Make-its of Mondays Past: Jane Austen's Dungeons and Dragons

Bonus post for your lunchtime enjoyment!

Long before mash-ups were all the rage, an adolescent me had visions of comic grandeur. I occasionally put pen to paper and in my hormone and Stridex-addled state, attempted to write things that I thought were brilliant bits of sketch comedy. Well, this past weekend, the Wife and I dug a bunch of boxes out of the old family storage unit to be reorganized and transported to the NEW family storage unit. Among the detritus of my murky past, I stumbled upon one of these sketches that appears to be of high school vintage.

Perhaps against my better judgment, I have decided to post it in its full, un-revised glory for you lovely readers. BEHOLD A GLIMPSE INTO THE MIND OF HIGH SCHOOL GEOFF!

Splodey

Being my fifth submission to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group

This post was originally supposed to go up on Wednesday, but due to a whole lot of anxiety over posting something anxious as my first post of the year, I bumped it to today. Better late than never, right? Right!?

Anyway, recent events at work, the holidays and a bout with a nasty bug have left my sense of order and creative impulses all caddywampus and/or akimbo.

When my department at work decided to take it easy during the week between Christmas and New Years, I thought "Fantastic! If people are only going to be in for a couple hours during the afternoons, things will be quiet and I can get tons of writing done!" So, I elected to just slightly relax my work regimen in hopes of being productive. Alas, it turned into a situation where I did a lot of work but felt like I got nothing done. The couple hours in the afternoon turned into a string of meetings which required both preparation and post-meeting thought-gathering. As a result, I didn't have time to really sink into a writing Zen. Though my thoughts on the project became clearer in certain areas, very few jams were kicked out.

Towards the end of the week, as we discussed the schedule moving forward, I mentioned to the Boss that writing is a process that works best with big chunks of time unhindered by interruption or distraction. He said he agreed and gave me his blessing to do some work from home if it would help. "Oh, and BTW, next week, we should have a series of meetings each day to discuss this, that and the other. KTHXBAI"

So, that's my story. I'm hoping to finally reach the productivity Nirvana of "not in a noisy office" next week, because my schedule is open... so far.

How do you write best, when it comes to work? Can you do it from home or do the TVs and home projects lure you with their siren song? Coffee shop? Library? I'd love thoughts and recommendations.

Dumbing it Down

Being my fourth submission to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group

One of the many challenges I face as a museum writer is achieving a certain "grade level" in my writing. As a form of self-selected edutainment *gag*, museum exhibits must strive to enlighten and accurately inform the visitor while simultaneously presenting a topic in an accessible manner (i.e. don't scare people with big words) I understand and support this approach of informing without lecturing. I am a huge fan of really smart people, like Richard Feynman and Mary Roach, who excel at presenting complex topics in an engaging manner.


However, I find the notion of a target grade level difficult to swallow and even more difficult to hit without dumbing down an exhibit's content to the point of non-existence. At the moment, I am struggling with an exhibit on space exploration, which is a complex subject full of jargon and big words. Today, my sub-topic of the moment was cosmic radiation (best pronounced "Cooooooooosmic Radiatioooooooon!") which is an even more complex and jargon-filled subset of the whole. As such, it has taken me two days worth of research to spit out 200 words on the matter. When I felt moderately satisfied with my draft--meaning it no longer made my eyes bleed--I decided to check the grade level of my writing in Word's handy-dandy Flesch-Kincaid readability checker. It came back as grade level 14+. Apparently a museum visitor would need at least an associates degree in reading to understand my 200 words.

Moderately irked by what I found to be an erroneous reading, I decided to check individual sentences within the text. Each came back with a ridiculously high outcome. Finally, I checked the first sentence of the panel, which was also one of the shortest.

"Radiation is energy that travels as either particles or waves." 

According to Microsoft's brilliant readability standards, the above ten word sentence represents a grade level of 10.7. Really!?


I then decided to look up who these Fleschy Kincaidians were in hopes of finding out that the metric was some long-debunked crackpot theory. Much to my dismay, I found that the F-K system is pretty dang standard, having been developed for the U.S. Navy. There are apparently laws based on this shit intended to keep insurance companies from swindling poor, plain-spoken, main street Amerkins!


Are we really that dumb? Do other countries have similarly low standards!? Do you really need a high school diploma to understand this sentence!?

"The Australian platypus is seemingly a hybrid of a mammal and reptilian creature."

Incidentally, this post is written at an 11th grade level, and so should be easily understood by someone who is not a complete moran.

In the Beginning

Being my second submission to Alex Cavanaugh's Insecure Writer's Support Group:

That's it, no more monkeying around trying to write Shakespeare. The content writing phase of my big project at work has officially begun and I expect that my life between now and the end of February will be characterized by grumpiness; deer in headlights looks in response to otherwise reasonable requests; interesting, impromptu hairstyles; baggy eyes; frayed nerves; and an obsessive focus on a single subject... oh, and of course, writer's block.

Starting a writing project is always the worst part of the endeavor. No matter how much I tell myself, "The first draft doesn't have to be good, just put something on 'puter!" My mind can't let go of thoughts that belong two or three steps down the road. "Is this information best included here? or there? in combination with this? or that? or left out entirely?" My mental state quickly devolves into a self-directed argument about how over-thinking is going to slow down the process when there is a very aggressive, borderline-unreasonable deadline to meet, to which the response to myself is:
"well, at least I'm thinking about the project instead of nitpicking about how slow its going"
"Oh yeah, well you're nitpicking now, and because I'm actually you, you are just as bad as me, you self-righteous prick!"
"Who do think you are calling me self-righteous!?"
and on, and on...
And of course this usually happens when I am either trying to write or trying to sleep so that I can write the next day.

Anyway, I am at the part in the process where I feel like this:

This video was made for a friend-of-a-friend by several of my friends. 

Read the previous sentence over and over until it gets too annoying to bear

The implications of my impending writing block/blitz for work is that my writing for pleasure--including the posts I pen for this blog--will likely be sporadic at best. If you enjoy what I have to say, stick around, because I'm not giving up on the blog, I'm just getting busy... awww yeaaaaah!