drill it into their heads.
And because I’m on the topic, here’s a little puzzle you can solve with the power of opposites.
I have a mystery number. I divide it by two, subtract 200, square the result, multiply that by ten, and add 52, getting a result of 412. What was my mystery number?