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The Nature of Art
Michaelangelo signed only one piece, The Pieta. Because someone, in his presence, attributed it to another artist. Of course, he had a reputation for a volatile temper, but it wouldn’t be the last time an artist tried to get in one more word after his or her art was publicly displayed.
This post is mostly for writers, so normal people might want to tune out for a while.
Writers have a similar difficulty, it would seem, to Maestro Buonarroti. My debut novel was released in September 2009 and it got a review at Dear Author (I know! It was soooo cool). Unfortunately, Jane Litte didn’t have a strong reaction to it: she gave it a C+ rating, and actually misreported a minor fact about the plot in her review.
But that was her opinion, and it was how she remembered the minor plot point. If I didn’t explain things clearly enough such that she came away with the wrong impression, that’s my fault as an artist and a communicator. Once it was published, it became an artifact that had to stand or fall on its own merits. Perhaps someone should explain that to George Lucas. Just sayin’….
I don’t get to “correct” someone else’s opinion, any more than anyone is allowed to tell me I’m wrong for being completely uninterested in the Twilight series (I don’t care for vampires, werewolves, or passive female leads in general, so I’m just not in the target audience for the series no matter how good it might or might not be).
Once you release your novel into the wild, people will have reactions to it. They are human; they will form opinions. That’s a good thing. Some of them will like it and will have an impression similar to what you intended. And some of them will not like it. In fact, some of them will hate it with a capital Hate. They will not be quiet about hating it, either.
They are entitled to do this. You are entitled to take it and smile, ignore it and smile, or stick your fingers in your ears and go “Lalalalalalalalala.” Because you’re the writer who let your precious baby manuscript turn into a published book, and they took it as you sent it out. Objecting to their perfectly legitimate opinions makes you look like a fool or a diva, and not in a good way.
Here’s the dirty little secret of book reviews: Really bad reviews can be more effective at generating sales than really good reviews. If Sarah Wendell at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (another lovely person, whom I met in real life last Ocober) calls your book craptastic, her followers will buy it just to see if it’s really as bad as she thinks it is. They will pay you for the privilege of hating your work.
That bears repeating: A very negative review can get people to pay you (by buying your book) so they can hate your work. You can pout (silently) all the way to the bank.
And that’s all I have to say about that, so any non-writers still reading can start paying attention again. 🙂
Introducing Gypsy Roberts
Time for a cute dog photo. Meet Gypsy, the terrier-mix teenager who came home with us from the shelter last Saturday:
She’s very nice when she’s not trying to chase cats. She’s very naughty when she’s trying to chase cats.
Stuart is terrified of her, Gizmo has stared her down. Tuffy hasn’t been seen in the last twenty-four hours, although we’re pretty sure he’s in the house.
Speaking of Tuffy, here’s a photo of his elusive self:
Being Irish-American on the Feast Day of St. Patrick
I don’t drink green beer on St. Patrick’s Day. Why?
1. It’s stupid. Beer is not supposed to be green.
2. It’s the wrong color, anyway. Green traditionally is associated with Irish nationalism, blue with St. Patrick.
3. Real Irish beer is dark enough you wouldn’t be able to see any green dye in it. Think Guiness Stout, then go darker.
4. Thanks to my Celtic ancestry, I have celiac disease; I can’t drink beer at all. Just whiskey. You put green food coloring in an Irishman’s (or Irishwoman’s) whiskey and I won’t be responsible for the consequences. You have been warned.
However, we adopted a dog today. We’ve been looking for a companion for Hank for several weeks, for a couple of reasons. He’s going to be eleven this summer, and for a dog his size that’s getting old. A younger companion will help him get enough exercise and feel younger longer.
Plus, Spooky Man is going to be a total mess when Hank eventually dies, and he knows it (he noticed he was a mess when Syrina died last fall, and she was twenty which is very old for a housecat). He thinks another dog will help him get through the hardest part. I think it beats a stint in a psych hospital for severe depression.
So. Gypsy is two, a terrier mix, and she was homeless due to the death of her owner (the paperwork said). So far we’ve discovered she likes bones, likes to bark at everything, and really wants to chase cats even when she gets in trouble for it. These kids today. I’ll post a photo when I can get her to sit still long enough to take a non-blurry one.
Other than that, I made it through Hell Week at work (it felt like SEAL training, anyway) and the cold. Did I mention I came down with a cold the day after I got home from California? Okay, thanks, I forgot I’d mentioned it. That week was kind of a fog. If I didn’t still have the Carina e-mail, I might not believe that happened, either.
Last weekend I worked on the plot for The Nobinata Gambit, the follow-on to The Valmont Contingency. And I started the opening scene with the perfect first line: At least I’m not dead. I think this book might actually be fun to write. Fingers crossed.
Breaking Valradio silence for a moment
Carina Press wants to publish “The Valmont Contingency” (formerly known as “The Valois Contngency” if you want to read an excerpt of the first draft). The one day in the last year I forgot to take my cell phone with me to work and I missed The Call. I had to settle for The Voicemail and The Follow-Up E-Mail.
It’s an aggressive production schedule, too; they want an October 2012 go-live date. Good thing I’ve started the opening scene of the sequel, workingly titled “The Nobinata Gambit.” Grin.
In other news, I came down with a cold the day after I got back from the business trip. Drove home from work, dropped into a coma for a couple of hours, and woke up with stuffy nose and scratchy throat. Joy.
Missed my local romance writers’ meeting in the spirit of “let’s not infect everyone.” Some things are better when they’re not shared.
Thank you, exotic California rhinovirus (or else I caught it before I went there; in that case, sorry about the exotic Idaho rhinovirus, California).
However, now I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of zinc gluconate lozenges. I used them as often as I was allowed, and every time I finished one, I felt as if the symptoms had been knocked back several steps.
I’m almost over it after five days — and I’m normally a 10-day cold person with a fight to keep it from turning into bronchitis, the legacy of walking pneumonia in high school.
Maybe I should buy stock in Cold-Eeze or Zicam.
I Survived the Business Trip
SFO hates me.
Getting there on Tuesday wasn’t bad, although the pilot wanted the wings de-iced before we left (it seemed awfully warm to have frost on the wings, but whatever). In spite of taking off 15 minutes later, we arrived half an hour early, and had to wait for our gate.
Then the jetway broke. Yup. San Francisco International Airport had to push a portable ramp up to the airplane and we walked down the stairs like it was 1975. Ohhhhhkay.
Then there was the trip back. My “11:17” flight took off at 2:10, during a small break in the heavy fog. And by heavy, I mean a smallish jet that had its nose up fairly close to the terminal windows appeared to have no tail at all.
The California office was nice (much bigger than the Boise outpost), the people were lovely, the job candidates I interviewed were personable and highly qualified, the hotel was serene, and the airport either hates me or was having a really bad week..
That is all.
Busy, Busy, Busy
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: real life, technical writing
Leave a comment The other tech writer at my day job quit last week. Personal reasons, emergency trip to London, etc. So, in a four-day week (Monday was the Presidents’ Day holiday in the US), I’ve been doing the work of two technical writers. Plus reviewing resumes for hiring a new technical writer…in another state.
In addition, I’m updating graphics for customer portals so that 12 business units can migrate to our new! improved! software-as-a-service in the next few weeks. And I’m going to the main office in California for two days next week. Translated from Geekspeak to English: Work is really busy and I’m doing some stuff I’ve not done before. Oy!
So don’t be surprised if there’s a couple of weeks of Valradio silence. I’m here. I’m just working.
The Date (Heineken), new butchered version
Someone cut this ad down to 15 seconds (I think; I didn’t time it but it seemed very brief) and replaced the fabulous 1960s song “Jaan Pehechaan Ho” (from the 1965 Bollywood-before-there-was-a-Bollywood film Gumnaam). Badly on both accounts; the singer’s mouth is still singing the original, but the music and words we hear are different.
I would post a link to the short-short version, but I couldn’t find one.
One has to wonder what happened; the original ad was 92 seconds long and didn’t take itself too seriously, but this…wow. A meaningful look, a magic trick deliberately shot from the wrong angle and a song that doesn’t match the vocalist’s mouth movements just doesn’t make a story.
There must be an interesting story behind the machete-edit, because it makes the editor look bad (though I’m sure he/she worked hard to make it as good as possible), it makes the ad agency that produced the original version look kind of bad, and it makes the brand look bad–or at least less good.
I read somewhere that the first ad in the series (“The Entrance”) had to fight off a complaint from another brewer in the UK who claimed it implied that drinking the beer made a person more interesting…except it never showed the dashing male character drinking the beer.
Was there a similar complaint for The Date? The couple doesn’t get their beer until the end and are never shown drinking it. An issue with the song rights? I hope not; I love both the song and the 1960s Eurasian vibe it conjures.
Maybe it was the song’s Ghostworld association–the Gumnaam scene featuring it is shown in the opening scene of the 2001 film made from the comic book.
In any case, I don’t think it was Heineken International’s intention to set off a bunch of speculation as to why the original filmlet was cut down so drastically (OMG, maybe they couldn’t afford a full 30 seconds on the obscure cable channel I was watching!). Perhaps they would have been better off not using the short-short version.
Kind of a bummer for their image, as it was pretty good beer back when I could still drink beer.
Update: I saw this ad again, but it appears to have been fixed. The singer’s mouth movements fit the song, the ad is longer, and now the Facebook contest connection is explained well enough that a non-Facebook person (I’m a Twitter person) can understand what’s going on.
Either I saw a trial run that was later fixed, or I was extremely tired and not paying attention. (My money’s on a trial run, because I was paying attention as soon as I realized the song was different.)
Stuart the IT Cat
Stuart somehow reformatted Spooky Man’s shiny-new-laptop solid-state hard drive RAID on Tuesday. He (Spooky Man, not Stuart) had downloaded a rather large file and wanted to copy it onto a flash drive. Stepping into another room for a moment, he returned to find him (Stuart, not Spooky Man) standing on the keyboard, trying to remove the flash drive (bad kitty! you have to unmount it first!).
Upon rebooting, the computer couldn’t find Windows. Spooky man spent most of Wednesday reinstalling and reconfiguring the computer. But even after all that, it still wasn’t right. The third drive was missing, somehow — I say “somehow” because when I asked “so what’s wrong with it?” he made a face, then mumbled something along the lines of “Damned cat, I should have skinned him.”
So this morning, on the way home from the last doctor appointment for the month, we stopped at Best Buy and he asked a Geek Squad person for a second opinion.
The drives are all fine. They’re just uncoupled, and the third one, which I understand is some kind of hybrid hard drive that is half-solid state and half-normal, is empty. Somehow, Stuart managed to reformat that hard drive, says Spooky Man.
I say, he’s quite an intelligent cat — by nine months of age, he had figured out how to open drawers and understood that the doorknob opens a door — but I don’t think he’s quite that intelligent. Perhaps Spooky Man did something (or failed to do some other thing) while reinstalling Windows yesterday that changed his RAID from all three drives to only the fully solid-state drives and reformatted the hybrid. I didn’t say that in the store, because then he would have looked stupid in front of a Geek Squad Geek. Because of a cat. And he’s an A+ certified nerd (Spooky Man, not Stuart).
Not acceptable.
However, the final answer is that the computer is fine, the cat is fine, the hard drive is fine, and Spooky Man didn’t look stupid in front of the Geek Squad. They didn’t even charge us for looking at it.
Acceptable.
At some point, Spooky Man will have to accept that a highly intelligent cat is far more dangerous than a normal cat and treat Stuart accordingly. You cannot stick something interesting and different looking into the edge of the thing that you put on your lap (instead of a cat, the horror) and not expect him to investigate as soon as you’re not looking.
Well, you can, but you might end up looking stupid in front of a Geek.
‘Twas a week before the feast of St. Valentine
Love is in the stores, but things are low-key at my house. Finally.
Spooky man has successfully had a birthday, his nose’s inner workings are healing nicely, the Year of the Dragon has begun, chocolate-covered macadamia nuts have been ordered. This is how we’re celebrating Valentine’s Day 2012–good coffee, dark chocolate, and maybe some flowers because they’re pretty. Ahhhh.
One nice thing about loving the same person for 20 years is that you don’t have to make a big deal out of Valentine’s Day.
Spooky Man knows I love him because I made sure he had a new leather recliner, a full refrigerator and fresh books before his nose was remodeled. I know he loves me because he spent his VA-disability backpay on home improvements to keep us and the furbabies safe and dry. It’s all good.
Now that Things Have Settled Down, maybe I can get back to some serious word count on my works in progress.
Spooky Man’s Nose Surgery
It went well, and now he’s back home recuperating.
True to form, he had an unusual case, in that the septum deviation went “all the way up.” Of course. Biological weirdness is just how Spooky man rolls; I love him, but he is a freak of nature.
I’m slightly disappointed, because he doesn’t have any external scars, sutures or bandaging. Other than a little swelling around the nose, he doesn’t look like he had surgery. No blackmail photo opportunity, alas.
On the other hand, I get the bed to myself for the next few days — he has to keep his head elevated, which means he has to sleep in his new leather recliner (poor thing, she typed sarcastically).
And now he’s going to be able to breathe out of both sides of his nose, hopefully in time for his birthday in a week or so.
