Timewaster's Guide Archive

I'm already sharing a room with Eric's girlfriend, Heidi, but the more the merrier if Stacy would like to room with us. We'd love to have her.

And Eric? Did Heidi make reservations or do you want me to do that? I was going to do it today, but didn't want to double book us if it's already been done. And yep, I need a ride. Any cars left to ride share?

During the depression my great grandfather abandoned his wife and seven children. Without any way to feed her children, my great grandmother put them all in an orphanage. She felt so despaired at having left her kids in such an awful place, she went back and reclaimed the oldest, Mary.  The rest were all adopted out to various families. My grandfather was adopted by the peterson's. He was seven. The peterson's had no children of their own and since they were getting on in years, they needed someone to work the farm (I actually own the land the farm existed on and have set up my house and a cute little store on it)

They beat my grandfather like he was a worthless work horse and even made jokes about the five dollar bastard horse they bought. He had a nervous breakdown when he was ten and the sheriff told Mr Peterson that if he beat my grandfather any more, they'd end up killing him. So the beatings lessened but didn't cease. My grandfather  (in spite of all this) grew to be a good man.  He was a good husband and a good father. I really think he grew up good because as a small child he'd been raised with love. He ended up having seven kids. A few years after my parents were married, they received a strange phone call from a woman named Mary. She was all grown up and her mother was dying and her mother's only wish was to see the children she gave away all those years ago in the same room together. Mary was trying to find them all.

So on the death bed of my great grandmother, her estranged children gathered, and were together for the first time in decades. She died the next morning. The kids all stayed in touch and were very good friends for the rest of their lives.

It's a sad story and a beautiful story. I've gone several times to write it, but my cousins might not like that very much . . . Maybe someday.

I like the idea of a pen name, but I also like having my own name to avoid confusion.
If an author is changing genres or writing adult novels suddenly when they were writing children's before, a pen name is a nice courtesy to their readers. Janette Rallison uses a pen name for her LDS fiction, but her own name for her national work.
I think short names that fit in nice large letters on the cover are a great idea, and something to consider. My friend, Jeff Savage, writes horror and that's his real name. Lucky dog How cool to writer horror and have a last name like Savage!

When I was young, I wanted the pen name of Alexandria Austen (I was into alliteration and loved Jane Austen) Sadly that name sounds like it belongs on the cover of a bodice ripper. I figure the pen name I've pretty well settled on will work for me since everone calls me Jules, and Hartman is the name my paternal grandfather had before he was adopted as a slave to the people who needed someone to work their farm.  So the name works for me on all levels.

but the simple fact is that we live in an overpopulated country on an overpopulated planet

Actually not entirely accurate. You believe this because you live in Massachusetts.   Drive from your home to the west coast and try telling me the world is overpopulated. I made that trip when I was eighteen and moving to Northboro, MA from Utah. I will spare you the same miserable trip and give you statistical information. If you took every single man woman and child on the earth today and gave them each individually an acre of land, they would fit within the North American continent with  room to spare. The North American Continent is only 16% of the land mass of the world. The world is full and there is enough in resources to support a growing population for many thousands of years. Even landfill sites are reclaimed by the earth and magically transformed into useful land. Never underestimate a world that works.

As far as the rest of the conversation, I enjoy the debate without the mud slinging. I appreciate how diverse the conversation remains without getting ugly. My brother is/was? gay. He brought home his boyfriends all that during his teenage years and into his adulthood. He is now almost forty. We were not raised in a religious home, so that never came into play. I am a Mormon, but I'm a convert so my upbringing is a little different. God was only mentioned in my house when Dad hit his thumb with a hammer. I appreciated Brandon's thoughts on Why Mormonism.  My conversion was one of all those things mentioned: Logic, feelings, common sense, resonance . . . but there were tangible aspects to my conversion as well. 

As an interesting aside, my brother has a girlfriend now. None of us have any idea what happened with the girlfriend, we're entirely baffled by her presence, but we all know he "became" gay, ,he had no prior tendencies . . . he readily admits this. He was on drugs as an early teen. His supplier was an older man who traded drugs for favors, and Robert become caught up in a lifestyle. 

the nurture/nature issue is interesting to me based on his experiences and so I've enjoyed this thread. I personally believe (which means nothing to anyone but me) that we've each been given our weaknesses. I think a lot of our happiness in this world depends upon how we choose to act upon those weaknesses. I come up pretty poorly some days, but i'm hoping to ultimately overcome all my weaknesses. I think the people who experience the most joy are those who manage to gain full control over themselves.  I shudder when I think on the girl I might have been, had it not been for a little self mastery when my weaknesses bared their ugly teeth. I shudder further still at the times I gave in to them.

my computer must hate me . . . no reply received yet. I even checked my deleted files in case my filters determined you were spam. Any chance you'd resend it to me? Thanks and sorry to such a pain!

love that concept. There are lots of possibilities with such a topic. The whole point of dating is to find your perfect compliment . . . to find that one person that completes you in every way. A publisher/author relationship needs to be compatible so that when the newness wears off and they are stuck seeing eachother in their unmentionables and dealing with morning breath, they still like eachother enough to ignore the blemishes and stay together.

To find such a soul mate one needs to ask themselves: what kind of date do I like? Am I the dinner and movie sort of date-the typical, predictable, SAFE evening out? Am I the hockey game and hot dogs kind of date? Or maybe I'm the kind of date that wants an adventure. If I like the predictability of a dinner and movie, I need to be going out with  someone who isn't trying to drag me down black diamond ski runs.

It'll be fun hearing your presentation.

Thank you for the "A Geek Girl's Guide to Lectures on Writing"

I loved it and  completely agree.  At that same conference, I started a short story (which is weird since i haven't written a short since college) The panels were more of the same and I wasn't learning anything . . .  so I wrote.  I still plan on going to these writer's workshops and conferences, because I get to meet like-minded people and that's always valuable. I got to meet Stacer at the conference in question

But I just wanted to say thanks for the insight! I enjoyed reading your guide.

Thanks Shrain! I appreciate the offer of being allowed to play.