Tag: Writing

Paying the fiddler

We are told to avoid clichés. As writers, we are supposed to be original and thought-provoking. I suggest, however  – after over a quarter of a century of devising original sentences to put end to end in original works – that nothing moves a reader more than recognition.

Seeking originality, being inventive, and coming up with a piece of writing that’s totally unique has its drawbacks. It might not be liked. Readers might not understand what you are getting at. They might not see your premise. Where you are coming from might be a place they have never visited, and so not be able to identify. Or identify with. Continue reading “Paying the fiddler”

Good Night, Irene.

Okay, I’ve seen this post a hundred times and I always said, “It’ll never happen to me.” Well, it did. What a feeling … and it is not good.

The computer glowed as I headed out to do some stuff. As usual, I waved goodbye to my electronic friend and off I went. Meanwhile, while I was out enjoying a Friday afternoon in Coral Gables, meeting a friend for happy hour, my computer decides to have its own kind of happy hour.

On arrival back at the homestead, I saw the blinking cursor in the upper left hand corner. Ah—no problem, I thought. This has happened to me a million times. Punching the button, I sat back, waiting for the monster to awaken from its sleep. Nothing—after a few minutes, all I saw was a black screen with that damned cursor blinking at me from the upper left hand corner. Continue reading “Good Night, Irene.”

Ed’s Casual Friday: Get a helmet

We are all writers.

No, I don’t mean everybody, I mean specifically the people likely to be reading this post on Indies Unlimited. I totally don’t think just *everybody* can write, and if I ever had thought such a thing, grading freshman comp papers would have disabused me of the notion. Seriously, some of those kids couldn’t have put together a suicide note with a discernible climax. But I digress… Continue reading “Ed’s Casual Friday: Get a helmet”

No one is entitled to anything….

Okay, I’m stealing the snark queen crown from KS for a bit. Pardon my ranting….

Once upon a time I was the supervisor for a department of a retail computer electronics company which shall remain nameless. One day one of my employees – we’ll call him Dick – came to me in a bit of a snit. It seemed that another employee, John, wasn’t sharing his tools. Well, John was a great employee. In the Army Reserve at the time, he kept his work space neat and clean, his tools maintained and in place. As a consequence, he had the best tools in the department and he usually shared them. He had only one rule – return it the way you found it. Dick had broken that rule. Well, actually he’d broken the tool, and it wasn’t the first time. So John banned him from borrowing his tools. Dick, feeling he’d been treated unfairly, decided to help himself to John’s tools. At which point John went to him and politely asked for the tools back. Military trained, he used please, explained why Dick couldn’t use his tools, and then said thank you. I knew this, because as supervisor I’d been watching. Continue reading “No one is entitled to anything….”