16
Apr

19 and (Still) Growing

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality, Yesterday's Memories

Tomorrow is my daughter’s 19th birthday. It’s the first year she will be celebrating it away from my home and the rest of our family. She will be with friends, who I’m certain will make sure she has an enjoyable day, and there is a remotely possible chance that her mother and I may get to speak to her for a few minutes.

This occasion has given me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am sorrowful she will not be around to celebrate the day with us; on the other, I am proud to see her trying to move forward and trying to be more like the adult she has become. But, being proud of her doesn’t mean I have to like all of her choices; in fact, I’m not pleased with most of the ones she has made over the past six months or so (on which I will not elaborate here, other than to say she has chosen to take up permanent residence elsewhere). However, I do respect the fact that she is being the independent young woman we tried to raise, and she is making her own choices.

As a result, she is also learning what it truly means to live with the consequences of her actions. Because she has chosen to live elsewhere she is no longer considered a member of my household; among other things, this makes her ineligible for medical coverage through my employer’s health plan, and she must get her own policy. The same is true with her car insurance (she doesn’t own a car, but she is both licensed and living in a household that has one, and under Texas law she must have coverage or she gets points put on her driving record). On top of it all, at last word she did not have a job, so it’s uncertain to me how she plans to pay for any of that. It’s hard for me to know whether or not she has taken care of all these things; she has communicated very little with any of us in the last few months. But, from what I do know about her character as I watched her grow up, I am certain she will stick with it until she has everything worked out.

There have also been changes in the rest of my family as a result of her decisions. One of my sons spends a lot of his time in her old bedroom, where his computer is now set up on her old desk. Financially, I have one less mouth to feed (although my sons are quickly filling that gap), and there will be one less dependent to claim when my wife and I file our taxes next year (this is a fairly fresh one on my mind since yesterday was Tax Day). It’s also one less person for me to worry about taking to the doctor when she’s sick, or the dentist when she has a cavity, the eyeglass shop when she needs new contacts, or the pharmacy when she needs medicine. All of that burden is on her now.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, all of this change has hurt me greatly. I’ve tried my best to put it all in perspective by looking back at when I was her age, but the comparisons aren’t quite the same. Aside from the obvious difference in gender, when I was 19 I was living away from home as well, but my parents had been divorced for about 18 months and my three brothers were split up living with one parent or the other; my family today is intact and all living under one roof. She has had tremendous financial support for her college education; I was working two jobs and paying for my college classes out of my own pocket. Any way I cut it, it’s just not the same situation.

I don’t know if she will ever read this blog, but if she does I hope she comes to realize how difficult it is for me to watch as she heads down this road, knowing what lies ahead but unable to get her to believe, or even listen, to my experience-filled voice. It had been my hope that I could have helped her avoid going through the School of Hard Knocks, but it appears she decided to go there anyway. I have come to conclude that it must be a rite of passage for all of us at one time or another, and the cycle will likely repeat itself when she becomes a parent and her children head out into the world.

I do know that she’s very bright and very deep-minded, and I believe someday she’ll figure out what I was trying to tell her now, and come back and say “you were right.” I just hope that day comes sooner rather than later.

Happy Birthday Michelle!

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14
Apr

An Economics State Of Mind

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality

The debate over whether our country’s economy is improving or not always seems to get more lively around this time of year. That’s probably because tomorrow is Tax Day, the day everyone’s personal income tax returns should be at least in the mail heading to the IRS. [As I mentioned in an earlier post (Death and Taxes…Mostly Taxes), my wife and I filed our tax return a couple of weeks ago;  now, we get to sit back and watch as those late filers make their mad dash to the post office as the midnight deadline looms ever closer.]

I was reading a posting elsewhere today by someone who appears to be a strong supporter of the current Administration; he made a comment which (paraphrased) said, “Through his stimulus programs, the President has cut the deficit and lessened the tax burden on Americans more than any other president in our lifetimes.”

That’s a pretty substantial claim. Do you suppose it’s true? Or not?

I’m not going to argue either way about that statement; as I’ve also said in an earlier posting, I am not good at debates, so I won’t even try. I’ll leave that to you, my readers, to discuss/debate/argue any and all points of that claim. Please leave me out of it!

Instead, I would like to offer some personal observations:

When I studied economics in college 30-odd years ago, the rule was that if you are already in debt, and you spend more money (or you borrow money from someone else and then spend it), the result is that you go deeper into debt. How does one cut a deficit (or reduce a debt) by spending more money? Has our President somehow changed the laws of economics? Why hasn’t anyone else figured out how to do this before? Is there a secret handshake that goes along with knowing how to do that?

As far as tax burdens go, I can’t say that my situation has improved any in the past year or so. Last spring I had to take a pay cut to keep my job, and the entire company shut down for half of December; this year, we were told the pay cuts and annual shutdown will stay in place and that we shouldn’t expect to see any changes in the foreseeable future. I’m also paying more for my health coverage this year than ever before, and not hearing even a rumor about those costs coming down anytime soon. Wasn’t the new health care bill recently signed into law supposed to reduce my medical costs? When and how does that happen? I haven’t got a clue; no one (for good or bad) has been able to explain it to me in terms that make any sense, or that show me in real dollars where I’m going to save any money.

I don’t live an extravagant life by any measure I can think of. My newest vehicle is 14 years old, my house is in need of significant repairs, and I haven’t taken my family anywhere on vacation in close to 10 years. If something major breaks, it may take a while before we can afford to fix or replace it. Given that the costs for basic needs (food, fuel, prescription drugs, utilities, clothes for the kids, car insurance, etc.) continue to go up each year but my income does not, it is highly unlikely that I will have any disposable income to afford things like new vehicles or vacations in the foreseeable future. Even my future feels somewhat uncertain; when I took the pay cut, I stopped contributing to my 401k retirement plan to make up some of the loss…with the result that I’m not saving anything to live off of when I reach my golden years. I can’t afford it right now.

All in all, I suppose things may be better for some people, but from what I can tell I am not one of them.

I guess I don’t know the secret handshake.

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12
Apr

Sibling Parity, Take Two

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality

Once again, one of my sons’ computers took the spotlight over the weekend. This time it was the older son, who until recently had a more powerful machine than his younger brother. The older one got a little testy when he lost his “top dog” status, and made sure everyone in the house knew it in no uncertain terms. What he didn’t know was that I had already been working on a solution.

I had anticipated this conflict, and determined there were two things left I could do to his machine to make it more like his brother’s – change the processor and change the video card (the memory is already maxed out). The processor was simple enough; I found the most powerful one his machine could handle, and fortunately for my wallet it was at a rock-bottom price, so I jumped on it and got one shipped quickly. The day it came in I swapped out the old for the new, and made sure everything still worked after I had made the switch. Fortunately for me it did. Every analysis I could find indicated he should see an improvement in the machine’s performance by 30 to 40 percent, which by any measure is significant.

He wasn’t home at the time I made the swap, so I asked his brother to test it for me. His brother found that while it was still a measure behind his in performance, it did run certain things more smoothly than before. Then, when he did get home, I had him try it out. He quickly pronounced that what I had done didn’t make any difference at all; in reality, I think he said that more because he was upset that HE didn’t get to try it out first.

Since that didn’t seem to placate the situation, I moved on to the second upgrade – a new video card. I found one at a reasonable price at my favorite electronics store, and on Saturday I made the long drive down and back to pick one up. What followed that was four hours of the most frustrating nonsense that I’ve ever experienced in working with any computer. The card would go in easily enough, and the computer would recognize it and run just fine as a “generic” video card. When I tried to install the files that would let the computer recognize it as a specific model, the computer went berserk. Most of the time it would get to a certain point in starting up and then reboot itself, and repeat the cycle over and over. Every time I tried something different, it would fail. Searching through online forums and trying other’s suggestions didn’t work either. In the end, I gave up and put the old card back in.

It’s a rare time when a computer completely baffles me like that, but it does happen. At this point, there is nothing left to upgrade short of replacing the motherboard, and that’s currently out of the question. The good news from all of this is, he could see that I was trying, and while I had some success the machine itself set the limits of what I could do to it. He’s a bit more sympathetic now, which is a far cry from where things were a week ago. He has a very solid computer now for doing his school research and class assignments; it just doesn’t play video games quite as well as his brother’s.

He’ll have to get along with what it can do until he graduates from high school in a couple of years; after that, he’ll want a newer laptop to use at college. Will he outgrow the video games by then? Probably not, but at least he knows I did my best to make things work better. Hopefully in his mind that will count for something; it does in mine.

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9
Apr

Upgraded Software, Downgraded Minds

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality, Yesterday's Memories

When it comes to computer software, I suppose I’m a little behind the times. Like a lot of PC users I have Microsoft Office software to take care of all my writing, spreadsheet, presentation, and e-mail needs; in fact, I use it to write and proof all of my blog entries before posting them. Where I’m behind is with the version I’m using – Office 2003. It’s already one release older the rest of the world (Office 2007) and soon will be two releases back (when Office 2010 arrives later this year).

Is being behind the times always a bad thing? I don’t think so. Neither does my employer; we’ve only recently been given approval to upgrade our office computers from Office 2003 to 2007. One of the reasons is that Office 2007 has a significantly different look, and would require a lot of people to go through expensive retraining to learn how to use it. I often enjoy being on the “bleeding edge” of technology, but having to relearn how to use something I already know how to use doesn’t make sense. I’ll have to upgrade it eventually to keep up with the rest of my office, so I’ll have to learn to use it eventually as well.

There’s another element that comes into play here, at least for me: the old adage “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” For years, the old version (and even the one before it) worked perfectly fine for 99% of the tasks that make up my job. Most of the documents I write or spreadsheets I create aren’t going to dramatically change just because the software I use in creating them looks different. Some of the new features may turn out to be useful, but for the most part I’ll still be churning out the same-looking stuff. Why? Well, that’s what I get paid to do.

Also along with each new upgrade, it seems that designers are moving more toward the use of icons and symbols and farther away from actual words; Office 2007, for example, uses icons and symbols in the place of worded menus. For someone who has made a living designing complex business applications and writing the instruction manuals for using them, the use of icons is a mind-numbing shift in thinking. They also don’t make the writer’s job any simpler; instructional materials are much more elaborate now, adding pictures of each icon or symbol and describing what happens when you click on them. “Type ‘start’ at the prompt and press the Enter key” has been replaced with “Double-click on the square-looking thingy with the red and yellow stripes.” Who could have guessed when PCs were invented thirty years ago that we would go back to using hieroglyphics like the ancient Egyptians?

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying all icons are bad. They do have their uses. My kids learned how to start up a drawing program and how to shut down a computer by using icons long before they knew how to read or write. But, I also made sure they understood what the computer was doing “behind the scenes” each time they pointed and clicked on something. I’m sure there are some adults who don’t understand what they’re doing when they use a computer, and probably never will.

But, they do know how to double-click on that square-looking thingy.

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7
Apr

Musically Inclined

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality, Yesterday's Memories

The title of this posting is a little misleading. I’m not talking about my musical talents – I don’t have any to speak of, although my wife claims I sing fairly well at lower pitches (not quite as low as bass, but somewhere in the neighborhood). In this case, what I’m referring to is listening to music.

I enjoy a variety of musical styles, from country to pop, classical to jazz, and blues to New Age. My collection of a hundred or so CDs reflects my eclectic interests. With such a wide variety of tastes, choosing what to listen to at any give time can be a challenge. For years, many people have worked around this by copying, or “ripping”, their favorite songs from their discs onto their computers, and then arranging them to play in just such an order that the person is delivered into musical Nirvana. In the days before ripping software and CD burners we did something similar, only with LPs and cassette tapes. If you don’t know what those are, pretty much anyone over 35 should be able to explain them to you.

These days, the ultimate form of achieving an enlightened state is to put a computer-created arrangement of favorite music onto a portable player such as an Apple iPod or some other MP3 device. My children have all owned MP3 players (not iPods) for several years, and after having owned vehicles in which the radio was either broken or stolen, I decided that I wanted to jump on the MP3 bandwagon too. When I brought up the subject, my children didn’t believe me, and started asking me questions such as “why do you need one?” and “what would you do with a MP3 player?”.

It took a while, but finally my wish was fulfilled. My older son’s MP3 player had died, and he was a bit down over it. I found one at the world’s largest flea market (eBay) for a decent price, so I purchased it for him as a surprise Christmas present. The real surprise, however, was on me. When the player arrived and I unpacked it, I found a note tucked inside the shipping carton: “Dear Mr. Bernier, as my way of saying ‘thank you’ for your order, I have enclosed an extra gift. Merry Christmas!” Looking further into the carton, I found the seller had given me a second MP3 player! This one was much, much smaller than the one I had purchased for my son (1Gb compared to 4Gb for him), but I figured this would be perfect for my own needs, and put it away until my son had opened his gift.

With a MP3 player finally in hand, I set about trying to put together a song arrangement that would send me off to Nirvana along with everyone else. After all, why should I be left behind? I soon found that having a decades-long musical history in my head didn’t make it any easier to put such a collection together. TWO MONTHS later, after sifting through dozens of albums, ripping here and mixing there, I finally had my list. I downloaded the collection to my player, plugged in the headphones, and hit the Play button.

Ahhhh! Favorite songs from more than thirty years of listening filled the air. I closed my eyes, and the memories came flooding back. But that all-important question needed an answer: did I reach Nirvana, like so many others before me?

No. Or at least, not yet. I don’t know if I’ll get there either.

I may still be on the road toward enlightenment, and I may never get there, but at least the musical memories will help me pass the time…

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5
Apr

Death and Taxes…Mostly Taxes

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” ~Benjamin Franklin

My wife and I filed our tax return over the weekend. Ahh, taxes. It’s that special “season” that comes every year between January 1 and April 15 where, for a few hours at least and several days at most, everyone tries to remember their math skills as they fill in the lines on their tax forms. Some people have more forms to fill out than others; sometimes I think the number of forms grows exponentially with the number of people in the family. With three children, I shudder to think how many more forms it takes for me to file my taxes than for someone who is single.

Years ago, I gave up trying to fill out the forms by hand and started purchasing tax preparation software for my computer. It’s been a great help, especially when it comes to dealing with all the changes in tax laws that happen every year. How on earth would I have otherwise known I could have taken a substantial tax credit if I had purchased a new hybrid car? Of course, the tax laws don’t take into account the fact that I couldn’t afford to buy a hybrid car, or any other new car for that matter…but if I had, I could have received a credit for it.

Another advantage of using tax software is the ability to file taxes electronically. No paper forms to fill out or sign, no trips to the post office, and no chance that the return would get lost in the mail. Of course, it also means if you owe taxes, you can’t use any of those as excuses for not filing on time. But, the tax software can still help you there as well, by allowing you to electronically request a 6-month extension for filing. Yes, it looks like the software companies have thought of almost everything…except, of course, for how to pay your taxes in the first place.

My wife and I are getting a refund this year. Refunds, of course, are overpayments of taxes throughout the previous year. Some people try to walk a fine line and have just enough taken out of their paychecks to cover their taxes, and no more; that way they get the most in their pocket each payday. Raising three children, I already walk enough tightropes as it is, and I don’t need another one courtesy of Uncle Sam. So, I let them take more out than necessary, and I get it back as a refund the next year. Yes, that means I’m taking home a little less money each payday and it’s like giving the government a loan for a few months, but I’d much rather do that then get to the end of my tax forms and find out I need to pay additional taxes with money I don’t usually have in the first place. I like to think of it as a form of “indentured savings” where the government is helping us save throughout the year, and then they give it back for us to spend on the things we couldn’t afford to get all at one time otherwise, such as new wardrobes for the kids, or electronic gadgets, or appliances for the house. This year, it looks like appliances will take center stage; we have some that are in need of replacement, and others that could stand some repairs. If there’s anything left, it will probably go toward paying other bills that we’ve been putting off because, well, we didn’t have the money to pay them. Then, once the refund money is gone, the spending spree will be over with and life will return to normal, albeit with a few different things around the house.

At that point the cycle will start all over again, just as old Ben said it would over 200 years ago.

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2
Apr

The Eye’s Got It

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality

Over the last three days I’ve noticed some irritation developing in my left eye. Usually what’s happened is an eyelash or piece of dust has fallen onto my eye, and the eyelid rubs it around. My regular cure for that is to let nature take its course: the irritation produces more tears, the extra tears flush out the whatever-it-is, and it’s done.

This time has been different. The tears have increased in quantity, but nothing’s been flushed out. I even went so far as to put in extra eye drops (something I absolutely hate doing), but that didn’t help either. It was becoming harder to see clearly through the eye from all of the tears and drops. Finally, flustered at my failure to fix the problem on my own, I did the one thing that most guys won’t admit – I asked my wife for help. She took one look at it and said, “there’s no eyelash in there…you’ve got a stye.”

A stye? I didn’t recall ever having one before. “Okay”, I asked, “how do I fix it?”

I knew what the answer would be, but I waited to hear her say it: “Let me call the doctor’s office and see if they’ll call in a prescription for you.” Sure enough, the doctor did call one in for an antibiotic called Keflex…three pills per day for five days.

Wonderful, I thought. Another medication to add to the assortment of pills and capsules I consume for all the other maladies I’ve collected over the years. At least this one would only be for a short time; these days, most of my prescriptions are marked “take until further notice or death, whichever comes first.”

But, before I started popping more pills, I wanted to understand more about what I had. What exactly is a stye? And how did I get one? A few minutes of online research gave me a few answers. First, for those readers who are less informed (as I was), a stye is an irritated and sometimes slightly swollen area on the eyelid. It is usually caused by one of two things: either a staphylococcus (staph) infection, or a blocked oil gland inside the eyelid (in other words, a pimple). Frankly, they both sounded pretty gross to me, but if I had to choose I’d rather it have been caused by a staph infection; there’s something about the idea of having a pimple on the inside of my eyelid that just makes me shudder. As far as how I had come to get it, there seemed to be so many different ways listed that they could best be summed up by saying “it just happens” and leave it at that.

This new-found knowledge led to my next question: what were my choices for getting rid of it? My sources said if I did nothing at all I could expect it to take ten to fourteen days to clear up; or, with medication, it would take about four days. In this case, four sounded a lot better to me than fourteen, so I decided it was a good idea to go ahead and take the medication. Besides, what’s one more pill when I’m already taking a dozen or so every day?

So, armed with information and antibiotics, I am doing battle with this scourge known as a stye. It is a fight I expect to win handily if not immediately, and it will be worth it in the long run. After all, I just got new glasses last week; it would certainly be nice to get my money’s worth out of them by being able to see clearly through both lenses!

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31
Mar

I Know It’s Spring When…

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality

I’ve come to realize there are very definite events that must take place before it can be said that a particular season has arrived. Summer usually begins with a Memorial Day cookout and the kids getting out of school; Autumn usually begins right after the Labor Day cookout that marked the end of Summer, and the kids returning to school. Winter begins soon after Thanksgiving, when Christmas shopping reaches a fever pitch and the kids are once again out of school for the holiday break. 

Using this same logic the obvious question is, when does Spring begin? There are some traditions surrounding it, such as “right after the last frost”, or “when the daffodils are in bloom”, or even that old standby, the March date on the calendar. I have discovered my own personal event that takes place and, for me at least, most definitely marks the point when Spring has “sprung”. That event is when the first wasp of the year flies through my house and someone screams at me to kill it. 

The scene is a classic: the family is spread throughout the house doing various things such as watching television, cooking dinner, playing video games, doing homework, or surfing the Web. One fortunate individual begins hearing a faint buzzing sound, usually coming from behind them. They turn and find a wasp slowly making its way across the room, bouncing off the ceiling and looking every bit as menacing as the swarms of insects in all those B-grade horror films you used to find on TV at 2 in the morning. The person quickly ducks down, hoping the creature hasn’t spotted him as a target for exercising its stinger, and then calls out to everyone else, “There’s a wasp in the house!” Some of the other members of the household will run to the doorway of the room, peering inside all so carefully so that they don’t become targets as well. No one asks how it got into the house in the first place; that’s a question for later. At the moment it is simply accepted that it’s there.

If I am not the person who first spotted the wasp, the next thing that happens is that all-too-familiar call of “Mike (or Dad), there’s a WASP in the house!” The extra emphasis on the word “wasp” is usually a good indicator to me of how dire the person perceives their predicament to be – if it’s spoken fairly calmly, they’re okay and I can take my time; if it sounds a bit shaky, they’re sort of nervous and I need to start moving; if it’s said very loudly, they’re just this side of panic and I have to drop everything that instant to deal with it.

I move toward the room in question, usually grabbing something to swat at it like a notepad or an old magazine – whatever I happen to find along the path from where I was to where I am wanted. When I arrive, those in attendance quickly point out the current location of the intruder, and then clear out of the room…it oddly reminds me of those police shows where the bomb squad is called in to defuse an explosive device, only I’m not wearing any protective padding. Fortunately for me, I’m not allergic to wasp stings, but I’ve been stung enough times in my life to know I don’t like it, and I usually try my best to avoid it. With that in mind, I enter the room slowly and cautiously, never taking my eyes off my quarry. I follow the wasp as it bounces around the ceiling, waiting for it to alight on some fairly solid object long enough for my swatting effort to be lethal. The cat-and-mouse game can go on for several minutes, with the wasp sometimes almost taunting me by flying in my direction and then turning away. Eventually, it lands somewhere to take a break (I know I’d be tired after all that flying around) and I make my move. With a swing of my arm and snap of my wrist, the deed is done. Everyone breathes a big sigh of relief, and then they all go back to whatever they were doing prior to the wasp’s appearance. 

With that, it’s official: Spring has arrived.

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29
Mar

Sibling Parity

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality

I have two sons aged 15 and 13. They’re both bright and talented (I’m not bragging – they get straight A’s in school and both play in the school band), and they are both really big into PC-based video gaming, especially sports like baseball or football, and role-playing games involving a lot of shooting and blowing things up.

Up until a few months ago the boys shared one computer, which seemed to take care of their needs. I’ve had to upgrade it a couple of times so it could run the more complex games they keep getting, but it’s done pretty much everything they’ve asked of it. They would argue over who would play what, and sometimes things would get pretty ugly, but they have always worked out their differences and no bones have ever been broken in the process. The conflict finally came to a head when both of them claimed the need to use it more for schoolwork, and between that and the constant bickering over games it finally reached the point where another machine was needed to restore peace in the house.

I’ve built most of the home computers I’ve ever used. As late as two years ago, I was still using a machine I had built from scratch, while everyone else in the house had a “store-bought” PC. Then, in a very sudden and dramatic fashion my homebuilt machine died, and I needed to repair it very quickly. When I found out it would cost as much for new parts as it would to buy a fully-loaded computer ready to run, I bought a new one; but, forever and always an electronic packrat, I held on to that old box, figuring I could use some of its parts one day to repair another machine.

Two years later and faced with the prospect of buying another computer, I looked at that old box and thought, “maybe I could find some cheap surplus parts and rebuild it.” After some complicated negotiations, my youngest son decided he’d be brave and take on the challenge of working with one of Dad’s electronic creations.

It took some time to find parts, but once I had them I was in my element, my hands deep inside the metal casing hooking up cables to components that would bring it back to life. A few last connections, and voila! The old computer was running again! After some testing, I turned the resurrected PC over to my son so he could begin installing and playing games.

He learned what worked and what didn’t, and fortunately the “didn’t” list was fairly short. But, he started clamoring for upgrades to be able to play those games. With Christmas around the corner, I decided to give him some of the parts he needed as presents. Unfortunately, most of them didn’t work. The new parts would fit, but the older pieces were unable to support them.

By this point, I was committed to getting the PC working. So, I ran to the nearest computer parts store (about 60 miles away) to get the pieces I had tried to avoid buying in the first place. After several more round-trips to the store over the next three months, and some strategic purchases off eBay, over this past weekend I was able to FINALLY get it running the way I originally intended.

But, now that I’ve got little brother’s computer running smoothly, big brother starts to complain that his machine’s graphics aren’t as good, and wants to upgrade his to match.

So, the arguments start all over again. This time, at least, the boys aren’t complaining to each other.

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26
Mar

You Say “Potato Chips”, I Say “French Fries”

   Posted by: Michael Bernier   in Today's Reality

One of the benefits (or perils, as the case may be) in being a member of a creative writer’s group is having your writing reviewed and critiqued by the other group members. Oftentimes those critiques come with constructive comments, such as suggestions for restructuring a sentence to express an idea more clearly. At other times the critiques are more drastic, recommending that entire sentences or even paragraphs be altered or removed. These other points of view are important to a writer because it provides them with a perspective on their work they may not otherwise be able to see. They may not always like what they hear, but they do appreciate the input, for it helps them to become better at their craft…but sometimes it can make for some awkward situations.

Such was the case with a recent piece of writing I critiqued for another group member. Like me, she has a blog and makes regular postings on it for her readers. She asked me to review a posting she was working on that was very long and complex; she was hoping I could make some suggestions for shortening it up a little. Since I had done that for her a couple of times previously I felt okay with doing so again. I read through it a couple of times, found some pieces that I thought could be removed and others that could be changed around a little, and sent it back to her with my suggestions. A short time later, she sent it back to me with responses to almost every one of my notes explaining why she included all those pieces, why she wrote things a certain way, and even why she selected specific words. This person has a gentle soul, I love her dearly, and she goes out of her way to keep from hurting others, but it was painfully clear that my suggestions just weren’t going to work for her.

Many people would have felt hurt (or even insulted) by this, but I wasn’t. I have learned that creative writers tend to be a very subjective group, with no two ever looking at a piece of writing in exactly the same way. They also offer and receive criticism all the time, both good and bad, and learn to take it all in stride. If they can’t, they probably shouldn’t be writing in the first place. There will be other writings she will ask me to review in the future, and items I’ll ask her to review as well; just like this time, we’ll each offer our recommendations, and in return we can take them or turn them down. It’s just the way writers work.

I still liked my suggestions, though…

Postscript: She rewrote her posting, and asked me once again to have a look at it. I happily obliged. Such are the ways of the creative writer…

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