Daylight Savings and Atomic Clocks

I know Daylight Savings isn’t “celebrated” everywhere in the world, but it’s one big happy party for Americans. Let’s see, we can go to bed an hour early and get up at our normal time, thereby not “losing” an hour’s sleep, or we can go to bed at our normal time and sleep in an hour, so we get the recommended daily allowance of sleep for the night. The trouble is, if we do either, the next night—you know, the night before Marvelous Monday and work again—we can’t fall asleep at our normal time because our body tells us it’s an hour earlier than the clock reports; therefore, we lose the hour of sleep anyway. It’s totally a lose/lose situation. I guess the bright side is that in just six short months, we change our clocks again, and everything will be back in balance in the universe.

By the way, do intelligent-thinking people ever wonder what is the actual value of Daylight Savings? I hate to warn the government agency or political genius that this idea doesn’t make sense…but it doesn’t make sense. On Sunday, March 10, 2013, in my home town, there was 11 hours and 39 minutes of daylight. If the political genius rearranged the clock so that the sun would rise exactly one hour later, by all my calculations, it would set one hour later too, giving me 11 hours and 39 minutes of daylight. Only a naïve political genius and/or government agency would think that some daylight was “saved.” I mean, if I cut a foot off the top of a board and attached it to the bottom of the board, the board would not be longer. Or if educational spending is cut by a billion dollars but then an additional billion dollars is handed out to a foreign country, the budget wasn’t cut.  So what daylight is being saved?

Enough ranting. I have another serious issue with Daylight Savings Time. My atomic clock doesn’t change. Oh, there’s a setting in there somewhere that a person could find if he or she had instructions, but what red-blooded American man would keep those around? So here’s the problem. On Saturday, March 9, and Sunday, March 10, my wife and I performed the happy labor of changing numerous clocks ahead one hour (including the one on our DVD player that took about a half hour to figure out). Awesome funness is what I call the clock-changing experience. But if I change my atomic clock ahead one hour, it rethinks itself and changes back. What this means is that six months out of the year, it projects the wrong time.

Let me explain some things. I’m blind. Okay…not literally because if I was, I wouldn’t have any reason to read my clock. But 20-500 vision is nearly blind. That’s why I flood the bathroom with blazing light in the morning—light which challenges the sun in wattage. I can’t see in the shadows and such…especially now that it’s dark again in the morning! But I digress. Until I put in my contact lenses, I’m blind. But I don’t wear my contacts to bed and my wife was getting tired of me crawling all over her body in the middle of the night in an attempt to get my face three inches from the clock on her nightstand to find out how many more minutes I could sleep. So she purchased me an atomic clock which projected in giant red numbers on the wall just above my head, and I could see it! And for six months out of the year, it projects the actual time. The other six months of the year, starting on Sunday morning, March 10, I have to do math in the middle of the night.

Math in the middle of the night doesn’t sound impossible. I should be able to add ONE to the number on the wall right? Wrong. This is what happens. I roll over and glance up at that beautiful red projection, and it says 3:37, for instance. My mind at that time is working at about .0073% capacity, so I think, “Crap! Something in my mind, way back in a dark place is nagging a notion that it really isn’t 3:37. I wonder what time it really is?” Well, it’s 3:38 because a whole minute has passed while I formulated that thought. Then I think, “Oh, yeah, my clock is an hour off. Great! Do I add an hour or subtract one?” I can’t believe how I can be staring at those once-gorgeous digits, that once-satisfying projection, while my neck is cramping from the sustained effort to decide what time it really is. Well, it’s 3:39—somewhere. Just not in my room.

Eventually, after two full minutes of concerted brain exercise, my mind begins to function at 2.3892% capacity, and I remember that my clock is behind by one hour—which means, I have to add one hour to the 3:39 projection which has just changed to 3:40, and I find that it’s a very difficult problem. I mean, I’m pretty sure I could handle it at most times during the day, just not at 3:40 a.m….I mean 3:41. So I strain, maybe even create a visual image of a piece of paper with 3 + 1 = ____ , and eventually I reach the conclusion that it’s 4:41 a.m….I mean 4:42…and I have some more time to sleep. The trouble is, my brain has by then awakened to somewhere near 3.1216% capacity which I’m fairly certain is Pi. Unfortunately, I believe that number also to be the perfect scientific degree of awakedness that guarantees a sleeper to not be able to fall back asleep.

I’ve read that Daylight Savings was Ben Franklin’s idea—he’s had better ones. I’ve read that the Germans devised the evil scheme to save energy during World War I—danke not! To me, it means six months of blissful bedtime convenience turns into six months of mental acupuncture. It’s been four nights. The countdown—to the day that there is balance in the universe once again—has begun.

Vivid Examples of Excellence

"Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence."-George F. Will

In 1989, Michigan point guard, Rumeal Robinson, was fouled at the end of a game against Wisconsin. With no time on the clock and his team down by one point, Robinson proceeded to miss both free throws. There is no worse experience for an athlete than to be put in a position to win the game and to fail. It’s something that is devastating enough that it could ruin a weak-minded individual, but Robinson wasn’t the sort. The story is that he shot 100 extra free throws after every practice from that day forward because if the situation happened again, he didn’t want to fail. Later in the year, in the NCAA championship game in overtime, he drove to the basket in an attempt to make the game-winning shot, but he was fouled. With no time on the clock, and down by one point, Rumeal Robinson calmly sank both free throws to give his team a one-point victory—an NCAA championship.

Several years later, I was coaching a 7^th grade girls’ basketball team. We were undefeated, late in the season. I don’t recall if we were behind by one or two points, but one of my starters, a girl by the name of Stephanie Duell, was fouled on the last play of the game. She immediately started crying. She knew if she missed, our undefeated season was over and the emotion of the moment overwhelmed her. She shot the free throws, and, of course, missed. We lost one game that year. That was the only season I coached 7^th grade. The next year, I moved up with the team to 8^th grade. Stephanie was the hardest working girl on the team. Every time we shot free throws, she made it a competition between me and her. She practiced extra, and she was very good, but wouldn’t you know it, later in the year, against the same team with our same undefeated record on the line, Stephanie was fouled with no time on the clock, our team down by two points. That time there was no tears. She walked straight to the line and sank them both. I couldn’t have been prouder of one of my players than I was right then.

Two years ago, Detroit Catholic Central High School lost in the state wrestling finals to Oxford High. The number one ranked DCC team led going into the last match but lost the state title when Evan Toth was defeated. Two years later, last Saturday, as fate would have it, DCC was pitted against Davison High School, and Davison was leading 26-23 as the last two wrestlers walked onto the mat—one of them was Evan Toth. Based on criteria, if tied at the end of the meet, Davison would win, so Evan Toth couldn’t just win the match, earning his team three points—he needed bonus points. A simple win wouldn’t be good enough, and before he knew it, he was down 9-2 with his state championship dreams fading away once again. But Toth didn’t give up hope. While grappling against a quality wrestler, the clock, and demons from his past, Toth pinned his opponent with just thirty-five seconds remaining, earning six points—enough to give his team the state championship.

All three stories are feel bad stories followed up by feel good stories. All three stories demonstrate how sports can be a vivid example of excellence. Michael Jordan, a man whose name is synonymous with game-winning heroics said the following: “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” John Wooden, considered by many as the greatest college basketball coach of all time said, “Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.” Abraham Lincoln said, “Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you, and in the end you are sure to succeed.” Colin R. Davis said, “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.”

I’ve been blessed as an athlete, a teacher, a parent, a coach, and a sports fan to witness incredible feel-good stories of people who looked into the face of previous discouragement, previous failures, and previous mistakes, and instead of letting those moments defeat them, they rose above them and succeeded. They understood—and sports is usually a vivid example of it—that while others are simply dreaming of success, winners wake-up in the morning and work hard to achieve it. All of the feel-good, come-back stories that I mentioned earlier are examples of people who didn’t let failure get the best of them. They worked hard, prepared themselves well, and ended up succeeding in the very thing for which they failed earlier. Why don’t more people take the lessons from sports and apply them to their lives? Why do independent writers, for instance, write a book that doesn’t sell well and then put in the same effort and do the same things for the next book and expect it to do better? Why wouldn’t an indie writer take LOTS of extra time learning punctuation, capitalization, and grammar rules? Why wouldn’t the writer listen to advice from knowledgeable readers whom they can trust and be willing to make changes to his or her book—maybe even a complete overhaul? Why wouldn’t a writer use a thesaurus, do word searches for repetitious words, and even double and triple-check for spelling and capitalization and punctuation consistencies?

Athletes like Rumeal Robinson, Stephanie Duell, Evan Toth, and Michael Jordan went the extra mile, dedicated the extra effort, and refused to give in to failure. They believed in themselves and realized that in life there are usually numerous failures and mistakes on the road to success. Albert Einstein said, “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” Earl Nightingale  said, “Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.” Winston Churchill said, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” And finally, Thomas Edison said, “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Yes, sports serve society by giving vivid examples of excellence—examples that everyone can apply to any area of life. Do you need to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and try again? Then it’s time to renew your efforts and enthusiasm because the next great success story might be yours.

Common Grammar Errors

A week or so ago, my dogs were cuddled on the bed with my wife and me while we watched TV and ate ice cream—TV with benefits. Every light in the house was off except the one in the bedroom. Being the gentleman that I am (and feeling an almost impossible-to-be-denied need to roll off the bed and do something productive), I grabbed the ice cream bowls and headed off to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher. Because of the dogs, I closed the door on the way out and headed toward the kitchen, one glass bowl in each hand. The dark, silent hallway and a short jaunt through part of the living room were all that separated me from the kitchen and the awaiting sink—I thought. Unbeknownst to me, a dog gate was propped in the entryway because as people in the Northern United States definitely know, there is often snow on the ground outside…and people with house dogs might know that when the pets go outside to do their business, they come back in as happy, furry snowmen, barely recognizable as canines…and therefore, the gate is to keep the freshly bathed and de-snowballed dogs in the kitchen on the tile until they dry off adequately. Well, the dogs were in the bedroom, so the gate shouldn’t have been wedged in the doorway to the kitchen, but I wouldn’t have known that because the house was void of any light whatsoever.

I walked merrily on my way until the gate hit me just above the thighs. I flipped forward onto my waist, two glass bowls stretched out in front of me for their protection as I balanced myself on a thin wooden frame, looking remarkably—I’m sure—like Superman posed in flight. It was quite an athletic feat, but it was one in which the inanimate gate wasn’t impressed. Seemingly, the gate was only concerned about its own preservation, and it determined all by itself that it wasn’t made to hold the weight of a grown man—it was made to keep fourteen-pound puppies in the kitchen. It started to slip, but what was I to do? I couldn’t see a thing, and I had a glass bowl in each hand that would surely shatter on the tile floor over which I was hovering. All I could do was wait for the inevitable, and sure enough, the gate collapsed to the floor with a nervous homeowner splayed on top. I did my best abdominal banana pose and plopped to the floor, bowls stretched before me for safety. The gate crashed and I dropped to the tile unharmed, but most importantly, the bowls lived to tell their version of the story as well. Afterward, a crease of light appeared as my wife stuck her head out of the bedroom. “Are you all right?” she asked. Two dogs charged out the door, raced down the hall, trampled over my back, and started licking the bowls in my outstretched hands. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had planned the whole thing themselves.

The story is true, but the application has yet to be made. I am an author, but I’m also an English teacher who moonlights as an editor. I vowed to use this blog to occasionally give editing tips, which is what I’m just about to do. Examples are highlighted above.

1. Toward vs. towards (afterward vs. afterwards, etc.):  I did a whole blog about this, but I want to say again that “toward” is still considered the proper usage. All sorts of experts agree with my former statement. It appears, however, that outside of North America, “towards” and “afterwards” are much more commonly used and accepted. I don’t use “towards” because so many sites warn me that using it is likely to offend educated people while “toward” offends no one.

2. All right vs. alright: I did a blog about this too, but I want to say again that if you would do readings on the internet, you will see that no one thinks “all right” is a misspelling and lots of people think “alright” is spelled incorrectly. You will see that people claim that the “alright” spelling is becoming acceptable, but you’ll see over and over again that educated, intelligent people widely, crazily claim that the only correct spelling is “all right.” No one says “all right” is wrong. The majority say the other spelling is incorrect.

3. Hyphens: Hyphens always join words together to make one word. Fractions, compound numbers, and compound words (like mother-in-law) use hyphens to make more than one word into a single word. Where people seem to fall short in their understanding of this concept is when they take two separate adjectives and combine them to form a single description. “Fourteen-pound puppies” is an example. They aren’t “fourteen puppies” or “pound puppies.” Fourteen and pound form a single description…a single adjective…a single word. Therefore, they are hyphenated.

4. Coordinate adjectives: This is where you would use two or more adjectives in succession to describe the same word. You would place commas between these words if the words coordinate (work together equally). This is how I explain it to my eighth-graders. If you can put the word and between the adjectives and it sounds natural, you need a comma. “Furry, happy snowmen” was used above. I can say the snowmen were furry and happy. They were happy and furry snowmen. That sounds natural, as does “the hallway was dark and silent.” When I said “my best abdominal banana pose,” for instance, they didn’t coordinate because the pose is not my and best and abdominal and banana. The pose is not banana and abdominal or abdominal and best. That does not sound natural.

5. Punctuating dialogue: I actually have a prior blog post about this too, but some of the concepts need to be reviewed. First of all, put commas, periods, question marks, etc. before the quotation marks. There is a very, very infrequent exception, but it is rare. Example #1: “I’ll do it,” said Jimmy. There is a comma after “it”—not a period—because the sentence doesn’t end until “Jimmy.” The comma is written before the quotation marks as all punctuation (except a rare question mark exception) always is. The word “said” is not capitalized.  Example #2: “I’ll do it.” He nodded in affirmation. In this example, there is a period after “it” because that is the end of a sentence. “He nodded in affirmation” is another new, complete sentence. It is not a dialogue tag because “nodded” is not how a person can speak. Example #3: “Are you all right?” she asked. This example has a question mark and a period. The quote needs to be punctuated properly, hence the question mark, but it is not the end of the sentence. The dialogue tag ends the sentence, so there is no capital letter on “she” and there is a period at the end.

6. I vs. me:  This is a lot more complicated topic than I have time to cover thoroughly, so let me just say that “I” is always used as a subject and “me” is always used as an object. “With my wife and me” is a prepositional phrase with both “wife” and “me” as the objects of the preposition. If you eliminated “wife and” from the equation, the phrase would be “with me,” and that would sound right to everyone. It is also between you and me (I hear this as you and I very, very often).

So here I am at the end, and I still don’t know what I should call this blog post. Laughter and Language Lessons? Casual Stoll in the Dark? Ice Cream and Near Catastrophe? Gates and Grammar? Fourteen-Pound Puppies Pouncing? My Best Superman Banana Pose? I’m open for suggestions.

Ample, Heaving Bosom

Titles are phenomenally important. Do I have your attention? Today I’m going to recommend some movies about writing and/or books, incorporating some lines from the film’s script and my own personal touch, of course. Because there are five, I’ll get right to it.

1.    Dead Poets Society—English teacher John Keating (played by Robin Williams) inspires his students to a love of poetry and to seize the day.

a.    [Keating stands on his desk]: “Why do I stand up here? Anybody?”

Dalton: “To feel taller!”

John Keating: “No!” [Dings a bell with his foot] “Thank you for playing Mr. Dalton. I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way.”

(This is excellent writing advice—I should stand on my desk while writing. Or I could put a desk on my desk for a different perspective.)

b.   John Keating: “So avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired; he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad; use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys—to woo women—and, in that endeavor, laziness will not do.”

(Okay, I guess it’s time for me to write a very good love poem in hopes of wooing my woman. I’m very excited.)

2.    Misery—A famous novelist (played by James Caan) is "rescued" from a car crash by an obsessed fan (played by Kathy Lee Bates).

a.    Annie Wilkes: “God came to me last night and told me your purpose for being here. I’m going to help you write a new book.”

Paul Sheldon: “You think I can just whip one out?”

Annie Wilkes: “Oh, but I don't think, Paul, I know.”

(Who do you think we are, Annie? R.L. Stine? James Patterson?)

b.    [Annie has just read Paul's latest novel]

Annie Wilkes: “You! You dirty bird, how could you?!”

Paul Sheldon: “What?”

Annie Wilkes: “She can't be dead; Misery Chastain cannot be dead!”

Paul Sheldon: “Annie, in 1871, women often died during childbirth. But her spirit is the important thing, and Misery's spirit is still alive.”

Annie Wilkes: “I don't want her spirit! I want her! And you murdered her!”

Paul Sheldon: “No, I didn't.”

Annie Wilkes: “Who did?”

Paul Sheldon: “No one! She...she died! She just slipped away!”

Annie Wilkes: “Slipped away! Slipped away? She didn't just slip away! You did it! You did it! You did it! You murdered my Misery!”

(If you’ve seen the movie, this is really creepy and scary. I think I’ll let all the rest of my characters live…just in case there are other Annie Wilkeses in the world.)

3.    Alex and Emma—A writer (played by Luke Wilson) must turn out a novel in thirty days or face the wrath of loan sharks. A stenographer (played by Kate Hudson) helps him through his writer’s block.

a.    Alex, narrating to Emma: “He was wracked with confusion. For the first time in his life, he understood the true meaning of the expressions ‘horns of a dilemma’ and ‘between a rock and a hard place’—although the concept of ‘paying through the nose’ had always tormented him. How does the money get in the nose in the first place? Once in, is it pulled out by hand, or is a sneeze involved? And who would accept such a transaction? Burning questions all, but he had bigger fish to fry.”

(Clichés are awesome. It goes without saying that another “Red Pen” blog is evolving…just food for thought…all things being equal….My clichés are going over like a lead balloon, aren’t they?)

b.    Emma: "Ample bosom"?

Alex: “What’s wrong with that? It’s literary.”

Emma: “Oh, well, in that case, you forgot the heaving.”

Alex: “The what?”

Emma: “In every book I’ve ever read, whenever there’s an ample bosom, there’s always heaving.”

Alex: “What?”

Emma: “You introduced the bosom. I’m just asking if you want them to heave.”

Alex: “Fine, let them heave.”

(What I would give to have another person looking over my shoulder while I write, giving advice and commentary—unless she has ample, heaving bosoms—then it might be okay.)

4.    Finding Forester—An African-American teen writing prodigy/basketball player (played by Rob Brown) finds a mentor in a reclusive author (played by Sean Connery).

a.    Forrester: “No thinking…that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is...to write, not to think!”

(This would be sound advice if I could get my brain to stop working…but then I’d be dead…literally).

b.    Forrester: “Writers write things to give readers something to read.”

(I, on the other hand, do it to use up all of my spare time…oh, and so I can do all that fun marketing and promoting.)

5.    Inkheart—A young girl (played by Eliza Bennett) discovers her father (played by Brendan Fraser) has an amazing talent to bring characters out of their books and must try to stop a freed villain from destroying them all—with the help of her father, her aunt, and a storybook's hero.

a.    Narrator: “Since the dawn of time, storytellers have enchanted audiences with their words. But there is an even rarer gift. There are those, who by reading out loud, can bring characters to life. Out of books and into our world. Most of these ‘Silvertongues,’ as they are known, prefer to keep their skills a secret, but some do not even know this gift is theirs until it is too late.”

(This is why I love books. I do this in my head all the time.)

b.    Meggie: “Having writer's block? Maybe I can help.”

Fenoglio: “Oh yes, that's right. You want to be a writer, don't you?”

Meggie: “You say that as if it's a bad thing.”

Fenoglio: “Oh no, it's just a lonely thing. Sometimes the world you create on the page seems more friendly and alive than the world you actually live in.”

(Amen. What more is there to say?)

There you are—very good movies to watch that will make you, in no uncertain terms, a better writer or a more appreciative reader. It’s interesting that thinking of all these old movies has put me in the mood to get my mind off writing and my heart on an old favorite, so the popcorn is popping and I’m off to spend some more of my spare time on Entrapment. Katherine Zeta-Jones, with your ample, heaving bosom, here I come.

The So-manieth Time I Used That Word

There are almost 989,000 words in Webster’s dictionary. My current novel is approximately 72,000 words long. If I used every word in the language equally, I could write almost fourteen similarly lengthed books before I had to repeat a word. Yet in my current work, I used the word just 300 times. I used the word just more than I used the word said (only 271 times). I used the word pulled almost 100 times. (I didn’t use the word lengthed ever because Word says it’s not a word, yet I’ve used it twice already in this blog because I’m a crazy word-nut). I was just thinking that if I just used the word just just a few fewer times, my plot would stay just the same but my writing would be just that little bit better—that little bit that might just win me over a few more readers. Seriously. And why does my character have to pull a gun or a knife out and pull out his wallet and pull his motorcycle off the highway and pull into the driveway and pull an arrow from a quiver and pull a picture from his pocket and pull on a rope and pull a weapon back for a second swing and pull on a chain and pull the Staff of Moses from a rock? There are other words than just and pull. Webster has a stockpile of almost a million words from which to choose. Word has a handy-dandy thesaurus. (Handy-dandy isn’t in it, but it should be). There is a “Find” feature on Word also, which can be used to remind us that we’re using a word too much. And there is also such a thing as a pronoun to use as a replacement word. I used the word stop 58 times. I should stop using it so much. I should try a synonym.

I used is 318 times—and I wrote the book in the past tense. Plus, there’s no action in is. I used was 974 times. One out of every 74 words was was. There is no action in was either, yet my novel is an action/adventure. It’s full of action!! Just think how much more action there could have been if I would have stopped for a minute and pulled out my repertoire of action verbs. Numerous times I used the same word more than once in the same sentence. “He just pulled to a stop and pulled out his cell-phone just as the ring tone stopped.” (That icky sentence wasn’t in my current work in progress—I should never be taken too seriously). How about saying this? “He skidded into a parking space and yanked his cell phone from his pocket as the ring tone concluded.” Or how about…“He eased his motorcycle to a rest along the side of the road but was unable to slip out his cell phone before its tone terminated”?  Or how about…“The vehicle crashed and rolled down the expressway, air bags deploying, window glass shattering, seat and steering wheel pinning his body as his cell phone’s blaring ring tone ceased its musical notification”?

And let me ask this. Why do we as writers feel when we finally get the rough draft done that our book needs to be published before the next full moon? Shouldn’t we take more pride in our work? Shouldn’t we let people read it who aren’t afraid to offend us or tell us the truth or give us suggestions? Shouldn’t we be willing to go through it all and make plot adjustments, add better clues, make a better ending, word our sentences better, and stop with all the repetition…and stop with all the repetition? I have a “beta reader” who’s a brave lady. She tells me when I need improvement. For the word pulled she wrote—and I quote—“You have a love affair with this word.” For just, she simply put “delete” over and over and over. She typed, “You’re overusing the word some….I should start counting.” I counted them—all 118 of them. One time she noted, “This is the so-manieth time you’ve used this word.” So-manieth isn’t in Webster’s either, but she made her point. (Zombie-like isn’t in the dictionary either, but I fear I’m creating little zombie-like readers if I don’t rush to make a useful point soon).

Anyway, so now that I’m done with a productive round of content editing, I’m sending the manuscript to seven or eight readers with these instructions. “If you have questions, ask them. If you think a thought, write a comment. If you have a suggestion, tell it to me. If you find a mistake, note it. And if you feel the need to compliment me, that’s okay too.” In the meantime, I keep reading it. There’s always room for improvement. I want my book out as badly as the next person, but I want it to be something I’m proud of, not simply something I finished before moving on to the next project. Please read this closely, my fellow writers: The next step after finishing the rough draft is NOT choosing a cover. You see, choosing a great cover will motivate people to pick up the book and give it a try, but what’s inside the covers will motivate people to share, recommend, gift, and talk about your book—and read your next one.

Don’t just write your book and publish it. Take some time to repair it and improve it. Pull out your red pen to do the work of a serious writer. Stop being in such a hurry. You might begin to feel somewhat zombie-like during the revision process, making changes for the so-manieth time, but by using the handy-dandy tools and people at your disposal, you (or I) might actually produce a work of art in which we can be proud.