What Are You Doing?

Just finishing up the apartment for today's showing.

 

Low blood sugar. Woke me up 30 minutes earlier than my 4:30 am wakeup. Least I get to eat chocolate.

 

Having coffee while listening to YouTube and playing games.

 

That makes more sense...pronounced, capito-nim.

Cheers. I was at the initial realization. I've learnt over the years how to navigate my way through initial shock towards full acceptance and adaption to changes in reality that evoked initial negative responses.

Which leads me to the primary question (in two parts) I want to ask folks regarding my new adventure...
How much effort should one do on grammer and punctuation correcting on a transcript destined for publishers?
'Cus how much do publishers consider such errors as grounds for rejecting a work?
I ask because I know I could spend the rest of my life editing my work and never tire from it, so I don't want to waste time trying to make it perfect, but enough to make it a pleasure to read for editors and publishers.

On my cerebral travels today,

Spoiler: the usual deal...

including some jolly good contemplating while riding to the village in sweltering 4 degrees temp...with increasing acclimation to the new gearing, 59 in and 49 return, I thought about YT vids, as that kind of teaching format suits me. Found some initial vids to fully check out later.

And way back in my 20's I bought Peter Norton's phone book sized book on Dos 6, as I had severe trouble understanding my first DOS\Windows puta...I grew up with Commodores and Tandys with builtin OS and the programming language called, Basic, and I couldn't wrap my head around Mr. Norton's book, psyched out by the enormity of it and the tech orientated style of writing. So I put that aside and grabbed a copy of The Idiots guide to Dos 6, and the simplified style caused all manner of light bulbs to fire up, then Mr. Norton's book was a breeze to comprehend and thus began my love affair of repairing, maintaining and fine tuning putas...thus imma also look for an 'Idiots guide to grammer and punctuation' if I find I'm struggling through the learning process.

 

10 Let x=1
20 Let x=x+1
30 If x>10 GOTO 50
40 GOTO 20
50 End

Or something like that.

 

Slept all arvie after my ride this morning. Hadn't ridden for a few days due to rain and chose to push this morn to see my current fitness level, plus, I was up since 1am. Zonked out watching a normal season game between the Chiefs and Patriots and 2016 Bathurst 12hr. Awoke at 7pm, room slightly cold, tons of strange psych dreams.

Havin' a keto coffee, on me puta looking for the echidna vid, about to make a second coffee and grab a family block of Kitkat, I snag a batch of these and some Whittaker's (far better tasting than Kitkat and even expensive swedish chocolate) when they're on super special, and pig out every now and then. Look for more YT vids and will work on book tomorrow.

 

i've realized that i have not FINISHED a work of fiction in a long while (editing finished pieces and working on longer pieces..... i also dont count the one i handwrote as "finished" because i still need to type it up). So, i'm taking a break on my current WIP to type up a short story thats been in my notes for a while now.

 

With that kind of certainty which can only rise from complete lack of knowledge...

1. Perfect is enough - sometimes.

2. They tell they read only until they reject. Rejecting is their job. Sometimes - very rarely - they read something that is not worth rejecting. Then they consider it.

 

Either I stayed up way too late or you did, as I can't make head nor tail of your post.

 

This morn:
- downloaded all of YT channel Socratica's vids (28) on basic grammer.
- snagged a few on punctuation basics from different channels.
- eBay purchased, Basic English Grammer for Dummies, US version. I prefer a hard copy for referencing when I'm working.
- will watch vids and check out web pages I downloaded the other day to get me started.
- stayed up since 7pm last night, couldn't get back to sleep, rest day anyways. ˜yawns˜

 

Listening to Clamavi de Profundis on youtube, "The Song of Beren and Luthien" by J.R.R. Tolkien, while writing the second chapter of a book. I can hear the jet noise from fighter planes flying sorties rumbling in the distance, despite my headphones. Believe it or not it is a familiar and welcome sound, and doesn't annoy me at all. I'm a little stuck on this chapter, since I don't like how the scene I'm writing is going, but I still think it is a necessary scene and the best way to move the story along at this point. Hopefully it doesn't come across as boring, and I utilize the trope I'm writing effectively enough to make it interesting.

 

Easy to believe it.

I love to see & hear our Hornets and visiting friendly planes in our sky.

 

And when visiting friendly planes find new friends to play with?

 

Off topic

Well.... They play hide and seek with cameras very often over the Baltic Sea. But that is there, in international air space.

But our dudes train all the time with Swedish and Norwegian dudes. And we have visitors from other friendly countries like USA now and then.

 

Rested up so imma have a go...
( so easy to be severely mentally tired and not even be aware of it)

My interpretation is, and please feedback this post:

Spoiler: the usual deal...

X): You're offering your thoughts due to your understanding I have zero knowledge of publishing protocols...and that's true, I have no knowledge of these mysterious creatures, other than they organise the production and distribution of your work.

Y): You're sharing your definition of 'Perfect', or how you interface with the task of making something perfect. I have no knowledge of your attitude towards perfection, but I take it to mean - do my utmost to remove errors, don't be half-arsed about it. Take responsibility and don't think it's the publisher's or editor's job to clean up your mess.

You're also possibly saying, my work has to be damn close to perfection is order for these poor folks who have to sift through pages of crap (their judgement) day in day out, for them to take notice. That a well constructed piece will catch their attention, for they actually value works of art and that's why they spend a great deal of their life digging through endless rubble (their judgement) looking for rare gems.

Z) :
10: They'll read till they've decided it's too crappy to keep reading.

20: Not based on experience, but logic only, I have to disagree with it being their job to reject. For if this were true, they wouldn't read one word of a transcript. They'd simply stamp it with "Rejected" and move onto stamping the next one. Rejecting is a constant experience in their job, but it's not the only task they perform to receive their weekly pay cheque.

30: Thus the "sometimes", is due to while they're exploring they become aware a quality transcript has been written (or something unique, fresh, new, novel, etc., that still requires fixing) considering how much I cringe in pain at the huge amount of fiction being written as opposed to non-fiction; i.e., I feel for writer's who have to work a lot harder to stand out in this vast sea.

40: Once their attention has been adequately hooked, then they spend more time reading, thus immersing themselves more in the work, thus more time envisioning possibilities.

I appreciate your post Alan, it's given me much to consider regarding the upcoming work on me book over the next couple of weeks.

"If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe." - Abraham Lincoln

 

First I'm hinting that I don't know the topic well so my opinions are opinions, not facts and you should consider do you take them seriously or not.

And after warning about my lack of expertise I tell my answers to your questions:

I have understood that publishers and agents get more text than they have time to read. So they read only until they find a reason to throw away the text they are reading.

Reason to throw text away can be anything. Plot, grammar, characters, structure... anything. So everything should be perfect - including grammar and punctuation. Perfect is enough - maybe.

If you get 1 000 manuscripts per year and you know you can't get published more than 3-7, you read every manuscript only as long as it takes to decide you don't need to spend more time with it. If one page is enough, you read that - not more.

(In Finland percentage is less than one. I don't know American, Australian... numbers. But of course writers try several agents and/or houses.)

If you are not sure about grammar and stuff like that, it might be a good idea to use a software that helps with it. And after that some good beta readers.

 

- Been up since midnight; now 5:55 <---these special numbers always contain some significance to me.
- ˜outside looking at weather 'cus it's ride day˜ Semi-overcast, but the clouds are somewhat in a hurry and there's a ground level breeze, so the ride is on thus far.
- Road tyres have been sitting flat on floor since last fridee due to seller delivering them in a box thus tyres were folded half height; seeing if they'll return to uniform shape.
Will install this week sometime, but I suspect they're damaged.
- Iridium plugs for Ute came, so injector install time again.
- Apart from all that, the bulk of my time is allocated to me book, of which I'm enthused to sort out the huge amount of grammer and punctuation errors contained within.

'Avin'a 2nd coffee, writing a lengthy email to me son-in-law, awaiting dawn.

 

Cheers, so I was wrong regarding X, but on the money regarding Y and Z.


I've got me grammer and punctuation inadequacies covered with YT vids, web pages and an 'Idiots Guide' book coming soon. I'd rather learn then let a program sort my errors out, but a program to check after I've done my part would be interesting...got a link to such a program?

 

8:30, just hit the village. Predominantly overcast, no discernable wind, decided to push it again, did it in 55. Avg has been 1:03, last run was 59.
WOO!

EDIT:
BOO!
May have been slight tail wind in the morn as I felt a cross wind when I hit potato rise.
The wind picked up a lot on the return leg, only managing 52.
Noticed I don't look up to the tops of trees to check wind, and when I did, I noticed they were slightly swaying but the grass and shrubs at ground level were still.
Now I know how to check for wind.

Then after a stew blunch (breakie at lunchtime), I walked the traintrack to take some pics for OurJud.

 

Haha, no, luckily. Those are my engines roaring in the sky, well, at least as far as I work on them.


Right now however, the night is quiet. I'm feeling lazy for having not worked out today or written anything, and to make me feel better I'm wasting even more time by playing games.

 

Woke up around midnight, now 6am:
- Village day for rent.
- Check on sewing mods to Fox fishfingers.
- Pick up Californication box set from post office, and possibly other items.
- Snag some groceries.
- Grab some takeway and a coffee, say hello to the good folks at the art gallery.
- Chat with Tax Dept as they're trying to steal my next to no amount of Super.
- Chat with Auspost as they're still sending me spam mail and fone msges.
- Install and test road tyres on me treadlee if the morning drizzle disperses.

 

Waiting for my towel to finish drying so I can take a shower. It is clean but in the dryer now.

 

David Duchonvny. Nice!

Spoiler: nsfw

I'm making some tea.