The Mail Crew

This poem gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, and it reinforces my sense of it being an okay thing for me to wait for my Mr. Right. (I'm still the only single, unattached member of our crew.) But then, that last verse might be telling me to...what? I'm not sure. Shake more hands? Look into more eyes? Re-evaluate my expectations -- as more a realist than a dreamer? Thanks for a great poem! Rain

Today we received an email from a very special friend, the first we had heard from him since March. For the first time ever, our friend was not upbeat. We feel certain that he won?t mind our sharing this information. As most of you know, Johnny, aka The Carolina Scribbler (forum member name carolinascribbler), had double bypass surgery on February 23. He was recovering nicely from that surgery when, on April 3, he and his parents were in a car accident. Five days later, on Easter Sunday, Johnny?s dad died as a result of his injuries. Johnny suffered many broken bones, including ribs, hip, wrist, and eye socket. He spent four weeks in traction, and he?s had surgeries for implanting metal plates at various places in his body. He is in a physical rehab facility and his mother is also in rehab, but it a different city. When they are released from rehab, Johnny?s mom will move into his house and his sister will move there to take care of the two of them. Johnny was one of the first friends of The Mail Crew, and he?s always encouraged and supported us. He holds a very special place in our hearts. Johnny wrote that his brain?s left frontal lobe, which controls emotions, received a nasty blow. Partly because of that and because of the entire situation, Johnny is experiencing many emotions, including fear and discouragement. We ask for your thoughts and prayers for Johnny and his mother, and for his sister as she cares for them when they continue their recovery at Johnny?s house. We will post this message at AwesomeDude, DeweyWriter and Codey?s World. Please feel free to spread it to other forums. Thank you, The Mail Crew

Thanks, Sequoyah, for that insight. Saga of the Elizabethton Tarheels is among our favorite tales, along with all of your work. But you knew that. To anyone who isn't yet a Sequoyah fan, we highly recommend the Dude-created Sequoyah's Place site, where you'll find all of Sequoyah's stories and novels. Happy reading! Aaron, for The Mail Crew

Yes, Drake did write "Through Different Eyes" for our site, and he asked us not to send the files to anyone else. He didn't post the story at DrakeTales. He sent us that story in November 2003. In December 2003 he allowed us a holiday-season exclusive on "A Yule Tale" before he posted it at DrakeTales. "A Yule Tale" is still available on our site, on the Stories page. It has received many, many compliments. It's apparently considered to be an outstanding example of the writer's craft. We join many others in wishing Drake well, and we hope to hear from him again. He was a mentor to us during the early days of our website in 2003, but we haven't heard directly from him since 2005. Borrowing Drake's usual sign-off phrase: Be well, my brothers, Aaron, for The Mail Crew

Maybe I am way off base but I see a positive pregnancy test and an abortion pill and a would-be father who is relieved to be free of the responsibility of fatherhood but feeling guilty for being an accessory to the act of ending a life. How far off am I? David -- the straight one of our crew

Yo, Gabe, We saw that on your site and plan to mention it in our next News/Updates post on our site. It's heavy. The link you show in this thread doesn't work for us tho. It shows http:// twice in the address line when we click on it. Later, Eric

This poem is GREAT!! Andy of TMC

My "about to retire" comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek. Yeah, Jan, I do have a fine teacher in Aaron, whose constructive criticism is done in private, not in an open forum. I was shocked and hurt by Graeme's public slamming of my editing, that criticism based on his opinion that I left unchanged something that he perceives to be "an annoying mistake". (I don't see it that way, but we didn't discuss it privately.) And hey, that was just in the first paragraph! (Actually, the second.) Oh, well, moving past that............... Since this thread is in Writers' Workshop rather than Editor's Desk, we think that Graeme is asking for opinions about the concept and content of the story. I'll paste in part of our comments to him from about a week ago, and maybe that will stimulate some discussion: Some of us suspect, though, that some of your readers ... will see the story as too black/white, with no gray, especially in the area of Eric's cheating and Paul and Steve's apparently total rejection of him without a hearing. We wonder if readers might see the black/white swan comparisons in differing ways, even including (among American readers) racial symbolism and stereotyping (young blacks are promiscuous, unfaithful, etc.). And some may see the black swans as the gay ones and the white ones as the more perfect straight ones. Whatever anyone reads into it, it's a great story that will be meaningful to multiple generations. We told Graeme that we think "Black Swans" is his best short-short story to date. Cheers to all, Rain

Graeme, I'm just a beginning editor, and I told you by email that after I finished editing "Black Swans", Aaron saw some things he would have changed that I didn't spot. He has shown me that I did fail to correct some of your "annoying" mistakes. I apologize for that. I do see the word "activity" used twice in the second paragraph, but I don't think it stands out or is annoying. The noun "activity" is used once in one sentence and once again in the following sentence. I don't see a problem with that. Rain, about to retire from editing before causing more problems

Happy Birthday, Ben!! =D> from all of us at The Mail Crew Aaron, Andy, Billy, Chris, David, Eric, Jon, Rain, Scot, Todd, Trey, Wade

Drake Hunter wrote that story as an exclusive for us, soon after we started our website, so it's not even posted at his own site. We get a lot of compliments on it. Another story that Drake wrote for us and then later posted on his site is "A Yule Tale", which gets many compliments for its craftsmanship. Even readers who don't celebrate Christmas appreciate the quality of the writing. Happy New Year! Aaron, for The Mail Crew

Thank you for posting that link. We think the movie probably will not be shown anywhere near where we live so we will have to wait for the DVD. At least we have the story now. Chris, for all of The Mail Crew

Thanks for your replies. I'm glad vwl posted only 19 minutes after I presented the problem. That slowed Eric's bragging. :D I could have made the situation more clear to you by explaining that the four guys are playing 8-ball on a pool table. The winning team will be the one that wins the most games. The number of games played is not relevant at that point, so I changed that number to three, making it possible for one team to be ahead by one. Thanks again, Aaron

Hey, editors (and anyone else who reads this), I?m going to show you a sentence from something that I recently edited. It?s part of the narrator?s description of a series of pool games in which he and his partner were competing against another pair of players. What, if anything, would you change in the following sentence?: After four games, we were ahead by one. Maybe I?m just dense, but I?m in good company. Only Eric of our crew spotted the problem, and all of them read that chapter before I sent it back to the author. I had read that sentence several times without catching the error, but Eric saw it the first time and only he read it. He said, ?Dude, you gotta change that. It?s dumb!? So, I changed it, saving myself some embarrassment. You guys will probably see the problem immediately, but I let it slip right past me. Aaron

Hi, guys, This is Aaron of TMC. Naiilo, I edit aggressively, I think. Edit = "To prepare (e.g., a manuscript) for publication, as by correcting or revising." WBMS wrote: "I never, ever, ever, ever, ever change an authors words myself." Hmm... I always change the author's words. As Graeme noted in the Editing Demo thread, if he loved his own words, then I would drive him crazy. The Pecman wrote: "Nothing's sacred, and I'll rewrite the living crap out of it if I think something can be said in a better way." Graeme, do you think I should have a new nickname -- Pecman, Jr.? I do the MS Word Track Changes thing, and then save to a new file where I accept all changes and then do it all again, finding things I missed earlier. I combine the two (sometimes three) and then accept and print. I go over the printout with a red pen, and then make final changes in Word. Graeme gets a file that includes all changes. Another author wants a clean file with all changes accepted and no red showing. He reads that file and sometimes adds new text, which I then edit and send back to him. I've stopped editing for one author who uses several editors, because he apparently ignores my edits -- even things like 'your/you're' and 'their/they're' bloopers, which somehow survive his editors and show up in his posted chapters. My buds and I do still give him our opinions on his draft chapters, though. vwl wrote: "It really is up to the writer and editor what the relationship will be. The objective, though, is to foster the writer's product, because that is where creativity arises, which is the reason for writing in the first place. But the effort is a joint one, and the writer should learn from a good editor as should an editor from trying to make readable what the writer creates." I have to say "AMEN!!" to that. :D Naiilo, if you decide to become an editor, just remember that it can be a never-ending process that can drive you nuts, if you're as picky as I am. I already see several things I missed in the latest chapter of Graeme's "New Brother" that was recently posted here at AD. :( I know that some people grasp a storyline adequately as they quickly read, and are not bothered by mistakes. (However, I suspect that the speed-reader types often miss the power and beauty of words. They don't slow down and "smell the roses".) One of my intentions in editing is to cause the story to flow freely through the minds of readers who are as picky as I am. I really don't like to read stories that make me pause and think, "I would change that to...." I suppose that's why they call me Mr. Picky. Good luck with your editing venture, Naiilo. Aaron