One Great Tug-o-War for Fiction Writers

I was working on a book today and a truth revealed itself.  This is something that you may have already known (I was even taught it, formally) but still not "learned."

As a writer, if you want to even have a chance of getting discovered in what seems like a sea full of authors, the first thing you have to master is avoiding mistakes.  One of the easiest mistakes to make is to write a story or even just a small part of a story that is not believable.  Ironically, a person writing make-believe stories must keep his or her story even more believable than reality, because the subconscious mind of most readers is always on the hunt for the improbable or impossible.  It can cause a reader to slam a book shut faster than you can say, "Should have edited."

But making a passage believable follows the same, merciless rules as making an entire story believable does.  As an author, you are putting yourself in a very difficult position.  You are writing something that a wide variety of minds that have had experiences you have not had must be able to agree is believable.

 That's asking a lot of yourself.

If you're a trained auto mechanic who knows that a valve cover gasket cannot be made of glass, and you read in my story, "Reynold set the valve cover on top of the battery, unwrapped the valve cover gasket and promptly dropped the gasket as he prepared to put it in, watching it shatter into a million shiny fragments," then I'm busted.  The average reader might let it go, reading on, but you have just lost all respect for me.  You have been jerked out of the story by something you know is impossible using today's automobile standards, and even if you try to read on, you are nagged by the fact that I have tried to squeeze something past you because I didn't want to do my research.  In your mind with your training, you can't shake that nagging thought that this author has fumbled, making you believe that sooner or later, I will have fumbled again and again, and wasted a lot of your reading time.

But wait.

Wouldn't it be rather boring if every book was a product of making certain that every single thing was believable?  That's a technical journal.  That's a news report.  That's not a fiction novel, is it?  At the least, I have to have something like, "Reynold leaned over the engine and placed the gasket onto the steaming steel, adjusted it into perfect positioning, and reached for the valve cover without looking, grabbing, instead, what was the wrist of the only man he had hoped to avoid--the one that had loved to watch him fail so many times before--his stepfather, Jack Muller."  I mean, when I read that, I want to know what's up.  Who is this Jack Muller?  I already get the idea that he is a prick, but I want to know why.  And I want to see him "lose," already, just from what I've read if I like the character named Reynold.  So, now, I've written something believable but intriguing. 

Those are three common states you'll find in fiction; believable but boring, unbelievable and believable but intriguing.  Nobody reads fiction to see what they've seen tens or hundreds of times before which can be a result of an author emulating a well-established writer's style.  A reader wants something new, but it must be believable and intriguing.  You can't just decide that people suddenly have a third and fourth eye on each elbow unless it is fully supported in the background of your story (i.e. you are on an alien planet or in some alternate dimension or you are going, bravely though it be, into the abstract form of our art--intentionally throwing out odd, non-realistic details here and there for effect).

My suggestion to myself and anyone else who wants to be successful in writing fiction, for the purposes of this post, are to perfect "believable but intriguing" in your writing.  I know--there are 10 million tips out there for writers, and this is just one, but it seems to me to be one of the top overlooked guidelines of all.

Keep it believable without being boring (often referred to by readers as the "slow" parts of the book--these boring but believable runs) without having every paragraph be too intriguing as to become unrealistic.

*Quick side-note: Tim O'Brien's book, "The Things they Carried," is an awesome example of how you can have perfectly believable and often boring things happening to characters while maintaining a constant allure to your readers as to what might come next by peppering your story with unexpected surprises as well as making those boring things part of the very plot--making the boring things part of the "problem."  It is the closest dance you'll find around metafiction without actually stepping into it.

Best of luck!

The Great Human Pretenders

Have you ever wondered how we've managed to survive so long while living life as if the atrocities we've been through, witnessed, or perpetuated are ignored?  Or forgotten?  Or just never talked about?

There is a dark side to every human mind.  In the greatest among us--those that are saint-like in their behavior--this dark side still exists.  At the very least, it would surface when their lives or their families' lives are truly threatened by another human or an animal.  A mother who looks like the perfect, model-mom will rip your face off if you attack her child.  She will tap straight into the ugly, automatically.  Wired in.  Unchangeable.  And that's good.  It becomes questionable when she knocks another mother and child off of a floating piece of lumber after a shipwreck so that she and her child, instead, can survive.  All kinds of questions arise, then.

Maybe that's how the strongest among our species has made it this far; tip of the hat to Mr. Darwin.

But for any living creature to ensure long-term survival for his species, he must constantly make right decisions when in critical situations.  When making decisions, do we not require information to make good ones?  Information is everything when making critical, tough decisions.  We need to stuff as much info. as possible into our brains so that when we need to make a decision, a good one can be made.  Those who consistently made bad decisions were, presumably, removed from the gene pool early on.

Fast-forward to now.  Not fast-forward through evolution as I firmly believe that evolution is an illusion (we have never grown toward a greater status or finality; we have simply changed in response to stimuli... in response to environmental demands and the supporting genetics for whatever those very random demands happened to be during a time of real change).  Just fast-forward to today through all of the random loops and curves that got us here.

A 21st-century people doesn't talk about its dark side much.  It doesn't talk much about extreme behaviors involving physical abuse or attacks.  Doesn't talk much about vengeance and rage.  Not much about incest, murder, or dangerous group-think dynamics (basically, the way people can somehow justify a behavior while in a group that they would not be able to justify as an individual, such as the Russian rapist soldiers as they entered Germany in 1944 or the Japanese rapists entering China or the American murderers who killed known innocents in Vietnam--no people is without those that have dark sides).  You don't hear much about the strategies involved in corporate competition or cheating on a spouse without getting caught or seeing somebody in public who obviously needs immediate help as people drive on by.  It's negative, and I hate negative more than anybody, but because of this shroud, we don't have all of the information, do we?  To make good decisions?

Have you ever noticed that weird feeling that comes when a "dark issue," I'll call it, arises among a group of people?  It's a kind of, "You are now way too close to an area that I don't know if I'm comfortable talking about," feeling.  When it happens to me, it's not comfortable (I'm usually the one bringing up the dark issue because I believe it needs to be discussed but it doesn't matter if another brings it up; the feeling is the same).  I don't like it, but I feel a sense of obligation to further humanity.  For example, just a couple of weeks back, I felt a need to show two little girls a scenario that could happen to them.  We were in a store, and I told them I would walk up toward them first as a normal man who was just shopping--one who was just going to walk on by or grab his product and go, and then I showed them the nervous, slithery behavior of a man who might try to snatch them.  I walked up beside them, looking around is if looking out for authorities or cameras.  I randomly picked up and put down products with a relatively wide-eyed, definitively non-shopping related look.  I made them study me.  I wanted them to be able to recognize the questionable people.  I didn't like it; it actually depressed me a bit as it always does when I have to get into these types of discussions about bad things.  I only do it because I believe the information can help people and save lives or lead to, at least, further study by way of exposure.

Yet we walk along in public, bobbing our heads and smiling like the world is a Utopia and nothing ever goes wrong.  Not aloof; we know how bad people can be, but we shut it out.  And that really does bring up a serious question, which is this: Can we keep the facts about how bad people can be in our active, conscious minds and still remain happy?  It's easy to picture a person not trusting anybody, for any reason, and walking around always suspicious, and always worrying, and never enjoying life because they finally have let into their conscious thoughts the fact that a lot of bad people do a lot of bad shi8 in this world, and sometimes, the best of people do bad shi8 in this world.  Who wants to think about that?

What I know already is that we are quite good at pretending.  Religions often push the dark matter under the carpet, but even non-religious folks abide by the out-of-sight, out-of-mind creed.  What I don't know is how we can keep a more realistic view of human behavior in our minds without spoiling the joy we find in daily living.  I don't know how I can expect those two girls to smile while shopping if they're scanning for shady types.  Yet, it is information that they need to potentially save their lives or others.

I'm a instant reactor.  That can be good or bad.  It's good when my family or friends are threatened; I'm the first one, always, to get into the face of the threat and take action.  I like to believe, as I've said a few times before (and in one of my books) that I'm the guy you want to be around when shi8 goes wrong.  It's bad to be an instant reactor when it is a misunderstanding or when used to spray hate at somebody who has behaved in a way I dislike instead of dismissing their (probably) child-like behavior.  To credit myself, I will say I've become much, much better at containing the instant reactions in questionable cases; I will never contain it if I know it leads directly and instantly to defending innocent, living creatures, especially those that I care about.  I actually made a Facebook page titled something like, "I'm a nice person; please take the shirt off of my back.  But threaten my family or friends or get in my face and I will erase your ass!" which lots of people "liked," as I imagined they would.

So let me wind this down in the form of asking for your opinion on a few questions (which will help lead us all to a better way forward).  How do we get people thinking about the very real, very negative threats and human behaviors while not sapping their happiness, whatever happiness they may be normally feeling?  And to what degree, and under what circumstances, should we use our instant reaction capability?  In WWII, they used to make German soldiers wait at least 72 hours before filing a grievance--theory being that they would calm down in that time and be thinking more rationally and less hatefully which can dramatically change the tone and outcome of a complaint.  Where is the balance between reaction now and necessarily reacting some hours or days later?  And, finally, do you agree that we as a people should have more forthright conversations about the dark sides within all of us?  Thank you for all of your input; help all of us understand what the best approach would be in your view; we will not judge.  We just want to learn.

Next week or two, I'm going to blog about what could happen during an economic collapse, and what your hindsight might show if you hadn't prepared as well as ask your ideas on how we should prepare, if at all. 

I write for you.  That sounds very generalized, but my thinking is very generalized. I literally (by the way, that's pronounced litter uh lee, not litra lee) imagine an average reader reading my words as I type them.  People that know me know that I want no fame which I doubt will be a problem, but I do want my writing/other work to please people.  I was really bored tonight and can't sleep through the back pain, and it took me an hour to figure out what to do, even though I now have 9 unfinished novels that I need to finish writing.  I sometimes find it hard to even believe I finished the first 3.  So, let's get to it.

Do you feel like you aren't accepted somewhere or by somebody?  Far be it for me to throw some blanket statement out that covers your "condition," because there are so many ways and sources of rejection that the definition and recovery plan for lack of acceptance changes every moment.  Are you a boy who thinks a girl doesn't accept you?  A nerd who thinks the jocks won't?  A jock who thinks the jocks won't?  A co-worker that isn't part of the "club?"  This can go on and on and as it changes, I would be suggesting different things for each situation if I wanted to be that detailed.  In my usual form, I'll take on two or three and hope to provide you with something of value to you.  I was a psych. and English major so maybe it'll pan out well.

Wife not accepted by husband

I wrote in The Lost Dialogues of Table 18 (no, not a plug, or link would be provided) that the problem with men is that they see women as accomplishments, and the problem with women is that they see men as projects. I truly believe that and when I came up with it a few years back, I pretty much knew then that I had struck on something as I replayed situations of relationship failures in my head.

Well, wife-women, if you feel like your husband is unreachable and places himself higher on the importance totem pole than you do, tell him.  Tell him what I just wrote and ask him why he feels higher.  When he denies it, give examples, including body language, words, behaviors, episodes with friends/family, etc.  Tell him you don't like it, and that you avow, from this day forward, to be exactly one half of a team that respects, appreciates, and loves one another.  Tell him to stop what's hurting you, and point out every single time he does it.  Don't miss any.  He'll stop.  Tell him what feels good, and remind him daily or whenever you need it; soon, it will be automatic for him.  Unless your requests are unreasonable, there is no reason he can't join you in uplifting each other like a truly loving couple should do.  In return for his cooperation in realizing that you are, in fact, an equal, let him have his man-cave time, let him do a reasonable amount of his normal hobbies and don't snap when you catch him looking at another lady; it's been wired into men since forever, and it isn't going anywhere soon (a key here, for him, might be subtlety so as not to embarrass you).


Husband not accepted by wife

Things change here from above.  That's no fair.  I know.  But if your wife sees herself as above you on the importance totem pole, approach her with details.  Men tend to try to communicate in short, over-simplified sentences using direct words; I call that part of a bigger philosophy (which I call the Lego Block View).  Do not offend her as you make this approach, especially if she has not offended you.

Maybe you are hurting because she brings in more money or she works and you don't or because guys are always looking at her; write it all down.  All of it... don't trust yourself to memorize anything, because what you'll do is get halfway into the conversation and decide, "That'll do for tonight."  No, that will not do for tonight, from one dude to another--please do this and trust me.  All of it must come out; make sure that you approach this not from an angle of blaming her, but from an angle of how you feel.  (In the event that you weren't aware, scientists have recently discovered that men do have feelings).

Tell her that you believe you can solve the issue(s) together, but you need to know how she feels about those things you have written down.  If she feels like she can't open up to you because you get angry too easily, that's a whole 'nother mountain you gotta climb, but I'm a fan of going for the Hail Mary sometimes.  Tell her you promise not to get angry or upset but that you need her to open up to you on this day/night and share with you thoughts about your feelings and thoughts about her needs.  It won't be long, if you're mature and loving about it, before you will feel like 50% of that couple again.


Co-worker not accepted into inner circles

I was working at Gateway in Tech. Support at the time in Hampton, VA (had to specify because I also worked IT there, and transferred to their Colorado Springs facility) taking essentially PC trouble calls.  The way our desks were laid out was basically a big diamond with everybody facing outward, maybe 25 desks or so, and in the center of the diamond were a manager's desk and a few "senior technician" desks.  Now, the senior techs. were supposed to be the ones to answer the questions you, the phone technician, had when things got really difficult.  So they were seen as semi-elite; semi-popular.  Did I try to get close to them?  Negative, sons.  I already knew my PC stuff when I went into tech. support, and the day it was made clearest is when one of our team members named Tim walked straight past the seniors desk to MY desk, and waited a few minutes for me to finish my call before answering his question.  Very few people did that, but who wants conflict?  Or to embarrass co-workers?  Or confrontation?  I'm sure the other techs didn't want to arouse angst in the senior technicians or manager for not following "procedure."  (Tim was an exception; he found out very quickly who knew what and he learned from them, and within two years, had flat bypassed being a senior tech and became a manager, and an excellent one at that and I can say for certain that he was generally more intelligent than I).

Moral of that derailment was that if you can't get into an inner circle (and my personality asks, "why do you want to?" but my logic and experience tells me it's for acceptance... maybe even leading to a heightened sense of job security, prompt raises, and favored assignments) then make yourself valuable.  You can do it instantly by offering to help other co-workers more, staying late or coming in early, by educating yourself on (boring) rules, regs, policies and procedures so that you quickly become a "go-to" guy or gal in whatever area you choose to shine in.  For my last job as a copier technician, for example, I was always the guy you could call to go to work on weekends.  I made certain my boss knew this, and he knew he could count on me for those very important (but rare) weekend copier breakdowns on large accounts.  I anchored myself into that spot.  If I would have wanted to change out of that spot, I would have found something else to specialize in first.

The key things to avoid doing are: appearing to be a know-it-all, talking constantly about your last job/employer, doing obvious butt-kissing (something I never once engaged in), giving the impression that you're "better" than the job or that this is just a job, and trying to get too much "talk time" early in your job... be a listener.  People can't stand it when new people come in and want to immediately change a bunch of stuff.  They despise it!

Conclusion

Life is inconclusive to me in every way, so I have none.  I just hope I have given you a couple of paragraphs that might help you get some monkeys off of your back, gently.

Book Excerpt: Addy's Boom and the Blast Frontier

Book Excerpt: Addy's Boom and the Blast Frontier
Expected publish date: June 6th, 2012

Chapter 6: Lauren’s Discovery

With rain approaching, Lauren began looking around the wrecked diner store to try to find a better place to make her bed; the food rack with the plywood bed and bubble wrap lie directly under a hole in the ceiling, a two-foot long rip that would allow water in.  She lifted the food rack out of the mess on the floor; the cans of Spam, wet wipes, jars of pickles, bags of marshmallows, instant coffee, peanut butter, and as she was just noticing, one dead mouse.

She drug the rack nearer to the edges of the store.  Day five of her new life was coming to a close and she was not willing to spend her night trying to sleep in cold, dripping water.  She removed the debris from the rear-right corner of the store and wrestled the rack over piles of boxes of cereal and two-liter sodas and bags of flour that had turned to some kind of compound.  She reconstructed the bed in the corner, putting the piece of cracked plywood up on the tipped-over rack, followed by layers of bubble wrap and, this time, a blanket to cover with that she found on the curb, adjacent to the store.  She had hung it on the clothesline and it took a day and a half to dry and was still damp, but would be acceptably dry by bedtime.

She climbed up on it to rest, bringing a bottle of water and a pack of instant tea with her, along with a individually wrapped cupcakes and pecan rolls.  She looked, as she had done for most of her recent days, out the front doors, out at the crane and the car.  The water was almost gone.  The land looked like a desert with occasional indentations of where foundations had been.  She looked and she thought and she hoped somebody would come.  Anybody.  She reviewed in her mind the wave, what must have happened to her family, and what she would do if she could get out of this place.  It wouldn’t be long before she struck out in search of, what?  She didn’t care.  She knew she had to go find other people or life would be unbearable. 

This wasn’t life.  This was a prison designed by Mother Nature, used to punish the unsuspecting.  It was a prison for the body and the mind where free motion was severely reprimanded and the gullibility needed to believe everything would be okay was heckled and spat upon.  

Her heart ached with heaviness.  For the first time since the wave hit, she was starting to realize what she had lost, and besides her prior life, she had lost everything and everyone that mattered to her.  She sobbed.  She sobbed for two hours, crying so hard that her face ached and her throat burned and her eyes ran dry as her torso bobbed up and down like she was laughing.  It was mercilessly draining and painful, yet she felt better afterward.  She had to put what was gone behind her if she was going to make anything good happen with her spared life, and that evening she set out on a journey in her mind; a journey toward acceptance, toward purpose, and toward something more than survival, if she could just get out of this place.  As she fought to throw off her blanket of grief, she found sleep under her dried blanket of cotton and rayon as the rain pattered on the roof like pebbles on a rear fender and the drops of the ceiling leak ticked like a clock on the floor in the middle of the diner store.

In the morning, when she woke, it wasn’t to the normal nightmares or odd sounds.  It was to the sound of something alive.  It was to a quiet ,”heh, heh, heh…”

How to get more fans and better statistics on Facebook

How Dare You Look in the Proper Places and Take Initiative for your own Success!!!!  What in the WORLD?

As some of you know, I'm a small-time author.  And I don't have 10,000 page likes, yet, but what I do have is a steep and steady incline in "likes" and in discussions about the page.  I'd like to share a few of these tips with you now to try to give you a jump start.

First, don't be afraid to do like-for-like trading.  I personally would find it dishonorable UNLESS you start a conversation with that person (content on page, anything) and after you have established that contact, you should feel entirely free to like their page and ask them to like yours...

Next, join discussions.  I've found "Linked-In" to be a great place to get people to like your page in return for liking theirs.  There are many other options Google will be happy to list along these lines. 

And this is also where I see one of the biggest mistakes writers' make.

Although I have 100% faith that there is room for writers in our industry for every single one of us, there are still some percentage of writers that want other writers to fail.  They really do.  They want you to fail to simply fall away so that their line to the top can be a more direct one.  They truly do see you as competition.

And we wonder why reading is down.

Because of this, you must be hyper-vigilante about who you trust regarding tips toward success.  There are plenty of authors, agents, and publishers out there we who will keep you down and hold you down in any way that they can.  You've been trying to get an agent for ten years and nothing has worked out, so you decide to self-publish or use a vanity publisher, and writers or others start telling you that you're making a mistake and that you'll ruin yourself; it's crap.  If your writing is ready, and you are ready, go publish.  Find a vanity publisher or just self-publish 50 or 100 books and hit the streets (libraries, book stores, malls, door to door, friends and family, universities).  Stay tuned to this blog for more, especially on what to watch out for as I do tend to blend subjects quite often and jump around (remember, my blog is about writing, life, and the other thing) so I won't go too deeply into it tonight because I'm working on some other short-deadline projects.

But let me say this; that mistake I mentioned four paragraphs ago?  That mistake is this; a new writer will constantly be seeking out writers boards, writer's groups, teach me teach me, writer and editorial groups instead of realizing that the neglected group--the group that is thirsting for your content is READERS!!!!  Find readers groups, especially if you have a free book go give away.  Spend some time there.  Find out what readers are talking about and looking for.  Don't shove anything down their throat; wait until somebody mentions that they like/want something from the genre you wrote, and then post a link and synopsis of your book.  Always offer free autographs if they'll cover shipping and if you're going to sell a paperback or hard-cover, readers LOVE getting free stuff.  I've sent out pens, calendars, and their favorite of all, customized bookmarks (see my FB page/pics for examples http://www.facebook.com/author.kevin.a.kierstead  ).  Readers are who you want, not writers!!!!

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

Kev

Hey, prick, drop dead!

The Almighty Asshole; he is a relatively rare bird, but a smelly, flightless, rancid one, nonetheless.

Assholes.  

I know I've written about them before, but I was recently confronted with a prick so prickly that you want to see him beaten by 100 angry birds.  Oh, a sight that would be.  Here's a guy who seeks out those who may be doing something well or tasting some success or, Gawd forbid, may believe something HE doesn't believe and then he attacks.  He attacks who they are, how little schooling they've had, how little they are contributing to the world, how unliked or unpopular or fat or ugly they are, how their religious or political beliefs are wrong and stupid, and he slices hard with these knives.  He himself is a sad person.  He's mad if you're tall, successful, handsome, or liked.  He's not attractive to the ladies and doesn't have a lady.  He's got bad posture and sounds like a teenage female when he speaks, often lispy and mumbling.  He has no speaking skills, no social skills and believes he knows it all.  He believes that whites are superior to all, and he is superior to all whites.  He brags and brags that he has a degree in physics and that he is a builder (all bow now to his Greatness, please)..

It's hard to answer when one asks how he became this way; I can personally testify that he has BEEN this way for at least 22 years, since I knew him in high school.  It's funny; I had very little to do with him, at all, but I knew his reputation and how hated he was.  One day, in football practice, coach had me playing QB because the team we were coming up against had a really tall QB and I am really tall so he wanted me to play the position for the rest of the defense to understand how he might pass over top of them, etc.  So one play, I'm running around, couldn't find a receiver, and ran back across the back of the scrimmage line still looking; no receiver, so I knew I had to bust through the line of scrimmage and get some yardage.  Right before I picked my spot in the messy line of scrimmage to run through, I noted this prick not blocking for me but chatting with one of his friends, absolutely unconcerned that the ball was still in play, I then had 7 guys chasing me, and that his job was to push the defense away to make a hole for me to run through.  The choice was obvious; I ran square into has back at no less than 20 mph, absolutely flattening him as I watched his head snap back (admitting now that I enjoyed it) and I knocked over a linebacker, who caught my ankle and I spun around, bumbling for another 5 or 10 yards before falling.  That's the speed and intensity I had when I hit the line; when I hit him, that I would have never had were it not for the rage that snapped in my mind when I saw him chatting.  Why didn't he like me then?  I don't know.  I guess because I was tall.  I had never done anything to him.

Fast forward a couple of decades, and he decides to jump out of nowhere, attacking my books, calling them "shitty fiction."  Ohhhhhhhh.  My friends, suffice it to say that I didn't have to defend myself.  My friends and readers jumped all over him like piranha on a chicken leg.  He was left hollow by the end of the exchange which took the form of a series of comments on a friend's Facebook status.  He tried to backpedal and say that I (Kevin) was intelligent and that maybe I wrote well (and you can goddam guarantee that it made him SICK to have to do this, just to try to not make any more enemies than he had already made) but my friends and I were not buying it.

My point is this; the guy I'm talking about is real, and I know two other men like him.  First, you can identify them by a few common traits.  They are mean, they define their success and in some cases, they define themselves, by earnings.  Money made.  Next, they have very closed minds socially.  The do not tend to respect women, but especially tend to disrespect anybody who isn't their own race.  They are not open to understanding that life differs outside of their "county lines," that not everybody thinks like them, and that even those that don't think like them could actually be right.  They won't ever, ever, ever believe that.  They are right, and nobody else is.  They are kings in their world.  It could come from parents who made them believe they were kings, or a wife/girlfriend who was subservient to them and over a course of years made them feel like kings.

First, I'd like to offer my words to them; words I'll happily stand behind when speaking to them in person.  Matter of fact, if one of them should see this blog entry and care to print it out and confront me with it, I'll read it to them, while looking at them, and I'll put special emphasis on this next message that I'm giving to them:

• "You are an asshole.  A prick.  You are as small as you think you are big.  You set out to hurt people and elevate yourself.  Nobody likes you.  People like me despise you.  Your ego is nauseating and nobody likes that.  You are nothing, and nobody.  I know this because what makes somebody into somebody is the willingness to give, to be humble, and to care about others.  You, on the other hand, are a low-life asshole who thinks the world revolves around you.  You are a piece of shit that the world will do better without.  You are the type of person that makes me appreciate good people all that much more, because you are not good people.  You, child-like adult, are an asshole, and you will live and die as an asshole.  You have no class.  You are angry at the tall/good-looking/popular/loved people.  Stay out of my life and out of my way so that I don't have to find a creative way to make you not be in my life or in my way.  Carry your poison off into the darkness; carry your own insecurities and feelings of failure that cause you to act like you do off into the remote corners of the world where the rest of us won't be bothered by your selfish, childish, idiotic behavior."  

That's what I'll say, to their faces.  Feel free to pass this blog on to any that might need it read to their face.

Why this blog entry?  Because, as my close friends know, I seek to inspire, and I seek to inspire in areas where we're all looking and thinking that something should be done, and I'm usually one of the few that will jump up early and call for action, and I will always do this in favor of good people; of those that give to others, those that do not believe they are better than everybody else--ultimately to those that realize that no matter how bad your life is, there is no good reason to attack others unless they are either attacking you or attacking other innocent people.  So, please, don't just read this; believe it, and stand up against assholes and bullies.  Stand hard, and with confidence.  You can do it if you choose, and you will succeed.

Another language reminder; nothing sounds more stoopid than close-but-wrong words in a cliche!

You know you've heard them before.  "He was armed to the tea."  "That guy drownded" (Dr. Phil still says "drownded") or "It's a mute point."  Let me help you, my friends.  People HATE when you do this.  There are a host of reasons, and I'll share a few.

First, the worst possible scenario for the close-but-wrong word is when it's being used in a statement of wisdom from a younger person to a necessarily older and wiser person (picture an 15-year-old correcting or preaching to a 70-year-old judge in a court room).  There is an old and accurate quote: "It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims (--Aristotle)."  It is.  So to have a young (presumably inexperienced) person giving advice or orders to an older (presumably experienced) person WHILE also getting a quote/cliche wrong is to commit a social suicide in front of everybody you are speaking within hearing range of.

Second problem is that people already hate cliches.  Granted, something like Dr. Phil's "drownded" isn't used in a cliche, but it's equally deplorable and one would never expect a man with PhD. behind his name to not know that "drownded" is not the past tense of the word, "drown,." or that it isn't even a word.  Not even a slang word.  So as soon as they hear you say, "Treat others as you..." bang!  Their open mind slams shut and you are front-and-center in their mental murder room.  They have already given you the lethal injection.  They roll their eyes, mentally at least because there is something fully unsatisfying and repetitive about taking a wise/old/true statement and repeating it incessantly or, worse, pretending you have an elevated understanding of it or others do not (and there are my personal favorites; people that act like maybe you've never heard it at all and then can glow in the light of the witty display, quite knowingly, as if it was their own).

Why bother worrying about this disaster? We HAVE to avoid it because there is no fixing it once it has happened.  Everybody remembers the guy who says to the employees at the meeting, "Great customer service really is worth its weight in coal."  You just CAN'T make these mistakes the first time, ever.  I'll admit; I could have seriously condensed this message to you today.  My friend, Jasper, just recently changed his Facebook status to "Don't use words you don't know the meaning of,"  and that would about sum it up (Yeah, we both know about ending sentences with prepositions, and we both rebel; know the rules before you break them), but I wanted to use many colors to paint this picture because you don't get a second or third chance to not make this mistake; there is no recovery. 

Here's the thing about correct spelling, speaking, and grammar; people judge you by it.  They can calculate a million different answers about you as a person by only using your words.  You do NOT want those words to be incorrectly used in a major way (minor happens all the time, such as using the term "severe angle," as one of my favorite hockey commentators likes to do instead of using what he should be using: "extreme angle."  He does this when referring to hockey shots that are shot from areas off to the side or behind the net.  But severe?  That's a word that is a measure of intensity.  Angles do not have intensities, they are simply numerical references.  From dictionary.com, here are their pertinent definitions... 1.  extreme: of a character or kind farthest removed from the ordinary or average and 2. severe: harsh; unnecessarily extreme).

So we are drawing a distinct difference here between the types of people that use the word "psychopath," where "disturbed" would work much better and those that say, "I always choose the psycho-path less traveled."  You get me?  The latter just makes itself unforgivable and unforgettable.  The former... we'll forget in as early as a few moments. 


To totally avoid this disaster, there are three main things you have to do.  1.  Improve your vocabulary.  Do so by regularly reading definitions of words that you aren't very clear about but hear often or, if you're already a competent wordsmith, purposely seek out words that you're not familiar with.  2.  Impose a set of speaking guidelines upon yourself; promise yourself that, when speaking in front of others, you will avoid cliches altogether and stick to very well known and familiar words and ideas that originate in your own mind, not somebody elses, and don't let others' comments re-direct you into unfamiliar territory or, as my Grandpa used to say, "If you don't know about it, don't talk about it."  3.  Always think for at least one second before speaking.  People will not catch you; they won't be thinking, "Oh, that person is slow to respond so they must be scared of answering for some reason."  They won't even catch a one-second delay and it could save your behind.  One second is more than long enough to say to yourself, "Ok, no cliche, stick to rules, be confident" or, if it goes in a direction you refuse to such as religion or politics, you should be thinking "Steer it away or pass on speaking."  You won't make many new friends talking about religion or politics, no matter your beliefs.  


To sum up: improve your vocabulary, create a small and memorable set of rules for yourself regarding speaking in public, always avoid cliches and think before speaking. (Most of these are good for writing, too, but that's for a whole 'nother post)

EDIT: Also, if you're young, you will help yourself out a great deal by just saying to yourself (and believing), "I don't know anything.  I will respect my elders for their experience and knowledge and never take an elevated posture when speaking to them."