Midweek is as Midweek Does

November 6, 2013November 3, 2013 ~ John W. Howell ~ 22 Comments

Wednesday has arrived once again. There is only a short time left if you need to get a ton of things done by Friday. The bright side says that Friday is viewable from Wednesday. One only has to cross the wasteland known as Thursday to make the golden appointment with the entryway to the weekend. The Golden Entryway to the weekend. I like the phrase as it describes Friday pretty nicely.

Since this is only Wednesday let’s not spent too much of Wednesday’s time on the merits of Friday. Wednesday has some really good points of its own. (It just occurred to me that I am making these days sound as if they are optional occurrences and I am working as an agent in trying to convince you to select them. Even though these days arrive and we are in no position to reject their arrival, I think it is productive to have some nice things to look forward to as they show up.) So here are some nice things about my old pal Wednesday:

No one gets fired on Wednesday. A particular pleasure of management is to reserve the surprise of the pink slip to Friday so that it can be fully enjoyed over the weekend.
When national holidays occur on Wednesday you can elect to tag on two other days in the beginning or after to make the whole thing worth Five days instead of one.
Bosses day usually falls on a Wednesday and gives you the opportunity to make a number of brownie points that will serve you well for the remainder of the year.
A number of bars and clubs have drink specials on Wednesday which can be a great excuse to celebrate the middle of the work week.
Administrative Assistant Day is on a Wednesday
in April of each year and gives you the opportunity to bribe thank your boss’s administrative assistant for all the wonderful and helpful things done for you.
The most DUI arrests take place on a Friday and the least on a Monday. Wednesday is right in the middle so your odds of avoiding a DUI arrest on Wednesday is very good. Your odds are really great if you don’t drink and drive.
Valentine’s day will not be on a Wednesday until sometime after 2016. This means you are safe on Wednesday if you tend to forget.

Can you think of any other good things for a Wednesday? If so why not share them. Here is hoping you have a good balance of the week

Wednesday is as Wednesday Does

October 30, 2013October 27, 2013 ~ John W. Howell ~ 26 Comments

Slow Time in Wrist Watch on Dry Leaf (Photo credit: epSos.de)

Wednesday shows up faster and faster each week. It is quite amazing how that happens. Here we are mid-week and it seems like we just left the weekend. I heard tell by some old folks one time that as you get older time moves faster. I suppose that is true when I think about being a kid waiting for baseball season to start. It looked to me as if it would never get underway when I was growing up.. As an old fart I turn around and the World Series is almost over in what appeared to be a blink of an eye from spring practice. That’s how it goes I guess. Given this train of thought I decided to list some the things that move fast in life and those that move slow. This list is very subjective and I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to take exception to what I perceive to be the timing of these events. Also you may have some of your own so feel free to use the comments section for those. Don’t forget the blog is called Fiction Favorites so don’t be afraid to make things up. I do it all the time.

Here is the list of fast and slow time movers:

Waiting in the rain for a bus, taxi, or car pool ride and you are wearing wool. – Slow Time mover
Preparing for an agent pitch that begins in a half hour and you had four days to work on – Fast Time mover
The time between the last anniversary, birthday, or mother’s day that you forgot and the next – Fast Time mover
The time that the seatbelt light goes off on a flight after you realize the BIG GULP you had with lunch needs to go somewhere. – Slow Time mover
The pay raise that you were promised shows up in your check – Slow Time mover
The extra taxes that you have taken out of your check – Fast Time mover
Time between in law visits – Fast Time mover
The amount of time on the meter where you parked your car – Fast Time mover
The time it takes to get a table after you have been seated in the bar – Slow Time mover
The time it takes to check out of the supermarket in the ten items or less lane – Slow Time mover
April 15^th(Tax day in the US) – Fast time mover
The time spent in the doctor’s office after your appointment time. – Slow Time mover.
The amount of time left for your team to catch up from behind. – Fast Time mover
The amount of time the opponent’s team has to catch up from behind – Slow Time mover
The time between when your airplane takes off after a delay and the time the pilot said you were going to take off after the delay – Slow Time mover
The time between the notification by HR that your bosses boss wants to see you and the time your boss comes into you cube. – Fast Time Mover
The time to lunch when you decided to skip breakfast. – Slow Time mover
The time to dinner when you had no time for lunch – Slow Time mover.
The effects of alcohol on your system when you skipped breakfast, lunch, and dinner. –Fast Time mover.
The trip to Disney World with three kids from the time you leave home until you get there. (hint: “are we there yet?”) – Slowest Time mover

Well you get the idea. Happy Hump Day Y’all.

Reader is as Reader Does

October 23, 2013October 19, 2013 ~ John W. Howell ~ 14 Comments

Engraving of a Reader (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Readers are fundamental to what we do. Without them there would be little reason to spend the long hours propped up to a key board pounding out the words that make a story. It is the words that make a story not the brainstorm that created the concept. So with that in mind I have a question. Do you take care of your readers? I don’t mean do you house and feed them, I am really asking if you actually write for your readers? In writing for your readers do you do everything possible to make certain they are okay as they read what you have written?

You can’t query your readers as they move through your book (unlike the old high school smart assed trick on a long report, “if you have read this far check the box.”) so you must think ahead about pleasing them. How do we do that? (BTW Thanks for asking) Here are five simple things to think about and try as you are writing:

Think about your reader as a real person sitting in the room with you and you are reading your story to them. This will allow you to have personal contact with the reader and if you are a good writer you will be able to detect questions that your reader might have about what you have written.
Don’t leave your reader in the dark about some key points of plot that will help them come to some resolution about what you intended in the story. Nothing is more discouraging for a reader than to have invested their time in a story only to wonder what happened in the end. This can be as simple as a question about the rationale for character actions or as complex as a plot twist that comes out of left field with no preparation.
Think of some of the habits of your reader. If you are writing in a particular genre and that genre has some fast rules, your reader will not expect deviations from those rules. You as an artist may want to deviate from these rules to demonstrate your multi-dimensional talent, but your reader may be left in the dust of the experiment. If there is a question about artistic freedom and genre conventions you should side with the reader. There are a number of break out genres that the reader expects rebelliousness. This would be the more proper place for your grand statement.
Try to understand the demographics of your reader. In this way you can keep your story true to form. Age, sex, income and education all make up who your readers are in life. If your readers are highly educated and more affluent then you can use more sophisticated sentence and plot structures. If your reader is more like the population norm then the writing style should be geared to be most understood by the largest number. You may have the desire to use your story as an educational tool or literary statement, but if your readership cannot understand what you have written, you may lose the interest of a wide segment of readers doing so.
Think about how your readers live and what they want to think about when reading your story. Doing this will allow you to create some amazing scenes that may actually carry your reader away from the mundane and into the special world you have created. In this special world, all the worries and concerns of your reader’s everyday life can be washed away for the time spent reading. If you are able to build a story that transforms the reader even for a few hours you will have won the reader over to a loyalty factor that will last a lifetime.

I hope you find these tips useful. Let me know what you think.

Hump Day is as Hump Day Does

September 18, 2013September 15, 2013 ~ John W. Howell ~ 20 Comments

I don’t know if you have seen the commercial where the camel wanders around an office asking various workers, “What day is it?” Finally one of the staff mumbles, “its Hump Day.” The camel is very happy to be a visible part of what has become the second most important work day of the week. For those of you who defected to Red China during the Korean War and have just come back, let me make sure you know the meaning of Hump Day. Hump Day is the arrival of the day where one has survived two days of work which could be considered the uphill phase of the week. The downhill phase, being the last two days of the week; doesn’t start until Hump Day is over. For the folks who work a traditional Monday through Friday routine, Hump Day is Wednesday. For all others it is the day that separates the beginning of the work week from that downhill slide to the days off time. If you work seven days a week or are a writer this is all theory and really doesn’t exist for you.

What makes Hump Day so special? Well it’s like you are on a journey, you finally get to the point of no return and the next major milestone is the destination. The fact that your destination is closer than your point of departure makes it almost appear as if you will actually get there. How many times have we heard a child ask, “are we there yet?” when the trip is only minutes old. It is the same with the work week. Monday begins the journey to Friday. The destination is Saturday and on Monday it seems like getting there is about as possible as walking to Europe from the United States or vice versa. So when the workers of the world reach Wednesday and they are still viable; the prospect of reaching Friday has an exponential increase in odds. The odds increase so much that the day itself becomes a cause for celebration. It is sort of like celebrating being on a like raft when a ship sinks. You are not completely safe but a hell of a lot safer than when the whole mess started.

Since this is Wednesday I wrote a little Haiku that I hope captures the essence of the feeling for getting this far in the week.

Hump day is a hill,

Successfully climbed after much trial . . .

Coasting down till Friday

Happy Hump Day.