Barrag

[Erkhyan]

I've just been sent a test package by the translator job company. It was two English texts to translate into French, 60 minutes each. Well, I made them BOTH in less than 60 minutes. I needed to complete a typing speed test too, which gave me an average of 42 words per minute. If that satisfies them, then I'll be requested for an interview.

They better give me a chance, because the only other place that sent me a job interview looked like one of those stereotypical chinese stadium-sized factories, except with computers instead of sewing machines (long commute, wonky hours and please share your office space with over 500 other employees)

[Erkhyan]

Back from another job interview. I stammered. A lot. I always stammer when I speak and forget to speak s-l-o-w-l-y and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y. It's a bit annoying, you know — family makes fun of it, and sometimes (like today) it even makes me uncomfortable in more serious situations!

I think what makes me stammer is the same reason why I overedit when I write, whatever reason it is.

[Chromium Steel]

* Walks in to the pub for the first time. Looks around and smiles to see a interesting crowd. Is slightly annoyed that he can't get a jug of beer so has to make do with a stubby of pale-ale instead. *

I couldn't help but over-hear [read] your last comment Erkhyan. While it's not my place to guess what could be the causes of your two issues, I can offer some advice from my own experances.

I too have suffered from fairly bad speech impediments. One trick that a therapist taught me was to use tonal shifting. Try speaking in a octave or two lower or higher than your natural voice. It seems to 'fool' the speech centres of the brain in to thinking that you are singing. Because singing uses different synaptic paths to conventional speech, it can often avoid the areas that are causing the problem. (It's also the reason why most singers accents are different when singing to when speaking.) Singing will naturally slow your speaking speed down too for the same reasons.

In my own experience, the best way to avoid over-editing a work is to take time away from it. Like you I use to over-edit my work like crazy because of my dyslexia. I found that if after I finished a draft, I left it for a couple of weeks (or longer) while working on other material; when I did edit it I found that I saw it with fresh eyes and could more effectively edit it.

Anyway cheers, mates. It's great to be here.

[Erkhyan]

Well hello Chromium, welcome aboard!

Actually, I meant that my problem comes from my mind working way faster than either my mouth or my fingers. Which leads to one idea already either changed or forgotten in my head before I've had time to voice/write it... It leads to lots of slips of the tongue when speaking, and a tendency to erase one paragraph of text for each two written...

[Chromium Steel]

Ah, that would've been my second guess. Well colour my spherical head pink in embarrassment.
*Takes a long draft of ale to cover the social gaff.*

My advice on the editing still stands though. It's better to walk away from a work for a while than to work on it on the heat of the moment. Reading it with 'new eyes' is always produces a better final product in my mind. That and remembering that you can 'over-egg' any work , if you pardon the cooking term. Sometimes it's better to get on with creating the next piece than hunting out that last flaw. (Most readers forgive the occasional minor flaw in a work if its worth reading in the first place.)

Hum - Another person with an over-clocked mind. There tends to be a lot of them in the artistic profession/places like this. Raises the philosophical question: is an over-active mind necessary to be a creative person or does being a creative person result in an over-active mind?

*Grabs another beer and contemplates the question in the rising bubbles of C02*

[Erkhyan]

A question worth asking, indeed.

To clarify on my over-editing: I don't usually do it after writing. I do it WHILE writing. Say, for example, my mind says "character A should do action B then C, then D". By the time I've written actions B and C, I have another idea involving "action E"... that makes "action C" irrelevant. So everything written about Action C goes down the drain before I can continue with action E...

*sips a rum'n'coca*

Hope that made sense anyway...

[Quinn Yellowfox]

Hum - Another person with an over-clocked mind. There tends to be a lot of them in the artistic profession/places like this. Raises the philosophical question: is an over-active mind necessary to be a creative person or does being a creative person result in an over-active mind?

*Points CS to beer tap and mugs*

I think overclocked minds are the norm, amongst writers at least. I don't know if that crosses over to other arts. It may be why so many writers also drink a lot...it shuts off the voices. *Spots ice block in the freezer and begins to carve a serpentine groove in it's surface*

I actually write best with a digital voice recorder because I can't keep up with the ideas while typing. It's also how I get past the over-editing thing.

*Blows dust off a bottle of Southern Comfort*

I think you can be very creative without an over active mind if you possess focus.

*Smiles* Ice shots anyone?

(Sorry I haven't been around as much as I like to. To those I've made promises, I haven't forgotten. RL sucks sometimes...not in a good way.)

[Chromium Steel]

Yes I did see the taps and mugs Quinn but I didn't recognised any of the brands. (That's why I went for the stubby [350-ish ml bottle.]) Then again, this is a metaphysical pub; so if I asked for a Speights Old Dark, Mac's Rockhopper, or a Monteiths Black, it would be no problem to pour me a handle [mug] or a [1l] jug, would it

*Smiles* Ice shots anyone?

Is that a challenge? Be wary of what you ask dear fox. You are talking to a safety symbol figure that has done a swap-a-crate (12 x 1.5l bottles of proper beer), a baking [cookie] tray of vodka jelly shots, and finished of the night playing maxie's downing straight shots of 20% peppermint schnapps and survived without lasting brain damage. (Body-wise was a different story.) In all seriousness I'll stick to sipping my beer, I've outgrown the kiwi tradition of getting rats-assed on the weekends.

I think over[-]clocked minds are the norm, amongst writers at least. I don't know if that crosses over to other arts. It may be why so many writers also drink a lot...it shuts off the voices. [...] I think you can be very creative without an over active mind if you possess focus.

I believe that it does apply to all creative activities. I use to know a Punk song writer, and she would have these periods of being 'in the zone' and produce this huge amount of work. I think that when you 'become' a creative, it becomes like an addiction. You have to do it constantly or you start to have withdrawal symptoms. Maybe that is why we writers suffer from the voices in the head, maybe it's the same delirium that drug addicts have. Food for thought, huh.

I'm not so sure about the creativity though pure focus. I've known people like that, and well, what they produce I couldn't really call art. Don't get me wrong, the work was incredibly technically proficient, but you could just feel that there was something missing. A spark perhaps. A touch of madness. Maybe the old truism applies here: `Genius is just madness from a different perspective.'

Sorry about putting my foot in it again Erkhyan. *Sigh* The editing while writing can be a real 'bastich' to deal with. Maybe you should try Quinns method, it's probably more suitable than what I've suggested.

(You Americans do many great things, but IMOHO beer is not one of them. My honest opinion about them is not suitable for general audiences, but I'm glad that our own local varieties take after the European traditions.)

[Altivo]

There is plenty of good beer in America, it just isn't put out by the big corporate producers. You have to hunt for it in local places, and it's usually available in only small quantities so of course very little of it gets out of the country. If you've been exposed only to the mass produced swill, then I agree, it's undrinkable.

I generally prefer wine, but have been quite impressed with some of the locally produced and locally distributed beers.

[IsaacCoyote]

A somewhat younger looking coyote, maybe early twenties, pokes his head in. He looks hesitant to enter, yet at the same time hesitant to leave.

"Don't mean to be intruding here, but it looked like something was going on."

[tempest]

Sure it is. Hop in

Regarding Erk's problem, may I suggest a method? Don't worry about the illogical loose ends or unexplained actions; just write, and let your subconsciousness crumb the ongoing problems. Leave the flaw as it is; in following chapters you'll think of a solution to patch the plot. If you've got no ideas, force a character to do something random. Hey, I do it all the time. It's the thrill of wriggling through the already written and devising a right way through the story's maze. The art of making the actions appear like YOU wanted it that way, not the circumstances.

And for the beer, hey, I was in a brewery, far north, and heard a story I couldn't 100% confirm. A techie said that they use specific brand of rats to speed up the corn fermentation process. Apparently, they would import a bunch of rodents whose saliva contain and sustain a special bacteria or fungi, and they let the rats into the silo to chew the corn, whole day long, then they mix the mould-infested corn to speed up the fermentation. Dunno if it's just an urban legend. It does remind me of kuchikami-no method of sake preparation, don't you think so?

[IsaacCoyote]

The coyote pushes in walking in a bit, but not sitting yet.

"I actually had a story I wrote a while back where I had two characters that had a major problem, and I had no idea how to fix it. One died without any real reason, but he needed to die... the other had a very unclear background that didn't make sense in my head as I wrote it... I just pressed on anyway, and by the time I finished writing, the two characters became the same character. By having the first character fake his death and pretend to be someone else, he became the second character and it fixed both problems... caught me by surprise too, and I'm the writer!"

The coyote smiles sheepishly.

"So, sometimes it's good to just press on. If problems don't fix themselves by the end, that's what editing is for.... right?"

[k9k]

*pokes head up from laptop* my two cents for what they be worth!
first, I concur about the hyper manic mind, ADHD out the wazoo and thats with meds
2nd, anyone else find they have depression issues/generally screwy in the head?
and 3rd, I know what you mean Isaac, I plan one thing but when I am done writing, its a totally different ending. And I agree with the voices and withdrawl, I didn't write for a long time and it made my head spin, and I start thinking how so and so would act, not how I would write it!

[Chromium Steel]

There is plenty of good beer in America, it just isn't put out by the big corporate producers. [...] If you've been exposed only to the mass produced swill, then I agree, it's undrinkable. I generally prefer wine, but have been quite impressed with some of the locally produced and locally distributed beers.

That's so true, the best stuff is usually only available to the locals who are in the know; kind'a like Fur Rag. * Knowing grin *

I guess that it's become especially bad for us in NZ over the last couple of years because we have only just been 'discovered' by a lot of American companies. I'm not saying that what is being brought in is bad, it's just that they seem not to understand that our tastes are radically different to other countries. In god's name why do they put palm oil and corn sucrose in chocolate! When a local iconic brand tried to do it, the backlash was so massive, that it made prime time news and forced them to do a back-down and recall. (Not that it helped in the end, it's now be taken over by Kraft so I fully expect their stuff to be either run into the ground or be turned to crud.)

Oh and if you do get the chance Altivo, give kiwi wines a go. Thanks to our incredibility varied soils and valley sized micro-climates, neighbouring vineyards can have wildly differently tastes/bouquets. I think that you will be pleasantly surprised

Apparently, they would import a bunch of rodents whose saliva contain and sustain a special bacteria or fungi, and they let the rats into the silo to chew the corn, whole day long, then they mix the mould-infested corn to speed up the fermentation. Dunno if it's just an urban legend.

I think that's classic urban legend, like any health authority allow that to happen. Having said that, I do know that some breweries do use special moulds in second stage brewing to add flavours. I wouldn't be at all surprised that they use a manufactured version of the rat saliva analogue to support it. I know it sounds odd, but once upon a time, they use to put newts in beer barrels to aid fermentation; hence the phrase 'drunk as a newt.'

As for my suggestion of creativity = madness = addiction; I have one small addition to the theory. Once upon a time I was a serious game addict. Many's a time I would start playing after school and would only stop when I had to leave for school the next day. Just the other day I walked in to a game store, looked at what was available and didn't give a toss. Why play someone else's creation, when the buzz of making my own is so much more.

* Sits back and takes another draft of his cold one, and waits to hear what others have to say *

[Quinn Yellowfox]

Wow, the bar is hoppin' again. Where should I start?

*Pours a shot of Southern Comfort into ice trough and races around to catch it in muzzle. Smiles then coughs.* 100 proof?

Don't worry about speaking up around here Isaac. If you are uncertain about it, say or do something silly. *Points to sign that reads: "The proprietors are not responsible for personal damage caused by ceiling fan interactions. Ride at your own risk."* 'Tivo had to put that up because of me, but it was a heck of a party!

In fact Isaac, you just solidified yourself as a writer. We all have the same experiences. Characters do things for no apparrent reason and it comes back a couple chapters later as very important. You wouldn't believe how pivital a little piece of fluff can become sometimes. Don't be afraid to talk to your characters too. Whenever I get stuck on a story, they usually have the answer. Often it's because I've asked them to do something that was out of character. In Wildlands, Lydia actually told me it was her time to die and asked me to write it so her son could be with her. It propelled a huge conflict and drove the rest of the story. (Im not sure if I ever posted that)

*Whispers* The voices...they be real. I know people who wear blue tooth devices in their ear so they can talk to them without being thought odd.

Regarding depression, ADD and the rest..I am totally ADD and dyslexic. It gives a great perspective on things. I once saw a parody of The Raven as it would have been written if Poe had Prozac. I think it was called Hello Blackbird, or something like that. It was so lame but funny.  

And CS, I think the palm oil is in chocolate so heat doesn't make it turn white and it ships better. Tastes like wax though. I remember the chocolates in Belgium. They had to be refrigerated because they had fresh egg and cream. Naturally, the exports aren't as good.

Here in the desert, the Mexicans love to drink light beer with clam juice and tobasco. I can't say I've tried it, but some summer day maybe I'll give it a chance.