Bob Mayer's Blog, page 63

On Writing: Dumb and Dumber

I mentioned in a previous post about ideas that title is important and how my first book published, Eyes of the Hammer, failed in that regard? As did my second book: Dragon Sim-13.

By the time my third book rolled around I was much smarter. Not.

I got cute. I invented a word: SYNBAT.

You know what that stands for, right? Of course not. Which leads me to my rule of thumb that a title should not need you to read the book in order to understand it. That’s backwards. Unless (because there are no hard and fast rules in writing) the title is evocative enough to get you to read the book and then you understand the meaning.

For example, one of my next books coming out will be New York Minute. I think its evocative as well as being the title of an Eagle’s song. The story is set in New York City, so that’s good. And here’s the really scary thing. I didn’t know it when I’d chosen the title and started writing the book, but the Minute thing turns out playing a HUGE role in the story and is central to the actions in the climactic scene. So. Trust the subconscious.

Back to inventing a title. I’d started with straight military thrillers in Eyes of the Hammer and Dragon Sim-13. But my mind wanders, as my career clearly indicates.

With my third book I drifted toward science fiction as I pondered the idea: how will scientists use genetics to ‘improve’ the soldier? Thus SYNBAT which you knew stood for Synthetic Battle form. Right?

This was in the early 90s so the science wasn’t as advanced as it is now, but I projected forward, which is the duty of the fiction writer. I envisioned a merging of humans and baboons to create killing machines. Add on top of that an ability to procreate and fast growth and you essentially have a military virus.

As an interesting side note on this book, at the very end a dog plays a key role in saving the day. I named the dog Chelsea, after our Golden Retriever who was with us for so many years. The editor came back and said I can’t name a dog after the First Daughter. That gives you an idea of the time period.

So we’re three books into my career and its obvious I’d learned little on the business side of things. I hadn’t been to any writers conferences, wasn’t a member of a writing group. I was basically fumbling my way alone into the publishing business, which is never good.

More to come.

Why We Must Stop Procrastinating and Start Preparing?

We all need we need to “be prepared”. But what does that mean? Where do we start? There’s so much information out there and the image of hunkering down in a bunker, fending off zombies is overwhelming. But the real problems are real and WILL happen to all of us.

We know we need to do something, but we’re not sure what, and there’s just so much other stuff to do in day-to-day living we never get around to that something that could save our lives and the lives of the people we love.

80% of Americans live in a county
that has been hit by a weather related disaster since 2007

60% of people have not practiced or
prepared for what to do in an emergency

55% of people think they can rely
on the “authorities” to rescue them

53% of people do not have a three
day supply of water

52% of families do not have an
emergency rally point (ERP)

48% of people have no emergency
supplies

44% of people have no first aid kit

42% of people do not know the phone
numbers of immediate family members

In the Green Berets, the most
important thing that made us elite was our planning. We not only thoroughly
planned our missions, we also prepared for all the possible things we
could imagine going wrong.

You prepare for 3
reasons:

To avoid the emergency.

To have a plan, equipment, training
etc. in place in case the emergency strikes.

To give you peace of mind in
day-to-day living so you don’t constantly have to worry about potential
emergencies because you are prepared for them. This allows you to experience a
higher quality of life.

Procrastination comes from the Latin: pro= forward; crastinus=belonging to tomorrow. Which is a bit redundant, but you get the point. When we procrastinate we stay in a constant state of worry, knowing there’s something that needs to be done, but hasn’t been.

My latest book, The Procrastinator’s Survival Guide was written with you in mind. To show you how to start small and build. It has a number of tasks in it that build your preparation.

By ticking off these tasks, your peace of mind will expand.

Clear and Present Danger?

Great title, eh? I listened to Mary Higgins Clark speak one day and she said a title must invite the reader into the book. It seems so obvious now, but when I was a newbie writer, I didn’t know this, nor did I focus on it.

As my wife and psychologist will tell you, I have focus issues among some of my brain problems.

No one else told me about the importance of title either. Or, let’s be honest, perhaps they did and I was too obstinate to listen. Which has happened once or twice.

The second book I wrote, which was actually my first book published, was about Special Forces going into Colombia to interdict drug traffickers. Sound familiar? Remember I said that no idea is unique?

I wrote this book because I understood from the inside how such an operation might go down and also the inherent risks. One of the first things we did in Special Forces after we got a mission packet in Isolation, after all the briefers had left, was ask ourselves: What if this is a lie? What if the real mission is something else and we’re being used as a diversion? As a maneuvering piece in a larger geo-political game?

I was already into my third book when my agent finally got me my first book contract, which was, no surprisingly, a three book deal. It was with Presidio Press, a nonfiction military publisher which was now testing the fiction waters given the Naval Institute Press’ massive success with Tom Clancy’s first book, Hunt for Red October (another good title).

The first book I wrote was Dragon-Sim 13 (another terrible title) ended up being the second published. Think about that title: what does it mean? In fact, when it sold in paperback the editor said people would think it was a fantasy novel so let’s add Operation Dragon Sim-13.

Back to my first published book, which was very similar to Clancy’s Clear and Present Danger. Did I come up with a title to invited readers into the book? Sure. It’s Eyes of the Hammer.

I mean, WTF does that mean? Well, the Special Forces were the recon team (Eyes) for the airborne platforms with the firepower (the Hammer). You knew that right? Right?

Arggh. I can’t complain too much as the book has sold a lot over the years, but still.

So. Title is really, really, really important!

BTW, that book, Eyes of the Hammer, is free on every eBook platform as the lead in to my Green Beret series which has sold over a million copies over the years and continues forward. Nothing but good times and better titles ahead!

Did You Set Up The Health App on your iPhone?

We have so many things on our phones, we often don’t focus on them. iPhones come with an App that is easily ignored but can save your life. The Health App is loaded on your iPhone when you buy it. I know I didn’t even notice it until I started researching information for this book. Then again, my wife knows that to hide something in the fridge from me all she has to do is put it behind something. I’ll never find it.

Have you considered what would happen if you were in an accident and not conscious or able to speak? How would someone get hold of your In Case of Emergency (ICE) contact? How would they know if you are allergic to certain medicines? What is your blood type?

Remember, your phone is locked. What information do you carry in your wallet or purse with this information other than driver’s license? And is that up to date with the right address?

On the iPhone go to your Health App, which looks like this:

Launch the Health app on your iPhone.Tap the Medical ID tab.Tap Edit in the upper right corner.Tap Edit Medical ID.Under Emergency Contacts tap Add emergency contact.Select a contact from your list.Select a Relationship.

You can add as much information as you like on this app in the appropriate places.

Just one of many practical, small steps to take to being better prepared as presented in: The Procrastinator’s Survival Guide.

Free Preparation & Survival Checklists, Apps and more

At reader’s requests, I’ve pulled all the checklists from The Procrastinator’s Survival Guide and put them into a flipbook. Also, are links to all gear, free Survival Apps and useful web pages such as homefacts, FEMA flood zones, etc.

The checklists follow an order of preparation, from the first one which is quite simple about water. They are also divided in levels of preparation as needed.

To access the Flipbook go to this page: Nonfiction

Then click on the image below and follow the link. To turn pages in the Flipbook use the arrows on the left and right. All links work.

I hope you find these checklists helpful along with the links.

Idea Is Not Story

I often see writers who are concerned about someone stealing their idea. The problem with that is that every idea has been done. I know there’s always someone who thinks they have a truly original idea that has never been thought of in the history of mankind, but sorry, it has been.

The key is the translation from idea to story.

An idea is a concept. Story is translating that idea with

Where and when? Setting.

Who? Character.

Why? Motivation.

What? Plot.

Take same idea, put a twist when moving to story and it can appear the idea is different. I like to boil ideas down to one sentence. This keeps me focused. It is the one thing in a book that can’t change. Change the idea, then you change the story. You can change the story without changing the idea. This is something I expand on in the Novel Writers Toolkit.

I’m going to show examples of this in subsequent blogs, but I might as well start at the beginning, my first idea that I translated into story and the story didn’t work, so I kept the idea and changed the story and it eventually became my second book published.

The idea was really basic: What if Special Forces soldiers have to destroy an enemy pipeline?

This was back in the old days, before Internet was widely used, when I went to the library for my research and pissed off the librarians by rechecking out the same books over and over as I wrote the book, and we used chisel and stone for our first draft.

Actually, I used the original 512K Mac. That gives some of you old-timers a perspective. Loved that computer. I had just gotten off active duty in the army, although I was still in the reserves and I moved to South Korea to be with my then-wife who was still active duty. She commanded a company in an attack helicopter battalion, probably the first woman to do so, because she was also a maintenance test pilot. I had a lot of time on my hands as I studied martial arts (can only get beat up so many hours of the day) so I plugged in that Mac and started writing a book. I honestly can say I had no thoughts of getting published. I used the opportunity, something which has always been a very valuable tenet of my life.

My idea was simple because I figured I had to focus on the writing of the book so I used the KISS technique.

WHAT IF SPECIAL FORCES SOLDIERS HAVE TO BLOW UP AN ENEMY PIPELINE?

Why that idea? Because my team had done. I knew most of the story so I could focus on the writing. I just changed details.

As I developed my story I decided to set it in the Soviet Union (hint, really gives you an idea how long ago it was). For some reason I now forget the Russians blow up the Alaskan pipeline so we send an SF A-team to blow up the trans-Siberian pipeline. I wrote the book which I titled Payback. Started right into a second book once I finished that.

I won’t go into the long story of getting an agent etc. but finally, when I did have an agent, he read the manuscript, liked it, but said: Bob, the Soviet Union no longer exists. No one wants a book about that.

Which also gives you an idea how long it took me to get an agent.

So during Spring Break of grad school I took the same idea, changed the setting to China, backdropped it against the Tiananmen Square riots, added in a much better reason for the mission in terms of a Fail Safe type scenario and Payback became Dragon Sim-13.

Same idea. Very different story.

On the Valley of the Beasts front, I fear that Scout and Cool Gus are plotting my demise. It’s not paranoia if they are out to get you. They’ve already stolen my shoe and I fear their wrath if I try to retrieve it.

How Many Phone #s Do You Know?

Like, really know?

I remember when we had letters at the start of phone numbers in New York City, but we also used tin cans and string to call each other.

But, seriously. If you had to use someone else’s cell phone, or, God Forbid, yes they do exist, a pay phone, to call, and you didn’t have your contact list or autodial, how many people could you call? Everyone in your family?

At the very least we should know the phone numbers of the members of our household. The checklist below should be in your kitchen and everyone should have a copy of it at work/school and in their car. This is Task #2 from The Procrastinator’s Survival Guide. We start slow and with the basics and then build (BTW, Task One was getting two cases of bottled water per person in your household)

Task
Two

Mild: A-Team Contact Information &
Alert Flow

A-Team Member
Cell Phone
Number Work/School
Address & Phone #
#1
 

 

 

#2
 

 

 

#3
 

 

 

#4
 

 

 

#5
 

 

 

#6
 

 

 

#7
 

 

 

#8
 

 

 

#9
 

 

 

#10
 

 

 

BTW. Scout is fitting right in as a guard dog in the mode of Cool Gus.

The goal of this survival guide is to get people who know they need to do something, but aren’t sure where to start, to start. Most prep and survival books jump in at the deep end. We start slow and build. More to come.

Deb’s Flying Phobia

Bob: I vaguely remember this.

Deb: I got a flying phobia. Well, that and a snake phobia and for the life of me, I’ll never understand why I didn’t write ‘Snakes on a Plane’, first. Before I met Bob, I’d write the first chapter of a book every night instead of reading. I still have a three-foot-high stack of legal pads covered in my cursive which used to be so lovely till this typing everything wiped out two years of elementary school to the point where I can’t even write legibly on the grand babies birthday cards. Rather sad to have to cross out Nana and rewrite it cause it looks like Nomo.

But, I still remember a first chapter that I wrote because my protagonist (didn’t know that word then and thought of her as the chick this chapter is about) later became Hannah in Bodyguard of Lies. But the first Hannah was in a phobic flying group and waiting at a gate in a terminal with her group, the psychologist who led the group, and her husband who did indeed need to go to Chicago for business and wasn’t flying there and back for a ‘desensitize exercise’. Hannah wasn’t calm at all and freaking everyone out and her husband was getting a bit tired of her inability to rationalize away the magical thinking a phobia requires.

Plus, nothing like ten fearful flyers watching someone have
a meltdown over their greatest fear. And why I love the part in that movie, Bridesmaids where Kristin Wiig the
phobic flyer finds a seat next to another phobic flyer who says, “I had a
dream last night that the plane crashed. You were in it”.

I never had a plan for these chapters cause they’d sorta
fall out of my head so I was writing and reading at the same time. Everyone
gets on the plane except Hannah who immediately feels two things as she watches
the plane pull away from the gate: tremendous relief and total embarrassment
because that’s what phobias are–giving in to them and then feeling oh, so
foolish that you did. But, in the fiction the plane crashes on take-off as
Hannah watches and then there’s a bunch of stuff about her messing with fate
cause she was supposed to have been on that plane.

Years later when I saw Final
Destination, I realized that I’d written the first chapter of that but
ideas are just that: ideas and a lot of people have them but those who do
something with them own them.

But, the magical thinking of flying had been there for a
long time and has stuck with me. I could fly occasionally, but not with anyone
whom I loved. I could fly if I wore all leather (for the fire) and only Delta
(I’d read that they had a lot of military trained pilots) and a first-class
ticket cause you could cancel those and I figured that if I paid more that the
cabin crew would tolerate me more since fearful flyer was stamped by my name
right on the manifest. Plus, if you only fly once a year it’s not that much.

I never acted all nuts unless you consider putting your
leather coat over your head and silently weeping for a few hours to be nuts.
Once the flight attendant asked my covered head if I was OK cause we were still
at the gate and I said, “Right now, the only thing worse would be if you
opened that cabinet above me and a snake fell on my lap”. See, can’t
believe that I didn’t write that movie.

Then our son graduated from college and Bob had only a few
days before a conference and so I willed myself to think logically for his sake
and we flew from Savannah to Denver in coach cause Bob would poke out an eye
before wasting money on first class for himself and he’d be with me to keep the
coat from slipping. It’s very uncomfortable to wear leather pants, boots and
coat in June unless you’re getting the breeze from a motorcycle. 

The flight was as uneventful as they are for everyone who
gets on a plane as if it were just a convenient way to get from A to Z, but I
didn’t remember much except Bob saying, “just some turbulence, just the
landing gear folding up,” and my thinking shut up cause I’m pretending to
be in a hole. In the ground. Ground, I want ground. 

The graduation was lovely and the whole family being there
was nice, but in the back of my head I kept thinking about the flight back:
magically thinking of the flight back. One night in the hotel I dreamt that the
plane was going straight down and the cockpit door was open and I could see
those Three Mile Island towers of the nuclear plant we were aiming for through
the cockpit window. I thought that was a bit much for even my unconscious mind,
but it stuck and when we got to the gate for the flight home I told Bob that I
couldn’t do it and he should fly back and I’d rent a car and drive. I’m a very
good long-distance driver cause I’ve had so much practice. He tried to talk me
into it with all the logical reasons that flying is safer than driving, but you
can’t reason with a phobic flyer fully immersed in the ridiculous notion that
their thinking is part of the cause and effect of reality.

Bob said I’ll drive with you and if we alternate and don’t
stop we can make it home in time.

I loved him so much at that moment that I knew for a fact
that we both couldn’t get on that plane. We rented an SUV that had about twenty
miles on it which to me was all the assurance that I needed that driving was
the absolute right thing. 

I was sound asleep in the back seat with no seat belt cause
we were on the GROUND when my phone rang. It was a friend from Hilton Head
asking when he should pick us up at the Savannah airport. We were in the middle
of Kansas where most of the exits have a sign for the name of the astronaut
from that little town cause nothing like flat Kansas to make you look toward
the heavens for adventure. Bob was driving about ten or twelve miles over the
speed limit of 70 while I tried to rationally explain why we were in an SUV in
Kansas which it seems you can’t do. I put the phone into my purse and wide
awake ask Bob to stop at the next exist cause a lot of coffee and now we could
switch places.

It’s why we weren’t killed when the front passenger side
tire blew about ten seconds later.

He’d slowed and had taken some defense driving courses, but
it was still a whirl of gravel and spinning and almost a roll over, and one of
those moments where everything seems to slow down because there is no more
control and whatever will happen will.

Bob managed to get the thing stopped and safely to the side
of the road and he put his head on the steering wheel and took a few deep
breaths as I crawled back onto the rear seat and his phone buzzed. He said,
“the plane just landed”. 

And I haven’t flown since and Bob hasn’t driven with me since cause proof positive that flying is safer than driving didn’t cancel out that phobia at all. It added another layer of magical thinking: I can’t drive with Bob anymore.

Bob’s PS: It probably doesn’t help that I research disasters for my Stuff Doesn’t Just Happen books including the Kegworth plane crash where the pilots turned off the wrong engine and no one in the back told them and they crashed a quarter miles short of the runway. Just saying.

On Temper Tantrums & Standing Firm

This is a guest post by my wife, who is much smarter.

Deb:

I’ve decided that everything is about age. Bob and I got a puppy from the pound cause day-to-day life has been so boring of late. We named her Scout and handed her to our ten-year-old dog, Gus, as if we were giving him a trip to Bimini. She’s about thirteen weeks now and still deals with the world with her needle-like fangs. She’s one of those dogs that cocks her head at you cause she’s trying to figure out what you want from her. After a decade of sweet English Labradors, I’d forgotten how smart puppies act. It’s not that Gus is a dummy, but he’s never cocked his head except to let us know that he has an itchy ear. He’s managed to get what he wants by being pleasant and accepting that he can’t have that squirrel. But, now this little Rottweiler mix of something is reminding me that determined gets what it wants by being demanding.

Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas (not quite sure cause it’s all a jumble of needing evaporated milk and having only condensed) I went to the grocery store to pick up a few of those odd things which exist only for holidays. It was one of those huge places where you can buy a decorative bed pillow or some shoes or milk. They make me nuts cause my brain can buy either shoes or milk.

Anyway, while staring at some shoes I heard the unmistakable
first scream of a toddler tantrum. We all know it–a kid in the cart who’s old
enough to know the word, ‘no’ but also knows that in a store full of people
that a meltdown can turn a no into yes cause that parent is thinking of the
sanity of others.

By the time I’d hit the candle aisle which I told Bob many
years ago would be an excellent way to convey a pathogen cause we were all
prying off a glass lid and inhaling deeply–the tantrum had been raging for
about seven minutes and was building into full shriek mode. 

I overheard one of the two women already snorting candles
say that it sounded like they were going for it. Odd that I instantly knew that
‘they’ was the parent and not the kid. The other woman said I saw him and he’s
about three and a half and his mother is ignoring him. 

Yes, she was going for it and gonna outlast him and not give
in and soon a man joined us as we all began sharing the times that we went for
it with our own puppy-child. Some of us admitted to leaving the store at that
time cause it’s too embarrassing to see the looks of fellow humans who haven’t
raised a child and think that toddlers are real people but smaller and that
reasoning works. Some of us had stuck it out in the soda aisles hoping that
cardboard and aluminum was an effective sound barrier till the kid was an
exhausted heap lying over a bag of potatoes and making those little exhausted
whimpers before passing out and drooling all over the lettuce.

But, I’d had help in the form of a woman about the age that
I am now who’d known that I was trying to go for it, but I was checking out my
fellow shoppers with a look of despair which told her that I was gonna fail and
that box of Junior Mints or whatever was soon going to be in his sweaty little
hands.

By now there were six or seven carts piled up as we
discussed the dilemma of the young mother pushing around the amplifier set
at eleven.

 It was nice to have a group discussion of fellow
adults all sharing the same opinion on one topic because it’s not ever been the
way our country was designed to work since the freedom to disagree is sorta the
reason you have freedom at all.  And we were all of the opinion that she
was too far in to back down now, but we were also all losing our collective
marbles cause that kid wasn’t giving up anytime soon. 

I said will someone watch my stuff cause I’m going in. They
all said sure in unison cause it was either leave or lose thirty years so we’d
all have ear buds in and notice nothing anyway.

We were all of that age where shopping and personal music
was as bizarre a notion as the self-service check-outs. And none of us wanted
to leave our little piles of baking powder and food coloring and odd sprinkles
just to return later cause not like we had those things in the cupboards. I did
thirty years ago but I had more need of sprinkles throughout the year cause of
the inevitable, “Mom, I need fifty cupcakes for the bake sale,
tomorrow”. 

Age changes even the contents of the pantry, but it’s also
age which walks bravely into the fray of disintegrating mother and toddler
tantrum. She wasn’t hard to find in that big store, I will say that. 

She was in her early thirties but probably looked
younger when she walked in, and initially said no about whatever.  I
write, ‘whatever’ because it’s never the thing but rather the battle and he was
too old because everything is age and a year younger and he’s still wondering
why you’ve brought me to a place full of things which I can have by asking
nicely. That extra year is where the ask is no longer the issue but the
willingness to accept an arbitrary no is the issue. And she was struggling
because she knew that everyone in the store was caught in their own minds
between ‘give that little shit whatever he wants so he’ll shut up’, and oh,
dear, you’re in too deep to cave now. But, I had my memories of the
grandmotherly woman who’d helped me win my battle and thus the forever war of
when no means no and just because I said so.

I made my approach to her by creeping by the kid and
ignoring him as if he weren’t there which was harder than you think because I
could feel my eardrums twitching a bit. I said something of no consequence, but
she started to apologize and I barely shook my head no, and she was still lucid
enough to cock her head a bit and realize that I was coming to help and not to
complain.

The screaming intensified for a moment cause the kid knew he
he was close to winning though he’d probably forgotten what, so he immediately
sensed his mother’s tiny withdrawal of her previously focused attention on him.
A three-and-a-half-year-old knows when they’re being purposefully ignored because
they can see the sweat on your brow.

She was one of those mother’s who’d worked very hard for the
right to wear those yoga pants and so I talked of yoga. After a few seconds her
grip on the cart lessened cause I could see some blood returning to her knuckles
and after a few more seconds, the screaming lessened in decibels but not
intensity cause he, too, was too far in to roll over easily now. At that point
I wished I’d really gone to a few yoga classes instead of looking through the
glass of a darkened room in that gym at all those people standing on their
heads with hands cupped on steel buttocks while I meandered to a treadmill.
But, I can fake talk on a lot of subjects and moved to the back of her so that
she’d turn away from him and face me.

By then I was discussing the price of yoga mats and she was
nodding as if yoga mats were twitter trend of the day. And like magic the more
she stopped ignoring his shrieks and just forgot about them the longer the
gasps between hysteria and the more time spent on who’s that old lady chatting
up my mother?

After he’d quieted for about two minutes, I turned and said,
“My grandsons want Voltron stuff from Santa and do you think that’s a good
choice?”  He immediately said no and launched into the merits of
Avengers of all types versus Voltrons of any sort. He was hard to understand at
first because he’d nearly hyperventilated his way into a coma. We chatted about
Santa for a few more minutes and I told him that I’d take the whole Avengers
thing under advisement because he was a smart kid who made a good argument
against Voltron. I said have a Merry Christmas and I gotta go find some
powdered sugar and he said it’s that way and pointed the opposite way of my
buggy. Cripes, cause now I had to go that way and sneak behind a few people
sorting through the hams to get back to the candle aisle. 

Most of my fellow shoppers were gone, but one woman was
guarding my buggy and said–I too had help the day that I drew my metaphorical
line in the sand and went for it. We did one of those lame high fives where we
missed our hands cause reading glasses aren’t just for reading anymore.

I passed the mother and her son a few aisles down and darn
if that kid didn’t notice that I had no powered sugar. Seriously I mentioned
the one thing which I always do have instead of yams or something.

He was very sharp as I suspected because my own one-time
tantrum kid went on to get his doctorate in Materials Engineering and Physics.
Like my toddler he was fighting the arbitrary nature of the no and not the no
itself. It is a difficult thing for some toddlers to accept that ‘because I
said so’ is a viable argument. But, they need learn the lesson only once and
they only learn it by losing that one battle because losing is as much a part
of life as winning.

If you grow up never learning that losing exists then you’ll
believe that winning is all there is.

It took a week for our dog, Gus, to teach Scout, the puppy
with needle teeth, that he would play but not if she saw him as a chew toy. The
more that he snarled and growled and the more she thought it was fun, so he
finally learned to jump on the bed and withdraw since she’s too tiny to climb
there and once she calmed he’d jump down, but right back up at the first tug on
his tail or the one unfortunate incident where she missed his tail and nipped
his rectum. Scout won’t be doing that again and he did finally teach her to
that tug of war which included nothing attached to his body could be fun, too.

 Age is everything and puppies like children learn from
the experience of their elders. Puppies win if they never learn how to lose and
end up in dog parks on a three point leash and toddlers win if they never lose
and end up being president where there isn’t even an argument about the merits
of Avengers over Voltron. There’s only the getting of what they wanted from the
first time they entered the store and screamed till they got it and thus never
learn the arbitrary nature of no. You’d think that a septuagenarian toddler who
played ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ at his campaign rallies would know
that for a fact. But, since he doesn’t and is making his tantrum about
partisanship rather than our joint effort at teaching a very old dog a new
trick? Then the discussion isn’t about walls: it’s about yoga.

Writers and Their Better Halves– Don’t Do This

Writers tend to be insecure people. Don’t believe me? I don’t think you do. Why not? Seriously? Geez.

But we can learn to be better. The two videos in this post are prime examples of what NOT to do. The first illustrates an important rule: What not to gift your better half!

The second is the result of asking your better half to read your work in progress. Never a good idea and often the precursor to a divorce.

WHAT NOT TO GIVE:

THE RESULT OF MAKING YOUR SPOUSE READ YOUR MANUSCRIPT:

You’re better off working on your craft.

The Complete Writer