Title Goes Here · 4:26am Jan 15th, 2021
“So, Biscuit,” said nobody in particular, “how’s 2021 been going so far?”
And we had a whole six days without incident, too.
Work has been interesting thus far. I’m semi-tasked with herding two new guys idiots,* and my manager’s been in fine form due to him messing up his back. Remember when he lost a work order that I literally put on the desk in front of him (and said incident prompted a story)? He’s back at that level. Today, he asked one of the new guys idiots to pull in an Astro van and see which part of the hood latch needed to be replaced. Yesterday, I told him which part of the hood latch needed to be replaced, and apparently he forgot. I took a picture this time, so if he forgets again, I can show it to him.
I also ordered a ream of pink paper because he doesn’t like printing work orders, so I thought that me handing him home-made work orders on pink paper might inspire him to actually do it, thereby avoiding a pile of pink paper on his desk. That hasn’t worked, so when that ream of paper runs out, I’m going to order pinker paper, and if that doesn’t work I have another idea.
Speaking of which, I also have a few things I need to address with him, although I’m trying to think of a way to do it without being condescending or confrontational. For all y’all reading this, it’s okay to say ‘I don’t know,’ or ‘I don’t remember.’ He’s got trouble with that, and sometimes I ask him a question, he gives me an answer, and it’s wrong, and I start to pull the rack and pinion out of a Chrysler 300 for no reason other than either his memory’s faulty, or he couldn’t admit that he’d never pulled the front driveshaft out of a Chrysler 300.
And since I’m on the subject of complaining about my manager, twice this year so far he’s left to do things, leaving me in charge with talking to customers and answering the phone, and when a customer’s changed her mind, he gets irate at me. Last time I asked him if he was going to object with me telling him what people had said on phone calls and he claimed he wasn’t.
But enough about me complaining about work!
Earlier this year or maybe it was last year, I can’t remember, I was scrolling through Facebook as one does, and I came upon a gem of wisdom (as one rarely does).
I won’t tell you what it was just yet, ‘cause you know how I like to lead you on. That’s called foreshadowing or padding for content depending on the context. You decide!
As I may or may not have mentioned in a blog post before (and as you may or may not know), there’s two principle methods of writing. One’s the deliberate plotting method, where there are flowcharts and outlines and character sheets and I really don’t know what else because I subscribe to the other school which is called ‘discovery writing’ or ‘pantsing’ (as in, ‘flying by the seat of your pants’), where I come up with an idea and/or a main character and start writing and see what happens.
You can tell the two styles apart because one has an author who was genuinely surprised with what their characters got up to and the other doesn’t.
Anyway, that somehow came up in a PM thread with another well-known author in the fandom, who doesn’t do discovery writing, who I assume finds the process both anxiety-inducing and unknowable, and who mentioned that he should maybe practice at it.
But should he?
Like, don’t get me wrong, getting new skills is never a bad thing. There are some days where I wish I’d had the foresight to come up with an actual outline, rather than this basic idea:
Pony hobo
Hides in the underside of a bridge
Must be a pegasus
And then from there, let’s explore the who, the where, the why. I sure don’t know; ‘because she can’ might be all you get. Let’s be honest, sometimes that’s the only justification people can give for why they do what they do, so. . . .
I’m not just padding for content here**; some of us do think that we ought to try other things. Branch out. Not be typecast. Heaven knows I’ve done it a time or two, but here’s the thing, and here’s where we get back to the nugget of wisdom I found on Facebook: nobody ever said to Dorothy Sayers, “Yeah, your murder mysteries are pretty good, but have you ever considered writing romance novels?”
<here’s where I’d post a screenshot of the actual tweet (or reddit?) if I could be bothered>
A lot of readers follow an author because of what they want to see. Like, get your minds away from internet content for a moment and think about a bookstore (for millennials, that’s a musty-smelling place with rows upon rows of shelves like a grocery store except that all those shelves have books on them [for zoomers, that’s like an e-book, but with words printed in ink, on paper]).*** Sure, y’all explored the genres that interested you the most, but you also explored the authors who interested you the most, and that was because of what they wrote, not their name.
And maybe some of us confuse a rut with a niche. Not the readers, no, they know what they want. I mean us, the writers, maybe we write a lot of things that are kinda the same because that’s what we like, and maybe we’ve got a lot of followers (or not so many) who read those things because that’s what they like, and maybe we should do what we like to do because we like to do it and maybe that’s good enough.
Unrelated,**** but it happened to be the tab that was open during this last section so I dunno
Do some of us beat ourselves up and feel like we ought to try new skills when maybe we should be happy with where we are? Are there artists reading my blog who are perhaps great at pen-and-ink but don’t know tablets or Adobe Flash or whatever the kids are doing these days? Maybe marble busts? Like, yeah, that’s a great picture you got there but have you ever considered working in stone instead of with a pen on paper? How about chefs? Restaurants? Y’all go to McDonald’s and then leave disappointed ‘cause they still haven’t got proper Ramen on the menu, or visit Panda Express and wonder why they’re lacking when it comes to Tex-Mex food? Of course you don’t. We all ought to pick something we’re good at and which we like doing and we ought to stick to that.*****
#diasweetes, #weapons-grade cute
I’m going back to tangentially work-related for just a moment. Yesterday (or today, depending on when I publish), my manger got all frisky with one of our new guys because he had the Audacity to have Someone Else work on his Truck (random caps are random). He’s a Mechanic, darn it, and he Ought to Fix his Own Truck.
I mentioned to my manager that he paid someone else to put on his (my manger’s) tattoos, when all he needed was some India ink and a sharp needle. And while that was maybe a silly comparison, we all know that do-it-yourself root canals aren’t as simple as they sound****** and we also know I’ve got the drawing skills of a turnip, my manager also apparently is incapable of making coffee or lunch, since he outsources both. Also today (q.v.) I taught him how ‘print to PDF’ works in late-model Microsofts, and tomorrow I’ve been volunteered to put a Lock-n-Stitch insert into that same new guy’s F150 with a Triton because:
A: the new guy doesn’t know how
B: the manager doesn’t know how but won’t admit it
C: we’re really slow at the shop and I have nothing to work on
D: did I mention yesterday the manager questioned my expertise (such as it is) with 5.4L Triton motors and spark plugs ejected from the same, and now that everything I’ve said (thus far) has been proven to be correct, choose B.
E: all of the above, except C
One of the YouTubers I watch on occasion is Beau of the Fifth Column.******* [protip: y’all should have read the footnotes before commenting; I’d say ‘yes, you know who you are,’ but those of you who did and didn’t, you don’t know who you are] His usual outro is “Anyway, it’s just a thought,” and to be honest, I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Footnotes!
*So true story, the owner asked how the new guy was (that was when we had only one new idiot), and I said, “I don’t know how it’s possible, but I think he gets dumber every day.” Several months on, I stand by that statement.
**I’m totally padding for content here
***
****OR IS IT
*****odds of author sticking to his own advice: 0/100
*******six stars is a new academy record
*******in this case, not political (although a lot of y’all know where I stand); I’m specifically addressing his outro.
Also, if you’re thinking of getting political, know that I’ve still got an angry batpony ready to go.
Only thing I can say at this moment is, Viva la Presedente.
Yes I’m playing Tropico Mucho Mucho edition, what of it?
Also also what kind of loser comments three times on his own blog post?
<insert appropriate pony image>
5436244
Any kind.
I like to think that, somewhere in the world, there's some Venn overlap between Pantsers and Planners, if only so I can call them Planters.
What with how Beau always starts his videos, there's a non zero chance that if I ever meet him in person, I'll address him as 'Mr. Again'. Which would be even more ironic, as Beau isn't his actual name either. Regardless, he does put out thought provoking perspectives.
Anyhow, glad to hear you've got so much free time at the shop
Shouting into fans is one of life’s precious treasures.
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I got one in front of me right now at work... but I'm too chicken to do it. My co-worker will just think I'm weird(er)
5436244
You okay there Biscuit? You going a bit stir crazy, locked up in that resort? All work and no play?
What are the printouts for?
I am starting to think you are the only reason your place of employment is even able to operate. You should really go into business for yourself. It will hopefully be a lot less of a hassle for you.
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I remember we used to have competitions in Germany between each of the Family Military Apartment Blocks just off post. Movie quotes, book readings, anything to get in front of a fan in the middle of summer because Germany had apparently not yet discovered the glory that was Individual Apartment Air Conditioning/Heating. (Seriously, Steam Radiators were in EVERY room on every floor for all three Apartment Buildings. Ours in the living room burst during winter one year.)
And holy shnikies I just found our old apartment building in Walldorf Germany.
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Proof, most likely...
Ah, sorry about the work difficulties; good luck.
"but those of you who did and didn’t, you don’t know who you are"
...This doesn't seem to be parsing for me, sorry.
(Though I did also read the footnotes before commenting.)
And thanks for commentary and pony pictures. :)
I just came for the adorable pictures and 2 bat ponies adorable
I used to work maintenance at a high-end apartment complex in Temecula, California. Here's how a typical week went:
Manager ( on the radio ): Mark! Apartment twenty needs their garbage disposal replaced!
Me (under a sink fixing another garbage disposal): I can't get to them right now, I'm already working on this one.
Manager: Stop what you're doing and hurry over to twenty! They're really pissed!
Me: Cheryl, that's not my problem. It's first-come, first-served. You know that.
Manager: I'm not going to argue with you! Get over to twenty!!
Me: ....
I should probably mention that particular apartment was rented by tenants who believed with all their sweet, tiny
brainshearts that anyone who worked for the apartment was their personal slaves....I lasted about a year there. Never looked back.
Distinguishing between niches and ruts can be tricky, but I'd argue that experimentation is a good thing. Even if it falls through and you never publish the attempt, you've still learned something about your own capabilities. And if you enjoy the new twist on things, so much the better!
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As it turns out, there is! Although given my rather questionable ability at caring for things that require any semblance of upkeep, attempting to label me as a Planter would most likely involve subjecting the unfortunate term to contortions of logic no innocent word should ever have to endure.
In my case, it thus far has tended to take the form of discovery-writing the overall plan for the story (read: letting research and inspiration feeding-frenzy off each other until I've come up with enough bits and pieces that some subset of them naturally fall into a viable narrative structure) and then discovery-writing my way through the plan in question (read: discovery-writing but I try to nudge the narrative in the general direction of as many of said bits and pieces as I can). Given that I'm usually way too prone to overplanning things, I definitely was not expecting I'd end up as anything but a pure Planner, but in retrospect it feels like it makes sense – I find that the process feels pretty similar to attempting to direct the course of a conversation/game/etc, where any particular plan one might make tends to get immediately derailed by the other parties involved but it's still possible to influence things such that one's overarching goals end up achieved.
Stars?
At least its not Exclamation marks.
Yet.
The woman in that video has superb comedic timing.
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I'm aghast - AGHAST I say - at your use of asterisks. Everyone know that the standard is: *, **, ***, *†, †, †*, according to the sequence * † ‡. (The rare triple dagger is no longer commonly available, as someone decided that fifty footnotes was too many on a page. Very short-sighted, I think that you'll agree.)
(I may or may not have been pulling this out of my rear.)
4mm steel and an engraving laser? Stone tablets and a chisel?
It's not padding if we get a pony pic at the end. What can I say, I'm easily distracted.
Yeah! We want exactly what you wrote last time! But different, because the same will be boring! But not too different, otherwise I won't like it! More of that yellow pony with wings! Like the time you wrote more about the Teal pony! But not like that, because she went on a holiday and things were different, even though we asked you to make her do different things! She didn't even do all the same things we really liked, like stay at home!
Yeah, you might want to check the internet - Flash is kinda dead these days. However, that did work out well for me - one of my clients systems half run on flash, I told them they should upgrade about a year ago for a whole bunch of reasons and nothing happened. I even got to say "I told you so" in email and on the phone with them.
New Year dead as a doornail?
5436346 My son just got moved to Poland for his deployment, and I asked him if it would have just been easier to write 'poland' across the 'germany' signs on the barracks.
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But he's gonna enjoy Poland. It's a beautiful country with a really down to earth people who actually appreciate an American Presence.
Honestly? It probably would be.
5436778 Oh, yes. My g-g-grandparents are from Poland. Of course it used to be Germany, but mobile borders. Something like Gladdsburgh if I remember right.
5436841
My family was mostly Sweden and Ireland, with a little English. Then the other half of the family is English and Japanese (With Japanese being the largest overall contributor.)
5436243
I always preferred Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi!
5436259
And it turns out that there are! From, I’ll admit, a source I didn’t anticipate.
5436263
Wait, you’re telling me people on the internet sometimes don’t use their real names?
He does, and I do like the ‘it’s just a thought,’ as compared to many people who would try to convince you that their point of view is the only correct one.
Yeah, so much free time. I only got fifteen hours of overtime this week. Did get the spark plug in the new guy’s truck, though, so there’s that, and only worked a half-hour late to get it done, as a result of dealing with rusty fuel lines on a Tahoe. Someday I’ll blog about the joys of rust and pressurized pipes—the short version is if you have to touch one thing, you’ll probably have to replace all the things.
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I haven’t done it in years, I think I’m missing out. I’ve got two fans that I could set up to make a weird sort of fanception. . . .
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In a nutshell, they tell us (the techs) what we’re doing on a vehicle. Give us a piece of paper to reference for parts, jobs, VIN [vehicle identification number], etc., and a place to write down what we find. Saved my bacon one time at a dealership; I wrote down that the strut mounts were binding and my service writer didn’t pass that on to the customer who then complained, and when the shop manager yelled at me, I told him it was on the order, he pulled it, and had a new target for his wrath.
Like in a more familiar sense (well, I don’t know what you do or what your life experiences are), it’s the shop equivalent of an order at a restaurant. “This is what the customer wants.” Instead, he likes feeding that information back to the mechanics [the cooks, in this analogy] one dribble at a time, which cuts efficiency IMHO and also sets up mistakes. Like if he says that the customer wants a deluxe burger, and only after it’s prepared and plated mentions that they don’t want mustard on it because they’re deathly allergic to mustard.
5436336
Oh no. No, no no. I ran the shop for a while, and I do not want to do that again; dealing with customers sucks and there are regulations and licenses and having to hire people you can trust to not
things up. Despite my complaints, I’m very happy to not have to deal with any of that. And also the fact that I’m a valued enough employee that I can get away with all manner of weirdness and know I’ve still got job security.
5436351
It’s basically what you’re working on (details like which engine it has, what model year it is, etc.), what you’re supposed to be doing, and what parts you’re supposed to be using. Nothing like figuring out on the fly that Chrysler had two different 2.4L engines in the Sebring, and that they take two different oil filters, when the car’s in the air with the oil drained and you gotta drop it back down to figure out which exact engine it has so you don’t have the oil filter fall off and take out the engine. And trust me, this is the voice of experience talking. Or when you’ve accidentally pulled Auto Zone’s delivery truck into the shop and taken the tires off it before you get informed that it’s the other white Ranger with the keys in it that you’re supposed to be working on.
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Thanks! It’s Friday, and at the end of the day we were back down to a manageable number of dead cars in the parking lot. Two of them need engines, and one of them needs a priest.
The gist of it is that I meant that the people who would see the name “Beau of the Fifth Column” and go on a rampage would have been the ones who didn’t read the footnote; those of you who DID know who they were but DIDN’T read the footnotes DON’T know who they are (because they didn’t read the footnote). Yeah, it’s weirdly worded, but I was half-asleep when I wrote it and can be indulged
You’re welcome!
5436381
Hey, whatever it takes to get readers or just drive-by picture viewers . . . either way, it’s a public service I’m happy to provide.
5436396
I’ve gotten that exact same treatment at some corporate jobs, and I’m sorry, ‘the customer is always right’ doesn’t take into account how dumb customers are. The nice thing about working at a small shop is sometimes we can tell customers what we think about them, and sometimes we can go out of our way to drive them off for unreasonable expectations. You want your car fixed at our shop, it’ll get done when it gets done and not a moment before. Calling and asking why it’s not done yet will introduce delays (I literally once told a customer on the phone that I was working on his car and it was going slowly because I kept getting interrupted by phone calls) and if we don’t like you, next time you go to schedule an appointment, our next available time will be the twelfth of never. Even if the shop’s empty when you pull up, we’re too busy polishing the alignment rack, come back later.
The flipside is if you’re a good, reliable customer, we’ll stay late to fix your car that you dropped off with no appointment because you couldn’t predict that the fuel pump would fail on the morning of the day you were going to go on vacation.
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Eh, Tropico only had room for so many .wav files even with two discs.
It is the best version in my humble and very biased opinion.
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I feel like there’s sort of a sliding scale. I can’t disagree about learning new skills, or at least attempting to learn new skills. About trying and failing—or succeeding, however it pans out. At the same time, I don’t think that there should be a pressure or obligation to step outside of one’s comfort zone; you’re not a failure as a writer if you can’t produce feature-box stories using all the tags on FimFiction, for example. I did grimdark once, it got the reception one would expect, because I’m me it got a larger bias of thoughtful comments than a similar story by another author might have, which I guess is a success, and I came away with the knowledge that I can do it, I hate it, a majority of readers approved of it, and there are better writers for that genre than me, and they’re welcome to it.
Also, as an aside, since you’re you and I know you, I honestly considered couching it in Magic deck building terms, but let’s be honest I peaked at elf decks.
5436444
I’ll be honest, I do some of my stuff that way, too. I feel like you’re more on the planner end of that spectrum and I’m more on the pantser end, but I also often fall into the research rabbit hole and let it inform my writing, it’s just that usually I don’t intend for it and plan it from the outset, I have a vague idea and start working on it and then do the research and work it in in the process. Like, in the soup fic, the broad idea was a steam-era pumping station but with soup, and a lot of the details were researched and added in on the fly; I did just enough research on the front end to have a decent framework and figured that the specifics, such as they were, could come in as needed.
5436509
!
! Oh boy could I abuse that power.
5436529
Oh yeah, 10/10, nailed it.
5436532
Don’t make me dig up old footnoted texts, because I will. We use what we have, and if we’re not lazy, we use the supertext function {I’m lazy) to make them <sup>ed where they belong and I say, sir, that whatever symbol one wants to use is appropriate if it’s referential, be it numbers or wingdings. I have the vast powers of unicode at my fingertips (with some simple googling). I usually use bullets for soft breaks, but they could be shoes and hearts and it could be if one translated the ponish code, they have a secret message . . .
Footnote sequences are a forbidden fruit, and woe betide the author who plumbs their depths. *, **, ***, *†, †, †* is merely the beginning, the rabbit hole runs deep.‡**
Turn back, while you still can.
It’s cromulent, nonetheless.
________________________________________________
‡** Fly, you fools
5436624
Simpler and yet worse for a manly man.
Hey, I’ll take views however I get them.
Yeah, that exactly. Although I’ll be honest, comments aren’t usually as to-the-point as that, but if you read between the lines. . . . Still, gotta give the fans what they want, right?
Also, I’m old, but I’m still hip enough (if that’s what kids these days still say) to know flash is dead. Long live flash!
I wish . . .
The plus side is that I fixed his truck, and I only had a half hour of overtime stacked on top of already overtime to do it. Like to the point where a few hours ago, the owner bought pizza and then paid me (hourly) the cost of said pizza to eat that pizza.
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5436962
I wonder if this has any relation. Maybe he thinks you can just look directly at/annotate directly onto a file.
5436959
You already have the typewriters... cif polc? (I just like how polc sounds, not making a suggestion)
5436982
Ever have a joke in your head that you just can't quite make work, but you tell it anyway? Yeah, I thought it would be funnier than it was to Roman numeralize your asterisks. 
5436244
If you didn't love hearing yourself talk, you wouldn't spend so much time writing.
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"It’s Friday, and at the end of the day we were back down to a manageable number of dead cars in the parking lot."
Ah, good. :)
"Two of them need engines, and one of them needs a priest."
Ah, sorry about that third one, though. :D
"Yeah, it’s weirdly worded, but I was half-asleep when I wrote it and can be indulged
"
Ah, sorry about that, but aye. :)
But, uh...
"would have been the ones who didn’t read the footnote; those of you who DID know who they were but DIDN’T read the footnotes DON’T know who they are (because they didn’t read the footnote)"
...Yeah, I'm still not figuring out who apparently knows what or why, here.
("Well, of course Who knows What and Why; they're all on the same team together, aren't they?" :D)
"The gist of it is that I meant that the people who would see the name “Beau of the Fifth Column” and go on a rampage"
Also possibly part of my confusion is that I'm not sure I'd ever heard of them before you mentioned them here.
"You’re welcome!"
:)
5437034
Well, I don't know how funny you thought it would be, but I recall finding it nice, at least. :)