WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide – Hussey

How easy is it to set up a WordPress blog? With the right guidebook, it’s as easy as pie. My computer skills are limited: familiar with Microsoft Office, can back things up myself, not too familiar with Facebook and LinkedIn, no coding experience. But, with the right guidebook, I was able to set up Doing Melpomene’s Work. The guidebook in question was: WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide by Tris Hussey. Published by Que in 2014. 410 pages. Lots of full colour screenshots. I read it in a week. After reading it, I was able to create the blog in an evening. You can do it too. BTW, as I write this in September 2015, the book is still very much up to date.

Hussey, WordPress: Absolute Beginner's Guide

Hussey, WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide

WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide Back Blurb

More than 70 million websites and blogs run on WordPress: it’s the world’s #1 web development tool. Now, you can make the most of WordPress without becoming a technical expert. WordPress Absolute Beginner’s Guide is the fastest way to get comfortable and productive with WordPress and its most powerful tools. Whether you’re new to WordPress or not, this practical, approachable book will show you how to do exactly what you want, one incredibly clear and easy step at a time – all explained with full-color illustrations.

Leading WordPress instructor Tris Hussey provides step-by-step instructions for every task requiring more than one step. Screenshots and illustrations guide you through complex processes, so you’ll never get lost or confused. You’ll find friendly, patient, crystal-clear coverage that always respects your intelligence, and never patronizes you. Hussey covers all this, and much more:

  • Understanding the mechanics of a WordPress website
  • Installing WordPress yourself, along with the themes and plug-ins you want
  • Using WordPress.com if you don’t want to run WordPress on your own equipment
  • Setting up your site right the first time, to avoid problems later
  • Tweaking themes to make your site look perfect
  • Integrating images and media
  • Making your site mobile-ready
  • Using basic search engine optimization techniques to get your site discovered
  • Troubleshooting, maintaining, and performance-tuning your site

WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide Author Bio

Tris Hussey was Canada’s first professional blogger, and has since become a freelance writer, bestselling author, technologist, and lecturer. His bestselling books on social media and technology include Create Your Own Blog, Using WordPress, and Sams Teach Yourself Fourquare in 10 Minutes. Hussey has taught social media, WordPress, and podcasting at University of British Columbia and produced the WordPress Essentials video collection.

Hmm, I wonder if it should read ‘Tris Hussey is Canada’s first professional blogger’?–he seems like a young guy!

The Book

I had originally planned to review a newer book that just became available at the library: WordPress: The Fast and Easy Way to Learn 3rd ed. by George Plumley. It’s part of the ‘Teach Yourself Visually’ series. The Plumley book is shorter (310 pages) and newer (2015). If you like screenshots on every page, go for the Plumley book. If you like a more detailed explanation, Hussey is the better option: there’s more text. If I were to start all over again, I’d go for the Hussey volume. The Plumley edition is even more basic than the Absolute Beginner’s Guide.

WordPress is pretty simple to use. The jargon is complicated though. WordPress today is like what computers were before Apple made everything simple: it’s not complicated but appears complicated if you’re not familiar with it. Hussey cuts through all the jargon. For me, that was a big help. For example, there’s wordpress.com blogs and wordpress.org blogs. And then, of the .org blogs, you can do install your own web server or you can find a host that offers an easy or one-click installation.

There’s chapters in Hussey’s book on both wordpress.com and wordpress.org but the book is more geared towards the latter. I imagine that’s what most people will be interested in. BTW Doing Melpomene’s Work is a wordpress.org blog hosted by GoDaddy. One-click installation. It’s been running just over a year without any major problems. The only problem was one time I changed pages while one of the plugins was still updating. GoDaddy helped me resolve the problem in about 10 minutes. Not bad.

In addition to chapters on setting up and installing, Hussey also guides you through the process of selecting the plugins you really need. Plugins are little widgets and tools that make your site more user friendly: social media buttons, comment boxes, and things like that. And then there are chapters on attaching media into your blog: video, photo, and sound files.

Usually I like the ‘Missing Manual’ series. But, after looking through the 10 or 15 WordPress beginner books they had at the Vancouver Chapters, I went with Hussey. It had the right blend of screenshots and text. Explanations were easy to follow. The writing was interesting (he relates how things have changed since he started blogging in 2004). If you’re thinking of starting a blog, this is a good place to start doing research.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and thanks to Tris Hussey’s help, I’m Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

Now that the rewriting and editing process has started, it was high time for new dictionary. The dictionary that came with the laptop (MacBook Pro running OS 10.10.5) is good, but I wanted another one for a second opinion. I also wanted a reference dictionary to keep spellings and hyphenations consistent. Hyphenation is rapidly evolving: it’s no longer ice-cream but ice cream. And not bumble-bee but bumblebee. Hyphenation is like a double-breasted suit: out of fashion. As the stock dictionary is The New Oxford American Dictionary and I use British spellings, I was also looking for a specifically British dictionary. I thought about getting a physical dictionary, but if a suitable app could be found, that would be preferable. In the 90s and even 2000s the reference dictionaries were always physical. I was hoping that in the 2010s that has changed. It has: the search led to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

The app was downloaded from the Apple app store for $28.99 CAD. This is the sixth edition, version 2.4, Oxford copyright 2007, updated February 28, 2015. It must be licensed out to WordWebSoftware, who put it together and copyrighted the software part of it in 2011. I wonder why Oxford couldn’t do it in house?

Here’s the online blurb from the Apple App Store:

Description

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary contains an incredible one-third of the coverage of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary and includes all words in current English from 1700 to the present day, plus the vocabulary of Shakespeare, the Bible and other major works in English from before 1700.

With new coverage of global English, as well as slang, dialect, technical, historical, and literary terms, and rare and obsolete words, the Sixth Edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary contains more than 600,000 words, phrases, and definitions, with coverage of language from the entire English-speaking world, from North America and the UK to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and the Caribbean. It has been fully updated with 2,500 new words and meanings based on ongoing research at Oxford Dictionaries and the Oxford English Corpus.

This is a mobile dictionary with content from Oxford University Press and advanced search and language tools that have become the staple of quality language apps from MobiSystems.

SEARCH TOOLS – effortlessly find words using a clear, functional, and easy-to-use interface. The integrated search tools activate automatically the moment you start typing:
* Search autocomplete helps find words quickly by displaying predictions as you type
* Keyword lookup allows you to search within compound words and phrases
* An automatic ‘Fuzzy filter’ to correct word spelling, as well as ‘Wild card’ (‘*’ or ‘?’) to replace a letter or entire parts of a word
* Camera search looks up words in the camera viewfinder and displays results

LEARNING TOOLS – engaging features that help you further enhance your vocabulary:
* ‘Favorites’ feature to create custom folders with lists of words from the extensive library
* ‘Recent’ list to help you easily review looked-up words
* ‘Word of the day’ section to help expand your vocabulary every day

Sounds good! Now, you may be asking: why not just get the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (OED)? Well, amazon.ca is selling the 20 volume set for $1447.04. That’s the 1989 edition. It must weigh a ton. And to get the latest (i.e. what’s happened between 1989 and 2015), you have to get all the supplemental volumes. No thanks. But doesn’t the OED come in an app? Not that I can find. There’s a cd-rom version for $295 USD (about $375 CAD). Most of the links to it from Oxford’s own site are broken. The cd-rom version apparently is designed for Macs with a PowerPC processor. Those are the Macs from 10+ years ago! Not about to drop $375 for a dictionary that probably won’t work and doesn’t appear to be supported. It surprises me that Oxford would even continue to sell such stone age software.

That’s sort of disappointing the unabridged OED isn’t available for download. I was prepared to pay up to $200 for it. You can subscribe to the online version for $295 USD a year. This seems like a ripoff. And you have to be online to use it, which is a turn off. At any rate, the Greater Victoria Public Library subscribes to it and you can access it FOR FREE by logging in with your library card. But you still have to be online and it would be a pain to login each time you wanted to look up a word. Imagine! Sheesh!

So, because the unabridged is too hard to access, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is the next best thing. At 600,000 words, the word-count is almost double the 350,000 words in the New Oxford American Dictionary, the dictionary which comes stock with my computer.

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Versus Stock Dictionary

Let’s go head to head. Here’s works I’ve actually been using whilst writing Paying Melpomene’s Price.

Here’s aporia in the stock dictionary:

aporia |əˈpôrēə| noun an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory: the celebrated aporia whereby a Cretan declares all Cretans to be liars.• Rhetoric the expression of doubt.ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: via late Latin from Greek, from aporos ‘impassable,’ from a- ‘without’ + poros ‘passage.’

And here’s the same word in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

aporia əˈpɔ:rɪə , əˈpɒrɪə noun. m16.

  • 1Rhetoric. The expression of doubt. m16.
  • 2 A doubtful matter, a perplexing difficulty. l19.
ORIGIN: Late Latin from Greek, from aporos impassable, from a- 10 + poros: see aporetic , -ia 1.
I almost find the stock dictionary better! One nice thing about the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary are the pronunciations: press on a button and it says the word out loud.
The next word is Capitoline. That word is not in the stock dictionary. But here’s the entry from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:
Capitoline kəˈpɪtəlʌɪn adjective designating or pertaining to the hill at Rome on which the Capitol stood ; of or pertaining to the Capitol: e17.
Let’s see how they deal with the proper name Melpomene. The stock dictionary has:
Melpomene |melˈpämənē| Greek & Roman Mythologythe Muse of tragedy.ORIGIN Greek, literally ‘singer.’
The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t have an entry for Melpomene, only ‘melpomenish’:

melpomenish mɛlˈpɒmɪnɪʃ adjective. literary. rare. e19.

Tragic.

ORIGIN: from Greek Melpomenē (lit. ‘singer’) the Muse of tragedy + -ish 1.

Shouldn’t it have Melpomene if the melpomenish entry refers back to the name?

Surprising: the stock dictionary outperforms and the Shorter Oxford in some ways underperforms expectation. It IS, however, nice to have both dictionaries. I’d make the same purchase again.

To sum up: The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is a good buy at $28.99. The sound files are a big plus for pronunciations. 600,000 words is plenty. Besides proper names, haven’t run across any words it doesn’t have. The interface does the trick. If you’re looking for an authoritative dictionary with British spellings, this is your ticket until the unabridged OED becomes available for download.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I don’t like to be a spelling slob whilst Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Cooking Soap

Last night was soap making night with assiduous first time soap-maker F! Good Planet on Fort Street sells soap making kits with everything you need. They go for $50 or so. There’s a discount on the kits if you’ve attended their soap making classes which I did last year with LH. Well, the kits have almost everything. They have all the raw materials. You supply: safety goggles, a medium pot, a thermometer that can go between 45-80C, and a whisk (or hand blender). The kit comes with the raw materials (lye, fat, essential oils, and organic colouring). They even have a pair of safety gloves. You can also add exfoliant. We picked up some poppy seeds from Market on Yates for exfoliant. Hemp hearts also work.

The first time I made soap, it was in the back studio of the Good Planet store. Tea tree oil. I’ve been using it since then. It lasts a long time. And my skin likes it much better. Commercial soaps (even the dermatologist recommended ones) leave me itchy. Writers have sensitive skin! Well no, I’ve got eczema so I’m always mindful of skin care. Did you know that some commercial soaps cannot even be labelled ‘soap’? They have so many weird ingredients that the bureau of people with nothing better to do makes the manufacturer’s call them ‘beauty bars’ instead. I’m not into hippy stuff, but I definitely am into home made soap.

How Do You Make Soap?

It’s easy as ABC. Allow about 1-1/2. Measure out water (tap water is fine) into a bowl. Whilst wearing gloves and goggles, slowly add lye to the water and whisk. It starts smoking a little bit as the water rises from room temperature to 70. It will take a little while to cool to 45, at which point you pour in the fat. When the lye/water gets close to 45, heat up the fat in the microwave until it’s at 45. While whisking, slowly pour the fat into the lye/water. Make sure not to get any on exposed skin!

It takes a while to whisk. Maybe 15 minutes. It might go faster with hand blender, but that’s just something else to clean up. And it’s good to give the forearms a workout too! As you whisk it, a chemical reaction takes place between the lye and the fat. It’s like gunpowder or cement: it forms a new substance. In this case, after the process of saponification, the lye is no longer lye and the fat is no longer fat. It’s become soap.

Soap after whisking 10 min

Soap after whisking 10 min

After a 15 minute whisking workout, the consistency (which started out like water) gets to the ‘trace’ stage. That’s when you can lift the whisk up, and the soap dripping off the whisk into the pot stays on the surface for a second before melting back into the solution. For example, you could spell out a letter (briefly) or something like that on the surface of the soap solution.

When it reaches trace stage, put the colouring, essential oils, and exfoliant into the mixture. Then pour it all into the wax lined mold:

Pouring soap into mold

Pouring soap into mold

Wrap it in a towel (to keep it warm to the chemical reaction continues) and in a day or two, you can chop it up into blocks. It’s still quite soft. Cures in three weeks. And gets better and harder with time. If you’ve used the right amount of lye and fat, no expiration date: too much fat and it will go rancid. Too much lye and you will burn your skin! As a safeguard, people usually err on the side of a little more fat than the chemical process demands. If you do this, it will last a long time. I’ve had my other soap for over a year and it looks and smells great.

After a day, voila:

Soap curing in mold

Soap curing in mold

Ready to be chopped into blocks!

Why Make Soap?

It’s good value. Good Planet sells the bars for $6. If you get 25 bars from the box, you save $100 from the individual cost (retail cost of individual bars = $150, kit = $50. If you sourced out the materials individually instead of getting the kit, you could probably gets costs down to $20.

It’s good to make things yourself. There’s a certain satisfaction. It’s going back to the roots of things. You’re in control. You feel like you’ve done something. It makes a good gift.

You learn something. Who knew making soap was this easy? And yes, now I know why Blind Willie Johnson and all those other blind blues players went blind: don’t get the lye in your eyes! Take the precautions and it’s 100% safe. Well 99% safe.

What I Learned Making Soap

Do not throw the pots and whisks right in the dishwasher. The dishwasher soap does not clean soap soap and makes more of a mess. Rinse off the soap before putting everything in the dishwasher.

The lye will discolour cutting boards. No biggie. Now I have a soap making memento!

So: if you haven’t done it, give it a whirl! You’ll be glad you did!

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I like to stay clean while Doing Melpomene’s Work.

On Writing – Stephen King

Sometimes such a tremendous book comes along you have to lay aside everything else you’re reading. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen Edwin King is one of those books. The last one that had that power was Consilience by Wilson.

King, On Writing Cover Illustration

King, On Writing Cover Illustration

Hmmm, what’s in the cellar?

Assiduous readers will know that I’ve been reading style guides and ‘how-to’ books on writing lately. Big King fan JC in the 90s had persuaded me to try reading ‘The Long Walk’, a short story by King. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. JC also told me that King had written a book on writing horror. Now that is in line with what I like. It’s always been in the back of my mind to read it. It would be like learning about comedy from Seinfeld: learning from the master.

So I picked up On Writing at the library. But looking at the publication date (2000), this wasn’t the right book! It turns out Danse Macabre is the book that JC had mentioned. But no matter. On Writing fits the bill of what I’m looking for: some tips on how to write for readers.

King, On Writing Back Blurb

‘If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write’.

In 1999, Stephen King began to write about his craft–and his life. By midyear, a widely reported accident jeopardized the survival of both. And in his months of recovery, the link between writing and living became more crucial than ever.

Rarely has a book on writing been so clear, so useful, and so revealing. On Writing begins with a mesmerizing account of King’s childhood and his uncannily early focus on writing to tell a story. A series of vivid memories from adolescence, college, and the stuffing years that led up to his first novel, Carrie, will afford readers a fresh and often very funny perspective on the formation of a writer. King next turns to the basic tools of his trade–how to sharpen and multiply them through use, and how the writer must always have them close at hand. He takes the reader through crucial aspects of the writer’s art and life, offering practical and inspiring advice on everything from plot and character development to work habits and rejection.

Serialized in the New Yorker to vivid acclaim, On Writing culminates with a profoundly moving account of how King’s overwhelming need to write spurred him toward recovery, and brough him back to his life.

Brilliantly structure, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower–and entertain–everyone who reads it.

Wow, the back blurb wasn’t written by King: he hates adverbs. Most of the time.

The Book

The book is part autobiography, part style guide, part analysis of his own novels, and part about living. The best way to put it is that it’s a book on the writing lifestyle: writing and life are intertwined. To prove the point, King even has tips on where to place furniture:

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you site down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.

Oops, my writing table is smack dab in the middle of the living room…the sign of an apprentice writer!

It’s refreshing to read King after reading the other style guides. King doesn’t like pretentious writing books either. The only one that passes his ‘bullshit rule’ is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. King advocates simple writing. I love one of his examples:

He came to the river. The river was there.

That’s no less a writer than Hemingway.

Now, every style guide advocates simple writing. But King provides good and bad examples from his works and others. They are entertaining examples. That’s what makes this book good: you want to read it.

But there are places where he taught me something new. For example, he talks about paragraphs, and how to make paragraphs look nice and inviting to readers. The first thing readers do, even before they start reading, is they scan the page: how to the paragraphs look? Easy? Or do they look big and daunting? I had never thought of that. Thanks, King! I will make paragraphs shorter and more evenly sized! Why didn’t I think of that? Or someone else, for that matter?

King advocates honesty. Write about things you know about. That’s what he does. His characters are the types of people he runs across. Even when he was run down, as he was going in and out of consciousness, it struck him that the careless driver was someone straight out of his novels. Even the advice he gives writers is deadly honest: if you can’t write, his book isn’t going to help you. Nothing will. The most his book can do is make a competent writer a good writer. Going from bad to good is out of the question. Going from good to great is also out of the question. That’s what genes are for.

Although King talks about fiction writing, the wisdom is transferable to any sort of writing. Writing to King is just like a toolbox. There may be special tools for fiction writing, but in the fiction toolbox are all the sorts of tools you’d make everything else with too. Yes, he uses the toolbox analogy. His writing toolbox is actually modelled after his uncle’s toolbox. I like this book. Things are real. You can touch them. It’s not one of those writing books filled with linguistic theory. When I read those books I feel like they are bashing me over the head with a hammer.

So why write?

Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

Damn, I like that! Speaking of getting happy, I am happy to have read this fine book! And now I think I will have to read The Stand somewhere down the line…in another twenty years maybe…

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m getting happy by Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Hard to Love – Nowinski

A good friend who has been fighting the good fight recommended Joseph Nowinski’s book on MBPD: Hard to Love: Understanding and Overcoming Male Borderline Personality Disorder. It was published by Central Recovery Press in 2014. The book is written for two audiences: friends and family seeking to understand what it is to suffer MBPD and those with MBPD seeking to overcome it. Here’s the cover illustration:

Cover Illustration, Hard to Love by Nowinski

Cover Illustration, Hard to Love by Nowinski

Hmmm, is that a picture of some brain process? I guess when you have a captive audience, cover illustration is not that important: people will read the book no matter what’s on the cover.

And the back blurb:

Renowned clinical psychologist Joseph Nowinski defines Male Borderline Personality Disorder, describes symptoms, and offers solutions that work. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) occurs commonly in both men and women, but is frequently misdiagnosed in men, resulting in either no treatment (or worse, jail time) or the wrong treatment. Dr. Nowinski lays out the origins of BPD in men and helps a man determine if BPD describes the problems in living he’s experienced, and if so, how to fix them. This book provides easy-to-implement solutions for BPD men and those who love them.

The following indicators are tell-tale signs of BPD: difficulty making relationships work, tendency to see things in black and white terms, starved for attention, emotionally instability, and drug/alcohol abuse. For some reason, the tell-tale signs of BPD reminded me of rock stars. According to Nowinski, BPD is the result of abandonment as a child. The way to overcome it is through building up psychological resilience: thinking thoughts along the lines of ‘my marriage is secure and my wife loves me’ instead of ‘I am not lovable or good enough for my wife’.

One of the reasons Nowinski wrote the book is to establish MBPD as a distinct disorder. Nowinski feels too often MBPD is misdiagnosed as depression or anxiety in men. This leads to the wrong treatment and the wrong medicines being prescribed. This was the hard part for me to understand: if the symptoms of BPD are difficulties staying in a relationship, a tendency to see things in black and white, being starved for attention, emotional instability, and drug/alcohol abuse, then how is it functionally different than depression? Here’s an easier example. Let’s say there are suitcases and backpacks. I say that suitcases are black, rectangular, have handles, and transport things. Then I say that backpacks are black, rectangular, have handles, and transport things. But then I say it’s critical not to confuse suitcases with backpacks. Would that be confusing?

Obviously backpacks aren’t suitcases. But to differentiate the two, distinctions must be made between the two: you can say, for example, that suitcases are hard and backpacks soft. I don’t feel that Nowinksi does this. He says MBPD is not depression but it’s not clear to me why they’re different. What the book needs is a chapter on the biological basis of MBPD. If not a chapter, at least a few paragraphs.

I understand the book is an introduction to MBPD. But even the short online blurb the National Institute of Mental Health reveals that there is a biological basis to MBPD:

Recent neuroimaging studies show differences in brain structure and function between people with borderline personality disorder and people who do not have this illness. Some research suggests that brain areas involved in emotional responses become overactive in people with borderline personality disorder when they perform tasks that they perceive as negative. People with the disorder also show less activity in areas of the brain that help control emotions and aggressive impulses and allow people to understand the context of a situation. These findings may help explain the unstable and sometimes explosive moods characteristic of borderline personality disorder.

Another study showed that, when looking at emotionally negative pictures, people with borderline personality disorder used different areas of the brain than people without the disorder. Those with the illness tended to use brain areas related to reflexive actions and alertness, which may explain the tendency to act impulsively on emotional cues.

These findings could inform efforts to develop more specific tests to diagnose borderline personality disorder.

Nowinski argues that MBPD goes back to childhood abandonment. But then the National Institute of Mental Health suggests that the disorder is genetic and inherited:

Studies on twins with borderline personality disorder suggest that the illness is strongly inherited. Another study shows that a person can inherit his or her temperament and specific personality traits, particularly impulsiveness and aggression. Scientists are studying genes that help regulate emotions and impulse control for possible links to the disorder.

So which is it–does it have a biological basis or is it from abandonment? If it has a biological basis, are drugs effective? If Nowinski argues that MBPD has environmental roots (this is my impression), he should at least mention the other viewpoints. After all, I think it must be safe for me to assume that Hard to Love and the National Institute of Mental Health are talking about the same disorder?

What Nowinski is good at is telling stories of the difficulties people with MBPD go through in their day to day lives. People with MBPD find it difficult in relationships to give the other person the benefit of the doubt: they automatically assume the worse about themselves and others. The book opened my eyes to how it would be difficult to live like this. So, to my friend and all the others out there suffering from MBPD, keep fighting the good fight!

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Preface Released to Beta Readers

After a flurry of last minute activity, the preface has gone out to the eight brave beta readers last Friday. It’s a bit of a milestone as now, for the first time *drum roll* Paying Melpomene’s Price has GONE PUBLIC! If you haven’t received it yet, the spam filter might have put it into junk mail. Well…it might be junk but I’d rather the beta readers tell me than the spam filter!

Here’s the little blurb that went out with it. Thanks to MR and MA for ideas and suggestions on putting the blurb together:

Brave Beta Readers,
This is it! The preface of Paying Melpomene’s Price is attached. Two identical versions: a Microsoft Word document and a PDF. You can either comment right on the Word document (use a big font or colour) or markup the PDF with Adobe Acrobat. Alternately, you can comment in return email by citing page and paragraph (e.g. page 2, the paragraph that starts with ‘Two and a half…’). I can also deliver hard copies to those wanting to go that route! All sorts of options, use the easiest!
This is what I’m looking for: 1) parts you like (I should do more of this), 2) parts you don’t like (I should do less of it), 3) parts you understand (I should do more of this), and 4) parts that are difficult to understand (I should rewrite). Here’s a set of symbols:
Parts you like, put a checkmark
Parts you don’t like, put a frown
Parts you understand, write a capital U
Parts that are hard to understand, write a ?
Don’t worry about grammar and spelling. Those things will be caught down the line. Go with initial reactions. Right now, I’m most concerned with people’s reactions: what they like and what they don’t like. Don’t worry about offending me! Now’s the time that honesty is appreciated. Better to fix things now than later! There’s eight beta readers, so it’ll be interesting to see if some kind of consensus forms. I’m betting it will.
No rush. If things get busy, wait for the next instalment to come out (one per month, eight more sections). BIG thanks to everyone for participating!
Enjoy!
Edwin Wong
Writer – Doing Melpomene’s Work

It’ll be interesting to see if a consensus forms between the eight beta readers. Will they like/dislike the same things? It’s a diverse crowd of beta readers: artists, graphic designers, a doctor, a restauranteur, an academic coordinator, and some self-employed business people. No one (as far as I can tell) with a professional theatre background. That might be a good thing. One person moonlights as a bona fide editor (has edited articles for Science and Nature). Ages range from thirties to sixties. Three women and a five men. A good mix.

The preface is eight pages long. Before rewriting, it was ten pages long. Another page or two can probably get deleted somewhere down the line. But it’s as good as I can get it right now. After sending it out, I was curious: how long would it take to read eight pages? I timed myself reading it in 17 minutes. But that’s sort of cheating as I’m reading my own thoughts. For other people to read it maybe it would take 25-30 minutes? If you’re making notes on the page as you go along, that might add another fifteen minutes. So maybe 45 minutes or so?

Another things: Microsoft Word pages (and PDFs made from Word) are longer than book pages. I counted up how many words there are in several softcover academic type works and compared them with the word count in the preface. Word counts in books vary according to spacing, font, and page size. But it seems like you can convert Microsoft Word pages into average book pages by dividing by 0.6. So, eight pages of the preface in Word = 13.33 book pages (8 / 0.6 = 13.33).

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I’m glad there are brave beta readers out there Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Oak Bay Bicycles Sunday Ride

A writer ought to have active hobbies. If you’re writing five hours a day and reading two hours a day, that’s a lot of time sitting around. To make things worse, a lot of times when writers get writer’s block, they break out the munchies. I have a weakness for cookies (Dad’s), ice cream (black cherry), and nacho chips (plain chips with guac or salsa). Mmmm. A couple of cookies here and there, the second bowl of ice cream: the calories add up quickly! Nothing burns calories like cycling (maybe swimming, but you can cycle longer than you can swim). Cycling happens to be my active hobby of choice. Running too, is nice. But, on a ride, you can go for longer and enjoy more outdoor sights, sounds, and smells (esp. the ocean and the leaves as we head into fall). If I want to run by the ocean or around Elk Lake, I have to be able to get there first.

I spent a lot of time on a bike as a kid. It represented freedom. When I got my first car, that felt like freedom too. But looking back, the bike was better: you power the bike. It doesn’t break down all the time. Repairs don’t cost thousands. You don’t have to fill it up. You can eat more. You feel like you’ve accomplished something by commuting. Nothing against cars. I’d get a car if it could earn its keep: if it were a delivery car or a construction truck.

For a lot of years between then and now, the bike lay gathering dust, though. Last year, I dusted it off, pumped up the tires, and went for a ride. It was fun. The wind in the hair helmet. For my 40th birthday, I treated myself to my first road bike. One with bright silver Campagnolo parts: a Ti Marinoni Sportivo. No paint, no graphics. It was plain. It was beautiful. Made in Canada to boot. There’s a surprising number of Canadian bicycle companies: Kona, Norco, Guru, Argon 18, Cannondale (owned by Dorel Industries), Brodie, Rocky Mountain, and many others. If you’re wondering, yes, my bike earns its keep: it lugs around minor building materials for use around the building (tools, paint, and hardware). It’s cash flow positive. Well, maybe that’s wishful thinking. It will be cash flow positive.

Straight Up Cycles brought in the Marinoni came in November 2014. Looking back at a post in May this year, I had said 20km was an ideal ride and that 40km was becoming painful. That’s one of the nice things about blogging: once it’s written down, you know where to look for it if you don’t remember. Lately I’ve started to ride harder and longer. TS has inspired me: he’s been riding into Victoria from Mission, BC. It’s about 100km from Mission to the ferry. And he does it on a full mountain with a 20Ib backpack! Insanity! I thought if he can do it, I should be able to as well. Lately I’ve been going back and forth between town and the ferries (~70km). Another nice ride is to Cadboro Bay beach. Get there, read a book, and head back. Rolling hills. As I worked up the miles, I wondered: could I handle a group ride?

One of the guys at Straight Up Cycles suggested that the Sunday ride at Oak Bay Bicycles might be a good fit. The Oak Bay Bicycles website advertises the Sunday ride as a beginner/recovery ride. It turns out that the hard core group rides on Saturday. To them, the purpose of the Sunday ride is to recover and relax! The route they take is roughly 77km at a 25km/hr pace. So ’bout 3 hrs. It starts in Oak Bay, cuts through Gordon Head, Mt Doug, and up towards Sidney. There’s a short washroom break just before Sidney. From there, they ride towards the airport, down along West Saanich before joining up with the Galloping Goose heading back into town. Beginner riders typically see how far they can go. When they’ve had enough, they drop out and ride home. Next time out, they go further. Repeat until you build up the endurance to do the whole thing.

At the ride last Sunday, there were eight of us in all. Usually there are more: up to 30! But this week, there were two other races happening at the same time. And there was also a big storm the night before. Many people must have been still without power. The average age was around 40. Two women and six guys. And some beautiful bikes! Mostly carbon but one Moots ti as well. Also ran into JK, an old friend from high school! Wow! High school was over 20 years ago, would you believe it! I think some of the riders must be pros or serious amateurs.

Have you ever ridden with a group? The idea is that you can socialize as well as going faster and longer. By drafting (following the cyclist ahead of you with a gap of less than one wheel diameter), you can save 20% of your energy. You’re not fighting the wind. The cyclist at the head of the pack has to do most of the work. But, by taking turns leading the pack, everyone gets a benefit. It’s the closest thing out there to a free lunch.

There’s an interesting psychology in a group ride. First of all, a big thank you to the other riders who explained how things work! There’s some excellent teachers on this ride. The first thing in a group ride is that it’s harder to see the road when you’re riding in formation. You have to trust the riders in front to point out crap on the side of the road. If you’re riding at the back, your job is to alert the others of cars coming up from behind. And if you’re up front, your job is the grunt work of cutting through the wind. Everyone has a job. It seems everyone has a responsibility to one another. It’s nice to go faster and further. But the thing that left the biggest impression on my mind is the sense of trust the riders must have in one another. That’s cool. That’s something I can learn: trust. Biking really is a team sport. I had not known that before.

When I started the ride, it was difficult to follow so close on another rider’s wheel. I was afraid. What if they braked? What if I ran into them?  After a few kilometres and some kind words of encouragement, my fear dissipated. I could get closer: maybe a wheel diameter to half a diameter away. For the group ride to work, everyone has an obligation to one another to stay close together. It’s wonderful just watching the dynamics of the group. Or hearing the sound of people’s pedal strokes: they all sound different. Some riders grind it out in a low roar. Others spin quickly and lightly. Tires sound different too. If the road changes, you can hear the road changing from listening to the riders ahead of you. The experience is altogether different than, say, a group run. In a group run, you’re still your own individual. In a group ride, you’re really part of the group. You move with the group. You react with the group.

And then it happened. On the way back, on the hills on West Saanich, I couldn’t keep up. Just out of gas. What a weird feeling that was. Watching the group pull away. I tried pedalling faster. I tried pedalling standing up. Just couldn’t do it. It’s such a weird and helpless feeling to be going all out, huffing and puffing, putting out as much as you can, and not being able to keep up. The group slowed down, but after a few more hills, I was done like dinner. Boy was I done. One of the kind riders dropped back with me and I followed him back into town drafting behind him. That was much appreciated, thank you!

What a great learning experience. Thanks to everyone for sharing their tips. I’ll be doing this again. But I’ll need to do some more hill training first. And I’ll push myself harder on the flats. And yes, no saddlebag and rear carrier next time! Going on the group ride was eye opening: this was the ‘recovery’ ride as well. I am almost frightened to think how much power is required to keep up with the group on their Saturday rides!

Still smiling at the halfway mark of the group ride

Still smiling at the halfway mark of the group ride

Improvised Tragedy Review (Fringe August 27)

Before Paying Melpomene’s Price is self-published, I thought I should improve my ‘street cred’. There’s only one way to do that: go see more theatre. Yes: see more theatre instead of read more theatre. I’ve become an ‘armchair critic’. Sort of like ‘armchair historians’ or ‘armchair archaeologists’: they prefer to do things in the comfort of their own homes rather than going out and getting their fingers dirty. Oh yes, are the quotation marks around the slang terms (‘street cred’) driving you crazy? Yes, all the styleguides say not to use them like that! Ah, I am a bad man!

Well, what do you know?–when I was thinking about going to see a show, this sign on a lamppost jumped out of nowhere:

Improvised Theatre Poster

Improvised Theatre Poster

Hmmm. Nice poster! Slightly detached look. The look of distance, perhaps. All black (well, it’s black and white). Wearing sackcloth. They must be either philosophers or characters in a tragedy!

But this isn’t any tragedy. This is Improvised Tragedy. And Improvised Tragedy was playing tonight. It was meant to be. I could see a strange show and improve my credibility. Who knew that tragedy could be improvised? Tragedy turns into comedy easily enough (think Gloucester jumping off the white cliffs of Dover in Lear). It would be interesting to see if Improvised Tragedy could maintain the tension of tragedy. What is more, an improvised tragedy would probably reduce tragedy done to the bare bones. An x-ray vision of tragedy. An x-ray vision of tragedy is just what I wanted to see. The question in my mind: will their version of tragedy conform with mine? It looks like from their blurb that the writers of this piece are also into the philosophy of tragedy:

‘Tragedy’ claims that whatever the disaster is, the disaster is exceptional. Lightning Theatre’s The Improvised Tragedy is both looking though the past at the history of the art of dramatic tragedy, and a progression for dramatic improvisation and the future of the art of tragedy. Together with your help we will discover what it’s like to say yes to life even in its strangest and most painful episodes.

The Improvised Tragedy

The Improvised Tragedy is written and performed by Lightning Theatre. The show is part of Victoria’s Fringe Festival, 11 days of unjuried contemporary plays at 11 different venues spread across town. Lottery determines who takes part. Experimental madness! A good chance to see up and coming artists perform.

The show played at the Roxy. Tickets were $11 and you also needed a $6 Fringe Button to get in. The Fringe Button gets you in all the shows. The $11 goes to the artists. The $6 probably goes to the venue. On opening night, the crowd was 28 strong, translating into proceeds of $308. The stage forces consisted of 3 actors, 1 musician on keyboard and a wind instrument, and a lighting tech. That works out to be $61.60 for a day’s work for each. The people selling / collecting tickets were Fringe volunteers. If the proceeds from the Fringe button goes to the venue (I think it must go into a pot which is distributed in the end somehow), the Roxy would have gotten $66 to open the doors that night. Good thing there are corporate sponsors. A raucous university crowd in attendance tonight.

By the way, I chatted with the actors before the show. That’s the nice thing about Fringe shows: audience and actors can interact. One of the actors was performing with a fresh (couple of hours old) sling on his right hand: he was riding his bike and got right hooked by a car that afternoon. Kudos to him for performing that night. Hey, as they say, ‘the show must go on’!

Improvised?

At the beginning of the show, the three actors ask the audience for various words. The winning selections were: bike, metamorphosis, and … can’t remember the third word! So, in the space of 50 minutes, they did three tragic skits based on the three words. There are spoilers below, but since every show should be different (it’s improv), brave readers read on! But I would imagine that they must have some kind of skeleton they work from…

The first tragedy is about a cyclist. He’s competitive but can’t quite win. A friend introduces him to doping. He starts winning. But turns into a horrible human being. Sort of like Lance Armstrong.

The second tragedy is about an unemployed hobo. He gets the job offer of a lifetime: work one day, decide yourself how much you want to be paid. But in that one day, anything goes. It turns out the employer steals his health and youth. It reminded me of Dorian Grey. But from a different perspective.

The third tragedy was about a stutterer and a gimp. He has the chance to try miracle cure. It works. But there are side effects: he becomes like an animal. He is rejected from society. It’s sort of like what happens to a Marvel comic villain.

The Idea of Tragedy

Interesting: in each of the three skits the hero is tempted (winning, job, and cure). He makes a wager (friends, health, and side effects). He rolls the dice. And pays the price. The x-ray vision of tragedy by the Lightning Theatre reduces tragedy to a sort of gambling instinct. I like it. This is tragedy distilled!

And yes, there were guffaws plenty from the audience. This wasn’t any shortcoming of the production: the actors did a great job. It has more to do with the nature of tragedy and comedy. It’s a thin line between the tragic and the comic. You know what they say: ‘When I get a papercut it’s a tragedy; when you fall into an open sewer and die it’s a comedy’. Who was that–Mel Brooks perhaps?

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I am watching others who are Doing Melpomene’s Work.

The Elements of Style – Strunk & White

Brief digression: a BIG thank you to everyone who responded to Monday’s post! Beta readers are going to make Paying Melpomene’s Price more accessible, clearer, and more fun to read. To those of you on the fence: join in the fun! There’s no commitment: do as little or as much as you please! I’m looking for feedback, comments, suggestions… It’s good to be writing for an audience again; for too long I’ve been writing for myself. Even knowing that the text will be beta read forces me to think more in terms of the reader. That is a good thing. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White is the shortest and most frequently recommended of all styleguides. The body of the text weighs in at 85 pages. With the forward, introduction, glossary, afterword, and index, it is still a lean 123 pages. I have been meaning to read it for a long time. They say classics are books that everyone wishes they have read but no one wants to read. Well, The Elements of Style is definitely a classic. I am glad to have finally read it. I should have done so earlier. Better late than never.

Why would such a short book require two authors? It turns out that Strunk (1869-1946) was an English professor at Cornell. He wrote The Elements of Style to distribute to students. White was one of Strunk’s students in 1919. In 1956, seeing a need for such a book, White published it. He expanded Strunk’s original 43 pages and added an introduction and a concluding chapter (‘An Approach to Style’). That is the reason the book has two authors.

Back Blurb

Making ‘every word tell’ is what The Elements of Style is all about. This famous manual, now in a fourth edition, has conveyed the principles of plain English style to millions of readers. It is probably the only style manual ever to appear on the best seller lists.

Whether you write letters, term papers, or novels, the ‘little book’, as it has come to be called, can help you communicate more effectively. It will show you how to cut deadwood out of your sentences; enliven your prose with the active voice; put statements in a positive form; approach style by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

The original ‘little’ book was written by William Strunk, Jr., late professor of English at Cornell, for use by his students. Years later, one of the most illustrious of those students, E.B. White, prepared an edition of the book for the general public, revising the original and contributing a final chapter of his own that sought to lead the reader beyond mere correctness toward distinction in English style.

This Fourth Edition includes a new glossary of grammatical terms. In addition, the book has been revised to update many of the references in examples and to reflect contemporary usage. These changes help make the ‘little’ book even more accessible to new generations of readers and writers.

The Eureka Moment

Believe it or not, it wasn’t what Strunk had to say but what White had to say in the final chapter that was the eureka moment. What Strunk lays out in the main body of the text is good. For example, one thing that’s always been on my mind is the difference between that and which. Here is how Strunk clarifies the difference between the two:

That is the the defining, or restrictive, pronoun, which the non defining, or nonrestrictive.

The lawn mower that is broken is in the garage. (Tells which one)

The lawn mower, which is broken, is in the garage. (Adds a fact about the only mower in question.)

The use of which for that is common in written and spoken language (‘Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass’.) Occasionally which seems preferable to that, as in the sentence from the Bible. But it would be a convenience to all if these two pronouns were used with precision. Careful writers, watchful for small conveniences, go which-hunting, remove the defining whiches, and by so doing improve their work.

That is pretty good, but not the eureka moment. The eureka moment is in White’s final chapter on style:

With some writers, style not only reveals the spirit of the man but reveals his identity, as surely as would his fingerprints. Here, following, are two brief passages from the works of two American novelists. The subject in each case is languor. In both, the words used are ordinary, and there is nothing eccentric about the construction.

He did not still fell weak, he was merely luxuriating in that supremely gutful lassitude of convalescence in which time, hurry, doing, did not exist, the accumulating seconds and minutes and hours to which in its well state the body is slave both waking and sleeping, now reversed and time now the lip-server and mendicant to the body’s pleasure instead of the body thrall to time’s headlong course

Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy himself. It was too hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito. He would go to sleep while he waited.

Anyone acquainted with Faulkner and Hemingway will have recognized them in these passages and perceived which is which. How different are their languors!

Or take two American poets, stopping at evening. One stops by woods, the other by laughing flesh.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

…

I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,

To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing,

laughing flesh is enough…

Because of the characteristic styles, there is little question about identity here, and if the situations were revered, with Whitman stopping by woods and Frost by laughing flesh (not one of his regularly scheduled stops), the reader would know who was who.

It dawned on me: no one would mistake Faulkner for Hemingway or Frost for Whitman. In the above passages, there is nothing bombastic in the style: in Hemingway’s case it is even sort of mundane (e.g. ‘Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito’). But yet they are all great writers. The eureka moment for me was that style does not come from trying to do something fancy. Style comes from within. It is in every word we write.

Style is sort of like clothing. One can wear a suit jacket or a t-shirt. One can wear a dress or a blouse. There is style in both. Those with the best style don’t do anything pretentious with clothing. They wear clothing that fits the body. Not too tight, not too loose. Colour is nice. But not too bright and not too subdued. They choose colours to fit the occasion. There are winter colours and summer colours. There is no use in making clothing bombastic, loud, or pretentious: that is not style. Style comes from within. It is probably the way we carry ourselves in the clothing. Words are sort of like that: they are the things we dress up our thoughts with.

What’s the takeaway from all this? First, read The Elements of Style. It is a nice short book. The way books ought to be. Second. When writing, don’t worry about style. It’s everywhere. It’s part of you. It is you. You don’t have to think about style to write with style. But do think about finding the words that fit just as you would find clothes that fit. And by fit I mean both the body and the occasion. Using a foreign word, for example, is like wearing the latest Spanish cut. And so on.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I am Doing Melpomene’s Work in style.

Get Your Free Copy of Paying Melpomene’s Price

Wanted: Beta Readers

Any beta readers out there? For your time and helpful suggestions, you will receive a signed copy of Paying Melpomene’s Price: Tragedy and the Risk Theatre. What is more, beta readers will be individually acknowledged in the published version: I realize your time is valuable. C’mon, give it a go and take part in this happy and worthy cause!

As assiduous readers will recall, the first draft of Paying Melpomene’s Price is complete. The internal process of rewriting and editing started in early August. I am looking for some much needed feedback as I rewrite and edit before sending the manuscript out to the copy editors, structural editors, proofreaders, etc., next year. You see, the ideas in Paying Melpomene’s Price have been with me so long that they just make sense. I’m convinced. But convincing me is like preaching to the choir. I’m reaching out for different perspectives.

What’s Involved for Beta Readers

There’s a preface and eight chapters. Each chapter is about 15 pages. At the rate I’m going, I’m editing/rewriting a chapter a month. This is what I’m thinking: each month I’ll release a chapter. To do a cursory read and make some notes takes roughly two hours. To write out the notes in an email takes another couple of hours (some may be faster). So its a half a day per month for nine months, give or take.

The nice thing is, the heavy lifting of fact checking, close reading, and proofreading will be done at a later stage. Right now, the thing that interests me the most is whether things make sense. These are the sorts of questions I have for beta readers: where is the text clear? Where is it unclear? What are some of the things I do well (because I need to do more of it!). What are some of the things you wish I did less of?

Beta Reader Qualifications

The book is on literary theory and theatre. But this doesn’t mean that beta readers have to be experts in these fields (though experts are welcome!). In some ways, it even helps out more when beta readers approach the text from a nonspecialist perspective: I want the arguments to appeal to broad segments of the population. I want it to be accessible to students, academics, dramatists, literary theorists, and people just interested in theatre or literary theory. I believe it’s possible to write something simple and broadly appealing at the same time. That’s where the feedback from beta readers is invaluable. Is it something you would enjoy reading (if you were not beta reading)?

So, there are no qualifications for beta readers! If you want to contribute to the idea of tragedy as the risk theatre or just to be a beta reader, give it a whirl!

Back Blurb for Paying Melpomene’s Price

The back blurb is an ongoing composition. Here it is as it stands right now. It’ll give you an idea of whether Paying Melpomene’s Price is something you want to beta read:

YOU CAN’T BE A HERO IF YOU GOT NOTHING TO LOSE

Tragedy is a high stakes game where gamblers stake the milk of human kindness for a crown (Macbeth), the immortal soul for mortal glory (Dr. Faustus), or happiness for distinction (The Master Builder). By playing the game, heroes expose themselves to risk: a dead man’s hand or a queen of spades lurks in the cards. This is the idea of the risk theatre.

Paying Melpomene’s Price is about the risk theatre. The risk theatre sells heroes its benefits at a dear cost. Oedipus saves Thebes, but pays the price in doing so. Because relief is purchased by exile, love is purchased by blood, and power comes at the cost of the soul, tragedy is a valuing mechanism. It assigns a tangible value to intangible human qualities: the milk of human kindness may be exchanged for a crown. In an increasingly monetized world, tragedy restores value to humanity because its transactions are not measured in dollars and cents, but blood, sweat, and tears.

This book is written for students of tragic art theory looking for a philosophy of tragedy that celebrates the innate value of life. It is also written with dramatists in mind: in these pages is a neoclassical working model of drama. With its template, the dramatist can bring the idea of risk theatre to the stage. It is also written for those dismayed in the monetization of all things: the risk theatre puts the human back in humanity.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and today I’m looking for beta readers interested in Doing Melpomene’s Work.