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

Hey, AJ, With all my school activities and The Mail Crew taking up so much of my time, I'm still mostly just working on Graeme's "New Brother" and Ryan Keith's "Kayden and Zac", although I've just started editing a new and promising story by a 17-year-old Irish high school student. I haven't heard from him in about a week, so I'm hoping I haven't scared him off. I told him the first sentence of his prologue was similar to the infamous "It was a dark and stormy night..." I do get sample chapters from authors who want me to edit for them, but I have to turn them down because of time constraints. If I could find the time, I might even try writing something. I'm alphabetically at the top of the list of authors here at AD, but I've only written that one little story. If I do find time to write another story, I might do something that attacks "That's so gay!", which burns my ***. :evil: Cheers, Aaron

Editor Aaron here. WBMS, I like your ?Picking on an Editor and Author? post. Graeme pointed it out to me last night, when I didn?t have time to post a reply. I?m glad I didn?t, because today I asked several men of the parent and grandparent generations how they would have described a fight when they were high school students (in the olden days :) ). All of them used either ?beat? or ?beaten? or ?beaten up? in their answers. American kids of my generation most often say ?he kicked his ass? or a variation of that. (Fights don?t often happen at our school, but there are frequent ?I?ll kick your ass!? threats.) In very rare instances we hear ?he beat the shit out of him?. In Australia, the preferred terminology seems to include the word ?bash? and variations of it. I think readers (and authors) of different generations sometimes see a given subject or topic through different eyes. In my editing of ?New Brother? I often make changes that are aimed at making the teen characters more teen-like. I don?t need to do that when I edit Ryan Keith?s stories, because Ryan was a teen until last month. Chapter 19 includes four direct references to the fight: 1. An unnamed kid says, ?Hey, Paul! Luke Williams is bashing up some kid on the footy oval!? At our school, that would be ?Luke Williams is kicking some kid?s ass on the football field.? [in the chapter paragraph just above that one, I see a blooper that I missed in my editing: "One of guys running away?." I failed to insert ?the?. My bad.] 2. The head P.E. teacher, Mr. Presley, says, ?He?s done a real number on this guy.? That would be a realistic adult statement at our school. 3. Narrator David tells us: "I was puzzled by why Luke had bashed up Nick?." An American teen would use ?kicked Nick?s ass? instead of ?bashed up Nick?. [As an editor, I didn?t notice something that I have now noticed as a reader: In that sentence, the word combination ?by why? made me laugh out loud. A little dog ran through my mind, going ?by why? instead of ?bow wow?.] 4. Mary says, ?a kid was hurt, and hurt real bad.? Girls at our school would say the same thing. WBMS, your post refers to the fight as a beating, so I suspect that as you read about the fight you had variations of the word ?beat? in mind. As a teenaged editor, I didn?t have that word in mind, so character/narrator David?s ?Beats me? seemed to be a totally realistic statement, and I don?t think David would have carefully chosen his words in that tense situation. If one or more of Graeme?s written references to the fight had included ?beat? instead of ?bash?, then I might have considered ?Beats me? as being a poor choice. This post of mine is probably useless, but you?ve gotten author Graeme?s response, and now I?ve added editor Aaron?s. Gotta jet ? football game tonight. I?m one of the team managers and my man Billy is our place kicker. We?re gonna kick the other team?s asses tonight. Or, umm? will we beat them up? Beats me. I just hope we win. On the footy oval. :) Cheers, Aaron

I think that private comment might be the one I wrote to Graeme. Here's what I wrote to him: "You've left him as a blank slate, upon which readers who are lacking in parental skills will automatically draw their own child's image. Non-parent readers will draw images of themselves at that age. I think the lack of description of the boy draws the readers into the story, and that's very effective." The point I was trying to make is that I think when an author wants a short, short story to have an impact on readers, as in the case of "Happy Shells", which is not a happy story, it can be better to omit character description. Am I being naive in thinking that readers can be sucked into a story to the point that they project themselves into certain roles, such as the roles of the parents in "Happy Shells", and can thereby be shown the effects of their actions? Does the omitting of character description, in some cases, help in accomplishing that? Maybe I should be asking this in the Writers' Workshop section. Thanks in advance for your opinions. Aaron

My name is Aaron, a member of The Mail Crew. I've written only one short, one-chapter story, so I won't try to answer the "Why do you write?" question. I do, however, want to compliment the posts by James and Mr. Coleman. They're very convincingly presented and both are very thought-provoking posts. As a young, picky, smartassed editor, I could find nothing in Mr. Coleman's post that I would change. Awesome posts! Thank you for giving this young brat some new things to think about. (...about which to think. :D ) Aaron

I guess I should have tried to somehow make it even more obvious that I was referring to gay-oriented stories found on the Internet -- the focus of my post -- and not to great literature. I apologize for any misunderstanding. Trey

Someone sent us this in an email after I posted my rant: "THANK YOU VERY MUCH! You have articulated better than I could why positive stories are needed. I will note that all of the stories you mention that I've read, ALL include negative aspects, but have an overwhelming positive feel. You can add me to the list of those who have used those stories to help me understand and accept who/what I am." I'm glad he mentioned that those stories that have helped us and a lot of others do include negative aspects, but over all they are very positive. Trey

This is Trey of The Mail Crew. The Advocate said that Mississippi is the most gay-unfriendly state. New Jersey got the best score, 97, and MS got less than zero. (Less than zero???) We get email from all states and some other countries. We have learned that reaction to gay students varies a lot within a given state and even in different sections of the same county. It even seems like some parts of California are as bad as Mississippi. But over all, things are improving a lot faster than some publications would make us believe. Yes sir, James, there a lot of us gay teens who go to church and are accepted there, and a lot of us who are accepted by our parents. It was tough for me at first but now my dad accepts me. There are a lot of gay teens who are accepted by fellow students and by teachers and coaches. We do have a lot of care bears, but we face some sharks, too. I have to agree with Codey about the need for positive stories for GLBTQ teens. That?s why we only host positive stories on our website. I think our Aaron said it best in a post he wrote at another site. Here is part of it: ?Sure, we're young and idealistic, but we know that our Generation Y needs positive things to look forward to, even more than we need warnings of possible dangers.? I started reading the big sagas by Brew Maxwell, Sequoyah and Don Hanratty when I was 15, before the authors had finished writing them. I will be 19 in August. I am glad those were the first gay stories I read. They made me feel okay about being gay and they gave me hope for my future. Mainly because of those stories I have been involved with email groups for high school students for almost three years and with our website for almost two years. During that time I have seen emails from thousands of gay and lesbian and not sure teens. I know that they are very much influenced by the positive stories and they need more of them. I grabbed some parts of a few emails that I will paste in. Most of these quotes are from emails about our website or email groups, but they also mention stories: This one came from a girl, 16, a junior in high school who wrote to compliment our site: ?Also the writing is great, the stories are not all about sex but about importance in relationships with struggles. My teacher also wanted to say thanks for helping kids she appreciated it.? This one was from a boy, 14, after we recommended some stories to him. He didn?t want to read negative ones, so he asked about some we recommended: ?I read all of the stories by Dewey about Brian & Pete already, and the ones by Drake on Draketales, you know, about Chris, Brian's friend? I like the ones that are about kids my age, so. the other ones you talked about, do they got anything really bad in them, like with abuse and stuff?? This came from a guy, 17, who needs to read positive and informative things about being gay: ?Am I a straight guy with gay fantasies? Or I'm I bisexual? I don't know and I'm tired of running, I need to be honest with myself, but I need help.? This is from a teacher who gave our URL to his school?s administration: ?One of my students tried to commit suicide Sunday night. You would think after 25 years of teaching I would get used to it. This one blind-sided me a bit. After going through the usual list of "wish I would have...." or "could I have helped if I had done..." I know the only thing that matters now is that I make sure she knows there is a place at school where she can find somebody who cares and thinks she is a terrific person.? This is from an Irish boy, 17: ?I think your site is a must for any gay, bisexual or confused teen to read, and has helped me a lot. In rural Ireland it seems that there are no other people like me to talk to or share problems with, and you have convinced me that I'm not alone in the world.? He was mainly referring to the stories on our site. From a boy, 16: ?I read some of Grasshopper's stories because you mentioned it in your last email... and what can I say but wow!? From a boy, 15, who read positive stories and then had the courage to ask another boy out: ?I felt comfortable talking to him.Then we kissed in a seculded spot. My first real kiss!!! But I didn't get that silly happy feeling I expected.? Guess what? It?s not just the teens who get so much good from the positive stories. This one is from a much older man who wrote to compliment our site: ?Most of the authors that you mention are on my favourite list of authors and I have learned so much from their stories since I accepted my sexual orientation four years ago (I soon turn 80).? This is from a 50+ year old woman in Australia: ?I've been gleefully reading the stories on your site. I'm reading Brew Maxwell's "Foley Mashburn Saga" today. The Christmas story (the author's name escapes me at the moment) made me sniffle.? From an adult, unknown age: ?I am writing you about Drake Hunters "A Yule Tale". As I said to Drake in my email to him this story has joined "Miracle on 34th Street" as my co-favorite of all Christmas stories. I have rarely seen such great craftsmanship from any author. I want to thank you for hosting this terrific story!! I also want to suggest to you that you feature "A Yule Tale" at your site each year at Christmas time. I will look forward to reading this story each Christmas as long as I experience them.? It is the positive and uplifting stories and their authors that are remembered. We know of people who have read even the longest sagas over and over again. Stories by Driver, Grasshopper, Brew Maxwell, Dewey, Drake, Sequoyah, Don Hanratty, and now Graeme, Ryan Keith and others will be remembered for a long time because of their positive impact on the lives of readers. We hope the dark and negative stories are mostly forgotten soon after they are read. They are temporary reminders of the negative elements that we all face, but they offer little or no hope. Yes, the bad elements are all around us and we read and hear about them everyday in the news. They involve the straight world and the gay world. I just want to say that teens are very much influenced by what we see, read and hear, and that doesn?t make us idiots. We need more of the positive and less of the negative. We cast our votes for leaving the negative out of gay fiction, at least gay fiction that involves teens. The news is negative enough ? why add that element to gay fiction? And the stories with explicit and unrealistic sex scenes? Some young kids believe that stuff. We have gotten emails from kids as young as 13 who have gone out to parks, restrooms, truck stops, etc. to look for sex, because they read about things like that in stories. They write to us because they are hurting and scared and ashamed and worried they might have gotten diseases. Some of them do. Well, that?s my rant. Trey, for The Mail Crew

After looking at all the edited versions of the story, I can see why my buds here call me Mr. Picky. I can't change, though. I was born this way. It's in my genes. :-) Graeme has told me that I made 275 changes (135 deletions and 140 additions) in that short, two-and-one-half page story. I need a rest. LOL Aaron

I can't believe it! During all of the times I went over Chapter 2 of Ryan Keith's "Kayden and Zac" I didn't catch that huge blooper that is now right here at AD on the home page. Dude quoted from the story: "He's rather have something..." Billy noticed that this morning and showed it to me. It jumped out at me and made my head throb. It danced around and laughed at me. My dad uses that old saying about getting caught with your pants down. I feel like I've been caught, big time. Sometimes after a chapter has been posted I find little things I've missed, but this one made the front page. :p We corrected it on our site and I've asked Dude to correct it here and Bubba to correct it at DeweyWriter. I'm embarrassed, but I have to remember that somethng Drake told me a long time ago is true. Editing can be a never-ending process. That blooper was a proofing goof, though, not really an editing gaffe. Cheers, everyone, Aaron -- back from vacation and back to editing