Who died and made you editor?

Yesterday, I had a piece that I had written rejected because...well, I am not exactly sure. The form rejection said that it did not exhibit correct grammar, sentence structure, spelling and punctuation, which is like saying that something is not orange; it really does not narrow the actual problem down.

Looking over the piece, I could only find one sentence that was awkward. The rest of it would have gotten by the harshest of my university professors.

So I am left with wondering why it was rejected. Could it be that they did not want to pay for the piece and that was a handy reason. Or could it be that online editors are not necessarily qualified to do the job in the first place.

Yes, it was an online rejection.

I miss the days of the print market. At least there, you would occassionally get your article back with a sentence circled, so you would know where to look. But online rejections are even more cryptic than the form letters of the print market.

Looking over the piece, I noticed that I was writing at a college level; I was using complex and compound sentences, and some colons and semicolons.
And that is why I think the piece got bounced.

Call me paranoid. But there is one thing I have noticed from college class peer reviews and writing circles: if a person does not know why something is being done grammar-wise, they will say that it is wrong.

And a lot of online editors are not editors by trade. They are business people, computer people, and other people who did not have to suffer beyond eighth grade English (as in they never needed to prove that they knew what a semicolon was good for). These are the type of people that would prefer you to commit the crime of creating a comma splice, rather than use a semicolon.

Maybe I am wrong in this case. But the nagging voice in the back of my head tells me that I just encountered another editor who should not actually be an editor.

Mylot glitch and rumor fixed

Last week, over the weekend, Mylot had a small computer glitch. Basically, earnings were not being updated in a timely manner. Of course, this started people (or maybe more properly trolls) talking about how Mylot was not going to pay anymore. Computer glitch, trolls and rumors---what an unpleasant combination.

I wasn't worried. As many of my readers know, I use Mylot to relax, and perhaps warm up for a day's worth of writing. For me, Mylot is only a little pile of pennies, not neccessary a big deal if it did go payless. I just don't have enourgh referrals to make it worth my time to sweat over.

But it does call to mind two things.

First off, you should never be relying on one source of income that its removal causes you to panic. This is especially true for us writers. Markets come and go, and you should never have all your eggs in just one basket.

The second thing is that I have heard rumors like this on every site I belong to when a glitch results in earnings not being updated in a timely fashion. Trolls like to use every little glitch to stir up the pot. While some sites do go under, there are far more rumors than actual sites going under. One should never rely on rumors to figure out the health of a website that you are earning on.

Observing oneself in others

The last couple of weeks, I have gotten to watch someone obsessed with a research project. My wife is interested in tracing her family tree; she is also busy researching the history of our local neighborhood. The two projects overlap to such an extent that they appear to be one and the same to me (same skill-set, same type of research).

On one hand, it is cutting into my computer time, hence my writing time (though I will admit that I am not sure how much writing I would actually be doing; I am guilty of treating my summer as a vacation). On the another hand, it has given me the opportunity to observe someone obsessed with a research project.

I, personally suffer from research obsession. It is a trait that is useful both as a writer and a student of the mysteries (it has proven to be less useful as a college student---go figure). But it does have the side effect of me staying up until four in the morning trying to locate the one fact or figure that will make an entire scheme understandable. ("Just give me ten more minutes; I want to consult one more book before going to bed." Repeat as needed.)

The reason that I find my wife's obsession so interesting is that I have never watched a research obsession from the outside before. Call it knowing oneself though the actions of others.

An off day

I am kinda out of it for today. The most productive thing I have done today is guard the injuried sleeping kitty, and fed the recently fixed kitty. The cleaning lady sneak up on me (OMG, is that the time) and I have spent a lot of time on Facebook doing very little. I do not think that I am going to get any writing done today.

Cats going to the vet today

Two cats are going to the vet today. One is getting fixed, and both are being tested for FL (hopefully they do not have it---if they do: they will have to be put to sleep). Both are sweet boys that were abandoned.

Fall schedule

Well, after putting it off for a couple of weeks (or is it months at this point?), I finally registered for Fall 2009 classes (University of Colorado at Denver). I am taking:

Chemistry for the Consumer
Bible as Literature
Gothic Literature
Colorado History

I thought about taking basic biology instead. But I never did take high school chemistry, and I already own a biology textbook. And the Chemistry for the Consumer class is a in-home lab using household chemicals; ok, maybe that is not a good idea.

Both the chemistry and Bible class are lower division classes (I have to take another science if I want to graduate). The other two are upper division classes. I registered too late to take the Critical Essay class, but I just do not feel like doing it this semester. Especially considering I am going to have to read the Bible, or at least parts of it.

My exposure to the Bible was the Big Little Book of Bible Stories as a kid (my wiccan aunt gave me more religious training than my parents did), and the occasional bit that I have read as a Golden Dawn based kabbalist. I do not recognize Bible quotes when I run across them in literature. Hopefully, the class will help me as a writer, literature student, history student, and kabbalist.

I am taking the Gothic Literature because I want to; same with the Colorado History class (though that one may be research for a work of fiction that I have kicked around occasionally).

But part of all, I have no morning classes. This is really going to help me get some writing done this coming semester. Now all I have to do is decide who I want to annoy with my writing this fall; you know that I am going to annoy someone; after all, I am ME!

RIP Charlie

To add to the troubles of this week, on Thursday, we had to take one of the cats to the vet. Charlie had gotten injuried in a cat fight and the wound was not healing. Given the fact that she was eighteen years plus in age, we decided that putting her to sleep was more merciful than attempting mutliple operations and trying to keep the other cats away from her. I ended up crying a lot; after all, she was one of my cats and I had her for eighteen plus years. RIP Charlie.