Grate Writing Made Eazee

One of the great things about being named what I was is that although there aren't that many Bowmans in the word, my name is still relatively common. Anyone trying to look me up on the internet is likely to find more famous people that have my name instead of finding me. (This is an advantage that Kara Wild doesn't have. The man who is currently known as The Angst Guy, however, has it even sweeter than I do.)

For example, you might find the conservative commentator, or the countertenor, or the head of the non-profit office instead of me. Which makes me wonder why I was named after my father, because the odds are great that neither of us would have become famous enough to need ordinal numerals to tell us apart. We wouldn't have even gotten a lousy "pere" or a "fils".

I'm currently busy writing part-time for a sports website. The great thing about it is that I get to go to games and mingle with the players, and I get to go to these games free to boot. It's a pain in the ass trying to arrange my work life and my sports life, but I've been enjoying it so far.

However, the old mental illness can play tricks on you. (A friend of mine, Rebecca, has a livejournal tag for this problem: "STFU brain".) I recently got a letter from the editor of the website saying, "I'd like to ask you some questions about the article you last posted."

One of my problems is catastrophization. It's part of what they call a cognitive disorder, or what they used to call "stinkin' thinkin'" in the old days. Briefly, it is the belief that all outcomes will be the worst possible ones. Therefore, I attempted to ameliorate the problem - if there was one - before it even presented itself as one. I sent the editor a 17MB .wav file which consisted of my interview. I suspect she's going to love listening to that thing, but hey, it's my anxiety that you're dealing with here.

That isn't the point of the post. The point of the post is that writing fanfiction does not prepare you for a life of journalism. It doesn't even prepare you for a life of pseudo-journalism. In fact, writing fanfiction could get about as close to not preparing you for a professional writing career as you can get while the volume of the words you produce on electric paper increases.

The first problem with fanfiction is that it is very easy to post a first draft as a completed work. I'm sure that guys like The Angst Guy sharpen and resharpen their work. Brother Grimace asks for betareading help - I know because he sends his stuff to me and I try to point out parts that are unclear, or gramatical errors, or the like. I generally don't use a beta-reader, and there's a reason. It's not that I think that my work is so great that it can't be improved; rather, it's that once I get through the painful process of putting words on paper I want the thing to be over and done with.

I think the only work for which I had multiple beta-readers was "Reclamation" and god-damn was it a painful process to have to sit and wait for the editing to get done. "What's wrong with you people? I sent it five minutes ago! Can't I have it back now?" (Whenever I get something to beta-read, I try to remember to send back a message that says, "Hey, I got this, but I can't beta-read it right away. I just wanted you to know that your story wasn't eaten by gremlins.")

However, writing pretend-journalism forces you to adopt new, unfamiliar, and painful ways of life. The first of these is to get used to having your work read by someone else, all the time. Why? Because when it is posted, it will be read by several someone elses, and if you suck as a writer, it means that the organization that is editing you sucks - they were the ones that posted your signed confession of literary incompetence on the web for all to see.

The second is that you must deal with maximum article length. With fanfiction, you can write a never-ending story. (See: Legion of Lawndale Heroes, The.) When writing for "press" you have to write something more than 450 words and less than 800. This forces me to do two things that I don't like doing:

a) getting to the point, and
b) shutting up when I'm done.

This is why people like fanfiction - because it lets you ramble on at will to a (mostly) uncritical audience. (Hell, you're doing the audience a favor for writing about their favorite characters!) In writing for press, the reader is doing you a favor - "interest me now, or I'm going to do crossword puzzles."

(People who write fanfiction tend to start blogs. It lets them indulge in their favorite activity, rambling incessantly about nothing.)

The third is the awful deadline. You can't just finish when you want to finish. You can't wait months between story segments. You can't write an unfinished story. I have to have my articles in within 24 hours of game on weekdays, and within 12 hours on weekends. If you think this is an unreasonable deadline, let me put it this way - I'm just pretending to be press and I receive no pay. The real journalists out there have to go to press the same day and they have to get their work in before the paper goes to press. This means that they're writing the story while they watch the game, sometimes before the game is even over. And if the game goes to overtime, they are doubly screwed, because they might have a grand total of five minutes to rework an article to reflect a different outcome before the paper goes to press. They are getting paid not so much for their literary excellence as they are getting paid to write a workable article within unreasonable time constraints.

Has this made me a better writer? I don't know. I look at my press work and it seems stilted, like my style has been shoved into a straitjacket. My wife says that it's "dry - just details". I'm trying to get more quotes, more human interest, but editors aren't like beta-readers. A beta-reader wants to help you get better; an editor just wants to fix the errors. An editor can improve an article on his own but likely won't have the time or inclination to help you improve it in the future.

In short, all that time I spent writing fanfiction did not help me that much. Although I can definitely say that writing fanfiction made me more comfortable with writing in general, and taught me a few tricks to avoid writer's block. Maybe that's all you need to be a good writer, or at least, to walk the path.

The Autobiography of Jane Lane

I got the idea from an Iron Chef by mman, where he asks a Daria character to write his or her autobiography.

(* * *)

I regret to inform you of the secret history of the Lane family. You're going to be sorry you read this, because I'm not good at writing.

We are the outcasts of the Lane family in more ways that one. My father's name is Vincent Lane, but Dad is an illegitimate child. He is the son of my grandmother Marietta Lane, who used to live in New York.

It was a big scandal. Marietta went to a home for unwed mothers until Dad was born. My friend Daria looked up the name that my grandmother put on the birth certificate. My granfather's name is "William Patrick Heller".

So we couldn't find out anything about William Patrick Heller. However, Daria signed up for that Mormon online database and we had some more information. Given Mr. Heller's birthdate and place of birth on the birth certificate, we believe that Mr. Heller is actually Mr. William Patrick Hitler. W. P. Hilter is the half-son of Alois Hitler, who is the brother of the other Hitler guy.

Which explains why Dad moves around all the time and why this branch of the Lane family is so weird. I mean, I'm Hitler's great grand-niece. I think the reason Dad isn't at home a lot is because that way, the assassins can't draw a bead on him.

As for my birth, my mother, Amanda Knight, was American royalty, the granddaughter of one of the guys who invented envelopes. He might have just made envelopes. If someone on Mom's family had been a lot smarter, you would have to call envelopes "Lanes" and I'd be living on easy street.

My origins of birth are humble. I was born on December 25th. It was during an Xmas play that Dad was photographing with Mom in West Virginia. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the hospital in time, but Dad got some really great pictures. Mom got her tubes tied after that.

After that, I was shoved back into our ancestral home at Lawndale, with all of our family's genetic output. There was Summer, who was 15 and already planning her escape. Wind was 14 and had moved into the attic. Penny was 13 and already become the famous terror of Lawndale.

After Penny, my parents wisely decided to hold off for a few years. Or Dad had gotten lost on a trip to Tibet, I'm not sure. My older brother Trent was five when I was born and I'm sure you know who he is because he told me about having to write his biography and he got up to the time when he was four before he ran out of paper.

When I got to the time when the Man forced me to go to school, the old rotting house had emptied out. Summer had squeezed out some loinfruit and left. Wind had joined the Navy for six months. I don't know what happened, there's some story about him not being allowed back on the boat, but I can't ask him about it because he starts crying. Penny was one of the few people to cross to border into Mexico illegally, hopping on a bus the minute she graduated from Lawndale High.

So I was raised by my older brother Trent. I think it was like Tarzan raising Cheetah. Or maybe Cheetah raising Tarzan. I don't know which of the two is smarter.

Since we didn't have pencils, or pens, or anything sharp, I found all of Mom's old pottery supplies and began painting up a storm. My first work was called, "Ode to an Empty Refrigerator". I painted it when I was three, using Mom's porcelain paint. It was a white canvas, which I made full use of, turning the kitchen into a magical world of color.

When my Mom saw the mess, she said, "We have a little artist", and my work was displayed proudly in the kitchen for the next ten years. However, the refrigerator gave out four years later and the floor in the kitchen rotted through when I was ten. Two years of contractors later, and most of my original work had disappeared, leaving only fond memories.

After that, I was determined to leave my mark on the world as a suffering and tortured artist. Which is very hard when nobody knows who you are. When Van Gogh cut off his ear, at least everyone knew, hey, that's Van Gogh, what is he doing without an ear? But if no one knows who you are, all you would get is hey, what happened to your ear? Were you in an ear-mangling accident? I tried growing my hair long on one side, but Lawndale Elementary paid for money out of its petty cash fund and I was given a real haircut. Since that moment, I knew that the Man would never let me rest.

And now, I have blossomed into womanhood. What will be the destiny of Jane Lane? Will I stand with my foot on the shores of Europe, with continents ablaze behind me? Or will I just sleep a lot, like Trent? I don't know, but it will be fun finding out.

Said, Replied, Stated

Finished reading: Earthfall, Episode 1 Part 1

If you wanted to know about my sleep study, I'll show you some pictures of the room. The first picture is that of my too-soft bed:



The next picture is a picture of an old CPAP machine. They never hooked me up, and I assume that the machine is just there for show. It undoubtedly reassures the testee that if she has to wear a CPAP, the apparatus won't take up much space. I hope it's only there for display because the safety check sticker reads "03/07" as the last checked date.



(* * *)

Now, on to "Earthfall, Epiosde 1 Part 1".

You might wonder why I broke out a "Klosterman Question" two days ago. Like most of Klosterman's questions, his answers can be applied to situations other than the ones given in the question.

The situation I was actually asking about is fan fiction. Take a work of fan fiction that has a poor appearance. Grammar is poor, there are no commas, verbs are used incorrectly, there are frequent spelling errors -- but the characterization and plot are superb. Then take the opposite sort of story, where there are no violations of grammar but the story itself is awful. Which should be corrected first, the grammar or the structure of the story?

Both persons answering said, in effect, "the grammar and presentation is more important." To borrow Scissors MacGillicutty's answer, if you have a crappy story that looks good, people might think that the story has some sort of unexplored depth...or that it's a parody of bad stories. Whereas even the best stories won't be read if they are poorly presented.

"Earthfall, Episode 1 Part 1" is unfortunately poorly presented. Rather than rip the story to pieces, I want to use the story as an illustrative exercise, a sort of post-beta reading to show what should have been done.

First...paragraphs. "A paragraph is a self-contained unit of a discourse in writing dealing with a particular point or idea, or the words of an author," according to Wikipedia. However, legendeld places each sentence on a separate line, like so:



The trip to the bridge only took a handful of seconds but the sounds of her boots hitting the deck plates seem to last forever.

Smoke poured out of damaged panels as a fire control team struggled to maintain the navigation system.

“75 seconds until PSR Captain.” One of the bridge crew stated with a shaky voice.


We know that very bad things are going on aboard the Henry Global. The ship has entered a gravity well and is taking damange. Daria's hurried trip to the bridge and the sounds and sights she sees all support the same idea or point -- namely, the imminent destruction of the ship.


The trip to the bridge only took a handful of seconds but the sounds of her boots hitting the deck plates seem to last forever. Smoke poured out of damaged panels as a fire control team struggled to maintain the navigation system. “Seventy-five seconds until PSR, captain," stated one of the bridge crew with a shaky voice.


When I write, I have a hard time with paragraphs. If you have several one-sentence sub-points you wish to make that all fall in the same category, should you write one paragraph or three paragraphs? Where should one paragraph begin and another one end. Should I have included the sentence about the ship entering the gravity well, or do the sentences related to the damage belong to their own separate paragraph?

It's hard to get a cut and dried answer. All you can do is experiment, and hope that someone will point out your most egregious sins.

I changed some of the grammar. A sentence should not begin with a number if you can avoid it. If it must begin with a number, the number has to be spelled out. Relatively small numbers like "seventy-five" are okay to spell out. If the number was, say, 3,250, I might have rewritten the above sentence so that it didn't start with the number.

Since the line about PSR is being spoken by a member of the bridge crew, and we are catching him in the act of speaking it, I ended that sentence with a comma. Furthermore, since the word "captain" is only capitalized when the title is applied to a person, I put the word in lower-case. In the next sentence, Captain Meels is speaking and since we are now refering to Meels with respect to his rank, it is okay to capitalize the word.

Some more dialogue between Captain Meels and LTC Daria Morgendorffer, provided by legendeld....


“Push forward. They won’t follow us down.” Captain Meels replied.

“Captain.” Daria called out as soon as she entered the bridge.

“Finished with your little report Commander.” The captain sneered.

“Why are you entering atmo?” She demanded.

“I have no intention of allowing these buggers to hold Earth for one more day.”Meels answered.

“Our orders are to engage, assess then withdraw.” Daria responded with force.


The rewrite:

“Push forward," said Captain Meels. "They won't follow us down."

Daria centered the bridge. "Captain," she said.

“Finished with your little report, Commander?"

“Why are you entering atmo?”

“I have no intention of allowing these buggers to hold Earth for one more day.”

“Our orders are to engage, assess then withdraw," said Daria, forcefully.

“I am exercising command prerogative.”

Daria approached Captain Meels. “The Mars attack group needs this information.”

“No they don’t. The Invid will be pushed off Earth in a matter of hours.”


One problem beginning writers have is an embarrassment in using the perfectly respectable part of speech "said". Rather than just use "said" some writers want to use labored synonyms for "said" with every sentence: "answered", "responded", "replied", "stated".

It is perfectly okay to use "said"! "But CINCGREEN," you might ask, "won't this look tacky? Every one of my sentences will end with 'said'"!

The solution is that if only two people are talking, you don't have to write "he said" or "she said". You can simply write what they say. Every now and then you might want to throw in a 'said' so that people don't lose track of who is speaking.

In long novels, you can find entire pages which are nothing more than quoted sentences or paragraphs. What makes things more confusing is that a simple declarative statement or response is a paragraph, and therefore deserves its own line. An example:

"...and Mrs. Calabash," said the district attorney, "isn't it true that you always hated Mr. Durante? Isn't it true that you stalked him for days? Isn't it true that you broke into his house to gain his bank accounts? Isn't it t---!"

"--I object!"

The courtroom went silent. District Attorney Hamilton turned to Perry Mason. "You can't object!"

"I just did!"

"No you didn't!"

"Yes, I did, and it's perfectly legal!"

"Your momma is legal!"

"That's what your momma told me last night when I was on her back!"

"Oh yeah? Well your momma -- !"

"--SILENCE!!" It was Judge Carver, who had had enough.


In short, "Earthfall" needs a lot of cleaning up. That's where a beta-reader comes in. In its present state, "Earthfall" is hard to read and even harder to follow. I hope legendeld can work the kinks out of it; he's already written several stories and I think as soon as he can get the grammar problems fixed, he'll get the increase in readership that prolific writers deserve.

In Dreams

Finished reading: AD14

Work remains busy. There's really not much more to say about that. However, I'm beginning a new baseball story on another messageboard, a story which is taking up much of my present-moment thinking and has required a bit of research into baseball, 1983 style. I'll read the next two segments of "Apocalyptic Daria", and then I'll take a break for about a week for something new before I return to this tale.

(* * *)

Now, back to Daria and Jane on the lam.

The story starts with Daria and Jane trying to get some sleep, sharing a bed. (More on this later.) Jane wakes up and has some pizza, while Daria is dreaming that she is walking through a school gym converted to a hospital.

In Daria's dream, she sees people she knows either dead or suffering from radiation sickness. One moment her parents are in their normal work clothes, then she turns back towards them and they are either suffering from radiation sickness or are dead. Finally, Daria discovers Jane -- and herself -- as dead bodies punctured with bullet holes.

Daria screams and wakes up. Jane comes to confort her. They both share the fact that they miss their loved ones, and they thank each other for keeping each other alive.

(* * *)

Despite the compliments, I really didn't think AD14 was that great for a number of reasons:

First, a very minor complaint. Jane's banter with Daria -- these lesbian jokes -- were first amusing -- then intriguing -- and then started to get annoying with AD14. If I were Daria, I would really be starting to wonder about Jane's sexuality. "Jane, you're starting to creep me out here. You really need to find another theme, or seriously...you need to come out of the closet, because I can't tell if you're joking anymore, because you talk about this ALL the time."

The second complaint is the major one. It's hard to put one's foot down and say "this is the major problem", but I've seen it elsewhere and in AD14, we see it yet again. We see it in the dream sequence, and in Daria's reactions to it.

There's the old maxim of showing, not telling that most writers know. One doesn't simply tell the reader "Daria felt this way and Jane felt this way and Quinn felt this different way", but instead gives examples of how Daria and Jane and Quinn are reacting.

However, one can take this rule to the opposite extreme, the extreme where the author shows absolutely everything. In the omnipotent third person, this can be a bit dangerous. We not only get a physical accounting of events (this person went here, this person went there, that person did this, etc.) but also an emotional recounting of events (this person cried, this person raised their voices, this person was sullen). It reads as if a checklist is being checked off.

Sometimes, you have to decide to not show. Or better, to hint. The problem with showing and telling everything is that there's nothing left for the reader to do. Back before the year 2000, when Daria fandom fought on the ancient battleground of "is prose form or script form better?" one of the complaints about prose form was that it told everything. With the scripted form -- and no access into the characters' thoughts -- writers had to be much more subtle about conveying emotion.

The characters don't seem to have any subtlety or secrets. Rather, they just pour their emotions out. Seeing Daria, the calm one, act this way is particulary disturbing and probably not in the way the author intended. I suspect that if Daria ever truly got emotional, it would be a loud screaming jag the equivalent of a nervous breakdown, the result of emotions held back for so long finally leaking out. So much more could have been done with Daria not screaming, just waking up and saying, "can't sleep", the haunted look in her expression telling Jane everything she needed to know.

It was also a bad choice to put the dream in italics. This was a message to the reader: "what is happening is outside the scripted reality and is therefore not to be taken seriously". It might have been a homage to the M*A*S*H episode "Dreams". When I saw "Dreams" in its original airing, I didn't care much for it. The only parts of "Dreams" that worked were the parts that were truly surreal and there is nothing surreal in this dream; it's your standard near-linear post-apocalytic dream (if such dreams could be considered "standard").

The best prose writers have problems with such passages. It's a difficult thing to execute, and I was just waiting until Daria woke up because I knew nothing I was reading was "real". Yes, it's a lot to demand of fan fiction but it could have been handled better.

I'm probably the only person that didn't have praise for AD14, upon looking at the comments threads. It makes me wonder how useful message boards are and brings me back to the idea of fan fiction criticism. Fan fiction should probably not receive the same scathing treatment that a regular fiction writer might receive -- most of these writers write for pleasure or to improve their craft -- but where does one find a happy medium? Before you begin to suggest improvement, you have to point out where a work fails, and the only way that can be made painless is in dreams.

Sometimes You Eat the Bear, and....

All in all, everything from 5 pm yesterday does not bode well. First, I get a call from my boss. After more or less sitting on my hands for two weeks, he gives me enough work to more than fill my time. Which means that there will be no second draft of "Reclamation", at least not during work hours.

Second, I get home and at 9 pm or so...I conk out. I go upstairs, lie down for a few moments, and I'm unconscious. This seems to happen every week or so, most likely the result of accumulated sleep deprivation. I'm going to get that checked on this month, honest. What it means is I can't work on "Reclamation", once again.

So, this morning you'd think I'd have some time. I get ready to shave, turn on the hot water and...nothing. The hot water has frozen shut. Probably because it's about 14 degrees outside and we have an outside waterheater. My wife and I futilely try to unthaw it with an extension cord and a blow dryer. We try to clean up as much as possible with cold water and we'll have to wait for the water to thaw out and take showers when we get back. At present, I am unshaven.

Okay. I tell myself that if I have some spare time, I'll look at the second drafting process. I pull up Dennis's comments and the combined comments of smk-Scissors MacGillicutty and prepare to mail them....

...and the combined comments of smk-Scissors are gone. Missing completely. All that is left is my original, unmarked up copy of "Reclamation". Something must have happened during the save process. I can pull up smk's mark-up again through my mail, but Scissors's comments are lost, completely! (Which doubly sucks for him, as he's facing computer problems at home and the last thing he needs to worry about is his beta-read.)

So, sometimes there are perturbations in the universe. No fic analysis just yet. Sorry.

96 Tears

Finished reading: AD10

Currently, I'm at work, having prepared for a hard day's labor, only to find that the labor is stalled. I require a database that exists only on my boss's computer -- and he hasn't thought to send it to me. However, this is the time of day he is usually ready to talk to me; I can hopefully await a phonecall or follow-up e-mail. Until then, I'm at wit's end.

I had hoped to work on "Reclamation" with this unexpected bounty of semi-free time: I am on my employer's clock, you know. However, even though all of the beta reads have now been returned, I mailed myself a copy of "Reclamation" without the mark-up comments I needed. The second draft will have to wait until I return home.

(* * *)

Now, back to "Apocalyptic Daria".

When we last left the Culhane family (obscure joke), Daria and Jane were on their way out of the Cord residence and to somewhere closer to home. Their SUV is loaded up for bear and they have a load of supplies and barterables.

However, one thing they don't have is feminine hygiene products, and I'm sure that is one of their highest priorities. They find a store that's open but the manager has no intention of selling. With some gold coinage -- which just happened to be coincidentally at the Cord residence -- they manage to barter for their needs.

While inside, Daria engages in some bartering of her own with the young teenaged son of the store manager. For a gold coin, she obtains some boxes of pizza mix of the kind currently made by the late Chef Boyardee. Daria rewards the young man with a "quick kiss".

(It was interested to see some discussion in the comments thread as to whether Daria would do such a thing. Doggieboy thought about it, then kept it in for the final edit. Very admirable. "You might have a different opinion; I'll take the risk and keep what I have.")

Daria and Jane make it to the refugee center in Frostburg. The town is under martial law (but no one's been drafted yet) and the two stand in line for rations.

At the head of the line, they meet someone unexpected. Linda Griffin, Sandi's mother. It appears that Linda was traveling to Frostburg on work-related matters and when one of the nukes went off, the driver of her van was blinded and the van full of television executives plowed into a post. Linda was the only survivor. Rescued by firemen, Linda was brought to the refugee center where she found employment.

When Linda last heard from her family, her husband Tom was driving Sam and Chris to the Mall of the Millenium. Accompanying them were the entire Fashion Club -- including Quinn. As the Mall of the Millenium was between Baltimore and Washington, it is unknown how far Tom Griffin got, or if Quinn was killed with the others in the firestorm of the Washington bomb, or if they got out...or what happened.

Linda bemoans that her last words to her husband were hardly complementary. Daria remembers that her final comment to Quinn before accompanying Jane on the road trip was an insult, and Daria cries too.

(* * *)

All in all, not a bad section. For the first time since Larry Carter's death, Doggieboy has actually left questions unanswered. Fanfiction authors are obsessed in answering every question; Doggieboy rightfully leaves those questions for the reader.

However, Daria's crying is a bit disturbing. Not that Daria would not be disturbed over the fact that Quinn is dead. Even if these are good-old-fashioned honest tears of regret and shame, this moment allows me to springboard to the whole "Daria cried" subgenre of fanfiction.

My impression of Daria is that she's very uncomfortable with any displays of emotion. Her affect is generally flat. She doesn't like being embraced. She never went on dates until Tom, and found the very concept ludicrous. I don't think that Daria cried at any time during the five-year run. Hell, Daria's embrace of Jane in "Boxing Daria" was a very rare display of emotion from Daria, one so rare that it apparently made Jane uncomfortable.

I just don't see Daria as a crier. Before objections are raised, I am not saying that Daria can't feel great sadness or remorse; rather, I'm saying that she simply isn't very expressive. My personal feeling -- and one I feel is backed by the "canon" -- is that Daria sublimates her emotions or bottles them up. Her flat affect is her chosen way of dealing with the world and I assume that the flatness varies slightly, in the way that techtonic plates shift, depending on the circumstances.

In a lot of fanfiction -- particularly with jak's Daria/911 story -- it seems that the way to "prove" that an event is traumatic enough, that an event is the worst event ever and ever, is to have Daria cry about it. (I suspect that part of that is because of the unexpressed maxim of society that females are "supposed" to cry when they express strong emotion and that crying is an "appropriate" way for a female to behave. My response would be that females have a freedom in expressing emotion that males should take advantage of, rather than males acting as stoic wooden Indians.)

It might be a convenient shorthand, but it's a poor shortcut. It's very hard to draw tears from the printed page. Reading is a second-hand activity -- we are reading about someone else's experiences and experiencing emotion vicariously -- and it isn't just the fact that fanfiction writers are not good at making the reader so sad that they understand why Daria would cry, because *anyone* would cry. Rather, it's the fact that very few writers of any stripe, even the best of them, can move the reader with mere prose. You have to have the sensibility of a poet to write scenes like that. I find such scenes almost impossible to write, and almost impossible to read.

Let's save Daria's tears in the future. Let our little cynic be stoical, because it highlights how much she doesn't fit in with all of those around her. And besides, there's a drought on, and tears are a waste. And sometimes, grief is too deep to be expressed by mere tears.

(* * *)

Up next: A break from Apocalyptic Daria. I'm going to read a story from one of my beta-readers as payback (sorry, Scissors, it's not you) for services rendered. Take care.

Showdown at the Dumbass Corral

Finished reading: AD7

(Editor's note: I probably won't be needing any more beta readers. I have three, and one has already returned the MS. However, if came to visit for that purpose, I appreciate your help. Maybe next time. -- JB)

It's taken a little while for me to get to my computer, but I can proudly say that the computer has been reassembled at Fortress CINCGREEN and I am retyping from the comfortable basement.

My sister-in-law did yeoman's work in getting the place in tip-top shape. Among her various home improvement items were:

1) repainting the walls in forest gold and brown. My sister and law calls these colors "Reese's colors".
2) constructing a whiteboard for me and hanging it on the wall.
3) repainting this old 1950s-era desk, including drilling some holes in the side. The wood is 1/4 inch thick, and it was a chore to work with
4) cleaning out the old desk to make it possible for me to find a place to set the hard drive.
5) constructing a bookshelf (Target brand put-it-together)
6) putting molding along various doors, and
7) hanging a device that will store an ironing-board -- my office must double as the washer-dryer nook

In addition, Ruth and I have also

1) purchased a flat-screen monitor to replace the old "TV set" monitor, and
2) purchased a hacksaw.

The reason being that the old desk apparently had some sort of function wherein a typing table was concealed on the left side. You swung open the facade on the left side of the desk, and lifted the typing table out.

The problem was that the typing table stopped working long ago, and all that was within was the skeletal remains. As long as that old machinery was inside, putting a hard drive nook would have been impossible. Three metal bars -- two 1/4 inch diameter, one 1/2 inch diameter -- traversed the space and with the bars in place, the assembly was impossible to get out.

I was able to hack through the two 1/4 inch bars and bend the mechanism so that the assembly could come out, thanking goodness that I didn't have to hack through that final 1/2 inch of 40-year old metal. Everything is copacetic, Ruth and I have cleaned the floor, and the place probably looks better than it has in years.

(* * *)

Now, on to AD7. Hoo-boy. This section of "Apocalyptic Daria" I'm going to have to give a "thumbs-down" to. (More on the perils of serial-writing later.)

The story leaves off from AD6. When we last left Daria and Jane, they were blissfully unaware that three enemies of the former owner of the house were heading for a Straw Dogs type showdown.

Such an inept groups of assailants couldn't be imagined outside of a "Daria Triumphant" fic. Only one of these guys have managed to bring a firearm. The other, God help us, has actually brought an ax. The third has brought...nothing, save his fists. (Perhaps he's a descendant of the Boxers of the Opium wars.) One of them -- it's not worth while remembering who -- hopes that if the old man is not there, his daughter is. (So you're guaranteed to hate him already.)

I won't detail the showdown. Jane has a 10-gauge shotgun that she's found. Daria is carrying a concealed .357 Magnum -- forgive me if I get the numerical designations wrong. Jane manages to kill the only armed one of the group, I believe, with the 10-gauge -- but not before Jane takes a bullet in the arm. The other two, believing that Jane is now helpless (we're assuming that this breach-loading shotgun is not double-barreled), move in for the kill.

Unwise move. Daria manages to kill both of them with the .357 magnum. I'm surprised the extras were even given names. (Bill, John, and Harry for those keeping score.)

There follows a long scene with Daria and Jane trying to heal Jane's wound. With nothing sterile, Daria is forced to do the best she can with needle and thread. They manage to get the bleeding under control, and Daria allows Jane to sleep.

(* * *)

Immediately after the story was posted, the commentary broke down into two oppositely opposed camps, raising their voices at each other at least until AD8.

Camp A believed that Daria and Jane should be a bit distressed at the fact that they have killed three human beings -- rotten examples of human beings, but humans nonetheless. Camp B, on the other hand, believed that the survival instinct should trump and that Daria and Jane should have gone Clint Eastwood on them and not given the incident a second thought. (I'll assume that Doggieboy is in Camp B.) Both camps...are wrong. To claim that "all characters should respond like X" is a bit foolish, given the spectrum of human reactions.

Soldiers of all types, ages, and countries have been interviewed regarding their emotional experiences after killing people. There were many soldiers who said, "well, killing never bothered me, actually", and most of these "mass murderers" (after all, they did shoot dozens of people) went on to successful lives as butchers, bakers and candlestick makers without a shred of remorse, with no nightmares and no psychopathy. To these people, killing was simply a task much like any other.

On the other hand, psychological trauma has appeared to increase over the years from veterans. One interesting theory is that with the movement away from mass warfare, it is much harder to get away with deliberately missing. If you were truly terrified, or gripped with anxiety at the thought of taking life, you could fire your World War I Springfield in the general direction of the enemy without actually worrying about hitting anybody. In the chaos, it wouldn't be noticed. (Estimates were that only one out of ten soldiers in that era was actually trying to hit anyone.) However, with "fourth-generation warfare" -- small unit combat where you can actually see your enemy before you kill him -- you can't escape the necessity of taking life.

My conclusion? "One from Column A and one from Column B" -- with the caveat that personality tells you nothing about who will be an efficient killer and who will not. Drill Instructors can tell you dozens of stories about the tough guys who broke down during Basic Training, and they were the guys everyone thought would pass with ease. Then there were the soldiers with pencil-thin legs who wore glasses who calmly and resolutely stuck it out and made more-than-capable soldiers, men whom no one would bet on.

Daria and Jane's personalities will tell us nothing about how they react to trauma. For all we know, if you put a jammy in Mr. O'Neill's hands, he might be the most efficient killer of them all!

That wasn't the part I objected to, feeling that the commentators missed the point. My complaints are of two varieties:

a) the setup. I can't imagine where you could come up with more inept opposition. When I discovered how they were armed, they might as well have been wearing giant tags that read, "I will be dead soon." This is the time during the movie where you get up and get some popcorn while everyone else watches the killing.

Furthermore, Daria letting Jane rest and the "all is well" atmosphere at the end is difficult to understand. Once you shoot down three guys at your doorstep -- even a borrowed doorstep -- does it ever occur to you that someone might wander where they've gone? Maybe they have families too, like the rapist encountered in an earlier part of the story. Maybe they have dangerous...armed...smarter brethren who might be looking for their missing cuzzins.

Another complaint deals with gun mechanics. As it turns out, Daria fandom is blessed (?) with a herd of gun enthusiasts who can recommend what kind of ordinance Daria and Jane should be carrying down to the grains of the shells. Myself, I never wanted to become Tom Clancy and resigned myself to learning "just enough" to make a story involving guns remotely plausible...sometimes, with no success.

However, I have actually *fired* both of the weapons in question. I have fired a breech-loading shotgun as well as an automatic shotgun, small-caliber rifles and large caliber handguns. My father was a gun enthusiast and he wanted me to take up his enthusiasms -- I wouldn't have minded save for my mother, who was terrified with guns and I just opted out, not needing to be in a tug of war between the two.

The first thing that you'll note about shotguns and handguns is how loud they are. If you're not wearing ear protection, it's almost like a small firecracker going off next to your ear. (I hated shotguns precisely for that reason, prefering to stick to small-caliber rifles.)

Guns make noise that will have your ears ringing if you're not aware of what's coming. (I have no hints by the author that Daria and Jane have fired any sort of firearm.) I'm surprised Jane didn't hear from one of the malcreants. "You just shot our buddy and now (high pitched death of ear cells causing a whine in Jane's ears)"

The second part is that if you're not familiar with guns, they can be puzzling. "What do you do to open the breach?" "Where's the safety?" "How hard do you have to pull the trigger?" "How do you reload the chambers in a non-automatic handgun?" This isn't the kind of stuff you want to learn ad-hoc, although since Daria and Jane are smart kids, they might have doped it out on their own.

Finally, one matter has been forgotten -- recoil. Firearms are loud devices that tend to *kick*. Jane's shot knocked the assailant right to the ground -- a 10 gauge can be pretty powerful close up. However, Jane might have found the barrel rising, under its own power, into the air with the recoil. Recoil can sneak up even on experienced shooters. There are five-foot, one-hundred pound women who can handle the larger types of shotguns quite well, but even experienced marksmen can have trouble with the kick.

And Jane is no experienced marksman, and neither is Daria.

(* * *)

So do the criticisms above carry weight? Perhaps, they don't. There are always people out there that are going to nitpick over minutiae. I thought the unfamiliarity with firearms should have been a burden to the protagonists. Other people might claim, "The Belgian 10-Gauge Frammistat Shotgun is not a breech-loader, but an automatic, you clod." (In any role playing game, you always get one of those.)

Was the above enough to spoil my enjoyment of AD7? Neither was singularly, but combined with the ignorant protagonists it was enough to give this chapter of "Apocalyptic Daria" a failing grade.

And now, the important question: was AD7 so bad that it derailed your will to read the series? The answer is "no, it was not."

There's always a danger with writing serials -- every chapter is a chance for someone to climb off the bandwagon. People will find egregious fault with Chapter 1, or Chapter 2, or Chapter 22, or so on. A serial can never build readership, only lose it. It seems that enough people liked the story to read forty-two chapters of it; the first six chapters should make up for the bad seventh. In short, expect me to be here to read AD8 and comment on it.

(Note: Work might get a little more hectic at work, and further reviews might be less frequent. Can't be helped.)

The Usual Suspects

"Reclamation III" has now been re-read. Beta readers are sought. E-mail me at the address in the header, and I'll send it to you.

Into the Woods with Gun and Camera

Finished reading: AD6

All right. I can happily say that due to the fact that absolutely nothing was going on at work yesterday, that I have finally finished "Reclamation, Part III".

However, there are two more things that need to be done before the public can see it (and point, mockingly). The first thing is that I have to re-read it and make corrections. I've always found this part of "fic writing" the very hardest part of all.

Hard parts of fic writing, in order

1. Rereading the first draft.
2. Waiting for the first draft to come back.
3. Preparing the final copy from the first draft.
4. Writing the first draft.

Notice that "writing the first draft" is fourth on the list, the very bottom. Anyone can write a first draft and just throw it up on the Internet. Which is why I've often called fan fiction "an amusing collection of first drafts". To become a polished writer, one has to revise and revise and revise and I've always found this revision painful.

I already know the first draft is weak. Parts of the dialogue are clunky. Parts of the plot are propelled by coincidences. Sometimes, you just don't have any idea as to how you're going to fix those parts. So you do the best you can -- put bandaids on it despite the fact that blood is pouring out of the copy -- then send it back. And wait.

Hopefully, the beta readers will have good ideas as to how to fix things. (Bad ideas are a dime a dozen.) At least, they can confirm your initial diagnoses ("yep. I knew that didn't work") or even find new ones.

Then, they send it back, you stitch it up, and mail it to messageboards and get it out of your life.

(* * *)

I'm presently making excuses for not rereading my original copy. My computer, my gateway to the world, is currently in pieces in the basement. Why? My sister-in-law is here painting and redecorating the place and we're hoping to turn the basement into a true Fortress CINCGREEN and not "the place where you put all the spare crap that doesn't belong elsewhere in the house". I'll actually have my own home office.

So where am I typing this? From the living room. My wife is otherwise distracted, but I hate the thought that someone could look over my shoulder at any moment and say "whatcha doin'"? Not that I have anything to be ashamed of, but I find my return to fan fiction writing a bit embarrassing. My wife would say, "oh, not this again" and I'd have to say "yeah, this again."

However, I have access to the first draft from this computer. I'll make the effort to read it. I pinky-swear.

(* * *)

By the way -- I miss my computer baseball game, the only copy of which is on that computer mentioned above, in pieces. The plan is to replace my monitor with a flat-screen monitor. I want a big one.

(* * *)

Anyway, on to AD6. Part of reading a story is that you get to follow its thread, and I'm very surprised that commentary didn't so much center on the strengths (or weaknesses -- you'll never get honest commentary on a message board ) as on what kinds of supplies the commenters would be storing if society went ass-up. It reminds me of the earliest games of Dungeons and Dragons where you'd roll up a character and proceed to load down the character for supplies as if he were going on an arctic expedition.

Daria and Jane certainly can't carry this crap around with them. They can, however, put it in their car but if they lose the car...they lose everything. This shouldn't be as much of a prolbem as some people think. To paraphrase Mark Twain, "put all your eggs in one basket -- and watch that basket!"

They're probably better off in a car than in a house (more later). However, Daria and Jane are trying to find out what happened to Lawndale, and when a winter storm approaches, they decide to seek shelter in a house. The problem is that the houses nearby appear to be crudely barricaded. If I recall correctly, one house has parked its car right in front of the door, a sort of futile attempt at a barrier.

The two find the only house that isn't barricaded, and make their way in. However, they find the previous inhabitant...dead. Apparently, he died of a heart attack and there was no one to check on him. Daria and Jane dispose of the body, and gather more supplies from inside the house, including more firearms.

Unfortunately, Daria and Jane might not remain disturbed long. A group of men watches the house from a distance. They have it in for the previous owner -- they're not aware that the man died of natural causes -- and might plan a confrontation....

...can you feel the suspense out there? Time to head on to AD7....





My list of things for the apocalypse:

a) A backpack. Don't overload it.
b) A good knife with a sharp blade, preferably a long-bladed hunting knife -- not so much for defense as for its use as a tool
c) A whetstone, to keep such a knife sharpened.
d) A compass, so that you know where you're going. If walking, people tend to favor one leg or another, which means that after many, many days, you might end up walking in a circle when you think you're going "true north".
e) A pistol. Which you keep holstered, and at your side. "God did not make men equal. Sam Colt did." Ammo for same. Avoid rifles unless you plan to eat what you shoot.
f) Potassium iodide.
g) Flint, along with the knowledge to use it to start fires.
h) The knowledge of how to make your own sandals from tire rubber at http://www.hollowtop.com/sandals.htm. Save your shoes for winter.
i) Possibly, a Ph. D. in herbology. That might be hard to find during the apocalypse.
j) A friend, possibly the most valuable thing of all. Daria and Jane are already one-up on that....