StandingWater Creations

As has been stated, I am taking a creative writing class. This class is more an introduction to creative writing than something that allows me to explore more of what I’ve been doing for a few years. The professor is aware of that. I’ve had him before. As a result, I am writing real fiction and the rest of the class is working through other things. It proves to be interesting. Especially considering MoHo chick… she always has something to say that you’d think she would realize is completely … uhm … idiotic.

That, however, is not the point of this entry.

The point of the entry is that the professor of the class asked me to talk, today, about something I know a little about: technical writing. So, last night I put together an 8 slide PowerPoint presentation which went over what I thought was important for Professional Communications as a career. I didn’t really think a lot about what I was doing other than there are a) certain characteristics that are important to be a technical writer; and b) you have to want to pursue the job in some form or fashion.

I pulled from a magazine article writing book that has become, in recent weeks, a constant companion of mine. In the introduction is a list of attributes that people need to have in order to be successful at freelance magazine writing. I felt, and still feel, that these attributes apply to the technical writer and shared them. I won’t bore you all with the sordid details. However, went through the list. Talked about experiences with them and how they’ve affected my life and why, in some cases, I am what I am when it comes to these things; and then, after 20 minutes, ended.

What I found was really cool, and this is an aside, was that my macbook immediately recognized the projector and set it up as a second monitor AND with the second monitor running PowerPoint popped up a timer that let me see how long the presentation had been going. This was very cool. Great for presentations. When I unplugged the projector cable, the macbook screen flashed, momentarily, and then I had a single screen going again. It was so cool.

I’d handed that professor the first part of the first Cassandra West story and he read it over the weekend. Granted, not very long; and definitely not what I’d written over the summer when Cassandra, in my head, was still going by Cassidy; but he seemed pleasantly supportive of what I was doing and pointed some things out to me that I was totally unaware of as elements to the story, but also encouraged me to follow this muse after we’d discussed how it came to be and what I was planning on doing with the short stories. The conversation proved to be interesting.

I also learned, after a weekend of intending to read about professional communications that we have a weekly quiz that is directly related to the readings we were meant to do, and things learned in class, and as a result, unless you (read me) are insanely genius at nearly everything (and contrary to personal attitudes and some beliefs) and I am not, passing said quizzes can prove to be very difficult.

I don’t know how a weekly reading quiz got past me.

On a slightly different note, I have been looking, for some time, for a study done by a group of what I believe were … I don’t know, could’ve been psychologists, sociologists, someone who deals with interpersonal relationships. I recalled reading about it through some news outlet between 12 and 18 months ago. I recall that it dealt specifically with trends in dating. More specifically, that the average human being will date between 8 and 12 people before they will get married. The reason for this is that it takes that many committed (read semi-serious) relationships before you (as the human being – and yes, I don’t care that I am changing tenses) find the person you are most compatible with and can marry. At the point you’ve dated between 8 and 12 individuals, you begin to date the same person over and over again; which, in turn, means that the type of person you date is not likely to change.

Because it is a little frustrating to me, I decided to open a question at answers.yahoo.com to see if the universal meme that is the internet would be able to help me locate this study or, barring that, the article I got the information from.

This proved to be a mistake.

Instead of ACTUALLY getting someone to assist in this search I got idiots, and I mean idiots with capitals spelled a lot like: IDIOTS who chose to share with me their opinion (don’t care about your opinion) about how many people someone should date before they get married. More importantly, they decided to tell me that my question, which was specifically asking for assistance on finding source material, was stupid and that there was no real way to determine an answer.

I was and am not interested in the opinions. If I want an opinion I will say something to the effect of, “John, what do you think about dating and relationships?” and then proceed to write my own opinion. My opinion, or those of the people on the interwebbythingamajig don’t amount to a whole lot of anything. Rather, it places me where I already am. Nowhere.

Exciting, I am sure.

Anyway, still looking. May approach this from a slightly different angle as I need the research for something else I am working on and I really have to cite my sources.

I did learn, today, that some of the notes I gave directly to a professor I was taking last year about this time did a lot of good. She altered her class to reflect more of what was interesting to the students as well as what she needed to be doing in her discipline. Actually, the lore involved in my notes is as applicable as going out and interviewing people which proved to be rather nice to hear. We are comparing notes on books that relate to the new subject matter. It’s nice to hear that I had (what appears to be) a positive impact on how something is taught. She told me, this morning, that she has students who seriously did not know that The Little Mermaid was a story shared long before Disney ever got its hands on it.

As an aside, I told her I was getting an oral history of fairy tales that I ordered sometime next month, which should prove to be even more interesting than the collections I have sitting in various places in the house (mostly the office).

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Hero’s Fly