Gather Writing Essential: July 28, 2010

I know so many things...I know how to set up a writer's profile site on Wordpress. (jessicabosari.com)
I know how to develop a writing career
I know how to manage time working from home
I know how to be a loving mommy
I know how to forgive dysfunctional relatives
I know how to be happy
I know how to cut my own hair
I know how to do my own acrylic nails
I know how to recycle yarn (rewindyarn.com)
I know how to find the best telecommute writing jobs (killfive.com)
I know how to make a killer roasted chicken
I know a ton of uses for aging bananas
I know all about kitchen aid attachments
I know how to figure out if the water in Cape Cod Bay will be warm enough for swimming today.
Okay, now I feel like a know it all!

You must also know how to type with buffed-up nails. ^_^

as I'm typing this! :)

Worst advice ever: Listen to my advice, I know what I'm talking about.

I used to be an expert on darn near everything... Now days, not so much.

•Hoffer A: Chronic schizophrenic patients treated ten years or more. J.Orthomolecular Medicine, 9:7-37,1994.

Another set of fascinating questions!

Thanks for posting this to The Surreal Circus!

Thanks for sharing with Gather's Best Writers and Artists. Now featured.

OK, I'll go out on a limb a bit. I'm an ecologist and can tell you why the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem will eventually recover.

I might not be accurate, but I could write a sestina about how the Gulf will recover. ;-)

I'd be happy to supply you with the details.

Whenever you've the time...

Featured in the Triple Name Club.

I can't pretend to know it all but there is one thing that I know and it peeves me because I am beginning to grasp the possibility that I might be the only person on Earth who knows it - and that makes for a piece of baggage I guess I have to bear within a lonely dark closet. It's cruelly unfair.

Share it with me and then there'll be two of us so burdened. :-)

Well that thing started with me because I relish challenges. Maybe I shouldn't like them so much though, it seems. Any decent challenge carries a big need for being persistent and I knew that so I stuck with it. This was a multi-year effort I took on. I tried everything I could identify as possibly helpful with it, recruit assistants, try fundraising, go public, make noise, rattle the cages - the works. I see right now that another thing just like mine is going up that same highway - I wish them luck. Maybe you might not have noticed but there is a growing force developing to get the activity of cheerleading accredited as a genuine sporting event - and I sympathize with that effort as well because they have a tough road to go. They are already experiencing the same sort of resistence I had to put up with my new sports application. They don't know yet that they are going to be accused of maliciousness for one year, then it's going to be ridiculed for another, and after that it will be rejected due to some other specious reason, and like me they have to weather all that and more. I saw it as a persistency test - put up with all of it - and carried on. What finally got to me was when they called it frivolous. That's when I caved in and just quit the whole thing - years of work and I walked away - gave it up. I won't do this again - ever. That IOC is a cold-blooded wall of stone, steel, or titanuim - very high, too. I felt so alone about it because when I withdrew there wasn't even a notice in the media - not one word - anywhere. That's what I know that nobody else knows. Did you know that someone, just last week, told that cheerleading bunch to get in line behind ballet. That was cruel too. I guess they may have to find out with their sport just like I did with mine. Their debate now is about physicality - I've been there - done that. You can win on something like that in a debate but nothing changes. they find a way to reject the application anyway. It's also glacial - takes years. I'll never know how long it might have been for me but "sayonara" - humans have limits and I'm only human. Maybe someday someone else will pick it up where I left it and find a way that I could not. Until that happens sports audiences will be denied a wealth of thrills, entertainment and measurable contest results - totally unlike all these "judgement" things. I go for what can be timed, measured, or be won by points on a scoreboard. They seem to want more of those things that require a Phd in how to see the difference between a 8.9 and a 9.5. like figure skating or diving. Maybe they have a list of spare unemployed judges who know that stuff. That might help the cheerleading thing whereas mine was won on the scoreboard with actual points. Maybe this is part of what I know, too. Anyway, I gave it up and went shopping for some other challenge instead. The IOC can go their own way. Anyway, Susan, that's it. That's what I know. Thanks for listening to me.

But now you have my mind spinning. What sport could it be? Hmmm....

juggling
aerobics
poi swings
pig calling
belly dancing

can I get further confession out of you? :-)

Yes, of course, I should have mentioned it - the Winter Olympics thing.

Cross Country Snow Golf. Marvelous opportunities abound for uplifting the anonymity of the caddies. Scored by the clock on how long is required to locate the ball in high altitude powder. This goes beyond mere physicality into survivability - especially during blizzard conditions. The "edge of seat" tension of wondering if we have to await the spring thaw.
Everybody tees off, goes home, and it's up to the caddies - our new sports heroes. Alas, nothing but rejections - and finally "frivolous"? That insult got to me. Cruel - isn't it?

My 13-y.o. son is a caddie. I dropped him off at the caddyshack this morning and will do it again Friday morning if it doesn't rain.

I don't know you well enough to know what's serious and what's dry humor. :-)

Hi Susan,
If you would want to know me a tad more find my post entitled "Public Transportation". It is approximately a ten-minute reading. There is a side of me to be found once one has absorbed that narrative. Be patient with it and I hope you will have a good time.
I am working on an actual true story that narrates the activities of a pair of young brothers (age 10, 12) who evolved from playing with their toy Lionel train set, on the floor in their bedroom, into playing with their Southern Pacific train set, on the SP "adult" tracks within San Francisco - quite a jump in scale was that - and every word true.
"Snow Golf" fell into my realm during a brainstorming group session of comedy writers who could not find a way to encapsulate it within a limited time slot for a stand-up Las Vegas stage guy we all know. Given any wider genre I saw it had a zaniness to it. The "cruel" mention I add at the close is meant to beg your forgiveness. My humor side leans hard on dry, understated sarcasm, and black. If you read my "Linear Thought Processing" - also true - you might derive an insight to the thought processing style of some people whose humor grasp is entirely absent.

Incidentally - we have a teen-aged caddie in our family too - God bless them.

Two questions:
One--what is your area of expertise?
Wow, that's a good question. I honestly can't say that I know a lot about any subject. I would have said that I know a great deal about romance. But, according to someone who has never written romance in their lives, they claim to know more than I do.

Two--what's the best OR the worst advice you've ever received?
To go back on a story and re-write it totally and re-submit. Like my story was truly awful to begin with. When I write, I stick by what I write. If it has misspellings, I understand. But, for someone to say it needs to be totally re-done is rude, and annoying.

I know you wish for us to interview someone on this post...
Can it be a fictional someone?
Or can I interview myself, so to speak?
That would be interesting.

I put out the prompts, it's up to you as the reader to interpret them and follow or not. :-)

Okay, I feel better now.

I worked on cars for years and, as much as it’s a joke today, I can’t identify most of the parts underneath a hood these days.

I spent many years in an IT position and knew everything about computers -- I spoke machine language. Today? Nope.

Oh, I do like things that go boom. As a gun collector and hobby gunsmith, I’m pretty well-founded in pretty much everything dealing with firearms.

I do have a question about guns, do you think that the lack of gun-ownership in Europe contributed to the rise of Hitler?

Absolutely not. In my Haunted Bible series I discussed many of the things that led to Hitler’s rise to power and gun ownership (or lack thereof) had nothing to do with it. He was a magnificent orator and convinced the German population that he could lead them out of the worldwide depression and into a new world order. With or without firearm-ownership Hitler would have come to power.

It’s a convoluted story and I’ll try to make it short. Most Europeans at that time owned firearms for either hunting or protecting their property. Looking at only Germany that population was stripped of their right to own firearms after the First World War when the Treaty of Versailles (1919) required all firearms to be turned in to the government so that Germany could not cause any more trouble. Most Germans didn’t comply.

Then, in 1928, the German government (the Weimar Republic) passed the Law on Firearms and Ammunition that was designed to curb “gang activity” and also ease the restrictions imposed by the treaty. It required that all firearm owners and their firearms be registered. When the Nazis took power in 1933 they received those registration lists and used them to revoke annual ownership permits or declined to renew them for the people they felt were not “reliable.”

Hitler realized that he had to disarm the population in order to stay in power and he did that in 1938 by passing the Nazi Weapons Law that added complete handgun control to the original law and restricted ownership of weapons to Nazi party members and other “reliable” people.

Approximately eight months after that Hitler imposed regulations that prohibited Jews from possessing any dangerous weapon such as firearms, clubs, and knives.

The question is whether Hitler would have been able to maintain his power and whether the Jews would have been able to protect themselves if he hadn’t stripped them of their right to own firearms.

I know a whole lot about losing people, maybe because of my age, but they seem to be going faster lately, I don't like having this knowledge, watching death is not a nice thing to think about, but you really can't forget it. I know a whole lot about love, because I have experienced so much of it, and even with all that has happened in my life, I still feel love given and received. I also know a lot about romance, had a lifetime full of it, at least 60 years, and that is what keeps me going. love, Elsie

The best advice I ever received was actually a quote, "a wise man knows what he does not know" I like that,

KNOW THYSELF

That's what I know best, my ownself, for better or worse.

Hmmm...I know animals, I know how to wean kittens, I know how to calm both animals and babies, I know how to love, how to sidetrack a toddler insistent on getting into trouble, how to cross stitch, how to scrapbook, how to knit on a loom and I know I don't know nearly enough so I want to keep learning :)

I know about Enterprise Resource Planning Systems and how to use them to plan production and distribution in large companies. I am fairly good at Structured Query Language, and extracting useful information from a mountain of data. I design systems of people, processes and computers to work better together.
The best advice I ever had was from my Dad: "The most important decision you will ever make in your life is not where to live, not your choice of career and certainly not what to buy; it's who to marry! If you get that wrong, success in all your other ventures will be both less likely and more meaningless." Having married the right person I know what he means.
The worst advice I ever got was "If it doesn't fit, force it! If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway!" That guy broke a lot of gear.

That's amazing advice from your dad. Something more people ought consider.

Where is Structured Query Language used? In what circumstances? And the format? I've never heard of it. How did you become proficient at it?

SQL, pronounced "Sequel" is the main language for interrogating databases, and is a very useful skill for any kind of analyst to know.
Format? We would say "Syntax".
"Select * from Gather where firstname = 'Susan' and surname = 'Budig'"
would return all records relating to your good self.

Where did I gain proficiency?
20 Years in the Biz...

Where might I key in your syntax for results?
And interrogating databases? I've heard of interrogating prisoners and children and spouses, but databases?

What's that look like?

SQL is used in MS Access queries, in MS Excel Spreadsheets in the Query function, and in a myriad of commercial databases and Business intelligence packages such as Cognos and Business Objects. Most report packages such as Crystal Reports run on SQL queries. If you are not familiar with IT, then you may not have heard of it, but is is used throughout the IT industry.
I don't normally talk about it outside of work but you did ask...

I like a man who speaks a foreign language. ;-)

I dinna ken the noo! Dinna fash y'self lassie!

What is my expertise, except getting by on very little or staying practically invisible? Just about every weird occurrence that's ever happened to someone has happened to me. Also I've been giving such horrible advice that I know now if certain people say "right" I go "left." The horrible advisers tend to go according to the person they think you should be rather than seeing the person you are. The only good advice I had ever gotten were from psychics who told me at various times that the reason my creative work doesn't click with the public is because I don't relate to things the same way as the general public did.

Hiya Abbie,

I'm not so sure about those psychics. What would they have told to Picasso? Klee? e.e. cummings?

I think the avant garde artists are exactly the ones who "click" with success, but no, not necessarily click with the public.

Goes back to what one considers success.

I did an interview/Q&A with a very great poetess, since you said, I can follow the specific prompt or not: Myinterview:Q&AwithElizabeth...