Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 84
July 19, 2016
U.S. Army Veteran and Paralympic Swimmer
This is a great story about Sergeant Elizabeth Marks, who was injured in the war and became a Paralympic swimmer. Usually when I see stories about wounded veterans, they’re always about men, and they describe in excruciating detail how they were injured and then all the medical procedures, like their life ended at that moment. This one focuses on her journey becoming a Paralympic swimmer.
Filed under: Military Tagged: Army, Disabilities, Paralympics, Swimming, tattoos, Women Veterans
July 18, 2016
Entrepreneur Scarier than military?
Even when I started writing when I was little, I wanted to write full time. Writing is so much fun–what else would be better than playing around with characters and story? Though I listened too much to those myths that you can’t make enough money to live off, not realizing that if I didn’t go out after writing everything and anything, made the myths true.
Now the technology allows someone like me to publish my own books and eventually launch my own business. It’s both a scary and exciting through, because there is no safety net of a job. It has to work. From an article on veteran entrepreneurs:
“I never got scared in the Marines or the fire department,” Green says, “but entrepreneurship is the scariest thing ever.”
Filed under: Military, Writing Tagged: Veterans
July 17, 2016
Unusual Sighting at the Farmer’s Market
I walked down to the Farmer’s Market this morning, which I do every week. It’s a small farmer’s market with about six or seven vendors. During the spring and summer, there are a lot of people, and many of them bring their dogs.
So I did a double-take for a woman walking a black animal that, on a quick glance, was a medium-sized dog.
It was a pig!
He was on a leash, with a typical dog halter. Thirty-eight pounds. His nose was constantly working, sniffing the air. Food! Food! Mine! Mine!
As I made my rounds through the vendors, even the vendors were wanting to check out the pig. People were departing vendors saying, “Okay, I have to see this pig.”
He was enjoying being the star of the show!
Filed under: Food, Personal Tagged: Farmer's Market, Pig, Summer, Washington DC
July 16, 2016
What’s the first book you remember?
Books have always been a big part of my life. I would go down to the library with my mother and come back with a load of books. The earliest books I remember—and it’s weird because I even remember where the books were located on the shelf—were the Blaze books, which was about a horse.
When I looked it up, I was surprised to see it was Billy and Blaze. I remember the horse. I don’t remember the boy. Guess it needed a girl.
What’s the book you remember?
Filed under: Books, Thoughts
July 15, 2016
Behind the Scenes on NCIS
Most TV shows treat the military as a plot point or don’t really understand the rank or what the person does. NCIS goes behind that with respecting the military in every episode. Here’s some behind that scenes of the show.
Filed under: Entertainment, Thoughts, Videos Tagged: Mark Hramon, NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans, Scott Bakula
July 14, 2016
Scrivener is the Pantser’s Tool
When I write, I’m all over the place. I might work on Scene 15, then hop back to Scene 4 to add something that ties into Scene 15. Then I change the gender of a character, so I have to hop through five scenes and correct the name and the gender.
In Microsoft Word, this was awful. Scroll back through 5 or even 10 pages to find the right section is not too bad—but 75 pages? Two hundred?
It starts to get pretty unwieldy.
When Scrivener came out with its beta for Windows, I signed right up as a tester. I’d checked out most of the writing programs around at the time. Some of them seemed not to really understand writers at all, and others tried to force the writer to fit in with a process of writing.
Like outlining.
I don’t outline (the pantser thing), so a program that required me to outline to use it was, really, a complete waste of time. I suppose those programs were designed by people who couldn’t conceive that there might be multiple ways to approach writing process.
But Scrivener did. It’s one of those tools that’s designed so that you can use the parts you want, and ignore the parts that don’t work for you. An outliner can use the corkboard to keep track of their scenes, while I can happily ignore that.
And if I realize I need to hop back ten scenes, it’s a couple of clicks.
One of the best things though is that I can put one scene in one file. It’s still part of the whole, but now I can focus on just one scene. If I realize I need to add a scene or move the one I just wrote, it’s super easy. In Word, that was always a big frustration because the document was so unwieldy.
The best thing the tools should do is let you write.
Filed under: Writing Tagged: Microsoft Word, Pantsers, pantsing, Scrivener for Windows
July 13, 2016
Ignorance is a path to failure
Disclaimer: This is a no politics zone. Any political comments will be deleted.
I like to read a lot of business books, and sometimes quotes catch my eye. This one is from Trump 101: The way to Success by Donald Trump.
“Being well informed is a continuous and daily process. Our world now moves so quickly that keeping up is a challenge. Not keeping up is like quitting. Don’t quit. Learning everything you can because you never know when it might come in handy.”
There was a writer who I would have read forever because her books were that good, and they were about woman character who took on bad guys (I’m not telling who the writer is, but if you’ve read her, you’ll probably guess). She had humor, and the characters were good, and the world she built was good.
I even saw her improve as a writer for the first few books.
Then she got successful, and she thought she knew everything about writing. She not only stopped improving her craft, she regressed. I hung around for a while, hoping the later books would have that magic, but it was gone.
And it was such a shame. All because of ignorance.
Filed under: quotes, Writing Tagged: Donald Trump, Ignorance, Learning, writing craft
July 12, 2016
Women who served in Vietnam
When I went on the cruise last yet, there was a surprising number of women veterans. It included a nurse who had retired as a colonel, and she’d served in both Vietnam and Desert Storm.
The women who came home from that war was largely force to pretend like they hadn’t been to a war and nothing had happened to them. Unfortunately, some of the worst came from the male veterans:
[Starnes] was the only female in the room and was verbally abused by male veterans. She tried to explain that in Vietnam there was no safe area, everybody who served was in combat, but they didn’t want to hear. She left feeling ashamed and never again sought help.
I remember when the Women’s Memorial was created, and when the women’s statue was added to The Wall’s site. The male veterans were terrible, protesting angrily that the women shouldn’t be honored because they didn’t do anything. Complete disconnect.
They were unable to put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They were unable to see that the horrors they were living with, the women were also living with.
War is not gender neutral.
Filed under: History, Military, Thoughts Tagged: Vietnam Memorial, Vietnam War, Women Veterans, Women's Vietnam Memorial
July 11, 2016
The Hollywood military medal
If you watch any TV show with a veteran, he’s often homeless, but he keeps this medal he received perfectly preserved among his meager possessions.
The guy—and it’s always guy—is tormented by war and his buddies dying, so he keeps this medal as something that he looks at from time to time as a reminder.
It’s very Hollywood.
I’m not sure why Hollywood thinks that it would be any different than any other person. I suppose they hear “award” and think the other meaning, a prize.
Maybe there was one person who kept a medal as a reminder, and Hollywood glommed onto that for all veterans. They’re good about doing something like that.
But a way, the medal is rather impersonal. Sometimes the veterans put them on display in a shadow box. Mine are stuck in the closet somewhere. I’d have to hunt for one. The only time I took one out recently was that another writer wanted to see what one looked like.
If a veteran kept something as a remembrance, it’d be like what your parents or grandparents kept: Personal, to them. Maybe a photograph, or a card, or a letter.
Mine’s a ceramic Siamese cat. My Army buddy gave it to me in better times. War intruded and took with it her friendship, and two others.
Filed under: Entertainment, Military Tagged: Hollywood, Medals, Military
July 10, 2016
Rogue God
Anton Keymas is part of a magical Special Forces, the Vai, and blessed by a party goddess. His mission? Hunt monsters that no one believes in any more and try not to get killed.
But this new monster has killed two soldiers. Now that it’s gotten a taste of human flesh, it will be back for more.
Keymas has little time to stop a monster that is intelligent and cunning. He may have to do the one thing he has refused to do, and even that has a cost, especially when gods get involved.
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Filed under: Thoughts
