Froshty Mugs

An occasional forum I use to earn "She was funny" on my gravestone.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Shameless Self-Promotion

In the fall of 2005, I started a small company called Flexi-Word, and designed a website for it. Even though I produced keywords for metadata tagging and an abstract, which is how search engines like Google find websites when someone does a search, I have not been able to get Flexi-Word to come up when I search for it, or any of my other keywords such as freelance writing, small business, international, and more (including my full name). I understand that, for that to happen, I actually have to cough up a substantial amount of cash to give to a company that will then go after the search engines and arrange it so that my company's name not only simply appears when you search for it, but it also appears at the top of the list. Well, I do all right with my little business, but not enough "all right" for me to come up with that kind of money. This makes me sad, because I believe that Google is the reason that my life as a writer and researcher is so easy. In fact, when I have to write an overview for a product sold by the software giant I work for, rather than wade through the 147,800, 111 instances that the product's name is mentioned after a search on the company's website, I use Google to find that product immediately. Google also helps me discover if that product has been re-named (or, "re-branded" as they say in the biz) when the overview page does not immediately appear. So, I'm really disappointed that they do not have a democratic method of showing their search results but instead only a capitalistic one. But, I'm digressing.

Recently, for fun, I did a search for "froshty" on Google and this blog is the first link that appeared. This is because blogspot is owned by Google, so naturally it appears immediately. That got me thinking. What if, in my blog, I mentioned my company name and did a pitch here. Maybe that would get my company name out there and I wouldn't have to find $15,000 or more to go the advertising route.

So, I'm doing some shameless self-promotion for my company here to see how it flies. My company is called Flexi-Word and you can visit my website from here. I offer all kinds of writing services like proposal writing, brochure writing, ghost writing (articles, books), software documentation, press releases, and writing for the web. I also edit, translate from Spanish to English, audit websites with suggestions for improvement, train users how to use software, and I do website design and content authoring. In fact, one of the websites I designed (for a company called CSBS) went live yesterday.

I hope this works. Maybe I'll check it out and my next post can either be a brief update about the success of my little plan or a lengthy diatribe about why the Web should be more democratic.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Forsyth Needs

In an attempt to do more blogging until several massive projects come to fruition or Wayne returns from Italy (whichever comes first), I decided to steal another meme from Emily and Courtney. Because Forsyth is an unusual name, reserved usually for last names of Scottish botanists and bestselling authors or for towns and counties in the U.S, I decided to "google" "Forsyth needs," and post the results (with commentary, of course). In the cases where the pronoun "he" or "his" or "him" was used, I changed it to reflect my gender. So, here goes.

1. Forsyth needs to have a unified vision.
Look, I don't wear contacts in both eyes because I like being able to use the uncorrected right eye to read things up close without reading glasses. My doctor says he admires this approach and is thinking of having laser surgery on just one of his eyes for the same reason. Why would I throw away the one thing that I do that impresses my doctor?

If you think this might refer to my finally deciding whether I'm an editor or a writer, I can tell you that I'm not unifiying that vision, either. Nor am I going to settle for just one job. That's so boring; I prefer living life like the Jamaicans in the now-famous In Living Color skit and holding down at least 3 jobs at once. So, I'll leave the unified vision to other Americans, mon.

2. Forsyth needs to be completed in November.
Wow, that doesn't give me much time. I thought I didn't have to be complete for a few more years at least. Well, I guess I'll just have to step up the process by trying to do all the things I think I need to be complete starting now and giving up anything that might be distracting me from this process. If I suddenly stop blogging around November, you'll know that a complete person doesn't need a blog. Although, given my tendency to blog sporadically, you might want to wait until January before coming to that conclusion.

3. Forsyth needs an experienced administrator.
Well, as much as my unpaid office assistants might disagree, I think I do need an experienced administrator to: a) manage my teenaged daughter and her friends, b) remind me to pay my bills by the date they're due, c) keep track of my appointments, d) find a cook and housekeeper that will work for free, e) call all the people I keep meaning to call but am too tired at the end of the day to dial, f) keep track of all my ideas for my blog that vanish moments after I have them, g) make sure my bike and car are tuned and ready for riding whenever I want, h) suffer hangovers for me because it seems I get a hangover if I only say, "I'd like a margarita," i) eat sweets, chocolate, and junk food for me, and j) make sure my library books get back to the library before they're a year overdue or identified as a "lost book." This would then allow me to do only the things I truly love which include reading one book or more a day; shopping and hanging out with both daughters; spending time at Wayne's house; traveling to Peru, Italy, Spain, Hawaii, and New Orleans; riding my bike; having a margarita or two without paying for it the next day; working on all my writing projects (paid and unpaid); chatting with my friends online; and watching every kind of crime show, house flipping show, and dancing show offered on TV.

4. Forsyth needs to a) get an editor; b) begin to care about readers again; c) rediscover a sense of pride in her craft.
Slap in the face! All this time, I've thought that because I am an editor I don't need an editor, but after looking at all the typos in my blog entries, I can see that this part is true. I also didn't realize that I'd stopped caring about my readers or that I'd lost a sense of pride in my craft; caring about my readers is exactly why I wait so long between blog entries: I want them to read quality posts. Case in point: my ten things you don't know about me post has not interested anyone but Emily and she pointed out that she knew most of the ten things. I knew I should have waited 6 weeks before posting after the modern fiction one. Maybe I have lost my sense of pride in my craft.

5. Forsyth needs better cooperation.
Yes, this is true. I need better cooperation from technical reviewers that should check the code in the material I send them rather than editing my edits with changes that violate every style and grammar rule known to man. I need better cooperation from the people who developed Photoshop CS because it is the only software that I haven't been able to teach myself and that makes me furious. I need better cooperation from my teenagers in the matter of making sure that the health department doesn't come over and shut my house down. I need better cooperation from my house, which should know that I can't afford to paint the exterior or have the first floor re-wired at this time in my life and pocket book--I have a kid in college, for heaven's sake. I need better cooperation from nano-technologists because I want to be able to teleport myself to foreign lands and distant cities and they haven't done enough to help me in that respect.

6. Forsyth needs to stand up and defend Alberta’s five-point childcare agreement.
Wow, apparently I'm the one person that can help a Canadian province keep a childcare agreement alive. Ah, the heavy burden of responsibility I must bear.

7. Forsyth needs to hire an elections director.
This is a no-brainer. To defend Alberta's five-point childcare agreement, I will have to run for office. Is anyone out there interested?

8. Forsyth needs computers and software.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that the last thing anyone who has two laptops and two desktop computers in her house needs is more computers and software. Well, you're wrong. One of my laptops is missing the "R" key. On the other laptop, most of the letters printed on the keys have worn off. As a result, last year, when customs officials in Peru saw that computer, instead of charging me a duty of 20% of the computer's value, they just laughed. My other desktop is four years old and protests when I try to run Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver at the same time while playing iTunes. None of these computers has a dual-core processer, which I'm dying to have, nor do they have the latest editions of Office 2007 or Adobe Creative Suite, all of which cost too much. So, if someone wants to contribute to my savings account to remedy these dire situations, I'd be happy to accept donations.

9. Forsyth needs no introduction.
How could I disagree with a statement that is so patently true?

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Ten Things You Might Not Know About Me

My sister and brother have both addressed this topic on their blogs, although I think the original number was eight. I decided to write 10 things because my mind likes to work in multiples of 10 (maybe that's my 11th thing and this should be 11 Things You Might Not Know About Me--I'll let you decide).

1. I'm more likely to cry when I'm happy than when I'm sad.

2. I watch Apolo Ohno and Julianne Hough perform their version of the Samba (from "Dancing with the Stars") on youtube at least once a week.

3. I don't think chocolate ice cream is that great unless there's something like brownies in it.

4. I've convinced myself that, just by watching, I have the power to affect how the Carolina Tar Heels play in any given sport and I have to wait until I start watching to decide whether I will help them win or lose.

5. In 2004, while I drove over the Mississippi River Bridge just as the sun was setting over the New Orleans skyline, singing "Clocks" by Coldplay with my Peruvian friend Rale, I experienced a feeling of intense joy that I constantly try to relive.

6. I have a crush on a friend (a man) who is 15 years younger than I am.

7. I love to ride around aimlessly in a car after I've had a few drinks as long as someone else is driving.

8. I don't enjoy writing fiction, but I feel pressured to because many people I know say, "Oh, you're such a great writer; you should write a novel."

9. I hate the prepositional phrase "in order to."

10. My favorite number is 9 because of all the cool things about it, especially its symmetry. For example, the multiples of 9 from 2 to 10 all add up to nine, like 9x2=18 and 1+8=18 or 9x3=27 and 2+7=9. Not only that, but each sum derived from the multiples goes up by one increment and then back down again: 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, and 81.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

My Foray into Modern Fiction

I come from a family where reading is the favorite pasttime, except perhaps for eating, and almost all of my friends (except my boyfriend) are big readers. A conversation with any of them at any given time will usually include the mention of a book that we're reading or have just finished. Now the caveat here is that the books I read are usually suspense thrillers, murder mysteries, or chick lit; however, they're still books and I'm still reading. Every once in awhile I can mention that I'm reading Faulkner (every year I take a Faulkner book to the beach) book, or something by John Steinbeck (my favorite American novelist of the 20th century) or something by Latin American authors--I like Vargas Llosa in particular and now I've just discovered Isabel Allende. Basically, though, I lag behind my siblings and friends when it comes to reading books that were not written to get a $4.5 million advance and the Edgar Award for Best Mystery.

Recently, I've started pondering this, probably because I feel inadequate when I discover all the esoteric books my family and friends are reading. From the time I was 13 until I was about 5, I read all kinds of great fiction written in the 20th century by authors as diverse as Chaim Potok, Milan Kundera, Jerzy Kozinski (not spelled correctly), and Kurt Vonnegut. Why have I not continued in this vein? When my sister lists all the authors she likes on her blog, why don't I recognize any of their names? Why am I more excited about Sue Grafton's latest novel than the latest book by the guy who wrote The Kite Runner?

I was in the process of purchasing a Wally Lamb book that didn't really appeal to me just to say his name when someone asked me what I was reading rather than "Lisa Scottoline" or "Sara Paretsky" when I mentally slapped myself back to reality with a cathartic thought: I don't like books written by people like Wally Lamb. And the reason I don't like them is very simple: they just aren't interesting or even well-written. On several occasions, I've fallen for a critic's lyrical praise of a new work of fiction or a book that's won some National Book award or even a Pulitzer Prize and I've bought it at Barnes and Noble on a whim. Almost every time, I've been disappointed. All of these books are dreary books about painful human relationships that are caused by cold, unfeeling parents and told from the point of view of the multitudes. They run in three basic writing styles.

The first I like to call "diarrhea of the adjective and run-on sentence in present tense" and this style reads something like this:

She pours the lukewarm sepia tea that is supposed to be green but is always oversteeped so that it is never really green but somewhere between sepia and midnight oil out of the teapot that has poured countless such cups because she somehow thinks that tea is more motherly than another beverage and trying to be motherly is what she is all about although she has as much clue about how to be a mother as one of those animals that eats their young. Why do I do this? Every week I answer her call as if she is one of those hunters that blows a duck call and all the ducks come flying out of the bushes and over the murky lifeless ponds of winter just so the hunter can shoot them and brag triumphantly about bagging a bunch of ducks that might as well have been sitting because they fell for this siren's call and were not prepared for death. I sip her witch's brew and listen to her recount the details of her very uninteresting life that is filled with minor skirmishes over those empty headed despots she considers her social equals. I sip and I brood and I hate her with every fiber of my being for everything she has done wrong or not done right and I gleefully think of her choking on that tea and falling face forward into the plate of limp watercress sandwiches that she thinks are sophisticated but are just her pathetic attempt to look classy.


Do you like this narrator? I don't. One paragraph like this and I close the book angrily, especially if I've bought it. I know that the author is trying to emulate writers like Faulkner who see language as something rich and lush. The difference is that Faulkner knew how to write and even though his characters are tragic, they are sympathetic.

The second style is the complete opposite of of the diarrhea affliction, and I'd like to credit my sister Lindsay with helping me perfect my satire of it.

"Would you like some tea?" she asked.

"Yes, please," I reply.

We drink in silence. Later, on the subway ride home, I burst into tears.


Books like this are full of tantalizing vignettes that never really explain the story. They often have no ending or beginning. You are left wondering if the author simply followed a few people around, jotting down their conversations and recording their actions with no real knowledge of them or why they behave the way they do.

The third style is what I call "unnecessary character development in print." It is my understanding from a statement made by one of my clients, that nowadays, workshops about writing fiction emphasize character development rather than plot. My client opined that because I write nonfiction well that I couldn't write fiction because fiction involved character development and my nonfiction is based on telling a story. At the time, I was mildly insulted because I thought that telling stories and writing novels are one in the same. However, as I look over all the books that people praise that have been written in the last 20 years, I see that my client had a point.

Many modern novels are nothing more than the index cards that workshop attendees accumulate to use as background material for their characters. The result is 400 to 900-page tomes where every character, no matter how minor, has at least a chapter devoted to his point of view. There are some novelists that can a get away with this, most notably Vargas Llosa in his book La Ciudad y los Perros and Maeve Binchy, but that's because they manage to use these voices to tell a story irather than just spilling every voice in the book onto the pages. And the worst part of it is, I don't like any of the voices. It appears that the age of ugliness is upheld by book after book filled with ugly, bitter, savage people who hate for no reason and people suffering internal angst when they actually have wonderful lives.

Lest you all think that I'm just a cranky curmudgeon who likes to complain and has nothing positive to say about anything, I am pleased to report that this blog entry ends on a positive note. After spending 20 years searching for a writer as good as the writers that inspired and challenged me when I was in my 20s, I finally found one. About three weeks ago, I checked Ravelstein by Saul Bellow out of the library. Even though this book was another one where one male character idolizes another male character (often for reasons only known tp the narrator), such as Dr. Faustus, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and the Robertson Davies trilogy, Bellow writes so well, that I was caught up in his fantasy whereby an antihero is really a hero and I ended up enjoying the celebration of the main character, Ravelstein. I wish I hadn't returned the book to the library so precipitously because there were some great lines in the book that I can't quote word for word. But, my favorites go something like this: "He was one of those large men whose hands shake when he has to perform a small task" and after a comment that during Hitler's Germany, the world was convinced that Jews should not live, he wrote something like "That's something you feel down to your bones."

Good writing like that is something that I feel down to my bones.