Friday's Odds and Ends

There was an interesting pro and con debate on the death penalty in The Dallas Morning News last Sunday. Leon Neyfakh, a staff writer for the Boston Globe wrote, "People who share a deep worry about government overreach, who believe in the sanctity of life and who place great importance on fiscal responsibility should not support a policy that empowers the state to spend large sums of money killing people."

I thought that was a great point. Most people don't stop to think about how much more it costs the government - and ultimately us via our taxes - to execute someone than to keep that same someone in prison for the rest of his or her life. This study of the costs of the death penalty shows that the difference can be significant, up to six times more in some states.

It's never been a secret that I am against the death penalty. To me it is more about revenge than justice. "Something horrible happened and this despicable person was responsible so let's kill the bastard."

Moving on to something more pleasant, the other day I read an excellent blog piece in  The Blood Red Pencil blog by Kathryn Craft. She offered this advice about editing, and editing again, before putting a book out. "Learn your lessons ahead of time, folks, and apply them pre-publication—not on your reader’s dime."

That is most appropriate at this time when anyone can be an author and get a book published via the many online opportunities. What has been happening in the e-book industry is interesting. As more and more books are published, sales are bouncing all over the place. Some writers have noticed a significant drop in sales - myself included - and we have come to the conclusion that the market is saturated. And not just saturated, but saturated with too many books of poor quality, so readers are going elsewhere.

Who can blame them? I hate to spend even $2.99 for a book that is poorly crafted and poorly edited. Maybe not edited at all. What Kathryn pointed out in her article is a problem with careful editing, even in books coming from traditional publishers. One of the issues she pointed out was the use of common phrases that are almost cliches in their overuse, as well as needless repetition of the same gestures and certain words.

We all tend to write the common, the ordinary, the first thing that comes to mind in our first drafts, but that is not good enough. When working with a client, I try to encourage them to rise above the ordinary in what they are writing. It is their choice to do that or not. But they will gain and keep more readers by giving them something fresh and different.

Okay, here's your Friday Joke from The Laugh Factory:

A man buys a lie detector robot that slaps people who lie. He decides to test it at dinner. He asks his son, "Son, where were you today during school hours?"

 "At school." The robot slaps the son. "Okay, I went to the movies!"

The father asks, "Which one?"

"Harry Potter." The robot slaps the son again. "Okay, I was watching porn!"

The father replies, "What? When I was your age I didn't even know what porn was!" The robot slaps the father.

The mom chimes in, "Haha! After all, he is your son!" The robot slaps the mother.

And let's finish with a pleasant picture. These are some roses blooming in one part of my flower bed.

Monday Morning Musings

Well, I missed posting a book review yesterday. I decided to take most of the day off from anything online, and that felt good. I think we do need to disconnect sometimes. I went out to lunch with my hubby, and then we watched TV shows we'd taped, and I finished the jigsaw puzzle I'd been working on.

I've seen two of the birds, cardinal and bluebird, already this spring.

Last week, Dallas Morning News columnist Jacquielynn Floyd wrote about the recent decision by the  Transportation Security Administration to allow small knives and other sharp implements on airplanes. There has been quite a backlash since the decision was announced a few weeks ago, with many people saying it is a dangerous move.

Floyd asks us to look at the decision with reason instead of emotion. We all still have strong emotional reactions to what happened on 9/11, and many people are anxious and fearful when they are flying, worried that their plane could be hijacked the way the terrorists took over the planes that fateful day. Floyd quotes James Fallows, a correspondent for The Atlantic, who has written extensively about flight safety. He contends that "reinforced coskpits and alert passengers make it impossible for a handful of terrorists with small weapons to hijack or crash a plane."

Patrick Smith, a commercial pilot agrees. He has written in his column for the Boston Globe that the 9/11 terrorists plan "relied almost entirely on the element of surprise, not weapons," and that surprise was a one time event." He believes that hijackers will never be able to take over an airplane with small knives again.

Whether or not we agree with those opinions, I think we should agree that we should bring more reason to the discussion, or any discussion, and not always act on an emotional knee-jerk reaction.

And now for a bit of fun. In the comic strip One Big Happy, Ellen, Ruthie's mother, is helping her with homework.

Ellen: "What type of sentence is each of the following - telling or question? Is that a banana?"

Ruthie: "That's easy. It's a question! And a dumb one! What else could it be? An Avacado?"

So what did you do this weekend? Anything more interesting than a jigsaw puzzle?