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 |  A running blog on a real newbies adventures with the WDC website |
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I became a newbie writer just starting to learn the tools of the trade. Silly me thinking, I could just jump right in, and start swimming, with what I remember of my six grade English. After all what use did a professional computer repair person need of grammar, to fill in blanks, dot “I’s”, or cross his “T’s” with. I was forced into early retirement. Because of Agent Orange encounters from Vietnam, and a bad hernia repair. You cannot learn anything being a mugwump. What is a mugwump you say? It is a person sitting on a fence; with their mug on one side of the fence, and their wump on the other side. One day I received this interesting email from the Newbie Academy Group. They recommend I engage in contest activities. I thought to myself why not! I went to the contest list and found the writer’s cramp contest. At the prompt: here's a new restaurant in town with an interesting theme. What's the theme, how is it expressed, and how's the food? I read this and get all excited. I started thinking of all the Chief Gordon Ramsey shows I had watch with my wife. Out of nowhere pops a memory of a silly menu I had in my funny joke collection. It was a road kill menu for Uncle Roberts fine cuisine dinning. I decided to use my hillbilly name. I and my wife had a moment in our newly married life, when we were teasing a neighbor friend. We started calling our redneck friend Deny-Bob. He called us JoVonna-Bob and Brett-Bob. I decided to call my contest entry “Brett-Bob’s Road Kill Express” to me the whole idea was a joke and after all what a great thing to write about. To me the trick was to keep it rated ‘E’ as this was a requirement of the contest. I had in my mind decided to keep it as a fake road kill diner they would serve real food as fake road kill using the out of season as the excuse to use their specialty dishes for them. When I wrote it as with all my writing I am becoming world famous for run-ons and miss spelling. Part of the problem is MSoffice I blame its terrible spell checker, and the horrible grammar checker, since it cannot even do second grade error correction. Like I told one of the Newbie Academy Ladies I’m a senior citizen writing as a first grader. And even a first grader has trouble reading my work let alone the poor teacher. Beside whom else can I blame? None of us want to point that finger at ourselves. We might get ashamed and do something about it. One of the funnier parts to my story is I didn’t read it had a thousand word limit. I just assumed that they wanted whatever you could produce in a short time. Just like Nanowrimo. It had a twenty four hour dead line. I figured you didn’t need to worry, if it was a rough draft, or a finished work. This was probably my misreading of the contest rules. I’m betting the judge expects to judge finished works by more experienced authors other than newbies. Basically I’m trying to say, I set myself up for failure. But the best part of the story, and funniest is the judge’s comment: “You met that goal with an interesting piece. However, since I'm a vegetarian, it was unhappily a bit unappetizing in both humor and description. Sigh.” I know I thrive on rejection. But my very first contest. When I am trying to fit in, and receive that comment. It was about the funniest thing to happen to me. Being a new writer I understand not everything I write is golden or is going to make me incredibly rich either. I did install the sense of shame. I went visiting my email and asked the kind judge for help with run-ons. She took pity on me and provided a link to myenglishteacher.net. She also recommended a class from WDC’s own recommended school. She also recommended asking for help in my groups forums. The truth is I really don’t see even the kindest writer here, having the time to teach me sixth grade again. Then I realized I don’t need the whole lessen. I just need to learn to recognize what I do in my writing, and fix that issue. As I write I can auto correct instead or totally relearning English. So I went to some of the forums in the Newbie Academy Group. Since I have no life anymore I sometimes expect the same of everyone else. But the sad truth is it’s the week end, and all the nice people are out being nice people. I am going to have to wait until Monday to get my help. My contest entry received eight reviews; of the eight, two actually showed me areas to improve it, and of course one judge’s review. I think the poor lady felt sorry for me and I got the newbie prize of 250 gp with the review or it won third place. I in my vanity like the third place idea; the truth is I’m just guessing. I hope I haven’t offended any one with this story. It is another attempt at a funny story. I don’t have any hard feelings with the judge she was honest, truthful, and even extremely helpful. Some points of interest; only one person didn’t find it funny, the judge. Only the judge and one retired teacher gave me a link. They both gave me really helpful reviews with writing style help. I am still holding on to three reviews of the eight. I still get a laugh every time I read the third email. I just love her closing line: This story is fun, and I still have a silly smirk on my face. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** I'm building at "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"  Great place to read.I'm docked at "Blog Harbor from The Talent Pond"
, a safe port for bloggers to connect. |
| All though since I am reviewing this as a reader. You did bore me a bit with too much description. But you really made my day when I realized a man had a female shadow. I could just picture the sexy curves this man would show off as he walked with a female shadow. Pretty funny that one, I wonder what his wife would think when she noticed the shadows curves. I would love to see that happen. I bet it would be extremely funny watching him try to explain that one! This is a review I did today and it just cracked me up the story was about a man who lost his female shadow. I will not show the bitem on this because I'm not here to poke fun at an aspiring artist. I wanted to show that our mistakes in writing can be really funny at times! My point is we need to see the humor in our mistakes and laugh with the reviewer when they help us out and show us the errors in our writing also look at the story ideas it could generate. |
| Well here it is Turkey day gone again for another year. My household is settling down to everyone off to work and I'm left alone in peace until they all come home from work and school. Some cool new things that have enbtered into my struggles here at WDC. I was invited to the Paper Doll Gang and sent off to school again. It was quite fun actually I learned more about the review forms and some more education on reviewing. I love the point of moving those annoying group logo's to tail end of the review instead of at the top of the review form. I have been reading up on the art of reviewing from Patrick bless his group. I started using the short forms for review for two main reasons 1. I can adapt it to either a poem or anything else. with a few quick edits. 2. I am not yet good enough at sentence structure to be able to spot a run-on like I feel I should, and I cannot rhyme worth a bucket. If a boot was filled with rhymes and the instructions were written on the heal I would still not get it. I would saran wrap the boot first then tip it upside down to read the instructions. I feel bad for the people whose poetry I judge because I can only judge it by word flow and if the words rhyme to me. But the ones that don't rhyme I have no clue other than obvious miss spelling or if it makes no sense to me. If it reads good and I can get an image of what the title and the explanation say it does than hey automatic five star. This is the main reason I shy away from poetry reviews. I feel like I'm hindering the author not really help them. Sure we all love five star reviews but I like to earn it with my abilities not a free hand out because you like me or haven't a clue how to review my work.  Speaking of which while I was playing in the PDG sandbox I got an e-mail review notice saying "What the Heck!" This poor newbie was looking in my Nano Book with 51,120 words in it unedited and just freshly crammed into a book form all on Friday the 29th and 30th of Nov. So I had my whole Nano of 19 chapters with glossary in it. I realized that yes I would as a reviewer feel over whelmed upon opening some author's book lol. I took pity on the poor guy I explained to him what it was and that he was welcome to read it if he really wanted to do a review he should just pick a chapter, not the title page and review that. But the glossary would be more fun as it was only two pages of text a little over 600 words. I could picture myself in his shoes as well I'll be we all have done something similar. I don't mind doing a chapter at a time it gives the author time to fix it so you can review it after all the corrections. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| You know some days it does pay to wake up in the morning. For all the hassle that you get you would have been better off sleeping in. Well today was one of those days for a person I reviewed. It brought back to me memories of my youth. I have a saying about my youth it was when: "I was young, dumb, and stupid." I was wanting to be a professional computer repair guy. But there was no classes, no online service, or training for it. I started to really ponder this question in my mind. When it dawned on me what does a professional do that I don't. Here was my list I devised: 1.They always looked sharp. No one is going to trust there scared passion to some dirty hippy off the streets. 2. Watch your language. In order to make a good first impression: "You will use a lot of yes sir or mam, and a lot of no sir or mam." 3. You act the part. A professional is always on time, looks sharp, very polite, and is not afraid to tackle even the most hardest jobs. 4. A vast technology of both software and hardware. It was a paradigm shift for me. All I had to do was think I am a professional and do the things they would do. Because the only difference between them and me was my stinking thinking. Now the same thing is happening all over again. When your not on top but at the bottom and working your way up to being a professional writer I am finding my check list is a lot different. 1. You must know your English and use it well. I'm down at the very bottom still, do to run-on and fast typing without reading it before saving. 2. You need a love or a passion for what you do. It helps you with rejection and peer pressure. 3. What you create is art. You are a wordsmith able to create worlds in a single paragraph. Prevent world chaos and save lives, even mold lives with your mighty pen. 4.You love and are kind to your fellow artist. 5. You believe in other artists and promote, help and support them. |
Here I was reviewing a poem by someone who is paying for reviews see Review of "Poetic Toxins"  Now I don't know about you but here I am reading this person's work while listening to 'Smuggler's Blues' and then 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheep.' Can you picture the thoughts running through your head about some ones work when listening to those lyrics as well as the poem's lyrics now you get the idea on why this was so funny. It was a good thing I was only concentrating on the only word that I felt didn't fit the whole poem. Its rhyrimeing to me was out of sync with how I pronounce words. So it probably was me but still the music made me notice that the sentence structure with his title formed a human head thus the mind behind the pen. I gave the guy a 4.5 star rating the poem was that good. |
| It’s been another interesting week at WDC. It started off on Monday with my goal setting. You know I had to go back five pages to find my entry on last Friday to redo my goals. I will spend each day Monday - Friday writing 2,500 words or more on Nanowrimo. I am ahead of this goal by 2,700 words so far I still have my current chapter 15 to finish and enter in the word count. Total word count is 36,758 I will on Sunday up date my blog I started with my adventures for the week on this site and will always keep it positive. So far I have two entries one for each week since I started writing in it. I am hoping to continue and add this week’s progress into it. I will try and do at least one review a day during the week and more or less on the weekends. I have been working on it but i think I missed out doing one yesterday because I got invited to two groups the bloggers and the reviews I spent too much time and in the process I forgot to do my daily review I will make amends and get right on it. I did two on Friday to catch up. I am working on improving my grammar so I can quit being the run-on king. It is slow going but I am learning a lot more about sentence structure then I did know at the beginning of this week. I will work on my 1890 word entry to the monthly prompt for this month. Using the grammar help from the Newbie Academy Message Thread: I'm still taking a break from it and well do the edit next week. {b-item: 1962355} PS I got a good report back on it from a new friend I met this week. I ran across a newbie story that read like a ten year old wrote it. I was very careful not to offend because I didn’t know the real age of person that wrote it. After the review I finally remembered we all do portfolio so I found the review and clicked on the auto’s name and went there what I found was a blog stating she was married and dating all these young people. I think it is a young high school dropout trying to write. Other than lower case I’s no capitalization and spacing. The story was sound and it looked like it could have been written by a 10 year old. So I treated the person that wrote it just like I would a ten year old. I learned that you can never judge a person by their writing. So at this stage in her writing she writes like a child would. We all went through some of these stages as we got to where we are now. I just hope I didn’t offend her. She had a good story idea I would enjoy reading more of it. {review: 3925585} The high lights of the week was being invited to three other groups the “Blogging Bliss”, “The Art of Criticism News Group”, and tonight (Friday) “The Talent Pond”. I am still a member with the “Newbies Academy Group”. I found it interesting that The Blogger and Art of Criticism invited me from a fated newbie review I did on Review of "Drive-through Surgery" . I enjoyed reviewing that piece it was funny and she did a great job of comparing it to McDonald’s.Now I have all these great works to read and even more help. My problem is time management since I am doing Nano during the week, trying to do 2,500 words a day. Then I spend too much time on WDC with the e-mail working with my tutor with the newbie academy group. It was she who keeps me reviewing as a way to see the difference of writing and writing styles. She is right sometimes I learn a lot correcting others mistakes. I’m not up to the best grammatical judge just yet. Once I finish Nano and the rest of the book roughly 38 chapters to match the other two in my series I’m challenging myself to write. I will end up with nine sci-fi books and two or three murder mysteries. With some plans and ideas for some children’s books from stories I used to tell my kids to keep them inline. At first I started my Nano with a fantasy entry but it started out so slow and was a struggle to write about. Once I figured out how to introduce it into my sci-fi world. It became more interesting. Part of it is creating new words and cities and creating a glossary it goes so much slower. I was reading something on site where they recommended CC3. I went to their website and downloaded the trial version and used it to create my fantasy world and filled in all my land masses and islands I wrote about in the book. It does make world design so much better to visualize my lands and distances as well as ideas on where to put things that I am going to write about. I found fantasy takes larger name base, creature base, and a main character’s base you generally need a group. Now add your time line and a glossary. I don’t worry about the plot because it is basically the same as my other two books but time lines differ. Also I write the chapter first then I add all the plot pieces both that is going to pass on to another chapter as well as current happenings I use the time line to keep up with plot twists as they develop and to keep up my consistency. They actually are and in-depth story plot and twists and hints of things to come. I found I don’t write to an outline instead I create it as I go from one set of action to the next. Also if I’m trying to build up to a certain chapter where I tie up my hints and weird insights I planted two chapters ago. The active time line also helps me when I go and edit my book. Since it is chapter by chapter, it makes editing easier to do, it one chapter at a time. I was working on my third book in the series when I got the nano bug and now I’m working on the fourth book. So I have the third book almost half done and soon I’ll have the fourth one half done. The two first draft books are both over 100,000 words each. I think I have a great hook for the series. But now I know my grammar is like less than sixth grade. I have to relearn grammar to really edit those works to get them up to professional standards if I ever want to publish them . So that is why I’m here at WDC. It is the nicest place to learn and have fun I have found. Plus the advertizing here has set me up with people who can help me publish the books once I get them into a final draft. I got an hysterical funny idea of having a contest to have people figure out what the grammar rules were I used to create the glossary in my Nano entry. (If your curious why I find it so funny.
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| Weekly blog entry 11/17/2013 It has been an interesting week. I have been dealing with extreme swelling in my legs and hips. Thus causing writers block, bad temper, and a strange desire to do a lot of research. To me research is watching movies on Netflix. I might be watching one we have bought. That is close to the subject I am writing about or stuck on. A lot of times I’ll go to the library and check out books on the subject to get ideas from. When the pain is too great I sometimes play computer games. It is much more satisfying to take my rage out on some stupid game toon than a real person. Of course the family looks in and laughs at me cussing out my computer screen. I used to write the name of whoever offended me. Like friend or a co-worker on my monitor screen. And every time a monster would stand under that name I would kill it. A good friend taught me another stress relief and that was golf. You go down to your local golf club. You rent a set of clubs and a golf cart. When it is your turn to tee off you take your ball and write the name of the offending person on it and beat the hell out of that ball. I still remember the day I whacked old “Walt” into the middle of the water trap. There was no way I was going to get him out of that lake. I still chuckle thinking about someone’s surprise, when they buy a used golf ball, with “Walt” written all over it. You don’t have to know how to play golf, to whack balls with people’s names on them. I had more fun giggling and laughing hysterically, when they bounce off trees and got stuck in the sand traps, or even make a hole in one. We used to rent separate golf carts and have golf cart races. The idea being to get your mind off your issues, and just enjoy being alive. You can remove your stress using anything is my point. |
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