Tim Learn's Blog, page 11
November 10, 2016
To Beat a Grammarian: A Preface
Why I Want to Beat a Grammarian
After finishing my first book, I quickly realized there were many things I didn’t know about writing. Clearly, I can string lines together and make them coherent, even sometimes cohesive. Yet time and time again, comments arose about my grammar. And, to be honest, I was shocked. I’ve taught grammar and language for years now, so to have someone finger my lines or to sometimes full out lambast them was more than mind-boggling. But that’s the thing—most people spend very little time really looking at the details. I taught it, but I taught the fundamentals. When it comes to writing something with a much larger scope, the sentence variation—I hope—will range just as much, too.
In this way, I noticed I needed to brush up on my skills, on the minutia of grammar that so many purported experts flaunt. With modern day advancements, I checked for an e-book that could aid me in my struggle and…came up empty handed.
The large flaw with looking for such a book is there are only two types out there. The first one waxes on and on about how to write a stunning first paragraph, a strong protagonist with deep flaws, and a manuscript lacking POV shifts. All of this is the bedrock for good fiction and…absolutely not what I wanted. The other jumps into the nuts and bolts well enough (Strunk and White) but leaves much to be imagined. It may cover the basics, but there are so many loopholes that how can one feel positive about it all.
That’s when I began to compile the grammar points I happened to stumble across—and I’m not talking about the difference between it’s and its. I mean the glaring errors I found others remarking on in my manuscripts, the errors that no other books adequately explained. And, of course, the best way to learn it is to write it.
So here we are.
November 8, 2016
Chewy Noh–The Series
Chewy Noh: The Series
The first four books are now out and ready to read. Join the already many readers who have loved Chewy and the trouble he gets into.
Chewy Noh should be happy. He has a best friend like no other and by using his secret abilities, has found a way to connect Korea and America forever to keep him.
Unfortunately, none of this matters after Death’s messenger comes to tell him that he has one week left to live!
In the end, if Chewy doesn’t learn how to change, Death might just come out on top.
Book 5: Chewy Noh and the Jamais Vu
November 7, 2016
Chewy Noh and the Jamais Vu
Here it is: the final Chewy Noh!
Making his way back to the past, Chewy has a lot to do–the most important of which is making sure the horrible future he came from doesn’t happen. In order to do that, he needs to change his cousin’s thinking, avoid the death dodger Tong Pangsak, and make sure his grandmother, mom, and best friend don’t die. There’s only one catch: time doesn’t like repetition. It doesn’t like two of the same thing at once.
Slowly, Chewy’s mind begins to detonate on top of confidence. Everywhere he turns things get worse–his death dodger friend from the future doesn’t trust him, his grandfather seems broken, and the school bully is stricken with the same time disease he is.
If he doesn’t find a way to stop it, the horrible side-effects of traveling through time will slowly erase him. But as he digs further and further into his family’s past, he begins to see that changing things isn’t that easy. In fact, it’s down right impossible.
CHEWY NOH AND THE JAMAIS VU
November 4, 2016
Chewy Noh and the Legends of Spring
You’ve never heard of Chewy Noh? Well, at first, when he came, we thought nothing of him. He did well on tests, but so what? Even after his mom got sick, nobody paid attention. That is until the great gym fire.
Afterwards, no one could say for sure it was because of Chewy, but we all thought it. And then kids started getting sick. And the school bully went missing. And finally, a body turned up in his house—his mom’s! The strangest thing of all was he was nowhere to be found.
Some say he ran off. Others say he still wanders the night. Either way, for the past fifteen years, his house has sat silent…until now.
So if something strange moans beneath your bed or a shadow slinks out of your closet, don’t go looking. It could just be the legend of Chewy Noh—back for revenge!
November 3, 2016
Chewy Noh and the March of Death
Chewy Noh should be happy. He has a best friend like no other and by using his secret abilities, has found a way to connect Korea and America forever to keep him.
Unfortunately, none of this matters after Death’s messenger comes to tell him that he has one week left to live!
Knowing his death is coming soon, Chewy scrambles to figure out a way to avoid it, but every direction he turns seems to lead him further and further away from his goal—a dead body, a missing person, and at the heart of it, the secret that started that it all.
In the end, if Chewy doesn’t learn how to change, Death might just come out on top.
November 2, 2016
Chewy Noh and the Phantasm of Winter
Chewy Noh has many problems. Besides his mom becoming a mu-dang—a Korean fortune-teller possessed by his dead grandmother who can read minds—the school bully, Kent, is still on the warpath to get Chewy kicked out of school. With his secret ability to win at everything, none of this bothers him until he starts disappearing for no reason while a mysterious force attacks his fellow students, and he must scramble to figure out what’s going on before he becomes its next and final victim.
November 1, 2016
Chewy Noh and the Fall of the Mu-dang
The original!!!!!
Chewy Noh has problems. He was born with them. Two weeks after his birth, the family fortune-teller saw bad things in his future…and she was right. The school bully hates him and will stop at nothing to get rid of him. His mother suddenly can’t get out of bed, complaining of horrible headaches. And worst of all, the secret his grandmother is hiding may be at the root of it all. But why should he worry? He’s a superhero with a power no one’s ever seen before!
October 31, 2016
What I learned from ‘The Golden Notebook’ in relation to ‘All the Bright Places’
What I learned from ‘The Golden Notebook’
in relation to ‘All the Bright Places’
Niven’s new book recently came out and with it a flood of people began to gush about her first book again. Hearing as such, I decided to try it. With my experience reading YA, I know not all books are good—even the prize winners and the #1 sellers—still I was hoping this one would surprise me. It didn’t.
The only problem was, after reading it, I knew I loathed this book, but I wasn’t sure why. I mean—yes, Finch’s voice was sort of irritating, but so are many characters. And yes, too much of the book seemed too—I don’t know—expected. It is a teen book after all. Still, I was surprised by others’ reactions. Another person I know who had read it, couldn’t stop raving about it despite hating another suicide book, Thirteen Reasons. I’ll be reading that shortly and already feel a little dread, but the contrast that these two books got only further perplexed me as to why I hated this book.
And then I read Doris Lessing’s ‘The Golden Notebook.’
If there is such a thing as fate, reading her book so closely after reading Niven’s must be some kind of clandestine planning. I rarely underline in books that I personally read, but this time I had to. And this is the part that made everything clear.
“I feel sick when I look at the parody synopsis, at the letters from the film company; yet I know that what made the film company so excited about the possibilities of the novel as a film was precisely what made it successful as a novel. The novel is “about” a colour problem.”
Here we see Anna, the protagonist, fretting over her book being turned into a movie. She doesn’t like the idea, but Hollywood is going crazy and for the exact reason that she hates the book and the exact reason why she hates her treatment of the issues in the book and in her life: they all deal “about” a problem, whether it be a color problem, or socialist problem, or in the case of Niven’s book, a suicide problem. And I find that far too often books nowadays like to deal “about” an issue and never “in” an issue, much like Anna’s complaint.
This whole notion is only further compound by Niven’s own response to why she wrote the book, saying, “I want to write something dark.” That’s it. That’s the impetus for delving into suicide. It was something dark that she could write “about.” Never did she write “in” suicide. No, instead she gave us tales of others killing themselves, or haphazardly memorized stats on suicide with an occasional esoteric suicidal Italian poet to tie it all together.
On top of this, Finch’s reason for suicide is nothing more than a medical problem that many are afflicted with—which from others’ comments was portrayed poorly. If a book is going to delve into suicide, shouldn’t it address they many who do it for other reasons than ‘I-was-born-with-a-bad-roll-of-the-genetic-dice.’ Some might then offer up Violet’s own battle with it—or even Amanda Monk’s, whose suicidal revelation seemed all to convenient (Wow! Cool kids have these thoughts, too!) The thing with Violet is—it’s never believable. I never see her once dropping so low mentally to ever actually contemplate killing herself. It seems too topical, too superficial.
And if you haven’t figured it out yet, that’s exactly what being “about” something is.
October 30, 2016
End of October Review
End of October Review
A long month of test and other misadventures, but I was surprisingly able to finish more than I expected. I was anticipating to be busier and so to read less, but I pulled off almost an average month. On top of that, I got some editing done on some other writers’ books, and helped one publish his. Overall, not bad.
Books Read and/or Reviewed
First off, I decided to tackle some unfinished books—those books that you start and for some reason never come back to. The first one was Graham Greene’s The Comedians. Although I’d have to say I’m a huge Greene fan, this book didn’t hit me as much as I’d like. So many people rate it as their top choice, but I just couldn’t get into, though I did finish it this time. Another partly read book was Borges’ Labyrinths. This was not because it sucked or anything. Mainly it’s because it is a compilation of short stories, which makes it very easy to put down when a more gripping book comes along and then forget about it. That being said, it is awesome. The sad thing is it does take an amazing amount of concentration and should not be considered a light read. What Borges packs into a tiny story could be unfurled into volumes compared to other people’s works.
Next, I hit a YA hit, All the Bright Places. I cannot understand why people liked this book. Luckily, many others felt the same way I did. The only thing was, most of their comments were in regard to people who actually committed suicide and or are manic depressive. For me, that wasn’t it. I finally figured it out with this post. After that I jumped into the highly anticipated movie, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. Ang Lee is directing, so I wanted to read this before the film came out. I enjoyed it, but in no way would I rate it as a phenomenal success. Many critics compared it to Catch-22—a read I just finished a month ago—and I’d have to say: I don’t see it. America has changed a lot since WWII. The metaphor is drawn large in this book and is interesting, but not something I’d rave about.
Then I tackled some graphic novels. I read Raina’s Ghosts. I was overall disappointed in this fourth solo. I know it is aimed for middle grade readers, but it just stunk of immaturity. The relations were light and never too delved into. I thought after Drama, she’d hit a little harder. Sadly, not true. Following that, I read Yang’s Boxer duology out of order, finishing the second book, Saints, first. Luckily, they are only loosely linked, so the story just added another perspective, which was okay, but not as good as his American Born Chinese.
Furthermore, I finished Dicken’s Great Expectations. I read this with my students and was happy to do so as I had wanted to read it for years. Having tackled his ‘Hard Times’ before, I was worried if this book would be as dry, but fortunately it was not. Pip was awesome and the twists are classic Dickens at work. I only found out afterwards that this was pretty much his last work before he died which may explain why it always ranks so high. Following this, I read Wodehouse’s My Man Jeeves. I had seen many things about this author and how comedic he supposedly was so I decided to tackle it. Unfortunately, it was painful to get through. The writing is largely dated and the characters are barely interesting. It mainly consists of short stories based around a brilliant butler named Jeeves, but too often the best stories had him nor Wooster in them. On top of that, the language was awful. On an up note, there appears to be a TV version with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry playing the main characters. It might be slightly redeeming.
Finally, I tackled a larger tome on my shelf, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook. This thing was chaotic—as Anna proclaims early on—and hit so many highs and lows, not to mention seemed to span decades, that by the end you feel you’ve lived an entire life. That may sound daunting, but it was awesome, and like all awesome classics, it came with a thousand haters. Most reviews were negative, with quite a lot giving up in the first 150 pages. This book is over 600 pages long, so I find that shocking, not to mention the fact that the beginning is the most coherent. If those staminaless readers could only make it that far, I wonder what they’d think of the mess that was the end of the book. All in all, I know most can’t handled this thing, but I enjoyed it for what it was, and related to quite a bit of it.
Book Reviews Received
Not even worth mentioning, even with a new release (Chewy Noh and the Legends of Spring.) Sad.
Progress on 2016 goals
Finish Chewy 5: Done!—75,000 words
Read ‘The Recognitions’: Done!
Compiling my Editing book: Done!—30,000 words
Finish ‘All the Things in the Unknown World’: Done!—85,000 words
Send ATTITUW out to publishers: Sent out to 10 publishers
Next Month’s Agenda
I want to send ATTITUW out to more publishers next month. On top of that, I will try to do more editing and as it is November, I will try to start my next book. Unlike All the Things in the Unknown World, this next one will be much more scripted like the Chewy Noh series, so it should not be as much of a headache. I hope, time willing, I can add some more goals to the list then. If not, the years almost done, so I don’t have long.
September 30, 2016
End of September Review
End of September Review
The semester started and then I was hit by tons of vacation time. I feel as if I haven’t even started yet. Because of this, I was able to get a lot finished, most of all, the editing book I’ve been struggling to get to. I push myself into it and got it done in two days. Thanks a lot procrastination!
Books Read and/or Reviewed
First off, I was able to get a lot of reading done, especially now that I’m done with my writing project. The first book I completed was Catch-22. This book was a long time coming mainly because my brother always made it hard to read. That being said, I enjoyed it and the roundabout thinking it portrays. However, I don’t think I’d read the follow-up. Secondly, A Darker Side of Magic didn’t land so well. I found it to be childish and poorly written. On top of that, the plot was predictable and slow moving. I have no idea why this is a favorite of so many others. I will 100% not read the rest of the trilogy.
Then came The Girl Who Drank the Moon. Like other books I’ve read, it started out well and interesting with nice usage of words and then lagged for about one hundred and fifty pages until the end. After reading reviews for her other books, it sounds like it’s a trend. No more from this author. From here, I jumped to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep?—the classic novel that spawned the Blade Runner movie. It was awesome and well done. The world building for such a slim book was inspiring. He wasted no words and kept things moving, keeping some scenes full of suspense. Definitely made me want to explore other works by Dick.
Sadly, I followed up a classic like that with Smart Girls Get What They Want. This book felt like a kid wrote it. The plot was see-through. The writing was abysmal, and despite these girls—and one guy—being exceptionally smart, they were anything but. The fact that the main protagonist couldn’t decipher what I knew one-fifth into the book made me question her intellect. Trash. To level that off, I dove into Hiroshima. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for a while. I bought it to read with a student who later left before we got around to it. It’s a tight little book, but well worth the read. It follows six characters immediately after the atomic bomb and then catches up with them forty years later. Tragic.
In there somewhere, I got through And The Mountains Echoed. This is Kite Runner’s third book and most challenging. Though it has amazing characters and beautiful writing, the tales are spun in overlapping ways that highlight the difficulty of doing the right thing. For this reason (the difficulty) many were turned off by it. For me, though, I can see he is maturing into more than just a mawkish storyteller. Another book sitting long on my shelf was The Good Earth. This Pearl S. Buck classic was fast and fun to reading, detailing the life of a Chinese indigent. The hardship he has to face is amazing and you can really see how disappointing life—wherever it’s lived—can be. Well done.
Lastly, I read A Void, by Perec. This books gimmick is that the author never uses the letter E except for in his own name. It is startling to see a 300-page book done in this manner. Even more so, the story is unbelievably tight and windy. Though it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it’s definitely a book for hardcore readers. The captions at the end epitomize his goal, stating that language before us was different and after us will be so too. Where we use an ‘E,’ in the future, it may not be so. To top off my busy month, I also read for editing purposes the fourth Chewy Noh—Chewy Noh and the Legends of Spring.
Book Reviews Received
Not even worth mentioning, even with a new release (Chewy Noh and the Legends of Spring.) Sad.
Progress on 2016 goals
Finish Chewy 5: Done!
Read ‘The Recognitions’: Done!
Compiling my Editing book: Woo hoo! Done, too, and for sale!
Finish ‘All the Things in the Unknown World’: Done and in Beta Review.
Send ATTITUW out to publishers: TBA
Next Month’s Agenda
As you can see above, I hope to get my latest book through its beta stage and move onto sending it to publisher. Along with that, I’ve upped my Goodread’s book challenge to 75 books. So I have about fifteen books left to go. I want to clean off my bookshelf more and hope to do so with the upcoming mid-terms.
